A DANTE CRUX.
CTO THE EDITOR Or THC " ElrEonacat.")
Sns,—The letters of your correspondents on the opening line of Canto VII. of the Inferno remind me of the following passage in the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, when he is speaking of his prosecution for violence at Paris. I quote from Miss Macdonell's translation :- " As the great hall was already full of people, they took great care to let no one enter who had no business there. The door was kept locked and a guardian stood to bar the way. . . . It hap- pened that two gentlemen were determined to get in to watch the proceedings, and the porter was resisting stoutly. Thereupon the judge cried in a loud voice, Silence, silence. Satan, hence with you. Silence.' Now, in the French tongue these words sound like, Phe, phe, Satan, phe, phe, ale, phe. (Pair, pair, Satan; allez, pair.) I had become proficient in the French language, and, hearing these words spoken, I recalled what Dante said when he and his master Virgil entered the doors of Hell. Now Dante and the, painter Giotto the together in France, and particularly in Paris, where, for the reason I have here set forth, the place Of justice is indeed an Inferno. Thus Dante, who knew the
French tongue well, made use of this saying. And it has seemed to me curious that the, line has never been understood in this sense; and so I declare and believe that the commentators make him say things he never thought of."
The York and Lancaster Regiment.
British Military Mission to Comando Supremo, Italian Expeditionary Force, January 17th.
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