To JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
It is a happiness for me to connect this volume with the memory of my
friend and master from youth. I was but a beginner in the study of the
Divine Comedy when I first had his incomparable aid in the understanding
of it. During the last year of his life he read the proofs of this volume, to
what great advantage to my work may readily be conceived.
When, in the early summer of this year, the printing of the Purgatory
began, though illness made it an exertion to him, he continued this act of
friendship, and did not cease till, at the fifth canto, he laid down the pencil
forever from his dear and honored hand.
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
1 October, 1891
The text followed in this translation is, in general, that of Witte. In a
few cases I have preferred the readings which the more recent researches
of the Rev. Dr. Edward Moore, of Oxford, seem to have established as
correct.