12 s. viii. JUNE ii, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 463 punishment to great and small alike, but j I am repelled by this uncalled-for exhibition | of professional superiority over brother- ; poets. But I utterly repudiate Mr. W. J. i Payling Wright's unfair suspicion (' Dante and the Divine Comedy,' 1902, pp. 57-8) to j the effect that he is inclined to suspect that in his character there | lurked a vein of innate ferocity. We can justly excuse his cruel inventions as part of the spiritual I machinery of his age. . . . But, from one who has passed through the heavens and beheld the Eternal Love we expect the best and noblest. . . . Were the ' Inferno ' his only work, we could not but suspect him of taking pleasure in suffering for its own sake.* As the ' Inferno ' was not Dante's " only i work, r ' why harbour so ungenerous a sus- picion ? It is enough to have regretfully | to censure the great poet's extraordinary vanity without venturing to libel his cha- 1 racter with a charge of unthinkable cruelty, j 2. Ibid. xxvi. 112-142. " O frati," dissi, " che per cento milia," &c. Yet another display of inordinate self- esteem (this time vented on Horace and Virgil as well as on Lucan) is again discovered by Dean Plumptre in the lines indicated above, which he introduces with a com- plaint aimed at Tennyson : The noble passage that follows [the above line] has been made familiar to English readers by Tennyson's paraphrase in his ' Ulysses,' which, somewhat strangely, appears without any re- ference to Dante, f A comparison with JEn. i. 198, Hor. Od. I. vii. 25 (also Lucan ' Phars.' i. 229), suggests the thought that as, in the pre- vious canto, Dante had measured his strength against Lucan and Ovid, so now he does not shrink from competing with Horace, and even with his own Master and Guide, and, so far as he knew him, with Homer. He feels that his fame also in future ages will be as that of the poeta sovrano. So much the worse for Dante's emula- tion (if such there were), especially in the case of Homer, whom, as Scartazzini re- marks (ad ' Inf.' iv. 83), " non conosceva che di nome, non sapendo di Greco, e non essendone i poemi ancora tradotti (' Conv.' ii. 15 ; i. 7)." I conceive that it was a matter of indebtedness and adaptation. Mr. Tozer ('English Commentary,' ad vers.) is of opinion that " the idea may have been suggested by the Genoese voyages of dis- covery in search of a western continent, which were made in his time ; one of these expeditions started in 1291, and was never heard of again." If this be so, then there can be no question of conscious emulation on Dante's part in this passage with either Homer, Virgil, or Lucan, and it is signifi- cant that neither Scartazzini, Lombardi nor Bianchi seems to find any such therein. Who, then, are the commentators in this matter on whom Dean Plumptre " dwells with less delight, or from whom he reaps less profit " ? J. B. McGovEKN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.
- At 11 S. v. 401, I had already pilloried this
outrageous suspicion of Mr. Wright. f This may be so, but it is due to Tennyson's memory to transcribe here what Dr. Paget Toynbee states in his ' Dante in English Litera- ture,' vol. ii., p. 317: "'Ulysses,' which was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death (1833) though not published till 1842, was suggested by ' Inferno,' xxvi. 90-142. Tennyson himself said, ' There's an echo of Dante in it.' " And Dr. Toynbee heads his quotation of the poein ' Echo of Dante. 1 ALDEBURGH, EXTRACTS FROM CHAMBERLAINS* ACCOUNT-BOOK. 1625-1649. (See ante, pp. 163, 224, 265, 305, 343, 387, 426.) 16 PAYMENTS. 32 THE expenses for the new pulpit and desk formed one of the many complaints brought against the vicar, Richard Topcliffe. Representations were made to the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. The Earl wrote to the Bishop of Norwich enclosing a petition, from his tenants of Aldeburgh pressing for relief in troubles put upon them by the vicar, " causelessely and for mere vexation sake " ; amongst the troubles a complaint signed by two persons of the vicar's refusing to baptize a sick child privately ; " and they have en joyned such things as have drawn the town to great charges, as erecting a new pulpit (although they were very good and sufficient before)." Finally, on July 25, 1644, "the Sequestration of the Vicaridge of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk" takes place, and " Clement Ray, M. of Arts, an orthodox divine," occupies the new " pulpitt." Paid for help to gett a Caske of wine for the Comunion into the house '. . 00 00 02 Paid for Matts for the seat where mr Tapley sett 00 02 00
