FOOTNOTES:
[27] So I understand an obviously corrupt passage in Villani, viii. 41. One of the unlucky Blacks was a Portinari, doubtless a kinsman of Beatrice—a fact which curiously seems to have escaped the conjectural commentators.
CHAPTER VI.
THE “COMMEDIA”
So many good summaries of the Commedia exist that to give another may appear superfluous. At the same time, experience shows not only that such a summary is found by most readers to be the best of all helps to the study of the poem, but also that every fresh summariser treats it from a somewhat different point of view. It is therefore possible that in the following pages answers, or at least suggestions of answers, may be found to some questions which previous writers, in England at all events, have passed over; and that they may serve in some measure as a supplement to the works which will be mentioned in the appendix.