The first French translation was that of Grangier, 1596, but
the study of Dante struck no root there till the present century.
Rivarol, who translated the _Inferno_ in 1783, was the first Frenchman
who divined the wonderful force and vitality of the _Commedia_.[46] The
expressions of Voltaire represent very well the average opinion of
cultivated persons in respect of Dante in the middle of the eighteenth
century. He says: "The Italians call him divine; but it is a hidden
divinity; few people understand his oracles. He has commentators, which,
perhaps, is another reason for his not being understood. His reputation
will go on increasing, because scarce anybody reads him."[47] To Father
Bettinelli he writes: "I estimate highly the courage with which you have
dared to say that Dante was a madman and his work a monster." But he
adds, what shows that Dante had his admirers even in that flippant
century: "There are found among us, and in the eighteenth century, people
who strive to admire imaginations so stupidly extravagant and
barbarous."[48] Elsewhere he says that the _Commedia_ was "an odd poem,
but gleaming with natural beauties, a work in which the author rose in
parts above the bad taste of his age and his subject, and full of
passages written as purely as if they had been of the time of Ariosto and
Tasso.
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