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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10885 ***
+
+STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS: WITH LIVES OF THE WRITERS.
+
+
+BY LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+MDCCCXLVI.
+
+
+
+
+TO SIR PERCY SHELLEY, BART.
+
+
+MY DEAR SIR PERCY,
+
+As I know no man who surpasses yourself either in combining a love of
+the most romantic fiction with the coolest good sense, or in passing
+from the driest metaphysical questions to the heartiest enjoyment of
+humour,--I trust that even a modesty so true as yours will not grudge me
+the satisfaction of inscribing these volumes with your name.
+
+That you should possess such varieties of taste is no wonder,
+considering what an abundance of intellectual honours you inherit; nor
+might the world have been the better for it, had they been tastes, and
+nothing more. But that you should inherit also that zeal for justice to
+mankind, which has become so Christian a feature in the character of the
+age, and that you should include in that zeal a special regard for the
+welfare of your Father's Friend, are subjects of constant pleasurable
+reflection to
+
+Your obliged and affectionate
+
+LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The purpose of these volumes is, to add to the stock of tales from the
+Italian writers; to retain as much of the poetry of the originals as it
+is in the power of the writer's prose to compass; and to furnish careful
+biographical notices of the authors. There have been several collections
+of stories from the Novellists of Italy, but none from the Poets; and it
+struck me that prose versions from these, of the kind here offered to
+the public, might not be unwillingly received. The stories are selected
+from the five principal narrative poets, Dante, Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto,
+and Tasso; they comprise the most popular of such as are fit for
+translation; are reduced into one continuous narrative, when diffused
+and interrupted, as in the instances of those of Angelica, and Armida;
+are accompanied with critical and explanatory notes; and, in the case of
+Dante, consist of an abstract of the poet's whole work. The volumes are,
+furthermore, interspersed with the most favourite _morceaux_ of the
+originals, followed sometimes with attempts to versify them; and in the
+Appendix, for the furtherance of the study of the Italian language, are
+given entire stories, also in the original, and occasionally rendered
+in like manner. The book is particularly intended for such students or
+other lovers of the language as are pleased with any fresh endeavours to
+recommend it; and, at the same time, for such purely English readers as
+wish to know something about Italian poetry, without having leisure to
+cultivate its acquaintance.
+
+I did not intend in the first instance to depart from the plan
+of selection in the case of Dante; but when I considered what an
+extraordinary person he was,--how intense is every thing which he
+says,--how widely he has re-attracted of late the attention of the
+world,--how willingly perhaps his poem might be regarded by the reader
+as being itself one continued story (which, in fact, it is), related
+personally of the writer,--and lastly, what a combination of
+difficulties have prevented his best translators in verse from giving
+the public a just idea of his almost Scriptural simplicity,--I began to
+think that an abstract of his entire work might possibly be looked upon
+as supplying something of a desideratum. I am aware that nothing but
+verse can do perfect justice to verse; but besides the imperfections
+which are pardonable, because inevitable, in all such metrical
+endeavours, the desire to impress a grand and worshipful idea of Dante
+has been too apt to lead his translators into a tone and manner the
+reverse of his passionate, practical, and creative style--a style which
+may be said to write things instead of words; and thus to render every
+word that is put out of its place, or brought in for help and filling
+up, a misrepresentation. I do not mean to say, that he himself never
+does any thing of the sort, or does not occasionally assume too much
+of the oracle and the schoolmaster, in manner as well as matter;
+but passion, and the absence of the superfluous, are the chief
+characteristics of his poetry. Fortunately, this sincerity of purpose
+and utterance in Dante render him the least pervertible of poets in a
+sincere prose translation; and, since I ventured on attempting one, I
+have had the pleasure of meeting with an express recommendation of such
+a version in an early number of the _Edinburgh Review_.[1]
+
+The abstract of Dante, therefore, in these volumes (with every
+deprecation that becomes me of being supposed to pretend to give a
+thorough idea of any poetry whatsoever, especially without its metrical
+form) aspires to be regarded as, at all events, not exhibiting a false
+idea of the Dantesque spirit in point of feeling and expression. It is
+true, I have omitted long tedious lectures of scholastic divinity, and
+other learned absurdities of the time, which are among the bars to the
+poem's being read through, even in Italy (which Foscolo tells us is
+never the case); and I have compressed the work in other passages not
+essentially necessary to the formation of a just idea of the author.
+But quite enough remains to suggest it to the intelligent; and in no
+instance have I made additions or alterations. There is warrant--I hope
+I may say letter--for every thing put down. Dante is the greatest poet
+for intensity that ever lived; and he excites a corresponding emotion
+in his reader--I wish I could say, always on the poet's side; but his
+ferocious hates and bigotries too often tempt us to hate the bigot,
+and always compel us to take part with the fellow-creatures whom he
+outrages. At least, such is their effect on myself. Nor will he or his
+worshippers suffer us to criticise his faults with mere reference to the
+age in which he lived. I should have been glad to do so; but the claims
+made for him, even by himself, will not allow it. We are called upon to
+look on him as a divine, a prophet, an oracle in all respects for all
+time. Such a man, however, is the last whom a reporter is inclined to
+misrepresent. We respect his sincerity too much, ferocious and arrogant
+though it be; and we like to give him the full benefit of the recoil of
+his curses and maledictions. I hope I have not omitted one. On the
+other hand, as little have I closed my feelings against the lovely
+and enchanting sweetness which this great semi-barbarian sometimes so
+affectingly utters. On those occasions he is like an angel enclosed
+for penance in some furious giant, and permitted to weep through the
+creature's eyes.
+
+The stories from goodnatured Pulci I have been obliged to compress for
+other reasons--chiefly their excessive diffuseness. A paragraph of the
+version will sometimes comprise many pages. Those of Boiardo and Ariosto
+are more exact; and the reader will be good enough to bear in mind, that
+nothing is added to any of the poets, different as the case might seem
+here and there on comparison with the originals. An equivalent for
+whatever is said is to be found in some part of the context--generally
+in letter, always in spirit. The least characteristically exact passages
+are some in the love-scenes of Tasso; for I have omitted the plays upon
+words and other corruptions in style, in which that poet permitted
+himself to indulge. But I have noticed the circumstance in the comment.
+In other respects, I have endeavoured to make my version convey some
+idea of the different styles and genius of the writers,--of the severe
+passion of Dante; of the overflowing gaiety and affecting sympathies
+of Pulci, several of whose passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles are
+masterpieces of pathos; of the romantic and inventive elegance of
+Boiardo; the great cheerful universality of Ariosto, like a healthy
+_anima mundi_; and the ambitious irritability, the fairy imagination,
+and tender but somewhat effeminate voluptuousness of the poet of Armida
+and Rinaldo. I do not pretend that prose versions of passages from these
+writers can supersede the necessity of metrical ones, supposing proper
+metrical ones attainable. They suffice for them, in some respects, less
+than for Dante, the manner in their case being of more importance to
+the effect. But with all due respect to such translators as Harrington,
+Rose, and Wiffen, their books are not Ariosto and Tasso, even in manner.
+Harrington, the gay "godson" of Queen Elizabeth, is not always unlike
+Ariosto; but when not in good spirits he becomes as dull as if her
+majesty had frowned on him. Rose was a man of wit, and a scholar; yet
+he has undoubtedly turned the ease and animation of his original into
+inversion and insipidity. And Wiffen, though elegant and even poetical,
+did an unfortunate thing for Tasso, when he gave an additional line and
+a number of paraphrastic thoughts to a stanza already tending to the
+superfluous. Fairfax himself, who, upon the whole, and with regard to
+a work of any length, is the best metrical translator our language has
+seen, and, like Chapman, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the sins
+of prettiness and conceit in his original, and added to them a love
+of tautology amounting to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below
+criticism; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if I had
+no acquaintance with the Italian language, I confess I would rather get
+any friend who had, to read to me a passage out of Dante, Tasso, or
+Ariosto, into the first simple prose that offered itself, than go to any
+of the above translators for a taste of it, Fairfax excepted; and we
+have seen with how much allowance his sample would have to be taken.
+I have therefore, with some restrictions, only ventured to do for the
+public what I would have had a friend do for myself.
+
+The _Critical and Biographical Notices_ I did not intend to make so long
+at first; but the interest grew upon me; and I hope the reader will
+regard some of them--Dante's and Tasso's in particular--as being
+"stories" themselves, after their kind,--"stories, alas, too true;"
+"romances of real life." The extraordinary character of Dante, which is
+personally mixed up with his writings beyond that of any other poet, has
+led me into references to his church and creed, unavoidable at any
+time in the endeavour to give a thorough estimate of his genius, and
+singularly demanded by certain phenomena of the present day. I hold
+those phenomena to be alike feeble and fugitive; but only so by reason
+of their being openly so proclaimed; for mankind have a tendency to the
+absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed; and one of the
+uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it
+to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and
+the strange identification of his knowledge with all that was knowable,
+would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a
+prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was
+reversing the duty of a Christian and a great man; and there happen to
+be existing reasons why it is salutary to chew that he had no right to
+do so, and must not have his barbarism confounded with his strength.
+Machiavelli was of opinion, that if Christianity had not reverted to its
+first principles, by means of the poverty and pious lives of St. Francis
+and St. Dominic,[2] the faith would have been lost. It may have been;
+but such are not the secrets of its preservation in times of science and
+progression, when the spirit of inquiry has established itself among
+all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as it used to be. A few
+persons here and there, who confound a small superstitious reaction in
+England with the reverse of the fact all over the rest of Europe, may
+persuade themselves, if they please, that the world has not advanced in
+knowledge for the last three centuries, and so get up and cry aloud to
+us out of obsolete horn-books; but the community laugh at them. Every
+body else is inquiring into first principles, while they are dogmatising
+on a forty-ninth proposition. The Irish themselves, as they ought to do,
+care more for their pastors than for the Pope; and if any body wishes to
+know what is thought of his Holiness at head-quarters, let him consult
+the remarkable and admirable pamphlet which has lately issued from the
+pen of Mr. Mazzini.[3] I have the pleasure of knowing excellent Roman
+Catholics; I have suffered in behalf of their emancipation, and would do
+so again to-morrow; but I believe that if even their external form of
+Christianity has any chance of survival three hundred years hence, it
+will have been owing to the appearance meanwhile of some extraordinary
+man in power, who, in the teeth of worldly interests, or rather in
+charitable and sage inclusion of them, shall have proclaimed that the
+time had arrived for living in the flower of Christian charity, instead
+of the husks and thorns which may have been necessary to guard it. If it
+were possible for some new and wonderful Pope to make this change, and
+draw a line between these two Christian epochs, like that between the
+Old and New Testaments, the world would feel inclined to prostrate
+itself again and for ever at the feet of Rome. In a catholic state
+of things like that, delighted should I be, for one, to be among the
+humblest of its communicants. How beautiful would their organs be then!
+how ascending to an unperplexing Heaven their incense! how unselfish
+their salvation! how intelligible their talk about justice and love! It
+would be far more easy, however, for the Church of England to do this
+than the Church of Rome; since the former would not feel itself hampered
+with pretensions to infallibility. A Church once reformed, may reform
+itself again and again, till it remove every blemish in the way of its
+perfection. And God grant this may be the lot of the Church of my native
+country. Its beautiful old ivied places of worship would then want
+no harmony of accordance with its gentle and tranquil scenery; no
+completeness of attraction to the reflecting and the kind.
+
+But if Charity (and by Charity I do not mean mere toleration, or any
+other pretended right to permit others to have eyes like ourselves, but
+whatever the delightful Greek word implies of good and lovely), if this
+truly and only divine consummation of all Christian doctrine be not
+thought capable of taking a form of belief "strong" enough, apart from
+threats that revolt alike the heart and the understanding, Superstition
+must look out for some new mode of dictation altogether; for the world
+is outgrowing the old.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I cannot, in gratitude for the facilities afforded to myself, as well
+as for a more obvious and public reason, dismiss this Preface without
+congratulating men of letters on the establishment and increasing
+prosperity of the _London Library_, an institution founded for the
+purpose of accommodating subscribers with such books, at their own
+houses, as could only be consulted hitherto at the British Museum. The
+sole objection to the Museum is thus done away, and the literary world
+has a fair prospect of possessing two book-institutions instead of one,
+each with its distinct claims to regard, and presenting in combination
+all that the student can wish; for while it is highly desirable that
+authors should be able to have standard works at their command, when
+sickness or other circumstances render it impossible for them to go to
+the Museum, it is undoubtedly requisite that one great collection should
+exist in which they are sure to find the same works unremoved, in case
+of necessity,--not to mention curious volumes of all sorts, manuscripts,
+and a world of books of reference.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: "It is probable that a prose translation would give a
+better idea of the genius and manner of this poet than any metrical
+one." Vol. i. p. 310.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Discorsi sopra la Prinza Deca di Tito Livio_, lib. iii.
+cap. i. At p. 230 of the present volume I have too hastily called
+St. Dominic the "founder of the Inquisition." It is generally conceded, I
+believe, by candid Protestant inquirers, that he was not; whatever zeal
+in the foundation and support of the tribunal may have been manifested
+by his order. But this does not acquit him of the cruelty for which he
+has been praised by Dante. He joined in the sanguinary persecution of
+the Albigenses.]
+
+[Footnote: 3 It is entitled, "_Italy, Austria, and the Pope_;" and
+is full, not only of the eloquence of zeal, and of evidences
+of intellectual power, but of the most curious and instructive
+information.]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+OF
+
+THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DANTE.
+
+CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS
+
+THE ITALIAN PILGRIMS PROGRESS
+
+I. The Journey through Hell  II.   Purgatory.   III. Heaven
+
+
+PULCI.
+
+CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS
+
+HUMOURS OF GIANTS
+
+THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+I. Story of Paulo and Francesca. Translation.
+
+II. Accounts given by different writers of the circumstances relating to
+Paulo and Francesca; concluding with the only facts ascertained.
+
+III. Story of Ugolino. Translation. Real Story of Ugolino, and Chaucer's
+feeling respecting the Poem.
+
+IV. Picture of Florence in the time of Dante's Ancestors. Translation.
+
+V. The Monks and the Giants
+
+VI. Passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles.
+
+
+
+DANTE
+
+
+Critical Notice
+
+OF
+
+DANTE'S LIFE AND GENIUS.[1]
+
+
+Dante was a very great poet, a man of the strongest passions, a claimant
+of unbounded powers to lead and enlighten the world; and he lived in a
+semi-barbarous age, as favourable to the intensity of his imagination,
+as it was otherwise to the rest of his pretensions. Party zeal, and the
+fluctuations of moral and critical opinion, have at different periods
+over-rated and depreciated his memory; and if, in the following attempt
+to form its just estimate, I have found myself compelled, in some
+important respects, to differ with preceding writers, and to protest in
+particular against his being regarded as a proper teacher on any one
+point, poetry excepted, and as far as all such genius and energy cannot
+in some degree help being, I have not been the less sensible of the
+wonderful nature of that genius, while acting within the circle to which
+it belongs. Dante was indeed so great a poet, and at the same time
+exhibited in his personal character such a mortifying exception to what
+we conceive to be the natural wisdom and temper of great poets; in
+other words, he was such a bigoted and exasperated man, and sullied
+his imagination with so much that is contradictory to good feeling, in
+matters divine as well as human; that I should not have thought myself
+justified in assisting, however humbly, to extend the influence of his
+writings, had I not believed a time to have arrived, when the community
+may profit both from the marvels of his power and the melancholy
+absurdity of its contradictions.
+
+Dante Alighieri, who has always been known by his Christian rather than
+surname (partly owing to the Italian predilection for Christian names,
+and partly to the unsettled state of patronymics in his time), was the
+son of a lawyer of good family in Florence, and was born in that city on
+the 14th of May 1265 (sixty-three years before the birth of Chaucer).
+The stock is said to have been of Roman origin, of the race of the
+Frangipani; but the only certain trace of it is to Cacciaguida, a
+Florentine cavalier of the house of the Elisei, who died in the
+Crusades. Dante gives an account of him in his _Paradiso_.[2]
+Cacciaguida married a lady of the Alighieri family of the Valdipado;
+and, giving the name to one of his children, they subsequently retained
+it as a patronymic in preference to their own. It would appear, from the
+same poem, not only that the Alighieri were the more important house,
+but that some blot had darkened the scutcheon of the Elisei; perhaps
+their having been poor, and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from
+some disreputable district. Perhaps they were known to have been of
+ignoble origin; for, in the course of one of his most philosophical
+treatises, he bursts into an extraordinary ebullition of ferocity
+against such as adduce a knowledge of that kind as an argument against a
+family's acquired nobility; affirming that such brutal stuff should be
+answered not with words, but with the dagger.[3]
+
+The Elisei, however, must have been of some standing; for Macchiavelli,
+in his History of Florence, mentions them in his list of the early
+Guelph and Ghibelline parties, where the side which they take is
+different from that of the poet's immediate progenitors.[4] The arms of
+the Alighieri (probably occasioned by the change in that name, for it
+was previously written Aldighieri) are interesting on account of their
+poetical and aspiring character. They are a golden wing on a field
+azure.[5]
+
+It is generally supposed that the name Dante is an abbreviation of
+Durante; but this is not certain, though the poet had a nephew so
+called. Dante is the name he goes by in the gravest records, in
+law-proceedings, in his epitaph, in the mention of him put by himself
+into the mouth of a blessed spirit. Boccaccio intimates that he was
+christened Dante, and derives the name from the ablative case of _dans_
+(giving)--a probable etymology, especially for a Christian appellation.
+As an abbreviation of Durante, it would correspond in familiarity with
+the Ben of Ben Jonson--a diminutive that would assuredly not have been
+used by grave people on occasions like those mentioned, though a wit of
+the day gave the masons a shilling to carve "O rare Ben Jonson!" on his
+grave stone. On the other hand, if given at the font, the name of Ben
+would have acquired all the legal gravity of Benjamin. In the English
+Navy List, not long ago, one of our gallant admirals used to figure as
+"Billy Douglas."
+
+Of the mother of Dante nothing is known except that she was his father's
+second wife, and that her Christian name was Bella, or perhaps surname
+Bello. It might, however, be conjectured, from the remarkable and only
+opportunity which our author has taken of alluding to her, that he
+derived his disdainful character rather from his mother than father.[6]
+The father appears to have died during the boyhood of his illustrious
+son.
+
+The future poet, before he had completed his ninth year, conceived a
+romantic attachment to a little lady who had just entered hers, and who
+has attained a celebrity of which she was destined to know nothing. This
+was the famous Beatrice Portinari, daughter of a rich Florentine who
+founded more than one charitable institution. She married another man,
+and died in her youth; but retained the Platonical homage of her young
+admirer, living and dead, and became the heroine of his great poem.
+
+It is unpleasant to reduce any portion of a romance to the events of
+ordinary life; but with the exception of those who merely copy from
+one another, there has been such a conspiracy on the part of Dante's
+biographers to overlook at least one disenchanting conclusion to be
+drawn to that effect from the poet's own writings, that the probable
+truth of the matter must here for the first time be stated. The case,
+indeed, is clear enough from his account of it. The natural tendencies
+of a poetical temperament (oftener evinced in a like manner than the
+world in general suppose) not only made the boy-poet fall in love, but,
+in the truly Elysian state of the heart at that innocent and adoring
+time of life, made him fancy he had discovered a goddess in the object
+of his love; and strength of purpose as well as imagination made him
+grow up in the fancy. He disclosed himself, as time advanced, only by
+his manner--received complacent recognitions in company from the young
+lady--offended her by seeming to devote himself to another (see the poem
+in the _Vita Nuova_, beginning "Ballata io vo")--rendered himself the
+sport of her and her young friends by his adoring timidity (see the 5th
+and 6th sonnets in the same work)--in short, constituted her a paragon
+of perfection, and enabled her, by so doing, to shew that she was none.
+He says, that finding himself unexpectedly near her one day in company,
+he trembled so, and underwent such change of countenance, that many of
+the ladies present began to laugh with her about him--"_si gabbavano di
+me_." And he adds, in verse,
+
+  "Con l'altre donne mia vista gabbate,
+  E non pensate, donna, onde si mova
+  Ch'io vi rassembri sì figura nova,
+  Quando riguardo la vostra beltate," &c.          Son. 5.
+
+"You laugh with the other ladies to see how I look (literally, you mock
+my appearance); and do not think, lady, what it is that renders me so
+strange a figure at sight of your beauty."
+
+And in the sonnet that follows, he accuses her of preventing pity of him
+in others, by such "killing mockery" as makes him wish for death ("_la
+pietà, che 'l vostro gabbo recinde_," &c.)[7]
+
+Now, it is to be admitted, that a young lady, if she is not very wise,
+may laugh at her lover with her companions, and yet return his love,
+after her fashion; but the fair Portinari laughs and marries another.
+Some less melancholy face, some more intelligible courtship, triumphed
+over the questionable flattery of the poet's gratuitous worship; and the
+idol of Dante Alighieri became the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi. Not
+a word does he say on that mortifying point. It transpired from a clause
+in her father's will. And yet so bent are the poet's biographers on
+leaving a romantic doubt in one's mind, whether Beatrice may not have
+returned his passion, that not only do all of them (as far as I have
+observed) agree in taking no notice of these sonnets, but the author
+of the treatise entitled _Dante and the Catholic Philosophy of the
+Thirteenth Century_, "in spite" (as a critic says) "of the _Beatrice,
+his daughter, wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi_, of the paternal will,"
+describes her as dying in "all the lustre of virginity." [8] The
+assumption appears to be thus gloriously stated, as a counterpart to the
+notoriety of its untruth. It must be acknowledged, that Dante himself
+gave the cue to it by more than silence; for he not only vaunts her
+acquaintance in the next world, but assumes that she returns his love in
+that region, as if no such person as her husband could have existed, or
+as if he himself had not been married also. This life-long pertinacity
+of will is illustrative of his whole career.
+
+Meantime, though the young poet's father had died, nothing was wanting
+on the part of his guardians, or perhaps his mother, to furnish him with
+an excellent education. It was so complete, as to enable him to become
+master of all the knowledge of his time; and he added to this learning
+more than a taste for drawing and music. He speaks of himself as drawing
+an angel in his tablets on the first anniversary of Beatrice's death.[9]
+One of his instructors was Brunetto Latini, the most famous scholar then
+living; and he studied both at the universities of Padua and Bologna. At
+eighteen, perhaps sooner, he had shown such a genius for poetry as
+to attract the friendship of Guido Cavalcante, a young noble of a
+philosophical as well as poetical turn of mind, who has retained a
+reputation with posterity: and it was probably at the same time he
+became acquainted with Giotto, who drew his likeness, and with Casella,
+the musician, whom he greets with so much tenderness in the other world.
+
+Nor were his duties as a citizen forgotten. The year before Beatrice's
+death, he was at the battle of Campaldino, which his countrymen gained
+against the people of Arezzo; and the year after it he was present at
+the taking of Caprona from the Pisans. It has been supposed that he once
+studied medicine with a view to it as a profession; but the conjecture
+probably originated in nothing more than his having entered himself of
+one of the city-companies (which happened to be the medical) for the
+purpose of qualifying himself to accept office; a condition exacted of
+the gentry by the then democratic tendencies of the republic. It is
+asserted also, by an early commentator, that he entered the Franciscan
+order of friars, but quitted it before he was professed; and, indeed,
+the circumstance is not unlikely, considering his agitated and impatient
+turn of mind. Perhaps he fancied that he had done with the world when it
+lost the wife of Simone de' Bardi.
+
+Weddings that might have taken place but do not, are like the reigns
+of deceased heirs-apparent; every thing is assumable in their favour,
+checked only by the histories of husbands and kings. Would the great
+but splenetic poet have made an angel and a saint of Beatrice, had he
+married her? He never utters the name of the woman whom he did marry.
+
+Gemma Donati was a kinswoman of the powerful family of that name. It
+seems not improbable, from some passages in his works, that she was the
+young lady whom he speaks of as taking pity on him on account of his
+passion for Beatrice;[10] and in common justice to his feelings as a man
+and a gentleman, it is surely to be concluded, that he felt some sort
+of passion for his bride, if not of a very spiritual sort; though he
+afterwards did not scruple to intimate that he was ashamed of it, and
+Beatrice is made to rebuke him in the other world for thinking of
+any body after herself.[11] At any rate, he probably roused what was
+excitable in his wife's temper, with provocations from his own; for the
+nature of the latter is not to be doubted, whereas there is nothing but
+tradition to shew for the bitterness of hers. Foscolo is of opinion
+that the tradition itself arose simply from a rhetorical flourish of
+Boccaccio's, in his Life of Dante, against the marriages of men of
+letters; though Boccaccio himself expressly adds, that he knows nothing
+to the disadvantage of the poet's wife, except that her husband, after
+quitting Florence, would never either come where she was, or suffer
+her to come to him, mother as she was by him of so many children;--a
+statement, it must be confessed, not a little encouraging to the
+tradition.[12] Be this as it may, Dante married in his twenty-sixth
+year; wrote an adoring account of his first love (the _Vita Nuova_) in
+his twenty-eighth; and among the six children which Gemma brought him,
+had a daughter whom he named Beatrice, in honour, it is understood, of
+the fair Portinari; which surely was either a very great compliment, or
+no mean trial to the temper of the mother.
+
+We shall see presently how their domestic intercourse was interrupted,
+and what absolute uncertainty there is respecting it, except as far as
+conclusions may be drawn from his own temper and history.
+
+Italy, in those days, was divided into the parties of Guelphs and
+Ghibellines; the former, the advocates of general church-ascendancy
+and local government; the latter, of the pretensions of the Emperor of
+Germany, who claimed to be the Roman Cæsar, and paramount over the
+Pope. In Florence, the Guelphs had for a long time been so triumphant as
+to keep the Ghibellines in a state of banishment. Dante was born and
+bred a Guelph: he had twice borne arms for his country against Ghibelline
+neighbours; and now, at the age of thirty-five, in the ninth of his
+marriage, and last of his residence with his wife, he was appointed chief
+of the temporary administrators of affairs, called Priors;--functionaries
+who held office only for two months.
+
+Unfortunately, at that moment, his party had become subdivided into the
+factions of the Whites and Blacks, or adherents of two different sides
+in a dispute that took place in Pistoia. The consequences becoming
+serious, the Blacks proposed to bring in, as mediator, the French
+Prince, Charles of Valois, then in arms for the Pope against the
+Emperor; but the Whites, of whom Dante was one, were hostile to the
+measure; and in order to prevent it, he and his brother magistrates
+expelled for a time the heads of both factions, to the satisfaction of
+neither. The Whites accused them of secretly leaning to the Ghibellines,
+and the Blacks of openly favouring the Whites; who being, indeed,
+allowed to come back before their time, on the alleged ground of the
+unwholesomeness of their place of exile, which was fatal to Dante's
+friend Cavalcante, gave a colour to the charge. Dante answered it by
+saying, that he had then quitted office; but he could not shew that he
+had lost his influence. Meantime, Charles was still urged to interfere,
+and Dante was sent ambassador to the Pope to obtain his disapprobation
+of the interference; but the Pope (Boniface the Eighth), who had
+probably discovered that the Whites had ceased to care for any thing but
+their own disputes, and who, at all events, did not like their objection
+to his representative, beguiled the ambassador and encouraged the French
+prince; the Blacks, in consequence, regained their ascendancy; and
+the luckless poet, during his absence, was denounced as a corrupt
+administrator of affairs, guilty of peculation; was severely
+mulcted; banished from Tuscany for two years; and subsequently, for
+contumaciousness, was sentenced to be _burnt alive_, in case he returned
+ever. He never did return.
+
+From that day forth, Dante never beheld again his home or his wife. Her
+relations obtained possession of power, but no use was made of it except
+to keep him in exile. He had not accorded with them; and perhaps half
+the secret of his conjugal discomfort was owing to politics. It is the
+opinion of some, that the married couple were not sorry to part; others
+think that the wife remained behind, solely to scrape together what
+property she could, and bring up the children. All that is known is,
+that she never lived with him more.
+
+Dante now certainly did what his enemies had accused him of wishing to
+do: he joined the old exiles whom he had helped to make such, the party
+of the Ghibellines. He alleges, that he never was really of any party
+but his own; a naïve confession, probably true in one sense, considering
+his scorn of other people, his great intellectual superiority, and the
+large views he had for the whole Italian people. And, indeed, he soon
+quarrelled in private with the individuals composing his new party,
+however stanch he apparently remained to their cause. His former
+associates he had learnt to hate for their differences with him and for
+their self-seeking; he hated the Pope for deceiving him; he hated
+the Pope's French allies for being his allies, and interfering with
+Florence; and he had come to love the Emperor for being hated by them
+all, and for holding out (as he fancied) the only chance of reuniting
+Italy to their confusion, and making her the restorer of himself, and
+the mistress of the world.
+
+With these feelings in his heart, no money in his purse, and no place in
+which to lay his head, except such as chance-patrons afforded him,
+he now began to wander over Italy, like some lonely lion of a man,
+"grudging in his great disdain." At one moment he was conspiring and
+hoping; at another, despairing and endeavouring to conciliate his
+beautiful Florence: now again catching hope from some new movement of
+the Emperor's; and then, not very handsomely threatening and re-abusing
+her; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his
+thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work. It is
+conjectured, that whenever anything particularly affected him, whether
+with joy or sorrow, he put it, hot with the impression, into his
+"sacred poem." Every body who jarred against his sense of right or his
+prejudices he sent to the infernal regions, friend or foe: the strangest
+people who sided with them (but certainly no personal foe) he exalted
+to heaven. He encouraged, if not personally assisted, two ineffectual
+attempts of the Ghibellines against Florence; wrote, besides his great
+work, a book of mixed prose and poetry on "Love and Virtue" (the
+_Convito_, or Banquet); a Latin treatise on Monarchy (_de Monarchia_),
+recommending the "divine right" of the Emperor; another in two parts,
+and in the same language, on the Vernacular Tongue (_de Vulgari
+Eloquio_); and learnt to know meanwhile, as he affectingly tells us,
+"how hard it was to climb other people's stairs, and how salt the taste
+of bread is that is not our own." It is even thought not improbable,
+from one awful passage of his poem, that he may have "placed himself in
+some public way," and, "stripping his visage of all shame, and trembling
+in his very vitals," have stretched out his hand "for charity" [13]--an
+image of suffering, which, proud as he was, yet considering how great a
+man, is almost enough to make one's common nature stoop down for pardon
+at his feet; and yet he should first prostrate himself at the feet of
+that nature for his outrages on God and man. Several of the princes and
+feudal chieftains of Italy entertained the poet for a while in their
+houses; but genius and worldly power, unless for worldly purposes, find
+it difficult to accord, especially in tempers like his. There must be
+great wisdom and amiableness on both sides to save them from jealousy
+of one another's pretensions. Dante was not the man to give and take in
+such matters on equal terms; and hence he is at one time in a palace,
+and at another in a solitude. Now he is in Sienna, now in Arezzo, now in
+Bologna; then probably in Verona with Can Grande's elder brother; then
+(if we are to believe those who have tracked his steps) in Casentino;
+then with the Marchese Moroello Malaspina in Lunigiana; then with the
+great Ghibelline chieftain Faggiuola in the mountains near Urbino; then
+in Romagna, in Padua, in _Paris_ (arguing with the churchmen), some say
+in Germany, and at _Oxford_; then again in Italy; in Lucca (where he is
+supposed to have relapsed from his fidelity to Beatrice in favour of
+a certain "Gentucca"); then again in Verona with the new prince, the
+famous Can Grande (where his sarcasms appear to have lost him a doubtful
+hospitality); then in a monastery in the mountains of Umbria; in Udine;
+in Ravenna; and there at length he put up for the rest of his life with
+his last and best friend, Guido Novello da Polenta, not the father, but
+the nephew of the hapless Francesca.
+
+It was probably in the middle period of his exile, that in one of the
+moments of his greatest longing for his native country, he wrote that
+affecting passage in the _Convito_, which was evidently a direct effort
+at conciliation. Excusing himself for some harshness and obscurity in
+the style of that work, he exclaims, "Ah! would it had pleased the
+Dispenser of all things that this excuse had never been needed;
+that neither others had done me wrong, nor myself undergone penalty
+undeservedly--the penalty, I say, of exile and of poverty. For it
+pleased the citizens of the fairest and most renowned daughter of
+Rome--Florence--to cast me out of her most sweet bosom, where I was
+born, and bred, and passed half of the life of man, and in which, with
+her good leave, I still desire with all my heart to repose my weary
+spirit, and finish the days allotted me; and so I have wandered in
+almost every place to which our language extends, a stranger, almost a
+beggar, exposing against my will the wounds given me by fortune, too
+often unjustly imputed to the sufferer's fault. Truly I have been a
+vessel without sail and without rudder, driven about upon different
+ports and shores by the dry wind that springs out of dolorous poverty;
+and hence have I appeared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps, by
+some better report had conceived of me a different impression, and in
+whose sight not only has my person become thus debased, but an unworthy
+opinion created of every thing which I did, or which I had to do." [14]
+
+How simply and strongly written! How full of the touching yet
+undegrading commiseration which adversity has a right to take upon
+itself, when accompanied with the consciousness of manly endeavour and a
+good motive! How could such a man condescend at other times to rage with
+abuse, and to delight himself in images of infernal torment!
+
+The dates of these fluctuations of feeling towards his native city are
+not known; but it is supposed to have been not very long before his
+abode with Can Grande that he received permission to return to Florence,
+on conditions which he justly refused and resented in the following
+noble letter to a kinsman. The old spelling of the original (in the
+note) is retained as given by Foscolo in the article on "Dante" in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ (vol. XXX. no. 60); and I have retained also, with
+little difference, the translation which accompanies it:
+
+"From your letter, which I received with due respect and affection, I
+observe how much you have at heart my restoration to my country. I am
+bound to you the more gratefully, inasmuch as an exile rarely finds a
+friend. But after mature consideration, I must, by my answer, disappoint
+the wishes of some little minds; and I confide in the judgment to which
+your impartiality and prudence will lead you. Your nephew and mine has
+written to me, what indeed had been mentioned by many other friends,
+that, by a decree concerning the exiles, I am allowed to return to
+Florence, provided I pay a certain sum of money, and submit to the
+humiliation of asking and receiving absolution: wherein, my father, I
+see two propositions that are ridiculous and impertinent. I speak of the
+impertinence of those who mention such conditions to me; for in your
+letter, dictated by judgment and discretion, there is no such thing. Is
+such an invitation, then, to return to his country glorious to d. all.
+(Dante Allighieri), after suffering in exile almost fifteen years? Is it
+thus they would recompense innocence which all the world knows, and
+the labour and fatigue of unremitting study? Far from the man who is
+familiar with philosophy be the senseless baseness of a heart of earth,
+that could act like a little sciolist, and imitate the infamy of some
+others, by offering himself up as it were in chains: far from the man
+who cries aloud for justice, this compromise by his money with his
+persecutors. No, my father, this is not the way that shall lead me back
+to my country. I will return with hasty steps, if you or any other can
+open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame and honour of d.
+(Dante); but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I
+shall never enter. What! shall I not everywhere enjoy the light of the
+sun and stars? and may I not seek and contemplate, in every corner of
+the earth, under the canopy of heaven, consoling and delightful truth,
+without first rendering myself inglorious, nay infamous, to the people
+and republic of Florence? Bread, I hope, will not fail me." [15]
+
+Had Dante's pride and indignation always vented themselves in this truly
+exalted manner, never could the admirers of his genius have refused him
+their sympathy; and never, I conceive, need he either have brought his
+exile upon him, or closed it as he did. To that close we have now come,
+and it is truly melancholy and mortifying. Failure in a negotiation with
+the Venetians for his patron, Guido Novello, is supposed to have been
+the last bitter drop which made the cup of his endurance run over. He
+returned from Venice to Ravenna, worn out, and there died, after fifteen
+years' absence from his country, in the year 1231, aged fifty-seven. His
+life had been so agitated, that it probably would not have lasted so
+long, but for the solace of his poetry, and the glory which he knew it
+must produce him. Guido gave him a sumptuous funeral, and intended to
+give him a monument; but such was the state of Italy in those times,
+that he himself died in exile the year after. The monument, however, and
+one of a noble sort, was subsequently bestowed by the father of Cardinal
+Bembo, in 1483; and another, still nobler, as late as 1780, by Cardinal
+Gonzaga. His countrymen, in after years, made two solemn applications
+for the removal of his dust to Florence; but the just pride of the
+Ravennese refused them.
+
+Of the exile's family, three sons died young; the daughter went into a
+nunnery; and the two remaining brothers, who ultimately joined their
+father in his banishment, became respectable men of letters, and left
+families in Ravenna; where the race, though extinct in the male line,
+still survives through a daughter, in the noble house of Serego
+Alighieri. No direct descent of the other kind from poets of former
+times is, I believe, known to exist.
+
+The manners and general appearance of Dante have been minutely recorded,
+and are in striking agreement with his character. Boccaccio and other
+novelists are the chief relaters; and their accounts will be received
+accordingly with the greater or less trust, as the reader considers them
+probable; but the author of the Decameron personally knew some of his
+friends and relations, and he intermingles his least favourable reports
+with expressions of undoubted reverence. The poet was of middle height,
+of slow and serious deportment, had a long dark visage, large piercing
+eyes, large jaws, an aquiline nose, a projecting under-lip, and thick
+curling hair--an aspect announcing determination and melancholy. There
+is a sketch of his countenance, in his younger days, from the immature
+but sweet pencil of Giotto; and it is a refreshment to look at it,
+though pride and discontent, I think, are discernible in its lineaments.
+It is idle, and no true compliment to his nature, to pretend, as his
+mere worshippers do, that his face owes all its subsequent gloom and
+exacerbation to external causes, and that he was in every respect the
+poor victim of events--the infant changed at nurse by the wicked. What
+came out of him, he must have had in him, at least in the germ; and so
+inconsistent was his nature altogether, or, at any rate, such an epitome
+of all the graver passions that are capable of co-existing, both sweet
+and bitter, thoughtful and outrageous, that one is sometimes tempted to
+think he must have had an angel for one parent, and--I shall leave his
+own toleration to say what--for the other.
+
+To continue the account of his manners and inclinations: He dressed with
+a becoming gravity; was temperate in his diet; a great student; seldom
+spoke, unless spoken to, but always to the purpose; and almost all the
+anecdotes recorded of him, except by himself, are full of pride and
+sarcasm. He was so swarthy, that a woman, as he was going by a door in
+Verona, is said to have pointed him out to another, with a remark
+which made the saturnine poet smile--"That is the man who goes to hell
+whenever he pleases, and brings back news of the people there." On which
+her companion observed--"Very likely; don't you see what a curly beard he
+has, and what a dark face? owing, I dare say, to the heat and smoke." He
+was evidently a passionate lover of painting and music--is thought to
+have been less strict in his conduct with regard to the sex than might
+be supposed from his platonical aspirations--(Boccaccio says, that even
+a goitre did not repel him from the pretty face of a mountaineer)--could
+be very social when he was young, as may be gathered from the sonnet
+addressed to his friend Cavalcante about a party for a boat--and though
+his poetry was so intense and weighty, the laudable minuteness of a
+biographer has informed us, that his hand-writing, besides being neat
+and precise, was of a long and particularly thin character: "meagre" is
+his word.
+
+There is a letter, said to be nearly coeval with his time, and to be
+written by the prior of a monastery to a celebrated Ghibelline leader, a
+friend of Dante's, which, though hitherto accounted apocryphal by most,
+has such an air of truth, and contains an image of the poet in his exile
+so exceedingly like what we conceive of the man, that it is difficult
+not to believe it genuine, especially as the handwriting has lately been
+discovered to be that of Boccaccio.[16] At all events, I am sure the
+reader will not be sorry to have the substance of it. The writer says,
+that he perceived one day a man coming into the monastery, whom none of
+its inmates knew. He asked him what he wanted; but the stranger saying
+nothing, and continuing to gaze on the building as though contemplating
+its architecture, the question was put a second time; upon which,
+looking round on his interrogators, he answered, "_Peace_!" The prior,
+whose curiosity was strongly excited, took the stranger apart, and
+discovering who he was, shewed him all the attention becoming his fame;
+and then Dante took a little book out of his bosom, aid observing that
+perhaps the prior had not seen it, expressed a wish to leave it with his
+new friend as a memorial. It was "a portion," he said, "of his work."
+The prior received the volume with respect; and politely opening it at
+once, and fixing his eyes on the contents, in order, it would seem,
+to shew the interest he took in it, appeared suddenly to check some
+observation which they suggested. Dante found that his reader was
+surprised at seeing the work written in the vulgar tongue instead of
+Latin. He explained, that he wished to address himself to readers of all
+classes; and concluded with requesting the prior to add some notes, with
+the spirit of which he furnished him, and then forward it (transcribed,
+I presume, by the monks) to their common friend, the Ghibelline
+chieftain--a commission, which, knowing the prior's intimacy with that
+personage, appears to have been the main object of his coming to the
+place[17].
+
+This letter has been adduced as an evidence of Dante's poem having
+transpired during his lifetime: a thing which, in the teeth of
+Boccaccio's statement to that effect, and indeed the poet's own
+testimony[18], Foscolo holds to be so impossible, that he turns the
+evidence against the letter. He thinks, that if such bitter invectives
+had been circulated, a hundred daggers would have been sheathed in the
+bosom of the exasperating poet[19]. But I cannot help being of opinion,
+with some writer whom I am unable at present to call to mind (Schlegel,
+I think), that the strong critical reaction of modern times in favour
+of Dante's genius has tended to exaggerate the idea conceived of him in
+relation to his own. That he was of importance, and bitterly hated in
+his native city, was a distinction he shared with other partisans who
+have obtained no celebrity, though his poetry, no doubt, must have
+increased the bitterness; that his genius also became more and more felt
+out of the city, by the few individuals capable of estimating a man of
+letters in those semi-barbarous times, may be regarded as certain; but
+that busy politicians in general, war-making statesmen, and princes
+constantly occupied in fighting for their existence with one another,
+were at all alive either to his merits or his invectives, or would have
+regarded him as anything but a poor wandering scholar, solacing his
+foolish interference in the politics of this world with the old clerical
+threats against his enemies in another, will hardly, I think, be doubted
+by any one who reflects on the difference between a fame accumulated by
+ages, and the living poverty that is obliged to seek its bread. A writer
+on a monkish subject may have acquired fame with monks, and even with
+a few distinguished persons, and yet have been little known, and less
+cared for, out of the pale of that very private literary public, which
+was almost exclusively their own. When we read, now-a-days, of the great
+poet's being so politely received by Can Grande, lord of Verona, and
+sitting at his princely table, we are apt to fancy that nothing but
+his great poetry procured him the reception, and that nobody present
+competed with him in the eyes of his host. But, to say nothing of the
+different kinds of retainers that could sit at a prince's table in those
+days, Can, who was more ostentatious than delicate in his munificence,
+kept a sort of caravansera for clever exiles, whom he distributed into
+lodgings classified according to their pursuits;[20] and Dante only
+shared his bounty with the rest, till the more delicate poet could no
+longer endure either the buffoonery of his companions, or the amusement
+derived from it by the master. On one occasion, his platter is slily
+heaped with their bones, which provokes him to call them dogs, as having
+none to shew for their own. Another time, Can Grande asks him how it is
+that his companions give more pleasure at court than himself; to which
+he answers, "Because like loves like." He then leaves the court, and his
+disgusted superiority is no doubt regarded as a pedantic assumption.
+
+He stopped long nowhere, except with Guido Novello; and when that
+prince, whose downfal was at hand, sent him on the journey above
+mentioned to Venice, the senate (whom the poet had never offended) were
+so little aware of his being of consequence, that they declined giving
+him an audience. He went back, and broke his heart. Boccaccio says, that
+he would get into such passions with the very boys and girls in the
+street, who plagued him with party-words, as to throw stones at them--a
+thing that would be incredible, if persons acquainted with his great but
+ultra-sensitive nation did not know what Italians could do in all ages,
+from Dante's own age down to the times of Alfieri and Foscolo. It
+would be as difficult, from the evidence of his own works and of the
+exasperation he created, to doubt the extremest reports of his irascible
+temper, as it would be not to give implicit faith to his honesty. The
+charge of peculation which his enemies brought against this great poet,
+the world has universally scouted with an indignation that does it
+honour. He himself seems never to have condescended to allude to it;
+and a biographer would feel bound to copy his silence, had not the
+accusation been so atrociously recorded. But, on the other hand, who
+can believe that a man so capable of doing his fellow-citizens good and
+honour, would have experienced such excessive enmity, had he not carried
+to excess the provocations of his pride and scorn? His whole history
+goes to prove it, not omitting the confession he makes of pride as his
+chief sin, and the eulogies he bestows on the favourite vice of the
+age--revenge. His Christianity (at least as shewn in his poem) was not
+that of Christ, but of a furious polemic. His motives for changing his
+party, though probably of a mixed nature, like those of most human
+beings, may reasonably be supposed to have originated in something
+better than interest or indignation. He had most likely not agreed
+thoroughly with any party, and had become hopeless of seeing dispute
+brought to an end, except by the representative of the Cæsars. The
+inconsistency of the personal characters of the popes with the sacred
+claims of the chair of St. Peter, was also calculated greatly to disgust
+him; but still his own infirmities of pride and vindictiveness
+spoiled all; and when he loaded every body else with reproach for the
+misfortunes of his country, he should have recollected that, had his own
+faults been kept in subjection to his understanding, he might possibly
+have been its saviour. Dante's modesty has been asserted on the ground
+of his humbling himself to the fame of Virgil, and at the feet of
+blessed spirits; but this kind of exalted humility does not repay a
+man's fellow-citizens for lording it over them with scorn and derision.
+We learn from Boccaccio, that when he was asked to go ambassador
+from his party to the pope, he put to them the following useless and
+mortifying queries--"If I go, who is to stay?--and if I stay, who is to
+go?" [21] Neither did his pride make him tolerant of pride in others.
+A neighbour applying for his intercession with a magistrate, who had
+summoned him for some offence, Dante, who disliked the man for riding in
+an overbearing manner along the streets (stretching out his legs as wide
+as he could, and hindering people from going by), did intercede with the
+magistrate, but it was in behalf of doubling the fine in consideration
+of the horsemanship. The neighbour, who was a man of family, was so
+exasperated, that Sacchetti the novelist says it was the principal cause
+of Dante's expatriation. This will be considered the less improbable,
+if, as some suppose, the delinquent obtained possession of his derider's
+confiscated property; but, at all events, nothing is more likely to
+have injured him. The bitterest animosities are generally of a personal
+nature; and bitter indeed must have been those which condemned a man of
+official dignity and of genius to such a penalty as the stake.[22]
+
+That the Florentines of old, like other half-Christianised people, were
+capable of any extremity against an opponent, burning included, was
+proved by the fates of Savonarola and others; and that Dante himself
+could admire the burners is evident from his eulogies and beatification
+of such men as Folco and St. Dominic. The tragical as well as "fantastic
+tricks" which
+
+  "Man, proud man,
+  Drest in a little brief authority,"
+
+plays with his energy and bad passions under the guise of duty, is among
+the most perplexing of those spectacles, which, according to a greater
+understanding than Dante's, "make the angels weep." (Dante, by the way,
+has introduced in his heaven no such angels as those; though he has
+plenty that scorn and denounce.) Lope de Vega, though a poet, was an
+officer of the Inquisition, and joined the famous Armada that was coming
+to thumb-screw and roast us into his views of Christian meekness.
+Whether the author of the story of _Paulo and Francesca_ could have
+carried the Dominican theories into practice, had he been the banisher
+instead of the banished, is a point that may happily be doubted; but at
+all events he revenged himself on his enemies after their own fashion;
+for he answered their decree of the stake by putting them into hell.
+
+Dante entitled the saddest poem in the world a Comedy, because it was
+written in a middle style; though some, by a strange confusion of ideas,
+think the reason must have been because it "ended happily!" that is,
+because, beginning with hell (to some), it terminated with "heaven" (to
+others). As well might they have said, that a morning's work in the
+Inquisition ended happily, because, while people were being racked in
+the dungeons, the officers were making merry in the drawing-room. For
+the much-injured epithet of "Divine," Dante's memory is not responsible.
+He entitled his poem, arrogantly enough, yet still not with that impiety
+of arrogance, "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by nation but
+not by habits." The word "divine" was added by some transcriber; and it
+heaped absurdity on absurdity, too much of it, alas! being literally
+infernal tragedy. I am not speaking in mockery, any further than the
+fact itself cannot help so speaking. I respect what is to be respected
+in Dante; I admire in him what is admirable; would love (if his
+infernalities would let me) what is loveable; but this must not hinder
+one of the human race from protesting against what is erroneous in his
+fame, when it jars against every best feeling, human and divine. Mr.
+Cary thinks that Dante had as much right to avail himself of "the
+popular creed in all its extravagance" as Homer had of his gods, or
+Shakspeare of his fairies. But the distinction is obvious. Homer did not
+personally identify himself with a creed, or do his utmost to perpetuate
+the worst parts of it in behalf of a ferocious inquisitorial church, and
+to the risk of endangering the peace of millions of gentle minds.
+
+The great poem thus misnomered is partly a system of theology, partly an
+abstract of the knowledge of the day, but chiefly a series of passionate
+and imaginative pictures, altogether forming an account of the author's
+times, his friends, his enemies, and himself, written to vent the spleen
+of his exile, and the rest of his feelings, good and bad, and to reform
+church and state by a spirit of resentment and obloquy, which highly
+needed reform itself. It has also a design strictly self-referential.
+The author feigns, that the beatified spirit of his mistress has
+obtained leave to warn and purify his soul by shewing him the state of
+things in the next world. She deputes the soul of his master Virgil
+to conduct him through hell and purgatory, and then takes him herself
+through the spheres of heaven, where Saint Peter catechises and confirms
+him, and where he is finally honoured with sights of the Virgin Mary, of
+Christ, and even a glimpse of the Supreme Being!
+
+His hell, considered as a place, is, to speak geologically, a most
+fantastical formation. It descends from beneath Jerusalem to the centre
+of the earth, and is a funnel graduated in circles, each circle being a
+separate place of torment for a different vice or its co-ordinates, and
+the point of the funnel terminating with Satan stuck into ice. Purgatory
+is a corresponding mountain on the other side of the globe, commencing
+with the antipodes of Jerusalem, and divided into exterior circles of
+expiation, which end in a table-land forming the terrestrial paradise.
+From this the hero and his mistress ascend by a flight, exquisitely
+conceived, to the stars; where the sun and the planets of the Ptolemaic
+system (for the true one was unknown in Dante's time) form a series of
+heavens for different virtues, the whole terminating in the empyrean, or
+region of pure light, and the presence of the Beatific Vision.
+
+The boundaries of old and new, strange as it may now seem to us, were so
+confused in those days, and books were so rare, and the Latin poets held
+in such invincible reverence, that Dante, in one and the same poem,
+speaks of the false gods of Paganism, and yet retains much of its lower
+mythology; nay, invokes Apollo himself at the door of paradise. There
+was, perhaps, some mystical and even philosophical inclusion of the
+past in this medley, as recognising the constant superintendence of
+Providence; but that Dante partook of what may be called the literary
+superstition of the time, even for want of better knowledge, is clear
+from the grave historical use he makes of poetic fables in his treatise
+on Monarchy, and in the very arguments which he puts into the mouths of
+saints and apostles. There are lingering feelings to this effect even
+now among the peasantry of Italy; where, the reader need not be told,
+Pagan customs of all sorts, including religious and most reverend ones,
+are existing under the sanction of other names;--heathenisms christened.
+A Tuscan postilion, once enumerating to me some of the native poets,
+concluded his list with Apollo; and a plaster-cast man over here, in
+London, appeared much puzzled, when conversing on the subject with a
+friend of mine, how to discrepate Samson from Hercules.
+
+Dante accordingly, while, with the frightful bigotry of the schools, he
+puts the whole Pagan world into hell-borders (with the exception of two
+or three, whose salvation adds to the absurdity), mingles the hell of
+Virgil with that of Tertullian and St. Dominic; sets Minos at the door
+as judge; retains Charon in his old office of boatman over the Stygian
+lake; puts fabulous people with real among the damned, Dido, and Cacus,
+and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope Nicholas the Fifth; and associates
+the Centaurs and the Furies with the agents of diabolical torture. It
+has pleased him also to elevate Cato of Utica to the office of warder of
+purgatory, though the censor's poor good wife, Marcia, is detained in
+the regions below. By these and other far greater inconsistencies,
+the whole place of punishment becomes a _reductio ad absurdum_, as
+ridiculous as it is melancholy; so that one is astonished how so great a
+man, and especially a man who thought himself so far advanced beyond his
+age, and who possessed such powers of discerning the good and beautiful,
+could endure to let his mind live in so foul and foolish a region for
+any length of time, and there wreak and harden the unworthiest of his
+passions. Genius, nevertheless, is so commensurate with absurdity
+throughout the book, and there are even such sweet and balmy as well as
+sublime pictures in it occasionally, nay often, that not only will
+the poem ever be worthy of admiration, but when those increasing
+purifications of Christianity which our blessed reformers began, shall
+finally precipitate the whole dregs of the author into the mythology to
+which they belong, the world will derive a pleasure from it to an amount
+not to be conceived till the arrival of that day. Dante, meantime, with
+an impartiality which has been admired by those who can approve the
+assumption of a theological tyranny at the expense of common feeling
+and decency, has put friends as well as foes into hell: tutors of his
+childhood, kinsmen of those who treated him hospitably, even the father
+of his beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante--the last for not believing in a
+God: therein doing the worst thing possible in behalf of the belief, and
+totally differing both with the pious heathen Plutarch, and the great
+Christian philosopher Bacon, who were of opinion that a contumelious
+belief is worse than none, and that it is far better and more pious to
+believe in "no God at all," than in a God who would "eat his children
+as soon as they were born." And Dante makes him do worse; for the whole
+unbaptised infant world, Christian as well as Pagan, is in his Tartarus.
