The mass of omissions such as these is enormous.  We go forward to the comment on Canto XII. of the “Paradiso,” which exhibits a multitude of mutilations and alterations.  For instance, in the comment on the lines in which Dante speaks of St. Dominick as attacking heresies most eagerly where they were most firmly established, (dove le resistenze eran piu grosse,) our translator represents Benvenuto as saying, “That is, most eagerly in that place, namely, the district of Toulouse, where the Albigenses had become strong in their heresy and in power.”  But Benvenuto says nothing of the sort; his words are, “Idest, ubi erant majores Haeretici, vel ratione scientiae, vel potentiae.  Non enim fecit sicut quidam moderni Inquisitores, qui non sunt audaces nec solertes, nisi contra quosdam divites denariis, pauperes amicis, qui non possunt facere magnam resistentiam, et extorquent ab eis pecunias, quibus postea emunt Episcopatum.”

“That is, where were the greatest Heretics, either through their knowledge or their power.  For he did not do like some modern Inquisitors, who are bold and skilful only against such as are rich in money, but poor in friends, and who cannot make a great resistance, and from these they squeeze out their money with which they afterwards buy an Episcopate.”

Such is the way in which what is most illustrative of general history, or of the personal character of the author himself, is constantly destroyed by the processes of Signor Tamburini.  From the very next page a passage of real value, as a contemporary judgment upon the orders of St. Dominick and St. Francis, has utterly disappeared under his hands.  “And here take notice, that our most far-sighted author, from what he saw of these orders, conjectured what they would become.  For, in very truth, these two illustrious orders of Preachers and Minorites, formerly the two brightest lights of the world, now have indeed undergone an eclipse, and are in their decline, and are divided by quarrels and domestic discords.  And consequently it seems as if they were not to last much longer.  Therefore it was well answered by a monk of St. Benedict, when he was reproached by a Franciscan friar for his wanton life,—­When Francis shall be as old as Benedict, then you may talk to me.”

But there is a still more remarkable instance of Signor Tamburini’s tenderness to the Church, and of the manner in which he cheats his readers as to the spirit and meaning of the original, in the comment on the passage in Canto XXI. of the “Paradise,” where St. Peter Damiano rebukes the luxury and pomp of the modern prelates, and mentions, among their other displays of vanity, the size of their cloaks, “which cover even their steeds, so that two beasts go under one skin.”  “Namely,” says the honest old commentator, “the beast of burden, and the beast who is borne, who in truth is the more beastly of the two.  And, indeed, were the author now alive, he might change his words, and