Mr. Sinclair's three-volume prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy should prove to be an invaluable source of pleasure to those English readers who would read this great medieval classic with understanding. The original Italian text and the Sinclair translation are arranged on facing pages, and the commentaries, brilliant examples of genuine literary criticism, appear after each canto. In his Preface to the Inferno, Mr. Sinclair outlines the scope of his task: 'I have tried to serve readers who have little or no knowledge of Italian and who wish to know th ematter of Dante's poem. The requirements of some to whom the whole medieval outlook is strange and many of the classical references unfamiliar may excuse the number and the simplicity of the annotations, which are intended merely to make the narrative intelligible. In these I have erred, like the warder of the gate of Purgatory, 'rather in opening than in keeping locked.''
