TAMBURINI.
Al tempo di Guido in Brettinoro anche i nobili aravano le terre; ma insorsero discordie fra essi, e sparve la innocenza di vita, e con essa la liberalità. I brettinoresi determinarono di alzare in piazza una colonna con intorno tanti anelli di ferro, quanto le nobili famiglie di quel castello, e chi fosse arrivato ed avesse legato il cavallo ad uno de' predetti anelli, doveva esser ospite della famiglia, che indicava l' anello cui il cavallo era attaccato.
TRANSLATION.
In the time of Guido in Brettinoro even the nobles ploughed the land; but discords arose among them, and innocence of life disappeared, and with it liberality. The people of Brettinoro determined to erect in the pub lic square a column with as many iron rings upon it as there were noble families in that stronghold, and he who should arrive and tie his horse to one of those rings was to be the guest of the family pointed out by the ring to which the horse was attached.
Surely, Signor Tamburini has fixed the dunce's cap on his own head so that it can never he taken off. The commonest Latin phrases, which the dullest schoolboy could not mistranslate, he misunderstands, turning the pleasant sense of the worthy commentator into the most self-contradictory nonsense.
"Ad confirmandum propositum," says Benvenuto, "oceurrit mihi res jocosa,"[A]—"In confirmation of this statement, a laughable matter occurs to me"; and he goes on to relate a story about the famous astrologer Pietro di Abano. But our translator is not content without making him stultify himself, and renders the words we have quoted, "A maggiore conferma referiro un fatto a me accaduto"; that is, he makes Benvenuto say, "I will report an incident that happened to me," and then go on to tell the story of Pietro di Abano, which had no more to do with him than with Signor Tamburini himself.
[Footnote A: Comment on Purg. xvi. 80.]
We might fill page after page with examples such as these of the distortions and corruptions of Benvenuto's meaning which we have noted on the margin of this so-called translation. But we have given more than enough to prove the charge of incompetence against the President of the "Academy of the Industrious," and we pass on to exhibit him now no longer as simply an ignoramus, but as a mean and treacherous rogue.
Among the excellent qualities of Benvenuto there are few more marked than his freedom in speaking his opinion of rulers and ecclesiastics, and in holding up their vices to reproach, while at the same time he shows a due spirit of respect for proper civil and ecclesiastical authority. In this he imitates the temper of the poet upon whose work he comments,—and in so doing he has left many most valuable records of the character and manners especially of the clergy of those days—He loved a good story, and he did not hesitate to tell it even when it went hard against the priests. He knew and he would not hide the corruptions of the Church, and he was not the man to spare the vices which were sapping the foundations not so much of the Church as of religion itself. But his translator is of a different order of men, one of the devout votaries of falsehood and concealment; and he has done his best to remove some of the most characteristic touches of Benvenuto's work, regarding them as unfavorable to the Church, which even now in the nineteenth century cannot well bear to have exposed the sins committed by its rulers and its clergy in the thirteenth or fourteenth. Signor Tamburini has sought the favor of ecclesiastics, and gained the contempt of such honest men as have the ill-luck to meet with his book. Wherever Benvenuto uses a phrase or tells an anecdote which can be regarded as bearing in any way against the Church, we may be sure to find it either omitted or softened down in this Papalistic version. We give a few specimens.
In the comment on Canto III. of the "Inferno," Benvenuto says, speaking of Dante's great enemy, Boniface VIII.,—"Auctor ssepissime dicit de ipso Bonifacio magna mala, qui de rei veritate fuit magnanimus peccator": "Our author very often speaks exceedingly ill of Boniface, who was in very truth a grand sinner." This sentence is omitted in the translation.
Again, on the well-known verse, (Inferno, xix. 53,) "Se' tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?" Benvenuto commenting says,—"Auctor quando ista scripsit, viderat pravam vitam Bonifacii, ct ejus mortem rabidam. Ideo bene judicavit eum damnatum…. Heic dictus Nicolaus improperat Bonifacio duo mala. Primo, quia Sponsam Christ! fraudulenter assumpsit de manu simplicis Pastoris. Secundo, quia etiam earn more meretricis tractavit, simoniacc vendcndo eam, et tyrannice tractando": "The author, when he wrote these things, had witnessed the evil life of Boniface, and his raving death. Therefore he well judged him to be damned…. And here the aforementioned Pope Nicholas charges two crimes upon Boniface: first, that he had taken the Bride of Christ by deceit from the hand of a simple-minded Pastor; second, that he had treated her as a harlot, simoniacally selling her, and tyrannically dealing with her."
These two sentences are omitted by the translator; and the long further account which Benvenuto gives of the election and rule of Boniface is throughout modified by him in favor of this "magnanimus peccator." And so also the vigorous narrative of the old commentator concerning Pope Nicholas III. is deprived of its most telling points: "Nam fuit primus in cujus curia palam committeretur Simonia per suos attinentes. Quapropter multum ditavit eos possessionibus, pecuniis et castellis, super onmes Romanos": "For he was the first at whose court Simony was openly committed in favor of his adherents. Whereby he greatly enriched them with possessions, money, and strongholds, above all the Romans." "Sed quod Clerici capiunt raro dimittunt": "What the clergy have once laid hands on, they rarely give up." Nothing of this is found in the Italian,—and history fails of her dues at the hands of this tender-conscienced modernizer of Benvenuto. The comment on the whole canto is in this matter utterly vitiated.
In the comment on Canto XXIX. of the "Inferno," which is full of historic and biographic material of great interest, but throughout defaced by the license of the translator, occurs a passage in regard to the Romagna, which is curious not only as exhibiting the former condition of that beautiful and long-suffering portion of Italy, but also as applying to its recent state and its modern grievances.
BENVENUTO.
Judicio meo mihi videtur quod quatuor deduxerunt eam nobilem provinciam ad tantam desolationem. Primum est avaritia Pastorum Ecclesiae, qui nunc vendunt unam terram, nunc aliam; et nunc unus favet uni Tyranno, nunc alius alteri, secundum quod saepe mutantur officiales. Secundum est pravitas Tyrannorum suorum, qui semper inter se se lacerant et rodunt, et subditos excoriant. Tertium est fertilitas locorum ipsius provinciae, cujus pinguedo allicit barbaros et externos in praedam. Quartum est invidia, quae viget in cordibus ipsorum incolarum.