Yet Firdusi, "The Poet of Paradise" (for such is the meaning of this pen-name), is as much the national poet of Persia as Dante is of Italy or Shakespeare of England.

Abul Kasim Mansur is indeed a genuine epic poet, and for this reason his work is of genuine interest to the lovers of Homer, Vergil, and Dante.

The language of his Sohrab recalls the pathos of Vergil's Nisus and Euryalus, and the paternal love and despair of Dante's Ugolino.

Pitts and Bale have entirely neglected him, yet for his translation of David's Psalms into English metre and other poetical works, Leland scruples not to compare him with Dante and Petrarch, by giving him this ample commendation.

Let Florence fair her Dantes justly boast, And royal Rome, her Petrarchs numbered feet, In English Wyat both of them doth coast: In whom all graceful eloquence doth meet.

In illa terra sunt arbores dantes farinam, et mel, et vinum, et etiam venenum periculosius quod sit in mundo, quia contra illud non est remedium, nisi vnum solum, et est illud.

Quando etiam pater alicuius moritur, tunc filius conuocat omnes sacerdotes et histriones, et dicit se velle patrem suum honorare, et facit eum ad campum duci sequentibus parentibus omnibus, amicis, et vicinis, vbi sacerdotes cum magna solemnitate amputant caput suum, dantes illud filio suo, et tunc totum corpus in frusta concidunt, et ibi dimittunt, cum orationibus cum eo redeuntes;

I. "At that season," says Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante, "when the sweetness of heaven reclothes the earth with its adornments, and makes it all smiling with flowers among the green leaves, it was the custom in our city for the men and for the ladies to celebrate festivals in their own streets in separate companies.

She then, such as I depict her, or rather, far more beautiful, appeared at this feast before the eyes of our Dante, not, I believe, for the first time, but first with power to enamor him.

By as much as Dante or Shakspeare learnt of and entered into the hearts of men, by so much was his own nature strengthened and made peculiarly his own.

[Footnote 1: Vita di Dante.

[Footnote 2: Vita di Dante, p. 69.]

Mr. Joseph Carrow, who had a translation into English of the Vita Nuova, printed at Florence in 1840, entitles his book "The Early Life of Dante Allighieri."

In referring to Dante's Minor Poems, we shall refer to them as they stand in the first volume of Fraticelli's edition of the Opere Minore al Dante, Firenze, 1834.

In referring to Dante's Minor Poems, we shall refer to them as they stand in the first volume of Fraticelli's edition of the Opere Minore al Dante, Firenze, 1834.

There is great need of a careful, critical edition of the Canzoniere of Dante, in which poems falsely ascribed to him should no longer hold place among the genuine.

But there is little hope for this from Italy; for the race of Italian commentators on Dante is, as a whole, more frivolous, more impertinent, and duller, than that of English commentators on Shakespeare.]

In these mountains there are many herds of swine, many dantes, lions, tigers, bears, ounces, large wild-cats, monkeys, vast snakes, and other vermin.

They say that these mountains abound in tigers, lions, bears, wolves, wild- cats, foxes, dantes, ounces, hogs, and deer; and with many birds, both ravenous and others, most of them being black; while under the north, both birds and beasts are mostly white.

(i. e. Dantes Alligherius) revocatur ad patriam per trilustrium fere perpessus exilium?

Of ancient citizens, waiting for their sons to come back from the war, as in the "Agamemnon" of AEschylus; of sea-nymphs, as in his "Prometheus Bound;" even of the very Furies who hunt the matricide, as in his "Eumenides;" of senators, as in the "Antigone" of Sophocles; or of village farmers, as in his "OEdipus at Colonos"and now I have named five of the greatest poems, as I hold, written by mortal man till Dante rose.

Et primo incepit a digniori, scilicet a Guidone Guerra; et circa istius descriptionem lectori est aliqualiter immorandum, quia multi mirantur, immo truffantur ignoranter, quod Dantes, qui poterat describere istum praeclarum virum a claris progenitoribus et ejus claris gestis, describit eum ab una femina, avita sua, Domna Gualdrada.

bah, Beatrice!" cried Liszt, "the Dantes create the Beatrices.

Dante: La Divine comedie, index; avec une introduction a la bibliographie Dantesque.

My excellent father, Milord Smeet, had me put in a frigate when I was only twelve, an age at which one knows very little of Ciceros or Dantes or Corneilles, even as you will confess.