6-3-

DANTE,

TRANSLATED BY

ICHABOD CHARLES WRIGHT, M.A.,

LATE FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD.

VOL III.

THE PARADISO.

A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMAN.

1845.

1885. Jan. 21,

Gift of

The Heirs of C. C. Felton

"In exhibiting the works of great Poets in another language,
much depends upon preserving not only the internal meaning
-the force and beauty as regards sense, but even the external
lineaments, the proper colour and habit, the movement, and, as
it were, the gait of the original.”—Bishop Lowth. Sacred Poetry
of the Hebrews. Lec. 3.

NOTTINGHAM:

Printed by W. DEARDEN, Carlton Street.

INTRODUCTION.

By a course of allegorical representations, Dante conducts us through the three stages of human existence.In the Inferno, we witness the misery of sin: in the Purgatorio, the struggles of virtue. Those who have laboured up the hill,-who have surmounted the temptations of this world, and begun to taste the pleasures of the next, are described as enjoying that peace of mind which is imaged by the terrestrial Paradise. It is not, however, in the delights of Eden that the high destiny of man finds its full accomplishment. Verdant bowers and peaceful streams may be the emblem, but are not the reward, of holiness. As through the transgression of Adam all forfeited the blissful state of innocence; so, all who are justified, through the merits of Christ, not only recover the original happiness of their first parents, but are exalted to a higher state of felicity than that from which they fell. The task of the Poet in approaching such a theme becomes more arduous.-In describing the abodes of guilt or of virtue upon earth, he could avail