as it is as an early expression of
confidence in the duration of Dante's fame.

A similar omission of a curious reference to Dante occurs in the comment
on the 23d verse of Canto XXVII. of the "Inferno," where Benvenuto,
speaking of the power of mental engrossment or moral affections to
overcome physical pain, says, "As I, indeed, have seen a sick man cause
the poem of Dante to be brought to him for relief from the burning pains
of fever."

Such omissions as these deprive Benvenuto's pages of the charm of
_naivete_, and of the simple expression of personal experience and
feeling with which they abound in the original, and take from them
a great part of their interest for the general reader. But there
is another class of omissions and alterations which deprives the
translation of value for the special student of the text of Dante,--a
class embracing many of Benvenuto's discussions of disputed readings and
remarks upon verbal forms. Signor Tamburini has thus succeeded in making
his book of no use as an authority, and prevented it from being referred
to by any one desirous of learning Benvenuto's judgment in any case
of difficulty. To point out in detail instances of this kind is not
necessary, after what we have already done.

The common epithets of critical justice fail in such a case as that of
this work. The facts concerning it, as they present themselves one after
another, are stronger in their condemnation of it than any words. It
would seem as if nothing further could be added to the disgrace of the
translator; but we have still one more charge to prove against him,
worse than the incompetence, the ignorance, and the dishonesty of which
we have already found him guilty. In reading the last volume of his
work, after our suspicions of its character had been aroused, it seemed
to us that we met here and there with sentences which had a familiar
tone, which at least resembled sentences we had elsewhere read. We
found, upon examination, that Signor Tamburini, under the pretence of a
translation of Benvenuto, had inserted through his pages, with a liberal
hand, considerable portions of the well-known notes of Costa, and, more
rarely, of the still later Florentine editor, the Abate Bianchi. It
occurred to us as possible that Costa and Bianchi had in these passages
themselves translated from Benvenuto, and that Signor Tamburini had
simply adopted their versions without acknowledgment, to save himself
the trouble of maki