Goethe seems never to have given that attention to Dante which
his ever-alert intelligence might have been expected to bestow on so
imposing a moral and aesthetic phenomenon. Unless the conclusion of the
second part of "Faust" be an inspiration of the _Paradiso_, we remember
no adequate word from him on this theme. His remarks on one of the German
translations are brief, dry, and without that breadth which comes only of
thorough knowledge and sympathy. But German scholarship and constructive
criticism, through Witte, Kopisch, Wegele, Ruth, and others, have been of
pre-eminent service in deepening the understanding and facilitating the
study of the poet. In England the first recognition of Dante is by
Chaucer in the "Hugelin of Pisa" of the "Monkes Tale,"[52] and an
imitation of the opening verses of the third canto of the _Inferno_
("Assembly of Foules"). In 1417 Giovanni da Serravalle, bishop of Fermo,
completed a Latin prose translation of the _Commedia_, a copy of which,
as he made it at the request of two English bishops whom he met at the
council of Constance, was doubtless sent to England. Later we find Dante
now and then mentioned, but evidently from hearsay only,[53] till the
time of Spenser, who, like Milton fifty years later, shows that he had
read his works closely.
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