VISION;

OR,

HELL, PURGATORY, AND PARADISE,

OF

DANTE ALIGHIERI.

TRANSLATED BY

THE REV. H. F. CARY, A.M.

NEW YORK:

AMERICAN BOOK EXCHANGE,

TRIBUNE BUILDING.

PREFACE.

In the years 1805 and 1806, I published the first part of the following translation, with the text of the original. Since that period, two impressions of the whole of the Divina Commedia, in Italian, have made their appearance in this country. It is not necessary that I should add a third: and I am induced to hope that the Poem, even in the present version of it, may not be without interest for the mere English reader.

The translation of the second and third parts, "The Purgatory" and "The Paradise," was begun long before the first, and as early as the year 1797; but, owing to many interruptions, not concluded till the summer before last. On a retrospect of the time and exertions that have been thus employed, I do not regard those hours as the least happy of my life, during which (to use the eloquent language of Mr. Coleridge) "my individual recollections have been suspended, and lulled to sleep amid the music of nobler thoughts;" nor that study as misapplied, which has familiarized me with one of the sublimest efforts of the human invention.

To those, who shall be at the trouble of examining into the degree of accuracy with which the task has been