+
+Milton has spoken of the "milder shades of Purgatory;" and truly they
+possess great beauties. Even in a theological point of view they are
+something like a bit of Christian refreshment after the horrors of the
+_Inferno_. The first emerging from the hideous gulf to the sight of the
+blue serenity of heaven, is painted in a manner inexpressibly charming.
+So is the sea-shore with the coming of the angel; the valley, with the
+angels in green; the repose at night on the rocks; and twenty other
+pictures of gentleness and love. And yet, special and great has been the
+escape of the Protestant world from this part of Roman Catholic belief;
+for Purgatory is the heaviest stone that hangs about the neck of the
+old and feeble in that communion. Hell is avoidable by repentance; but
+Purgatory, what modest conscience shall escape? Mr. Cary, in a note on a
+passage in which Dante recommends his readers to think on what follows
+this expiatory state, rather than what is suffered there,[23] looks upon
+the poet's injunction as an "unanswerable objection to the doctrine of
+purgatory," it being difficult to conceive "how the best can meet death
+without horror, if they believe it must be followed by immediate and
+intense suffering." Luckily, assent is not belief; and mankind's
+feelings are for the most part superior to their opinions; otherwise
+the world would have been in a bad way indeed, and nature not been
+vindicated of her children. But let us watch and be on our guard against
+all resuscitations of superstition.
+
+As to our Florentine's Heaven, it is full of beauties also, though
+sometimes of a more questionable and pantomimical sort than is to be
+found in either of the other books. I shall speak of some of them
+presently; but the general impression of the place is, that it is no
+heaven at all. He says it is, and talks much of its smiles and its
+beatitude; but always excepting the poetry--especially the similes
+brought from the more heavenly earth--we realise little but a
+fantastical assemblage of doctors and doubtful characters, far more
+angry and theological than celestial; giddy raptures of monks and
+inquisitors dancing in circles, and saints denouncing popes and
+Florentines; in short, a heaven libelling itself with invectives against
+earth, and terminating in a great presumption. Many of the people put
+there, a Calvinistic Dante would have consigned to the "other place;"
+and some, if now living, would not be admitted into decent society. At
+the beginning of one of the cantos, the poet congratulates himself,
+with a complacent superiority, on his being in heaven and occupied with
+celestial matters, while his poor fellow-creatures are wandering and
+blundering on earth. But he had never got there! A divine--worthy of
+that name--of the Church of England (Dr. Whichcote), has beautifully
+said, that "heaven is first a temper, and then a place." According to
+this truly celestial topography, the implacable Florentine had not
+reached its outermost court. Again, his heavenly mistress, Beatrice,
+besides being far too didactic to sustain the womanly part of her
+character properly, alternates her smiles and her sarcasms in a way that
+jars horribly against the occasional enchantment of her aspect. She does
+not scruple to burst into taunts of the Florentines in the presence of
+Jesus himself; and the spirit of his ancestor, Cacciaguida, in the very
+bosom of Christian bliss, promises him revenge on his enemies! Is this
+the kind of zeal that is to be exempt from objection in a man who
+objected to all the world? or will it be thought a profaneness against
+such profanity, to remind the reader of the philosopher in Swift, who
+"while gazing on the stars, was betrayed by his lower parts into a
+ditch!"
+
+The reader's time need not be wasted with the allegorical and other
+mystical significations given to the poem; still less on the question
+whether Beatrice is theology, or a young lady, or both; and least of all
+on the discovery of the ingenious Signor Rossetti, that Dante and all
+the other great old Italian writers meant nothing, either by their
+mistresses or their mythology, but attacks on the court of Rome. Suffice
+it, that besides all other possible meanings, Dante himself has told us
+that his poem has its obvious and literal meaning; that he means a spade
+by a spade, purgatory by purgatory, and truly and unaffectedly to devote
+his friends to the infernal regions whenever he does so. I confess I
+think it is a great pity that Guido Cavalcante did not live to read the
+poem, especially the passage about his father. The understanding of
+Guido, who had not the admiration for Virgil that Dante had (very likely
+for reasons that have been thought sound in modern times), was in all
+probability as good as that of his friend in many respects, and perhaps
+more so in one or two; and modern criticism might have been saved some
+of its pains of objection by the poet's contemporary.
+
+The author did not live to publish, in any formal manner, his
+extraordinary poem, probably did not intend to do so, except under those
+circumstances of political triumph which he was always looking for; but
+as he shewed portions of it to his friends, it was no doubt talked of
+to a certain extent, and must have exasperated such of his enemies as
+considered him worth their hostility. No wonder they did all they could
+to keep him out of Florence. What would they have said of him, could
+they have written a counter poem? What would even his friends have said
+of him? for we see in what manner he has treated even those; and yet how
+could he possibly know, with respect either to friends or enemies, what
+passed between them and their consciences? or who was it that gave
+him his right to generate the boasted distinction between an author's
+feelings as a man and his assumed office as a theologian, and parade
+the latter at the former's expense? His own spleen, hatred, and avowed
+sentiments of vengeance, are manifest throughout the poem; and there is
+this, indeed, to be said for the moral and religious inconsistencies
+both of the man and his verse, that in those violent times the spirit
+of Christian charity, and even the sentiment of personal shame, were so
+little understood, that the author in one part of it is made to blush by
+a friend for not having avenged him; and it is said to have been thought
+a compliment to put a lady herself into hell, that she might be talked
+of, provided it was for something not odious. An admirer of this
+infernal kind of celebrity, even in later times, declared that he would
+have given a sum of money (I forget to what amount) if Dante had but
+done as much for one of his ancestors. It has been argued, that in all
+the parties concerned in these curious ethics there is a generous love
+of distinction, and a strong craving after life, action, and sympathy
+of some kind or other. Granted; there are all sorts of half-good,
+half-barbarous feelings in Dante's poem. Let justice be done to the
+good half; but do not let us take the ferocity for wisdom and piety; or
+pretend, in the complacency of our own freedom from superstition, to see
+no danger of harm to the less fortunate among our fellow-creatures in
+the support it receives from a man of genius. Bedlams have been filled
+with such horrors; thousands, nay millions of feeble minds are suffering
+by them or from them, at this minute, all over the world. Dante's best
+critic, Foscolo, has said much of the heroical nature of the age in
+which the poet lived; but he adds, that its mixture of knowledge and
+absurdity is almost inexplicable. The truth is, that like everything
+else which appears harsh and unaccountable in nature, it was an excess
+of the materials for good, working in an over-active and inexperienced
+manner; but knowing this, we are bound, for the sake of the good, not
+to retard its improvement by ignoring existing impieties, or blind
+ourselves to the perpetuating tendencies of the bigotries of great men.
+Oh! had the first indoctrinators of Christian feeling, while enlisting
+the "divine Plato" into the service of diviner charity, only kept the
+latter just enough in mind to discern the beautiful difference between
+the philosopher's unmalignant and improvable evil, and their own
+malignant and eternal one, what a world of folly and misery they might
+have saved us! But as the evil has happened, let us hope that even this
+form of it has had its uses. If Dante thought it salutary to the world
+to maintain a system of religious terror, the same charity which can
+hope that it may once have been so, has taught us how to commence a
+better. But did he, after all, or did he not, think it salutary? Did
+he think so, believing the creed himself? or did he think it from an
+unwilling sense of its necessity? Or, lastly, did he write only as a
+mythologist, and care for nothing but the exercise of his spleen and
+genius? If he had no other object than that, his conscientiousness would
+be reduced to a low pitch indeed. Foscolo is of opinion he was not only
+in earnest, but that he was very near taking himself for an apostle, and
+would have done so had his prophecies succeeded, perhaps with success to
+the pretension.[24] Thank heaven, his "Hell" has not embittered the mild
+reading-desks of the Church of England.
+
+If King George the Third himself, with all his arbitrary notions, and
+willing religious acquiescence, could not endure the creed of St.
+Athanasius with its damnatory enjoinments of the impossible, what would
+have been said to the inscription over Dante's hell-gate, or the
+account of Ugolino eating an archbishop, in the gentle chapels of Queen
+Victoria? May those chapels have every beauty in them, and every air of
+heaven, that painting and music can bestow--divine gifts, not unworthy
+to be set before their Divine Bestower; but far from them be kept the
+foul fiends of inhumanity and superstition!
+
+It is certainly impossible to get at a thorough knowledge of the
+opinions of Dante even in theology; and his morals, if judged according
+to the received standard, are not seldom puzzling. He rarely thinks as
+the popes do; sometimes not as the Church does: he is lax, for instance,
+on the subject of absolution by the priest at death.[25] All you can be
+sure of is, the predominance of his will, the most wonderful poetry, and
+the notions he entertained of the degrees of vice and virtue. Towards
+the errors of love he is inclined to be so lenient (some think because
+he had indulged in them himself), that it is pretty clear he would not
+have put Paulo and Francesca into hell, if their story had not been
+too recent, and their death too sudden, to allow him to assume their
+repentance in the teeth of the evidence required. He avails himself of
+orthodox license to put "the harlot Rahab" into heaven ("cette bonne
+fille de Jericho," as Ginguéné calls her); nay, he puts her into the
+planet Venus, as if to compliment her on her profession; and one of her
+companions there is a fair Ghibelline, sister of the tyrant Ezzelino, a
+lady famous for her gallantries, of whom the poet good-naturedly says,
+that she "was overcome by her star"--to wit, the said planet Venus; and
+yet he makes her the organ of the most unfeminine triumphs over the
+Guelphs. But both these ladies, it is to be understood, repented--for
+they had time for repentance; their good fortune saved them. Poor
+murdered Francesca had no time to repent; therefore her mischance was
+her damnation! Such are the compliments theology pays to the Creator.
+In fact, nothing is really punished in Dante's Catholic hell but
+impenitence, deliberate or accidental. No delay of repentance, however
+dangerous, hinders the most hard-hearted villain from reaching his
+heaven. The best man goes to hell for ever, if he does not think he has
+sinned as Dante thinks; the worst is beatified, if he agrees with him:
+the only thing which every body is sure of, is some dreadful duration
+of agony in purgatory--the great horror of Catholic death beds.
+Protestantism may well hug itself on having escaped it. O Luther!
+vast was the good you did us. O gentle Church of England! let nothing
+persuade you that it is better to preach frightful and foolish ideas of
+God from your pulpits, than loving-kindness to all men, and peace above
+all things.
+
+If Dante had erred only on the side of indulgence, humanity could easily
+have forgiven him--for the excesses of charity are the extensions of
+hope; but, unfortunately, where he is sweet-natured once, he is bitter a
+hundred times. This is the impression he makes on universalists of all
+creeds and parties; that is to say, on men who having run the whole
+round of sympathy with their fellow-creatures, become the only final
+judges of sovereign pretension. It is very well for individuals to
+make a god of Dante for some encouragement of their own position or
+pretension; but a god for the world at large he never was, or can be;
+and I doubt if an impression to this effect was not always, from the
+very dawn of our literature, the one entertained of him by the genius
+of our native country, which could never long endure any kind of
+unwarrantable dictation. Chaucer evidently thought him a man who would
+spare no unnecessary probe to the feelings (see the close of his version
+of _Ugolino_). Spenser says not a word of him, though he copied Tasso,
+and eulogised Ariosto. Shakspeare would assuredly have put him into
+the list of those presumptuous lookers into eternity who "_take upon
+themselves to know" (Cymbeline_, act v. sc. 4). Milton, in his sonnet
+to Henry Lawes, calls him "that sad Florentine"--a lamenting epithet,
+by which we do not designate a man whom we desire to resemble. The
+historian of English poetry, admirably applying to him a passage out of
+Milton, says that "Hell grows darker at his frown." [26]
+
+Walter Scott could not read him, at least not with pleasure. He tells
+Miss Seward that the "plan" of the poem appeared to him "unhappy;
+the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and
+uninteresting." [27] Uninteresting, I think, it is impossible to consider
+it. The known world is there, and the unknown pretends to be there; and
+both are surely interesting to most people.
+
+Landor, in his delightful book the _Pentameron_--a book full of the
+profoundest as well as sweetest humanity--makes Petrarch follow up
+Boccaccio's eulogies of the episode of Paulo and Francesca with
+ebullitions of surprise and horror:
+
+"_Petrarca_. Perfection of poetry! The greater is my wonder at
+discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole section
+of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,
+
+  'And he who fell as a dead body falls'
+
+would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy! What
+execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, Genoa! what hatred
+against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal
+and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the
+_Inferno_ as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written.
+Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and
+certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged
+forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling it,
+if this had been his intention." [28]
+
+Most happily is the distinction here intimated between the
+undesirableness of Dante's book in a moral and religious point of view,
+and the greater desirableness of it, nevertheless, as a pattern of
+poetry; for absurdity, however potent, wears itself out in the end, and
+leaves what is good and beautiful to vindicate even so foul an origin.
+
+Again, Petrarch says, "What an object of sadness and of consternation,
+he who rises up from hell like a giant refreshed!
+
+"_Boccaccio_. Strange perversion! A pillar of smoke by day and of fire
+by night, to guide no one. Paradise had fewer wants for him to satisfy
+than hell had, all which he fed to repletion; but let us rather look to
+his poetry than his temper."
+
+See also what is said in that admirable book further on (p. 50),
+respecting the most impious and absurd passage in all Dante's poem, the
+assumption about Divine Love in the inscription over hell-gate--one of
+those monstrosities of conception which none ever had the effrontery to
+pretend to vindicate, except theologians who profess to be superior to
+the priests of Moloch, and who yet defy every feeling of decency and
+humanity for the purpose of explaining their own worldly, frightened,
+or hard-hearted submission to the mistakes of the most wretched
+understandings. Ugo Foscolo, an excellent critic where his own temper
+and violence did not interfere, sees nothing but jealousy in Petrarch's
+dislike of Dante, and nothing but Jesuitism in similar feelings
+entertained by such men as Tiraboschi. But all gentle and considerate
+hearts must dislike the rage and bigotry in Dante, even were it true (as
+the Dantesque Foscolo thinks) that Italy will never be regenerated till
+one-half of it is baptised in the blood of the other![29] Such men, with
+all their acuteness, are incapable of seeing what can be effected by
+nobler and serener times, and the progress of civilisation. They fancy,
+no doubt, that they are vindicating the energies of Nature herself, and
+the inevitable necessity of "doing evil that good may come." But Dante
+in so doing violated the Scripture he professed to revere; and men must
+not assume to themselves that final knowledge of results, which is the
+only warrant of the privilege, and the possession of which is to be
+arrogated by no earthly wisdom. One calm discovery of science may do
+away with all the boasted eternal necessities of the angry and the
+self-idolatrous. The passions that may be necessary to savages are not
+bound to remain so to civilised men, any more than the eating of man's
+flesh or the worship of Jugghernaut. When we think of the wonderful
+things lately done by science for the intercourse of the world, and
+the beautiful and tranquil books of philosophy written by men of equal
+energy and benevolence, and opening the peacefulest hopes for mankind,
+and views of creation to which Dante's universe was a nutshell,--such
+a vision as that of his poem (in a theological point of view) seems no
+better than the dream of an hypochondriacal savage, and his nutshell a
+rottenness to be spit out of the mouth.
+
+Heaven send that the great poet's want of charity has not made myself
+presumptuous and uncharitable! But it is in the name of society I
+speak; and words, at all events, now-a-days are not the terrible,
+stake-preceding things they were in his. Readers in general,
+however--even those of the literary world--have little conception of
+the extent to which Dante carries either his cruelty or his abuse. The
+former (of which I shall give some examples presently) shews appalling
+habits of personal resentment; the latter is outrageous to a pitch of
+the ludicrous--positively screaming. I will give some specimens of it
+out of Foscolo himself, who collects them for a different purpose;
+though, with all his idolatry of Dante, he was far from being insensible
+to his mistakes.
+
+"The people of Sienna," according to this national and Christian poet,
+were "a parcel of cox-combs; those of Arezzo, dogs; and of Casentino,
+hogs. Lucca made a trade of perjury. Pistoia was a den of beasts, and
+ought to be reduced to ashes; and the river Arno should overflow and
+drown every soul in Pisa. Almost all the women in Florence walked
+half-naked in public, and were abandoned in private. Every brother,
+husband, son, and father, in Bologna, set their women to sale. In all
+Lombardy were not to be found three men who were not rascals; and in
+Genoa and Romagna people went about pretending to be men, but in reality
+were bodies inhabited by devils, their souls having gone to the 'lowest
+pit of hell' to join the betrayers of their friends and kinsmen." [30]
+
+So much for his beloved countrymen. As for foreigners, particularly
+kings, "Edward the First of England, and Robert of Scotland, were a
+couple of grasping fools; the Emperor Albert was an usurper; Alphonso
+the Second, of Spain, a debauchee; the King of Bohemia a coward;
+Frederick of Arragon a coward and miser; the Kings of Portugal and
+Norway forgers; the King of Naples a man whose virtues were expressed
+by a unit, and his vices by a million; and the King of France, the
+descendant of a Paris butcher, and of progenitors who poisoned St.
+Thomas Aquinas, their descendants conquering with the arms of Judas
+rather than of soldiers, and selling the flesh of their daughters to old
+men, in order to extricate themselves from a danger." [31]
+
+When we add to these invectives, damnations of friends as well as foes,
+of companions, lawyers, men of letters, princes, philosophers, popes,
+pagans, innocent people as well as guilty, fools and wise, capable and
+incapable, men, women, and children,--it is really no better than a kind
+of diabolical sublimation of Lord Thurlow's anathemas in the _Rolliad_,
+which begins with
+
+  "Damnation seize ye all;"
+
+and ends with
+
+  "Damn them beyond what mortal tongue can tell,
+  Confound, sink, plunge them all to deepest blackest hell." [32]
+
+In the gross, indeed, this is ridiculous enough.
+
+No burlesque can beat it. But in the particular, one is astonished and
+saddened at the cruelties in which the poet allows his imagination to
+riot horrors generally described with too intense a verisimilitude not
+to excite our admiration, with too astounding a perseverance not to
+amaze our humanity, and sometimes with an amount of positive joy
+and delight that makes us ready to shut the book with disgust and
+indignation. Thus, in a circle in hell, where traitors are stuck up
+to their chins in ice (canto xxxii.), the visitor, in walking about,
+happens to give one of their faces a kick; the sufferer weeps, and
+then curses him--with such infernal truth does the writer combine the
+malignant with the pathetic! Dante replies to the curse by asking the
+man his name. He is refused it. He then seizes the miserable wretch
+by the hair, in order to force him to the disclosure; and Virgil is
+represented as commending the barbarity![33] But he does worse. To
+barbarity he adds treachery of his own. He tells another poor wretch,
+whose face is iced up with his tears, as if he had worn a crystal vizor,
+that if he will disclose his name and offence, he will relieve his eyes
+awhile, _that he may weep_. The man does so; and the ferocious poet
+then refuses to perform his promise, adding mockery to falsehood, and
+observing that ill manners are the only courtesy proper to wards such
+a fellow![34] It has been conjectured, that Macchiavelli apparently
+encouraged the enormities of the princes of his time, with a design to
+expose them to indignation. It might have been thought of Dante, if he
+had not taken a part in the cruelty, that he detailed the horrors of his
+hell out of a wish to disgust the world with its frightful notions of
+God. This is certainly the effect of the worst part of his descriptions
+in an age like the present. Black burning gulfs, full of outcries
+and blasphemy, feet red-hot with fire, men eternally eating their
+fellow-creatures, frozen wretches malignantly dashing their iced heads
+against one another, other adversaries mutually exchanging shapes by
+force of an attraction at once irresistible and loathing, and spitting
+with hate and disgust when it is done--Enough, enough, for God's sake!
+Take the disgust out of one's senses, O flower of true Christian wisdom
+and charity, now beginning to fill the air with fragrance!
+
+But it will be said that Dante did all this out of his hate of cruelty
+itself, and of treachery itself. Partly no doubt he did; and entirely he
+thought he did. But see how the notions of such retribution react upon
+the judge, and produce in him the bad passions he punishes. It is true
+the punishments are imaginary. Were a human being actually to see such
+things, he must be dehumanised or he would cry out against them with
+horror and detestation. But the poem draws them as truths; the writer's
+creed threatened them; he himself contributed to maintain the belief;
+and however we may suppose such a belief to have had its use in giving
+alarm to ruffian passions and barbarously ignorant times, an age arrives
+when a beneficent Providence permits itself to be better understood, and
+dissipates the superfluous horror.
+
+Many, indeed, of the absurdities of Dante's poem are too obvious
+now-a-days to need remark. Even the composition of the poem,
+egotistically said to be faultless by such critics as Alfieri, who
+thought they resembled him, partakes, as every body's style does, of the
+faults as well as good qualities of the man. It is nervous, concise,
+full almost as it can hold, picturesque, mighty, primeval; but it is
+often obscure, often harsh, and forced in its constructions, defective
+in melody, and wilful and superfluous in the rhyme. Sometimes, also,
+the writer is inconsistent in circumstance (probably from not having
+corrected the poem); and he is not above being filthy. Even in the
+episode of Paulo and Francesca, which has so often been pronounced
+faultless, and which is unquestionably one of the most beautiful
+pieces of writing in the world, some of these faults are observable,
+particularly in the obscurity of the passage about _tolta forma_, the
+cessation of the incessant tempest, and the non-adjuration of the two
+lovers in the manner that Virgil prescribes.
+
+But truly it is said, that when Dante is great, nobody surpasses him. I
+doubt if anybody equals him, as to the constant intensity and incessant
+variety of his pictures; and whatever he paints, he throws, as it were,
+upon its own powers; as though an artist should draw figures that
+started into life, and proceeded to action for themselves, frightening
+their creator. Every motion, word, and look of these creatures becomes
+full of sensibility and suggestions. The invisible is at the back of the
+visible; darkness becomes palpable; silence describes a character, nay,
+forms the most striking part of a story; a word acts as a flash of
+lightning, which displays some gloomy neighbourhood, where a tower is
+standing, with dreadful faces at the window; or where, at your feet,
+full of eternal voices, one abyss is beheld dropping out of another in
+the lurid light of torment. In the present volume a story will be found
+which tells a long tragedy in half-a-dozen lines. Dante has the
+minute probabilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest and most
+generalising poetry; and this feeling of matter-of-fact is impressed by
+fictions the most improbable, nay, the most ridiculous and revolting.
+You laugh at the absurdity; you are shocked at the detestable cruelty;
+yet, for the moment, the thing almost seems as if it must be true. You
+feel as you do in a dream, and after it;--you wake and laugh, but the
+absurdity seemed true at the time; and while you laugh you shudder.
+
+Enough of this crueller part of his genius has been exhibited; but it is
+seldom you can have the genius without sadness. In the circle of hell,
+soothsayers walk along weeping, with their faces turned the wrong way,
+so that their tears fall between their shoulders. The picture is still
+more dreadful. Warton thinks it ridiculous. But I cannot help feeling
+with the poet, that it is dreadfully pathetic. It is the last mortifying
+insult to human pretension. Warton, who has a grudge against Dante
+natural to a man of happier piety, thinks him ridiculous also in
+describing the monster Geryon lying upon the edge of one of the gulfs
+of hell "like a beaver" (canto xvii.). He is of opinion that the writer
+only does it to shew his knowledge of natural history. But surely the
+idea of so strange and awful a creature (a huge mild-faced man ending in
+a dragon's body) lying familiarly on the edge of the gulf, as a beaver
+does by the water, combines the supernatural with the familiar in a very
+impressive manner. It is this combination of extremes which is the life
+and soul of the whole poem; you have this world in the next; the same
+persons, passions, remembrances, intensified by superhuman despairs
+or beatitudes; the speechless entrancements of bliss, the purgatorial
+trials of hope and patience; the supports of hate and anger (such as
+they are) in hell itself; nay, of loving despairs, and a self-pity made
+unboundedly pathetic by endless suffering. Hence there it no love-story
+so affecting as that of Paulo and Francesca thus told and perpetuated in
+another world; no father's misery so enforced upon us as Ugolino's, who,
+for hundreds of years, has not grown tired of the revenge to which it
+wrought him. Dante even puts this weight and continuity of feeling into
+passages of mere transient emotion or illustration, unconnected with the
+next world; as in the famous instance of the verses about evening, and
+many others which the reader will meet with in this volume. Indeed, if
+pathos and the most impressive simplicity, and graceful beauty of all
+kinds, and abundant grandeur, can pay (as the reader, I believe, will
+think it does even in a prose abstract), for the pangs of moral discord
+and absurdity inflicted by the perusal of Dante's poem, it may challenge
+competition with any in point of interest. His Heaven, it is true,
+though containing both sublime and lovely passages, is not so good as
+his Earth. The more unearthly he tried to make it, the less heavenly
+it became. When he is content with earth in heaven itself,-when he
+literalises a metaphor, and with exquisite felicity finds himself
+_arrived there_ in consequence of fixing his eyes on the eyes of
+Beatrice, then he is most celestial. But his endeavours to express
+degrees of beatitude and holiness by varieties of flame and light,--of
+dancing lights, revolving lights, lights of smiles, of stars, of starry
+crosses, of didactic letters and sentences, of animal figures made up of
+stars full of blessed souls, with saints _forming an eagle's beak_ and
+David in its _eye!_--such superhuman attempts become for the most part
+tricks of theatrical machinery, on which we gaze with little curiosity
+and no respect.
+
+His angels, however, are another matter. Belief was prepared for those
+winged human forms, and they furnished him with some of his most
+beautiful combinations of the natural with the supernatural. Ginguéné
+has remarked the singular variety as well as beauty of Dante's angels.
+Milton's, indeed, are commonplace in the comparison. In the eighth canto
+of the _Inferno_, the devils insolently refuse the poet and his guide an
+entrance into the city of Dis:--an angel comes sweeping over the Stygian
+lake to enforce it; the noise of his wings makes the shores tremble, and
+is like a crashing whirlwind such as beats down the trees and sends the
+peasants and their herds flying before it. The heavenly messenger, after
+rebuking the devils, touches the portals of the city with his wand; they
+fly open; and he returns the way he came without uttering a word to the
+two companions. His face was that of one occupied with other thoughts.
+This angel is announced by a tempest. Another, who brings the souls of
+the departed to Purgatory, is first discovered at a distance, gradually
+disclosing white splendours, which are his wings and garments. He comes
+in a boat, of which his wings are the sails; and as he approaches, it is
+impossible to look him in the face for its brightness. Two other angels
+have green wings and green garments, and the drapery is kept in motion
+like a flag by the vehement action of the wings. A fifth has a face like
+the morning star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth is of a lustre
+so oppressive, that the poet feels a weight on his eyes before he knows
+what is coming. Another's presence affects the senses like the fragrance
+of a May-morning; and another is in garments dark as cinders, but has
+a sword in his hand too sparkling to be gazed at. Dante's occasional
+pictures of the beauties of external nature are worthy of these angelic
+creations, and to the last degree fresh and lovely. You long to bathe
+your eyes, smarting with the fumes of hell, in his dews. You gaze
+enchanted on his green fields and his celestial blue skies, the more so
+from the pain and sorrow in midst of which the visions are created.
+
+Dante's grandeur of every kind is proportionate to that of his angels,
+almost to his ferocity; and that is saying every thing. It is not
+always the spiritual grandeur of Milton, the subjection of the material
+impression to the moral; but it is equally such when he chooses, and
+far more abundant. His infernal precipices--his black whirlwinds--his
+innumerable cries and claspings of hands--his very odours of huge
+loathsomeness--his giants at twilight standing up to the middle in pits,
+like towers, and causing earthquakes when they move--his earthquake of
+the mountain in Purgatory, when a spirit is set free for heaven--his
+dignified Mantuan Sordello, silently regarding him and his guide as they
+go by, "like a lion on his watch"--his blasphemer, Capaneus, lying in
+unconquered rage and sullenness under an eternal rain of flakes of fire
+(human precursor of Milton's Satan)--his aspect of Paradise, "as if the
+universe had smiled"--his inhabitants of the whole planet Saturn crying
+out _so loud_, in accordance with the anti-papal indignation of Saint
+Pietro Damiano, that the poet, though among them, _could not hear what
+they said_--and the blushing eclipse, like red clouds at sunset, which
+takes place at the apostle Peter's denunciation of the sanguinary filth
+of the court of Rome--all these sublimities, and many more, make us not
+know whether to be more astonished at the greatness of the poet or the
+raging littleness of the man. Grievous is it to be forced to bring two
+such opposites together; and I wish, for the honour and glory of poetry,
+I did not feel compelled to do so. But the swarthy Florentine had not
+the healthy temperament of his brethren, and he fell upon evil times.
+Compared with Homer and Shakspeare, his very intensity seems only
+superior to theirs from an excess of the morbid; and he is inferior to
+both in other sovereign qualities of poetry--to the one, in giving you
+the healthiest general impression of nature itself--to Shakspeare, in
+boundless universality--to most great poets, in thorough harmony and
+delightfulness. He wanted (generally speaking) the music of a happy and
+a happy-making disposition. Homer, from his large vital bosom, breathes
+like a broad fresh air over the world, amidst alternate storm and
+sunshine, making you aware that there is rough work to be faced, but
+also activity and beauty to be enjoyed. The feeling of health and
+strength is predominant. Life laughs at death itself, or meets it with
+a noble confidence--is not taught to dread it as a malignant goblin.
+Shakspeare has all the smiles as well as tears of nature, and discerns
+the "soul of goodness in things evil." He is comedy as well as
+tragedy--the entire man in all his qualities, moods, and experiences;
+and he beautifies all. And both those truly divine poets make nature
+their subject through her own inspiriting medium--not through
+the darkened glass of one man's spleen and resentment. Dante, in
+constituting himself the hero of his poem, not only renders her, in the
+general impression, as dreary as himself, in spite of the occasional
+beautiful pictures he draws of her, but narrows her very immensity into
+his pettiness. He fancied, alas, that he could build her universe over
+again out of the politics of old Rome and the divinity of the schools!
+
+Dante, besides his great poem, and a few Latin eclogues of no great
+value, wrote lyrics full of Platonical sentiment, some of which
+anticipated the loveliest of Petrarch's; and he was the author of
+various prose works, political and philosophical, all more or less
+masterly for the time in which he lived, and all coadjutors of his
+poetry in fixing his native tongue. His account of his Early Life (the
+_Vita Nuova_) is a most engaging history of a boyish passion, evidently
+as real and true on his own side as love and truth can be, whatever
+might be its mistake as to its object. The treatise on the Vernacular
+Tongue (_de Vulgari Eloquio_) shews how critically he considered his
+materials for impressing the world, and what a reader he was of every
+production of his contemporaries. The Banquet (_Convito_) is but an
+abstruse commentary on some of his minor poems; but the book on Monarchy
+(_de Monarchia_) is a compound of ability and absurdity, in which his
+great genius is fairly overborne by the barbarous pedantry of the age.
+It is an argument to prove that the world must all be governed by one
+man; that this one man must be the successor of the Roman Emperor--God
+having manifestly designed the world to be subject for ever to the Roman
+empire; and lastly, that this Emperor is equally designed by God to be
+independent of the Pope--spiritually subject to him, indeed, but so far
+only as a good son is subject to the religious advice of his father;
+and thus making Church and State happy for ever in the two divided
+supremacies. And all this assumption of the obsolete and impossible the
+author gravely proves in all the forms of logic, by arguments drawn from
+the history of Æneas, and the providential cackle of the Roman geese!
+
+How can the patriots of modern Italy, justified as they are in extolling
+the poet to the skies, see him plunge into such depths of bigotry in his
+verse and childishness in his prose, and consent to perplex the friends
+of advancement with making a type of their success out of so erring
+though so great a man? Such slavishness, even to such greatness, is a
+poor and unpromising thing, compared with an altogether unprejudiced
+and forward-looking self-reliance. To have no faith in names has been
+announced as one of their principles; and "God and Humanity" is their
+motto. What, therefore, has Dante's name to do with their principles? or
+what have the semi-barbarisms of the thirteenth century to do with the
+final triumph of "God and Humanity?" Dante's lauded wish for that union
+of the Italian States, which his fame has led them so fondly to identify
+with their own, was but a portion of his greater and prouder wish to see
+the whole world at the feet of his boasted ancestress, Rome. Not,
+of course, that he had no view to what he considered good and just
+government (for what sane despot purposes to rule without that?); but
+his good and just government was always to be founded on the _sine qua
+non_ principle of universal Italian domination.[35]
+
+All that Dante said or did has its interest for us in spite of his
+errors, because he was an earnest and suffering man and a great genius;
+but his fame must ever continue to lie where his greatest blame does,
+in his principal work. He was a gratuitous logician, a preposterous
+politician, a cruel theologian; but his wonderful imagination, and
+(considering the bitterness that was in him) still more wonderful
+sweetness, have gone into the hearts of his fellow-creatures, and will
+remain there in spite of the moral and religious absurdities with which
+they are mingled, and of the inability which the best-natured readers
+feel to associate his entire memory, as a poet, with their usual
+personal delight in a poet and his name.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: As notices of Dante's life have often been little but
+repetitions of former ones, I think it due to the painstaking character
+of this volume to state, that besides consulting various commentators
+and critics, from Boccaccio to Fraticelli and others, I have diligently
+perused the _Vita di Dante_, by Cesare Balbo, with Rocco's annotations;
+the _Histoire Littéraire d'Italie,_ by Ginguéné; the _Discorso sul Testo
+della Commedia_, by Foscolo; the _Amori e Rime di Dante_ of Arrivabene;
+the _Veltro Allegorico di Dante_, by Troja; and Ozanam's _Dante et la
+Philosophie Catholique an Treixième Siècle._]
+
+[Footnote 2: Canto xv. 88.]
+
+[Footnote 3: For the doubt apparently implied respecting the district,
+see canto xvi. 43, or the summary of it in the present volume. The
+following is the passage alluded to in the philosophical treatise
+"Risponder si vorrebbe, non colle parole, ma col coltello, a tanta
+bestialità." _Convito,--Opere Minori_, 12mo, Fir. 1834, vol. II. p. 432.
+"Beautiful mode" (says Perticeri in a note) "of settling questions."]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Istorie Fiorentine, II_. 43 (in _Tutte le Opere_, 4to,
+1550).]
+
+[Footnote 5: The name has been varied into _Allagheri_, _Aligieri_,
+_Alleghieri_, _Alligheri_, _Aligeri_, with the accent generally on the
+third, but sometimes on the second syllable. See Foscolo, _Discorso sul
+Testo, p_. 432. He says, that in Verona, where descendants of the poet
+survive, they call it _Alìgeri_. But names, like other words, often
+wander so far from their source, that it is impossible to ascertain it.
+Who would suppose that _Pomfret_ came from _Pontefract_, or _wig_ from
+_parrucca_? Coats of arms, unless in very special instances, prove
+nothing but the whims of the heralds.
+
+Those who like to hear of anything in connexion with Dante or his
+name, may find something to stir their fancies in the following grim
+significations of the word in the dictionaries:
+
+"_Dante_, a kind of great wild beast in Africa, that hath a very hard
+skin."--_Florio's Dictionary_, edited by Torreggiano.
+
+"_Dante_, an animal called otherwise the Great Beast."--_Vocabolario
+della Crusca, Compendiato_, Ven. 1729.]
+
+[Footnote 6: See the passage in "Hell," where Virgil, to express his
+enthusiastic approbation of the scorn and cruelty which Dante chews to
+one of the condemned, embraces and kisses him for a right "disdainful
+soul," and blesses the "mother that bore him."]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Opere minori_, vol iii 12. Flor. 1839, pp. 292 &c.]
+
+[Footnote 8: "Béatrix quitta la terre dans tout l'éclat de la jeunesse
+et de la virginité." See the work as above entitled, Paris, 1840, p. 60.
+The words in Latin, as quoted from the will by the critic alluded to in
+the _Foreign Quarterly Review_ (No._ 65, art. _Dante Allighieri_), are,
+"Bici filiæ suæ et uxori D. (Domini) Simonis de Bardis." "Bici" is
+the Latin dative case of Bice, the abbreviation of Beatrice. This
+employment, by the way, of an abbreviated name in a will, may seem to
+go counter to the deductions respecting the name of Dante. And it
+may really do so. Yet a will is not an epitaph, nor the address of a
+beatified spirit; neither is equal familiarity perhaps implied, as a
+matter of course, in the abbreviated names of male and female.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Vita Nuova_. ut sup. p. 343]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Vita Nuova_, p. 345.]
+
+[Footnote 11: In the article on _Dante, in_ the _Foreign Quarterly
+Review_, (ut supra), the exordium of which made me hope that the
+eloquent and assumption-denouncing writer was going to supply a good
+final account of his author, equally satisfactory for its feeling
+and its facts, but which ended in little better than the customary
+gratuitousness of wholesale panegyric, I was surprised to find the
+union with Gemma Donati characterised as "calm and cold,--rather the
+accomplishment of a social duty than the result of an irresistible
+impulse of the heart," p. 15. The accomplishment of the "social duty" is
+an assumption, not very probable with regard to any body, and much less
+so in a fiery Italian of twenty-six; but the addition of the epithets,
+"calm and cold," gives it a sort of horror. A reader of this article,
+evidently the production of a man of ability but of great wilfulness, is
+tempted to express the disappointment it has given him in plainer terms
+than might be wished, in consequence of the extraordinary license which
+its writer does not scruple to allow to his own fancies, in expressing
+his opinion of what he is pleased to think the fancies of others.]
+
+[Footnote 12: "Le invettive contr' essa per tanti secoli originarono
+dalla enumerazione rettorica del Boccaccio di tutti gli inconvenienti
+del matrimonio, e dove per altro ei dichiara,--'Certo io non affermo
+queste cose a Dante essere avvenute, che non lo so; comechè vero sia,
+che o a simili cose a queste, o ad altro che ne fusse cagione, egli una
+volta da lei partitosi, che per consolazione de' suoi affanni gli era
+stata data, mai nè dove ella fusse volle venire, nè sofferse che dove
+egli fusse ella venisse giammai, con tutto che di più figliuoli egli
+insieme con lei fusse parente." _Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. Londra,
+Pickering, 1825, p. 184.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Foscolo, in the _Edinburgh review_, vol. xxx. p. 351. ]
+
+[Footnote 14: "Ahi piaciuto fosse al Dispensatore dell'universo, che la
+cagione della mia scusa mai non fosse stata; che nè altri contro a me
+avria fallato, nè io sofferto avrei pena ingiustamente; pena, dico,
+d'esilio e di povertà. Poichè fu piacere de' cittadini della bellissima
+e famosissima figlia di Roma, Florenza, di gettarmi fuori del suo
+dolcissimo seno (nel quale nato e nudrito fui sino al colmo della mia
+vita, e nel quale, con buona pace di quella, desidero con tutto il core
+di riposare l'animo stanco, e terminare il tempo che m'è dato); per le
+parti quasi tutte, alle quali questa lingua si stende, peregrino, quasi
+mendicando, sono andato, mostrando contro a mia voglia la piaga della
+fortuna, che suole ingiustamente al piagato molte volte essere imputata.
+Veramente io sono stato legno sanza vela e sanza governo, portato a
+diversi porti e foci e liti dal vento secco che vapora la dolorosa
+povertà; e sono vile apparito agli occhi a molti, che forse per alcuna
+fama in altra forma mi aveano immaginato; nel cospetto de' quali non
+solamente mia persona inviliò, ma di minor pregio si fece ogni opera, si
+già fatta, come quella che fosse a fare."-_Opere Minori_, ut sup. vol.
+ii. p. 20.]
+
+[Footnote 15: "In licteris vestris et reverentia debita et affectione
+receptis, quam repatriatio mea cure sit vobis ex animo grata mente ac
+diligenti animaversione concepi, etenim tanto me districtius obligastis,
+quanto rarius exules invenire amicos contingit. ad illam vero
+significata respondeo: et si non eatenus qualiter forsam pusillanimitas
+appeteret aliquorum, ut sub examine vestri consilii ante judicium,
+affectuose deposco. ecce igitur quod per licteras vestri mei: que
+nepotis, necnon aliorum quamplurium amicorum significatum est mihi. per
+ordinamentum nuper factum Florentie super absolutione bannitorum. quod
+si solvere vellem certam pecunie quantitatem, vellemque pati notam
+oblationis et absolvi possem et redire ut presens. in quo quidem duo
+ridenda et male perconciliata sunt. Pater, dico male perconciliata per
+illos qui tali expresserunt: nam vestre litere discretius et consultius
+clausulate nicil de talibus continebant. estne ista revocatio gloriosa
+qua d. all. (i. e. _Dantes Alligherius_) revocatur ad patriam per
+trilustrium fere perpessus exilium? becne meruit conscientia manifesta
+quibuslibet? hec sudor et labor continuatus in studiis? absit a viro
+philosophie domestica temeraria terreni cordis humilitas, ut more
+cujusdam cioli et aliorum infamiam quasi vinctus ipse se patiatur
+offerri. absit a viro predicante justitiam, ut perpessus injuriam
+inferentibus. velud benemerentibus, pecuniam suam solvat. non est hec
+via redeundi ad patriam, Pater mi, sed si alia per vos, aut deinde per
+alios invenietur que fame d. _(Dantis)_ que onori non deroget, illam non
+lentis passibus acceptabo. quod si per nullam talem Florentia introitur,
+nunquam Florentiam introibo. quidni? nonne solis astrorumque specula
+ubique conspiciam? nonne dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique
+sub celo, ni prius inglorium, imo ignominiosum populo, Florentineque
+civitati am reddam? quippe panis non deficiet."]
+
+
+[Footnote 16: _Opere minori_, ut sup. vol iii. p. 186.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Veltro Allegorico di Dante_, ut sup. p. 208, where the
+Appendix contains the Latin original.]
+
+[Footnote 18: See Fraticelli's Dissertation on the Convito, in _Opere
+Minori_, ut sup. vol. ii. p. 560.]
+
+[Footnote 19: _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Balbo_. Naples edition, p. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 21: "Di se stesso presunse maravigliosamente tanto, che
+essendo egli glorioso nel colmo del reggimento della republica, e
+ragionandosi trà maggiori cittadini di mandare, per alcuna gran bisogna,
+ambasciata a Bonifazio Papa VIII., e che principe della ambasciata fosse
+Dante, ed egli in ciò in presenzia di tutti quegli che ciò consigliavano
+richiesto, avvenne, che soprastando egli alla risposta, alcun disse, che
+pensi? alle quali parole egli rispose: penso, se io vo, chi rimane; e
+s'io rimango, chi va: quasi esso solo fosse colui che tra tutti valesse
+e per cui tutti gli altri valessero." And he goes on to say respecting
+the stone-throwing--"Appresso, come che il nostro poeta nelle sua
+avversità paziente o no si fosse, in una fu impazientissimo: ed egli
+infino al cominciamento del suo esilio stato guelfissimo, non essendogli
+aperta la via del ritornare in casa sua, si fuor di modo diventò
+ghibellino, che ogni femminella, ogni picciol fanciullo, e quante
+volte avesse voluto, ragionando di parte, e la guelfa proponendo alla
+ghibellino, l'avrebbe non solamente fatto turbare, ma a tanta insania
+commosso, che se taciuto non fosse, a gittar le pietre l'avrebbe
+condotto." (_Vita di Dante_, prefixed to the Paris edition of the
+Commedia, 1844, p. XXV.) And then the "buon Boccaccio," with his
+accustomed sweetness of nature, begs pardon of so great a man, for being
+obliged to relate such things of him, and doubts whether his spirit may
+not be looking down on him that moment _disdainfully_ from _heaven_!
+Such an association of ideas had Dante produced between the celestial
+and the scornful!]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Novelle di Franco Sacchetti_, Milan edition, 1804, vol.
+ii. p. 148. It forms the setting, or frame-work, of an inferior story,
+and is not mentioned in the heading.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante
+Alighieri, &c._ Smith's edition, 1844, p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Discorso sul Testo_, pp. 64, 77-90, 335-338.]
+
+[Footnote 25: _Purgatorio_, canto III. 118, 138; referred to by Foscolo,
+in the _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 383.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Warton's _History of English Poetry_, edition of 1840,
+vol. iii. p. 214.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott_, Bart. vol. ii.
+p. 122.]
+
+[Footnote 28: _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, pp. 44-50.]
+
+[Footnote 29: _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 226. The whole passage (sect.
+cx.) is very eloquent, horrible, and _self-betraying_.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _Discorso_, as above, p. 101.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Discorso_, p. 103.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Criticisms on the Rolliad, and Probationary Odes for the_
+_Laureateship_. Third edit. 17S5, p. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 33: The writer of the article on Dante in the _Foreign
+Quarterly Review_ (as above) concedes that his hero in this passage
+becomes "_almost_ cruel." Almost! Tormenting a man further, who is up to
+his chin in everlasting ice, and whose face he has kicked!]
+
+[Footnote 34: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." _Inferno_, canto xxxiii.
+150.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Every body sees this who is not wilfully blind.
+"Passionate," says the editor of the _Opere Minori_, "for the ancient
+Italian glories, and the greatness of the Roman name, he was of
+opinion that it was only by means of combined strength, and one common
+government, that Italy could be finally secured from discord in its own
+bosom and enemies from without, _and recover its ancient empire over
+the whole world_." "Amantissimo delle antiche glorie Italiane, e della
+grandezza del nome romano, ei considerava, che soltanto pel mezzo d'una
+general forza ed autorita poteva l'Italia dalle interne contese e dalle
+straniere invasioni restarsi sicura, _e recuperare l'antico imperio
+sopra tutte le genti_."--Ut sup. vol. iii. p. 8.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
+
+I.
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
+
+Argument.
+
+The infernal regions, according to Dante, are situate in the globe we
+inhabit, directly beneath Jerusalem, and consist of a succession of
+gulfs or circles, narrowing as they descend, and terminating in the
+centre; so that the general shape is that of a funnel. Commentators have
+differed as to their magnitude; but the latest calculation gives 315
+miles for the diameter of the mouth or crater, and a quarter of a mile
+for that of its terminating point. In the middle is the abyss, pervading
+the whole depth, and 245 miles in diameter at the opening; which reduces
+the different platforms, or territories that surround it, to a size
+comparatively small. These territories are more or less varied with land
+and water, lakes, precipices, &c. A precipice, fourteen miles high,
+divides the first of them from the second. The passages from the upper
+world to the entrance are various; and the descents from one circle
+to another are effected by the poet and his guide in different
+manners-sometimes on foot through by-ways, sometimes by the conveyance
+of supernatural beings. The crater he finds to be the abode of those who
+have done neither good nor evil, caring for nothing but themselves.
+In the first circle are the whole unbaptised world--heathens and
+infants--melancholy, though not tormented. Here also is found the
+Elysium of Virgil, whose Charon and other infernal beings are among the
+agents of torment. In the second circle the torments commence with the
+sin of incontinence; and the punishment goes deepening with the crime
+from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath,
+sullenness, or unwillingness to be pleased with the creation, disbelief
+in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences),
+usury, murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction and other carnal
+enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft,
+trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery (on
+the great Italian scale), sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the
+Church, heresy, false apostleship, alchemy, forgery, coining (all these,
+from seduction downwards, in one circle); then, in the frozen or lowest
+circle of all, treachery; and at the bottom of this is Satan, stuck into
+the centre of the earth.
+
+With the centre of the globe commences the antipodean attraction of its
+opposite side, together with a rocky ascent out of it, through a
+huge ravine. The poet and his guide, on their arrival at this spot,
+accordingly find their position reversed; and so conclude their
+_downward_ journey _upwards_, till they issue forth to light on the
+borders of the sea which contains the island of Purgatory.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
+
+Dante says, that when he was half-way on his pilgrimage through this
+life, he one day found himself, towards nightfall, in a wood where he
+could no longer discern the right path. It was a place so gloomy and
+terrible, every thing in it growing in such a strange and savage manner,
+that the horror he felt returned on him whenever he thought of it. The
+pass of death could hardly be more bitter. Travelling through it all
+night with a beating heart, he at length came to the foot of a hill, and
+looking up, as he began to ascend it, he perceived the shoulders of the
+hill clad in the beams of morning; a sight which gave him some little
+comfort. He felt like a man who has buffeted his way to land out of a
+shipwreck, and who, though still anxious to get farther from his peril,
+cannot help turning round to gaze on the wide waters. So did he stand
+looking back on the pass that contained that dreadful wood. After
+resting a while, he again betook him up the hill; but had not gone far
+when he beheld a leopard bounding in front of him, and hindering his
+progress. After the leopard came a lion, with his head aloft, mad with
+hunger, and seeming to frighten the very air;[1] and after the lion,
+more eager still, a she-wolf, so lean that she appeared to be sharpened
+with every wolfish want. The pilgrim fled back in terror to the wood,
+where he again found himself in a darkness to which the light never
+penetrated. In that place, he said, the sun never spoke word.[2] But the
+wolf was still close upon him.[3]
+
+While thus flying, he beheld coming towards him a man, who spoke
+something, but he knew not what. The voice sounded strange and feeble,
+as if from disuse. Dante loudly called out to him to save him, whether
+he was a man or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight the wild
+beasts disappeared, said that he was no longer man, though man he
+had been in the time of the false gods, and sung the history of the
+offspring of Anchises.
+
+"And art thou, then, that Virgil," said Dante, "who has filled the world
+with such floods of eloquence? O glory and light of all poets, thou art
+my master, and thou mine _author_; thou alone the book from which I have
+gathered beauties that have gained me praise. Behold the peril I am in,
+and help me, for I tremble in every vein and pulse."
+
+Virgil comforted Dante. He told him that he must quit the wood by
+another road, and that he himself would be his guide, leading him first
+to behold the regions of woe underground, and then the spirits that
+lived content in fire because it purified them for heaven; and then that
+he would consign him to other hands worthier than his own, which should
+raise him to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of whom he was
+one, had been rebels to the law of him that reigns there, nobody could
+arrive at Paradise by their means.[4]
+
+So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and Dante closely followed. He
+expressed a fear, however, as they went, lest being "neither Æneas nor
+St. Paul," his journey could not be worthily undertaken, nor end in
+wisdom. But Virgil, after sharply rebuking him for his faintheartedness,
+told him, that the spirit of her whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down
+from heaven on purpose to commend her lover to his care; upon which the
+drooping courage of the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confidence;
+as flowers that have been closed and bowed down by frosty nights, rise
+all up on their stems in the morning sun.[5]
+
+ "Non vuol che 'n sua città per me sì vegna."
+
+The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any
+more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther. But this is one of the
+absurdities with which the impious effrontery or scarcely less
+impious admissions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at
+defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for the
+impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd," as the poet says;
+for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued, much more so, they
+had at least an equal claim on the submission of the reason; since the
+greater the irrationality, the higher the theological triumph.
+
+  "Through me is the road to the dolorous city;
+  Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows;
+  Through me is the road to the lost people.
+  Justice was the motive of my exalted maker;
+  I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom, and by primal love;
+  Before me was no created thing, if not eternal; and eternal am I also.
+  Abandon hope, all ye who enter."
+
+Such were the words which Dante beheld written in dark characters over a
+portal. "Master," said he to Virgil, "I find their meaning hard."
+
+"A man," answered Virgil, "must conduct himself at this door like one
+prepared. Hither must he bring no mistrust. Hither can come and live no
+cowardice. We have arrived at the place I told thee of. Here thou art to
+behold the dolorous people who have lost all intellectual good." [6]
+
+So saying, Virgil placed his hand on Dante's, looking on him with a
+cheerful countenance; and the Florentine passed with him through the
+dreadful gate.
+
+They entered upon a sightless gulf, in which was a black air without
+stars; and immediately heard a hubbub of groans; and wailings, and
+terrible things said in many languages, words of wretchedness, outcries
+of rage, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of the smitings of hands one
+against another. Dante began to weep. The sound was as if the sand in
+a whirlwind were turned into noises, and filled the blind air with
+incessant conflict.
+
+Yet these were not the souls of the wicked. They were those only who had
+lived without praise or blame, thinking of nothing but themselves. These
+miserable creatures were mixed with the angels who stood neutral in the
+war with Satan. Heaven would not dull its brightness with those angels,
+nor would lower hell receive them, lest the bad ones should triumph in
+their company.
