[547]. The choice between Eloquentia and Eloquium lies with the taste and fancy of the chooser. The first word occurs first in the treatise itself. The second is in the title of the Grenoble MS. The texts which I use are, for the Latin, Dr Prompt’s facsimile of this MS., Venice, Olschki, 1892, and Dr Moore’s edition of the Opere (Oxford, 1897), with Mr Ferrers-Howell’s annotated English translation (London, 1890). This latter is very good as a whole, though of course one may differ as to the rendering of individual terms. The edition of the Società Dantesca by Signor P. Rajna (Florence, 1896) is elaborated with all the minute care by which scholarship in the looser modern vernaculars endeavours to put itself on a level with that in the older and exacter tongues. Unfortunately the emulation, here as elsewhere, is carried as far as the old unworthy tricks of depreciation and abuse of predecessors and rivals. The elaborate commentary is limited, with an almost ferocious scrupulosity, to the barest letter of the text; but another volume containing literary annotation is promised.
[548]. Coleridge, I think, refers to it; but with no adequate recognition.
[549]. Hanc quidem secundariam Græci habent et alii sed non omnes.
[550]. For the delightfully scholastic (and, like most scholastic things, by no means inept) reasons, first, that as they set God at nought we need take no count of them; secondly, that all they want to know of each other, for their fiendish purposes, is their diabolic quality and rank.
[551]. As being solely guided by instinct.
[552]. As to the apparent contradiction with the Convito, v. infra.
[553]. It is desirable to note that the original confusion, or, to speak more correctly, ambiguity of “Grammar” is curiously illustrated in this close context. Here the first “grammar” seems to denote literary as opposed to vernacular tongue: the second can only mean Latin.
[554]. Facilior et delectabilior.
[555]. Arturi regis ambages pulcerrimæ. This observation is not quite negligible in the endless debate about the priority of verse or prose in these legends.