History is full of examples of the vital influence of Dante's great work only a few years after it was given to the world. Then came a long period of neglect, and it was only with the opening of the nineteenth century that Dante came fairly into his own. The last century saw a great welling up of enthusiasm over this poet and his work. The _Divine Comedy_ became the manual of Mazzini and Manzoni and the other leaders of New Italy, and its influence spread over all Europe, as well as throughout this country. Preachers of all creeds, scholars, poets, all acclaimed this great religious epic as one of the chief books of all the ages. In it they found inspiration and stimulus to the spiritual life. Their testimony to its deathless force would fill a volume. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO DI BONDONE] Yet in taking up the _Divine Comedy_ the reader who does not know Italian is confronted with the same difficulty as in reading the Greek or Latin poets without knowledge of the two classical languages. He must be prepared to get only a dim appreciation of the beauties of the original, because Dante is essentially Italian, and the form in which his verse is cast cannot be reproduced in English without great loss. On this subject of translating poetry George E. Woodberry, one of the ablest of American literary critics, says: "To read a great poet in a translation is like seeing the sun through smoked glass. * * * To understand a _canzone_ of Dante or Leopardi one must feel as an Italian feels; to appreciate its form he must know the music of the form as only the Italian language can hold and eternize it. Translation is impotent to overcome either of these difficulties." This is the scholar's estimate; yet Emerson, who saw as clearly as any man of his time and who grasped the essentials of all the great books, favored translations and declared he got great good from them. At any rate, the average reader has no time to learn Italian in order to appreciate Dante. The best he can do is to read a good translation and then help out his own impressions by the comment and appreciation of such lovers of the great poet as Ruskin, Carlyle, Lowell and Longfellow. The best translation is Cary's version, which was revised and brought out in its present form in 1844, just before the translator's death. It is written in blank verse, easy and melodious.