+
+"And what is it," said Dante, "which makes them so grievously suffer?"
+
+"Hopelessness of death," said Virgil. "Their blind existence here, and
+immemorable former life, make them so wretched, that they envy every
+other lot. Mercy and justice alike disdain them. Let us speak of them no
+more. Look, and pass."
+
+The companions went on till they came to a great river with a multitude
+waiting on the banks. A hoary old man appeared crossing the river
+towards them in a boat; and as he came, he said, "Woe to the wicked.
+Never expect to see heaven. I come to bear you across to the dark
+regions of everlasting fire and ice." Then looking at Dante, he said,
+"Get thee away from the dead, thou who standest there, live spirit."
+
+"Torment thyself not, Charon," said Virgil. "He has a passport beyond
+thy power to question."
+
+The shaggy cheeks of the boatman of the livid lake, who had wheels of
+fire about his eyes, fell at these words; and he was silent. But the
+naked multitude of souls whom he had spoken to changed colour, and
+gnashed their teeth, blaspheming God, and their parents, and the human
+species, and the place, and the hour, and the seed of the sowing of
+their birth; and all the while they felt themselves driven onwards, by a
+fear which became a desire, towards the cruel river-side, which awaits
+every one destitute of the fear of God. The demon Charon, beckoning to
+them with eyes like brasiers, collected them as they came, giving blows
+to those that lingered, with his oar. One by one they dropped into the
+boat like leaves from a bough in autumn, till the bough is left bare; or
+as birds drop into the decoy at the sound of the bird-call.
+
+There was then an earthquake, so terrible that the recollection of it
+made the poet burst into a sweat at every pore. A whirlwind issued from
+the lamenting ground, attended by vermilion flashes; and he lost his
+senses, and fell like a man stupefied.
+
+A crash of thunder through his brain woke up the pilgrim so hastily,
+that he shook himself like a person roused by force. He found that he
+was on the brink of a gulf, from which ascended a thunderous sound of
+innumerable groanings. He could see nothing down it. It was too dark
+with sooty clouds. Virgil himself turned pale, but said, "We are to go
+down here. I will lead the way."
+
+"O master," said Dante, "if even thou fearest, what is to become of
+myself?" "It is pity, not fear," replied Virgil, "that makes me change
+colour."
+
+With these words his guide led him into the first circle of hell,
+surrounding the abyss. The great noise gradually ceased to be heard, as
+they journeyed inwards, till at last they became aware of a world of
+sighs, which produced a trembling in the air. They were breathed by the
+souls of such as had died without baptism, men, women, and infants; no
+matter how good; no matter if they worshipped God before the coming of
+Christ, for they worshipped him not "properly." Virgil himself was
+one of them. They were all lost for no other reason; and their "only
+suffering" consisted in "hopeless desire!"
+
+Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard this, knowing how many
+good men must be in that place. He inquired if no one had ever been
+taken out of it into heaven. Virgil told him there had, and he named
+them; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the
+patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for
+whom Jacob did so much,--and "many more;" adding, however, that there
+was no instance of salvation before theirs.
+
+Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante perceived a
+lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evidently of
+great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the
+rest. Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their
+renown on earth. A voice was then heard exclaiming, "Honour and glory to
+the lofty poet! Lo, his shade returns." Dante then saw four other noble
+figures coming towards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful.
+
+"Observe him with the sword in his hand," said Virgil, as they were
+advancing. "That is Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him comes
+Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the last is Lucan."
+
+"And thus I beheld," says Dante, "the bright school of the loftiest of
+poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle."
+
+For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to
+the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and
+"further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, "for
+they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account
+I added a sixth." [7]
+
+The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived,
+talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a magnificent castle,
+girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which
+they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them
+into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with
+a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority,
+their voices sweet, and their speech seldom.[8] Dante was taken apart to
+an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly;
+and there, on the "enamelled green," [9] were pointed out to him the
+great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem.
+He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and Æneas,
+and Cæsar in armour with his hawk's eyes; and on another side he beheld
+old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled
+Tarquin, and Lucretia, and Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother
+of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin. He then
+raised his eyes a little, and beheld the "master of those who know" [10]
+(Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured
+by them all. Socrates and Plato were at his side. Among the rest was
+Democritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus,
+&c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he saw,
+and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and
+Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too
+numerous to mention. The company of six became diminished to two, and
+Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air
+for a stormy one; and so they descended again into darkness.
+
+It was the second circle into which they now came--a sphere narrower
+than the first, and by so much more the wretcheder. Minos sat at the
+entrance, gnarling--he that gives sentence on every one that comes, and
+intimates the circle into which each is to be plunged by the number of
+folds into which he casts his tail round about him. Minos admonished
+Dante to beware how he entered unbidden, and warned him against his
+conductor; but Virgil sharply rebuked the judge, and bade him not set
+his will against the will that was power.
+
+The pilgrims then descended through hell-mouth, till they came to a
+place dark as pitch, that bellowed with furious cross-winds, like a sea
+in a tempest. It was the first place of torment, and the habitation of
+carnal sinners. The winds, full of stifled voices, buffeted the souls
+for ever, whirling them away to and fro, and dashing them against one
+another. Whenever it seized them for that purpose, the wailing and the
+shrieking was loudest, crying out against the Divine Power. Sometimes a
+whole multitude came driven in a body like starlings before the wind,
+now hither and thither, now up, now down; sometimes they went in a line
+like cranes, when a company of those birds is beheld sailing along in
+the air, uttering its dolorous clangs.
+
+Dante, seeing a group of them advancing, inquired of Virgil who they
+were. "Who are these," said he, "coming hither, scourged in the blackest
+part of the hurricane?"
+
+"She at the head of them," said Virgil, "was empress over many nations.
+So foul grew her heart with lust, that she ordained license to be law,
+to the end that herself might be held blameless. She is Semiramis, of
+whom it is said that she gave suck to Ninus, and espoused him. Leading
+the multitude next to her is Dido, she that slew herself for love, and
+broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus; and she that follows with the next
+is the luxurious woman, Cleopatra."
+
+Dante then saw Helen, who produced such a world of misery; and the great
+Achilles, who fought for love till it slew him; and Paris; and Tristan;
+and a thousand more whom his guide pointed at, naming their names, every
+one of whom was lost through love.
+
+The poet stood for a while speechless for pity, and like one bereft of
+his wits. He then besought leave to speak to a particular couple who
+went side by side, and who appeared to be borne before the wind with
+speed lighter than the rest. His conductor bade him wait till they came
+nigher, and then to entreat them gently by the love which bore them in
+that manner, and they would stop and speak with him. Dante waited his
+time, and then lifted up his voice between the gusts of wind, and
+adjured the two "weary souls" to halt and have speech with him, if none
+forbade their doing so; upon which they came to him, like doves to the
+nest.[11]
+
+There was a lull in the tempest, as if on purpose to let them speak;
+and the female addressed Dante, saying, that as he showed such pity for
+their state, they would have prayed heaven to give peace and repose to
+his life, had they possessed the friendship of heaven.[12]
+
+"Love," she said, "which is soon kindled in a gentle heart, seized this
+my companion for the fair body I once inhabited--how deprived of it, my
+spirit is bowed to recollect. Love, which compels the beloved person
+upon thoughts of love, seized me in turn with a delight in his passion
+so strong, that, as thou seest, even here it forsakes me not. Love
+brought us both to one end. The punishment of Cain awaits him that slew
+us."
+
+The poet was struck dumb by this story. He hung down his head, and stood
+looking on the ground so long, that his guide asked him what was in his
+mind. "Alas!" answered he, "such then was this love, so full of sweet
+thoughts; and such the pass to which it brought them! Oh, Francesca!" he
+cried, turning again to the sad couple, "thy sufferings make me weep.
+But tell me, I pray thee, what was it that first made thee know, for a
+certainty, that his love was returned?--that thou couldst refuse him
+thine no longer?"
+
+"There is not a greater sorrow," answered she, "than calling to mind
+happy moments in the midst of wretchedness.[13] But since thy desire is
+so great to know our story to the root, hear me tell it as well as I
+may for tears. It chanced, one day, that we sat reading the tale of
+Sir Launcelot, how love took him in thrall. We were alone, and had no
+suspicion. Often, as we read, our eyes became suspended,[14] and we
+changed colour; but one passage alone it was that overcame us. When we
+read how Genevra smiled, and how the lover, out of the depth of his
+love, could not help kissing that smile, he that is never more to be
+parted from me kissed me himself on the mouth, all in a tremble. Never
+had we go-between but that book. The writer was the betrayer. That day
+we read no more."
+
+While these words were being uttered by one of the spirits, the other
+wailed so bitterly, that the poet thought he should have died for pity.
+His senses forsook him, and he fell flat on the ground, as a dead body
+falls.[15]
+
+On regaining his senses, the poet found himself in the third circle of
+hell, a place of everlasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush of
+hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. The triple-headed dog Cerberus,
+with red eyes and greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with claws,
+barked above the heads of the wretches who floundered in the mud,
+tearing, skinning, and dismembering them, as they turned their sore and
+soddened bodies from side to side. When he saw the two living men, he
+showed his fangs, and shook in every limb for desire of their flesh.
+Virgil threw lumps of dirt into his mouth, and so they passed him.
+
+It was the place of Gluttons. The travellers passed over them, as if
+they had been ground to walk upon. But one of them sat up, and addressed
+the Florentine as his acquaintance. Dante did not know him, for the
+agony in his countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog (Ciacco), and by no
+other name does the poet, or any one else, mention him. His countryman
+addressed him by it, though declaring at the same time that he wept to
+see him. Hog prophesied evil to his discordant native city, adding
+that there were but two just men in it--all the rest being given up to
+avarice, envy, and pride. Dante inquired by name respecting the fate of
+five other Florentines, _who had done good_, and was informed that they
+were all, for various offences, _in lower gulfs of hell_. Hog then
+begged that he would mention having seen him when he returned to the
+sweet world; and so, looking at him a little, bent his head, and
+disappeared among his blinded companions.
+
+"Satan! hoa, Satan!" roared the demon Plutus, as the poets were
+descending into the fourth circle.
+
+"Peace!" cried Virgil, "with thy swollen lip, thou accursed wolf. No one
+can hinder his coming down. God wills it." [16]
+
+Flat fell Plutus, collapsed, like the sails of a vessel when the mast is
+split.
+
+This circle was the most populous one they had yet come to. The
+sufferers, gifted with supernatural might, kept eternally rolling round
+it, one against another, with terrific violence, and so dashing apart,
+and returning. "Why grasp?" cried the one--"Why throw away?" cried the
+other; and thus exclaiming, they dashed furiously together.
+
+They were the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Multitudes of them were
+churchmen, including cardinals and popes. Not all the gold beneath the
+moon could have purchased them a moment's rest. Dante asked if none of
+them were to be recognised by their countenances. Virgil said, "No;" for
+the stupid and sullied lives which they led on earth swept their faces
+away from all distinction for ever.
+
+In discoursing of fortune, they descend by the side of a torrent, black
+as ink, into the fifth circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the
+Sullen, and the Proud. Here they first beheld a filthy marsh, full of
+dirty naked bodies, that in everlasting rage tore one another to pieces.
+In a quieter division of the pool were seen nothing but bubbles, carried
+by the ascent, from its slimy bottom, of the stifled words of the
+sullen. They were always saying, "We were sad and dark within us in the
+midst of the sweet sunshine, and now we live sadly in the dark bogs."
+The poets walked on till they came to the foot of a tower, which hung
+out two blazing signals to another just discernible in the distance. A
+boat came rapidly towards them, ferried by the wrathful Phlegyas;[17]
+who cried out, "Aha, felon! and so thou hast come at last!"
+
+"Thou errest," said Virgil. "We come for no longer time than it will
+take thee to ferry us across thy pool."
+
+Phlegyas looked like one defrauded of his right; but proceeded to convey
+them. During their course a spirit rose out of the mire, looking Dante
+in the face, and said, "Who art thou, that comest before thy time?"
+
+"Who art thou?" said Dante.
+
+"Thou seest who I am," answered the other; "one among the mourners."
+
+"Then mourn still, and howl, accursed spirit," returned the Florentine.
+"I know thee, all over filth as thou art."
+
+The wretch in fury laid hold of the boat, but Virgil thrust him back,
+exclaiming, "Down with thee! down among the other dogs!"
+
+Then turning to Dante, he embraced and kissed him, saying, "O soul, that
+knows how to disdain, blessed be she that bore thee! Arrogant, truly,
+upon earth was this sinner, nor is his memory graced by a single virtue.
+Hence the furiousness of his spirit now. How many kings are there at
+this moment lording it as gods, who shall wallow here, as he does, like
+swine in the mud, and be thought no better of by the world!" "I should
+like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, "before we go."
+
+"A right wish," said Virgil, "and thou shalt, to thy heart's content."
+
+On a sudden the wretch's muddy companions seized and drenched him so
+horribly that (exclaims Dante) "I laud and thank God for it now at this
+moment."
+
+"Have at him!" cried they; "have at Filippo Argenti;" and the wild fool
+of a Florentine dashed his teeth for rage into his own flesh.[18]
+
+The poet's attention was now drawn off by a noise of lamentation, and
+he perceived that he was approaching the city of Dis.[19] The turrets
+glowed vermilion with the fire within it, the walls appeared to be of
+iron, and moats were round about them. The boat circuited the walls till
+the travellers came to a gate, which Phlegyas, with a loud voice, told
+them to quit the boat and enter. But a thousand fallen angels crowded
+over the top of the gate, refusing to open it, and making furious
+gestures. At length they agreed to let Virgil speak with them inside;
+and he left Dante for a while, standing in terror without. The parley
+was in vain. They would not let them pass. Virgil, however, bade his
+companion be of good cheer, and then stood listening and talking to
+himself; disclosing by his words his expectation of some extraordinary
+assistance, and at the same time his anxiety for its arrival. On a
+sudden, three raging figures arose over the gate, coloured with gore.
+Green hydras twisted about them; and their fierce temples had snakes
+instead of hair.
+
+"Look," said Virgil. "The Furies! The one on the left is Megæra; Alecto
+is she that is wailing on the right; and in the middle is Tisiphone."
+Virgil then hushed. The Furies stood clawing their breasts, smiting
+their hands together, and raising such hideous cries, that Dante clung
+to his friend.
+
+"Bring the Gorgon's head!" cried the Furies, looking down; "turn him to
+adamant!"
+
+"Turn round," said Virgil, "and hide thy face; for if thou beholdest
+the Gorgon, never again wilt thou see the light of day." And with these
+words he seized Dante and turned him round himself, clapping his hands
+over his companion's eyes.
+
+And now was heard coming over the water a terrible crashing noise, that
+made the banks on either side of it tremble. It was like a hurricane
+which comes roaring through the vain shelter of the woods, splitting and
+hurling away the boughs, sweeping along proudly in a huge cloud of dust,
+and making herds and herdsmen fly before it. "Now stretch your eyesight
+across the water," said Virgil, letting loose his hands;--"there, where
+the smoke of the foam is thickest." Dante looked; and saw a thousand of
+the rebel angels, like frogs before a serpent, swept away into a heap
+before the coming of a single spirit, who flew over the tops of the
+billows with unwet feet. The spirit frequently pushed the gross air
+from before his face, as if tired of the base obstacle; and as he came
+nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messenger from heaven, looked anxiously
+at Virgil. Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow down.
+
+The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon as he arrived at the gate,
+touched it with a wand that he had in his hand, and it flew open.
+
+"Outcasts of heaven," said he; "despicable race! whence this fantastical
+arrogance? Do ye forget that your torments are laid oil thicker every
+time ye kick against the Fates? Do ye forget how your Cerberus was bound
+and chained till he lost the hair off his neck like a common dog?"
+
+So saying he turned swiftly and departed the way he came, not addressing
+a word to the travellers. His countenance had suddenly a look of some
+other business, totally different from the one he had terminated.
+
+The companions passed in, and beheld a place full of tombs red-hot. It
+was the region of Arch heretics and their followers. Dante and his guide
+passed round betwixt the walls and the sepulchres as in a churchyard,
+and came to the quarter which held Epicurus and his sect, who denied the
+existence of spirit apart from matter. The lids of the tombs remaining
+unclosed till the day of judgment, the soul of a noble Florentine,
+Farinata degli Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as a
+countryman, asking him to stop.[20] Dante, alarmed, beheld him rise half
+out of his sepulchre, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell itself.
+Finding who Dante was, he boasted of having three times expelled the
+Guelphs. "Perhaps so," said the poet; "but they came back again each
+time; an art which their enemies have not yet acquired."
+
+A visage then appeared from out another tomb, looking eagerly, as if it
+expected to see some one else. Being disappointed, the tears came into
+its eyes, and the sufferer said, "If it is thy genius that conducts thee
+hither, where is my son, and why is he not with thee?"
+
+"It is not my genius that conducts me," said Dante, "but that of one,
+whom perhaps thy son held in contempt."
+
+"How sayest thou?" cried the shade;--"_held_ in contempt? He is dead
+then? He beholds no longer the sweet light?" And with these words
+he dropped into his tomb, and was seen no more. It was Cavalcante
+Cavalcanti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido.[21]
+
+The shade of Farinata, who had meantime been looking on, now replied to
+the taunt of Dante, prophesying that he should soon have good reason to
+know that the art he spoke of _had_ been acquired; upon which Dante,
+speaking with more considerateness to the lofty sufferer, requested to
+know how the gift of prophecy could belong to spirits who were ignorant
+of the time present. Farinata answered that so it was; just as there was
+a kind of eyesight which could discern things at a distance though
+not at hand. Dante then expressed his remorse at not having informed
+Cavalcante that his son was alive. He said it was owing to his being
+overwhelmed with thought on the subject he had just mentioned, and
+entreated Farinata to tell him so.
+
+Quitting this part of the cemetery, Virgil led him through the midst
+of it towards a descent into a valley, from which there ascended a
+loathsome odour. They stood behind one of the tombs for a while, to
+accustom themselves to the breath of it; and then began to descend a
+wild fissure in a rock, near the mouth of which lay the infamy of Crete,
+the Minotaur. The monster beholding them gnawed himself for rage; and
+on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he
+is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in
+entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness
+to run at them; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of
+boiling blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed
+with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep according to the
+amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of the
+Inflicters of Violence; and if any of them emerged from it higher than
+he had a right to do, the Centaurs drove him down with their arrows.
+Nessus, the one that bequeathed Hercules the poisoned garment, came
+galloping towards the pilgrims, bending his bow, and calling out from
+a distance to know who they were; but Virgil, disdaining his hasty
+character, would explain himself only to Chiron, the Centaur who
+instructed Achilles. Chiron, in consequence, bade Nessus accompany
+them along the river; and there they saw tyrants immersed up to the
+eyebrows;--Alexander the Great among them, Dionysius of Syracuse, and
+Ezzelino the Paduan. There was one of the Pazzi of Florence, and Rinieri
+of Corneto (infestors of the public ways), now shedding bloody tears,
+and Attila the Scourge, and Pyrrhus king of Epirus. Further on, among
+those immersed up to the throat, was Guy de Montfort the Englishman, who
+slew his father's slayer, Prince Henry, during divine service, in
+the bosom of God; and then by degrees the river became shallower and
+shallower till it covered only the feet; and here the Centaur quitted
+the pilgrims, and they crossed over into a forest.
+
+The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest--the leaves not green,
+but black--the boughs not freely growing, but knotted and twisted--the
+fruit no fruit, but thorny poison. The Harpies wailed among the trees,
+occasionally showing their human faces; and on every side of him Dante
+heard lamenting human voices, but could see no one from whom they came.
+"Pluck one of the boughs," said Virgil. Dante did so; and blood and a
+cry followed it.
+
+"Why pluckest thou me?" said the trunk. "Men have we been, like thyself;
+but thou couldst not use us worse, had we been serpents." The blood and
+words came out together, as a green bough hisses and spits in the fire.
+
+The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the good chancellor of the
+Emperor Frederick the Second. Just though he had been to others, he
+was thus tormented for having been unjust to himself; for, envy having
+wronged him to his sovereign, who sentenced him to lose his eyes, he
+dashed his brains out against a wall. Piero entreated Dante to vindicate
+his memory. The poet could not speak for pity; so Virgil made the
+promise for him, inquiring at the same time in what manner it was that
+Suicides became thus identified with trees, and how their souls were to
+rejoin their bodies at the day of judgment. Piero said, that the moment
+the fierce self-murderer's spirit tore itself from the body, and passed
+before Charon, it fell, like a grain of corn, into that wood, and so
+grew into a tree. The Harpies then fed on its leaves, causing both pain
+and a vent for lamentation. The body it would never again enter, having
+thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag the body down to it by
+a violent attraction; and every suicide's carcass will be hung upon the
+thorn of its wretched shade.
+
+The naked souls of two men, whose profusion had brought them to a
+violent end, here came running through the wood from the fangs of black
+female mastiff's--leaving that of a suicide to mourn the havoc which
+their passage had made of his tree. He begged his countryman to gather
+his leaves up, and lay them at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so;
+and then he and Virgil proceeded on their journey.
+
+They issued from the wood on a barren sand, flaming hot, on which
+multitudes of naked souls lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly
+walked about, trying to throw from them incessant flakes of fire, which
+came down like a fall of snow. They were the souls of the Impious. Among
+them was a great spirit, who lay scornfully submitting himself to the
+fiery shower, as though it had not yet ripened him.[22] Overhearing
+Dante ask his guide who he was, he answered for himself, and said, "The
+same dead as living. Jove will tire his flames out before they conquer
+me."
+
+"Capaneus," exclaimed Virgil, "thy pride is thy punishment. No martyrdom
+were sufficient for thee, equal to thine own rage." The besieger of
+Thebes made no reply.
+
+In another quarter of the fiery shower the pilgrims met a crowd of
+Florentines, mostly churchmen, whose offence is not to be named; after
+which they beheld Usurers; and then arrived at a huge waterfall, which
+fell into the eighth circle, or that of the Fraudulent. Here Virgil, by
+way of bait to the monster Geryon, or Fraud, let down over the side
+of the waterfall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore about his
+waist,[23] and presently the dreadful creature came up, and sate on the
+margin of the fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him in
+the air, after the manner of a beaver; but the point of the tail was
+occasionally seen glancing upwards. He was a gigantic reptile, with the
+face of a just man, very mild. He had shaggy claws for arms, and a body
+variegated all over with colours that ran in knots and circles, each
+within the other, richer than any Eastern drapery. Virgil spoke apart
+to him, and then mounted on his back, bidding his companion, who was
+speechless for terror, do the salve. Geryon pushed back with them from
+the edge of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbour; and then,
+turning about, wheeled, like a sullen successless falcon, slowly down
+through the air in many a circuit. Dante would not have known that he
+was going downward, but for the air that struck up wards on his face.
+Presently they heard the crash of the waterfall on the circle below,
+and then distinguished flaming fires and the noises of suffering.
+The monster Geryon, ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a
+distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his riders from off his
+back to the water's side, and then shot away like an arrow.
+
+This eighth circle of hell is called Evil-Budget,[24] and consists of
+ten compartments, or gulfs of torment, crossed and connected with
+one another by bridges of flint. In the first were beheld Pimps and
+Seducers, scourged like children by horned devils; in the second,
+Flatterers, begrimed with ordure; in the third, Simonists, who were
+stuck like plugs into circular apertures, with their heads downwards,
+and their legs only discernible, the soles of their feet glowing with a
+fire which made them incessantly quiver. Dante, going down the side of
+the gulf with Virgil, was allowed to address one of them who seemed in
+greater agony than the rest; and, doing so, the sufferer cried out in a
+malignant rapture, "Aha, is it thou that standest there, Boniface?[25]
+Thou hast come sooner than it was prophesied." It was the soul of Pope
+Nicholas the Third that spoke. Dante undeceived and then sternly
+rebuked him for his avarice and depravity, telling him that nothing but
+reverence for the keys of St. Peter hindered him from using harsher
+words, and that it was such as he that the Evangelist beheld in the
+vision, when he saw the woman with seven heads and ten horns, who
+committed whoredom with the kings of the earth.
+
+"O Constantine!" exclaimed the poet, "of what a world of evil was that
+dowry the mother, which first converted the pastor of the church into a
+rich man!" [26] The feet of the guilty pope spun with fiercer agony at
+these words; and Virgil, looking pleased on Dante, returned with him
+the way he came, till they found themselves on the margin of the fourth
+gulf, the habitation of the souls of False Prophets.
+
+It was a valley, in which the souls came walking along, silent and
+weeping, at the pace of choristers who chant litanies. Their faces were
+turned the wrong way, so that the backs of their heads came foremost,
+and their tears fell on their loins. Dante was so overcome at the sight,
+that he leant against a rock and wept; but Virgil rebuked him, telling
+him that no pity at all was the only pity fit for that place.[27] There
+was Amphiaraus, whom the earth opened and swallowed up at Thebes; and
+Tiresias, who was transformed from sex to sex; and Aruns, who lived in
+a cavern on the side of the marble mountains of Carrara, looking out on
+the stars and ocean; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias (her hind tresses
+over her bosom), who wandered through the world till she came and lived
+in the solitary fen, whence afterwards arose the city of Mantua; and
+Michael Scot, the magician, with his slender loins;[28] and Eurypylus,
+the Grecian augur, who gave the signal with Calchas at Troy when to cut
+away the cables for home. He came stooping along, projecting his face
+over his swarthy shoulders. Guido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of
+Forli; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to
+his last; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff to
+wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of
+those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind
+them, and walked the reverse way of their looking.
+
+The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, constantly heaving and
+subsiding throughout, and bubbling with the breath of those within it.
+They were Public Peculators. Winged black devils were busy about the
+lake, pronging the sinners when they occasionally darted up their backs
+for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their jaws like frogs. Dante
+at first looked eagerly down into the gulf, like one who feels that he
+shall turn away instantly out of the very horror that attracts him.
+"See--look behind thee!" said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from
+the place where he stood, to a covert behind a crag. Dante looked round,
+and beheld a devil coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across his
+shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and then dashed down after him,
+like a mastiff let loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca, where
+every soul was a false dealer except Bonturo.[29] The devil called out
+to other devils, and a heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks as
+he rose to the surface; telling him, that he must practise there in
+secret, if he practised at all; and thrusting him back into the boiling
+pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot. The devils were of the
+lowest and most revolting habits, of which they made disgusting jest and
+parade.
+
+Some of them, on a sudden, perceived Dante and his guide, and were going
+to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a
+while they let him alone; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of
+the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter.
+The rest then fell upon him and flayed him.
+
+It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service of the good Thiebault, king
+of Navarre. One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita,
+governor of Gallura; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian.
+Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils,
+who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil,
+catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in
+a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction into the
+borders of gulf the sixth, the region of Hypocrites.
+
+The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked about in a wearisome and
+exhausted manner, as if ready to faint. They wore huge cowls, which hung
+over their eyes, and the outsides of which were gilded, but the insides
+of lead. Two of them had been rulers of Florence; and Dante was
+listening to their story, when his attention was called off by the sight
+of a cross, on which Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breathing
+hard all the while through his beard with sighs. It was his office to
+see that every soul which passed him, on its arrival in the place, was
+oppressed with the due weight. His father-in-law, Annas, and all his
+council, were stuck in like manner on crosses round the borders of the
+gulf. The pilgrims beheld little else in this region of weariness, and
+soon passed into the borders of one of the most terrible portions of
+Evil-budget, the land of the transformation of Robbers.
+
+The place was thronged with serpents of the most appalling and unwonted
+description, among which ran tormented the naked spirits of the
+robbers, agonised with fear. Their hands were bound behind them with
+serpents--their bodies pierced and enfolded with serpents. Dante saw one
+of the monsters leap up and transfix a man through the nape of the neck;
+when, lo! sooner than a pen could write _o_, or _i_, the sufferer burst
+into flames, burnt up, fell to the earth a heap of ashes--was again
+brought together, and again became a man, aghast with his agony, and
+staring about him, sighing.[30] Virgil asked him who he was.
+
+"I was but lately rained down into this dire gullet," said the man,
+"amidst a shower of Tuscans. The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led a
+brutal life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pistoia."
+
+"Compel him to stop," said Dante, "and relate what brought him hither. I
+knew the bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive."
+
+The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to these words, turned round
+to the speaker with the most painful shame in his face, and said, "I
+feel more bitterly at being caught here by thee in this condition, than
+when I first arrived. A power which I cannot resist compels me to let
+thee know, that I am here because I committed sacrilege and charged
+another with the crime; but now, mark me, that thou mayest hear
+something not to render this encounter so pleasant: Pistoia hates thy
+party of the Whites, and longs for the Blacks back again. It will have
+them, and so will Florence; and there will be a bloody cloud shall burst
+over the battlefield of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the
+earth. I tell thee this to make thee miserable."
+
+So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of contempt with his thumb and
+finger towards heaven, and said, "Take it, God--a fig for thee!" [31]
+
+"From that instant," said Dante, "the serpents and I were friends; for
+one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands
+into a knot behind his back. O Pistoia! Pistoia! why art not thou
+thyself turned into ashes, and swept from the face of the earth, since
+thy race has surpassed in evil thine ancestors? Never, through the
+whole darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire as this--not even
+Capaneus himself."
+
+The Pistoian fled away with the serpents upon him, followed by a
+Centaur, who came madly galloping up, crying, "Where is the caitiff?" It
+was the monster-thief Cacus, whose den upon earth often had a pond of
+blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in his rage, when he slew him,
+gave a whole hundred blows with his club, though the wretch perceived
+nothing after the ninth. He was all over adders up to the mouth; and
+upon his shoulders lay a dragon with its wings open, breathing fire on
+whomsoever it met.
+
+The Centaur tore away; and Dante and Virgil were gazing after him, when
+they heard voices beneath the bank on which they stood, crying, "Who are
+ye?" The pilgrims turned their eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits,
+one of whom, looking about him, said, "Where's Cianfa?" Dante made a
+sign to Virgil to say nothing.
+
+Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a serpent with six feet.[32]
+
+"If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I am about to tell thee,"
+says the poet, "be so; it is no marvel; for I myself, even now, scarcely
+credit what I beheld."
+
+The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front,
+clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into
+either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster
+grappled with every limb of that pinioned man. The two forms then
+gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of
+their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white
+in a piece of burning paper recedes before the brown, till it all
+becomes black. The other two human shapes looked on, exclaiming,
+"Oh, how thou changest, Agnello! See, thou art neither two nor yet one."
+And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained
+two countenances in the face. The four arms then became but two, and
+such also became the legs and thighs; and the two trunks became such a
+body as was never beheld; and the hideous twofold monster walked slowly
+away.[33]
+
+A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body
+of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on
+the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated
+and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand
+steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or
+fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and
+both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one
+volume.
+
+And now, let Lucan never speak more of the wretched Sabellus or
+Nisidius, but listen and be silent; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor
+speak again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his fountain that was
+Arethusa; for, says the Tuscan poet, I envy him not. Never did he change
+the natures of two creatures face to face, so that each received the
+form of the other.
+
+With corresponding impulse, the serpent split his train into a fork,
+while the man drew his legs together into a train; the skin of the
+serpent grew soft, while the man's hardened; the serpent acquired
+tresses of hair, the man grew hairless; the claws of the one projected
+into legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into his shoulders; the
+face of the serpent, as it rose from the ground, retreated towards the
+temples, pushing out human ears; that of the man, as he fell to the
+ground, thrust itself forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same time
+its ears into its head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature
+kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath
+the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then
+turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent,
+which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The
+new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and
+said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, "Let Buoso now take to
+his crawl, as I have done."
+
+The two then hastened away together, leaving Dante in a state of
+bewildered amazement, yet not so confused but that he recognised the
+unchanged one for another of his countrymen, Puccio the Lame. "Joy to
+thee, Florence!" cried the poet; "not content with having thy name
+bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell."
+
+The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier
+into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from
+one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies.
+
+"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls, each tormented with the fire
+that swathes it."
+
+"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the summit. Are the Theban
+brothers in it?"
+
+"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are Diomed and Ulysses." The
+sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors; and those two were
+the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse.
+
+Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures,
+not to be found in books: how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth
+again into the wide ocean; and how he sailed so far that he came into a
+region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever
+saw; when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell upon them from the shore,
+thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and
+the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads.
+
+"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more." The soul of Guido di
+Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect,
+asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how
+he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at
+once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes.[34] He
+was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on
+purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his
+absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim. "To repent evil, and to will
+to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel,
+"impossible: therefore wrong me not."
+
+"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "when he laid his hands upon
+me!" And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for
+agony, and so took its way.
+
+The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the
+Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False
+Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the
+sins of those whom they seduce.
+
+The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels,
+and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law,
+Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin; and the divisions in the church
+were punished in like manner upon all the schismatics in the place. They
+all walked round the circle, their gashes closing as they went; and on
+their reaching a certain point, a fiend hewed them open again with a
+sword. The Arabian prophet, ere he passed on, bade the pilgrims
+warn Friar Dolcino how he suffered himself to be surprised in his
+mountain-hold by the starvations of winter-time, if he did not wish
+speedily to follow him.[35]
+
+Among other mangled wretches, they beheld Piero of Medicina, a sower of
+dissension, exhibiting to them his face and throat all over wounds; and
+Curio, compelled to shew his tongue cut out for advising Cæsar to cross
+the Rubicon; and Mosca de' Lamberti, an adviser of assassination, and
+one of the authors of the Guelf and Ghibelline miseries, holding up
+the bleeding stumps of his arms, which dripped on his face. "Remember
+Mosca," cried he; "remember him, alas! who said, 'A deed done is a thing
+ended.' A bad saying of mine was that for the Tuscan nation."
+
+"And death to thy family," cried Dante.
+
+The assassin hurried away like a man driven mad with grief upon grief;
+and Dante now beheld a sight, which, if it were not, he says, for the
+testimony of a good conscience--that best of friends, which gives a
+man assurance of himself under the breastplate of a spotless
+innocence[36]--he should be afraid to relate without further proof. He
+saw--and while he was writing the account of it he still appeared to
+see--a headless trunk about to come past him with the others. It held
+its severed head by the hair, like a lantern; and the head looked up
+at the two pilgrims, and said, "Woe is me!" The head was, in fact, a
+lantern to the paths of the trunk; and thus there were two separated
+things in one, and one in two; and how that could be, he only can tell
+who ordained it. As the figure came nearer, it lifted the head aloft,
+that the pilgrims might hear better what it said. "Behold," it said,
+"behold, thou that walkest living among the dead, and say if there be
+any punishment like this. I am Bertrand de Born, he that incited John
+of England to rebel against his father. Father and son I set at
+variance--closest affections I set at variance--and hence do I bear my
+brain severed from the body on which it grew. In me behold the work of
+retribution." [37]
+
+The eyes of Dante were so inebriate with all that diversity of bleeding
+wounds, that they longed to stay and weep ere his guide proceeded
+further. Something also struck them on the sudden which added to his
+desire to stop. But Virgil asked what ailed him, and why he stood gazing
+still on the wretched multitude. "Thou hast not done so," continued he,
+"in any other portion of this circle; and the valley is twenty-two miles
+further about, and the moon already below us. Thou hast more yet to see
+than thou wottest of, and the time is short."
+
+Dante, excusing himself for the delay, and proceeding to follow his
+leader, said he thought he had seen, in the cavern at which he was
+gazing so hard, a spirit that was one of his own family--and it was so.
+It was the soul of Geri del Bello, a cousin of the poet's. Virgil said
+that he had observed him, while Dante was occupied with Bertrand de
+Born, pointing at his kinsman in a threatening manner. "Waste not a
+thought on him," concluded the Roman, "but leave him as he is." "O
+honoured guide!" said Dante, "he died a violent death, which his kinsmen
+have not yet avenged; and hence it is that he disdained to speak to me;
+and I must needs feel for him the more on that account." [38]
+
+They came now to the last partition of the circle of Evil-budget, and
+their ears were assailed with such a burst of sharp wailings, that Dante
+was fain to close his with his hands. The misery there, accompanied by
+a horrible odour, was as if all the hospitals in the sultry marshes of
+Valdichiana had brought their maladies together into one infernal ditch.
+It was the place of punishment for pretended Alchemists, Coiners,
+Personators of other people, False Accusers, and Impostors of all such
+descriptions. They lay on one another in heaps, or attempted to crawl
+about--some itching madly with leprosies--some swollen and gasping with
+dropsies--some wetly reeking, like hands washed in winter-time. One
+was an alchemist of Sienna, a nation vainer than the French; another a
+Florentine, who tricked a man into making a wrong will; another, Sinon
+of Troy; another, Myrrha; another, the wife of Potiphar. Their miseries
+did not hinder them from giving one another malignant blows; and Dante
+was listening eagerly to an abusive conversation between Sinon and
+a Brescian coiner, when Virgil rebuked him for the disgraceful
+condescension, and said it was a pleasure fit only for vulgar minds.[39]
+
+The blushing poet felt the reproof so deeply, that he could not speak
+for shame, though he manifested by his demeanour that he longed to do
+so, and thus obtained the pardon he despaired of. He says he felt like a
+man that, during an unhappy dream, wishes himself dreaming while he
+is so, and does not know it. Virgil understood his emotion, and, as
+Achilles did with his spear, healed the wound with the tongue that
+inflicted it.
+
+A silence now ensued between the companions; for they had quitted
+Evil-budget, and arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the mound
+of which they passed along, looking quietly and steadily before them.
+Daylight had given place to twilight; and Dante was advancing his head
+a little, and endeavouring to discern objects in the distance, when his
+whole attention was called to one particular spot, by a blast of a
+horn so loud, that a thunder clap was a whisper in comparison. Orlando
+himself blew no such terrific blast, after the dolorous rout, when
+Charlemagne was defeated in his holy enterprise.[40] The poet raised his
+head, thinking he perceived a multitude of lofty towers. He asked Virgil
+to what region they belonged; but Virgil said, "Those are no towers:
+they are giants, standing each up to his middle in the pit that goes
+round this circle." Dante looked harder; and as objects clear up by
+little and little in the departing mist, he saw, with alarm, the
+tremendous giants that warred against Jove, standing half in and
+half out of the pit, like the towers that crowned the citadel of
+Monteseggione. The one whom he saw plainest, and who stood with his arms
+hanging down on each side, appeared to him to have a face as huge as
+the pinnacle of St. Peter's, and limbs throughout in proportion. The
+monster, as the pilgrims were going by, opened his dreadful mouth, fit
+for no sweeter psalmody, and called after them, in the words of some
+unknown tongue, _Rafel, maee amech zabee almee_.[41] "Dull wretch!"
+exclaimed Virgil, "keep to thine horn, and so vent better whatsoever
+frenzy or other passion stuff thee. Feel the chain round thy throat,
+thou confusion! See, what a clenching hoop is about thy gorge!" Then he
+said to Dante, "His howl is its own mockery. This is Nimrod, he through
+whose evil ambition it was that mankind ceased to speak one language.
+Pass him, and say nothing; for every other tongue is to him, as his is
+to thee."
+
+The companions went on for about the length of a sling's throw, when
+they passed the second giant, who was much fiercer and linger than
+Nimrod. He was fettered round and round with chains, that fixed one arm
+before him and the other behind him--Ephialtes his name, the same that
+would needs make trial of his strength against Jove himself. The hands
+which he then wielded were now motionless, but he shook with passion;
+and Dante thought he should have died for terror, the effect on the
+ground about him was so fearful. It surpassed that of a tower shaken by
+an earthquake. The poet expressed a wish to look at Briareus, but he was
+too far off. He saw, however, Antæus, who, not having fought against
+heaven, was neither tongue-confounded nor shackled; and Virgil requested
+the "taker of a thousand lions," by the fame which the living poet had
+it in his power to give him, to bear the travellers in his arms down the
+steep descent into this deeper portion of hell, which was the region of
+tormenting cold. Antmus, stooping, like the leaning tower of Bologna,
+to take them up, gathered them in his arms, and, depositing them in the
+gulf below, raised himself to depart like the mast of a ship.[42]
+
+Had I hoarse and rugged words equal to my subject, says the poet, I
+would now make them fuller of expression, to suit the rocky horror of
+this hole of anguish; but I have not, and therefore approach it with
+fear, since it is no jesting enterprise to describe the depths of the
+universe, nor fit for a tongue that babbles of father and mother.[43]
+Let such of the Muses assist me as turned the words of Amphion into
+Theban walls; so shall the speech be not too far different from the
+matter.
+
+Oh, ill-starred creatures! wretched beyond all others, to inhabit a
+place so hard to speak of--better had ye been sheep or goats.
+
+The poet was beginning to walk with his guide along the place in which
+the giant had set them down, and was still looking up at the height from
+which he had descended, when a voice close to him said, "Have a care
+where thou treadest. Hurt not with thy feet the heads of thy unhappy
+brethren."
+
+Dante looked down and before him, and saw that he was walking on a lake
+of ice, in which were Murderous Traitors up to their chins, their teeth
+chattering, their faces held down, their eyes locked up frozen with
+tears. Dante saw two at his feet so closely stuck together, that the
+very hairs of their heads were mingled. He asked them who they were, and
+as they lifted up their heads for astonishment, and felt the cold doubly
+congeal them, they dashed their heads against one another for hate and
+fury. They were two brothers who had murdered each other.[44] Near them
+were other Tuscans, one of whom the cold had deprived of his ears; and
+thousands more were seen grinning like dogs, for the pain.
+
+Dante, as he went along, _kicked_ the face of one of them, whether by
+chance, or fate, or _will_,[45] he could not say. The sufferer burst
+into tears, and cried out, "Wherefore dost thou torment me? Art thou
+come to revenge the defeat at Montaperto?" The pilgrim at this question
+felt eager to know who he was; but the unhappy wretch would not tell.
+His countryman seized him by the hair to force him; but still he said
+he would not tell, were he to be scalped a thousand times. Dante, upon
+this, began plucking up his hairs by the roots, the man _barking_,[46]
+with his eyes squeezed up, at every pull; when another soul exclaimed,
+"Why, Bocca, what the devil ails thee? Must thou needs bark for cold as
+well as chatter?" [47]
+
+"Now, accursed traitor, betrayer of thy country's standard," said Dante,
+"be dumb if thou wilt; for I shall tell thy name to the world."
+
+"Tell and begone!" said Bocca; "but carry the name of this babbler with
+thee; 'tis Buoso, who left the pass open to the enemy between Piedmont
+and Parma; and near him is the traitor for the pope, Beccaria; and
+Ganellone, who betrayed Charlemagne; and Tribaldello, who opened Faenza
+to the enemy at night-time."
+
+The pilgrims went on, and beheld two other spirits so closely locked up
+together in one hole of the ice, that the head of one was right over the
+other's, like a cowl; and Dante, to his horror, saw that the upper head
+was devouring the lower with all the eagerness of a man who is famished.
+The poet asked what could possibly make him skew a hate so brutal;
+adding, that if there were any ground for it, he would tell the story to
+the world.[48]
+
+The sinner raised his head from the dire repast, and after wiping his
+jaws with the hair of it, said, "You ask a thing which it shakes me to
+the heart to think of. It is a story to renew all my misery. But since
+it will produce this wretch his due infamy, hear it, and you shall see
+me speak and weep at the same time. How thou tamest hither I know not;
+but I perceive by thy speech that thou art Florentine.
+
+"Learn, then, that I was the Count Ugolino, and this man was Ruggieri
+the Archbishop. How I trusted him, and was betrayed into prison, there
+is no need to relate; but of his treatment of me there, and how cruel a
+death I underwent, bear; and then judge if he has offended me.
+
+"I had been imprisoned with my children a long time in the tower which
+has since been called from me the Tower of Famine; and many a new moon
+had I seen through the hole that served us for a window, when I dreamt a
+dream that foreshadowed to me what was coming. Methought that this man
+headed a great chase against the wolf, in the mountains between Pisa
+and Lucca. Among the foremost in his party were Gualandi, Sismondi, and
+Lanfranchi, and the hounds were thin and eager, and high-bred; and in a
+little while I saw the hounds fasten on the flanks of the wolf and the
+wolf's children, and tear them. At that moment I awoke with the voices
+of my own children in my ears, asking for bread. Truly cruel must thou
+be, if thy heart does not ache to think of what I thought then. If thou
+feel not for a pang like that, what is it for which thou art accustomed
+to feel? We were now all awake; and the time was at hand when they
+brought us bread, and we had all dreamt dreams which made us anxious. At
+that moment I heard the key of the horrible tower turn in the lock of
+the door below, and fasten it. I looked at my children, and said not a
+word. I did not weep. I made a strong effort upon the soul within me.
+But my little Anselm said, 'Father, why do you look so? Is any thing the
+matter?' Nevertheless I did not weep, nor say a word all the day, nor
+the night that followed. In the morning a ray of light fell upon us
+through the window of our sad prison, and I beheld in those four little
+faces the likeness of my own face, and then I began to gnaw my hands for
+misery. My children, thinking I did it for hunger, raised themselves on
+the floor, and said, 'Father, we should be less miserable if you would
+eat our own flesh. It was you that gave it us. Take it again.' Then I
+sat still, in order not to make them unhappier: and that day and
+the next we all remained without speaking. On the fourth day, Gaddo
+stretched himself at my feet, and said, 'Father, why won't you help me?'
+and there he died. And as surely as thou lookest on me, so surely I
+beheld the whole three die in the same manner. So I began in my misery
+to grope about in the dark for them, for I had become blind; and three
+days I kept calling on them by name, though they were dead; till famine
+did for me what grief had been unable to do."
+
+With these words, the miserable man, his eyes starting from his head,
+seized that other wretch again with his teeth, and ground them against
+the skull as a dog does with a bone.
+
+O Pisa! scandal of the nations! since thy neighbours are so slow to
+punish thee, may the very islands tear themselves up from their roots in
+the sea, and come and block up the mouth of thy river, and drown every
+soul within thee. What if this Count Ugolino did, as report says he did,
+betray thy castles to the enemy? his children had not betrayed them; nor
+ought they to have been put to an agony like this. Their age was their
+innocence; and their deaths have given thee the infamy of a second
+Thebes.[49]
+
+The pilgrims passed on, and beheld other traitors frozen up in swathes
+of ice, with their heads upside down. Their very tears had hindered them
+from shedding more; for their eyes were encrusted with the first they
+shed, so as to be enclosed with them as in a crystal visor, which forced
+back the others into an accumulation of anguish. One of the sufferers
+begged Dante to relieve him of this ice, in order that he might vent a
+little of the burden which it repressed. The poet said he would do so,
+provided he would disclose who he was. The man said he was the friar
+Alberigo, who invited some of his brotherhood to a banquet in order to
+slay them.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Dante, "art thou no longer, then, among the living?"
+
+"Perhaps I appear to be," answered the friar; "for the moment any one
+commits a treachery like mine, his soul gives up his body to a demon,
+who thenceforward inhabits it in the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca
+Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche? He seems to be walking
+the earth still, and yet he has been in this place many years." [50]
+
+"Impossible!" cried Dante; "Branca Doria is still alive; he eats,
+drinks, and sleeps, like any other man."
+
+"I tell thee," returned the friar, "that the soul of the man he slew had
+not reached that lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him, ere the
+soul of his slayer was in this place, and his body occupied by a demon
+in its stead. But now stretch forth thy hand, and relieve mine eyes."
+
+Dante relieved them not. Ill manners, he said, were the only courtesy
+fit for such a wretch.[51]
+
+O ye Genoese! he exclaims,--men that are perversity all over, and full
+of every corruption to the core, why are ye not swept from the face of
+the earth? There is one of you whom you fancy to be walking about like
+other men, and he is all the while in the lowest pit of hell!
+
+"Look before thee," said Virgil, as they advanced: "behold the banners
+of the King of Hell."
+
+Dante looked, and beheld something which appeared like a windmill in
+motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable
+sharpness came from it.
+
+The souls of those who had been traitors to their benefactors were here
+frozen up in depths of pellucid ice, where they were seen in a variety
+of attitudes, motionless; some upright, some downward, some bent double,
+head to foot.
+
+At length they came to where the being stood who was once eminent for
+all fair seeming.[52] This was the figure that seemed tossing its arms
+at a distance like a windmill.
+
+"Satan," whispered Virgil; and put himself in front of Dante to
+re-assure him, halting him at the same time, and bidding him summon all
+his fortitude. Dante stood benumbed, though conscious; as if he himself
+had been turned to ice. He felt neither alive nor dead.
+
+The lord of the dolorous empire, each of his arms as big as a giant,
+stood in the ice half-way up his breast. He had one head, but three
+faces; the middle, vermilion; the one over the right shoulder a pale
+yellow; the other black. His sails of wings, huger than ever were beheld
+at sea, were in shape and texture those of a bat; and with these be
+constantly flapped, so as to send forth the wind that froze the depths
+of Tartarus. From his six eyes the tears ran down, mingling at his three
+chins with bloody foam; for at every mouth he crushed a sinner with his
+teeth, as substances are broken up by an engine. The middle sinner was
+the worst punished, for he was at once broken and flayed, and his head
+and trunk were inside the mouth. It was Judas Iscariot.
+
+Of the other two, whose heads were hanging out, one was Brutus, and the
+other Cassius. Cassius was very large-limbed. Brutus writhed with agony,
+but uttered not a word.[53]
+
+"Night has returned," said Virgil, "and all has been seen. It is time to
+depart onward."
+
+Dante then, at his bidding, clasped, as Virgil did, the huge inattentive
+being round the neck; and watching their opportunity, as the wings
+opened and shut, they slipped round it, and so down his shaggy and
+frozen sides, from pile to pile, clutching it as they went; till
+suddenly, with the greatest labour and pain, they were compelled to turn
+themselves upside down, as it seemed, but in reality to regain their
+proper footing; for they had passed the centre of gravity, and become
+Antipodes.
+
+Then looking down at what lately was upward, they saw Lucifer with his
+feet towards them; and so taking their departure, ascended a gloomy
+vault, till at a distance, through an opening above their heads, they
+beheld the loveliness of the stars.[54]
+
+
+[Footnote 1: "Parea che l'aer ne temesse."]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Là dove 'l sol tace." "The sun to me is dark, And _silent_
+is the moon, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."--Milton.]
+
+[Footnote 3: There is great difference among the commentators respecting
+the meaning of the three beasts; some supposing them passions, others
+political troubles, others personal enemies, &c. The point is not of
+much importance, especially as a mystery was intended; but nobody, as
+Mr. Cary says, can doubt that the passage was suggested by one in the
+prophet Jeremiah, v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay
+them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them; a leopard shall watch
+over their cities."]
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+  "Che quello 'mperador che là su regna
+  Perch' i' fu'ribellante à la sua legge,
+  Non vuol che 'n sua città per me sì vegna." ]
+
+
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+  "Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
+  Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl'imbianca,
+  Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo."
+
+  Like as the flowers that with the frosty night
+  Are bowed and closed, soon as the sun returns,
+  Rise on their stems, all open and upright.]
+
+[Footnote 6: This loss of intellectual good, and the confession of the
+poet that he finds the inscription over hell-portal hard to understand
+(_il senso lor m'è duro_), are among the passages in Dante which lead
+some critics to suppose that his hell is nothing but an allegory,
+intended at once to imply his own disbelief in it as understood by the
+vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it, nevertheless, as a
+salutary check both to the foolish and the reflecting;--to the foolish,
+as an alarm; and to the reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the
+teeth of many appearances to the contrary, that such may have been the
+case; but in the doubt that it affects either the foolish or the wise to
+any good purpose, and in the certainty that such doctrines do a world
+of mischief to tender consciences and the cause of sound piety, such
+monstrous contradictions, in terms, of every sense of justice and
+charity which God has implanted in the heart of man, are not to be
+passed over without indignant comment.]
+
+[Footnote 7: It is seldom that a boast of this kind--not, it must be
+owned, bashful--has been allowed by posterity to be just; nay, in four
+out of the five instances, below its claims.]
+
+[Footnote 8:
+
+  "Genti v'eran, con occhi tardi e gravi,
+  Di grande autorita ne' lor sembianti
+  Parlavan rado, con voci soavi." ]
+
+[Footnote 9: "Sopra 'l verde smalto." Mr. Cary has noticed the
+appearance, for the first time, of this beautiful but now commonplace
+image.]
+
+[Footnote 10: "Il maestro di color che sanno."]
+
+[Footnote 11: This is the famous episode of Paulo and Francesca. She
+was daughter to Count Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, and wife to
+Giovanni Malatesta, one of the sons, of the lord of Rimini. Paulo was
+her brother-in-law. They were surprised together by the husband, and
+slain on the spot. Particulars of their history will be found in the
+Appendix, together with the whole original passage.
+
+  "Quali colombe, dal disio chiamate,
+  Con l'ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
+  Volan per l'aer dal voler portate
+
+  Cotali uscir de la schiera ov'è Dido,
+  A noi venendo per l'aer maligno,
+  Sì forte fu l'affettuoso grido."
