Dante stands forth as the Apostle of Freedom in many spheres—that Freedom for which all the world is now longing: freedom for unhindered self-development of men and nations, freedom of spirit—the true atmosphere of all education. The _Monarchia_, the Epistles, and, most of all, the _Divina Commedia_—that “mystical epos of Man’s Free Will”—bear witness to the truth of the word which Virgil speaks of him at the foot of the Mount of Purgation— Libertà va cercando ... This all-pervading spirit of his teaching might perhaps of itself have been sufficient to make his name an inspiration to the heroes and martyrs who struggled for Italy’s liberation in the nineteenth century; but it may be worth while to draw attention to certain aspects of his work, which give him a more definite and specific claim to be the Father of Free Italy. The other day I turned up, after many years of neglect, Karl Witte’s Essay on Dante and United Italy. For this suspicious intercourse with “enemy alien literature” I can plead two extenuating circumstances: first, the absorbing nature of the topic at this moment, and secondly that I approached Witte in an English translation. Another point which might count in my favour is the fact that this particular Essay was written before 1870. That certainly lends to it a special interest; and the interest is rather enhanced than otherwise by the circumstance that Witte prefixed a Prefatory note and added a peroration in 1878. Karl Witte, who was born in 1800 and died in 1883, represents the old vigorous and admirable type of German scholarship which was in very truth “Stupor Mundi”: a blend of genius and conscientious painstaking on the reputation of which the Prussianised Kultur of to-day bases a claim to deference which Europe will more and more hesitate to accord. How far, for instance, Germany has fallen from her former position as regards Dante Scholarship may be gauged from E. Benvenuti’s slashing article in the _Bullettino della Società dantesca italiana_ of June, 1914, of which a summary appeared in the _Times_ Literary Supplement on March 4th. The article is the first instalment of a review of Dante studies in Germany for the years 1908-1913. It is a record, as the _Times_ reviewer remarks, of “monumental ignorance, inaccuracy, arrogance, bad taste, and sheer stupidity ... hailed with salvoes of approbation by the majority of German critics.” But Karl Witte is a man of other build than these modern Pan-Germanisers who are patriotic enough to attribute to Dante pure German ancestry, and too patriotic by far to soil their hands with the recent works of sound Italian critics, or their minds with the elements of Italian grammar and idiom.