There seems to us to be some ground for believing the second reading suggested above, Perocch' è il Sol che v' allumò ed arse Con caldo e con la luce, e sì iguali. to be the true one, not only from its correspondence with most of the early copies, but from the rarity of the use of _en_ by Dante. There is but one other passage in the poem where it is found (_Purgatory_, xvi. 121). Such is an example, taken at random, of the doubts suggested and the illustration afforded by these editions in the study of the text. Of course such minute criticism is of interest only to those few who reckon Dante's words at their true worth. The common reader may be content with the text as he finds it in common editions, But Dante, more than any other author, stimulates his student to research as to his exact words; for no other author has been so choice in his selection of them. He is not only the greatest modern master of condensation in style, but he has the deepest insight into the value and force of separate words, the most delicate sense of appropriateness in position, and in the highest degree the poetic faculty of selecting the word most fitting for the thought and most characteristic in expression. It rarely happens that the place of a word of any importance is a matter of indifference in his verse, no regard being had to the rhythm; and every one sufficiently familiar with the language in which he wrote to be conscious of its indefinable powers will feel, though he may be unable to point out specifically, a marked distinction in the quality and combinations of the words in the different parts of the poem. The description of the entrance to Hell, in the third canto of the _Inferno_ is, for instance, hardly more different from the description of the Terrestrial Paradise, (_Purgatory_, xxviii.,) in scenery and imagery, than it is in the vague but absolute qualities of language, in its rhythmical and verbal essence. But, leaving these subtilties, let us look at some of the disputed passages of the poem, upon which the texts before us may give their evidence.