ic
architecture itself, has many things which "lead to nothing" amidst
their massive greatness.

Had the Italian and the French commentators who have troubled themselves
on this occasion known the art which we have happily practised in this
country, of illustrating a great national bard by endeavouring to
recover the contemporary writings and circumstances which were connected
with his studies and his times, they had long ere this discovered the
real framework of the Inferno.

Within the last twenty years it had been rumoured that Dante had
borrowed or stolen his _Inferno_ from "The Vision of Alberico," which
was written two centuries before his time. The literary antiquary,
Bottari, had discovered a manuscript of this Vision of Alberico, and, in
haste, made extracts of a startling nature. They were well adapted to
inflame the curiosity of those who are eager after anything new about
something old; it throws an air of erudition over the small talker, who
otherwise would care little about the original! This was not the first
time that the whole edifice of genius had been threatened by the motion
of a remote earthquake; but in these cases it usually happens that those
early discoverers who can judge of a little part, are in total blindness
when they would decide on a whole. A poisonous mildew seemed to have
settled on the laurels of Dante; nor were we relieved from our constant
inquiries, till il Sigr. Abbate Cancellieri at Rome published, in 1814,
this much talked-of manuscript, and has now enabled us to see and to
decide, and even to add the present little article as an useful
supplement.

True it is that Dante must have read with equal attention and delight
this authentic _vision_ of Alberico; for it is given, so we are assured
by the whole monastery, as it happened to their ancient brother when a
boy; many a striking, and many a positive resemblance in the "Divina
Commedia" has been pointed out; and Mr. Gary, in his English version of
Dante, so English, that he makes Dante speak in blank verse very much
like Dante in stanzas, has observed, that "The reader will, in these
marked resemblances, see enough to convince him that Dante _had read
this singular work_." The truth is, that the "Vision of Alberico" must
not be considered as a _singular_ work--but, on the contrary, as the
prevalent mode of composition in the monastic ages. It has been
ascertained that Alberico was written in the twelfth century, judging of
the