Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription
Document Title: Dante at Verona (corrected holograph manuscript, Delaware Art Museum)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1880 (circa)
Type of Manuscript: corrected holograph copy in ink
Scribe: DGR
The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.
![Image of page [1]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/1-1848.delms.1.jpg)
Note: There is a printer's note by DGR at the top of the MS. The prose note to the
text is cancelled at the bottom of the page and rewritten by DGR, presumably to
make the script clearer. Received line 299 was begun at the left margin (the
word "So" is visible), then blotted out and begun again as an indented line.
Printer's Direction: for page 223
Editorial Description: Note to the printer.
Editorial Description: A plus sign, the numeral '1' enclosed in a circle, and a check mark are to the
right of DGR's note. They appear to have been written at the same time as the
note and are presumably in his hand.
Note: Two stanzas to be added to the longer poem
- Also a tale is told, how once,
- At clearing tables after meat,
- Heaped Piled for a jest at Dante's feet
- Were found the dinner's well-picked bones;
- So laid, to please the banquet's lord,
- By one who crouched beneath the board.
- Then smiled Can Grande to the rest:—
- “Our Dante's tuneful mouth indeed
- Lacks not the gift on flesh to feed!”
- 10 “Fair host of mine,” replied the guest,
- “So many bones you'd not descry
- If so it chanced the dog were I.” *
Transcribed Footnote (page [1]):
*
“
Messere, voi non vedreste
tant 'ossa se cane io fossi”
. The
point of the reproach is difficult
to render,
depending as it does
on the literal meaning of the
name
Cane.
Deleted Text
Messere, voi non vedreste
tant 'ossa se cane io fossi.
The point of the reproach is difficult
to render in English, depending as it
does on the literal meaning of the
word & name Cane.
tant 'ossa se cane io fossi.
The point of the reproach is difficult
to render in English, depending as it
does on the literal meaning of the
word & name Cane.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File:
1-1848.delms.rad.xml
Copyright: Digital images courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R.
Bancroft Collection.