All that Dante said or did has its interest for us in spite of his errors, because he was an earnest and suffering man and a great genius; but his fame must ever continue to lie where his greatest blame does, in his principal work. He was a gratuitous logician, a preposterous politician, a cruel theologian; but his wonderful imagination, and (considering the bitterness that was in him) still more wonderful sweetness, have gone into the hearts of his fellow-creatures, and will remain there in spite of the moral and religious absurdities with which they are mingled, and of the inability which the best-natured readers feel to associate his entire memory, as a poet, with their usual personal delight in a poet and his name.
[Footnote 1: As notices of Dante's life have often been little but repetitions of former ones, I think it due to the painstaking character of this volume to state, that besides consulting various commentators and critics, from Boccaccio to Fraticelli and others, I have diligently perused the _Vita di Dante_, by Cesare Balbo, with Rocco's annotations; the _Histoire Littéraire d'Italie,_ by Ginguéné; the _Discorso sul Testo della Commedia_, by Foscolo; the _Amori e Rime di Dante_ of Arrivabene; the _Veltro Allegorico di Dante_, by Troja; and Ozanam's _Dante et la Philosophie Catholique an Treixième Siècle._]
[Footnote 3: For the doubt apparently implied respecting the district, see canto xvi. 43, or the summary of it in the present volume. The following is the passage alluded to in the philosophical treatise "Risponder si vorrebbe, non colle parole, ma col coltello, a tanta bestialità." _Convito,--Opere Minori_, 12mo, Fir. 1834, vol. II. p. 432. "Beautiful mode" (says Perticeri in a note) "of settling questions."]
[Footnote 4: _Istorie Fiorentine, II_. 43 (in _Tutte le Opere_, 4to, 1550).]
[Footnote 5: The name has been varied into _Allagheri_, _Aligieri_, _Alleghieri_, _Alligheri_, _Aligeri_, with the accent generally on the third, but sometimes on the second syllable. See Foscolo, _Discorso sul Testo, p_. 432. He says, that in Verona, where descendants of the poet survive, they call it _Alìgeri_. But names, like other words, often wander so far from their source, that it is impossible to ascertain it. Who would suppose that _Pomfret_ came from _Pontefract_, or _wig_ from _parrucca_? Coats of arms, unless in very special instances, prove nothing but the whims of the heralds.