Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/533

 12 S.VIII. MAY 28, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 439 saeculi adesse." Lastly, there is the record of charters conveying lands to the Church and beginning with the words " seeing that the end of the world is approaching." It is, of course, possible that there was a falling-off in church-building about 1000A.D., for it was a time of such want and suffering that a modern writer has declared that if the seven trumpets of the seven angels had startled the earth with their blast a shout of mocking laughter would have gone up from the countless captives, serfs and monks who were living in the direst misery. The uncouth sculptures of the tenth century are said to show the influences of fear. But Glaber tells us that as soon as the panic passed away, almost every place of worship in Gaul and Italy was rebuilt, even though it were not in need of repair. The wealth that the Church had so suddenly acquired was favourable to architectural experiments, and the Byzantine style was superseded by a new style, known as the Romanesque. T. PERCY ABMSTKONG. The Authors' Club, Whitehall Court, S.W. on Britain's Tribute to Dante in Literature and Art. A Chronological Record of 540 Years (c. 1380- 1920). By Paget Toynbee. (Humphrey Mil- ford, for the British Academy. 12s. 6d. net.) DR. PAGET TOYNBEE has to his credit many studies, and these from more than one stand- point, of the great Florentine. This his latest work should not, we think, prove the least valuable. It is framed on a happy conception, and executed with just the right degree of fullness. Until one is deep in it one hardly realizes how much that is interesting, signi- ficant, illuminating is to be derived from the mere perusal of this record of the British writers and thinkers who, in this long space of time, have mentioned, quoted, admired or derided Dante, and of the British artists who have attempted representations of his scenes. The volume of praise increases steadily. In fact it would now, perhaps, require some courage in any man of letters to commit himself to any- thing like Horace Walpole's description of Dante as " extravagant, absurd, disgusting, in short, a Methodist parson in Bedlam " ; or to echo Coleridge's dicta that the line placed over the gate of Hell might well be inscribed over that of Paradise ; or to accuse Dante of " tedious particularity," puerility, and dullness, as did various writers in the Quarterly Revieio in the early years of the last century. The divergence of opinion on Dante from thoroughgoing scorn to almost unqualified admiration is surely greater than in the case of any other poet. That the " odium theologicum " has something to do with this cannot be denied ; but the question as to whether or not a person competent to form a judgment shall love Dante seems to depend ultimately upon his position this side or that of a great line of cleavage between human minds. You cannot read Dante to any purpose without taking account of religion : which pre- dominates in you, your sense of the One revealing Himself through the many, or of the many as resolving themselves back into the One ? If the former you will seldom complain of Dante's " particularity " ; if the latter, you may pos- sibly come to understand Horace Walpole. Chaucer's debt to Dante its nature and extent is pretty well known ; and it is pleasant to reflect that from Chaucer comes the first English mention of Dante's name : Oil Virgile or on Claudian, Or Daunte, that hit telle can In the early fifteenth century two English bishops, while" attending the Council of Con- stance, persuaded Serrayalle, Bishop of Fermo, to make a translation into Latin prose of the ' Divina Commedia,' and to Serravalle we owe a statement isolated and therefore doubtful that Dante had studied at Oxford. The first clear mention cf Beatrice would I appear to be that in Sir Philip Sidney's ' Apologie 1 for Poetrie.' The earliest translation of lines from the ' Divina Commedia ' into English blank verse is that of " Nessun maggior dolore. . ."by Thomas Hughes in ' The Misfortunes of Arthur.' It is curious how frequently those lines (' Inferno,' v. 121-3) reappear in this record: they, with " Lasciate ogni speranza," would appear to be to the verses as Paolo and Francesca and Ugolino are to the incidents in the ' Commedia.' The acquisition of MSS. and early editions of Dante's works by British collectors and libraries, beginning with the ' De Monarchia ' in Thomas James's Bodleian Catalogue, 1602, goes some- what slowly but steadily on, till we come to the Huth sale at Sotheby's in 1912, when the " record " price of 1,800 was paid for a copy of the 1481 edition of the ' Commedia.' In 1697, though Oxford and Cambridge still had none, there was a MS. of Dante at West- minster Abbey; and Wotton in 1639 had bequeathed two MSS. of him to Eton. The first Dante MS. acquired by the Bodleian was the fifteenth-century one belonging to the D'Orville collection, purchased in 1805. Judgment in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was, as might be guessed, favourable to Dante. Jewel uses him in support of his denunciation of Borne ; Sir William Alex- ander speaks of him quaintly as " old Dante, swolne With just disdaines." Of Milton, in this connexion, there is no need to speak ; and students of Gray will remember that the first line of the ' Elegy ' is an echo of the 'JPurgatorio ' (viii. 5-6.) More interesting, perhaps, are the references to Dante by humbler pens. Thus the learned Mrs. Carter finds Dante much beyond her comprehen- sion ; Goldsmith thinks he owes most of his reputation to the obscurity of the times in which he lived. Anna Seward talks of the " weary horror " of the 'Inferno,' and the Annual Register (1764) considers the simplicity of his style to be the chief cause of his pre-eminence. The early allusions to Dante in the Annual Register are particularly interesting as implying a certain know-