Note 547 — Chapter II · DANTE.

The choice between Eloquentia and Eloquium lies with the taste and fancy of the chooser. The first word occurs first in the treatise itself. The second is in the title of the Grenoble MS. The texts which I use are, for the Latin, Dr Prompt’s facsimile of this MS., Venice, Olschki, 1892, and Dr Moore’s edition of the Opere (Oxford, 1897), with Mr Ferrers-Howell’s annotated English translation (London, 1890). This latter is very good as a whole, though of course one may differ as to the rendering of individual terms. The edition of the Società Dantesca by Signor P. Rajna (Florence, 1896) is elaborated with all the minute care by which scholarship in the looser modern vernaculars endeavours to put itself on a level with that in the older and exacter tongues. Unfortunately the emulation, here as elsewhere, is carried as far as the old unworthy tricks of depreciation and abuse of predecessors and rivals. The elaborate commentary is limited, with an almost ferocious scrupulosity, to the barest letter of the text; but another volume containing literary annotation is promised.