father of a family, great in the affairs of his country at home and abroad; the exile, the wanderer, the greater poet; oppressed by poverty, defeated in his attempts to deliver the fatherland, heavy with a sense of the sin and injustice of the world, and feeling, as his great poem tells us, his own imperfect living toward his perfect aim, and yet through it all knowing the peace that comes with consecration to one's dreams.
Professor Albert S. Cook of Yale University suggested the undertaking of the present translation. The work has been carried on under his helpful guidance, and every page is nearer what it should be because of his thoughtful and painstaking criticism. Professor Henry R. Lang, also of Yale, has kindly decided for me doubtful points in the Italian. For the rendering of certain words and phrases I am indebted to the translation of the Boccaccio life by Professor G. R. Carpenter, published in a limited edition by the Grolier Club, New York 1900; and to the translation of the Bruni life and of portions of the Boccaccio life by Mr. P. H. Wicksteed, Hull 1898.
The texts used are as follows: Boccaccio, La Vita di Dante, ed. by Macrì-Leone, Florence 1888; Bruni, La Vita di Dante, in vol. v of Lombardi's edition of the Divina Commedia, Padua 1822; F. Villani's Liber de Civitatis Florentiae Famosis Civibus, ed. by Galetti, Florence 1847. In a very few instances I have departed from these texts: for example, I read in the Vita di Dante by Boccaccio, p. 25, l. 7, cercante for cercanti; p. 80, l. 5, lei for lui; in the Latin life by Villani, singillatim for sugillandum. I have retained the spelling of the texts in the case of proper names.
A discussion of the genuineness of the Vita by Boccaccio, which is here translated, as opposed to the so-called Compendio, and a critical review of both the Bruni and Boccaccio lives, will be found in Dante and His Early Biographers, by Dr. Edward Moore, London 1890.
- Yale University, May, 1901.
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