While sojourning in Florence he chanced to make the acquaintance of a talented woman who, discussing with him the masters of Italian literature, half in jest and half in earnest warned him not to attempt to read Dante, whom he could never hope to “understand.” Naturally this roused his curiosity, and he promptly bought an elaborate edition of the “Divine Comedy.” Reading this through, he then read what the commentators had to say about it, and was shocked at what he considered the inadequacy and positive error of their views. “Some day,” said he to himself, “I will certainly make an effort to promote a better appreciation of Dante.” This resolution he carried into effect five years later by the publication, in Germany, of one of the most important literary essays of the nineteenth century. It was entitled “On Misunderstanding Dante,” and concerning it a modern authority on the study of Dante, Philip H. Wicksteed, declares: “If the history of the revival of interest in Dante which has characterised this century shall ever be written, Karl Witte will be the chief hero of the tale. He was little more than a boy when, in 1823, he entered the lists against existing Dante scholars, all and sundry, demonstrated that there was not one of them that knew his trade, and announced his readiness to teach it to them. The amazing thing is that he fully accomplished his vaunt. His essay exercised a growing influence in Germany, and then in Europe; and after five-and-forty years of indefatigable and fruitful toil he was able to look back upon his youthful attempt as containing the germ of all his subsequent work on Dante. But now, instead of the audacious young heretic and revolutionist, he was the acknowledged master of the most prominent Dante scholars in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, England, and America.” In fact, from the time of the publication of this preliminary paper, almost to the time of his death, Dante essays, translations, commentaries, came from the pen of Karl Witte, to delight an ever-widening circle of Dante scholars, and incidentally to promote the study of Italian history. To understand Dante, Witte iterated and reiterated, it is absolutely necessary to have a knowledge of mediæval Italy. Especially must one study the religious pre-occupation of the age, as seen in the rise of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic, the Thomist reconstitution of theology and the contemporary consolidation of the hierarchy, and the attitude of the period toward the Albigenses and other heretics. This knowledge one must gain if he would fully appreciate the true significance of the “Divine Comedy” as the portrayal of man given over to sin and prevented by his lusts from recovering the path to virtue, till the Christian religion teaches him, by the light of understanding, to recognise sin and free himself from it, and then offers to his transported vision the divine revelation of the secret and bliss of Heaven.