lla Vita e nelle Opere, e di
lui Comento Latino sulla Divina Commedia di Dante Allghieri voltalo in
Italiano dall' Avvocato_ GIOVANNI TAMBURINI. Imola. 1855-56. 3 vol.
in 8vo. [The Commentary of Benvenuto Rambaldi of Imola on the _Divina
Commedia_, translated from Latin into Italian, by Giovanni Tamburini.]

Almost five centuries have passed since Benvenuto of Imola, one of
the most distinguished men of letters of his time, was called by the
University of Bologna to read a course of lectures upon the "Divina
Commedia" before the students at that famous seat of learning. From
that time till the present, a great part of his "Comment" has lain in
manuscript, sharing the fate of the other earliest commentaries on the
poem of Dante, not one of which, save that of Boccaccio, was given to
the press till within a few years. This neglect is the more strange,
since it was from the writers of the fourteenth century, almost
contemporary as they were with Dante, that the most important
illustrations both of the letter and of the sense of the "Divina
Commedia" were naturally to be looked for. When they wrote, the lapse of
time had not greatly obscured the memory of the events which the poet
had recorded, or to which he had referred. The studies with which he had
been familiar, the external sources from which he had drawn inspiration,
had undergone no essential change in direction or in nature. The same
traditions and beliefs possessed the intellects of men. Similar social
and political influences moulded their characters. The distance that
separated Dante from his first commentators was mainly due to the
surpassing nature of his genius, which, in some sort, made him, and
still makes him, a stranger to all men, and very little to changes like
those which have slowly come about in the passage of centuries, and
which divide his modern readers from the poet.

It was the intention of Benvenuto, as he tells us, "to elucidate what
was dark in the poem being veiled under figures, and to explain what
was involved in its multiplex meanings." But his Comment is more
illustrative than analytic, more literal than imaginative, and its chief
value lies in the abundance of current legends which it contains, and
in the number of stories related in it, which exhibit the manners or
illustrate the history of the times. So great, indeed, is the value
of this portion of his work, that Muratori, to whom a large debt of
gratitude is due from all students o