+
+  As doves, drawn home from where they circled still,
+  Set firm their open wings, and through the air
+  Come sweeping, wafted by their pure good-will
+
+  So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
+  Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign,
+  Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer. ]
+
+[Footnote 12: Francesca is to be conceived telling her story in anxious
+intermitting sentences--now all tenderness for her lover, now angry at
+their slayer; watching the poet's face, to see what he thinks, and
+at times averting her own. I take this excellent direction from Ugo
+Foscolo.]
+
+[Footnote 13:
+
+  "Nessun maggior dolore,
+  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
+  Ne la miseria." ]
+
+[Footnote 14:
+
+  "Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
+  Quella lettura."
+"To look at one another," says Boccaccio; and his interpretation
+has been followed by Cary and Foscolo; but, with deference to such
+authorities, I beg leave to think that the poet meant no more than he
+says, namely, that their eyes were simply "suspended"--hung, as it were,
+over the book, without being able to read on; which is what I intended
+to express (if I may allude to a production of which both those critics
+were pleased to speak well), when, in my youthful attempt to enlarge
+this story, I wrote "And o'er the book they hung, and nothing said,
+And every lingering page grew longer as they read."
+
+_Story of Rimini._]
+
+[Footnote 15:
+
+  "Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
+  L'altro piangeva sì, che di pietade
+  I' venni men così com'io morisse,
+  E caddi come corpo morto cade."
+
+This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deadness
+of its expression.
+
+  While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
+  With wail so woful, that at his remorse
+  I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd
+  Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.
+
+The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think)
+because he had sinned in the same way; and if Foscolo's opinion could
+be established--that the incident of the book is invention--their
+conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance
+of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough
+to have occurred to Dante. But the same probability applies in the case
+of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their
+own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's having been
+found in the room where they perished. The Pagans could not be rebels
+to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel
+to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious
+effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers
+avowedly set reason at defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of
+contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd,"
+as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued,
+much more so, they had at least an equal claim on the submission of the
+reason; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological
+triumph.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Plutus's exclamation about Satan is a great choke-pear to
+the commentators. The line in the original is
+
+  "Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe."
+
+The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not the business of
+this abstract to discuss such points; and therefore I content myself
+with believing that the context implies a call of alarm on the Prince of
+Hell at the sight of the living creature and his guide.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo for
+setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his
+daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in
+Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut
+is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle,
+involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a
+Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have written about it in
+Sanscrit.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Filippo Argenti (Philip _Silver_,--so called from his
+shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Florentine remarkable
+for bodily strength and extreme irascibility. What a barbarous strength
+and confusion of ideas is there in this whole passage about him!
+Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the
+unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed,
+passion arguing in a circle! Filippo himself might have written it.
+Dante says,
+
+  "Con piangere e con lutto
+  Spirito maladetto, ti rimani.
+  Via costà con gli altri cani," &c.
+
+Then Virgil, kissing and embracing him,
+
+  "Alma sdegnosa
+  Benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse," &c.
+
+And Dante again,
+
+  "Maestro, molto sarei vago
+  Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," &c. ]
+
+[Footnote 19: Dis, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for Satan.
+Within the walls of the city of Dis commence the punishments by fire.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Farinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of Dante,
+and had vanquished the poet's connexions at the battle of Montaperto.]
+
+[Footnote 21: What would Guido have said to this? More, I suspect, than
+Dante would have liked to hear, or known how to answer. But he died
+before the verses transpired; probably before they were written; for
+Dante, in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and seasons he
+finds most convenient.]
+
+[Footnote 22:
+
+  "Sì che la pioggia non par che 'l maturi."
+
+This is one of the grandest passages in Dante. It was probably (as
+English commentators have observed) in Milton's recollection when he
+conceived the character of Satan.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as
+Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery.
+
+The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (_Golden-sword_), and the
+Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (_Fair-flowing_), was rich in the possession
+of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this
+instrument of satire. The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point
+of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be.]
+
+[Footnote 24: "_Malebolge_," literally Evil-Budget. _Bolgia_ is an old
+form of the modern _baule_, the common term for a valise or portmanteau.
+"Bolgia" (says the _Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato_, Ven. 1792),
+"a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek]. In
+reference to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
+word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell." (Per
+similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di
+cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.)
+The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the
+contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional
+notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of
+their grandeur.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of
+the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his
+enemies in hell before their time.]
+
+[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by
+Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and
+others.]
+
+[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,
+
+  "Quì vive la pietà quand' è ben morta."
+  Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
+
+  "Chi è più scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui,
+  Ch'al giudicio divin passion porta."
+
+That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings
+against the judgments of God?" The answer is: He that attributes
+judgments to God which are to render humanity pitiless.]
+
+[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi così poco_. Michael Scot had been in
+Florence; to which circumstance we are most probably indebted for this
+curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to
+hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the
+vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice,
+considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to
+swallow.]
+
+[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a
+hearer of this passage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not
+one honest man in all Lucca!]
+
+[Footnote 30:
+
+  "Intorno si mira
+  Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
+  Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira."
+
+This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised
+astonishment ever painted.]
+
+[Footnote 31: I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant
+ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but
+a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by
+extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the
+Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the
+South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour,
+from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in
+England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the
+words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured
+fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was
+saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by
+attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more
+violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it
+best to run!]
+
+[Footnote 32: Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort,
+and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati
+family, connexions of the poet by marriage.]
+
+[Footnote 33: This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite
+the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he
+selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.
+They are the most appalling ever yet produced.]
+
+[Footnote 34: Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that
+day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins;
+but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode
+of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family,
+and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the
+opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to "promise much, and
+perform nothing" (_molto promettere, e nulla attendere_).]
+
+[Footnote 35: Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the
+fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods,
+including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming
+the church. He appears to have made a considerable impression, having
+thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where
+they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many
+others. Landino says he was very eloquent, and that "both he and
+Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause."
+Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such
+times bold enough to write it.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing himself to be
+pure:"
+
+  "Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura."
+
+The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in
+English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have
+met with in the whole poem. It might be argued, perhaps, against the
+perfection of the passage, that a good "conscience," and a man's
+"knowing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante himself has
+already used that word;
+
+  "Conscienzia m'assicura;
+  La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
+  Sotto l'osbergo," &c.
+
+But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could
+have kept it.]
+
+[Foonote 37: This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of
+physical horror with the truest pathos.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic
+instance of the ferocity of the time.]
+
+[Footnote 39: This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no
+ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante
+allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps
+it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into
+the unworthiness.]
+
+[Footnote 40: By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite
+a topic with the poets. The circumstance of the horn is taken from the
+Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv.]
+
+[Footnote 41: The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel _a_,
+is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is
+like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world.]
+
+[Footnote 42:
+
+  "Nè sì chinato li fece dimora,
+  E come albero in nave si levò."
+
+A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the
+original, _raised himself_, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to
+me to give the more grand and deliberate image.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Of "_màmma_" and "_bàbbo_," says the primitive poet. We
+have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not
+identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in
+some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the
+"artful" Italians.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto,
+lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death
+they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a
+mortal quarrel. The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late
+years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting
+surprise to meet with it.]
+
+[Footnote 45:
+
+  "Se _voler_ fu, o destino o fortuna,
+  Non so."
+
+What does the Christian reader think of that?]
+
+[Footnote 46: Latrando.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog,
+occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by
+treacherously cutting off the hand of the standard-bearer.]
+
+[Footnote 48: This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the
+castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in
+the Tower of Famine.]
+
+[Footnote 49: I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this
+story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too
+hasty in giving credit to parts of it, particularly the ages of some of
+his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop. See the Appendix
+to this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 50: This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware,
+in the whole circle of literature.]
+
+[Footnote 51: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." This is the foulest blot
+which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the
+cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to God). It is argued that he is
+cruel and false, out of hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then
+add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be suffering
+eternally? It is idle to discern in such barbarous inconsistencies any
+thing but the writer's own contributions to the stock of them. The
+utmost credit for right feeling is not to be given on every occasion to
+a man who refuses it to every one else.]
+
+[Footnote 52: "La creatura ch'ebbe il bel sembiante."
+
+This is touching; but the reader may as well be prepared for a total
+failure in Dante's conception of Satan, especially the English reader,
+accustomed to the sublimity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman
+Catholic poet intended to honour the fallen angel with no sublimity,
+but to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has overdone and
+degraded the picture into caricature. A great stupid being, stuck up in
+ice, with three faces, one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each
+eating a sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus, is an object
+for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting
+_bonnes-bouches,_ divides derision with disgust. The passage must be
+given, otherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete; but I
+cannot help thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a
+great poet.]
+
+[Footnote 53: This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus,
+especially from a man like Dante, and the more because it is extorted.
+Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, particularly treachery to the
+leader of his beloved Roman emperors; forgetting three things; first,
+that Cæsar was guilty of treachery himself to the Roman people; second,
+that he, Dante, has put Curio in hell for advising Cæsar to cross the
+Rubicon, though he has put the crosser among the good Pagans; and third,
+that Brutus was educated in the belief that the punishment of such
+treachery as Cæsar's by assassination was one of the first of duties.
+How differently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than
+democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of assassins in
+general, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic
+philosopher!]
+
+[Footnote 54: At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absurdity,
+sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossible for any
+reflecting heart to avoid asking, _Cui bono?_ What is the good of it
+to the poor wretches, if we are to suppose it true? and what to the
+world--except, indeed, as a poetic study and a warning against degrading
+notions of God--if we are to take it simply as a fiction? Theology,
+disdaining both questions, has an answer confessedly incomprehensible.
+Humanity replies: Assume not premises for which you have worse than no
+proofs.]
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
+
+Argument.
+
+Purgatory, in the system of Dante, is a mountain at the Antipodes, on
+the top of which is the Terrestrial Paradise, once the seat of Adam and
+Eve. It forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and possesses
+a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two exceptions of redeemed
+Pagans, is occupied by Excommunicated Penitents and by Delayers of
+Penitence, all of whom are compelled to lose time before their atonement
+commences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is divided into
+circles or plains, in which are expiated the Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet
+ascends from circle to circle with Virgil and Statius, and is met in
+a forest on the top by the spirit of Beatrice, who transports him to
+Heaven.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
+
+When the pilgrims emerged from the opening through which they beheld the
+stars, they found themselves in a scene which enchanted them with hope
+and joy. It was dawn: a sweet pure air came on their faces; and they
+beheld a sky of the loveliest oriental sapphire, whose colour seemed
+to pervade the whole serene hollow from earth to heaven. The beautiful
+planet which encourages loving thoughts made all the orient laugh,
+obscuring by its very radiance the stars in its train; and among those
+which were still lingering and sparkling in the southern horizon,
+Dante saw four in the shape of a cross, never beheld by man since they
+gladdened the eyes of our first parents. Heaven seemed to rejoice in
+their possession. O widowed northern pole! bereaved art thou, indeed,
+since thou canst not gaze upon them![1]
+
+The poet turned to look at the north where he had been accustomed to see
+stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who
+struck his beholder with a veneration like that of a son for his father.
+He had grey hairs, and a long beard which parted in two down his
+bosom; and the four southern stars beamed on his face with such lustre,
+that his aspect was as radiant as if he had stood in the sun.
+
+"Who are ye?" said the old man, "that have escaped from the dreadful
+prison-house? Can the laws of the abyss be violated? Or has Heaven
+changed its mind, that thus ye are allowed to come from the regions of
+condemnation into mine?"
+
+It was the spirit of Cato of Utica, the warder of the ascent of
+purgatory.
+
+The Roman poet explained to his countryman who they were, and how Dante
+was under heavenly protection; and then he prayed leave of passage of
+him by the love he bore to the chaste eyes of his Marcia, who sent him a
+message from the Pagan circle, hoping that he would still own her.
+
+Cato replied, that although he was so fond of Marcia while on earth that
+he could deny her nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new laws, to
+have any affection for her, now that she dwelt beyond the evil river;
+but as the pilgrim, his companion, was under heavenly protection, he
+would of course do what he desired.[2] He then desired him to gird his
+companion with one of the simplest and completest rushes he would see by
+the water's side, and to wash the stain of the lower world out of his
+face, and so take their journey up the mountain before them, by a
+path which the rising sun would disclose. And with these words he
+disappeared.[3]
+
+The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of one who thinks every step
+in vain till he finds the path he has lost. The full dawn by this time
+had arisen, and they saw the trembling of the sea in the distance.[4]
+Virgil then dipped his hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun
+had least affected it, and with the moisture bathed the face of Dante,
+who held it out to him, suffused with tears;[5] and then they went on
+till they came to a solitary shore, whence no voyager had ever returned,
+and there the loins of the Florentine were girt with the rush.
+
+On this shore they were standing in doubt how to proceed,--moving
+onward, as it were, in mind, while yet their feet were staying,--when
+they be held a light over the water at a distance, rayless at first as
+the planet Mars when he looks redly out of the horizon through a fog,
+but speedily growing brighter and brighter with amazing swiftness. Dante
+had but turned for an instant to ask his guide what it was, when, on
+looking again, it had grown far brighter. Two splendid phenomena, he
+knew not what, then developed themselves from it on either side; and, by
+degrees, another below it. The two splendours quickly turned out to be
+wings; and Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in silence, cried
+out, "Down, down,--on thy knees! It is God's angel. Clasp thine hands.
+Now thou shalt behold operancy indeed. Lo, how he needs neither sail nor
+oar, coming all this way with nothing but his wings! Lo, how he holds
+them aloft, using the air with them at his will, and knowing they can
+never be weary."
+
+The "divine bird" grew brighter and brighter as he came, so that the
+eye at last could not sustain the lustre; and Dante turned his to the
+ground. A boat then rushed to shore which the angel had brought with
+him, so light that it drew not a drop of water. The celestial pilot
+stood at the helm, with bliss written in his face; and a hundred spirits
+were seen within the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the psalm
+beginning "When Israel came out of Egypt." At the close of the psalm,
+the angel blessed them with the sign of the cross, and they all leaped
+to shore; upon which he turned round, and departed as swiftly as he
+came.
+
+The new-comers, after gazing about them for a while, in the manner of
+those who are astonished to see new sights, inquired of Virgil and his
+companion the best way to the mountain. Virgil explained who they were;
+and the spirits, pale with astonishment at beholding in Dante a living
+and breathing man, crowded about him, in spite of their anxiety to
+shorten the period of their trials. One of them came darting out of the
+press to embrace him, in a manner so affectionate as to move the poet to
+return his warmth; but his arms again and again found themselves crossed
+on his own bosom, having encircled nothing. The shadow, smiling at the
+astonishment in the other's face, drew back; and Dante hastened as much
+forward to shew his zeal in the greeting, when the spirit in a sweet
+voice recommended him to desist. The Florentine then knew who it
+was,--Casella, a musician, to whom he had been much attached. After
+mutual explanations as to their meeting, Dante requested his friend, if
+no ordinance opposed it, to refresh his spirit awhile with one of the
+tender airs that used to charm away all his troubles on earth. Casella
+immediately began one of his friend's own productions, commencing with
+the words,
+
+"Love, that delights to talk unto my soul Of all the wonders of my
+lady's nature."
+
+And he sang it so beautifully, that the sweetness rang within the poet's
+heart while recording the circumstance. The other spirits listened with
+such attention, that they seemed to have forgotten the very purpose
+of their coming; when suddenly the voice of Cato was heard, sternly
+rebuking their delay; and the whole party speeded in trepidation towards
+the mountain.[6]
+
+The two pilgrims, who had at first hastened with the others, in a little
+while slackened their steps; and Dante found that his body projected a
+shadow, while the form of Virgil had none. When arrived at the foot of
+the mountain, they were joined by a second party of spirits, of whom
+Virgil inquired the way up it. One of the spirits, of a noble aspect,
+but with a gaping wound in his forehead, stepped forth, and asked Dante
+if he remembered him. The poet humbly answering in the negative, the
+stranger disclosed a second wound, that was in his bosom; and then, with
+a smile, announced himself as Manfredi, king of Naples, who was slain in
+battle against Charles of Anjou, and died excommunicated. Manfredi gave
+Dante a message to his daughter Costanza, queen of Arragon, begging her
+to shorten the consequences of the excommunication by her prayers;
+since he, like the rest of the party with him, though repenting of his
+contumacy against the church, would have to wander on the outskirts of
+Purgatory three times as long as the presumption had lasted, unless
+relieved by such petitions from the living.[7]
+
+Dante went on, with his thoughts so full of this request, that he did
+not perceive he had arrived at the path which Virgil asked for, till the
+wandering spirits called out to them to say so. The pilgrims then, with
+great difficulty, began to ascend through an extremely narrow passage;
+and Virgil, after explaining to Dante how it was that in this antipodal
+region his eastward face beheld the sun in the north instead of the
+south, was encouraging him to proceed manfully in the hope of finding
+the path easier by degrees, and of reposing at the end of it, when they
+heard a voice observing, that they would most likely find it expedient
+to repose a little sooner. The pilgrims looked about them, and observed
+close at hand a crag of a rock, in the shade of which some spirits were
+standing, as men stand idly at noon. Another was sitting down, as if
+tired out, with his arms about his knees, and his face bent down between
+them.[8]
+
+"Dearest master!" exclaimed Dante to his guide, "what thinkest thou of a
+croucher like this, for manful journeying? Verily he seems to have been
+twin-born with Idleness herself."
+
+The croucher, lifting up his eyes at these words, looked hard at Dante,
+and said, "Since thou art so stout, push on."
+
+Dante then saw it was Belacqua, a pleasant acquaintance of his, famous
+for his indolence.
+
+"That was a good lesson," said Belacqua, "that was given thee just now
+in astronomy."
+
+The poet could not help smiling at the manner in which his acquaintance
+uttered these words, it was so like his ways of old. Belacqua pretended,
+even in another world, that it was of no use to make haste, since the
+angel had prohibited his going higher up the mountain. He and his
+companions had to walk round the foot of it as many years as they had
+delayed repenting; unless, as in the case of Manfredi, their time was
+shortened by the prayers of good people.
+
+A little further on, the pilgrims encountered the spirits of such
+Delayers of Penitence as, having died violent deaths, repented at the
+last moment. One of them, Buonconte da Montefeltro, who died in battle,
+and whose body could not be found, described how the devil, having been
+hindered from seizing him by the shedding of a single tear, had raised
+in his fury a tremendous tempest, which sent the body down the river
+Arno, and buried it in the mud.[9]
+
+Another spirit, a female, said to Dante, "Ah! when thou returnest to
+earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, remember me,--Pia.
+Sienna gave me life; the Marshes took it from me. This he knows, who put
+on my finger the wedding-ring."[10]
+
+The majority of this party were so importunate with the Florentine
+to procure them the prayers of their friends, that he had as much
+difficulty to get away, as a winner at dice has to free himself from the
+mercenary congratulations of the by-standers. On resuming their way,
+Dante quoted to Virgil a passage in the Æneid, decrying the utility of
+prayer, and begged him to explain how it was to be reconciled with what
+they had just heard. Virgil advised him to wait for the explanation till
+he saw Beatrice, whom, he now said, he should meet at the top of the
+mountain. Dante, at this information, expressed a desire to hasten their
+progress; and Virgil, seeing a spirit looking towards them as they
+advanced, requested him to acquaint them with the shortest road.
+
+The spirit, maintaining a lofty and reserved aspect, was as silent as if
+he had not heard the request; intimating by his manner that they might
+as well proceed without repeating it, and eyeing them like a lion on the
+watch. Virgil, however, went up to him, and gently urged it; but the
+only reply was a question as to who they were and of what country. The
+Latin poet beginning to answer him, had scarcely mentioned the word
+"Mantua," when the stranger went as eagerly up to his interrogator as
+the latter had done to him, and said, "Mantua! My own country! My name
+is Sordello." And the compatriots embraced.
+
+O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land without affections, without
+principle, without faith in any one good thing! here was a man who could
+not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his
+heart gush towards him, and there are no people now in any one of thy
+towns that do not hate and torment one another.
+
+Sordello, in another tone, now exclaimed, "But who are ye?"
+
+Virgil disclosed himself, and Sordello fell at his feet.[11]
+
+Sordello now undertook to accompany the great Roman poet and his friend
+to a certain distance on their ascent towards the penal quarters of the
+mountain; but as evening was drawing nigh, and the ascent could not
+be made properly in the dark, he proposed that they should await the
+dawning of the next day in a recess that overlooked a flowery hollow.
+The hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled with flowers that
+surpassed the exquisitest dyes, and green with a grass brighter than
+emeralds newly broken.[12] There rose from it also a fragrance of a
+thousand different kinds of sweetness, all mingled into one that was new
+and indescribable; and with the fragrance there ascended the chant of
+the prayer beginning "Hail, Queen of Heaven,"[13] which was sung by a
+multitude of souls that appeared sitting on the flowery sward.
+
+Virgil pointed them out. They were penitent delayers of penitence, of
+sovereign rank. Among them, however, were spirits who sat mute; one
+of whom was the Emperor Rodolph, who ought to have attended better to
+Italy, the garden of the empire; and another, Ottocar, king of Bohemia,
+his enemy, who now comforted him; and another, with a small nose,[14]
+Philip the Third of France, who died a fugitive, shedding the leaves of
+the lily; he sat beating his breast; and with him was Henry the Third of
+Navarre, sighing with his cheek on his hand. One was the father, and one
+the father-in-law of Philip the Handsome, the bane of France; and it was
+on account of his unworthiness they grieved.
+
+But among the singers Virgil pointed out the strong-limbed King of
+Arragon, Pedro; and Charles, king of Naples, with his masculine nose
+(these two were singing together); and Henry the Third of England, the
+king of the simple life, sitting by himself;[15] and below these, but
+with his eyes in heaven, Guglielmo marquis of Montferrat.
+
+It was now the hour when men at sea think longingly of home, and feel
+their hearts melt within them to remember the day on which they bade
+adieu to beloved friends; and now, too, was the hour when the pilgrim,
+new to his journey, is thrilled with the like tenderness, when he hears
+the vesper-bell in the distance, which seems to mourn for the expiring
+day.[16] At this hour of the coming darkness, Dante beheld one of the
+spirits in the flowery hollow arise, and after giving a signal to the
+others to do as he did, stretch forth both hands, palm to palm, towards
+the East, and with softest emotion commence the hymn beginning,
+
+"Thee before the closing light."[17]
+
+Upon which all the rest devoutly and softly followed him, keeping their
+eyes fixed on the heavens. At the end of it they remained, with pale
+countenances, in an attitude of humble expectation; and Dante saw the
+angels issue from the quarter to which they looked, and descend towards
+them with flaming swords in their hands, broken short of the point.
+Their wings were as green as the leaves in spring; and they wore
+garments equally green, which the fanning of the wings kept in a state
+of streaming fluctuation behind them as they came. One of them took his
+stand on a part of the hill just over where the pilgrims stood, and the
+other on a hill opposite, so that the party in the valley were between
+them. Dante could discern their heads of hair, notwithstanding its
+brightness; but their faces were so dazzling as to be undistinguishable.
+
+"They come from Mary's bosom," whispered Sordello, "to protect the
+valley from the designs of our enemy yonder,--the Serpent."
+
+Dante looked in trepidation towards the only undefended side of the
+valley, and beheld the Serpent of Eve coming softly among the grass and
+flowers, occasionally turning its head, and licking its polished back.
+Before he could take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two angels
+had come down like falcons, and at the whirring of their pinions the
+serpent fled. The angels returned as swiftly to their stations.
+
+Aurora was now looking palely over the eastern cliff on the other side
+of the globe, and the stars of midnight shining over the heads of Dante
+and his friends, when they seated themselves for rest on the mountain's
+side. The Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for weariness,
+and was overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamt that a golden eagle
+flashed down like lightning upon him, and bore him up to the region
+of fire, where the heat was so intense that it woke him, staring and
+looking round about with a pale face. His dream was a shadowing of
+the truth. He had actually come to another place,--to the entrance of
+Purgatory itself. Sordello had been left behind, Virgil alone remained,
+looking him cheerfully in the face. Saint Lucy had come from heaven,
+and shortened the fatigue of his journey by carrying him upwards as he
+slept, the heathen poet following them. On arriving where they stood,
+the fair saint intimated the entrance of Purgatory to Virgil by a glance
+thither of her beautiful eyes, and then vanished as Dante woke.[18]
+
+The portal by which Purgatory was entered was embedded in a cliff. It
+had three steps, each of a different colour; and on the highest of these
+there sat, mute and watching, an angel in ash-coloured garments, holding
+a naked sword, which glanced with such intolerable brightness on Dante,
+whenever he attempted to look, that he gave up the endeavour. The angel
+demanded who they were, and receiving the right answer, gently bade them
+advance.
+
+Dante now saw, that the lowest step was of marble, so white and clear
+that he beheld his face in it. The colour of the next was a deadly
+black, and it was all rough, scorched, and full of cracks. The third was
+of flaming porphyry, red as a man's blood when it leaps forth under
+the lancet.[19] The angel, whose feet were on the porphyry, sat on a
+threshold which appeared to be rock-diamond. Dante, ascending the steps,
+with the encouragement of Virgil, fell at the angel's feet, and, after
+thrice beating himself on the breast, humbly asked admittance. The
+angel, with the point of his sword, inscribed the first letter of the
+word _peccatum_ (sin) seven times on the petitioner's forehead; then,
+bidding him pray with tears for their erasement, and be cautious how he
+looked back, opened the portal with a silver and a golden key.[20]
+The hinges roared, as they turned, like thunder; and the pilgrims, on
+entering, thought they heard, mingling with the sound, a chorus of
+voices singing, "We praise thee, O God!"[21] It was like the chant that
+mingles with a cathedral organ, when the words that the choristers utter
+are at one moment to be distinguished, and at another fade away.
+
+The companions continued ascending till they reached a plain. It
+stretched as far as the eye could see, and was as lonely as roads across
+deserts.
+
+This was the first flat, or table-land, of the ascending gradations of
+Purgatory, and the place of trial for the souls of the Proud. It was
+bordered with a mound, or natural wall, of white marble, sculptured all
+over with stories of humility. Dante beheld among them the Annunciation,
+represented with so much life, that the sweet action of the angel seemed
+to be uttering the very word, "Hail!" and the submissive spirit of the
+Virgin to be no less impressed, like very wax, in her demeanour. The
+next story was that of David dancing and harping before the ark,--an
+action in which he seemed both less and greater than a king. Michal
+was looking out upon him from a window, like a lady full of scorn and
+sorrow. Next to the story of David was that of the Emperor Trajan, when
+he did a thing so glorious, as moved St. Gregory to gain the greatest of
+all his conquests--the delivering of the emperor's soul from hell.
+
+A widow, in tears and mourning, was laying hold of his bridle as he rode
+amidst his court with a noise of horses and horsemen, while the Roman
+eagles floated in gold over his head. The miserable creature spoke out
+loudly among them all, crying for vengeance on the murderers of her
+sons. The emperor seemed to say, "Wait till I return."
+
+But she, in the hastiness of her misery, said, "Suppose thou returnest
+not?"
+
+"Then my successor will attend to thee," replied the emperor.
+
+"And what hast thou to do with the duties of another man," cried she,
+"if thou attendest not to thine own?"
+
+"Now, be of good comfort," concluded Trajan, "for verily my duty shall
+be done before I go; justice wills it, and pity arrests me."
+
+Dante was proceeding to delight himself further with these sculptures,
+when Virgil whispered hint to look round and see what was coming. He did
+so, and beheld strange figures advancing, the nature of which he could
+not make out at first, for they seemed neither human, nor aught else
+which he could call to mind. They were souls of the proud, bent double
+under enormous burdens.
+
+"O proud, miserable, woe-begone Christians!" exclaims the poet; "ye who,
+in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the
+right path! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic
+butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede our flight?"[22]
+
+The souls came slowly on, each bending down in proportion to his burden.
+They looked like the crouching figures in architecture that are used
+to support roofs or balconies, and that excite piteous fancies in the
+beholders. The one that appeared to have the most patience, yet seemed
+as if he said, "I can endure no further."
+
+The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish, raised their voices in
+a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, which they concluded with humbly
+stating, that they repeated the clause against temptation, not for
+themselves, but for those who were yet living.
+
+Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance, requested them to spew the
+best way of going up to the next circle. Who it was that answered him
+could not be discerned, on account of their all being so bent down; but
+a voice gave them the required direction; the speaker adding, that he
+wished he could raise his eyes, so as to see the living creature that
+stood near him. He said that his name was Omberto--that he came of
+the great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco--and that his countrymen, the
+Siennese, murdered him on account of his arrogance.
+
+Dante had bent down his own head to listen, and in so doing he was
+recognised by one of the sufferers, who, eyeing him as well as he could,
+addressed him by name. The poet replied by exclaiming, "Art thou not
+Oderisi, the glory of Agubbio, the master of the art of illumination?"
+
+"Ah!" said Oderisi, "Franco of Bologna has all the glory now. His
+colours make the pages of books laugh with beauty, compared with what
+mine do.[23] I could not have owned it while on earth, for the sin which
+has brought me hither; but so it is; and so will it ever be, let a man's
+fame be never so green and flourishing, unless he can secure a dull age
+to come after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept the field against
+all comers, and now the cry is 'Giotto.' Thus, in song, a new Guido has
+deprived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is born who shall drive
+both out of the nest.[24] Fame is but a wind that changes about from all
+quarters. What does glory amount to at best, that a man should prefer
+living and growing old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and
+his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thousand years? A thousand
+years!--the twinkling of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before me;
+his name resounded once over all our Tuscany, and now it is scarcely
+whispered in his native place. He was lord there at the time that your
+once proud but now loathsome Florence had such a lesson given to its
+frenzy at the battle of Arbia."
+
+"And what is his name?" inquired Dante.
+
+"Salvani," returned the limner. "He is here, because he had the
+presumption to think that he could hold Sienna in the hollow of his
+hand. Fifty years has he paced in this manner. Such is the punishment
+for audacity."
+
+"But why is he here at all," said Dante, "and not in the outer region,
+among the delayers of repentance?"
+
+"Because," exclaimed the other, "in the height of his ascendancy he did
+not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in
+every vein, beg money from the people to ransom a friend from captivity.
+Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance? Thy
+countrymen shall too soon help thee to understand me."[25]
+
+Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the
+ground on which they were treading. It was pavement, wrought all over
+with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them,
+struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with
+the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his
+hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and
+Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children;
+and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider,
+at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence,
+flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmæon, who made his mother pay
+with her life for the ornament she received to betray his father; and
+Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple; and the head of Cyrus,
+thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might
+swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his
+Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow
+places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the
+loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps,
+bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of
+your ways.[26]
+
+"Behold," said Virgil, "there is an angel coming."
+
+The angel came on, clad in white, with a face that sent trembling beams
+before it, like the morning star. He skewed the pilgrims the way up to
+the second circle; and then, beating his wings against the forehead of
+Dante, on which the seven initials of sin were written, told him he
+should go safely, and disappeared.
+
+On reaching the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wailings that
+used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, "Blessed
+are the poor in spirit."[27] As he went, he perceived that he walked
+lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of
+the letters on his forehead. He put his hand up to make sure, as a man
+does in the street when people take notice of something on his head of
+which he is not aware; and Virgil smiled.
+
+In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated. After the pilgrims had
+proceeded a mile, they heard the voices of invisible spirits passing
+them, uttering sentiments of love and charity; for it was charity itself
+that had to punish envy.
+
+The souls of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for support and
+humiliation, partly against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly on
+one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near
+places of worship. Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks in
+training, but not so as to hinder them from shedding tears, which they
+did in abundance; and they cried, "Mary, pray for us!--Michael, Peter,
+and all the saints, pray for us!"
+
+Dante spoke to them; and one, a female, lifted up her chin as a blind
+person does when expressing consciousness of notice, and said she was
+Sapia of Sienna, who used to be pleased at people's misfortunes, and had
+rejoiced when her countrymen lost the battle of Colle. "_Sapia_ was
+my name," she said, "but _sapient_ I was not[28], for I prayed God to
+defeat my countrymen; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do),
+I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy
+worst, for I fear thee not!' I was like the bird in the fable, who
+thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my
+latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know
+not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers.
+But who art thou that goest with open eyes, and breathest in thy talk?"
+
+"Mine eyes," answered Dante, "may yet have to endure the blindness in
+this place, though for no long period. Far more do I fear the sufferings
+in the one that I have just left. I seem to feel the weight already upon
+me."[29]
+
+The Florentine then informed Sapia how he came thither, which, she said,
+was a great sign that God loved him; and she begged his prayers. The
+conversation excited the curiosity of two spirits who overheard it; and
+one of them, Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the poet of
+what country he was. Dante, without mentioning the name of the river,
+intimated that he came from the banks of the Arno; upon which the other
+spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked his friend why the stranger suppressed
+the name, as though it was something horrible. Guido said he well might;
+for the river, throughout its course, beheld none but bad men and
+persecutors of virtue. First, he said, it made its petty way by the
+sties of those brutal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then arrived at
+the dignity of watering the kennels of the curs of Arezzo, who excelled
+more in barking than in biting; then, growing unluckier as it grew
+larger, like the cursed and miserable ditch that it was, it found in
+Florence the dogs become wolves; and finally, ere it went into the sea,
+it passed the den of those foxes, the Pisans, who were full of such
+cunning that they held traps in contempt.
+
+"It will be well," continued Guido, "for this man to remember what he
+hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to
+Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked
+happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli
+which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in
+the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is
+the good Lizio?--where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have
+all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin
+di Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Faenza! Wonder not,
+Tuscan, to see me weep, when I think of the noble spirits that we have
+lived with--of the Guidos of Prata, and the Ugolins of Azzo--of Federigo
+Tignoso and his band--of the Traversaros and Anastagios, families now
+ruined--and all the ladies and the cavaliers, the alternate employments
+and delights which wrapped us in a round of love and courtesy, where now
+there is nothing but ill-will! O castle of Brettinoro! why dost thou
+not fall? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo done, who will have no more
+children. Who would propagate a race of Counties from such blood as the
+Castrocaros and the Conios? Is not the son of Pagani called the Demon?
+and would it not be better that such a son were swept out of the family?
+Nay, let him live to chew to what a pitch of villany it has arrived.
+Ubaldini alone is blest, for his name is good, and he is too old to
+leave a child after him. Go, Tuscan--go; for I would be left to my
+tears."
+
+Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and had scarcely done so, when a
+tremendous voice met them, splitting the air like peals of thunder, and
+crying out, "Whoever finds me will slay me!" then dashed apart, like the
+thunder-bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had scarcely recovered
+its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quarter near
+them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. "I am
+Aglauros," it said, "that was turned into stone." Dante drew closer to
+his guide, and there ensued a dead silence.[30]
+
+The sun was now in the west, and the pilgrims were journeying towards
+it, when Dante suddenly felt such a weight of splendour on his eyes, as
+forced him to screen them with both his hands. It was an angel coming to
+show them the ascent to the next circle, a way that was less steep than
+the last. While mounting, they heard the angel's voice singing behind
+them, "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy!" and on
+his leaving them to proceed by themselves, the second letter on Dante's
+forehead was found to have been effaced by the splendour.
+
+The poet looked round in wonder on the new circle, where the sin
+of Anger was expiated, and beheld, as in a dream, three successive
+spectacles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The first was that of
+a crowded temple, on the threshold of which a female said to her son, in
+the sweet manner of a mother, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
+Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing:"[31]--and here she
+became silent, and the vision ended. The next was the lord of Athens,
+Pisistratus, calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to put to death
+her daughter's lover, who, in a transport, had embraced her in public.
+"If we are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, "with those that love
+us, what is to be done with such as hate?" The last spectacle was that
+of a furious multitude shouting and stoning to death a youth, who, as he
+fell to the ground, still kept his face towards heaven, making his eyes
+the gates through which his soul reached it, and imploring forgiveness
+for his murderers.[32]
+
+The visions passed away, leaving the poet staggering as if but half
+awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he
+followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly
+telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in
+unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
+world." They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of
+them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by
+degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as
+the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in
+singing; Haman, retaining his look of spite and rage on the cross; and
+Lavinia, mourning for her mother, who slew herself for rage at the death
+of Turnus.[33]
+
+These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken; and
+Dante heard a voice out of it saying, "The ascent is here." He then, as
+Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face,
+as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance
+of the words, "Blessed are the peace-makers;" and his forehead was
+lightened of the third letter.[34]
+
+In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for
+good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making
+amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love
+that was in them. "Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, "to salute
+Elizabeth." "And Cæsar," cried another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida."[35]
+"And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, "died before
+they reached the promised land." "And the tired among the Trojans
+preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium."--It was now midnight, and
+Dante slept and had a dream.
+
+His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried
+ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
+towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked
+earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold.
+Her tongue was loosened; her feet made straight; she stood upright; her
+paleness became a lovely rose-colour; and she warbled so beautifully,
+that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it.
+
+"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made the mariners turn pale for
+pleasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song; and
+he that harbours with me once, rarely departs ever, so well I pay him
+for what he abandons."
+
+Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earliest
+countenance came up to shame her. "O Virgil!" she cried angrily, "who is
+this?" Virgil approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady; and the lady
+tore away the garments of the woman, and spewed her to be a creature so
+loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror.[36]
+
+Virgil said, "I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move,
+and find the place at which we are to go higher."
+
+It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante
+was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever
+heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them,
+who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against
+the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
+"Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for they shall be
+comforted."
+
+The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the expiators of
+Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could
+for the tears that choked them, "My soul hath cleaved to the dust."
+Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The
+poet fell on his knees; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. "I am no
+longer," said he, "spouse of the Church, here; but fellow-servant with
+thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my
+deliverance."
+
+The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the
+struggling tones of a woman in child-bed, "O blessed Virgin! That was a
+poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O
+good Fabricius! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with
+riches." And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a
+father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want
+of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for
+them all.
+
+Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was; and the spirit
+said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked
+elsewhere, but because of the shining grace that was in his questioner,
+though yet alive.
+
+"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil plant which overshadows all
+Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the
+Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the
+old race of kings was worn out.[37] We began by seizing the government
+in Paris; then plundered in Provence; then, to make amends, laid hold of
+Poitou, Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make amends, put Conradin
+to death and seized Naples; then, always to make amends, gave Saint
+Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a
+descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas
+_jousted with_[38] shall transfix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
+posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara.
+Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the
+person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to
+seize its money. O Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which
+even now thou huggest in delight to thy bosom![39]
+
+"Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, "we speak while it is
+light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the
+blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we
+denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each
+the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his
+wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems
+frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we
+accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
+hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] and Crassus, on whom we
+call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold.
+Thus we record our thoughts in the night-time, now high, now low, now at
+greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
+was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no
+respondent near me."
+
+The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their
+journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of
+Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of
+Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the
+twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that
+Virgil stood nigher to his companion, and bade him be of good heart.
+"Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
+gather the words only from those who were near him.
+
+It was Purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its
+bounds.[41]
+
+The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement
+onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted
+to Christianity in the reign of Domitian.[42] Mutual astonishment led to
+inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell
+at his master's feet.
+
+Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that
+vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
+
+An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead;
+and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the
+mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with
+reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a
+sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from
+a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin
+poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be
+chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
+visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine.' The women of oldest Rome
+drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst
+made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild
+honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel."
+
+The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the
+others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
+weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the
+psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips!" and the chanters were expiators
+of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to
+circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of
+the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid multitude,
+with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of
+their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped.[43] One of
+them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he
+heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate
+connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little
+forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
+expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers
+of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.
+Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife
+Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the
+contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the
+Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked
+savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
+
+"What is to be said of such creatures?" continued he. "O my dear cousin!
+I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from
+the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what
+infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in
+store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for
+howling."[44]
+
+Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished
+fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh
+and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.
+
+"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led
+together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks
+here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it
+is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now
+traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path."[45]
+
+After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among
+the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope
+Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels
+which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his
+teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on
+his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in
+the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante
+eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about
+a lady of the name of Gentucca.
+
+"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.
+
+"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta;
+"and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there
+shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning
+
+"Ladies, that understand the lore of love?"[46]
+
+"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding
+no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests."[47]
+
+"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see
+what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from
+hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking
+like one contented to have ascertained a truth.[48]
+
+The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift
+alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment
+to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end
+of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the
+heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites
+him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded
+after the others.
+
+The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude
+were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man
+who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a
+voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to
+stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve
+tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds,
+the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the
+Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their
+effeminate thirst."[49]
+
+The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of
+a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry
+hackney.
+
+"Of what value is thought," said the voice, "if it lose its way? The
+path lies hither."
+
+Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red as in
+a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him,
+nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fanning of its wings
+fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant
+as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and
+ascended with the two other poets into the seventh and last circle of
+the mountain.
+
+This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its
+precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind from outside of
+the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path; and in the
+midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They
+sang the hymn beginning "God of consummate mercy!"[50] Dante was
+compelled to divide his attention between his own footsteps and theirs,
+in order to move without destruction. At the close of the hymn they
+cried aloud, "I know not a man!"[51] and then recommenced it; after
+which they again cried aloud, saying, "Diana ran to the wood, and drove
+Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus!" And then
+again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste
+women and husbands; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as
+their time of trial lasted.
+
+Occasionally the multitude that went in one direction met another
+which mingled with and passed through it, individuals of both greeting
+tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in passing they touch
+the antennæ of one another. These two multitudes parted with loud and
+sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty;
+and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.
+
+The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature
+by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he
+learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry, Guido
+Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence,
+till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in
+the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The
+greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provençal poet, who, after begging
+the prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like manner.
+
+The sun by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, when an
+angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the
+edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, "Blessed are
+the pure in heart!" invited the three poets to plunge into the flames
+themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of
+the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them
+aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed
+made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion
+encouraged him to obey the angel; but he could not stir. Virgil said,
+"Now mark me, son; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee
+and Beatrice;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante
+followed them.
+
+"I could have cast myself," said he, "into molten glass to cool myself,
+so raging was the furnace." Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He
+said, "Methinks I see her eyes beholding us." There was, indeed, a great
+light upon the quarter to which they were crossing; and out of the light
+issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, "Come, blessed of my
+Father! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the
+ascent is to be gained."
+
+The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire; and the voice
+and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in
+the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock;
+and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying
+down for the night near two shepherds.
+
+Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a
+dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a lea,
+and bending every now and then to gather flowers; and as she bound the
+flowers into a garland, she sang, "I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn
+myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my
+sister Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless; contented with
+her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is
+mine."[52]
+
+When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now
+produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he
+awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already
+up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon
+it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial
+Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees
+and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance
+terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to
+be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the
+tried and purified lord over himself.
+
+The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions
+awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and
+lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the
+brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet
+unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the
+full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's
+radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with
+a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi,
+when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes
+rolling through the forest from bough to bough.[53]
+
+Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he
+entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with
+whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet
+it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun
+or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless
+diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration,
+looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took
+away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side
+of the water, singing and culling flowers.
+
+"Ah, lady!" said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy
+looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee
+nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou
+remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of
+what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she
+herself lost the spring-time on earth."
+
+As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with
+lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before
+the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and
+vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing
+so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she
+stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the
+flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display
+of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus
+herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt
+it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's
+Hellespont.
+
+The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet
+was the Lethe of Paradise;--Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe
+higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil
+deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It
+was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets
+had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence
+imagined their golden age;--and at these words she looked at Virgil and
+Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her
+kindly words.
+
+Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the
+contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on
+his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen!" and a
+light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed
+by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of
+expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs
+like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical
+and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car
+brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs,
+and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of
+which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.
+
+The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who
+it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for
+encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice
+herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and
+the tears ran down his cheeks.
+
+"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil
+leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming,
+at which it will behove thee to weep." Then assuming a sterner attitude,
+and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech
+for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest,
+Beatrice indeed;--Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to
+seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that
+here only can man be happy?"
+
+Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the
+water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.
+
+Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour
+of bitterness was mingled with her pity.
+
+She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, "In thee, O
+Lord, have I put my trust;" but went no farther in the psalm than the
+words, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room." The tears of Dante had
+hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled
+down his cheeks.
+
+Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, "This man, when he
+proposed to himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so
+gifted, that every good habit ought to have thrived with him; but the
+richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent
+light of my countenance drew him the right way; but when I quitted
+mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave
+himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased
+in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned
+into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their
+promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his
+behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little
+was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained
+but to shew him the state of the condemned; and therefore I went to
+their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that
+brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe
+could be passed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of
+remorse.[55]
+
+"O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, "who standest on
+the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth?"
+
+Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they passed
+his lips.
+
+"What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, "when I had given thee
+aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could end in nothing?"
+
+Dante said, "Thy face was taken from me, and the presence of false
+pleasure led me astray."
+
+"Never didst thou behold," cried the maiden, "loveliness like mine; and
+if bliss failed thee because of my death, how couldst thou be allured by
+mortal inferiority? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain
+all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before
+thee. How could thy spirit endure to stoop to further chances, or to a
+childish girl, or any other fleeting vanity? The bird that is newly out
+of the nest may be twice or thrice tempted by the snare; but in vain,
+surely, is the net spread in sight of one that is older."[56]
+
+Dante stood as silent and abashed as a sorry child.
+
+"If but to hear me," said Beatrice, "thus afflicts thee, lift up thy
+beard, and see what sight can do."
+
+Dante, though feeling the sting intended by the word "beard," did as he
+was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of flowers
+about the maiden; and be beheld her, though still beneath her veil, as
+far surpassing her former self in loveliness, as that self had surpassed
+others. The sight pierced him with such pangs, that the more he had
+loved any thing else, the more he now loathed it; and he fell senseless
+to the ground.
+
+When he recovered his senses, he found himself in the hands of the lady
+he had first seen in the place, who bidding him keep firm hold of her,
+drew him into the river Lethe, and so through and across it to the other
+side, speeding as she went like a weaver's shuttle, and immersing him
+when she arrived, the angels all the while singing, "Wash me, and I
+shall be whiter than snow."[57] She then delivered him into the hands of
+the nymphs that had danced about the car,--nymphs on earth, but stars
+and cardinal virtues in heaven; a song burst from the lips of the
+angels; and Faith, Hope, and Charity, calling upon Beatrice to unveil
+her face, she did so; and Dante quenched the ten-years thirst of his
+eyes in her ineffable beauty.[58]
+
+After a while he and Statius were made thoroughly regenerate with the
+waters of Eunoe; and he felt pure with a new being, and fit to soar into
+the stars.
+
+
+[Footnote 1:
+
+  "Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro
+  Che s'accoglieva nel serenoaspetto
+  De l'aer puro infino al primo giro,
+  A gli occhi miei ricomincio diletto,
+  Tosto ch'io usci' fuor de l'aura morta
+  Che m'avea contristati gli occhi e 'l petto.
+
+  Lo bel pianeta, ch'ad amar conforta,
+  Faceva tutto rider l'oriente,
+  Velando i Pesci, ch'erano in sua scorta.
+
+  Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente
+  All'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
+  Non viste mai, fuor ch'a la prima gente;
+
+  Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiammelle.
+  O settentrional vedovo sito,
+  Poi che privato sei di mirar quelle!"
+
+  The sweetest oriental sapphire blue,
+  Which the whole air in its pure bosom had,
+  Greeted mine eyes, far as the heavens withdrew;
+
+  So that again they felt assured and glad,
+  Soon as they issued forth from the dead air,
+  Where every sight and thought had made them sad.
+
+  The beauteous star, which lets no love despair,
+  Made all the orient laugh with loveliness,
+  Veiling the Fish that glimmered in its hair.
+
+  I turned me to the right to gaze and bless,
+  And saw four more, never of living wight
+  Beheld, since Adam brought us our distress;
+
+  Heaven seemed rejoicing in their happy light.
+  O widowed northern pole, bereaved indeed,
+  Since thou hast had no power to see that sight!
+
+Readers who may have gone thus far with the "Italian Pilgrim's
+Progress," will allow me to congratulate them on arriving at this lovely
+scene, one of the most admired in the poem.
+
+This is one of the passages which make the religious admirers of Dante
+inclined to pronounce him divinely inspired; for how could he otherwise
+have seen stars, they ask us, which were not discovered till after
+his time, and which compose the constellation of the Cross? But other
+commentators are of opinion, that the Cross, though not so named till
+subsequently (and Dante, we see, gives no prophetic hint about the
+name), _had_ been seen, probably by stray navigators. An Arabian globe
+is even mentioned by M. Artaud (see Cary), in which the Southern Cross
+is set down. Mr. Cary, in his note on the passage, refers to Seneca's
+prediction of the discovery of America; most likely suggested by similar
+information. "But whatever," he adds, "may be thought of this, it is
+certain that the four stars are here symbolical of the four cardinal
+virtues;" and he refers to canto xxxi, where those virtues are
+retrospectively associated with these stars. The symbol, however, is
+not, necessary. Dante was a very curious inquirer on all subjects, and
+evidently acquainted with ships and seamen as well as geography; and his
+imagination would eagerly have seized a magnificent novelty like this,
+and used it the first opportunity. Columbus's discovery, as the reader
+will see, was anticipated by Pulci.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Generous and disinterested!--Cato, the republican enemy of
+Cæsar, and committer of suicide, is not luckily chosen for his present
+office by the poet who has put Brutus into the devil's mouth in spite of
+his agreeing with Cato, and the suicide Piero delle Vigne into hell in
+spite of his virtues. But Dante thought Cato's austere manners like his
+own.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The girding with the rush (_giunco schietto_) is_ supposed
+by the commentators to be an injunction of simplicity and patience.
+Perhaps it is to enjoin sincerity; especially as the region of expiation
+has now been entered, and sincerity is the first step to repentance.
+It will be recollected that Dante's former girdle, the cord of the
+Franciscan friars, has been left in the hands of Fraud.]
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+  "L'alba vinceva l'ora mattutina
+  Che fuggia 'nnanzi, sì che di lontano
+  Conobbi il tremolar de la marina."
+
+  The lingering shadows now began to flee
+  Before the whitening dawn, so that mine eyes
+  Discerned far off the trembling of the sea.
+
+  "Conobbi il tremolar de la marina"
+is a beautiful verse, both for the picture and the sound.]
+
+[Footnote 5: This evidence of humility and gratitude on the part of
+Dante would be very affecting, if we could forget all the pride and
+passion he has been shewing elsewhere, and the torments in which he has
+left his fellow-creatures. With these recollections upon us, it looks
+like an overweening piece of self-congratulation at other people's
+expense.]
+
+[Footnote 6:
+
+  "Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona
+  De la mia donna disiosamente,"
+
+is the beginning of the ode sung by Dante's friend. The incident is
+beautifully introduced; and Casella's being made to select a production
+from the pen of the man who asks him to sing, very delicately implies a
+graceful cordiality in the musician's character.
+
+Milton alludes to the passage in his sonnet to Henry Lawes:
+
+  "Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
+  To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,
+  That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story.
+  Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
+  Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
+  Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."  ]
+
+[Footnote 7: Manfredi was the natural son of the Emperor Frederick the
+Second. "He was lively and agreeable in his manners," observes Mr. Cary,
+"and delighted in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious
+and ambitious, void of religion, and in his philosophy an epicurean."
+_Translation of Dante_, Smith's edition, p. 77. Thus King Manfredi ought
+to have been in a red-hot tomb, roasting for ever with Epicurus himself,
+and with the father of the poet's beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante: but
+he was the son of an emperor, and a foe to the house of Anjou; so Dante
+gives him a passport to heaven. There is no ground whatever for the
+repentance assumed in the text.]
+
+[Footnote 8: The unexpected bit of comedy here ensuing is very
+remarkable and pleasant. Belacqua, according to an old commentator, was
+a musician.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Buonconte was the son of that Guido da Montefeltro, whose
+soul we have seen carried off from St. Francis by a devil, for having
+violated the conditions of penitence. It is curious that both father and
+son should have been contested for in this manner.]
+
+[Footnote 10: This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all brief
+stories.
+
+  "Deh quando to sarai tornato al mondo,
+  E riposato de la lunga via,
+  Seguitò 'l terzo spirito al secondo,
+
+  Ricorditi di me che son la Pia:
+  Siena mi fè; disfecemi Maremma;
+  Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria
+
+  Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma."
+
+  Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth
+  (Said then a female soul), remember me,--
+  Pia. Sienna was my place of birth,
+
+  The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he,
+  Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring.
