Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/47

 9<" s. in. JAN. 21, m

NOTES AND QUERIES.

41

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY VI, 1899.

CONTENTS.-No. 56.


 * Dante, 41 Lee's 'Life of Shakespeare,' 42

Stone," 43 Oxford, 44 The ' Roxburghe Kevels,' 45 Truphesof Phylosophers' A Chronogram Robert Bur- ton " The policy of pin-pricks," 46 Parallel Passages " Ask no questions," &c. General Index to Fourth Series, 47.

QUERIES : De Feritate Wordsworth Edgeworth's Parents' Assistant,' 47 " Tres tois d'or" Bingham Armorial Device and Motto Godfrey Box Damage to Bridge" Dies creta notandus "The Sister Churches- Miss Sibley, 48" Pip in the webe" John Bright Fleet Prisoners Puzzle Jug Lo Spendore The Captive Stag Mrs. Yates, 49 ' Iconography of Don Quixote' " Flowerie " Simeon Slingsby Heraldic Authors Wanted, 50.

REPLIES : " Helpmate." 50 Mergate Hall Prime Minis- ter' More Hints on Etiquette,' 52-Changes of Name- Book Terms Epitaphs " Hullabaloo " " Ceiling," 53 Sweating-pits W. Prynn Walpole and his Editors, 54 'The Book of Tephi' Middlesex Nonjurors The Curse of St. Withold Carkeet and Andrews Chaussey, 56 " Interlunar cave" Cure for Consumption Names of the Cowslip Myrraecides, 57 Major John Andr< Picture by Murillo Theatre Tickets Architectural Niches Mael- strom Hebrew Numerals, 58.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Fox-Davies's ' Armorial Families ' Steuart's ' Diary of Thomas Brown ' Frere's ' The Use of Sarum ' Paravicini's ' Life of St. Edmund of Abingdon' Buckman-Linard's ' My Horse, my Love.'

Notices to Correspondents.

THE STUDY OF DANTE IN AMERICA.

CAVALIERE GIACOMO BONI, Inspector of Antiquities to the Italian Government, has recently reprinted from La Rivista d? Italia. a new literary and artistic review published in RtDme, a very interesting contribution to the history of the study of Dante in America, entitled ' Studi Danteschi in America,' which deserves recognition in this country.

Cav. Boni records with patriotic pride, he being himself a Venetian, that the first im- pulse towards the study of Italian literature in America was given by Lorenzo da Ponte, a native of the ancient city of Ceneda, in Venetian territory, between Cpnegliano and Cadore (the birthplace of Titian), who is chiefly known to fame as the author of the words of the operas of 'Don Giovanni ' anc the ' Marriage of Figaro,' and who, after an ad- venturous life in his own country, emigratec to London and afterwards to New York, whence he removed in 1811 to Sunbury, in Pennsylvania. In 1822 Da Ponte translated Byron's 'Prophecy of Dante' in terza rima and published in 1827 a small volume entitlec 'Storia della Letteratura ' in New York, in which he relates the efforts he had made to increase the library of Columbia College where he had been appointed Professor o:

talian Literature. So successful had been ds efforts that, to use his own words, " there were more than seven hundred volumes here on my arrival there was nothing >ut an old, ragged, and moth-eaten copy of Boccaccio."

Da Ponte wrote and lectured on Dante, and published the results of some of his researches

the text of the poet, which appeared in the New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine
 * or 1825-0, from which Cav. Boni gives some

extracts. Da Ponte also wrote his memoirs n three volumes, which were published in [talian in New York, and afterwards trans- ated into French and German. Copies of these memoirs in Italian and French are to be found in the British Museum, but it is stated, on the authority of Vittorio Mala- mani, that there is no complete copy of the work in any Italian library. Da Ponte died at New York in 1838, aged ninety, and was buried in a Catholic church there (but the precise church is not stated), without a stone to mark the spot, and Cav. Boni appeals to the Dante Society of the United States to provide a simple memorial to one who has aone so much to diffuse a knowledge of the Italian tongue in America.

Prof. Th. W. Koch, in the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Dante Society of Cambridge (Mass.), published an elaborate study on Dante in America, and recalls that on Da Ponte's arrival in America the Italian language and literature were completely unknown. Ten years after that date George Ticknor found it difficult to procure a copy of Dante's works in Boston, and absolutely im- possible to find any one to assist him in reading them. George Ticknor did much to stimulate the study of Dante in New Eng- land, and inaugurated a course of lectures at Harvard on the * Divina Commedia ' and its author. The work thus commenced was continued by Longfellow, Lowell, and Nor- ton, and thanks to them the study of Dante has now become one of the most important branches of education in the university, at the present time ten of the principal colleges of America having lectures on the subject.

Another devoted student of Dante in America was Richard Henry Wilde, a native of Ireland, where he was born in 1789, who was instrumental, with Signor Giovanni Aubrey Bezzi, an exiled Piedmontese lawyer and Seymour Kirkup, an English artist and archaeologist, in discovering in 1840 the por- trait of Dante, by Giotto, in the chapel of the Palazzo del Podesta, afterwards known as the Bargello, at Florence.