Excerpt from The Purgatory of Dante Alighieri: Edited With Translation and Notes

There can be very little doubt that of late years the serious study of Dante's great poem is beginning to make its way in this country. Formerly, the Inferno was read, all through, or oftener in fragments, by young people who were learning Italian; and then they went on to read a little Ariosto, a little Tassco, and so on, till they were considered to be 'finished.' Very few, it may be imagined, ever looked into the Purgatorio; almost none ventured on the Paradiso. Indeed, the second and third Canticles must have occupied much the same position in the opinion of the critics as is held by Paradise Regained. Thus Sismondi decides that the interest falls off in the second part of the poem: he seems to looked back with regret to the 'horror of great darkness,' varied only by the diverse torments of Hell. In the lively hope which animates 'the folk secure of beholding the light on high,' he can see only a lack of emotion resulting in frigidity; and even the visions and dreams, important as they are to the understanding of the Cantica, seem to him adapted only to awaken the impatience of the reader, in haste to get to the end of the story.

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