+
+"Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work entitled _De l'Amour,_
+"obtained in marriage the hand of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the
+Ptolomei, the richest and most noble family of Sienna. Her beauty, which
+was the admiration of all Tuscany, gave rise to a jealousy in the
+breast of her husband, that, envenomed by wrong reports and suspicions
+continually reviving, led to a frightful catastrophe. It is not easy to
+determine at this day if his wife was altogether innocent; but Dante
+has represented her as such. Her husband carried her with him into
+the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as now, for the pestiferous
+effects of the air. Never would he tell his wife the reason of her
+banishment into so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to
+pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a
+deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins on the seashore;
+he never broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of
+his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved
+by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of
+this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most
+beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a few
+months she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that
+Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in
+some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even
+to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest
+of his days in a silence which was never broken." Hazlitt's _Journey
+through France and Italy_, p. 315.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Sordello was a famous Provençal poet; with whose writings
+the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of
+M. Raynouard, in his _Choix des Poésies des Troubadours_, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 12: "Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca." An exquisite
+image of newness and brilliancy.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "Salve, Regina:" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant
+to the Virgin.]
+
+[Footnote 14: "With nose deprest," says Mr. Cary. But Dante says,
+literally, "small nose,"--_nasetto_. So, further on, he says, "masculine
+nose,"--_maschio naso_. He meant to imply the greater or less
+determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed
+to indicate.]
+
+[Footnote 15: An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign
+for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect. But Henry was a
+devout servant of the Church.]
+
+[Footnote 16:
+
+  "Era già l'ora che volge 'l desio
+  A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore
+  Lo dì ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;
+
+  E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore
+  Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
+  Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore."
+
+A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to
+be the voice of Evening herself.
+
+  'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
+  Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
+  The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
+  And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
+  Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
+  That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
+
+Every body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from
+Dante's--
+
+  "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
+
+Nothing can equal, however, the _tone_ in the Italian original,--the
+
+  "Pàia 'l giorno pianger the si muòre."
+
+Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his
+personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have
+left us a work truly to be called Divine?]
+
+[Footnote 17:
+
+"Te lucis ante terminum;"--a hymn sung at evening service.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Lucy, _Lucia_ (supposed to be derived from _lux, lucis_),
+is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic
+countries may be said to preside over _light_, and who is really invoked
+in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for
+that reason among others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
+they had been cured. In her spiritual character she represents the light
+of grace.]
+
+[Footnote 19: The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the second,
+horror of it; the third, zeal to amend.]
+
+[Footnote 20: The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the
+commentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the learning and
+judgment requisite to use it.]
+
+[Footnote 21: "Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and
+St. Augustine.]
+
+[Footnote 22:
+
+  "Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
+  Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
+  Che vola a giustizia senza schermi?"
+
+  "Know you not, we are worms
+  Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
+  That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms?"
+
+[Footnote 23:
+
+  "Più ridon le carte
+  Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
+  L'onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte."
+
+[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
+the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
+and the poet, who is to "chase them from the nest," _caccerà di nido_
+(as the not very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
+supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the statement becoming? It
+was certainly not necessary. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship
+with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti,
+probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition; far they
+could be proud themselves; and the son has the reputation of scepticism,
+as well as the father. See the _Decameron, Giorn_. vi. _Nov. 9_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
+Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein," from the awful
+necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with some other commentators, thinks
+that the "trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not
+rather mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case it certainly
+does; for it was in consideration of the pang to his pride, that the
+good deed rescued him from worse punishment.]
+
+[Footnote 26: The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of
+Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of
+such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose
+it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call
+to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on
+Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous,
+of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
+the reconcilement with absurdity.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;
+for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of
+the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and
+admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
+renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for
+them, and his impatience to see them triumph." So said the Inquisition.
+The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
+result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed,
+or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions.]
+
+[Footnote 28:
+
+  "_Sàvia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapìa_
+  Fosse chiamata."
+The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian
+name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is
+the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented
+on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in
+English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name." It
+is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the
+punsters.--It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at
+the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some
+zeal of faction]
+
+[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a
+little envy, but far more pride:
+
+  "Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
+  Ma picciol tempo; che poch' è l'offesa
+  Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
+  Troppa è più la paura ond' è sospesa
+  L'anima mia del tormento di sotto
+  Che già lo 'ncarco di là giù mi pesa."
+
+The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second,
+affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have
+allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to
+women.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned
+to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her
+sister Herse.
+
+The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful
+and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and
+violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to
+suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his
+thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for
+his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.
+
+Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros
+is thunder-claps crashing into one another--broken thunder. This is
+exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful
+music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness. If it were
+not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two
+silences; for I doubt whether they are not better even than one. At all
+events, the final silence is tremendous.]
+
+[Footnote 30: St. Luke ii. 48.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The stoning of Stephen.]
+
+[Footnote 32: These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
+inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not
+always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird
+as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
+Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as
+he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake,
+Philomela, in the _Metamorphoses_.]
+
+[Footnote 33: So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards; and
+I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite
+intimations at each successive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly
+having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the
+outset. The whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
+wanted his final revision.]
+
+[Footnote 34: What an instance to put among those of haste to do good!
+But the fame and accomplishments of Cæsar, and his being at the head of
+our Ghibelline's beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted
+impartiality.]
+
+[Footnote 35: A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of
+it in the original has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the
+last recesses of feeling, and disgusts us with the denouncer.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in
+the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association
+of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that
+Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his
+dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
+interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a
+metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when
+we find the man called, not _the_ butcher, or _that_ butcher, or butcher
+in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
+Paris" (_un beccaio di Parigi_), and when this designation is followed
+up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the
+ordinary construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems
+to have had no ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless
+considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed, condescended to
+feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it,
+in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt
+contradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeatedly said, that
+the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth
+excepted) are a heap of contradictions.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in which there
+is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an
+impression to the same effect.]
+
+[Footnote 38:
+
+  "O Signor mio, quando sarò io lieto
+  A veder la vendetta the nascosa
+  Fa dolce l'ira tua nel tuo segreto!"
+
+The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian,
+viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being
+"too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
+as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth
+century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine! God hugs
+revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a
+poor grinning Florentine!]
+
+[Footnote 39: A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The allusion
+is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her
+husband, the priest Sichæus, for his riches. The term "parricide" is
+here applied in its secondary sense of--the murderer of any one to whom
+we owe reverence.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
+supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael.]
+
+[Footnote 41: A grand and beautiful fiction.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation
+for this fancy, except in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in
+another passage, not necessary to give, confounds the poet Statius who
+was from Naples, with a rhetorician of the same name from Thoulouse.]
+
+[Footnote 43:
+
+  "Parèn l'occhiaje anella senza gemme."
+
+This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one
+of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the
+physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (_homo_, man), written in the face
+of the human being, might easily have seen the letter _m_ in theirs."
+
+  "Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge _o m o_,
+  Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_."
+
+The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples
+form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman
+domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin!]
+
+[Footnote 44:
+
+  "Se le svergognate fosser certe
+  Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
+  Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte."
+
+This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John
+Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted
+to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness,
+and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays.
+But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the
+worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer
+him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take
+good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
+
+Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those
+self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins
+they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." He was
+a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The
+defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
+testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having
+availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such
+candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The
+words in the original are
+
+  "Se ti riduci a mente
+  Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
+  Ancor fia grave il memorar presente."
+
+Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast
+with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee
+still."
+
+His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
+the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
+construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
+first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
+intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of Æneas's
+descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
+as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
+very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
+spotless.]
+
+[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
+the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
+any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
+present volume.) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
+gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
+person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
+record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
+record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
+Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
+some rumour.]
+
+[Footnote 47: A celebrated and charming passage:
+
+  "Io mi son un, che quando
+  Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo
+  Che detta dentro, vo significando."
+
+  I am one that notes
+  When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell
+  In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.
+
+[Footnote 48: Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment
+to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the
+Notary, and Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of
+the day. The latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his
+translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last
+day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under
+_crudel martire_), _because_ an inscription will then be seen on his
+forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love! An odd way for a
+poet to shew his feelings, and a friar his religion!]
+
+[Footnote 49: Judges vii. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _Summæ Deus clementiæ_. The ancient beginning of a hymn in
+the Roman Catholic church; now altered, say the commentators, to "Summæ
+parens clementiæ."]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Virum non cognosco_. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How
+shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"--_Luke_ i. 34.
+
+The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of
+Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by
+spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.
+A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question
+suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of
+letters.]
+
+[Footnote 52: An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;--not, I
+think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart
+from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is
+rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express
+love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be
+taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity.]
+
+[Footnote 53:
+
+  "Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
+  Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
+  Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie."
+
+  Even as from branch to branch
+  Along the piny forests on the shore
+  Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
+  When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
+  The dripping south."--_Cary_.
+
+"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's
+sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to
+the Decameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec., G. 5, N.
+8, and Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in
+it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta."--_Translation of
+Dante_, ut sup. p. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Lethe, _Forgetfulness_; Eunoe, _Well-mindedness_.]
+
+[Footnote 55:
+
+  "Senza alcuno scotto
+  Di pentimento."
+
+Literally, _scot-free_.--"Scotto," scot;--"payment for dinner or supper
+in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor
+of the _Parnaso Italiano_, and a very summary gentleman); "here used
+figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and
+grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that
+collection, vol. ii. p. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (_pargoletta_) or any
+other fleeting vanity,
+
+  "O altra vanità con sì breve use,"
+
+is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he
+liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they
+might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?
+
+Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as
+a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the
+sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape;
+and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells
+us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of
+Signor Rubbi, is no better than _snubbing_;--to say nothing of the
+vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.
+
+I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an
+exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out
+of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and
+his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in
+charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so
+many things, hates nothing. Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
+high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
+our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them.]
+
+[Footnote 57:
+
+"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
+clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."--Psalm li. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years.]
+
+
+III.
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. Argument.
+
+The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of
+astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets
+according to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
+Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond these, or that of the
+Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the
+moveless Earth; and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which
+is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by
+its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue; and Dante visits each
+under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes,
+on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally
+admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the
+Great First Cause.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
+
+It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in
+Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed
+his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself in Heaven.
+
+He had been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by
+his side.
+
+The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empyrean, and heard
+the music of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven,
+the circle of the orb of the moon.
+
+This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed,
+outside, as solid, though as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as
+sunbeams are admitted into water without dividing the substance. It now
+appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of
+which they saw but dimly; and they beheld many faces eagerly looking at
+them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding
+whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn.[1]
+Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom
+they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right; and he entered
+into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost
+him. It was Piccarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he
+had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason
+of her wonderful increase in beauty. She and her associates were such
+as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity and Religion, but had been
+Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in
+Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso.[2] On
+
+Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of bliss, she and
+her sister-spirits gently smiled; and then answered, with faces as happy
+as first love,[3] that they willed only what it pleased God to give
+them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer,
+that every place in Heaven was Paradise, though the bliss might be of
+different degrees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side,
+lustrous with all the glory of the region, Costanza, daughter of the
+king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the
+wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began
+singing _Ave Maria_; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as
+substances disappear in water.[4]
+
+A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next
+circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet Mercury, the
+residence of those who had acted rather out of Desire of Fame than Love
+of God. The spirits here, as in the former Heaven, crowded towards them,
+as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their
+eyes sparkled with celestial joy; and the more they thought of their
+joy, the brighter they grew; till one of them who addressed the poet
+became indistinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of
+the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman
+empire up to his time; and then gave an account of one of his associates
+in bliss, Romèo, who had been minister to Raymond Beranger, Count of
+Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every
+one became a queen; and all this had been brought about by Romèo, a poor
+stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romèo, incited
+Raymond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had
+brought his master's treasury twelve-fold for every ten it disbursed.
+Romeo quitted the court, poor and old; "and if the world," said
+Justinian, "could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his
+bread as he went, crust by crust--praise him as it does, it would praise
+him a great deal more."[5]
+
+  "Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth,
+  Superillumining with light of light
+  The happy fires of these thy Malahoth!"[6]
+
+Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian; and then, turning
+as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire.
+
+Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven,
+or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous.[7] He only knew it by the
+increased loveliness in the face of his companion.
+
+The spirits in this orb, who came and went in the light of it like
+sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun
+round in circles of delight, each with more or less swiftness, according
+to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out
+of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his
+patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why
+diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of
+the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth;
+and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and
+Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy
+Land, and whose place was next Folco.[8] Cunizza said that she did not
+at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar
+might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel
+who was close to her, Folco--contrasted his zeal with the inertness of
+her contemptible countrymen--and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the
+latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed
+in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is
+expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the
+lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or
+Hercules; but added, that he had no recollection of them, except a
+joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven),
+but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Folco concluded with
+explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing
+the indifference of popes and cardinals (those adulterers of the Church)
+to every thing but accursed money-getting.[9]
+
+In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth
+Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of
+them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon,
+singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be
+exported, was not conveyable by expression to mortal fancy. The spirits
+composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus,
+Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius
+the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede,
+Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the
+namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak; but
+when he had done speaking, they began resuming it, one by one, and
+circling as they moved, like the wheels of church-clocks that sound one
+after another with a sweet tinkling, when they summon the hearts of the
+devout to morning prayer.[10]
+
+Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of
+the order of St. Dominic; but with generous grace he held up the founder
+of the Franciscans, with his vow of poverty, as the example of what a
+pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On
+the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their
+appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling
+round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new
+circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle,
+and Saint Buonaventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.
+Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity, the holy wrestler,--benign
+to his friends and cruel to his enemies;[11]--and so confined his
+reproofs to his own Franciscan order. He then, as St. Thomas had done
+with the doctors in the inner circle, named those who constituted the
+outer: to wit, Illuminato, and Agostino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and
+Petrus Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty-first, Nathan the Prophet,
+Chrysostom, Anselmo of Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach grammar,
+Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of Calabria. The two circles then varied
+their movement by wheeling round one another in counter directions; and
+after they had chanted, not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of Three Persons
+in One, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's thoughts by intuition, again
+addressed him, discoursing of mysteries human and divine, exhorting
+him to be slow in giving assent or denial to propositions without
+examination, and bidding him warn people in general how they presumed
+to anticipate the divine judgment as to who should be saved and who
+not.[12] The spirit of Solomon then related how souls could resume their
+bodies glorified; and the two circles uttering a rapturous amen, glowed
+with such intolerable brightness, that the eyes of Beatrice only were
+able to sustain it. Dante gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and
+suddenly found himself in the fifth Heaven.
+
+It was the planet Mars, the receptacle of those who had Died Fighting
+for the Cross. In the middle of its ruddy light stood a cross itself, of
+enormous dimensions, made of light still greater, and exhibiting, first,
+in the body of it, the Crucified Presence, glittering all over with
+indescribable flashes like lightning; and secondly, in addition to and
+across the Presence, innumerable sparkles of the intensest mixture
+of white and red, darting to and fro through the whole extent of the
+crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a
+sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols,
+before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from
+the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which
+entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words,
+"Arise and conquer," as one who hears and yet hears not.
+
+On a sudden, with a glide like a falling star, there ran down from the
+right horn of the Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this
+cluster of splendours, distinguishing itself, as it went, like flame in
+alabaster.
+
+"O flesh of my flesh!" it exclaimed to Dante; "O superabounding Divine
+Grace! when was the door of Paradise ever twice opened, as it Shall have
+been to thee?"[13] Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice, and saw
+such a rapture of delight in her eyes, that he seemed, at that instant,
+as if his own had touched the depth of his acceptance and of his
+heaven.[14]
+
+The light resumed its speech, but in words too profound in their meaning
+for Dante to comprehend. They seemed to be returning thanks to God. This
+rapturous absorption being ended, the speaker expressed in more human
+terms his gratitude to Beatrice; and then, after inciting Dante to ask
+his name, declared himself thus:
+
+"O branch of mine, whom I have long desired to behold, I am the root of
+thy stock; of him thy great-grandsire, who first brought from his mother
+the family-name into thy house, and whom thou sawest expiating his sin
+of pride on the first circle of the mountain. Well it befitteth thee to
+shorten his long suffering with thy good works. Florence,[15] while yet
+she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the
+bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste
+and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy
+sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were
+not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries
+too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to
+separate; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared
+to practise. The heights of Rome had not been surpassed by your tower of
+Uccellatoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its aspiring. I saw
+Bellincion Berti walking the streets in a leathern girdle fastened with
+bone; and his wife come from her looking-glass without a painted face.
+I saw the Nerlis and the Vecchios contented with the simplest doublets,
+and their good dames hard at work at their spindles. O happy they! They
+were sure of burial in their native earth, and none were left desolate
+by husbands that loved France better than Italy. One kept awake to tend
+her child in its cradle, lulling it with the household words that had
+fondled her own infancy. Another, as she sat in the midst of her family,
+drawing the flax from the distaff, told them stories of Troy, and
+Fiesole, and Rome. It would have been as great a wonder, then, to see
+such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man as Lapo Salterello, as it
+would now be to meet with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia.[16]
+
+"It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful time," continued the poet's
+ancestor, "when we all lived in such good faith and fellowship, and in
+so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin vouchsafed the first sight
+of me to the cries of my mother; and there, in your old Baptistery, I
+became, at once, Christian and Cacciaguida. My brothers were called
+Moronto and Eliseo. It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdipado,
+thy family name of Alighieri. I then followed the Emperor Conrad, and
+he made me a knight for my good service, and I went with him to fight
+against the wicked Saracen law, whose people usurp the fold that remains
+lost through the fault of the shepherd. There, by that foul crew, was I
+delivered from the snares and pollutions of the world; and so, from the
+martyrdom, came to this peace."
+
+Cacciaguida was silent. But his descendant praying to be told more of
+his family and of the old state of Florence, the beatified soldier
+resumed. He would not, however, speak of his own predecessors. He said
+it would be more becoming to say nothing as to who they were, or the
+place they came from. All he disclosed was, that his father and
+mother lived near the gate San Piero.[17] With regard to Florence, he
+continued, the number of the inhabitants fit to carry arms was at that
+time not a fifth of its present amount; but then the blood of the
+whole city was pure. It had not been mixed up with that of Campi, and
+Certaldo, and Figghine. It ran clear in the veins of the humblest
+mechanic.
+
+"Oh, how much better would it have been," cried the soul of the old
+Florentine, "had my countrymen still kept it as it was, and not brought
+upon themselves the stench of the peasant knave out of Aguglione, and
+that other from Signa, with his eye to a bribe! Had Rome done its duty
+to the emperor, and so prevented the factions that have ruined us,
+Simifonte would have kept its beggarly upstart to itself; the Conti
+would have stuck to their parish of Acone, and perhaps the Buondelmonti
+to Valdigrieve. Crude mixtures do as much harm to the body politic as to
+the natural body; and size is not strength. The blind bull falls with a
+speedier plunge than the blind lamb. One sword often slashes round about
+it better than five. Cities themselves perish. See what has become of
+Luni and of Urbisaglia; and what will soon become of Sinigaglia too, and
+of Chiusi! And if cities perish, what is to be expected of families? In
+my time the Ughi, the Catellini, the Filippi, were great names. So were
+the Alberichi, the Ormanni, and twenty others. The golden sword of
+knighthood was then to be seen in the house of Galigaio. The Column,
+Verrey, was then a great thing in the herald's eye. The Galli, the
+Sacchetti, were great; so was the old trunk of the Calfucci; so was that
+of the peculators who now blush to hear of a measure of wheat; and the
+Sizii and the Arrigucci were drawn in pomp to their civic chairs. Oh,
+how mighty I saw them then, and how low has their pride brought them!
+_Florence_ in those days deserved her name. She _flourished_ indeed; and
+the balls of gold were ever at the top of the flower.[18] And now the
+descendants of these men sit in priestly stalls and grow fat. The
+over-weening Adimari, who are such dragons when their foes run, and such
+lambs when they turn, were then of note so little, that Albertino Donato
+was angry with Bellincion, his father-in-law, for making him brother
+to one of their females. On the other hand, thy foes, the Amidei, the
+origin of all thy tears through the just anger which has slain the
+happiness of thy life, were honoured in those days; and the honour was
+par taken by their friends. O Buondelmonte! why didst thou break thy
+troth to thy first love, and become wedded to another? Many who are now
+miserable would have been happy, had God given thee to the river Ema,
+when it rose against thy first coming to Florence. But the Arno had
+swept our Palladium from its bridge, and Florence was to be the victim
+on its altar."[19]
+
+Cacciaguida was again silent; but his descendant begged him to speak
+yet a little more. He had heard, as he came through the nether regions,
+alarming intimations of the ill fortune that awaited him, and he was
+anxious to know, from so high and certain an authority, what it would
+really be.
+
+Cacciaguida said, "As Hippolytus was forced to depart from Athens by the
+wiles of his cruel step-dame, so must even thou depart out of Florence.
+Such is the wish, such this very moment the plot, and soon will it be
+the deed, of those, the business of whose lives is to make a traffic of
+Christ with Rome. Thou shalt quit every thing that is dearest to thee
+in the world. That is the first arrow shot from the bow of exile. Thou
+shalt experience how salt is the taste of bread eaten at the expense of
+others; how hard is the going up and down others' stairs. But what shall
+most bow thee down, is the worthless and disgusting company with whom
+thy lot must be partaken; for they shall all turn against thee, the
+whole mad, heartless, and ungrateful set. Nevertheless, it shall not be
+long first, before themselves, and not thou, shall have cause to hang
+down their heads for shame. The brutishness of all they do, will shew
+how well it became thee to be of no party, but the party of thyself.[20]
+
+"Thy first refuge thou shalt owe to the courtesy of the great Lombard,
+who bears the Ladder charged with the Holy Bird.[21] So benignly
+shall he regard thee, that in the matter of asking and receiving, the
+customary order of things shall be reversed between you two, and the
+gift anticipate the request. With him thou shalt behold the mortal, born
+under so strong an influence of this our star, that the nations shall
+take note of him. They are not aware of him yet, by reason
+of his tender age; but ere the Gascon practise on the great
+Henry, sparkles of his worth shall break forth in his contempt
+of money and of ease; and when his munificence appears in all
+its lustre, his very enemies shall not be able to hold their
+tongues for admiration.[22] Look thou to this second benefactor
+also; for many a change of the lots of people shall he make, both rich
+and poor; and do thou bear in mind, but repeat not, what further I shall
+now tell thee of thy life." Here the spirit, says the poet,
+foretold things which afterwards appeared incredible to their very
+beholders;--and then added: "Such, my son, is the heart and mystery of
+the things thou hast desired to learn. The snares will shortly gather
+about thee; but wish not to change places with the contrivers; for thy
+days will outlast those of their retribution."
+
+Again was the spirit silent; and yet again once more did his descendant
+question him, anxious to have the advice of one that saw so far, and
+that spoke the truth so purely, and loved him so well.
+
+"Too plainly, my father," said Dante, "do I see the time coming, when a
+blow is to be struck me, heaviest ever to the man that is not true to
+himself. For which reason it is fit that I so far arm myself beforehand,
+that in losing the spot dearest to me on earth, I do not let my verses
+deprive me of every other refuge. Now I have been down below through the
+region whose grief is without end; and I have scaled the mountain from
+the top of which I was lifted by my lady's eyes; and I have come thus
+far through heaven, from luminary to luminary; and in the course of this
+my pilgrimage I have heard things which, if I tell again, may bitterly
+disrelish with many. Yet, on the other hand, if I prove but a timid
+friend to truth, I fear I shall not survive with the generations by whom
+the present times will be called times of old."
+
+The light that enclosed the treasure which its descendant had found in
+heaven, first flashed at this speech like a golden mirror against the
+sun, and then it replied thus:
+
+"Let the consciences blush at thy words that have reason to blush. Do
+thou, far from shadow of misrepresentation, make manifest all which thou
+hast seen, and let the sore places be galled that deserve it. Thy bitter
+truths shall carry with them vital nourishment--thy voice, as the wind
+does, shall smite loudest the loftiest summits; and no little shall that
+redound to thy praise. It is for this reason that, in all thy journey,
+thou hast been shewn none but spirits of note, since little heed would
+have been taken of such as excite doubt by their obscurity."
+
+The spirit of Cacciaguida now relapsed into the silent joy of its
+reflections, and the poet was standing absorbed in the mingled feelings
+of his own, when Beatrice said to him, "Change the current of thy
+thoughts. Consider how near I am in heaven to one that repayeth every
+wrong."
+
+Dante turned at the sound of this comfort, and felt no longer any other
+wish than to look upon her eyes; but she said, with a smile, "Turn thee
+round again, and attend. I am not thy only Paradise." And Dante again
+turned, and saw his ancestor prepared to say more.
+
+Cacciaguida bade him look again on the Cross, and he should see various
+spirits, as he named them, flash over it like lightning; and they did
+so. That of Joshua, which was first mentioned, darted along the Cross
+in a stream. The light of Judas Maccabeus went spinning, as if joy had
+scourged it.[23] Charlemagne and Orlando swept away together, pursued
+by the poet's eyes. Guglielmo[24] followed, and Rinaldo, and Godfrey of
+Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard of Naples; and the light of Cacciaguida
+himself darted back to its place, and, uttering another sort of voice,
+began shewing how sweet a singer he too was amidst the glittering choir.
+
+Dante turned to share the joy with Beatrice, and, by the lovely paling
+of her cheek, like a maiden's when it delivers itself of the burden of
+a blush,[25] knew that he was in another and whiter star. It was the
+planet Jupiter, the abode of blessed Administrators of Justice.
+
+Here he beheld troops of dazzling essences, warbling as they flew, and
+shaping their flights hither and thither, like birds when they rise from
+the banks of rivers, and rejoice with one another in new-found pasture.
+But the figures into which the flights were shaped were of a more
+special sort, being mystical compositions of letters of the alphabet,
+now a D, now an I, now an L, and so on, till the poet observed that they
+completed the whole text of Scripture, which says, _Diligite justitiam,
+qui judicatis terram_--(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the
+earth). The last letter, M, they did not decompose like the rest, but
+kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the
+silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a
+song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on the top, of
+the letter; and then, from the body of it, rose thousands of sparks, as
+from a shaken firebrand, and, gradually expanding into the form of an
+eagle, the lights which had descended like lilies distributed themselves
+over the whole bird, encrusting it with rubies flashing in the sun.
+
+But what, says the poet, was never yet heard of, written, or
+imagined,--the beak of the eagle spoke! It uttered many minds in one
+voice, just as one heat is given out by many embers; and proclaimed
+itself to have been thus exalted, because it united justice and mercy
+while on earth.
+
+Dante addressed this splendid phenomenon, and prayed it to ease his mind
+of the perplexities of its worldly reason respecting the Divine nature
+and government, and the exclusion from heaven of goodness itself, unless
+within the Christian pale.
+
+The celestial bird, rousing itself into motion with delight, like a
+falcon in the conscious energy of its will and beauty, when, upon being
+set free from its hood, it glances above it into the air, and claps its
+self-congratulating wings, answered nevertheless somewhat disdainfully,
+that it was impossible for man, in his mortal state, to comprehend such
+things; and that the astonishment he feels at them, though doubtless it
+would be excusable under other circumstances, must rest satisfied with
+the affirmations of Scripture.
+
+The bird then bent over its questioner, as a stork does over the
+nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and
+renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, "As my notes are to thee
+that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to
+thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly
+regions that did not believe in Christ, either after he was crucified or
+before it. Yet many, who call Christ! Christ! shall at the last day be
+found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings
+of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment
+opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dishonour? In
+that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict
+on Bohemia:[26]--in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that
+adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's
+teeth:--in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the
+Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds:--in
+that book, the luxury of the Spaniard, and the effeminate life of the
+Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy:--in that
+book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a
+unit, and his worthlessness by a million:--in that book, the avarice and
+cowardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died;
+and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness,
+the writing shall be in short-hand; and his uncle's and his brother's
+filthy doings shall be read in that book--they who have made such
+rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the
+Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner
+of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O
+blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer!--O blessed
+Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain
+walls! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest
+of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the
+beast, who keeps so close in the path of the herd his brethren."
+
+The blessed bird for a moment was silent; but as, at the going down of
+the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth into innumerable
+stars which the sun lights up,[27] so the splendours within the figure
+of the bird suddenly became more splendid, and broke forth into songs
+too beautiful for mortal to remember.
+
+O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy
+manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere
+thoughts of those pious hearts!
+
+After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their
+angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes
+falling from rock to rock, and chews, by the fulness of its tone, the
+abundance of its mountain spring; and as the sound of the guitar is
+modulated on the neck of it, and the breath of the pipe is accordant to
+the spiracle from which it issues, so the murmuring within the eagle
+suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in
+words. The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye; because,
+of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the
+eye were the noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the
+pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now
+enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment. Of the
+five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was
+Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it
+costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell
+before he was translated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah,
+whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death: next Hezekiah,
+Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of
+a pastor, he had unwittingly brought destruction on the world: next
+Constantine, William the Good of Sicily, whose death is not more
+lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown and lastly, next
+William, Riphaeus the Trojan. "What erring mortal," cried the bird,
+"would believe it possible to find Riphæus the Trojan among the
+blest?--but so it is; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace
+than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth."[28]
+
+The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the
+happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering and
+expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and content,
+having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness.[29]
+
+But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans
+in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.
+It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of
+justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same
+reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption;
+and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of
+Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to
+the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird
+mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they
+quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced
+by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes.[30]
+
+Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice,
+and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer
+there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at
+every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been
+able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the
+planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy
+Contemplation.
+
+In this crystal sphere, called after the name of the monarch who reigned
+over the Age of Innocence, Dante looked up, and beheld a ladder, the hue
+of which was like gold when the sun glisters it, and the height so great
+that its top was out of sight; and down the steps of this ladder he saw
+coming such multitudes of shining spirits, that it seemed as if all the
+lights of heaven must have been there poured forth; but not a sound was
+in the whole splendour. It was spared to the poet for the same reason
+that he missed the smile of Beatrice. When they came to a certain step
+in the ladder, some of the spirits flew off it in circles or other
+careers, like rooks when they issue from their trees in the morning
+to dry their feathers in the sun, part of them going away without
+returning, others returning to the point they left, and others
+contenting themselves with flying round about it. One of them came so
+near Dante and Beatrice, and brightened with such ardour, that the poet
+saw it was done in affection towards them, and begged the loving spirit
+to tell them who it was.
+
+"Between the two coasts of Italy," said the spirit, "and not far from
+thine own country, the stony mountains ascend into a ridge so lofty
+that the thunder rolls beneath it. Catria is its name. Beneath it is a
+consecrated cell; and in that cell I was called Pietro Damiano.[31] I so
+devoted myself to the service of God, that with no other sustenance than
+the juice of the olive, I forgot both heat and cold, happy in heavenly
+meditation. That cloister made abundant returns in its season to these
+granaries of the Lord; but so idle has it become now, that it is fit
+the world should know its barrenness. The days of my mortal life were
+drawing to a close, when I was besought and drawn into wearing the hat
+which descends every day from bad head to worse.[32] St. Peter and St.
+Paul came lean and barefoot, getting their bread where they could; but
+pastors now-a-days must be lifted from the ground, and have ushers going
+before them, and train-bearers behind them, and ride upon palfreys
+covered with their spreading mantles, so that two beasts go under one
+skin.[33] O Lord, how long!"
+
+At these words Dante saw more splendours come pouring down the ladder,
+and wheel round and round, and become at every wheel more beautiful.
+The whole dazzling body then gathered round the indignant speaker, and
+shouted something in a voice so tremendous, that the poet could liken it
+to nothing on earth. The thunder was so overwhelming, that he did not
+even hear what they said.[34]
+
+Pallid and stunned, he turned in affright to Beatrice, who comforted him
+as a mother comforts a child that wants breath to speak. The shout was
+prophetic of the vengeance about to overtake the Church. Beatrice then
+directed hisattention to a multitude of small orbs, which increased one
+another's beauty by interchanging their splendours. They enclosed the
+spirits of those who most combined meditation with love. One of them was
+Saint Benedict; and others Macarius and Romoaldo.[35] The light of St.
+Benedict issued forth from among its companions to address the poet;
+and after explaining how its occupant was unable farther to disclose
+himself, inveighed against the degeneracy of the religious orders. It
+then rejoined its fellows, and the whole company clustering into one
+meteor, swept aloft like a whirlwind. Beatrice beckoned the poet to
+ascend after them. He did so, gifted with the usual virtue by her eyes;
+and found himself in the twin light of the Gemini, the constellation
+that presided over his birth. He was now in the region of the fixed
+stars.
+
+"Thou art now," said his guide, "so near the summit of thy prayers, that
+it behoves thee to take a last look at things below thee, and see
+how little they should account in thine eyes." Dante turned his
+eyes downwards through all the seven spheres, and saw the earth so
+diminutive, that he smiled at its miserable appearance. Wisest, thought
+he, is the man that esteems it least; and truly worthy he that sets his
+thoughts on the world to come. He now saw the moon without those spots
+in it which made him formerly attribute the variation to dense and rare.
+He sustained the brightness of the face of the sun, and discerned all
+the signs and motions and relative distances of the planets. Finally, he
+saw, as he rolled round with the sphere in which he stood, and by virtue
+of his gifted sight, the petty arena, from hill to harbour, which filled
+his countrymen with such ferocious ambition; and then he turned his eyes
+to the sweet eyes beside him.[36]
+
+Beatrice stood wrapt in attention, looking earnestly towards the south,
+as if she expected some appearance. She resembled the bird that sits
+among the dewy leaves in the darkness of night, yearning for the coming
+of the morning, that she may again behold her young, and have light by
+which to seek the food, that renders her fatigue for them a joy. So
+stood Beatrice, looking; which caused Dante to watch in the same
+direction, with the feelings of one that is already possessed of some
+new delight by the assuredness of his expectation.[37]
+
+The quarter on which they were gazing soon became brighter and brighter,
+and Beatrice exclaimed, "Behold the armies of the triumph of Christ!"
+Her face appeared all fire, and her eyes so full of love, that the poet
+could find no words to express them.
+
+As the moon, when the depths of heaven are serene with her fulness,
+looks abroad smiling among her eternal handmaids the stars, that paint
+every gulf of the great hollow with beauty;[38] so brightest, above
+myriads of splendours around it, appeared a sun which gave radiance to
+them all, even as our earthly sun gives light to the constellations.
+
+"O Beatrice!" exclaimed Dante, overpowered, "sweet and beloved guide!"
+
+"Overwhelming," said Beatrice, "is the virtue with which nothing can
+compare. What thou hast seen is the Wisdom and the Power, by whom the
+path between heaven and earth has been laid open."[39]
+
+Dante's soul--like the fire which falls to earth out of the swollen
+thunder-cloud, instead of rising according to the wont of fire--had
+grown too great for his still mortal nature; and he could afterwards
+find within him no memory of what it did.
+
+"Open thine eyes," said Beatrice, "and see me now indeed. Thou hast
+beheld things that empower thee to sustain my smiling."
+
+Dante, while doing as he was desired, felt like one who has suddenly
+waked up from a dream, and endeavours in vain to recollect it.
+
+"Never," said he, "can that moment be erased from the book of the past.
+If all the tongues were granted me that were fed with the richest milk
+of Polyhymnia and her sisters, they could not express one thousandth
+part of the beauty of that divine smile, or of the thorough perfection
+which it made of the whole of her divine countenance."
+
+But Beatrice said, "Why dost thou so enamour thee of this face, and
+lose the sight of the beautiful guide, blossoming beneath the beams of
+Christ? Behold the rose, in which the Word was made flesh.[40] Behold
+the lilies, by whose odour the way of life is tracked."
+
+Dante looked, and gave battle to the sight with his weak eyes.[41]
+
+As flowers on a cloudy day in a meadow are suddenly lit up by a gleam of
+sunshine, he beheld multitudes of splendours effulgent with beaming rays
+that smote on them from above, though he could not discern the source of
+the effulgence. He had invoked the name of the Virgin when he looked;
+and the gracious fountain of the light had drawn itself higher up within
+the heaven, to accommodate the radiance to his faculties. He then beheld
+the Virgin herself bodily present,--her who is fairest now in heaven,
+as she was on earth; and while his eyes were being painted with her
+beauty,[42] there fell on a sudden a seraphic light from heaven, which,
+spinning into a circle as it came, formed a diadem round her head, still
+spinning, and warbling as it spun. The sweetest melody that ever drew
+the soul to it on earth would have seemed like the splitting of a
+thunder-cloud, compared with the music that sung around the head of that
+jewel of Paradise.[43]
+
+"I am Angelic Love," said the light, "and I spin for joy of the womb in
+which our Hope abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I thus attend
+thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his
+loving-kindness from sphere to sphere."
+
+All the other splendours now resounded the name of Mary. The Virgin
+began ascending to pursue the path of her Son; and Dante, unable to
+endure her beauty as it rose, turned his eyes to the angelical callers
+on the name of Mary, who remained yearning after her with their hands
+outstretched, as a babe yearns after the bosom withdrawn from his lips.
+Then rising after her themselves, they halted ere they went out of
+sight, and sung "O Queen of Heaven" so sweetly, that the delight never
+quitted the air.
+
+A flame now approached and thrice encircled Beatrice, singing all the
+while so divinely, that the poet could retain no idea expressive of its
+sweetness. Mortal imagination cannot unfold such wonder. It was Saint
+Peter, whom she had besought to come down from his higher sphere, in
+order to catechise and discourse with her companion on the subject of
+faith.
+
+The catechising and the discourse ensued, and were concluded by the
+Apostle's giving the poet the benediction, and encircling his forehead
+thrice with his holy light. "So well," says Dante, "was he pleased with
+my answers."[44]
+
+"If ever," continued the Florentine, "the sacred poem to which heaven
+and earth have set their hands, and which for years past has wasted my
+flesh in the writing, shall prevail against the cruelty that shut me out
+of the sweet fold in which I slept like a lamb, wishing harm to none but
+the wolves that beset it,--with another voice, and in another guise than
+now, will I return, a poet, and standing by the fount of my baptism,
+assume the crown that belongs to me; for I there first entered on the
+faith which gives souls to God; and for that faith did Peter thus
+encircle my forehead."[45]
+
+A flame enclosing Saint James now succeeded to that of Saint Peter, and
+after greeting his predecessor as doves greet one another, murmuring and
+moving round, proceeded to examine the mortal visitant on the subject
+of Hope. The examination was closed amidst resounding anthems of,"
+Let their hope be in thee;"[46] and a third apostolic flame ensued,
+enclosing Saint John, who completed the catechism with the topic of
+Charity. Dante acquitted himself with skill throughout; the spheres
+resounded with songs of "Holy, holy," Beatrice joining in the warble;
+and the poet suddenly found Adam beside him. The parent of the human
+race knew by intuition what his descendant wished to learn of him; and
+manifesting his assent before he spoke, as an animal sometimes does by
+movements and quiverings of the flesh within its coat, corresponding
+with its good-will,[47] told him, that his fall was not owing to the
+fruit which he tasted, but to the violation of the injunction not to
+taste it; that he remained in the Limbo on hell-borders upwards of five
+thousand years; and that the language he spoke had become obsolete
+before the days of Nimrod.
+
+The gentle fire of Saint Peter now began to assume an awful brightness,
+such as the planet Jupiter might assume, if Mars and it were birds,
+and exchanged the colour of their plumage.[48] Silence fell upon the
+celestial choristers; and the Apostle spoke thus:
+
+"Wonder not if thou seest me change colour. Thou wilt see, while I
+speak, all which is round about us colour in like manner. He who usurps
+my place on earth,--_my_ place, I say,--ay, _mine_,--which before God is
+now vacant,--has converted the city in which my dust lies buried into a
+common-sewer of filth and blood; so that the fiend who fell from hence
+rejoices himself down there."
+
+At these words of the Apostle the whole face of Heaven was covered with
+a blush, red as dawn or sunset; and Beatrice changed colour, like a
+maiden that shrinks in alarm from the report of blame in another. The
+eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the
+Cross.
+
+Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his
+appearance:
+
+"Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ
+fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,--the blood
+of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor
+Urban; men, for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They died that souls
+might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that
+the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom
+against the other; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the
+faithful; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying documents,
+which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm
+of God, why sleepest thou? Men out of Gascony and Cahors are even
+now making ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning, to what vile
+conclusion must thou come! But the high Providence, which made Scipio
+the sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the world, will fail not its
+timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing
+must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and
+hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself."
+
+As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the
+sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in
+the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apostle, as he turned with the
+other saints to depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they
+became viewless.[49]
+
+The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same
+instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or
+_Primum Mobile_, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of
+those beneath it.
+
+[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
+something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
+and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
+the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
+the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
+altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
+invective awful.
+
+Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of
+inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies.
+All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained
+many mysteries to him connected with that sight; and then vehemently
+denounced the false and foolish teachers that quit the authority of the
+Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the
+gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig.[50]
+
+Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face became so full
+of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to endeavour to speak of
+it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed
+by any save its Maker.[51] Her look carried him upward as before, and
+he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light;--of light made of
+intellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy; joy, transcendant
+above all sweetness.
+
+Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him,
+swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes
+against the blinded eyes; but the light was love here, and instead of
+injuring, gave new power to the object it embraced.
+
+With this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante
+looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours,
+and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest
+flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched
+themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile,
+like rubies set in gold; till inebriated with the odours, they recast
+themselves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as one returned,
+another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light,
+that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature; for the river,
+and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing
+flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which
+they included; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as
+without further assistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as
+they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an
+infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and his
+eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became
+a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him,
+like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined
+courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circumference larger
+than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was
+reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile
+below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's
+side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with
+all its verdure and its flowers; so, round about on all sides, upon
+thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat
+beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together
+formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which ascended above them,
+tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasurable rose,--all dilating
+itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises
+of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the
+flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew
+forward her companion, and said, "Behold the innumerable assemblage of
+the white garments! Behold our city, how large its circuit! Behold our
+seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comers are wanted to
+fill them! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, surmounted with
+the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal
+feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set
+Italy right before she is prepared for it.[52] The blind waywardness of
+which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of
+hunger, kicks away his nurse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot
+walk in the same path with such a man, whatever be the road.[53] But God
+will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon
+Magus; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of
+Alagna still lower.[54]"
+
+In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed multitude of human souls
+lay manifest before the eyes of the poet; and now he observed, that the
+winged portion of the blest, the angels, who fly up with their wings
+nearer to Him that fills them with love, came to and fro upon the rose
+like bees; now descending into its bosom, now streaming back to the
+source of their affection. Their faces were all fire, their wings
+golden, their garments whiter than snow. Whenever they descended on
+the flower, they went from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and
+communicating the peace and ardour which they gathered as they gave.
+Dante beheld all,--every flight and action of the whole winged
+multitude,--without let or shadow; for he stood in the region of light
+itself, and light has no obstacle where it is deservedly vouchsafed.
+
+"Oh," cries the poet, "if the barbarians that came from the north stood
+dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they
+saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who
+had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the
+people of Florence to beings just and sane?"
+
+Dante stood, without a wish either to speak or to hear. He felt like a
+pilgrim who has arrived within the place of his devotion, and who looks
+round about him, hoping some day to relate what he sees. He gazed
+upwards and downwards, and on every side round about, and saw movements
+graceful with every truth of innocence, and faces full of loving
+persuasion, rich in their own smiles and in the light of the smiles of
+others.
+
+He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone;--gone, as a messenger from
+herself told him, to resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the
+messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in the third circle from the
+top, as far from Dante as the bottom of the sea is from the region of
+thunder; and yet he saw her as plainly as if she had been close at hand.
+He addressed words to her of thanks for all she had done for him, and
+a hope for her assistance after death; and she looked down at him and
+smiled.
+
+The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade the poet lift his eyes higher;
+and Dante beheld the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in the centre
+of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels
+were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour
+and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and
+she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all
+the blessed.
+
+At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful--she that opened the wound
+which Mary closed; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice; and
+at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then
+Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the
+Miserere;[55] and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the
+flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived
+before Christ from those who lived after; a line which, on the opposite
+side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the
+Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was
+divided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and
+underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices,
+were the souls of such as were too young to have attained Heaven by
+assistance of good works.
+
+St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the Virgin, and
+gather from her countenance the power of beholding the face of Christ as
+God. Her aspect was flooded with gladness from the spirits around her;
+while the angel who had descended to her on earth now hailed her above
+with "Ave, Maria!" singing till the whole host of Heaven joined in
+the song. St. Bernard then prayed to her for help to his companion's
+eyesight. Beatrice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the
+prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the Virgin, after benignly
+looking on the petitioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the way with
+her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then looked also, and
+beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory to endure.
+
+He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever
+trickled to his heart.
+
+Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far
+vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey
+to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he
+saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose
+sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted,
+attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld,
+concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is
+diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the
+universe--all substance and accident and mode--all so compounded that
+they become one light. He thought he beheld at one and the same time
+the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies;
+because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the
+course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.
+
+But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he
+could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for
+completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain
+it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as
+short of right speech as the sounds of an infant's tongue while it is
+murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light,
+the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with
+the succession of the astonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear
+self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same
+breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does
+rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from
+both.[56]
+
+O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone
+understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so
+understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.
+
+The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted
+by its own colours with the likeness of a human face.[57]
+
+But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw
+his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician
+experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the
+principle by which he is to square it.
+
+He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed
+him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the
+discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire
+became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the
+particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the
+stars.[58]
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A curious and happy image.
+
+  "Tornan de' nostri visi le postille
+  Debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte
+  Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille:
+  Tali vid' io più facce a parlar pronte." ]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Rodolfo da Tossignano, _Hist. Seraph. Relig._ P. i. p.
+138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda:
+'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister,
+having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other
+abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried
+away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her
+religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her
+nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new
+husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity
+to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as
+to strike grief and horror into the beholders; and thus, in a few days,
+through the divine disposal, she passed with a palm of virginity to the
+Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to
+certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has chosen to pass it over
+discreetly, by making Piccarda say, 'God knows how, after that, my life
+was framed.'"--_Cary_, ut sup. p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 3: A lovely simile indeed.
+
+  "Tanto lieta
+  Ch' arder parea d'amor nel primo foco."
+
+[Footnote 4: Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken
+out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second.
+"She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting
+from Muratori and others); "and because it was not credited that she
+could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion; and it
+was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty to see her. Many
+came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased."--_Translation of Dante_, ut
+sup. p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings.]
+
+[Footnote 6:
+
+  "Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth
+  Superillustrans claritate tuâ
+  Felices ignes horum Malahoth."
+  _Malahoth_; Hebrew, _kingdoms_.]
+
+
+[Footnote 7: The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the
+nature of the inhabitants.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Charles Martel, son of the king of Naples and Sicily, and
+crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become acquainted with Dante
+during the poet's youth, when the prince met his royal father in the
+city of Florence. He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father,
+and who was the friend of Petrarch.
+
+"The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star," says
+Cary, "are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i. cap. 3,
+in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. viii. p. 173. She eloped from her
+first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello (see
+Purg. canto vi. and vii.); with whom she is supposed to have cohabited
+before her marriage: then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife
+was living at the same time in the same city; and, on his being murdered
+by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of
+Braganzo: lastly, when he also had fallen by the same hand, she, after
+her brother's death, was again wedded in Verona."--_Translation of
+Dante_, ut sup. p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in the _Discorso
+sul Testo_, p. 329.
+
+Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab,
+is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the
+Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being
+asked, during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the orthodox
+and heterodox were to be distinguished, he said, "Kill all: God will
+know his own."
+
+For Rahab, see _Joshua_, chap. ii. and vi.; and _Hebrews_. xi. 31]
+
+[Footnote 9: The reader need not be required to attend to the
+extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding
+passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology
+or the poet might have desired.]
+
+[Footnote 10: These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and
+schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no
+longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after
+them.
+
+Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every
+respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity
+of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church,
+Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many
+dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with
+voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much
+light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the
+old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our
+imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must
+be gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted
+enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the
+forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is
+more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all these dances and
+tinklings.]
+
+[Footnote 11:
+
+  "Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo."
+
+Cruel indeed;--the founder of the Inquisition! The "loving minion"
+is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of "_amoroso drudo_." But what a
+minion, and how loving! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of
+course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down
+other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia.
+So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent
+semi-barbarism in the character of Spain, which it has never got rid of
+to this day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern patriots, it
+would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even
+Lope de Vega was an inquisitor; and Mendoza, the entertaining author of
+Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cervantes, however, is enough to
+sweeten a whole peninsula.]
+
+[Footnote 12: What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility
+enough to apply it to himself!]
+
+[Footnote 13:
+
+  "O sanguis meus, o superinfusa
+  Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui
+  Bis unquam coeli janua reclusa?"
+
+The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet
+in "the obscurity of a learned language." And in truth it is a little
+strong.]
+
+[Footnote 14:
+
+  "Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso
+  Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo
+  De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso."
+
+That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more
+favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei
+essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)--_Variorum edition of
+Dante_, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times
+in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the
+original passage, with another version, in the Appendix.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of
+the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman,
+of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the
+co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who
+appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old
+commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate
+that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so,
+Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved
+Cæsar;--that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip
+of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks.]
+
+
+[Footnote 17:
+
+  "Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,
+  Più è tacer che ragionare onesto."
+
+Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the
+lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a
+boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general
+character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts
+(see the opening of canto xvi., Paradise, in the original), that while
+he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto
+xv. 73, &c.), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble
+condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity
+of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic,
+may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious
+specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours
+is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that
+Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a
+harbinger.
+
+All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on
+the Cross!]
+
+[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with
+argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old
+families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names,
+of which nothing else is recorded.]
+
+[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious
+popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue
+of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
+
+With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have
+first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to
+marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
+Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that
+he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his
+engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 20:
+
+  "Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
+  Più caramente; e questo e quello strale
+  Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
+
+  Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
+  Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle
+  Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
+
+  E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,
+  Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia
+  Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
+
+  Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
+  Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso
+  Ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.
+
+  Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
+  Farà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia bello
+  Averti fatta parte per te stesso."
+
+[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of
+Verona.]
+
+[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who
+had received Dante at his court.]
+
+[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paléo"]
+
+[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
+Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne,
+or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the
+former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin?)
+seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text
+brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante)
+might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second
+William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
+
+[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
+
+  "Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
+  De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia."
+
+In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the
+verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the
+beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats
+them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings
+against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my
+heart (like hers) contented.
+
+"_Boccaccio._--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of
+the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_
+quite enough without _che la sazia?_The picture is before us, the
+sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
+
+"_Petrarch._--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your
+remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as
+blemishes, and even more."--p. 92.
+
+Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety
+itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety.]
+
+[Footnote 30:
+
+  "E come a buon cantor buon citarista
+  Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda
+  In che più di piacer lo canto acquista;
+
+  Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda,
+  Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
+  Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
+
+  Con le parole muover le fiammette." ]
+
+[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
+and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a
+private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to
+Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age." Petrarch also makes honourable
+mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while
+in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem
+there.--_Lombardi in loc._ vol. III. p. 547.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat.]
+
+[Footnote 33: "Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle."]
+
+[Footnote 34:
+
+  "Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
+  E fero un grido di sì alto suono,
+  Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
+
+  Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono."
+
+  Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
+  And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
+  Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
+
+  Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
+
+If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage
+into his treatise on the Sublime.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.
+Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the
+Camaldoli.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage
+in Cowley
+
+  "Lo, I mount; and lo,
+  How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!
+  Where shall I find the noble British land?
+  Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
+  Which in the sea does lie,
+  And seems a grain o' the sand.
+  For this will any sin, or bleed?
+  Of civil wars is this the meed?
+  And is it this, alas, which we,
+  Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie?"
+
+And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very
+finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the
+Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--
+
+  "Where am I now? angels and God is here."
+
+All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full
+of grandeur and loveliness.]
+
+[Footnote 37:
+
+  "Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,
+  Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
+  La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
+
+  Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
+  E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
+  In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
+
+  Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,
+  E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
+  Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
+
+  Così la donna mia si stava eretta
+  E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
+  Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
+
+  Sì the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
+  Fecimi quale è quei che disiando
+  Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga." ]
+
+[Footnote 38:
+
+  "Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
+  Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
+  Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni."
+
+[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person.]
+
+[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary.]
+
+[Footnote 41:
+
+  "Mi rendei
+  A la battaglia de' debili cigli."]
+
+[Footnote 42:
+
+  "Ambo le luci mi dipinse."
+
+[Footnote 43:
+
+  "Qualunque melodia più dolce suona
+  Qua giù, e più a se l'anima tira,
+  Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
+
+  Comparata al sonar di quella lira
+  Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
+  Del quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira." ]
+
+  [Footnote 44:
+
+  "Benedicendomi cantando
+  Tre volte cinse me, sì com' io tacqui,
+  L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
+
+  Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui."
+
+It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to
+suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion
+which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his
+_Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
+of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_,
+12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by
+the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough
+to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he
+expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed
+to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of
+Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist!]
+
+[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the
+twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just
+given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
+
+  "Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
+  Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
+  Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
+
+  Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra
+  Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
+  Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
+
+  Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
+  Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
+  Del mio battesmo prenderò 'l capello:
+
+  Perocchè ne la fede che fa conte
+  L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
+  Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte." ]
+
+[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te." _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says,
+"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee."]
+
+[Footnote 47:
+
+  "Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
+  Sì che l' affetto convien che si paia
+  Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia."
