and its clergy in the thirteenth or fourteenth.  Signor Tamburini has sought the favor of ecclesiastics, and gained the contempt of such honest men as have the ill-luck to meet with his book.  Wherever Benvenuto uses a phrase or tells an anecdote which can be regarded as bearing in any way against the Church, we may be sure to find it either omitted or softened down in this Papalistic version.  We give a few specimens.

In the comment on Canto III. of the “Inferno,” Benvenuto says, speaking of Dante’s great enemy, Boniface VIII.,—­“Auctor ssepissime dicit de ipso Bonifacio magna mala, qui de rei veritate fuit magnanimus peccator”:  “Our author very often speaks exceedingly ill of Boniface, who was in very truth a grand sinner.”  This sentence is omitted in the translation.

Again, on the well-known verse, (Inferno, xix. 53,) “Se’ tu gia costi ritto, Bonifazio?” Benvenuto commenting says,—­“Auctor quando ista scripsit, viderat pravam vitam Bonifacii, ct ejus mortem rabidam.  Ideo bene judicavit eum damnatum....  Heic dictus Nicolaus improperat Bonifacio duo mala.  Primo, quia Sponsam Christ! fraudulenter assumpsit de manu simplicis Pastoris.  Secundo, quia etiam earn more meretricis tractavit, simoniacc vendcndo eam, et tyrannice tractando”:  “The author, when he wrote these things, had witnessed the evil life of Boniface, and his raving death.  Therefore he well judged him to be damned....  And here the aforementioned Pope Nicholas charges two crimes upon Boniface:  first, that he had taken the Bride of Christ by deceit from the hand of a simple-minded Pastor; second, that he had treated her as a harlot, simoniacally selling her, and tyrannically dealing with her.”

These two sentences are omitted by the translator; and the long further account which Benvenuto gives of the election and rule of Boniface is throughout modified by him in favor of this “magnanimus peccator.”  And so also the vigorous narrative of the old commentator concerning Pope Nicholas III. is deprived of its most telling points:  “Nam fuit primus in cujus curia palam committeretur Simonia per suos attinentes.  Quapropter multum ditavit eos possessionibus, pecuniis et castellis, super onmes Romanos”:  “For he was the first at whose court Simony was openly committed in favor of his adherents.  Whereby he greatly enriched them with possessions, money, and strongholds, above all the Romans.”  “Sed quod Clerici capiunt raro dimittunt”:  “What the clergy have once laid hands on, they rarely give up.”  Nothing of this is found in the Italian,—­and history fails of her dues at the hands of this tender-conscienced modernizer of Benvenuto.  The comment on the whole canto is in this matter utterly vitiated.

In the comment on Canto XXIX. of the “Inferno,” which is full of historic and biographic material of great interest, but throughout defaced by the license of the translator, occurs a passage in regard to the Romagna, which is curious not only as exhibiting the former condition of that beautiful and long-suffering portion of Italy, but also as applying to its recent state and its modern grievances.