THE
DIVINE
COMEDY
OF
DANTE
ALIGHIERI

THE
INFERNO

A TRANSLATION
WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY
JAMES ROMANES SIBBALD

EDINBURGH
PUBLISHED BY DAVID DOUGLAS
MDCCCLXXXIV

[Pg vi]

[Pg vii]

PREFACE.

A Translator who has never felt his self-imposedtask to be a light one may be excused fromentering into explanations that would but too naturallytake the form of apologies. I will only say thatwhile I have striven to be as faithful as I could tothe words as well as to the sense of my author, thefollowing translation is not offered as being alwaysclosely literal. The kind of verse employed I believeto be that best fitted to give some idea, howeverfaint, of the rigidly measured and yet easy strengthof Dante’s terza rima; but whoever chooses to adoptit with its constantly recurring demand for rhymesnecessarily becomes in some degree its servant. Suchstudents as wish to follow the poet word by word willalways find what they need in Dr. J. A. Carlyle’sexcellent prose version of the Inferno, a work to whichI have to acknowledge my own indebtedness at manypoints.

The matter of the notes, it is needless to say, has[Pg viii]been in very great part found ready to my hand inexisting Commentaries. My edition of John Villani isthat of Florence, 1823.

The Note at page cx was printed before it hadbeen resolved to provide the volume with a copy ofGiotto’s portrait of Dante. I have to thank theCouncil of the Arundel Society for their kind permissionto Messrs. Dawson to make use of theirlithograph of Mr. Seymour Kirkup’s invaluable sketchin the production of the Frontispiece—a privilege thatwould have been taken more advantage of had it notbeen deemed advisable to work chiefly from the photographof the same sketch, given in the third volumeof the late Lord Vernon’s sumptuous and rare edition ofthe Inferno (Florence, 1865). In this Vernon photograph,as well as in the Arundel Society’s chromolithograph,the disfiguring mark on the face causedby the damage to the plaster of the fresco is faithfullyreproduced. A less degree of fidelity ha

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