+
+A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for
+the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in
+which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of
+doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian
+sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles
+to one's imagination.]
+
+[Footnote 48:
+
+  "Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
+  Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
+  Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne."
+
+Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical
+image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the
+tremendous passage that ensues!]
+
+[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
+something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
+and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
+the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
+the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
+altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
+invective awful.
+
+A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope
+would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the
+hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
+poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic?--I am afraid, all things considered,
+we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius
+the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine
+Church-hymns he would have written!]
+
+[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence!) that
+for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The
+preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings
+them into Heaven!]
+
+[Footnote 51:
+
+  "Certo io credo
+  Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda." ]
+
+[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the
+close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of
+restoration to his country were at an end.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now
+dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had
+prepared for him.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to
+thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle
+Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical!]
+
+[Footnote 55: David.]
+
+[Footnote 56: The Trinity.]
+
+[Footnote 57: The Incarnation.]
+
+[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p.
+845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe
+de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the
+curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of
+his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy
+augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention,
+however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations
+terminated.]
+
+
+
+PULCI:
+
+
+Critical Notice
+
+of
+
+PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.
+
+Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after
+Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after
+tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he
+seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety
+of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the
+absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be
+the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet
+of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a
+susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in
+earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most
+laughable sallies.
+
+Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble
+family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into
+Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of
+December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of
+a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo,
+the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and
+Lucca wrote a romance called the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, and is commended
+for his _Heroic Epistles_. Little else is known of these brothers; and
+not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the
+name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was
+one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary
+circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always
+meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens.
+Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little
+credit (Zilioli _On the Italian Poets_), and an earlier printed book,
+which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone _De
+Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinæ_), say that he died miserably in Padua,
+and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is
+not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici
+family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its
+troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their
+enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite
+allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their
+master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I
+have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible
+death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther,
+calling them both the greatest villains (_sceleratissimi_); and adding,
+that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his
+bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
+
+Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a
+ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical
+paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a
+Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good
+humour--sport to amuse their friends--a perilous speculation. Besides
+his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his
+brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems,
+and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, _La Beca_, in
+emulation of the charming poem _La Nencia_, the first of its kind,
+written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo,
+who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power
+of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs
+for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
+
+The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind.
+Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such
+differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the
+latter's youth, probably from his birth--is spoken of in a tone of
+domestic intimacy by his wife--and is enumerated by him among his
+companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on
+Hawking _(La Caccia col Falcone_), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen
+about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into
+a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a
+sonnet:
+
+"'Luigi Pulci ov' è, che non si sente?' 'Egli se n' andò dianzi in quel
+boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr à fantasticar
+forse un sonetto.'"
+
+"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw _him_." "Oh, in the wood there. Gone,
+depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain--some whim, That will
+not let him rest till it's a sonnet."
+
+In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his
+seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the
+courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down
+the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he
+says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make
+of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or
+other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here--he
+who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it." Such is the
+first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the
+sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial
+listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with
+the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by
+Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in
+somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della
+Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in
+turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in
+the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of
+Lorenzo.
+
+"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia,
+Che questa non è storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la
+via,
+
+Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la
+pazzia;
+
+Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi è infinita.
+
+La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei
+boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con
+lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E così fuggo mille
+urban dispetti: Sì ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur
+sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
+
+I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this
+side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that
+the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and
+contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such
+crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to
+know 'em.
+
+Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods
+and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me
+baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And
+thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew
+your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites."
+
+He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted
+by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the
+laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little
+troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
+
+Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his
+"refuge." The _Morgante Maggiore_, the work which has rendered the name
+of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely
+narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production
+that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points.
+The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which
+prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance
+of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome.
+The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then
+settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied
+with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think,
+and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the
+Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams
+to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity
+itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian
+theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect.
+Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to
+an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's
+friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise
+with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its
+liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in
+combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a
+mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the
+same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors;
+second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious
+dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of
+charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding;
+third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics,
+"sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly,
+a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended
+to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest
+at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he
+opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the
+piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix
+levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and
+the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his
+description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in
+all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question,
+as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind,
+which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi,
+who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if
+not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses
+himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his
+cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are
+constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner
+capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this
+monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo
+di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of
+profane derision." [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively
+and impassioned people of the south take what may be called
+household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than
+northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does
+not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as
+it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others,
+perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like
+some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is
+such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the
+representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest
+when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his
+own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to
+affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more
+acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to,
+ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more
+levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If
+Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well
+as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in
+something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation
+of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might
+explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse,
+if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever
+present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been
+interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening
+with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal
+seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards
+in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred
+invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the
+like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as
+gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the
+reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that
+ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout
+the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant
+officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the
+circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet
+perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest
+at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends,
+and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a
+captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling
+than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only
+warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.
+
+If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our
+author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by
+himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother,
+Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest woman, herself a poetess, who
+wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than
+once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. The _Morgante_
+concludes with an address respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with
+a hope that her "devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him
+in Paradise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that
+expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have
+had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his
+mother as to a jest?
+
+I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived,
+Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
+orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
+Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
+appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
+Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
+eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
+may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
+spheres." He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
+to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
+of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
+fellow-creature.
+
+Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
+pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
+appearance of Columbus.[3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
+Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
+rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
+aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
+of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
+doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
+adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
+Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
+the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
+stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
+bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
+hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
+Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
+persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
+him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
+Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
+ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
+screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
+
+Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
+regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
+style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
+and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
+eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
+point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
+and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
+disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
+render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
+this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
+of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
+Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci."[5] And all minds, in
+which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
+
+The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
+of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
+and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
+Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
+monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
+is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
+received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
+became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
+upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
+seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
+the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
+place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
+poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
+champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
+vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
+for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
+history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
+exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
+chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
+all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
+weak.[6]
+
+The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
+Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
+emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
+with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many
+adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins,
+his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more
+or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they
+assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne;
+and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most
+of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself
+and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's
+fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious;
+and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice
+better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a
+halter.
+
+There is, perhaps, no pure invention in the whole of this enlargement of
+old ballads and chronicles, except the characters of another giant, and
+of a rebel angel; for even Morgante's history, though told in a very
+different manner, has its prototype in the fictions of the pretended
+archbishop.[7] The Paladins are well distinguished from one another;
+Orlando as foremost alike in prowess and magnanimity, Rinaldo by his
+vehemence, Ricciardetto by his amours, Astolfo by an ostentatious
+rashness and self-committal; but in all these respects they appear to
+have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit
+any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular
+idiomatic phraseology; still less, though it has plenty of infernal
+magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring
+order, as in Ariosto; or with love-stories as good as Boiardo's, or even
+with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be
+found in both of those poets; albeit, in the fourteenth canto, there is
+a long _catalogue raisonné_ of the whole animal creation, which a lady
+has worked for Rinaldo on a pavilion of silk and gold.
+
+To these negative faults must be added the positive ones of too many
+trifling, unconnected, and uninteresting incidents (at least to readers
+who cannot taste the flavour of the racy Tuscan idiom); great occasional
+prolixity, even in the best as well as worst passages, not excepting
+Orlando's dying speeches; harshness in spite of his fluency (according
+to Foscolo), and even bad grammar; too many low or over-familiar forms
+of speech (so the graver critics allege, though, perhaps, from want of
+animal spirits or a more comprehensive discernment); and lastly (to say
+nothing of the question as to the gravity or levity of the theology),
+the strange exhibition of whole successive stanzas, containing as many
+questions or affirmations as lines, and commencing each line with the
+same words. They meet the eye like palisadoes, or a file of soldiers,
+and turn truth and pathos itself into a jest. They were most likely
+imitated from the popular ballads. The following is the order of words
+in which a young lady thinks fit to complain of a desert, into which she
+has been carried away by a giant. After seven initiatory O's addressed
+to her friends and to life in general, she changes the key into E:
+
+"E' questa, la mia patria dov' io nacqui? E' questo il mio palagio e 'l
+mio castello? E' questo il nido ov' alcun tempo giacqui? E' questo il
+padre e 'l mio dolce fratello? E' questo il popol dov' io tanto piacqui?
+E' questo il regno giusto antico e bello? E' questo il porto de la mia
+salute? E' questo il premio d' ogni mia virtute?
+
+Ove son or le mie purpuree veste? Ove son or le gemme e le ricchezze?
+Ove son or già le notturne feste? Ove son or le mie delicatezze? Ove son
+or le mie compagne oneste? Ove son or le fuggite dolcezze? Ove son or le
+damigelle mie? Ove son, dice? omè, non son già quie."[8]
+
+Is this the country, then, where I was born? Is this my palace, and my
+castle this? Is this the nest I woke in, every morn? Is this my father's
+and my brother's kiss? Is this the land they bred me to adorn? Is this
+the good old bower of all my bliss? Is this the haven of my youth and
+beauty? Is this the sure reward of all my duty?
+
+Where now are all my wardrobes and their treasures? Where now are all
+my riches and my rights? Where now are all the midnight feasts and
+measures? Where now are all the delicate delights? Where now are all the
+partners of my pleasures? Where now are all the sweets of sounds and
+sights? Where now are all my maidens ever near? Where, do I say? Alas,
+alas, not here!
+
+There are seven more "where nows," including lovers, and "proffered
+husbands," and "romances," and ending with the startling question and
+answer,--the counterpoint of the former close,--
+
+"Ove son l' aspre selve e i lupi adesso, E gli orsi, e i draghi, e i
+tigri? Son qui presso."
+
+Where now are all the woods and forests drear, Wolves, tigers, bears,
+and dragons? Alas, here!
+
+These are all very natural thoughts, and such, no doubt, as would
+actually pass through the mind of the young lady, in the candour of
+desolation; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them
+renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by
+the poor queen in the play of _Richard the Second_, when she overhears
+the discourse of the gardener:
+
+"My wretchedness _unto a roar of pins_, They'll talk of state."
+
+Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during
+the recital of these passages? Or did he flatter himself, that the
+comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be
+amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new
+one?[9]
+
+The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external
+nature, in the _Morgante_, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of
+heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost
+absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and
+delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion. The
+fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues
+it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to
+accept; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that "she
+wishes she could give him the sun;" and that if she were to say, after
+all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should
+be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is
+so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his
+lips. The way also in which another of these loving admirers of Paladins
+conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently
+hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with
+a ring and a graceful speech, is in a taste as high as any thing in
+Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their
+great successor.[10] Yet the tenderness of Pulci rather shews itself in
+the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little
+escapes of generous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great
+charms of the _Morgante_. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's
+encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he
+discovers a kinsman; and this goodness and relationship combined move
+the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who
+is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such
+a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without
+peril out of the clutches of a devil, he longs to go and set free the
+whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his
+affection for him. Rinaldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest
+till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part
+with him without manifesting a tenderness proportionate to their
+valour,--the old Homeric candour of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth
+himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he
+has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (_gentilezza_) even
+in hell; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, answers that he has no
+doubt of it, or of the capability of "friendship" in that quarter; and
+he says he is as "sorry to part with him as with a brother." The passage
+will be found in our abstract. There are no such devils as these in
+Dante; though Milton has something like them:
+
+  "Devil with devil damn'd
+  Firm concord holds: men only disagree."
+
+It is supposed that the character of Ashtaroth, which is a very new
+and extraordinary one, and does great honour to the daring goodness
+of Pulci's imagination, was not lost upon Milton, who was not only
+acquainted with the poem, but expressly intimates the pleasure he took
+in it.[11] Rinaldo advises this devil, as Burns did Lucifer, to "take a
+thought and mend." Ashtaroth, who had been a seraph, takes no notice of
+the advice, except with a waving of the recollection of happier times.
+He bids the hero farewell, and says he has only to summon him in order
+to receive his aid. This retention of a sense of his former angelical
+dignity has been noticed by Foscolo and Panizzi, the two best writers on
+these Italian poems.[12] A Calvinist would call the expression of the
+sympathy "hardened." A humanist knows it to be the result of a spirit
+exquisitely softened. An unbounded tenderness is the secret of all that
+is beautiful in the serious portion of our author's genius. Orlando's
+good-natured giant weeps even for the death of the scoundrel Margutte;
+and the awful hero himself, at whose death nature is convulsed and the
+heavens open, begs his dying horse to forgive him if ever he has wronged
+it.
+
+A charm of another sort in Pulci, and yet in most instances, perhaps,
+owing the best part of its charmingness to its being connected with the
+same feeling, is his wit. Foscolo, it is true, says it is, in general,
+more severe than refined; and it is perilous to differ with such a
+critic on such a point; for much of it, unfortunately, is lost to a
+foreign reader, in consequence of its dependance on the piquant old
+Tuscan idiom, and on popular sayings and allusions. Yet I should think
+it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some
+more agreeable quality; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most
+obvious to a foreigner may claim, if not to have originated, at least
+to have been very like the style of one who was among its declared
+admirers,--and who was a very polished writer,--Voltaire. It consists in
+treating an absurdity with an air as if it were none; or as if it had
+been a pure matter of course, erroneously mistaken for an absurdity.
+Thus the good abbot, whose monastery is blockaded by the giants (for the
+virtue and simplicity of his character must be borne in mind), after
+observing that the ancient fathers in the desert had not only locusts to
+eat, but manna, which he has no doubt was rained down on purpose from
+heaven, laments that the "relishes" provided for himself and his
+brethren should have consisted of "showers of stones." The stones, while
+the abbot is speaking, come thundering down, and he exclaims, "For God's
+sake, knight, come in, for the manna is falling!" This is exactly in the
+style of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. So when Margutte is asked
+what he believes in, and says he believes in "neither black nor blue,"
+but in a good capon, "whether roast or boiled," the reader is forcibly
+reminded of Voltaire's Traveller, _Scarmentado_, who, when he is desired
+by the Tartars to declare which of their two parties he is for, the
+party of the black-mutton or the white-mutton, answers, that the dish is
+"equally indifferent to him, provided it is tender." Voltaire, however,
+does injustice to Pulci, when he pretends that in matters of belief he
+is like himself,--a mere scoffer. The friend of Lucrezia Tornabuoni has
+evidently the tenderest veneration for all that is good and lovely in
+the Catholic faith; and whatever liberties he might have allowed himself
+in professed _extravaganzas_, when an age without Church-authority
+encouraged them, and a reverend canon could take part in those (it must
+be acknowledged) unseemly "high jinks," he never, in the _Morgante_,
+when speaking in his own person, and not in that of the worst
+characters, intimates disrespect towards any opinion which he did not
+hold to be irrelevant to a right faith. It is observable that his freest
+expressions are put in the mouth of the giant Margutte, the lowest
+of these characters, who is an invention of the author's, and a most
+extraordinary personage. He is the first unmitigated blackguard in
+fiction, and is the greatest as well as first. Pulci is conjectured,
+with great probability, to have designed him as a caricature of some
+real person; for Margutte is a Greek who, in point of morals, has been
+horribly brought up, and some of the Greek refugees in Italy were
+greatly disliked for the cynicism of their manners and the grossness of
+their lives. Margutte is a glutton, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and
+a blasphemer. He boasts of having every vice, and no virtue except
+fidelity; which is meant to reconcile Morgante to his company; but
+though the latter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives
+him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by
+the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The
+respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on
+what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs
+himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as
+though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt of
+a merely and grossly anti-serious mode of existence, and his
+consideration, nevertheless, towards the poor selfish wretch who had had
+no better training.
+
+To this wit and this pathos let the reader add a style of singular ease
+and fluency,--rhymes often the most unexpected, but never at a loss,--a
+purity of Tuscan acknowledged by every body, and ranking him among the
+authorities of the language,--and a modesty in speaking of his own
+pretensions equalled only by his enthusiastic extolments of genius in
+others; and the reader has before him the lively and affecting, hopeful,
+charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci, the precursor, and in some
+respects exemplar, of Ariosto, and, in Milton's opinion, a poet worth
+reading for the "good use" that may be made of him. It has been
+strangely supposed that his friend Politian, and Ficino the Platonist,
+not merely helped him with their books (as he takes a pride in telling
+us), but wrote a good deal of the latter part of the Morgante,
+particularly the speculations in matters of opinion. As if (to say
+nothing of the difference of style) a man of genius, however lively, did
+not go through the gravest reflections in the course of his life, or
+could not enter into any theological or metaphysical question, to which
+he chose to direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too
+often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy; and one
+fit of jaundice or hypochondria might have enabled the poet to see more
+visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps
+ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the
+disciple of Plato.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _Literature of the South of Europe_, Thomas Roscoe's
+Translation, vol. ii. p.54. For the opinions of other writers, here and
+elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him),
+_Storia della Poesia Italiana_, cap. v. sect. 25; Gravina, who is more
+so, _Della Ragion Poetica_ (quoted in Ginguéné, as below); Crescimbeni,
+_Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Poesia_, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3
+(Mathias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work,
+4to, Rome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was
+perhaps the "modestest sad most temperate writer" of his age ("il pin
+modesto e moderato"); Ginguéné, _Histoire Littéraire d'Italie_, tom. iv.
+p. 214; Foscolo, in the _Quarterly Review_, as further on; Panizzi on
+the _Romantic Poetry of the Italians_, ditto; Stebbing, _Lives of the
+Italian Poets_, second edition, vol, i.; and the first volume of _Lives
+of Literary and Scientific Men_, in _Lardner's Cyclopædia_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Canto xxv. The passage will be found in the present
+volume.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Id. And this also.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Canto xxvii. stanza 2.
+
+  "S' altro ajuto qui non si dimostra,
+  Sarà pur tragedía la istoria nostra.
+
+  Ed io pur commedía pensato avea
+  Iscriver del mio Carlo finalmente,
+  Ed _Alcuin_ così mi promettea," &c. ]
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+"In fine to adorerai l'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ma tu amerai il
+Pulci."--_Parn. Ital_. vol. ix. p. 344.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Ellis's _Specimens of Early English Poetical Romances_,
+vol. ii. p. 287; and Panizzi's _Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry
+of the Italians_; in his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p.
+113.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia_, &c. cap. xviii.
+p. 39 (Ciampi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferracutus, or
+Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had the strength of forty men,
+and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat
+with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which
+its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful
+beggings of the question; after which the giant stakes the credit of
+their respective beliefs on the event of their encounter.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Canto xix. st. 21.]
+
+[Footnote 9: When a proper name happens to be a part of the tautology,
+the look is still more extraordinary. Orlando is remonstrating with
+Rinaldo on his being unseasonably in love:
+
+  "Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gagliardia?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo sommo potere?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo senno di pria?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo antivedere?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua fantasia?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, l' arme e 'l tuo destriere?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gloria e fama?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo core? a la dama."
+
+Canto xvi. st. 50.
+
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy gagliardize?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy might indeed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy repute for wise?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy sagacious heed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy free-thoughted eyes?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy good arms and steed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy renown and glory?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, _thou?_--In a love-story.
+
+The incessant repetition of the names in the burdens of modern songs
+is hardly so bad as this. The single line questions and answers in the
+Greek drama were nothing to it. Yet there is a still more extraordinary
+play upon words in canto xxiii. st. 49, consisting of the description
+of a hermitage. It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the
+poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration
+mad with envy:--
+
+  "La _casa cosa_ parea _bretta_ e _brutta_,
+  _Vinta_ dal _vento_; e la _notta_ e la _notte_
+  _Stilla_ le _stelle_, ch' a _tetto_ era _tutto_:
+  Del _pane appena_ ne _dette_ ta' _dotte_.
+  _Pere_ avea _pure_, e qualche _fratta frutta_;
+  E _svina_ e _svena_ di _botto_ una _botte_
+  _Poscia_ per _pesci lasche_ prese a _l'esca_;
+  Ma il _letto allotta_ a la _frasca_ fu _fresca_."
+
+  This _holy hole_ was a vile _thin_-built _thing_,
+  _Blown_ by the _blast_; the _night nought_ else o'erhead
+  But _staring stars_ the _rude roof_ entering;
+  Their _sup_ of _supper_ was no _splendid spread_;
+  _Poor pears_ their fare, and such-_like libelling_
+  Of quantum suff;--their _butt_ all _but_;--_bad bread_;--
+  A _flash_ of _fish_ instead of _flush_ of _flesh_;
+  Their bed a _frisk al-fresco_, _freezing fresh_.
+
+Really, if Sir Philip Sidney and other serious and exquisite gentlemen
+had not sometimes taken a positively grave interest in the like pastimes
+of paronomasia, one should hardly conceive it possible to meet with
+them even in tragi-comedy. Did Pulci find these also in his
+ballad-authorities? If his Greek-loving critics made objections here,
+they had the advantage of him: unless indeed they too, in their
+Alexandrian predilections, had a sneaking regard for certain shapings
+of verse into altars and hatchets, such as have been charged upon
+Theocritus himself, and which might be supposed to warrant any other
+conceit on occasion.]
+
+[Footnote 10: See, in the original, the story of Meridiana, canto vii.
+King Manfredonio has come in loving hostility against her to endeavour
+to win her affection by his prowess. He finds her assisted by the
+Paladins, and engaged by her own heart to Uliviero; and in he despair of
+his discomfiture, expresses a wish to die by her hand. Meridiana, with
+graceful pity, begs his acceptance of a jewel, and recommends him to
+go home with his army; to which he grievingly consents. This indeed is
+beautiful; and perhaps I ought to have given an abstract of it, as a
+specimen of what Pulci could have done in this way, had he chosen.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "Perhaps it was from that same politic drift that the
+devil whipt St. Jerome in a lenten dream for reading Cicero; or else it
+was a fantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an
+angel been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon
+Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading and not the vanity, it had
+been plainly partial; first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not
+for scurrile Plautus, whom he confesses to have been reading not long
+before; next, to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers
+wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of such a
+tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may
+be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer;
+and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same
+purpose?"--_Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
+Printing_, Prose Works, folio, 1697, p. 378. I quote the passage
+as extracted by Mr. Merivale in the preface to his "Orlando in
+Roncesvalles,"--_Poems_, vol. ii. p. 41.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Ut sup. p. 222. Foscolo's remark is to be found in his
+admirable article on the _Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians_,
+in the _Quarterly Review_, vol. xxi. p. 525.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+HUMOURS OF GIANTS
+
+Twelve Paladins had the Emperor Charlemagne in his court; and the most
+wise and famous of them was Orlando. It is of him I am about to speak,
+and of his friend Morgante, and of Gan the traitor, who beguiled him to
+his death in Roncesvalles, where he sounded his horn so mightily after
+the dolorous rout.
+
+It was Easter, and Charles had all his court with him in Paris, making
+high feast and triumph. There was Orlando, the first among them, and
+Ogier the Dane, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Ansuigi; and there came
+Angiolin of Bayonne, and Uliviero, and the gentle Berlinghieri; and
+there was also Avolio and Avino, and Otho of Normandy, and Richard, and
+the wise Namo, and the aged Salamon, and Walter of Monlione, and Baldwin
+who was the son of the wretched Gan. The good emperor was too happy, and
+oftentimes fairly groaned for joy at seeing all his Paladins together.
+Now Morgante, the only surviving brother, had a palace made, after
+giant's fashion, of earth, and boughs, and shingles, in which he shut
+himself up at night. Orlando knocked, and disturbed him from his sleep,
+so that he came staring to the door like a madman, for he had had a
+bewildering dream.
+
+"Who knocks there?" quoth he.
+
+"You will know too soon," answered Orlando; "I am come to make you do
+penance for your sins, like your brothers. Divine Providence has sent me
+to avenge the wrongs of the monks upon the whole set of you. Doubt it
+not; for Passamonte and Alabastro are already as cold as a couple of
+pilasters.".
+
+"Noble knight," said Morgante, "do me no ill; but if you are a
+Christian, tell me in courtesy who you are."
+
+"I will satisfy you of my faith," replied Orlando; "I adore Christ; and
+if you please, you may adore him also."
+
+"I have had a strange vision," replied Morgante, with a low voice was
+assailed by a dreadful serpent, and called upon Mahomet in vain; then I
+called upon your God who was crucified, and he succoured me, and I was
+delivered from the serpent; so I am disposed to become a Christian."
+
+"If you keep in this mind," returned Orlando, "you shall worship the
+true God, and come with me and be my companion, and I will love you with
+perfect love. Your idols are false and vain; the true God is the God of
+the Christians. Deny the unjust and villanous worship of your Mahomet,
+and be baptised in the name of my God, who alone is worthy."
+
+"I am content," said Morgante.
+
+Then Orlando embraced him, and said, "I will lead you to the abbey."
+
+"Let us go quickly," replied Morgante, for he was impatient to make his
+peace with the monks.
+
+Orlando rejoiced, saying, "My good brother, and devout withal, you must
+ask pardon of the abbot; for God has enlightened you, and accepted you,
+and he would have you practise humility."
+
+"Yes," said Morgante, "thanks to you, your God shall henceforth be my
+God. Tell me your name, and afterwards dispose of me as you will." And
+he told him that he was Orlando.
+
+But Fortune stands watching in secret to baffle our designs. While
+Charles was thus hugging himself with delight, Orlando governed every
+thing at court, and this made Gan burst with envy; so that he began one
+day talking with Charles after the following manner--"Are we always to
+have Orlando for our master? I have thought of speaking to you about it
+a thousand times. Orlando has a great deal too much presumption. Here
+are we, counts, dukes, and kings, at your service, but not at his; and
+we have resolved not to be governed any longer by one so much younger
+than ourselves. You began in Aspramont to give him to understand how
+valiant he was, and that he did great things at that fountain; whereas,
+if it had not been for the good Gerard, I know very well where the
+victory would have been. The truth is, he has an eye upon the crown.
+This, Charles, is the worthy who has deserved so much! All your generals
+are afflicted at it. As for me, I shall repass those mountains over
+which I came to you with seventy-two counts. Do you take him for a
+Mars?"
+
+Orlando happened to hear these words as he sat apart, and it displeased
+him with the lord of Pontiers that he should speak so, but much more
+that Charles should believe him. He would have killed Gan, if Uliviero
+had not prevented him and taken his sword out of his hand; nay, he would
+have killed Charlemagne; but at last he went from Paris by himself,
+raging with scorn and grief. He borrowed, as he went, of Ermillina
+the wife of Ogier, the Dane's sword Cortana and his horse Rondel, and
+proceeded on his way to Brava. His wife, Alda the Fair, hastened to
+embrace him; but while she was saying, "Welcome, my Orlando," he was
+going to strike her with his sword, for his head was bewildered, and he
+took her for the traitor. The fair Alda marvelled greatly, but Orlando
+recollected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped from
+his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested himself with her
+for some days.
+
+He then took his leave, being still carried away by his disdain, and
+resolved to pass over into Heathendom; and as he rode, he thought, every
+step of the way, of the traitor Gan; and so, riding on wherever the road
+took him, he reached the confines between the Christian countries and
+the Pagan, and came upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert.
+
+Now above the abbey was a great mountain, inhabited by three fierce
+giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, another Alabastro, and the
+third Morgante; and these giants used to disturb the abbey by throwing
+things down upon it from the mountain with slings, so that the poor
+little monks could not go out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked,
+but nobody would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot
+came himself, and opening the door bade him welcome. The good man told
+him the reason of the delay, and said that since the arrival of the
+giants they had been so perplexed that they did not know what to do.
+"Our ancient fathers in the desert," quoth he, "were rewarded according
+to their holiness. It is not to be supposed that they lived only upon
+locusts; doubtless, it also rained manna upon them from heaven; but
+here one is regaled with stones, which the giants pour on us from the
+mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest of the
+three, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great trees by the roots, and
+casts them on us." While they were talking thus in the cemetery, there
+came a stone which seemed as if it would break Rondel's back.
+
+"For God's sake, cavalier," said the abbot, "come in, for the manna is
+falling."
+
+"My dear abbot," answered Orlando, "this fellow, methinks, does not wish
+to let my horse feed; he wants to cure him of being restive; the stone
+seems as if it came from a good arm." "Yes," replied the holy father,
+"I did not deceive you. I think, some day or other, they will cast the
+mountain itself on us."
+
+Orlando quieted his horse, and then sat down to a meal; after which he
+said, "Abbot, I must go and return the present that has been made to my
+horse." The abbot with great tenderness endeavoured to dissuade him, but
+in vain; upon which he crossed him on the forehead, and said, "Go, then;
+and the blessing of God be with you."
+
+Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing
+him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would
+stay with him for a page, promising to make him comfortable. "Stupid
+Saracen," said Orlando, "I come to you, according to the will of God, to
+be your death, and not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants
+here, and are no longer to be endured, dog that you are!"
+
+The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to his weapons;
+and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, which struck him
+on the head with such force, as not only made his helmet ring again, but
+felled him to the earth. Passamonte thought he was dead. "What could
+have brought that paltry fellow here?" said he, as he turned away. But
+Christ never forsakes his followers. While Passamonte was going away,
+Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, "How now, giant? do you fancy you
+have killed me? Turn back, for unless you have wings, your escape is
+out of the question, dog of a renegade!" The giant, greatly marvelling,
+turned back; and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cortana
+naked in his hand, cleft his skull; upon which, cursing Mahomet, the
+monster tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blaspheming fell
+the sour-hearted and cruel wretch; but Orlando, in the mean while,
+thanked the Father and the Word.
+
+The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant; who, when
+he saw him, endeavoured to pluck up a great piece of stony earth by the
+roots. "Ho, ho!" cried Orlando, "you too are for throwing stones,
+are you?" Then Alabastro took his sling, and flung at him so large a
+fragment as forced Orlando to defend himself, for if it had struck him,
+he would no more have needed a surgeon;[1] but collecting his strength,
+he thrust his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell
+dead.
+
+"Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, "for I have always heard you
+called a perfect knight; and as I said, I will follow you all my life
+long."
+
+And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey; and by the way
+Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort
+him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our
+Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we
+must submit to the will of God. The doctors of our Church," continued
+he, "are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in heaven were to
+feel pity for their miserable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion
+in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing; and this, you see, would
+plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of their
+faith, that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do what he
+may, they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible for him to
+err; so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering everlasting
+punishment, it does not disturb them an atom. This is the custom, I
+assure you, in the choirs above."[2]
+
+"A word to the wise," said Morgante; "you shall see if I grieve for my
+brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God, and behave
+myself like an angel. So dust to dust; and now let us enjoy ourselves. I
+will cut off their hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy
+monks, that they may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out
+alone into the desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has
+purified me, and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom
+of heaven." So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, and
+left their bodies to the beasts and birds.
+
+They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Orlando in great
+anxiety; but the monks not knowing what had happened, ran to the abbot
+in great haste and alarm, saying, "Will you suffer this giant to come
+in?" And when the abbot saw the giant, he changed countenance. Orlando,
+perceiving him thus disturbed, made haste and said, "Abbot, peace be
+with you! The giant is a Christian; he believes in Christ, and has
+renounced his false prophet, Mahomet." And Morgante shewing the hands in
+proof of his faith, the abbot thanked Heaven with great contentment of
+mind.
+
+The abbot did much honour to Morgante, comparing him with St. Paul; and
+they rested there many days. One day, wandering over the house, they
+entered a room where the abbot kept a quantity of armour; and Morgante
+saw a bow which pleased him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in
+the place a great scarcity of water; and Orlando said, like his good
+brother, "Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water." "Command me
+as you please," said he; and placing a great tub on his shoulders, he
+went towards a spring at which he had been accustomed to drink, at the
+foot of the mountain. Having reached the spring, he suddenly heard a
+great noise in the forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it
+in the bow, and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing
+towards the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean
+through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in revenge, ran
+towards the giant, without giving him time to use a second arrow; so he
+lent him a cuff on the head which broke the bone, and killed him also;
+which stroke the rest seeing fled in haste through the valley. Morgante
+then placed the tub full of water upon one of his shoulders, and the
+two porkers on the other, and returned to the abbey which was at some
+distance, without spilling a drop.
+
+The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still more the
+pork; for there is no animal to whom food comes amiss. They let their
+breviaries therefore go to sleep a while, and fell heartily to work, so
+that the cats and dogs had reason to lament the polish of the bones.
+
+"But why do we stay here doing nothing?" said Orlando one day to
+Morgante; and he shook hands with the abbot, and told him he must take
+his leave. "I must go," said he, "and make up for lost time. I ought to
+have gone long ago, my good father; but I cannot tell you what I feel
+within me, at the content I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall
+bear in mind and in heart with me for ever the abbot, the abbey, and
+this desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a
+time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for me, in his
+own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do not forget us in your
+prayers."
+
+When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, his heart melted
+within him for tenderness, and he said, "Knight, if we have failed in
+any courtesy due to your prowess and great gentleness (and indeed what
+we have done has been but little), pray put it to the account of our
+ignorance, and of the place which we inhabit. We are but poor men of
+the cloister, better able to regale you with masses and orisons and
+paternosters, than with dinners and suppers. You have so taken this
+heart of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I
+shall be with you still wherever you go; and, on the other hand, you
+will always be present here with me. This seems a contradiction; but you
+are wise, and will take my meaning discreetly. You have saved the very
+life and spirit within us; for so much perplexity had those giants cast
+about our place, that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May
+He who sent you into these woods reward the justice and piety by which
+we are delivered from our trouble. Thanks be to him and to you. We shall
+all be disconsolate at your departure. We shall grieve that we cannot
+detain you among us for months and years; but you do not wear these
+weeds; you bear arms and armour; and you may possibly merit as well in
+carrying those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your
+virtue has been the means of shewing the giant the way to heaven. Go in
+peace then, and prosper, whoever you may be. I do not seek your name;
+but if ever I am asked who it was that came among us, I shall say that
+it was an angel from God. If there is any armour or other thing that you
+would have, go into the room where it is, and take it."
+
+"If you have any armour that would suit my companion," replied Orlando,
+"that I will accept with pleasure."
+
+"Come and see," said the abbot; and they went to a room that was full of
+armour. Morgante looked all about, but could find nothing large enough,
+except a rusty breast-plate, which fitted him marvellously. It had
+belonged to an enormous giant, who was killed there of old by Orlando's
+father, Milo of Angrante. There was a painting on the wall which told
+the whole story: how the giant had laid cruel and long siege to the
+abbey; and how he had been overthrown at last by the great Milo. Orlando
+seeing this, said within himself: "O God, unto whom all things are
+known, how came Milo here, who destroyed this giant?" And reading
+certain inscriptions which were there, he could no longer keep a firm
+countenance, but the tears ran down his cheeks.
+
+When the abbot saw Orlando weep, and his brow redden, and the light of
+his eyes become child-like for sweetness, he asked him the reason; but,
+finding him still dumb with emotion, he said, "I do not know whether you
+are overpowered by admiration of what is painted in this chamber. You
+must know that I am of high descent, though not through lawful wedlock.
+I believe I may say I am nephew or sister's son to no less a man than
+that Rinaldo, who was so great a Paladin in the world, though my own
+father was not of a lawful mother. Ansuigi was his name; my own, out in
+the world, was Chiaramonte; and this Milo was my father's brother. Ah,
+gentle baron, for blessed Jesus' sake, tell me what name is yours!"
+
+Orlando, all glowing with affection, and bathed in tears, replied, "My
+dear abbot and cousin, he before you is your Orlando." Upon this, they
+ran for tenderness into each other's arms, weeping on both sides with
+a sovereign affection, too high to be expressed. The abbot was so
+over-joyed, that he seemed as if he would never have done embracing
+Orlando. "By what fortune," said the knight, "do I find you in this
+obscure place? Tell me, my dear abbot, how was it you became a monk, and
+did not follow arms, like myself and the rest of us?"
+
+"It is the will of God," replied the abbot, hastening to give his
+feelings utterance. "Many and divers are the paths he points out for us
+by which to arrive at his city; some walk it with the sword--some with
+pastoral staff. Nature makes the inclination different, and therefore
+there are different ways for us to take: enough if we all arrive safely
+at one and the same place, the last as well as the first. We are all
+pilgrims through many kingdoms. We all wish to go to Rome, Orlando;
+but we go picking out our journey through different roads. Such is the
+trouble in body and soul brought upon us by that sin of the old apple.
+Day and night am I here with my book in hand--day and night do you ride
+about, holding your sword, and sweating oft both in sun and shadow; and
+all to get round at last to the home from which we departed--I say, all
+out of anxiety and hope to get back to our home of old." And the giant
+hearing them talk of these things, shed tears also.
+
+The Paladin and the giant quitted the abbey, the one on horseback and
+the other on foot, and journeyed through the desert till they came to
+a magnificent castle, the door of which stood open. They entered, and
+found rooms furnished in the most splendid manner--beds covered with
+cloth of gold, and floors rejoicing in variegated marbles. There was
+even a feast prepared in the saloon, but nobody to eat it, or to speak
+to them.
+
+Orlando suspected some trap, and did not quite like it; but Morgante
+thought nothing worth considering but the feast. "Who cares for the
+host," said he, "when there's such a dinner? Let us eat as much as we
+can, and bear off the rest. I always do that when I have the picking of
+castles."
+
+They accordingly sat down, and being very hungry with their day's
+journey, devoured heaps of the good things before them, eating with all
+the vigour of health, and drinking to a pitch of weakness.[3] They sat
+late in this manner enjoying themselves, and then retired for the night
+into rich beds.
+
+But what was their astonishment in the morning at finding that they
+could not get out of the place! There was no door. All the entrances had
+vanished, even to any feasible window.
+
+"We must be dreaming," said Orlando.
+
+"My dinner was no dream, I'll swear," said the giant. "As for the rest,
+let it be a dream if it pleases."
+
+Continuing to search up and down, they at length found a vault with
+a tomb in it; and out of the tomb came a voice, saying, "You must
+encounter with me, or stay here for ever. Lift, therefore, the stone
+that covers me."
+
+"Do you hear that?" said Morgante; "I'll have him out, if it's the devil
+himself. Perhaps it's two devils, Filthy-dog and Foul-mouth, or Itching
+and Evil-tail."[4]
+
+"Have him out," said Orlando, "whoever he is, even were it as many
+devils as were rained out of heaven into the centre."
+
+Morgante lifted up the stone, and out leaped, surely enough, a devil in
+the likeness of a dried-up dead body, black as a coal. Orlando seized
+him, and the devil grappled with Orlando. Morgante was for joining him,
+but the Paladin bade him keep back. It was a hard struggle, and
+the devil grinned and laughed, till the giant, who was a master of
+wrestling, could bear it no longer: so he doubled him up, and, in spite
+of all his efforts, thrust him back into the tomb.
+
+"You'll never get out," said the devil, "if you leave me shut up."
+
+"Why not?" inquired the Paladin.
+
+"Because your giant's baptism and my deliverance must go together,"
+answered the devil. "If he is not baptised, you can have no deliverance;
+and if I am not delivered, I can prevent it still, take my word for it."
+
+Orlando baptised the giant. The two companions then issued forth,
+and hearing a mighty noise in the house, looked back, and saw it all
+vanished.
+
+"I could find it in my heart," said Morgante, "to go down to those same
+regions below, and make all the devils disappear in like manner. Why
+shouldn't we do it? We'd set free all the poor souls there. Egad, I'd
+cut off Minos's tail--I'd pull out Charon's beard by the roots--make a
+sop of Phlegyas, and a sup of Phlegethon--unseat Pluto,--kill Cerberus
+and the Furies with a punch of the face a-piece--and set Beelzebub
+scampering like a dromedary."
+
+"You might find more trouble than you wot of," quoth Orlando, "and get
+worsted besides. Better keep the straight path, than thrust your head
+into out-of-the-way places."
+
+Morgante took his lord's advice, and went straightforward with him
+through many great adventures, helping him with loving good-will as
+often as he was permitted, sometimes as his pioneer, and sometimes as
+his finisher of troublesome work, such as a slaughter of some thousands
+of infidels. Now he chucked a spy into a river--now felled a rude
+ambassador to the earth (for he didn't stand upon ceremony)--now cleared
+a space round him in battle with the clapper of an old bell which he had
+found at the monastery--now doubled up a king in his tent, and bore him
+away, tent and all, and a Paladin with him, because he would not let the
+Paladin go.
+
+In the course of these services, the giant was left to take care of a
+lady, and lost his master for a time; but the office being at an end, he
+set out to rejoin him, and, arriving at a cross-road, met with a very
+extraordinary personage.
+
+This was a giant huger than himself, swarthy-faced, horrible, brutish.
+He came out of a wood, and appeared to be journeying somewhere.
+Morgante, who had the great bell-clapper in his hand above-mentioned,
+struck it on the ground with astonishment, as much as to say, "Who the
+devil is this?" and then set himself on a stone by the way-side to
+observe the creature.
+
+"What's your name, traveller?" said Morgante, as it came up.
+
+"My name's Margutte," said the phenomenon. "I intended to be a giant
+myself, but altered my mind, you see, and stopped half-way; so that I am
+only twenty feet or so."
+
+"I'm glad to see you," quoth his brother-giant. "But tell me, are you
+Christian or Saracen? Do you believe in Christ or in _Apollo_?"
+
+"To tell you the truth," said the other, "I believe neither in black
+nor blue, but in a good capon, whether it be roast or boiled. I
+believe sometimes also in butter, and, when I can get it, in new wine,
+particularly the rough sort; but, above all, I believe in wine that's
+good and old. Mahomet's prohibition of it is all moonshine. I am the
+son, you must know, of a Greek nun and a Turkish bishop; and the first
+thing I learned was to play the fiddle. I used to sing Homer to it.
+I was then concerned in a brawl in a mosque, in which the old bishop
+somehow happened to be killed; so I tied a sword to my side, and went to
+seek my fortune, accompanied by all the possible sins of Turk and Greek.
+People talk of the seven deadly sins; but I have seventy-seven that
+never quit me, summer or winter; by which you may judge of the amount
+of my venial ones. I am a gambler, a cheat, a ruffian, a highwayman, a
+pick-pocket, a glutton (at beef or blows); have no shame whatever; love
+to let every body know what I can do; lie, besides, about what I can't
+do; have a particular attachment to sacrilege; swallow perjuries like
+figs; never give a farthing to any body, but beg of every body, and
+abuse them into the bargain; look upon not spilling a drop of liquor as
+the chief of all the cardinal virtues; but must own I am not much given
+to assassination, murder being inconvenient; and one thing I am bound to
+acknowledge, which is, that I never betrayed a messmate."
+
+"That's as well," observed Morgante; "because you see, as you don't
+believe in any thing else, I'd have you believe in this bell-clapper of
+mine. So now, as you have been candid with me, and I am well instructed
+in your ways, we'll pursue our journey together."
+
+The best of giants, in those days, were not scrupulous in their modes of
+living; so that one of the best and one of the worst got on pretty well
+together, emptying the larders on the road, and paying nothing but
+douses on the chops. When they could find no inn, they hunted elephants
+and crocodiles. Morgante, who was the braver of the two, delighted to
+banter, and sometimes to cheat, Margutte; and he ate up all the fare;
+which made the other, notwithstanding the credit he gave himself for
+readiness of wit and tongue, cut a very sorry figure, and seriously
+remonstrate: "I reverence you," said Margutte, "in other matters; but in
+eating, you really don't behave well. He who deprives me of my share at
+meals is no friend; at every mouthful of which he robs me, I seem to
+lose an eye. I'm for sharing every thing to a nicety, even if it be no
+better than a fig."
+
+"You are a fine fellow," said Morgante; "you gain upon me very much. You
+are 'the master of those who know.'"[6]
+
+So saying, he made him put some wood on the fire, and perform a hundred
+other offices to render every thing snug; and then he slept: and next
+day he cheated his great scoundrelly companion at drink, as he had
+done the day before at meat; and the poor shabby devil complained; and
+Morgante laughed till he was ready to burst, and again and again always
+cheated him.
+
+There was a levity, nevertheless, in Margutte, which restored his
+spirits on the slightest glimpse of good fortune; and if he realised a
+hearty meal, he became the happiest, beastliest, and most confident of
+giants. The companions, in the course of their journey, delivered a
+damsel from the clutches of three other giants. She was the daughter of
+a great lord; and when she got home, she did honour to Morgante as to
+an equal, and put Margutte into the kitchen, where he was in a state of
+bliss. He did nothing but swill, stuff, surfeit, be sick, play at dice,
+cheat, filch, go to sleep, guzzle again, laugh, chatter, and tell a
+thousand lies.
+
+Morgante took leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents.
+Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and impudent, daubed his
+face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in
+his hand, demanded "something for the cook." The fair hostess gave him
+a jewel; and the vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it
+with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that
+when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the
+earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had disgraced
+him for ever.
+
+"Softly!" said the brute-beast. "Didn't you take me with you, knowing
+what sort of fellow I was? Didn't I tell you I had every sin and shame
+under heaven; and have I deceived you by the exhibition of a single
+virtue?"
+
+Morgante could not help laughing at a candour of this excessive nature.
+So they went on their way till they came to a wood, where they rested
+themselves by a fountain, and Margutte fell fast asleep. He had a pair
+of boots on, which Morgante felt tempted to draw off, that he might see
+what he would do on waking. He accordingly did so, and threw them to a
+little distance among the bushes. The sleeper awoke in good time,
+and, looking and searching round about, suddenly burst into roars of
+laughter. A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off,
+making the most ridiculous gestures. The monkey busied himself, and the
+light-minded drunkard laughed; and at every fresh gesticulation of the
+new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at
+length it was found impossible to be restrained. The glutton had a
+laughing-fit. In vain he tried to stop himself; in vain his fingers
+would have loosened the buttons of his doublet, to give his lungs room
+to play. They couldn't do it; so he laughed and roared till he burst.
+The snap was like the splitting of a cannon. Morgante ran up to him, but
+it was of no use. He was dead.
+
+Alas! it was not the only death; it was not even the most trivial cause
+of a death. Giants are big fellows, but Death's a bigger, though he may
+come in a little shape. Morgante had succeeded in joining his master.
+He helped him to take Babylon; he killed a whale for him at sea that
+obstructed his passage; he played the part of a main-sail during a
+storm, holding out his arms and a great hide; but on coming to shore,
+a crab bit him in the heel; and behold the lot of the great giant--he
+died! He laughed, and thought it a very little thing, but it proved a
+mighty one.
+
+"He made the East tremble," said Orlando; "and the bite of a crab has
+slain him!"
+
+O life of ours, weak, and a fallacy![7]
+
+Orlando embalmed his huge friend, and had him taken to Babylon, and
+honourably interred; and, after many an adventure, in which he regretted
+him, his own days were closed by a far baser, though not so petty a
+cause.
+
+How shall I speak of it? exclaims the poet. How think of the horrible
+slaughter about to fall on the Christians and their greatest men, so
+that not a dry eye shall be left in France? How express my disgust at
+the traitor Gan, whose heart a thousand pardons from his sovereign, and
+the most undeserved rescues of him by the warrior he betrayed, could not
+shame or soften? How mourn the weakness of Charles, always deceived by
+him, and always trusting? How dare to present to my mind the good,
+the great, the ever-generous Orlando, brought by the traitor into the
+doleful pass of Roncesvalles and the hands of myriads of his enemies, so
+that even his superhuman strength availed not to deliver him out of the
+slaughterhouse, and he blew the blast with his dying breath, which was
+the mightiest, the farthest heard, and the most melancholy sound that
+ever came to the ears of the undeceived?
+
+Gan was known well to every body but his confiding sovereign. The
+Paladins knew him well; and in their moments of indignant disgust often
+told him so, though they spared him the consequences of his misdeeds,
+and even incurred the most frightful perils to deliver him out of the
+hands of his enemies. But he was brave; he was in favour with the
+sovereign, who was also their kinsman; and they were loyal and loving
+men, and knew that the wretch envied them for the greatness of their
+achievements, and might do the state a mischief; so they allowed
+themselves to take a kind of scornful pleasure in putting up with him.
+Their cousin Malagigi, the enchanter, had himself assisted Gan, though
+he knew him best of all, and had prophesied that the innumerable
+endeavours of his envy to destroy his king and country would bring some
+terrible evil at last to all Chistendom. The evil, alas! is at hand. The
+doleful time has come. It will be followed, it is true, by a worse fate
+of the wretch himself; but not till the valleys of the Pyrenees have run
+rivers of blood, and all France is in mourning.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A common pleasantry in the old romances--"Galaor went in,
+and then the halberders attacked him on one side, and the knight on the
+other. He snatched an axe from one, and turned to the knight and smote
+him, so that he had no need of a surgeon."--Southey's _Amadis of Gaul_,
+vol. i. p. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 2:
+
+  "Sonsi i nostri dottori accordati,
+  Pigliando tutti una conclusione,
+  Che que' che son nel ciel glorificati,
+  S' avessin nel pensier compassione
+  De' miseri parenti che dannati
+  Son ne lo inferno in gran confusione,
+  La lor felicità nulla sarebbe
+  E vedi the qui ingiusto Iddio parebbe.
+
+  Ma egli anno posto in Gesù ferma spene;
+  E tanto pare a lor, quanto a lui pare:
+  Afferman cio ch' e' fu, che facci bene,
+  E che non possi in nessun modo errare:
+  Se padre o madre è ne l'eterne pene,
+  Di questo non si posson conturbare:
+  Che quel che piace a Dio, sol piace a loro
+  Questo s'osserva ne l'eterno core.
+
+  Al savio suol bastar poche parole,
+  Disse Morgante: tu il potrai vedere,
+  De' miei fratelli, Orlando, se mi duole,
+  E s'io m'accordero di Dio al volere,
+  Come tu di che in ciel servar si suole:
+  Morti co' morti; or pensiam di godere:
+  Io vo' tagliar le mani a tutti quanti,
+  E porterolle a que' monaci santi."
+
+This doctrine, which is horrible blasphemy in the eyes of natural
+feeling, is good reasoning in Catholic and Calvinistic theology.
+They first make the Deity's actions a necessity from some barbarous
+assumption, then square them according to a dictum of the Councils, then
+compliment him by laying all that he has made good and kindly within us
+mangled and mad at his feet. Meantime they think themselves qualified to
+denounce Moloch and Jugghanaut!]
+
+[Footnote 3:
+
+  "E furno al here infermi, al mangiar sani."
+
+I am not sure that I am right in my construction of this passage.
+Perhaps Pulci means to say, that they had the appetites of men in
+health, and the thirst of a fever.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Cagnazzo, Farfarello. Libicocco, and Malacoda; names of
+devils in Dante.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Il maestro di color che sanno." A jocose application of
+Dante's praise of Aristotle.]
+
+[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace!"]
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
+
+Notice.
+
+This is the
+
+  "sad and fearful story
+  Of the Roncesvalles fight;"
+
+an event which national and religious exaggeration impressed deeply on
+the popular mind of Europe. Hence Italian romances and Spanish ballads:
+hence the famous passage in Milton,
+
+  "When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
+  By Fontarabbia:"
+
+hence Dante's record of the _dolorosa rotta_ (dolorous rout) in the
+_Inferno_, where he compares the voice of Nimrod with the horn sounded
+by the dying Orlando: hence the peasant in Cervantes, who is met by Don
+Quixote singing the battle as he comes along the road in the morning:
+and hence the song of Roland actually thundered forth by the army of
+William the Conqueror as they advanced against the English.
+
+But Charlemagne did not "fall," as Milton has stated. Nor does Pulci
+make him do so. In this respect, if in little else, the Italian poet
+adhered to the fact. The whole story is a remarkable instance of what
+can be done by poetry and popularity towards misrepresenting and
+aggrandising a petty though striking adventure. The simple fact was the
+cutting off the rear of Charlemagne's army by the revolted Gascons, as
+he returned from a successful expedition into Spain. Two or three only
+of his nobles perished, among whom was his nephew Roland, the obscure
+warden of his marches of Brittany. But Charlemagne was the temporal head
+of Christendom; the poets constituted his nephew its champion; and hence
+all the glories and superhuman exploits of the Orlando of Pulci and
+Ariosto. The whole assumption of the wickedness of the Saracens,
+particularly of the then Saracen king of Spain, whom Pulci's authority,
+the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, strangely called Marsilius, was nothing
+but a pious fraud; the pretended Marsilius having been no less a person
+than the great and good Abdoùlrahmaùn the First, who wrested the
+dominion of that country out of the hands of the usurpers of his
+family-rights. Yet so potent and long-lived are the most extravagant
+fictions, when genius has put its heart into them, that to this day we
+read of the devoted Orlando and his friends not only with gravity, but
+with the liveliest emotion.
