Henry Boyd's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.

I am not a theologian, medieval historian, Dante expert, or astrologist. However, I am a delver of old English poetry, and regardless of accuracy, I personally find the poetical interpretation (if nothing else) of Henry Boyd to be beautiful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Boyd_(translator)

It was released in 1802 in three volumes, under the title of Divina Commedia. However, every single printed edition of the three volumes I have seen previewed online (including the risky "reprints" you can buy on various websites) is absolutely riddled with printing errors. Below is an online print of his Paradiso:

https://archive.org/details/divinacommediaof03dantuoft/page/186

So instead of "the song", it reads "the fong", etc., and there are literally hundreds of other such examples.

I do not have too much hope (I know Henry Boyd does not come up often when discussing translations of the Divine Comedy) but does anyone happen to know of a clean source of Boyd's original complete translation, online or otherwise?

I would also be interested in reading the opinions of his translation in general from Dante experts, whether good or bad, heh.

Thank you kindly for any assistance. :)

Note: I also posted this is another group. I hope that is okay.

You do realise those are not f’s but long s’s, don’t you? Not “the fong” but “the ſong”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s

Around 1800 it was beginning to disappear from English typography, but it’s not very surprising to find books still printed that way around that time.

>2 thorold: Oh, goodness - pardon my ignorance, and good to know! Is there anything else I need to know in order to understand this printed edition if I manage to get it? Thanks.

>3 VoicelessTorment: Don’t worry, we’ve all been there too. One of the many things in life that is so simple, once you know it.

>4 VoicelessTorment: There are lots of other little differences in 18th century spelling and printing, but I think they are all pretty self-evident. You may find that names of places and people mentioned in the poem are spelled differently from those in the notes of more recent editions of Dante, but you’ll probably be able to work those out with a bit of lateral thinking.

>6 thorold: Thanks so much for your kindness and being so helpful. *Air hugs.*

I had forgotten about the long s .