Content:
A prose note about Italian writer Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). According to Edward Grier, this scrap may have been part of a larger manuscript of notes about other Italian writers (see
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984], 5:1860). The text Whitman quotes comes from the
Westminster Review
, American Edition, LI, (July 1849): 186 (see Stovall, "Notes on Whitman's Reading,"
American Literature
26, no. 3, [November 1954]: 361). This manuscript could therefore date from as early as 1849, although it was most likely written in the 1850s. The manuscript is pasted down to a backing sheet, making the verso inaccessible.