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
+
+A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died
+in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses. Altogether
+impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of
+this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, than
+melancholy; but though Gan will die at last, Orlando must die
+before him, and that makes a tragedy of all. I had a doubt whether,
+consistently with the truth, I could give the reader even that sorry
+satisfaction; for at the beginning of the dreadful battle, Orlando's
+cousin, Rinaldo, who is said to have joined it before it was over, and
+there, as well as afterwards, to have avenged his death, was far away
+from the seat of slaughter, in Egypt; and how was I to suppose that he
+could arrive soon enough in the valleys of the Pyrenees? But an angel
+upon earth shewed me the secret, even Angelo Poliziano, the glory of his
+age and country. He informed me how Arnauld, the Provençal poet, had
+written of this very matter, and brought the Paladin from Egypt to
+France by means of the wonderful skill in occult science possessed by
+his cousin Malagigi--a wonder to the ignorant, but not so marvellous to
+those who know that all the creation is full of wonders, and who have
+different modes of relating the same events. By and by, a great many
+things will be done in the world, of which we have no conception now,
+and people will be inclined to believe them works of the devil, when, in
+fact, they will be very good works, and contribute to angelical effects,
+whether the devil be forced to have a hand in them or not; for evil
+itself can work only in subordination to good. So listen when the
+astonishment comes, and reflect and think the best. Meantime, we must
+speak of another and more truly devilish astonishment, and of the pangs
+of mortal flesh and blood.
+
+The traitor Gan, for the fiftieth time, had secretly brought the
+infidels from all quarters against his friend and master, the Emperor
+Charles; and Charles, by the help of Orlando, had conquered them all.
+The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court
+of France tribute; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited
+in this particular instance, and his known villany at all times, had
+succeeded in persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador
+into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting
+the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando.
+Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too; but the one
+was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes. The
+traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying
+him to write if he had any thing to say before the arrangements with
+Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his
+villany was manifest to every one but the old monarch. He fastened with
+equal tenderness on Uliviero, who smiled contemptuously in his face, and
+thought to himself, "You may make as many fair speeches as you choose,
+but you lie." All the other Paladins who were present thought the same
+and they said as much to the emperor; adding, that on no account should
+Gan be sent ambassador to Marsilius. But Charles was infatuated. His
+beard and his credulity had grown old together.
+
+Gan was received with great honour in Spain by Marsilius. The king,
+attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Saragossa to meet him,
+and then conducted him into the city amid tumults of delight. There
+was nothing for several days but balls, and games, and exhibitions
+of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French
+knights, and the people shouting "France! France! Mountjoy and St.
+Denis!"
+
+Gan made a speech, "like a Demosthenes," to King Marsilius in public;
+but he made him another in private, like nobody but himself. The king
+and he were sitting in a garden; they were traitors both, and began
+to understand, from one another's looks, that the real object of the
+ambassador was yet to be discussed. Marsilius accordingly assumed a more
+than usually cheerful and confidential aspect; and, taking his visitor
+by the hand, said, "You know the proverb, Mr. Ambassador--'At dawn, the
+mountain; afternoon, the fountain.' Different things at different hours.
+So here is a fountain to accommodate us."
+
+It was a very beautiful fountain, so clear that you saw your face in
+it as in a mirror; and the spot was encircled with fruit-trees that
+quivered with the fresh air. Gan praised it very much, contriving to
+insinuate, on one subject, his satisfaction with the glimpses he
+got into another. Marsilius understood him; and as he resumed the
+conversation, and gradually encouraged a mutual disclosure of their
+thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was enabled to
+do so by contemplating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its
+expression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime,
+saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan. By degrees, he began to touch
+on that dissatisfaction with Charlemagne and his court, which he knew
+was in both their minds: he lamented, not as to the ambassador, but as
+to the friend, the injuries which he said he had received from Charles
+in the repeated attacks on his dominions, and the emperor's wish to
+crown Orlando king of them; till at length he plainly uttered his
+belief, that if that tremendous Paladin were but dead, good men would
+get their rights, and his visitor and himself have all things at their
+disposal.
+
+Gan heaved a sigh, as if he was unwillingly compelled to allow the force
+of what the king said; but, unable to contain himself long, he lifted up
+his face, radiant with triumphant wickedness, and exclaimed, "Every word
+you utter is truth. Die he must; and die also must Uliviero, who struck
+me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like
+those? I have planned every thing--I have settled every thing already
+with their besotted master. Orlando could not be expected to be brought
+hither, where he has been accustomed to look for a crown; but he will
+come to the Spanish borders--to Roncesvalles--for the purpose of
+receiving the tribute. Charles will await him, at no great distance, in
+St. John Pied de Port. Orlando will bring but a small band with him;
+you, when you meet him, will have secretly your whole army at your back.
+You surround him; and who receives tribute then?"
+
+The new Judas had scarcely uttered these words, when the delight of him
+and his associate was interrupted by a change in the face of nature.
+The sky was suddenly overcast; it thundered and lightened; a laurel was
+split in two from head to foot; the fountain ran into burning blood;
+there was an earthquake, and the carob-tree under which Gan was sitting,
+and which was of the species on which Judas Iscariot hung himself,
+dropped some of its fruit on his head. The hair of the head rose in
+horror.
+
+Marsilius, as well as Gan, was appalled at this omen; but on assembling
+his soothsayers, they came to the conclusion that the laurel-tree turned
+the omen against the emperor, the successor of the Cæsars; though one
+of them renewed the consternation of Gan, by saying that he did not
+understand the meaning of the tree of Judas, and intimating that perhaps
+the ambassador could explain it. Gan relieved his consternation with
+anger; the habit of wickedness prevailed over all considerations; and
+the king prepared to march for Roncesvalles at the head of all his
+forces.
+
+Gan wrote to Charlemagne, to say how humbly and properly Marsilius was
+coming to pay the tribute into the hands of Orlando, and how handsome it
+would be of the emperor to meet him halfway, as agreed upon, at St. John
+Pied de Port, and so be ready to receive him, after the payment, at
+his footstool. He added a brilliant account of the tribute and its
+accompanying presents. They included a crown in the shape of a garland
+which had a carbuncle in it that gave light in darkness; two lions of
+an "immeasurable length, and aspects that frightened every body;" some
+"lively buffalos," leopards, crocodiles, and giraffes; arms and armour
+of all sorts; and apes and monkeys seated among the rich merchandise
+that loaded the backs of the camels. This imaginary treasure contained,
+furthermore, two enchanted spirits, called "Floro and Faresse," who were
+confined in a mirror, and were to tell the emperor wonderful things,
+particularly Floro (for there is nothing so nice in its details as
+lying): and Orlando was to have heaps of caravans full of Eastern
+wealth, and a hundred white horses, all with saddles and bridles of
+gold. There was a beautiful vest, too, for Uliviero, all over jewels,
+worth ten thousand "seraffi," or more.
+
+The good emperor wrote in turn to say how pleased he was with the
+ambassador's diligence, and that matters were arranged precisely as
+he wished. His court, however, had its suspicions still. Nobody could
+believe that Gan had not some new mischief in contemplation. Little,
+nevertheless, did they imagine, after the base endeavours he had but
+lately made against them, that he had immediately plotted a new
+and greater one, and that his object in bringing Charles into the
+neighbourhood of Roncesvalles was to deliver him more speedily into the
+hands of Marsilius, in the event of the latter's destruction of Orlando.
+
+Orlando, however, did as his lord and sovereign desired. He went to
+Roncesvalles, accompanied by a moderate train of warriors, not dreaming
+of the atrocity that awaited him. Gan himself, meantime, had hastened on
+to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in
+the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while
+Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of
+Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on
+the Paladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers.
+He had also, by Gan's advice, brought heaps of wine and good cheer to
+be set before his victims in the first instance; "for that," said the
+traitor, "will render the onset the more effective, the feasters being
+unarmed; and, supposing prodigies of valour to await even the attack of
+your second army, you will have no trouble with your third. One thing,
+however, I must not forget," added he; "my son Baldwin is sure to be
+with Orlando; you must take care of his life for my sake." "I give him
+this vest off my own body," said the king; "let him wear it in the
+battle, and have no fear. My soldiers shall be directed not to touch
+him."
+
+Gan went away rejoicing to France. He embraced the court and his
+sovereign all round, with the air of a man who had brought them nothing
+but blessings; and the old king wept for very tenderness and delight.
+
+"Something is going on wrong, and looks very black," thought Malagigi,
+the good wizard; "and Rinaldo is not here, and it is indispensably
+necessary that he should be. I must find out where he is, and
+Ricciardetto too, and send for them with all speed, and at any price."
+Malagigi called up, by his art, a wise, terrible, and cruel spirit,
+named Ashtaroth;--no light personage to deal with--no little spirit,
+such as plays tricks with you like a fairy. A much blacker visitant was
+this.
+
+"Tell me, and tell me truly of Rinaldo," said Malagigi to the spirit.
+
+Hard looked the demon at the Paladin, and said nothing. His aspect was
+clouded and violent. He wished to see whether his summoner retained all
+the force of his art.
+
+The enchanter, with an aspect still cloudier, bade Ashtaroth lay down
+that look. While giving this order, he also made signs indicative of a
+disposition to resort to angrier compulsion; and the devil, apprehending
+that he would confine him in some hateful place, loosened his tongue,
+and said, "You have not told me what you desire to know of Rinaldo."
+
+"I desire to know what he has been doing, and where he is," returned the
+enchanter.
+
+"He has been conquering and baptising the world, east and west," said
+the demon, "and is now in Egypt with Ricciardetto."
+
+"And what has Gan been plotting with Marsilius," inquired Malagigi, "and
+what is to come of it?"
+
+"On neither of those points can I enlighten you," said the devil. "I was
+not attending to Gan at the time, and we fallen spirits know not the
+future. Had we done so, we had not been so willing to incur the danger
+of falling. All I discern is, that, by the signs and comets in the
+heavens, something dreadful is about to happen--something very strange,
+treacherous, and bloody; and that Gan has a seat ready prepared for him
+in hell."
+
+"Within three days," cried the enchanter, loudly, "fetch Rinaldo
+and Ricciardetto into the pass of Roncesvalles. Do it, and I hereby
+undertake never to summon thee more."
+
+"Suppose they will not trust themselves with me," said the spirit.
+
+"Enter Rinaldo's horse, and bring him, whether he trust thee or not."
+
+"It shall be done," returned the demon; "and my serving-devil
+Foul-Mouth, or Fire-Red, shall enter the horse of Ricciardetto. Doubt it
+not. Am I not wise, and thyself powerful?"
+
+There was an earthquake, and Ashtaroth disappeared.
+
+Marsilius has now made his first movement towards the destruction of
+Orlando, by sending before him his vassal-king Blanchardin with his
+presents of wines and other luxuries. The temperate but courteous hero
+took them in good part, and distributed them as the traitor wished; and
+then Blanchardin, on pretence of going forward to salute Charlemagne
+at St. John Pied de Port, returned and put himself at the head of the
+second army, which was the post assigned him by his liege lord. The
+device on his flag was an "Apollo" on a field azure. King Falseron,
+whose son Orlando had slain in battle, headed the first army, the device
+of which was a black figure of the devil Belphegor on a dapple-grey
+field. The third army was under King Balugante, and had for ensign a
+Mahomet with golden wings in a field of red. Marsilius made a speech to
+them at night, in which he confessed his ill faith, but defended it on
+the ground of Charles's hatred of their religion, and of the example
+of "Judith and Holofernes." He said, that he had not come there to pay
+tribute, and sell his countrymen for slaves, but to make all Christendom
+pay tribute to them as conquerors; and he concluded by recommending to
+their good-will the son of his friend Gan, whom they would know by the
+vest he had sent him, and who was the only soul among the Christians
+they were to spare.
+
+This son of Gan, meantime, and several of the Paladins who were
+disgusted with Charles's credulity, and anxious at all events to be with
+Orlando, had joined the hero in the fated valley; so that the little
+Christian host, considering the tremendous valour of their lord and his
+friends, and the comparative inefficiency of that of the infidels,
+were at any rate not to be sold for nothing. Rinaldo, alas! the second
+thunderbolt of Christendom, was destined not to be there in time to save
+their lives. He could only avenge the dreadful tragedy, and prevent
+still worse consequences to the whole Christian court and empire.
+The Paladins had in vain begged Orlando to be on his guard against
+treachery, and send for a more numerous body of men. The great heart of
+the Champion of the Faith was unwilling to think the worst as long as
+he could help it. He refused to summon aid that might be superfluous;
+neither would he do any thing but what his liege lord had desired. And
+yet he could not wholly repress a misgiving. A shadow had fallen on his
+heart, great and cheerful as it was. The anticipations of his friends
+disturbed him, in spite of the face with which he met them. I am not
+sure that he did not, by a certain instinctive foresight, expect death
+itself; but he felt bound not to encourage the impression. Besides, time
+pressed; the moment of the looked-for tribute was at hand; and little
+combinations of circumstances determine often the greatest events.
+
+King Blanchardin had brought Orlando's people a luxurious supper; King
+Marsilius was to arrive early next day with the tribute; and Uliviero
+accordingly, with the morning sun, rode forth to reconnoitre, and see
+if he could discover the peaceful pomp of the Spanish court in the
+distance. Guottibuoffi was with him, a warrior who had expected the very
+worst, and repeatedly implored Orlando to believe it possible. Uliviero
+and he rode up the mountain nearest them, and from the top of it beheld
+the first army of Marsilius already forming in the passes.
+
+"O Guottibuoffi!" exclaimed he, "behold thy prophecies come true! behold
+the last day of the glory of Charles! Every where I see the arms of the
+traitors around us. I feel Paris tremble all the way through France, to
+the ground beneath my feet. O Malagigi, too much in the right wert thou!
+O devil Gan, this then is the consummation of thy good offices!"
+
+Uliviero put spurs to his horse, and galloped back down the mountain to
+Orlando.
+
+"Well," cried the hero, "what news?"
+
+"Bad news," said his cousin; "such as you would not hear of yesterday.
+Marsilius is here in arms, and all the world has come with him."
+
+The Paladins pressed round Orlando, and entreated him to sound his horn,
+in token that he needed help. His only answer was, to mount his horse,
+and ride up the mountain with Sansonetto.
+
+As soon, however, as he cast forth his eyes and beheld what was round
+about him, he turned in sorrow, and looked down into Roncesvalles, and
+said, "O valley, miserable indeed! the blood that is shed in thee this
+day will colour thy name for ever."
+
+Many of the Paladins had ridden after him, and they again pressed him to
+sound his horn, if only in pity to his own people. He said, "If Cæsar
+and Alexander were here, Scipio and Hannibal, and Nebuchadnezzar with
+all his flags, and Death stared me in the face with his knife in his
+hand, never would I sound my horn for the baseness of fear."
+
+Orlando's little camp were furious against the Saracens. They armed
+themselves with the greatest impatience. There was nothing but lacing
+of helmets and mounting of horses; and good Archbishop Turpin went
+from rank to rank, exhorting and encouraging the warriors of Christ.
+Accoutrements and habiliments were put on the wrong way; words and
+deeds mixed in confusion; men running against one another out of very
+absorption in themselves; all the place full of cries of "Arm! arm! the
+enemy!" and the trumpets clanged over all against the mountain-echoes.
+
+Orlando and his captains withdrew for a moment to consultation. He
+fairly groaned for sorrow, and at first had not a word to say; so
+wretched he felt at having brought his people to die in Roncesvalles.
+
+Uliviero spoke first. He could not resist the opportunity of comforting
+himself a little in his despair, with referring to his unheeded advice.
+
+"You see, cousin," said he, "what has come at last. Would to God you had
+attended to what I said; to what Malagigi said; to what we all said! I
+told you Marsilius was nothing but an anointed scoundrel. Yet forsooth,
+he was to bring us tribute! and Charles is this moment expecting his
+mummeries at St. John Pied de Port! Did ever any body believe a word
+that Gan said, but Charles? And now you see this rotten fruit has come
+to a head;--this medlar has got its crown."
+
+Orlando said nothing in answer to Uliviero; for in truth he had nothing
+to say. He broke away to give orders to the camp; bade them take
+refreshment; and then addressing both officers and men, he said, "I
+confess, that if it had entered my heart to conceive the king of Spain
+to be such a villain, never would you have seen this day. He has
+exchanged with me a thousand courtesies and good words; and I thought
+that the worse enemies we had been before, the better friends we had
+become now. I fancied every human being capable of this kind of virtue
+on a good opportunity, saving, indeed, such base-hearted wretches as can
+never forgive their very forgivers; and of these I certainly did not
+suppose him to be one. Let us die, if we must die, like honest and
+gallant men; so that it shall be said of us, it was only our bodies that
+died. It becomes our souls to be invincible, and our glory immortal.
+Our motto must be, 'A good heart and no hope.' The reason why I did not
+sound the horn was, partly because I thought it did not become us, and
+partly because our liege lord could be of little use, even if he heard
+it. Let Gan have his glut of us like a carrion crow; but let him find
+us under heaps of his Saracens, an example for all time. Heaven, my
+friends, is with us, if earth is against us. Methinks I see it open
+this moment, ready to receive our souls amidst crowns of glory; and
+therefore, as the champion of God's church, I give you my benediction;
+and the good archbishop here will absolve you; and so, please God, we
+shall all go to Heaven and be happy."
+
+And with these words Orlando sprang to his horse, crying, "Away against
+the Saracens!" but he had no sooner turned his face than he wept
+bitterly, and said, "O holy Virgin, think not of me, the sinner Orlando,
+but have pity on these thy servants."
+
+Archbishop Turpin did as Orlando said, giving the whole band his
+benediction at once, and absolving them from their sins, so that every
+body took comfort in the thought of dying for Christ, and thus they
+embraced one another, weeping; and then lance was put to thigh, and the
+banner was raised that was won in the jousting at Aspramont.
+
+And now with a mighty dust, and an infinite sound of horns, and
+tambours, and trumpets, which came filling the valley, the first army
+of the infidels made its appearance, horses neighing, and a thousand
+pennons flying in the air. King Falseron led them on, saying to his
+officers, "Now, gentlemen, recollect what I said. The first battle is
+for the leaders only;--and, above all, let nobody dare to lay a finger
+on Orlando. He belongs to myself. The revenge of my son's death is mine.
+I will cut the man down that comes between us."
+
+"Now, friends," said Orlando, "every man for himself, and St. Michael
+for us all. There is no one here that is not a perfect knight."
+
+And he might well say it; for the flower of all France was there, except
+Rinaldo and Ricciardetto; every man a picked man; all friends and
+constant companions of Orlando. There was Richard of Normandy, and
+Guottibuoffi, and Uliviero, and Count Anselm, and Avolio, and Avino, and
+the gentle Berlinghieri, and his brother, and Sansonetto, and the good
+Duke Egibard, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Angiolin of Bayona, and
+all the other Paladins of France, excepting those two whom I have
+mentioned. And so the captains of the little troop and of the great
+array sat looking at one another, and singling one another out, as the
+latter came on; and then either side began raising their war-cries, and
+the mob of the infidels halted, and the knights put spear in rest, and
+ran for a while, two and two in succession, each one against the other.
+
+Astolfo was the first to move. He ran against Arlotto of Soria; and
+Angiolin then ran against Malducco; and Mazzarigi the Renegade came
+against Avino; and Uliviero was borne forth by his horse Rondel, who
+couldn't stand still, against Malprimo, the first of the captains of
+Falseron.
+
+And now lances began to be painted red, without any brush but
+themselves; and the new colour extended itself to the bucklers, and the
+cuishes, and the cuirasses, and the trappings of the steeds.
+
+Astolfo thrust his antagonist's body out of the saddle, and his soul
+into the other world; and Angiolin gave and took a terrible blow with
+Malducco; but his horse bore him onward; and Avino had something of the
+like encounter with Mazzarigi; but Uliviero, though he received a thrust
+which hurt him, sent his lance right through the heart of Malprimo.
+
+Falseron was daunted at this blow. "Verily," thought he, "this is a
+miracle." Uliviero did not press on among the Saracens, his wound was
+too painful; but Orlando now put himself and his whole band into motion,
+and you may guess what an uproar ensued. The sound of the rattling of
+the blows and helmets was as if the forge of Vulcan had been thrown
+open. Falseron beheld Orlando coming so furiously, that he thought him a
+Lucifer who had burst his chain, and was quite of another mind than when
+he proposed to have him all to himself. On the contrary, he recommended
+himself to his gods; and turning away, begged for a more auspicious
+season of revenge. But Orlando hailed and arrested him with a terrible
+voice, saying, "O thou traitor! Was this the end to which old quarrels
+were made up? Dost thou not blush, thou and thy fellow-traitor
+Marsilius, to have kissed me on the cheek like a Judas, when last thou
+wert in France?"
+
+Orlando had never shewn such anger in his countenance as he did that
+day. He dashed at Falseron with a fury so swift, and at the same time
+a mastery of his lance so marvellous, that though he plunged it in the
+man's body so as instantly to kill him, the body did not move in the
+saddle. The hero himself, as he rushed onwards, was fain to see the end
+of a stroke so perfect, and, turning his horse back, he touched the
+carcass with his sword, and it fell on the instant. They say, that it
+had no sooner fallen than it disappeared. People got off their horses
+to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being
+left; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found as empty as
+the shell that is cast by a lobster. O new, and strange, and portentous
+event!--proof manifest of the anger with which God regards treachery.
+
+When the first infidel army beheld their leader dead, such fear fell
+upon them, that they were for leaving the field to the Paladins; but
+they were unable. Marsilius had drawn the rest of his forces round the
+valley like a net, so that their shoulders were turned in vain. Orlando
+rode into the thick of them, with Count Anselm by his side. He rushed
+like a tempest; and wherever he went, thunderbolts fell upon helmets.
+The Paladins drove here and there after them, each making a whirlwind
+round about him, and a bloody circle. Uliviero was again in the _mêlée_;
+and Walter of Amulion threw himself into it; and Baldwin roared like
+a lion; and Avino and Avolio reaped the wretches' heads like a
+turnip-field; and blows blinded men's eyes; and Archbishop Turpin
+himself had changed his crozier for a lance, and chased a new flock
+before him to the mountains.
+
+Yet what could be done against foes without number? Multitudes fill
+up the spaces left by the dead without stopping. Marsilius, from his
+anxious and raging post, constantly pours them in. The Paladins are as
+units to thousands. Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto?
+
+The horses did not tarry; but fate had been quicker than enchantment.
+Ashtaroth, nevertheless, had presented himself to Rinaldo in Egypt, as
+though he had issued out of a flash of lightning. After telling his
+mission, and giving orders to hundreds of invisible spirits round about
+him (for the air was full of them), he and Foul-Mouth, his servant,
+entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh and
+snort and leap with the fiends within them, till off they flew through
+the air over the pyramids, crowds of spirits going like a tempest before
+them. Ricciardetto shut his eyes at first, on perceiving himself so high
+in the air; but he speedily became used to it, though he looked down
+on the sun at last. In this manner they passed the desert, and the
+sea-coast, and the ocean, and swept the tops of the Pyrenees, Ashtaroth
+talking to them of wonders by the way; for he was one of the wisest of
+the devils, and knew a great many things which were then unknown to man.
+He laughed, for instance, as they went over sea, at the notion, among
+other vain fancies, that nothing was to be found beyond the pillars of
+Hercules; "for," said he, "the earth is round, and the sea has an even
+surface all over it; and there are nations on the other side of the
+globe, who walk with their feet opposed to yours, and worship other gods
+than the Christians."
+
+"Hah!" said Rinaldo; "and may I ask whether they can be saved?"
+
+"It is a bold thing to ask," said the devil; "but do you take the
+Redeemer for a partisan, and fancy he died for you only? Be assured he
+died for the whole world, Antipodes and all. Perhaps not one soul will
+be left out the pale of salvation at last, but the whole human race
+adore the truth, and find mercy. The Christian is the only true
+religion; but Heaven loves all goodness that believes honestly,
+whatsoever the belief may be."
+
+Rinaldo was mightily taken with the humanity of the devil's opinions:
+but they were now approaching the end of their journey, and began to
+hear the noise of the battle; and he could no longer think of any thing
+but the delight of being near Orlando, and plunging into the middle of
+it.
+
+"You shall be in the very heart of it instantly," said his bearer.
+"I love you, and would fain do all you desire. Do not fancy that all
+nobleness of spirit is lost among us people below. You know what the
+proverb says, 'There's never a fruit, however degenerate, but will taste
+of its stock.' I was of a different order of beings once, and--But it is
+as well not to talk of happy times. Yonder is Marsilius; and there goes
+Orlando. Farewell, and give me a place in your memory."
+
+Rinaldo could not find words to express his sense of the devil's
+good-will, nor of that of Foul Mouth himself. He said: "Ashtaroth, I am
+as sorry to part with you as if you were a brother; and I certainly do
+believe that nobleness of spirit exists, as you say, among your people
+below. I shall be glad to see you both sometimes, if you can come; and I
+pray God (if my poor prayer be worth any thing) that you may all repent,
+and obtain his pardon; for without repentance, you know, nothing can be
+done for you."
+
+"If I might suggest a favour," returned Ashtaroth, "since you are so
+good as to wish to do me one, persuade Malagigi to free me from his
+service, and I am yours for ever. To serve you will be a pleasure to me.
+You will only have to say, 'Ashtaroth,' and my good friend here will be
+with you in an instant."
+
+"I am obliged to you," cried Rinaldo, "and so is my brother. I will
+write Malagigi, not merely a letter, but a whole packet-full of your
+praises; and so I will to Orlando; and you shall be set free, depend on
+it, your company has been so perfectly agreeable."
+
+"Your humble servant," said Ashtaroth, and vanished with his companion
+like lightning.
+
+But they did not go far.
+
+There was a little chapel by the road-side in Roncesvalles, which had
+a couple of bells; and on the top of that chapel did the devils place
+themselves, in order that they might catch the souls of the infidels as
+they died, and so carry them off to the infernal regions. Guess if their
+wings had plenty to do that day! Guess if Minos and Rhadamanthus were
+busy, and Charon sung in his boat, and Lucifer hugged himself for joy.
+Guess, also, if the tables in heaven groaned with nectar and ambrosia,
+and good old St. Peter had a dry hair in his beard.
+
+The two Paladins, on their horses, dropped right into the middle of the
+Saracens, and began making such havoc about them, that Marsilius, who
+overlooked the fight from a mountain, thought his soldiers had turned
+one against the other. He therefore descended in fury with his third
+army; and Rinaldo, seeing him coming, said to Ricciardetto, "We had
+better be off here, and join Orlando;" and with these words, he gave his
+horse one turn round before he retreated, so as to enable his sword to
+make a bloody circle about him; and stories say, that he sheared off
+twenty heads in the whirl of it. He then dashed through the astonished
+beholders towards the battle of Orlando, who guessed it could be no
+other than his cousin, and almost dropped from his horse, out of desire
+to meet him. Ricciardetto followed Rinaldo; and Uliviero coming up at
+the same moment, the rapture of the whole party is not to be expressed.
+They almost died for joy. After a thousand embraces, and questions, and
+explanations, and expressions of astonishment (for the infidels held
+aloof awhile, to take breath from the horror and mischief they had
+undergone), Orlando refreshed his little band of heroes, and then drew
+Rinaldo apart, and said, "O my brother, I feel such delight at seeing
+you, I can hardly persuade myself I am not dreaming. Heaven be praised
+for it. I have no other wish on earth, now that I see you before I die.
+Why didn't you write? But never mind. Here you are, and I shall not die
+for nothing."
+
+"I did write," said Rinaldo, "and so did Ricciardetto; but villany
+intercepted our letters. Tell me what to do, my dear cousin; for time
+presses, and all the world is upon us."
+
+"Gan has brought us here," said Orlando, "under pretence of receiving
+tribute from Marsilius--you see of what sort; and Charles, poor old man,
+is waiting to receive his homage at the town of St. John! I have never
+seen a lucky day since you left us. I believe I have done for Charles
+more than in duty bound, and that my sins pursue me, and I and mine must
+all perish in Roncesvalles."
+
+"Look to Marsilius," exclaimed Rinaldo; "he is right upon us."
+
+Marsilius was upon them, surely enough, at once furious and frightened
+at the coming of the new Paladins; for his camp, numerous as it was, had
+not only held aloof, but turned about to fly like herds before the lion;
+so he was forced to drive them back, and bring up his other troops,
+reasonably thinking that such numbers must overwhelm at last, if they
+could but be kept together.
+
+Not the less, however, for this, did the Paladins continue to fight as
+if with joy. They killed and trampled wheresoever they went; Rinaldo
+fatiguing himself with sending infinite numbers of souls to Ashtaroth,
+and Orlando making a bloody passage towards Marsilius, whom he hoped to
+settle as he had done Falseron.
+
+In the course of this his tremendous progress, the hero struck a youth
+on the head, whose helmet was so good as to resist the blow, but at the
+same time flew off; and Orlando seized him by the hair to kill him.
+"Hold!" cried the youth, as loud as want of breath could let him; "you
+loved my father--I'm Bujaforte."
+
+The Paladin had never seen Bujaforte; but he saw the likeness to the
+good old Man of the Mountain, his father; and he let go the youth's
+hair, and embraced and kissed him. "O Bujaforte!" said he; "I loved him
+indeed my good old man; but what does his son do here, fighting against
+his friend?"
+
+Bujaforte was a long time before he could speak for weeping. At length
+he said, "Orlando, let not your noble heart be pained with ill thoughts
+of my father's son. I am forced to be here by my lord and master
+Marsilius. I had no friend left me in the world, and he took me into his
+court, and has brought me here before I knew what it was for; and I have
+made a shew of fighting, but have not hurt a single Christian. Treachery
+is on every side of you. Baldwin himself has a vest given him by
+Marsilius, that every body may know the son of his friend Gan, and do
+him no injury. See there--look how the lances avoid him."
+
+"Put your helmet on again," said Orlando, "and behave just as you have
+done. Never will your father's friend be an enemy to the son. Only take
+care not to come across Rinaldo."
+
+The hero then turned in fury to look for Baldwin, who was hastening
+towards him at that moment with friendliness in his looks.
+
+"'Tis strange," said Baldwin; "I have done my duty as well as I could,
+yet no body will come against me. I have slain right and left, and
+cannot comprehend what it is that makes the stoutest infidels avoid me."
+
+"Take off your vest," cried Orlando, contemptuously, "and you will soon
+discover the secret, if you wish to know it. Your father has sold us to
+Marsilius, all but his honourable son."
+
+"If my father," cried Baldwin, impetuously tearing off the vest, "has
+been such a villain, and I escape dying any longer, by God! I will
+plunge this sword through his heart. But I am no traitor, Orlando;
+and you do me wrong to say it. You do me foul dishonour, and I'll not
+survive it. Never more shall you behold me alive."
+
+Baldwin spurred off into the fight, not waiting to hear another word
+from Orlando, but constantly crying out, "You have done me dishonour;"
+and Orlando was very sorry for what he had said, for he perceived that
+the youth was in despair.
+
+And now the fight raged beyond all it had done before; and the Paladins
+themselves began to fall, the enemy were driven forward in such
+multitudes by Marsilius. There was unhorsing of foes, and re-seating of
+friends, and great cries, and anguish, and unceasing labour; and twenty
+Pagans went down for one Christian; but still the Christians fell. One
+Paladin disappeared after another, having too much to do for mortal men.
+Some could not make way through the press for very fatigue of killing,
+and others were hampered with the falling horses and men. Sansonetto was
+thus beaten to earth by the club of Grandonio; and Walter d'Amulion had
+his shoulders broken; and Angiolin of Bayona, having lost his lance,
+was thrust down by Marsilius, and Angiolin of Bellonda by Sirionne; and
+Berlinghieri and Ottone are gone; and then Astolfo went, in revenge of
+whose death Orlando turned the spot on which he died into a gulf of
+Saracen blood. Rinaldo met the luckless Bujaforte, who had just begun to
+explain how he seemed to be fighting on the side which his father hated,
+when the impatient hero exclaimed, "He who is not with me is against
+me;" and gave him a volley of such horrible cuffs about the head and
+ears, that Bujaforte died without being able to speak another word.
+Orlando, cutting his way to a spot in which there was a great struggle
+and uproar, found the poor youth Baldwin, the son of Gan, with two
+spears in his breast. "I am no traitor now," said Baldwin; and so
+saying, fell dead to the earth; and Orlando lifted up his voice and
+wept, for he was bitterly sorry to have been the cause of his death. He
+then joined Rinaldo in the hottest of the tumult; and all the surviving
+Paladins gathered about them, including Turpin the archbishop, who
+fought as hardily as the rest; and the slaughter was lavish and
+horrible, so that the eddies of the wind chucked the blood into the air,
+and earth appeared a very seething-cauldron of hell. At length down went
+Uliviero himself. He had become blind with his own blood, and smitten
+Orlando without knowing him, who had never received such a blow in his
+life.
+
+"How now, cousin!" cried Orlando; "have you too gone over to the enemy?"
+
+"O, my lord and master, Orlando," cried the other, "I ask your pardon,
+if I have struck you. I can see nothing--I am dying. The traitor
+Arcaliffe has stabbed me in the back; but I killed him for it. If you
+love me, lead my horse into the thick of them, so that I may not die
+unavenged."
+
+"I shall die myself before long," said Orlando, "out of very toil and
+grief; so we will go together. I have lost all hope, all pride, all wish
+to live any longer; but not my love for Uliviero. Come--let us give them
+a few blows yet; let them see what you can do with your dying hands. One
+faith, one death, one only wish be ours."
+
+Orlando led his cousin's horse where the press was thickest, and
+dreadful was the strength of the dying man and of his half-dying
+companion. They made a street, through which they passed out of the
+battle; and Orlando led his cousin away to his tent, and said, "Wait
+a little till I return, for I will go and sound the horn on the hill
+yonder."
+
+"'Tis of no use," said Uliviero; "and my spirit is fast going, and
+desires to be with its Lord and Saviour." He would have said more, but
+his words came from him imperfectly, like those of a man in a dream;
+only his cousin gathered that he meant to commend to him his sister,
+Orlando's wife, Alda the Fair, of whom indeed the great Paladin had not
+thought so much in this world as he might have done. And with these
+imperfect words he expired.
+
+But Orlando no sooner saw him dead, than he felt as if he was left alone
+on the earth; and he was quite willing to leave it; only he wished that
+Charles at St. John Pied de Port should hear how the case stood before
+he went; and so he took up the horn, and blew it three times with such
+force that the blood burst out of his nose and mouth. Turpin says, that
+at the third blast the horn broke in two.
+
+In spite of all the noise of the battle, the sound of the horn broke
+over it like a voice out of the other world. They say that birds fell
+dead at it, and that the whole Saracen army drew back in terror. But
+fearfuller still was its effect at St. John Pied de Port. Charlemagne
+was sitting in the midst of his court when the sound reached him; and
+Gan was there. The emperor was the first to hear it.
+
+"Do you hear that?" said he to his nobles. "Did you hear the horn, as I
+heard it?"
+
+Upon this they all listened; and Gan felt his heart misgive him.
+
+The horn sounded the second time.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" said Charles.
+
+"Orlando is hunting," observed Gan, "and the stag is killed. He is at
+the old pastime that he was so fond of in Aspramonte."
+
+But when the horn sounded yet a third time, and the blast was one of so
+dreadful a vehemence, every body looked at the other, and then they all
+looked at Gan in fury. Charles rose from his seat. "This is no hunting
+of the stag," said he. "The sound goes to my very heart, and, I confess,
+makes me tremble. I am awakened out of a great dream. O Gan! O Gan! Not
+for thee do I blush, but for myself, and for nobody else. O my God, what
+is to be done! But whatever is to be done, must be done quickly. Take
+this villain, gentlemen, and keep him in hard prison. O foul and
+monstrous villain! Would to God I had not lived to see this day! O
+obstinate and enormous folly! O Malagigi, had I but believed thy
+foresight! 'Tis thou went the wise man, and I the grey-headed fool."
+
+Ogier the Dane, and Namo and others, in the bitterness of their grief
+and anger, could not help reminding the emperor of all which they had
+foretold. But it was no time for words. They put the traitor into
+prison; and then Charles, with all his court, took his way to
+Roncesvalles, grieving and praying.
+
+It was afternoon when the horn sounded, and half an hour after it when
+the emperor set out; and meantime Orlando had returned to the fight that
+he might do his duty, however hopeless, as long as he could sit his
+horse, and the Paladins were now reduced to four; and though the
+Saracens suffered themselves to be mowed down like grass by them and
+their little band, he found his end approaching for toil and fever,
+and so at length he withdrew out of the fight, and rode all alone to a
+fountain which he knew of, where he had before quenched his thirst.
+
+His horse was wearier still than he, and no sooner had its master
+alighted, than the beast, kneeling down as if to take leave, and to
+say, "I have brought you to your place of rest," fell dead at his feet.
+Orlando cast water on him from the fountain, not wishing to believe him
+dead; but when he found it to no purpose, he grieved for him as if he
+had been a human being, and addressed him by name in tears, and asked
+forgiveness if ever he had done him wrong. They say, that the horse at
+these words once more opened his eyes a little, and looked kindly at his
+master, and so stirred never more.
+
+They say also that Orlando then, summoning all his strength, smote a
+rock near him with his beautiful sword Durlindana, thinking to shiver
+the steel in pieces, and so prevent its falling into the hands of the
+enemy; but though the rock split like a slate, and a deep fissure
+remained ever after to astonish the eyes of pilgrims, the sword remained
+unhurt.
+
+"O strong Durlindana," cried he, "O noble and worthy sword, had I known
+thee from the first, as I know thee now, never would I have been brought
+to this pass."
+
+And now Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and Turpin came up, having given chase
+to the Saracens till they were weary, and Orlando gave joyful welcome to
+his cousin, and they told him how the battle was won, and then Orlando
+knelt before Turpin, his face all in tears, and begged remission of his
+sins and confessed them, and Turpin gave him absolution; and suddenly a
+light came down upon him from heaven like a rainbow, accompanied with
+a sound of music, and an angel stood in the air blessing him, and then
+disappeared; upon which Orlando fixed his eyes on the hilt of his sword
+as on a crucifix, and embraced it, and said, "Lord, vouchsafe that I may
+look on this poor instrument as on the symbol of the tree upon which
+Thou sufferedst thy unspeakable martyrdom!" and so adjusting the sword
+to his bosom, and embracing it closer, he raised his eyes, and appeared
+like a creature seraphical and transfigured; and in bowing his head he
+breathed out his pure soul. A thunder was then heard in the heavens,
+and the heavens opened and seemed to stoop to the earth, and a flock of
+angels was seen like a white cloud ascending with his spirit, who were
+known to be what they were by the trembling of their wings. The white
+cloud shot out golden fires, so that the whole air was full of them; and
+the voices of the angels mingled in song with the instruments of their
+brethren above, which made an inexpressible harmony, at once deep and
+dulcet. The priestly warrior Turpin, and the two Paladins, and the
+hero's squire Terigi, who were all on their knees, forgot their own
+beings, in following the miracle with their eyes.
+
+It was now the office of that squire to take horse and ride off to
+the emperor at Saint John Pied de Port, and tell him of all that had
+occurred; but in spite of what he had just seen, he lay for a time
+overwhelmed with grief. He then rose, and mounted his steed, and left
+the Paladins and the archbishop with the dead body, who knelt about it,
+guarding it with weeping love.
+
+The good squire Terigi met the emperor and his cavalcade coming towards
+Roncesvalles, and alighted and fell on his knees, telling him the
+miserable news, and how all his people were slain but two of his
+Paladins, and himself, and the good archbishop. Charles for anguish
+began tearing his white locks; but Terigi comforted him against so
+doing, by giving an account of the manner of Orlando's death, and how
+he had surely gone to heaven. Nevertheless, the squire himself was
+broken-hearted with grief and toil; and he had scarcely added a
+denouncement of the traitor Gan, and a hope that the emperor would
+appease Heaven finally by giving his body to the winds, than he said,
+"The cold of death is upon me;" and so he fell dead at the emperor's
+feet.
+
+Charles was ready to drop from his saddle for wretchedness. He cried
+out, "Let nobody comfort me more. I will have no comfort. Cursed be Gan,
+and cursed this horrible day, and this place, and every thing. Let us go
+on, like blind miserable men that we are, into Roncesvalles; and have
+patience if we can, out of pure misery, like Job, till we do all that
+can be done."
+
+So Charles rode on with his nobles; and they say, that for the sake of
+the champion of Christendom and the martyrs that died with him, the sun
+stood still in the sky till the emperor had seen Orlando, and till the
+dead were buried.
+
+Horrible to his eyes was the sight of the field of Roncesvalles. The
+Saracens, indeed, had forsaken it, conquered; but all his Paladins but
+two were left on it dead, and the slaughtered heaps among which they lay
+made the whole valley like a great dumb slaughter-house, trampled up
+into blood and dirt, and reeking to the heat. The very trees were
+dropping with blood; and every thing, so to speak, seemed tired out, and
+gone to a horrible sleep.
+
+Charles trembled to his heart's core for wonder and agony. After dumbly
+gazing on the place, he again cursed it with a solemn curse, and wished
+that never grass might grow within it again, nor seed of any kind,
+neither within it, nor on any of its mountains around with their proud
+shoulders; but the anger of Heaven abide over it for ever, as on a pit
+made by hell upon earth.
+
+Then he rode on, and came up to where the body of Orlando awaited him
+with the Paladins, and the old man, weeping, threw himself as if he had
+been a reckless youth from his horse, and embraced and kissed the dead
+body, and said, "I bless thee, Orlando. I bless thy whole life, and all
+that thou wast, and all that thou ever didst, and thy mighty and holy
+valour, and the father that begot thee; and I ask pardon of thee for
+believing those who brought thee to thine end. They shall have their
+reward, O thou beloved one! But, indeed, it is thou that livest, and I
+that am worse than dead."
+
+And now, behold a wonder. For the emperor, in the fervour of his heart
+and of the memory of what had passed between them, called to mind that
+Orlando had promised to give him his sword, should he die before him;
+and he lifted up his voice more bravely, and adjured him even now to
+return it to him gladly; and it pleased God that the dead body of
+Orlando should rise on its feet, and kneel as he was wont to do at the
+feet of his liege lord, and gladly, and with a smile on its face, return
+the sword to the Emperor Charles. As Orlando rose, the Paladins and
+Turpin knelt down out of fear and horror, especially seeing him look
+with a stern countenance; but when they saw that he knelt also, and
+smiled, and returned the sword, their hearts became re-assured, and
+Charles took the sword like his liege lord, though trembling with wonder
+and affection: and in truth he could hardly clench his fingers around
+it.
+
+Orlando was buried in a great sepulchre in Aquisgrana, and the dead
+Paladins were all embalmed and sent with majestic cavalcades to their
+respective counties and principalities, and every Christian was
+honourably and reverently put in the earth, and recorded among the
+martyrs of the Church.
+
+But meantime the flying Saracens, thinking to bury their own dead, and
+ignorant of what still awaited them, came back into the valley, and
+Rinaldo beheld them with a dreadful joy, and shewed them to Charles. Now
+the emperor's cavalcade had increased every moment; and they fell upon
+the Saracens with a new and unexpected battle, and the old emperor,
+addressing the sword of Orlando, exclaimed, "My strength is little, but
+do thou do thy duty to thy master, thou famous sword, seeing that he
+returned it to me smiling, and that his revenge is in my hands." And so
+saying, he met Balugante, the leader of the infidels, as he came borne
+along by his frightened horse; and the old man, raising the sword with
+both hands, cleaved him, with a delighted mind, to the chin.
+
+O sacred Emperor Charles! O well-lived old man! Defender of the Faith!
+light and glory of the old time! thou hast cut off the other ear of
+Malchus, and shown how rightly thou wert born into the world, to save it
+a second time from the abyss.
+
+Again fled the Saracens, never to come to Christendom more: but Charles
+went after them into Spain, he and Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and the good
+Turpin; and they took and fired Saragossa; and Marsilius was hung to the
+carob-tree under which he had planned his villany with Gan; and Gan was
+hung, and drawn and quartered, in Roncesvalles, amidst the execrations
+of the country.
+
+And if you ask, how it happened that Charles ever put faith in such a
+wretch, I shall tell you that it was because the good old emperor, with
+all his faults, was a divine man, and believed in others out of the
+excellence of his own heart and truth. And such was the case with
+Orlando himself.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+No. I.
+
+STORY OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA.
+
+  Poscia ch' i' ebbi il mio dottore udito
+  Nomar le donne antiche e i cavalieri,
+  Pietà mi vinse, e fui quasi smarrito.
+
+  I' cominciai: Poeta, volentieri
+  Parlerei a que' duo the 'nsieme vanno,
+  E pajon sì al vento esser leggieri.
+
+  Ed egli a me: Vedrai, quando saranno
+  Più presso a noi: e tu allor gli piega,
+  Per quell' amor ch' ei mena; e quei verranno.
+
+  Si tosto come 'l vento a noi gli piega,
+  Mossi la voce: O anime affannate,
+  Venite a not parlar, s' altri nol niega.
+
+  Quali colombe dal disio chiamate,
+  Con l' ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
+  Volan per l' aer dal voter portate:
+
+  Cotali uscir de la schiera ov' è Dido,
+  A noi venendo per l' aer maligno,
+  Si forte fu l' affettuoso grido.
+
+  O animal grazioso e benigno,
+  Che visitando vai per l' aer perso
+  Noi che tignemmo it mondo di sanguigno;
+  Se fosse amico il Re de l'Universo,
+  Noi pregheremmo lui per la tua pace,
+  Poich' hai pietà del nostro mal perverso.
+
+  Di quel ch'udire e che parlar ti piace,
+  Noi udiremo, e parleremo a vui,
+  Mentre che 'l vento, come fa, si tace.
+
+  Siede la terra, dove nata fui,
+  Su la marina, dove 'l Pò discende,
+  Per aver pace co' seguaci sui.
+
+  Amor ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,
+  Prese costui de la bella persona
+  Che mi fu tolta, e 'l modo ancor m'offende
+
+  Amer ch'a null'amato amar perdona,
+  Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
+  Che come vedi ancor non m'abbandona
+
+  Amor condusse noi ad una morte
+  Caina attende chi 'n vita ci spense.
+  Queste parole da lor ci fur porte.
+
+  Da ch'io 'ntesi quell'anime offense,
+  Chinai 'l viso, e tanto 'l tenni basso,
+  Finchè 'l poeta mi disse: Che pense?
+
+  Quando risposi, cominciai: O lasso,
+  Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio
+  Menò costoro al doloroso passo!
+
+  Po' mi rivolsi a loro, e parla' io,
+  E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri
+  A lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pie.
+
+  Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri,
+  A che, e come concedette amore
+  Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri?
+
+  Ed ella a me: Nessun maggior dolore,
+  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
+  Ne la miseria; e ciò sa 'l tuo dottore.
+  Ma s'a conoscer la prima radice
+  Del nostro amor to hai cotanto affetto,
+  Farò come colui the piange e dice.
+
+  Noi leggiavamo tin giorno per diletto
+  Di Lancilotto, come amor to strinse
+  Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto.
+
+  Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
+  Quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso
+  Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse.
+
+  Quando leggemmo il disiato riso
+  Esser baciato da cotanto amante,
+  Questi che mai da me non sia diviso,
+
+  La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:
+  Galeotto fu il libro, e chi to scrisse:
+  Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.
+
+  Mentre the l'uno spirto questo disse,
+  L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade
+  I' venni men cosi com' io morisse,
+
+  E caddi come corpo morto cade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Translation in the terza rima of the original._
+
+  Scarce had I learnt the names of all that press
+  Of knights and dames, than I beheld a sight
+  Nigh reft my wits for very tenderness.
+
+  "O guide!" I said, "fain would I, if I might,
+  Have speech with yonder pair, that hand in hand
+  Seem borne before the dreadful wind so light."
+
+  "Wait," said my guide, "until then seest their band
+  Sweep round. Then beg them, by that lose, to stay;
+  And they will come, and hover where we stand."
+
+  Anon the whirlwind flung them round that way;
+  And then I cried, "Oh, if I ask nought ill,
+  Poor weary souls, have speech with me, I pray."
+
+  As doves, that leave some bevy circling still,
+  Set firm their open wings, and through the air
+  Sweep homewards, wafted by their pure good will;
+
+  So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
+  Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign;
+  Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer.
+
+  The female spoke. "O living soul benign!"
+  She said, "thus, in this lost air, visiting
+  Us who with blood stain'd the sweet earth divine;
+
+  Had we a friend in heaven's eternal King,
+  We would beseech him keep thy conscience clear,
+  Since to our anguish thou dost pity bring.
+
+  Of what it pleaseth thee to speak and hear,
+  To that we also, till this lull be o'er
+  That falleth now, will speak and will give ear.
+
+  The place where I was born is on the shore,
+  Where Po brings all his rivers to depart
+  In peace, and fuse them with the ocean floor.
+
+  Love, that soon kindleth in a gentle heart,
+  Seized him thou look'st on for the form and face,
+  Whose end still haunts me like a rankling dart.
+
+  Love, which by love will be denied no grace,
+  Gave me a transport in my turn so true,
+  That to! 'tis with me, even in this place.
+
+  Love brought us to one grave. The hand that slew
+  Is doom'd to mourn us in the pit of Cain."
+  Such were the words that told me of those two.
+
+  Downcast I stood, looking so full of pain
+  To think how hard and sad a case it was,
+  That my guide ask'd what held me in that vein.
+
+  His voiced aroused me; and I said, "Alas
+  All their sweet thoughts then, all the steps that led
+  To love, but brought them to this dolorous pass."
+
+  Then turning my sad eyes to theirs, I said,
+  "Francesca, see--these human cheeks are wet--
+  Truer and sadder tears were never shed.
+
+  But tell me. At the time when sighs were sweet,
+  What made thee strive no longer?--hurried thee
+  To the last step where bliss and sorrow meet?"
+
+  "There is no greater sorrow," answered she,
+  "And this thy teacher here knoweth full well,
+  Than calling to mind joy in misery.
+
+  But since thy wish be great to hear us tell
+  How we lost all but love, tell it I will,
+  As well as tears will let me. It befel,
+
+  One day, we read how Lancelot gazed his fill
+  At her he loved, and what his lady said.
+  We were alone, thinking of nothing ill.
+
+  Oft were our eyes suspended as we read,
+  And in our cheeks the colour went and came;
+  Yet one sole passage struck resistance dead.
+
+  'Twas where the lover, moth-like in his flame,
+  Drawn by her sweet smile, kiss'd it. O then, he
+  Whose lot and mine are now for aye the same,
+
+  All in a tremble, on the mouth kiss'd _me_.
+  The book did all. Our hearts within us burn'd
+  Through that alone. That day no more read we."
+
+  While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
+  With wail so woful, that at his remorse
+  I felt as though I should have died. I turned
+
+  Stone-stiff; and to the ground fell like a corse.]
+
+
+No. II.
+
+ACCOUNTS GIVEN BY DIFFERENT WRITERS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES RELATING TO
+PAULO AND FRANCESCA; CONCLUDING WITH THE ONLY FACTS ASCERTAINED.
+
+BOCCACCIO'S ACCOUNT
+
+Translated from his Commentary on the Passage.
+
+"You must know, that this lady, Madonna Francesca, was daughter of
+Messer Guido the Elder, lord of Ravenna and of Cervia, and that a long
+and grievous war having been waged between him and the lords Malatesta
+of Rimini, a treaty of peace by certain mediators was at length
+concluded between them; the which, to the end that it might be the more
+firmly established, it pleased both parties to desire to fortify by
+relationship; and the matter of this relationship was so discoursed,
+that the said Messer Guido agreed to give his young and fair daughter
+in marriage to Gianciotto, the son of Messer Malatesta. Now, this being
+made known to certain of the friends of Messer Guido, one of them
+said to him, 'Take care what you do; for if you contrive not matters
+discreetly, such relationship will beget scandal. You know what manner
+of person your daughter is, and of how lofty a spirit; and if she see
+Gianciotto before the bond is tied, neither you nor any one else will
+have power to persuade her to marry him; therefore, if it so please you,
+it seems to me that it would be good to conduct the matter thus: namely,
+that Gianciotto should not come hither himself to marry her, but that a
+brother of his should come and espouse her in his name.'
