D. G.
Rossetti's remarkable volume of translations from the early Italian
poets. Mr. Rossetti would do a real and lasting service to literature
by employing his singular gift in putting Dante's minor poems into
English.
[200] The old French poems confound all unbelievers together as
pagans and worshippers of idols.
[201] Dante is an ancient in this respect as in many others, but the
difference is that with him society is something divinely ordained.
He follows Aristotle pretty closely, but on his own theory crime and
sin are identical.
[202] Purgatorio, XVIII. 73. He defines it in the De Monarchia (Lib.
I. sec. 14). Among other things he calls it "the first beginning of our
liberty." Paradiso, V. 19, 20, he calls it "the greatest gift that in
his largess God creating made." "Dico quod judicium medium est
apprehensionis et appetitus." (De Monarchia, _ubi supra_.)
"Right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides."
_Troilus and Cressida._
[203] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 22.
[204] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 7. "Qui descenderit ad inferos, non
ascendet." Job vii. 9.
[205] But it may he inferred that he put the interests of mankind
above both.
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