Britain's Tribute to Dante in Literature and Art. By Paget
Toynbee. (H. Milford for the British Academy. 12s. 8d. net.)— The sixth centenary of Dante's death in September, 1321, has been celebrated in London during the past week by the Uni- versity and by the British Academy. For the Academy our leading Dante scholar, Dr. Toynbee, has prepared this " chrono- logical record of 540 years, 1380-1920," mentioning English editions, translations, articles, and references to the poet, and the pictures, drawings, and sculptures inspired by his poems. It is an elaborate piece of work, which must have cost much time and trouble. Dante was introduced to English readers by Chaucer about 1380. Oxford had a copy of the Divine Comedy in 1444. Cultivated people read Italian in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and knew Dante. In the late eighteenth century appeared the first English translation of the Inferno, in blank verse, by Charles Rogers. Fuseli and Flaxman about the same time drew subjects from the Divine Comedy. The first complete translation of the epic, by Henry Boyd, appeared in 1802. Cary's familiar translation came out in 1814. From that time Dante rapidly became familiar to English readers. Four-fifths of Dr. Toynbee's record deals with books and works of art produced since the beginning of the nineteenth century Dr. Toynbee says that an English version of one or other of the three parts of the Divine Comedy has appeared, on an average, every year since 1802—" a record which, it is believed, cannot be paralleled in the literature of any other country." He has noted over fifty pictures or sculptures representing the episode of Paolo and Francesca, and over thirty representing Beatrice- The growing popularity of Italian studies in this country will doubtless increase still further the numbers of those who read and study Italy's great poet.
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