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The five Sermons which form the body of this little book on Dante were delivered in the ordinary course of my ministry at Little Portland Street Chapel, in the autumn of 1878, and subsequently at the Free Christian Church, Croydon, in a slightly altered form.

They are now printed, at the request of many of my hearers, almost exactly as delivered at Croydon.

The substance of a sixth Sermon has been thrown into an Appendix.

In allowing the publication of this little volume, my only thought is to let it take its chance with other fugitive productions of the Pulpit that appeal to the Press as a means of widening the possible area rather than extending the period over which the preacher's voice may extend; and my only justification is the hope that it may here and there reach hands to which no more adequate treatment of the subject was likely to find its way.

The translations I have given are sometimes paraphrastic, and virtually contain glosses or interpretations which make it necessary to warn the reader against regarding them as in every case Dante's ipsissima verba. For the most part the renderings are substantially my own; but I have freely availed myself of numerous translations, without special acknowledgment, whenever they supplied me with suitable phrases.

I have only to add the acknowledgment of my obligations to Fraticelli's edition of Dante's works (whose numbering of the minor poems and the letters I have adopted for reference), to the same writer's 'Life of Dante,' and to Mr. Symonds' 'Introduction to the Study of Dante.'

P. H. W.

June 1879.