+
+"Gianciotto was a man of great spirit, and hoped, after his father's
+death, to become lord of Rimini; in the contemplation of which event,
+albeit he was rude in appearance and a cripple, Messer Guido desired him
+for a son-in-law above any one of his brothers. Discerning, therefore,
+the reasonableness of what his friend counselled, he secretly disposed
+matters according to his device; and a day being appointed, Polo, a
+brother of Gianciotto, came to Ravenna with full authority to espouse
+Madonna Francesca. Polo was a handsome man, very pleasant, and of a
+courteous breeding; and passing with other gentlemen over the court-yard
+of the palace of Messer Guido, a damsel who knew him pointed him out to
+Madonna Francesca through an opening in the casement, saying, 'That is
+he that is to be your husband;' and so indeed the poor lady believed,
+and incontinently placed in him her whole affection; and the ceremony of
+the marriage having been thus brought about, and the lady conveyed to
+Rimini, she became not aware of the deceit till the morning ensuing
+the marriage, when she beheld Gianciotto rise from her side; the which
+discovery moved her to such disdain, that she became not a whit the less
+rooted in her love for Polo. Nevertheless, that it grew to be unlawful
+I never heard, except in what is written by this author (Dante), and
+possibly it might so have become; albeit I take what he says to have
+been an invention framed on the possibility, rather than any thing
+which he knew of his own knowledge. Be this as it may, Polo and Madonna
+Francesca living in the same house, and Gianciotto being gone into
+a certain neighbouring district as governor, they fell into great
+companionship with one another, suspecting nothing; but a servant of
+Gianciotto's noting it, went to his master and told him how matters
+looked; with the which Gianciotto being fiercely moved, secretly
+returned to Rimini; and seeing Polo enter the room of Madonna Francesca
+the while he himself was arriving, went straight to the door, and
+finding it locked inside, called to his lady to come out; for, Madonna
+Francesca and Polo having descried him, Polo thought to escape suddenly
+through an opening in the wall, by means of which there was a descent
+into another room; and therefore, thinking to conceal his fault either
+wholly or in part, he threw himself into the opening, telling the lady
+to go and open the door. But his hope did not turn out as he expected;
+for the hem of a mantle which he had on caught upon a nail, and the
+lady opening the door meantime, in the belief that all would be well by
+reason of Polo's not being there, Gianciotto caught sight of Polo as
+he was detained by the hem of the mantle, and straightway ran with his
+dagger in his hand to kill him; whereupon the lady, to prevent it, ran
+between them; but Gianciotto having lifted the dagger, and put the whole
+force of his arm into the blow, there came to pass what he had not
+desired--namely, that he struck the dagger into the bosom of the lady
+before it could reach Polo; by which accident, being as one who had
+loved the lady better than himself, he withdrew the dagger, and again
+struck at Polo, and slew him; and so leaving them both dead, he hastily
+went his way and betook him to his wonted affairs; and the next morning
+the two lovers, with many tears, were buried together in the same
+grave."
+
+The reader of this account will have observed, that while Dante assumes
+the guilt of all parties, and puts them into the infernal regions, the
+good-natured Boccaccio is for doubting it, and consequently for sending
+them all to heaven. He will ignore as much of the business as a
+gentleman can; boldly doubts any guilt in the case; says nothing of the
+circumstance of the book; and affirms that the husband loved his wife,
+and was miserable at having slain her. There is, however, one negative
+point in common between the two narrators; they both say nothing of
+certain particulars connected with the date of Francesca's marriage, and
+not a little qualifying the first romantic look of the story.
+
+Now, it is the absence of these particulars, combined with the tradition
+of the father's artifice (omitted perhaps by Dante out of personal
+favour), and with that of the husband's ferocity of character (the
+belief in which Boccaccio did not succeed in displacing), that has
+left the prevailing impression on the minds of posterity, which is
+this:--that Francesca was beguiled by her father into the marriage with
+the deformed and unamiable Giovanni, and that the unconscious medium of
+the artifice was the amiable and handsome Paulo; that one or both of
+the victims of the artifice fell in love with the other; that their
+intercourse, whatever it was, took place not long after the marriage;
+and that when Paulo and Francesca were slain in consequence, they were
+young lovers, with no other ties to the world.
+
+It is not pleasant in general to dispel the illusions of romance, though
+Dante's will bear the operation with less hurt to a reader's feelings
+than most; and I suspect, that if nine out of ten of all the implied
+conclusions of other narratives in his poem could be compared with the
+facts, he would be found to be one of the greatest of romancers in a new
+and not very desirable sense, however excusable he may have been in his
+party-prejudice. But a romance may be displaced, only to substitute
+perhaps matters of fact more really touching, by reason of their greater
+probability. The following is the whole of what modern inquirers have
+ascertained respecting Paulo and Francesca. Future enlargers on the
+story may suppress what they please, as Dante did; but if any one of
+them, like the writer of the present remarks, is anxious to speak
+nothing but the truth, I advise him (especially if he is for troubling
+himself with making changes in his story) not to think that he has seen
+all the authorities on the subject, or even remembered all he has seen,
+until he has searched every corner of his library and his memory. All
+the poems hitherto written upon this popular subject are indeed only to
+be regarded as so many probable pieces of fancy, that of Dante himself
+included.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ONLY PARTICULARS HITHERTO REALLY ASCERTAINED RESPECTING THE HISTORY
+OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA.
+
+Francesca was daughter of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna.
+
+She was married to Giovanni, surnamed the Lame, one of the sons of
+Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini.
+
+Giovanni the Lame had a brother named Paulo the Handsome, who was a
+widower, and left a son.
+
+Twelve years after Francesca's marriage, by which time she had become
+mother of a son who died, and of a daughter who survived her, she and
+her brother-in-law Paulo were slain together by the husband, and buried
+in one grave.
+
+Two hundred years afterwards, the grave was opened, and the bodies found
+lying together in silken garments, the silk itself being entire.
+
+Now, a far more touching history may have lurked under these facts than
+in the half-concealed and misleading circumstances of the received
+story--long patience, long duty, struggling conscience, exhausted hope.
+
+On the other hand, it may have been a mere heartless case of intrigue
+and folly.
+
+But tradition is to be allowed its reasonable weight; and the
+probability is, that the marriage was an affair of state, the lady
+unhappy, and the brothers too different from one another.
+
+The event took place in Dante's twenty-fourth year; so that he, who
+looks so much older to our imaginations than his heroine, was younger;
+and this renders more than probable what the latest biographers have
+asserted--namely, that the lord of Ravenna, at whose house he finished
+his days, was not her father, Guido da Polenta, the third of that name,
+but her nephew, Guido the Fifth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. IIII
+
+STORY OF UGOLINO.
+
+  Non eravam partiti già da ello,
+  Ch' i' vidi duo ghiacciati in una buca
+  Si, che l'un capo a l'altro era capello:
+
+  E come 'l pan per fame si manduca,
+  Così 'l sovran li denti a l'altro pose
+  Là've 'l cervel s'aggiunge con la nuca.
+
+  Non altrimenti Tideo sì rose
+  Le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno,
+  Che quei faceva 'l teschio e l'altre cose.
+
+  O tu che mostri per sì bestial segno
+  Odio sovra colui che tu ti mangi
+  Dimmi 'l perchè, diss' io, per tal convegno,
+
+  Che se tu a ragion di lui ti piangi,
+  Sappiendo chi voi siete, e la sua pecca,
+  Nel mondo suso ancor io te ne cangi,
+
+  Se quella con ch' i' parlo non si secca.
+
+  La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto
+  Quel peccator, forbendola a' capelli
+  Del capo ch' egli avea diretro guasto:
+
+  Poi cominciò: tu vuoi ch' i' rinnovelli
+  Disperato dolor the 'l cuor mi preme
+  Già pur pensando, pria ch' i' ne favelli.
+
+  Ma se le mie parole esser den seme,
+  Che frutti infamia al traditor ch' i' rodo,
+  Parlare e lagrimar vedrai insieme.
+
+  I' non so chi tu sei, nè per che modo
+  Venuto se' qua giù: ma Fiorentino
+  Mi sembri veramente, quand' i' t' odo.
+
+  Tu de' saper ch' i' fu 'l Conte Ugolino,
+  E questi l' Arcivescovo Ruggieri:
+  Or ti dirò perch' i' son tal vicino.
+
+  Che per l' effetto de' suo' ma' pensieri,
+  Fidandomi di lui, io fossi preso,
+  E poscia morto, dir non è mestieri.
+
+  Però quel che non puoi avere inteso,
+  Cioè, come la morte mia fu cruda,
+  Udirai e saprai se m' ha offeso.
+
+  Breve pertugio dentro da la muda,
+  La qual per me ha 'l titol da la fame,
+  E 'n che conviene ancor ch' altrui si chiuda,
+
+  M' avea mostrato per lo suo forame
+  Più lone già, quand' i' feci 'l mal sonno,
+  Che del futuro mi squarciò 'l velame.
+
+  Questi pareva a me maestro e donno,
+  Cacciando 'l lupo e i lupicirui al monte,
+  Perchè i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno.
+
+  Con cagne magre studiose e conte
+  Gualandi con Sismondi e con Lanfranchi
+  S' avea messi dinanzi da la fronte.
+
+  In picciol corso mi pareano stanchi
+  Lo padre e i figli, e con l' agute scane
+  Mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi.
+
+  Quando fui desto innanzi la dimane,
+  Pianger senti' fra 'l sonno miei figliuoli
+  Ch' eran con meco, e dimandar del pane.
+
+  Ben se' crudel, se uo già non ti duoli
+  Pensando ciò ch' al mio cuor s' annunziava
+  E se non piangi, di che pianger suoli?
+
+  Già eram desti, e l'ora s'appressava
+  Che 'l cibo ne soleva essere addotto,
+  E per suo sogno ciascun dubitava,
+
+  Ed io senti' chiavar l'uscio di sotto
+  A l'orribile torre: ond' io guardai
+  Nel viso a miei figliuoi senza far motto:
+
+  I' non piangeva, sì dentro impietrai:
+  Piangevan' elli; ed Anselmuccio mio
+  Disse, Tu guardi sì, padre: che hai?
+
+  Però non lagrimai nè rispos' io
+  Tutto quel giorno nè la notte appresso,
+  Infin che l'altro sol nel mondo uscío.
+
+  Com' un poco di raggio si fu messo
+  Nel doloroso carcere, ed io scorsi
+  Per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso,
+
+  Ambo le mani per dolor mi morsi:
+  E quei pensando ch' i 'l fessi per voglia
+  Di manicar, di subito levorsi
+
+  E disser: Padre, assai ci sia men doglia,
+  Se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti
+  Queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia.
+
+  Quetàmi allor per non fargli più tristi:
+  Quel dì e l'altro stemmo tutti muti:
+  Ahi dura terra, perchè non t'apristi?
+
+  Posciachè fummo al quarto di venuti,
+  Gaddo mi si gittò disteso a' piedi,
+  Dicendo: Padre mio, che non m' ajuti?
+
+  Quivi morì: e come tu mi vedi,
+  Vid' io cascar li tre ad uno ad uno
+  Tra 'l quinto di, e 'l sesto: ond' i' mi diedi
+
+  Già cieco a brancolar sovra ciascuno,
+  E tre di gli chiamai poich' e 'fur morti:
+  Poscia, più che 'l dolor, pote 'l digiuno.
+
+  Quand' ebbe detto ciò, con gli occhj torti
+  Riprese 'l teschio misero co' denti,
+  Che furo a l'osso come d' un can forti.
+
+  Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti,
+  Del bel paese là dove 'l sì suona;
+  Poiche i vicini a te punir son lenti,
+
+  Muovasi la Capraja e la Gorgona,
+  E faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce,
+  Si ch' egli annieghi in te ogni persona:
+
+  Che se 'l Conte Ugolino aveva voce
+  D'aver tradita te de le castella,
+  Non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce.
+
+  Innocenti facea 'l eta novella;
+  Novella Tebe, Uguccione, e 'l Brigata,
+  E gli altri duo che 'l canto suso appella.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  _Translation in the heroic couplet._
+
+  Quitting the traitor Bocca's barking soul,
+  We saw two more, so iced up in one hole,
+  That the one's visage capp'd the other's head;
+  And as a famish'd man devoureth bread,
+  So rent the top one's teeth the skull below
+  'Twixt nape and brain. Tydeus, as stories show,
+  Thus to the brain of Menalippus ate:--
+  "O thou!" I cried, "showing such bestial hate
+  To him thou tearest, read us whence it rose;
+  That, if thy cause be juster than thy foe's,
+  The world, when I return, knowing the truth,
+  May of thy story have the greater ruth."
+
+  His mouth he lifted from his dreadful fare,
+  That sinner, wiping it with the grey hair
+  Whose roots he had laid waste; and thus he said:--
+  "A desperate thing thou askest; what I dread
+  Even to think of. Yet, to sow a seed
+  Of infamy to him on whom I feed,
+  Tell it I will:--ay, and thine eyes shall see
+  Mine own weep all the while for misery.
+  Who thou may'st be, I know not; nor can dream
+  How thou cam'st hither; but thy tongue doth seem
+  To skew thee, of a surety, Florentine.
+  Know then, that I was once Count Ugoline,
+  And this man was Ruggieri, the archpriest.
+  Still thou may'st wonder at my raging feast;
+  For though his snares be known, and how his key
+  He turn'd upon my trust, and murder'd me,
+  Yet what the murder was, of what strange sort
+  And cruel, few have had the true report.
+  Hear then, and judge.--In the tower, called since then
+  The Tower of Famine, I had lain and seen
+  Full many a moon fade through the narrow bars.
+  When, in a dream one night, mine evil stars
+  Shew'd me the future with its dreadful face.
+  Methought this man led a great lordly chase
+  Against a wolf and cubs, across the height
+  Which barreth Lucca from the Pisan's sight.
+  Lean were the hounds, high-bred, and sharp for blood;
+  And foremost in the press Gualandi rode,
+  Lanfranchi, and Sismondi. Soon were seen
+  The father and his sons, those wolves I mean,
+  Limping, and by the hounds all crush'd and torn
+  And as the cry awoke me in the morn,
+  I heard my boys, the while they dozed in bed
+  (For they were with me), wail, and ask for bread.
+  Full cruel, if it move thee not, thou art,
+  To think what thoughts then rush'd into my heart.
+  What wouldst thou weep at, weeping not at this?
+  All had now waked, and something seem'd amiss,
+  For 'twas the time they used to bring us bread,
+  And from our dreams had grown a horrid dread.
+  I listen'd; and a key, down stairs, I heard
+  Lock up the dreadful turret. Not a word
+  I spoke, but look'd my children in the face
+  No tear I shed, so firmly did I brace
+  My soul; but _they_ did; and my Anselm said,
+  'Father, you look so!--Won't they bring us bread?'
+  E'en then I wept not, nor did answer word
+  All day, nor the next night. And now was stirr'd,
+  Upon the world without, another day;
+  And of its light there came a little ray,
+  Which mingled with the gloom of our sad jail;
+  And looking to my children's bed, full pale,
+  In four small faces mine own face I saw.
+  Oh, then both hands for misery did I gnaw;
+  And they, thinking I did it, being mad
+  For food, said, 'Father, we should be less sad
+  If you would feed on us. Children, they say,
+  Are their own father's flesh. Starve not to-day.'
+  Thenceforth they saw me shake not, hand nor foot.
+  That day, and next, we all continued mute.
+  O thou hard Earth!--why opened'st thou not?
+  Next day (it was the fourth in our sad lot)
+  My Gaddo stretched him at my feet, and cried,
+  'Dear father, won't you help me?' and he died.
+  And surely as thou seest me here undone,
+  I saw my whole three children, one by one,
+  Between the fifth day and the sixth, all die.
+  I became blind; and in my misery
+  Went groping for them, as I knelt and crawl'd
+  About the room; and for three days I call'd
+  Upon their names, as though they could speak too,
+  Till famine did what grief had fail'd to do."
+
+  Having spoke thus, he seiz'd with fiery eyes
+  That wretch again, his feast and sacrifice,
+  And fasten'd on the skull, over a groan,
+  With teeth as strong as mastiff's on a bone.
+  Ah, Pisa! thou that shame and scandal be
+  To the sweet land that speaks the tongue of Sì.[1]
+
+  Since Florence spareth thy vile neck the yoke,
+  Would that the very isles would rise, and choke
+  Thy river, and drown every soul within
+  Thy loathsome walls. What if this Ugolin
+  Did play the traitor, and give up (for so
+  The rumour runs) thy castles to the foe,
+  Thou hadst no right to put to rack like this
+  His children. Childhood innocency is.
+  But that same innocence, and that man's name,
+  Have damn'd thee, Pisa, to a Theban fame?[2]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REAL STORY OF UGOLINO,
+
+AND CHAUCER'S FEELING RESPECTING THE POEM.
+
+Chaucer has told the greater part of this story beautifully in his
+"Canterbury Tales;" but he had not the heart to finish it. He refers
+for the conclusion to his original, hight "Dant," the "grete poete
+of Itaille;" adding, that Dante will not fail his readers a single
+word--that is to say, not an atom of the cruelty.
+
+Our great gentle-hearted countryman, who tells Fortune that it was
+
+  "great cruelty
+  Such birdes for to put in such a cage,"
+
+adds a touch of pathos in the behaviour of one of the children, which
+Dante does not seem to have thought of:
+
+  "There day by day this child began to cry,
+  Till in his father's barme (lap) adown he lay;
+  And said, 'Farewell, father, I muste die,'
+  And _kiss'd his father_, and died the same day."
+
+It will be a relief, perhaps, instead of a disappointment, to the
+readers of this appalling story, to hear that Dante's particulars of it
+are as little to be relied on as those of the Paulo and Francesca. The
+only facts known of Ugolino are, that he was an ambitious traitor, who
+did actually deliver up the fortified places, as Dante acknowledges; and
+that his rivals, infamous as he, or more infamous, prevailed against
+him, and did shut him up and starve him and some of his family. But
+the "little" children are an invention of the poet's, or probably his
+belief, when he was a young man, and first heard the story; for some of
+Ugolino's fellow-prisoners may have been youths, but others were grown
+up--none so childish as he intimates; and they were not all his own
+sons; some were his nephews.
+
+And as to Archbishop Ruggieri, there is no proof whatever of his having
+had any share in the business--hardly a ground of suspicion; so that
+historians look upon him as an "ill-used gentleman." Dante, in all
+probability, must have learnt the real circumstances of the case, as he
+advanced in years; but if charity is bound to hope that he would have
+altered the passage accordingly, had he revised his poem, it is forced
+to admit that he left it unaltered, and that his "will and pleasure"
+might have found means of reconciling the retention to his conscience.
+Pride, unfortunately, includes the power to do things which it pretends
+to be very foreign to its nature; and in proportion as detraction is
+easy to it, retraction becomes insupportable.[3]
+
+Rabelais, to shew his contempt for the knights of chivalry, has made
+them galley-slaves in the next world, their business being to help
+Charon row his boat over the river Styx, and their payment a piece of
+mouldy bread and a fillip on the nose. Somebody should write a burlesque
+of the enormities in Dante's poem, and invent some Rabelaesque
+punishment for a great poet's pride and presumption. What should it be?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. IV.
+
+PICTURE OF FLORENCE IN THE TIME OF DANTE'S ANCESTORS.
+
+  Fiorenza dentro da la cerchia antica,
+  Ond' ella toglie ancora e Terza e Nona,
+  Si stava in pace sobria e pudica.
+
+  Non avea catenella, non corona,
+  Non donne contigiate, non cintura
+  Che fosse a veder più che la persona.
+
+  Non faceva nascendo ancor paura
+  La figlia al padre, che 'l tempo e la dotte
+  Non fuggian quindi e quindi la misura.
+
+  Non avea case di famiglia vote
+  Non v'era giunto ancor Sardanapalo
+  A mostrar ciò che 'n camera si puote.
+
+  Non era vinto ancora Montemalo
+  Dal vostro Uccellatojo, che com' è vinto
+  Nel montar su, così sarà nel calo.
+
+  Bellincion Berti vid' io andar cinto
+  Di cuojo e d'osso, e venir da lo specchio
+  La donna sua sanza 'l viso dipinto:
+
+  E vidi quel de' Nerli e quel del Vecchio
+  Esser contenti a la pelle scoverta,
+  E le sue donne al fuso ed al pennecchio.
+
+  O fortunate! e ciascuna era certa
+  De la sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla
+  Era per Francia nel lotto deserta.
+
+  L'una vegghiava a studio de la culla,
+  E consolando usava l'idioma
+  Che pria li padri e le madri trastulla:
+
+  L'altra traendo a la rocca la chioma
+  Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia
+  Di Trojani e di Fiesole e di Roma.
+
+  Saria tenuta allor tal maraviglia
+  Una Cianghella, un Lapo Salterello,
+  Qual or saria Cincinnato e Corniglia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Translation in blank verse._
+
+  Florence, before she broke the good old bounds,
+  Whence yet are heard the chimes of eve and morn.
+  Abided well in modesty and peace.
+  No coronets had she--no chains of gold--
+  No gaudy sandals--no rich girdles rare
+  That caught the eye more than the person did.
+  Fathers then feared no daughter's birth, for dread
+  Of wantons courting wealth; nor were their homes
+  Emptied with exile. Chamberers had not shown
+  What they could dare, to prove their scorn of shame.
+  Your neighbouring uplands then beheld no towers
+  Prouder than Rome's, only to know worse fall.
+  I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
+  Girt with a thong of leather; and his wife
+  Come from the glass without a painted face.
+  Nerlis I saw, and Vecchios, and the like,
+  In doublets without cloaks; and their good dames
+  Contented while they spun. Blest women those
+  They know the place where they should lie when dead;
+  Nor were their beds deserted while they liv'd.
+  They nurs'd their babies; lull'd them with the songs
+  And household words of their own infancy;
+  And while they drew the distaff's hair away,
+  In the sweet bosoms of their families,
+  Told tales of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome.
+  It had been then as marvellous to see
+  A man of Lapo Salterello's sort,
+  Or woman like Cianghella, as to find
+  A Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. V.
+
+THE MONKS AND THE GIANTS.
+
+PULCI.
+
+  L'abate si chiamava Chiaramonte,
+  Era del sangue disceso d'Angrante:
+  Di sopra a la badia v'era un gran monte,
+  Dove abitava alcun fiero gigante,
+  De' quali uno avea nome Passamonte,
+  L'altro Alabastro, e 'l terzo era Morgante:
+  Con certe frombe gittavan da alto,
+  Ed ogni di facevan qualche assalto.
+
+  I monachetti non potieno uscire
+  Del monistero, o per legne, o per acque.
+  Orlando picchia, e non volieno aprire,
+  Fin che a l'abate a la fine pur piacque:
+  Entrato drento cominciava a dire,
+  Come colui che di Maria già nacque,
+  Adora, ed era cristian battezzato,
+  E com' egli era a la badia arrivato.
+
+  Disse l' abate: Il ben venuto sia:
+  Di quel ch' io ho, volentier ti daremo,
+  Poi the tu credi al figliuol di Maria;
+  E la cagion, cavalier, ti diremo,
+  Acciò che non l'imputi a villania,
+  Perchè a l'entrar resistenza facemo,
+  E non ti volle aprir quel monachetto;
+  Così intervien chi vive con sospetto.
+
+  Quando ci venni al principio abitare
+  Queste montagne, benchè sieno oscure
+  Come tu vedi, pur si potea stare
+  Sanza sospetto, ch' ell' eran sicure:
+  Sol da le fiere t'avevi a guardare:
+  Fernoci spesso di brutte paure;
+  Or ci bisogna, se vogliamo starci,
+  Da le bestie dimestiche guardarci.
+
+  Queste ci fan piutosto stare a segno:
+  Sonci appariti tre fiere giganti,
+  Non so di qual paese o di qual regno,
+  Ma molto son feroci tutti quanti:
+  La forza e 'l malvoler giunt' a lo 'ngegno
+  Sai che può 'l tutto; e noi non siam bastanti:
+  Questi perturban si l'orazion nostra,
+  Che non so più che far, s'altri nol mostra.
+
+  Gli antichi padri nostri nel deserto,
+  Se le lor opre sante erano e giuste,
+  Del ben servir da Dio n'avean buon merto:
+  Nè creder sol vivessin di locuste:
+  Piovea dal ciel la manna, guesto è certo;
+  Ma qui convien che spesso assaggi e gust
+  Sassi, che piovon di sopra quel monte,
+  Che gettano Alabastro e Passamonte.
+
+  E 'l terzo ch' è Morgante, assai più fiero,
+  Isveglie e pini e faggi e cerri e gli oppi,
+  E gettagli infin quì; questo è pur vero:
+  Non posso far che d'ira non iscoppi.
+  Mentre che parlan così in cimitero,
+  Un sasso par che Rondel quasi sgroppi;
+  Che da' giganti giù venne da altro
+  Tanto, ch' e' prese sotto il tetto un salto.
+
+  Tirati drento, cavalier, per Dio,
+  Disse l'abate, che la manna casca.
+  Rispose Orlando: Caro abate mio,
+  Costui non vuol che 'l mio caval più pasca:
+  Veggo che lo guarebbe del restio:
+  Quel sasso par che di buon braccio nasca.
+  Rispose il santo padre: Io non t' inganno;
+  Credo che 'l monte un giorno gitteranno.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. VI.
+
+PASSAGES IN THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
+
+THE SAME.
+
+_Orlando and Bujaforte._
+
+  La battaglia veniva rinforzando,
+  E in ogni parte apparisce la morte:
+  E mentre in quà e in là, combatte Orlando,
+  Un tratto a caso trovò Bujaforte,
+  E in su la testa gli dette col brando:
+  E perchè l'elmo è temperato e forte,
+  O forse incantato era, al colpo ha retto:
+  Ma de la testa gli balzò di netto.
+
+  Orlando prese costui per le chiome,
+  E disse: Dimmi, se non ch' io t'uccido.
+  Di questo tradimento appunto e come:
+  E se tu il di', de la morte ti fido,
+  E vo' che tu mi dica presto il nome.
+  Onde il pagan rispose con gran grido,
+  Aspetta: Bujaforte io te lo dico,
+  De la montagna del Veglio tuo amico.
+
+  Orlando, quando intese il giovinetto,
+  Subito al padre suo raffigurollo:
+  Lasciò la chioma, e poi l'abbracciò stretto
+  Per tenerezza, e con l'elmo baciollo;
+  E disse: O Bujaforte, il vero hai detto
+  Il Veglio mio: e da canto tirollo:
+  Di questo tradimento dimmi appunto,
+  Poi the così la fortuna m' ha giunto.
+
+  Ma ben ti dico per la fede mia,
+  Che di combatter con mie genti hai torto;
+  E so che 'l padre tuo, dovunque e' sia,
+  Non ti perdona questo, così morto.
+  Bujaforte piangeva tuttavia;
+  Poi disse: Orlando mio, datti conforto;
+  Il mio signore a forza quà mi manda;
+  E obbedir convien quel che comanda.
+
+  Io son de la mia patria sbandeggiato:
+  Marsilio in corte sua m' ha ritenuto,
+  E promesso rimettermi in istato:
+  Io vo cercando consiglio ed ajuto,
+  Poi ch' io son da ognuno abbandonato:
+  E per questa cagion quà son venuto:
+  E bench' i mostri far grande schermaglia.
+  Non ho morto nessun ne la battaglia.
+
+  Io t' ho tanto per fama ricordare
+  Sentito a tutto il mondo, che nel core
+  Sempre poi t' ebbi: e mi puoi comandare:
+  E so del padre mio l'antico amore:
+  Del tradimento tu tel puoi pensare:
+  Sai che Gano e Marsilio è traditore:
+  E so per discrezion tu intendi bene,
+  Che tanta gente per tua morte viene.
+
+  E Baldovin di Marsilio ha la vesta;
+  Che così il vostro Gano ba ordinato:
+  Vedi che ignun non gli pon lancia in resta:
+  Che 'l signor nostro ce l'ha comandato.
+  Disse Orlando: Rimetti l'elmo in testa,
+  E torna a la battaglia al modo usato:
+  Vedrem che segnirà: tanto ti dico,
+  Ch' io t'arò sempre come il Veglio amico.
+
+  Poi disse: Aspetta un poco, intendi saldo,
+  Che non ti punga qualche strana ortica:
+  Sappi ch' egli è ne la zuffa Rinaldo:
+  Guarda che il nome per nulla non dica:
+  Che non dicesse in quella furia caldo,
+  Dunque tu se' da la parte nimica:
+  Si che tu giuochi netto, destro e largo:
+  Che ti bisogua aver quì gli occhi d'Argo.
+
+  Rispose Bujaforte: Bene hai detto:
+  Se la battaglia passerà a tuo modo,
+  Ti mostrerò che amico son perfetto,
+  Come fu il padre mio, ch' ancor ne godo.
+
+The poor youth takes his way through the fight, and unfortunately meets
+with Rinaldo.
+
+  Rinaldo ritrovò quel Bujaforte,
+  Al mio parer, che sarebbe scoppiato,
+  Se non avesse trovato la morte:
+  E come egli ebbe a parlar cominciato
+  Del re Marsilio, e di stare in suo corte.
+  Rinaldo gli rispose infuriato:
+  Chi non è ineco, avverso me sia detto;
+  E cominciogli a trassinar l'elmetto.
+  E trasse un mandiretto e due e tre
+  Con tanta furia, e quattro e cinque e sei,
+  Che non ebbe agio a domandar merzè,
+  E morto cadde sanza dire omei.
+
+  _Orlando and Baldwin._
+
+  Orlando, poi che lasciò Bujaforte,
+  Pargli mill'anni trovar Baldovino,
+  Che cerca pure e non truova la morte:
+  E ricognobbe il caval Vegliantino
+  Per la battaglia, e va correndo forte
+  Dov' era Orlando, e diceva il meschino:
+  Sappi ch' io ho fatto oggi il mio dovuto;
+  E contra me nessun mai e venuto.
+
+  Molti pagani ho pur fatti morire;
+  Però quel che ciò sia pensar non posso,
+  Se non ch' io veggo la gente fuggire.
+  Rispose Orlando: Tu ti fai ben grosso;
+  Di questo fatto stu ti vuoi chiarire,
+  La soppravvesta ti cava di dosso:
+  Vedrai che Gan, come tu te la cavi,
+  Ci ha venduti a Marsilio per ischiavi.
+
+  Rispose Baldwin: Se il padre mio
+  Ci ha qui condotti come traditore,
+  S' i' posso oggi campar, pel nostro Iddio
+  Con questa spada passerogli il core:
+  Ma traditore, Orlando, non so io,
+  Ch' io t' ho seguito con perfetto amore:
+  Non mi potresti dir maggiore ingiuria.--
+  Poi si stracciò la vesta con gran furia,
+
+  E disse: Io tornerò ne la battaglia,
+  Poi che tu m' hai per traditore scorto:
+  Io non son traditor, se Dio mi vaglia:
+  Non mi vedrai più oggi se non morto.
+  E in verso l'oste de' pagan si scaglia
+  Dicendo sempre: Tu m' hai fatto torto.
+  Orlando si pentea d'aver cio detto,
+  Che disperato vide il giovinetto.
+
+  Per la battaglia cornea Baldovino,
+  E riscontrò quel crudel Mazzarigi,
+  E disse: Tu se' qui, can Saracino,
+  Per distrugger la gente di Parigi?
+  O marran rinnegato paterino,
+  Tu sarai presto giù ne' bassi Stigi:
+  E trasse con la spada in modo a questo,
+  Che lo mandò dov' egli disse presto.
+
+Orlando meets again with Baldwin, who has kept his word.
+
+  Orlando corse a le grida e 'l romore,
+  E trovò Baldovino il poveretto
+  Ch' era gia presso a l'ultime sue ore,
+  E da due lance avea passato il petto;
+  E disse. Or non son io più traditore--
+  E cadde in terra morto così detto:
+  De la qual cosa duolsi Orlando forte,
+  E pianse esser cagion de la sua morte.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Sì, the Italian _yes_. A similar territorial designation is
+familiar to the reader in the word "Languedoc," meaning _langue d'oc_,
+or tongue of Oc, which was the pronunciation of the _oui_ or _yes_ of
+the French in that quarter.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Alluding to the cruel stories in the mythology of Boeotia.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The controversial character of Dante's genius, and the
+discordant estimate formed of it in so many respects by different
+writers, have already carried the author of this book so far beyond his
+intended limits, that he is obliged to refer for evidence in the cases
+of Ugolino and Francesca to Balbo, _Vita di Dante_ (Napoli, 1840), p.
+33; and to Troya, _Del Vettro Allegorico di Dante_ (Firenze, _1826), pp.
+28, 32, and 176.]
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories from the Italian Poets: With
+Lives of the Writers, Volume 1, by Leigh Hunt
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10885 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives
+of the Writers, Volume 1, by Leigh Hunt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1
+
+Author: Leigh Hunt
+
+Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10885]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stan Goodman, Jayam Subramanian and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS: WITH LIVES OF THE WRITERS.
+
+
+BY LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+MDCCCXLVI.
+
+
+
+
+TO SIR PERCY SHELLEY, BART.
+
+
+MY DEAR SIR PERCY,
+
+As I know no man who surpasses yourself either in combining a love of
+the most romantic fiction with the coolest good sense, or in passing
+from the driest metaphysical questions to the heartiest enjoyment of
+humour,--I trust that even a modesty so true as yours will not grudge me
+the satisfaction of inscribing these volumes with your name.
+
+That you should possess such varieties of taste is no wonder,
+considering what an abundance of intellectual honours you inherit; nor
+might the world have been the better for it, had they been tastes, and
+nothing more. But that you should inherit also that zeal for justice to
+mankind, which has become so Christian a feature in the character of the
+age, and that you should include in that zeal a special regard for the
+welfare of your Father's Friend, are subjects of constant pleasurable
+reflection to
+
+Your obliged and affectionate
+
+LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The purpose of these volumes is, to add to the stock of tales from the
+Italian writers; to retain as much of the poetry of the originals as it
+is in the power of the writer's prose to compass; and to furnish careful
+biographical notices of the authors. There have been several collections
+of stories from the Novellists of Italy, but none from the Poets; and it
+struck me that prose versions from these, of the kind here offered to
+the public, might not be unwillingly received. The stories are selected
+from the five principal narrative poets, Dante, Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto,
+and Tasso; they comprise the most popular of such as are fit for
+translation; are reduced into one continuous narrative, when diffused
+and interrupted, as in the instances of those of Angelica, and Armida;
+are accompanied with critical and explanatory notes; and, in the case of
+Dante, consist of an abstract of the poet's whole work. The volumes are,
+furthermore, interspersed with the most favourite _morceaux_ of the
+originals, followed sometimes with attempts to versify them; and in the
+Appendix, for the furtherance of the study of the Italian language, are
+given entire stories, also in the original, and occasionally rendered
+in like manner. The book is particularly intended for such students or
+other lovers of the language as are pleased with any fresh endeavours to
+recommend it; and, at the same time, for such purely English readers as
+wish to know something about Italian poetry, without having leisure to
+cultivate its acquaintance.
+
+I did not intend in the first instance to depart from the plan
+of selection in the case of Dante; but when I considered what an
+extraordinary person he was,--how intense is every thing which he
+says,--how widely he has re-attracted of late the attention of the
+world,--how willingly perhaps his poem might be regarded by the reader
+as being itself one continued story (which, in fact, it is), related
+personally of the writer,--and lastly, what a combination of
+difficulties have prevented his best translators in verse from giving
+the public a just idea of his almost Scriptural simplicity,--I began to
+think that an abstract of his entire work might possibly be looked upon
+as supplying something of a desideratum. I am aware that nothing but
+verse can do perfect justice to verse; but besides the imperfections
+which are pardonable, because inevitable, in all such metrical
+endeavours, the desire to impress a grand and worshipful idea of Dante
+has been too apt to lead his translators into a tone and manner the
+reverse of his passionate, practical, and creative style--a style which
+may be said to write things instead of words; and thus to render every
+word that is put out of its place, or brought in for help and filling
+up, a misrepresentation. I do not mean to say, that he himself never
+does any thing of the sort, or does not occasionally assume too much
+of the oracle and the schoolmaster, in manner as well as matter;
+but passion, and the absence of the superfluous, are the chief
+characteristics of his poetry. Fortunately, this sincerity of purpose
+and utterance in Dante render him the least pervertible of poets in a
+sincere prose translation; and, since I ventured on attempting one, I
+have had the pleasure of meeting with an express recommendation of such
+a version in an early number of the _Edinburgh Review_.[1]
+
+The abstract of Dante, therefore, in these volumes (with every
+deprecation that becomes me of being supposed to pretend to give a
+thorough idea of any poetry whatsoever, especially without its metrical
+form) aspires to be regarded as, at all events, not exhibiting a false
+idea of the Dantesque spirit in point of feeling and expression. It is
+true, I have omitted long tedious lectures of scholastic divinity, and
+other learned absurdities of the time, which are among the bars to the
+poem's being read through, even in Italy (which Foscolo tells us is
+never the case); and I have compressed the work in other passages not
+essentially necessary to the formation of a just idea of the author.
+But quite enough remains to suggest it to the intelligent; and in no
+instance have I made additions or alterations. There is warrant--I hope
+I may say letter--for every thing put down. Dante is the greatest poet
+for intensity that ever lived; and he excites a corresponding emotion
+in his reader--I wish I could say, always on the poet's side; but his
+ferocious hates and bigotries too often tempt us to hate the bigot,
+and always compel us to take part with the fellow-creatures whom he
+outrages. At least, such is their effect on myself. Nor will he or his
+worshippers suffer us to criticise his faults with mere reference to the
+age in which he lived. I should have been glad to do so; but the claims
+made for him, even by himself, will not allow it. We are called upon to
+look on him as a divine, a prophet, an oracle in all respects for all
+time. Such a man, however, is the last whom a reporter is inclined to
+misrepresent. We respect his sincerity too much, ferocious and arrogant
+though it be; and we like to give him the full benefit of the recoil of
+his curses and maledictions. I hope I have not omitted one. On the
+other hand, as little have I closed my feelings against the lovely
+and enchanting sweetness which this great semi-barbarian sometimes so
+affectingly utters. On those occasions he is like an angel enclosed
+for penance in some furious giant, and permitted to weep through the
+creature's eyes.
+
+The stories from goodnatured Pulci I have been obliged to compress for
+other reasons--chiefly their excessive diffuseness. A paragraph of the
+version will sometimes comprise many pages. Those of Boiardo and Ariosto
+are more exact; and the reader will be good enough to bear in mind, that
+nothing is added to any of the poets, different as the case might seem
+here and there on comparison with the originals. An equivalent for
+whatever is said is to be found in some part of the context--generally
+in letter, always in spirit. The least characteristically exact passages
+are some in the love-scenes of Tasso; for I have omitted the plays upon
+words and other corruptions in style, in which that poet permitted
+himself to indulge. But I have noticed the circumstance in the comment.
+In other respects, I have endeavoured to make my version convey some
+idea of the different styles and genius of the writers,--of the severe
+passion of Dante; of the overflowing gaiety and affecting sympathies
+of Pulci, several of whose passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles are
+masterpieces of pathos; of the romantic and inventive elegance of
+Boiardo; the great cheerful universality of Ariosto, like a healthy
+_anima mundi_; and the ambitious irritability, the fairy imagination,
+and tender but somewhat effeminate voluptuousness of the poet of Armida
+and Rinaldo. I do not pretend that prose versions of passages from these
+writers can supersede the necessity of metrical ones, supposing proper
+metrical ones attainable. They suffice for them, in some respects, less
+than for Dante, the manner in their case being of more importance to
+the effect. But with all due respect to such translators as Harrington,
+Rose, and Wiffen, their books are not Ariosto and Tasso, even in manner.
+Harrington, the gay "godson" of Queen Elizabeth, is not always unlike
+Ariosto; but when not in good spirits he becomes as dull as if her
+majesty had frowned on him. Rose was a man of wit, and a scholar; yet
+he has undoubtedly turned the ease and animation of his original into
+inversion and insipidity. And Wiffen, though elegant and even poetical,
+did an unfortunate thing for Tasso, when he gave an additional line and
+a number of paraphrastic thoughts to a stanza already tending to the
+superfluous. Fairfax himself, who, upon the whole, and with regard to
+a work of any length, is the best metrical translator our language has
+seen, and, like Chapman, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the sins
+of prettiness and conceit in his original, and added to them a love
+of tautology amounting to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below
+criticism; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if I had
+no acquaintance with the Italian language, I confess I would rather get
+any friend who had, to read to me a passage out of Dante, Tasso, or
+Ariosto, into the first simple prose that offered itself, than go to any
+of the above translators for a taste of it, Fairfax excepted; and we
+have seen with how much allowance his sample would have to be taken.
+I have therefore, with some restrictions, only ventured to do for the
+public what I would have had a friend do for myself.
+
+The _Critical and Biographical Notices_ I did not intend to make so long
+at first; but the interest grew upon me; and I hope the reader will
+regard some of them--Dante's and Tasso's in particular--as being
+"stories" themselves, after their kind,--"stories, alas, too true;"
+"romances of real life." The extraordinary character of Dante, which is
+personally mixed up with his writings beyond that of any other poet, has
+led me into references to his church and creed, unavoidable at any
+time in the endeavour to give a thorough estimate of his genius, and
+singularly demanded by certain phenomena of the present day. I hold
+those phenomena to be alike feeble and fugitive; but only so by reason
+of their being openly so proclaimed; for mankind have a tendency to the
+absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed; and one of the
+uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it
+to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and
+the strange identification of his knowledge with all that was knowable,
+would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a
+prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was
+reversing the duty of a Christian and a great man; and there happen to
+be existing reasons why it is salutary to chew that he had no right to
+do so, and must not have his barbarism confounded with his strength.
+Machiavelli was of opinion, that if Christianity had not reverted to its
+first principles, by means of the poverty and pious lives of St. Francis
+and St. Dominic,[2] the faith would have been lost. It may have been;
+but such are not the secrets of its preservation in times of science and
+progression, when the spirit of inquiry has established itself among
+all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as it used to be. A few
+persons here and there, who confound a small superstitious reaction in
+England with the reverse of the fact all over the rest of Europe, may
+persuade themselves, if they please, that the world has not advanced in
+knowledge for the last three centuries, and so get up and cry aloud to
+us out of obsolete horn-books; but the community laugh at them. Every
+body else is inquiring into first principles, while they are dogmatising
+on a forty-ninth proposition. The Irish themselves, as they ought to do,
+care more for their pastors than for the Pope; and if any body wishes to
+know what is thought of his Holiness at head-quarters, let him consult
+the remarkable and admirable pamphlet which has lately issued from the
+pen of Mr. Mazzini.[3] I have the pleasure of knowing excellent Roman
+Catholics; I have suffered in behalf of their emancipation, and would do
+so again to-morrow; but I believe that if even their external form of
+Christianity has any chance of survival three hundred years hence, it
+will have been owing to the appearance meanwhile of some extraordinary
+man in power, who, in the teeth of worldly interests, or rather in
+charitable and sage inclusion of them, shall have proclaimed that the
+time had arrived for living in the flower of Christian charity, instead
+of the husks and thorns which may have been necessary to guard it. If it
+were possible for some new and wonderful Pope to make this change, and
+draw a line between these two Christian epochs, like that between the
+Old and New Testaments, the world would feel inclined to prostrate
+itself again and for ever at the feet of Rome. In a catholic state
+of things like that, delighted should I be, for one, to be among the
+humblest of its communicants. How beautiful would their organs be then!
+how ascending to an unperplexing Heaven their incense! how unselfish
+their salvation! how intelligible their talk about justice and love! It
+would be far more easy, however, for the Church of England to do this
+than the Church of Rome; since the former would not feel itself hampered
+with pretensions to infallibility. A Church once reformed, may reform
+itself again and again, till it remove every blemish in the way of its
+perfection. And God grant this may be the lot of the Church of my native
+country. Its beautiful old ivied places of worship would then want
+no harmony of accordance with its gentle and tranquil scenery; no
+completeness of attraction to the reflecting and the kind.
+
+But if Charity (and by Charity I do not mean mere toleration, or any
+other pretended right to permit others to have eyes like ourselves, but
+whatever the delightful Greek word implies of good and lovely), if this
+truly and only divine consummation of all Christian doctrine be not
+thought capable of taking a form of belief "strong" enough, apart from
+threats that revolt alike the heart and the understanding, Superstition
+must look out for some new mode of dictation altogether; for the world
+is outgrowing the old.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I cannot, in gratitude for the facilities afforded to myself, as well
+as for a more obvious and public reason, dismiss this Preface without
+congratulating men of letters on the establishment and increasing
+prosperity of the _London Library_, an institution founded for the
+purpose of accommodating subscribers with such books, at their own
+houses, as could only be consulted hitherto at the British Museum. The
+sole objection to the Museum is thus done away, and the literary world
+has a fair prospect of possessing two book-institutions instead of one,
+each with its distinct claims to regard, and presenting in combination
+all that the student can wish; for while it is highly desirable that
+authors should be able to have standard works at their command, when
+sickness or other circumstances render it impossible for them to go to
+the Museum, it is undoubtedly requisite that one great collection should
+exist in which they are sure to find the same works unremoved, in case
+of necessity,--not to mention curious volumes of all sorts, manuscripts,
+and a world of books of reference.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: "It is probable that a prose translation would give a
+better idea of the genius and manner of this poet than any metrical
+one." Vol. i. p. 310.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Discorsi sopra la Prinza Deca di Tito Livio_, lib. iii.
+cap. i. At p. 230 of the present volume I have too hastily called
+St. Dominic the "founder of the Inquisition." It is generally conceded, I
+believe, by candid Protestant inquirers, that he was not; whatever zeal
+in the foundation and support of the tribunal may have been manifested
+by his order. But this does not acquit him of the cruelty for which he
+has been praised by Dante. He joined in the sanguinary persecution of
+the Albigenses.]
+
+[Footnote: 3 It is entitled, "_Italy, Austria, and the Pope_;" and
+is full, not only of the eloquence of zeal, and of evidences
+of intellectual power, but of the most curious and instructive
+information.]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+OF
+
+THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DANTE.
+
+CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS
+
+THE ITALIAN PILGRIMS PROGRESS
+
+I. The Journey through Hell  II.   Purgatory.   III. Heaven
+
+
+PULCI.
+
+CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS
+
+HUMOURS OF GIANTS
+
+THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+I. Story of Paulo and Francesca. Translation.
+
+II. Accounts given by different writers of the circumstances relating to
+Paulo and Francesca; concluding with the only facts ascertained.
+
+III. Story of Ugolino. Translation. Real Story of Ugolino, and Chaucer's
+feeling respecting the Poem.
+
+IV. Picture of Florence in the time of Dante's Ancestors. Translation.
+
+V. The Monks and the Giants
+
+VI. Passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles.
+
+
+
+DANTE
+
+
+Critical Notice
+
+OF
+
+DANTE'S LIFE AND GENIUS.[1]
+
+
+Dante was a very great poet, a man of the strongest passions, a claimant
+of unbounded powers to lead and enlighten the world; and he lived in a
+semi-barbarous age, as favourable to the intensity of his imagination,
+as it was otherwise to the rest of his pretensions. Party zeal, and the
+fluctuations of moral and critical opinion, have at different periods
+over-rated and depreciated his memory; and if, in the following attempt
+to form its just estimate, I have found myself compelled, in some
+important respects, to differ with preceding writers, and to protest in
+particular against his being regarded as a proper teacher on any one
+point, poetry excepted, and as far as all such genius and energy cannot
+in some degree help being, I have not been the less sensible of the
+wonderful nature of that genius, while acting within the circle to which
+it belongs. Dante was indeed so great a poet, and at the same time
+exhibited in his personal character such a mortifying exception to what
+we conceive to be the natural wisdom and temper of great poets; in
+other words, he was such a bigoted and exasperated man, and sullied
+his imagination with so much that is contradictory to good feeling, in
+matters divine as well as human; that I should not have thought myself
+justified in assisting, however humbly, to extend the influence of his
+writings, had I not believed a time to have arrived, when the community
+may profit both from the marvels of his power and the melancholy
+absurdity of its contradictions.
+
+Dante Alighieri, who has always been known by his Christian rather than
+surname (partly owing to the Italian predilection for Christian names,
+and partly to the unsettled state of patronymics in his time), was the
+son of a lawyer of good family in Florence, and was born in that city on
+the 14th of May 1265 (sixty-three years before the birth of Chaucer).
+The stock is said to have been of Roman origin, of the race of the
+Frangipani; but the only certain trace of it is to Cacciaguida, a
+Florentine cavalier of the house of the Elisei, who died in the
+Crusades. Dante gives an account of him in his _Paradiso_.[2]
+Cacciaguida married a lady of the Alighieri family of the Valdipado;
+and, giving the name to one of his children, they subsequently retained
+it as a patronymic in preference to their own. It would appear, from the
+same poem, not only that the Alighieri were the more important house,
+but that some blot had darkened the scutcheon of the Elisei; perhaps
+their having been poor, and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from
+some disreputable district. Perhaps they were known to have been of
+ignoble origin; for, in the course of one of his most philosophical
+treatises, he bursts into an extraordinary ebullition of ferocity
+against such as adduce a knowledge of that kind as an argument against a
+family's acquired nobility; affirming that such brutal stuff should be
+answered not with words, but with the dagger.[3]
+
+The Elisei, however, must have been of some standing; for Macchiavelli,
+in his History of Florence, mentions them in his list of the early
+Guelph and Ghibelline parties, where the side which they take is
+different from that of the poet's immediate progenitors.[4] The arms of
+the Alighieri (probably occasioned by the change in that name, for it
+was previously written Aldighieri) are interesting on account of their
+poetical and aspiring character. They are a golden wing on a field
+azure.[5]
+
+It is generally supposed that the name Dante is an abbreviation of
+Durante; but this is not certain, though the poet had a nephew so
+called. Dante is the name he goes by in the gravest records, in
+law-proceedings, in his epitaph, in the mention of him put by himself
+into the mouth of a blessed spirit. Boccaccio intimates that he was
+christened Dante, and derives the name from the ablative case of _dans_
+(giving)--a probable etymology, especially for a Christian appellation.
+As an abbreviation of Durante, it would correspond in familiarity with
+the Ben of Ben Jonson--a diminutive that would assuredly not have been
+used by grave people on occasions like those mentioned, though a wit of
+the day gave the masons a shilling to carve "O rare Ben Jonson!" on his
+grave stone. On the other hand, if given at the font, the name of Ben
+would have acquired all the legal gravity of Benjamin. In the English
+Navy List, not long ago, one of our gallant admirals used to figure as
+"Billy Douglas."
+
+Of the mother of Dante nothing is known except that she was his father's
+second wife, and that her Christian name was Bella, or perhaps surname
+Bello. It might, however, be conjectured, from the remarkable and only
+opportunity which our author has taken of alluding to her, that he
+derived his disdainful character rather from his mother than father.[6]
+The father appears to have died during the boyhood of his illustrious
+son.
+
+The future poet, before he had completed his ninth year, conceived a
+romantic attachment to a little lady who had just entered hers, and who
+has attained a celebrity of which she was destined to know nothing. This
+was the famous Beatrice Portinari, daughter of a rich Florentine who
+founded more than one charitable institution. She married another man,
+and died in her youth; but retained the Platonical homage of her young
+admirer, living and dead, and became the heroine of his great poem.
+
+It is unpleasant to reduce any portion of a romance to the events of
+ordinary life; but with the exception of those who merely copy from
+one another, there has been such a conspiracy on the part of Dante's
+biographers to overlook at least one disenchanting conclusion to be
+drawn to that effect from the poet's own writings, that the probable
+truth of the matter must here for the first time be stated. The case,
+indeed, is clear enough from his account of it. The natural tendencies
+of a poetical temperament (oftener evinced in a like manner than the
+world in general suppose) not only made the boy-poet fall in love, but,
+in the truly Elysian state of the heart at that innocent and adoring
+time of life, made him fancy he had discovered a goddess in the object
+of his love; and strength of purpose as well as imagination made him
+grow up in the fancy. He disclosed himself, as time advanced, only by
+his manner--received complacent recognitions in company from the young
+lady--offended her by seeming to devote himself to another (see the poem
+in the _Vita Nuova_, beginning "Ballata io vo")--rendered himself the
+sport of her and her young friends by his adoring timidity (see the 5th
+and 6th sonnets in the same work)--in short, constituted her a paragon
+of perfection, and enabled her, by so doing, to shew that she was none.
+He says, that finding himself unexpectedly near her one day in company,
+he trembled so, and underwent such change of countenance, that many of
+the ladies present began to laugh with her about him--"_si gabbavano di
+me_." And he adds, in verse,
+
+  "Con l'altre donne mia vista gabbate,
+  E non pensate, donna, onde si mova
+  Ch'io vi rassembri sì figura nova,
+  Quando riguardo la vostra beltate," &c.          Son. 5.
+
+"You laugh with the other ladies to see how I look (literally, you mock
+my appearance); and do not think, lady, what it is that renders me so
+strange a figure at sight of your beauty."
+
+And in the sonnet that follows, he accuses her of preventing pity of him
+in others, by such "killing mockery" as makes him wish for death ("_la
+pietà, che 'l vostro gabbo recinde_," &c.)[7]
+
+Now, it is to be admitted, that a young lady, if she is not very wise,
+may laugh at her lover with her companions, and yet return his love,
+after her fashion; but the fair Portinari laughs and marries another.
+Some less melancholy face, some more intelligible courtship, triumphed
+over the questionable flattery of the poet's gratuitous worship; and the
+idol of Dante Alighieri became the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi. Not
+a word does he say on that mortifying point. It transpired from a clause
+in her father's will. And yet so bent are the poet's biographers on
+leaving a romantic doubt in one's mind, whether Beatrice may not have
+returned his passion, that not only do all of them (as far as I have
+observed) agree in taking no notice of these sonnets, but the author
+of the treatise entitled _Dante and the Catholic Philosophy of the
+Thirteenth Century_, "in spite" (as a critic says) "of the _Beatrice,
+his daughter, wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi_, of the paternal will,"
+describes her as dying in "all the lustre of virginity." [8] The
+assumption appears to be thus gloriously stated, as a counterpart to the
+notoriety of its untruth. It must be acknowledged, that Dante himself
+gave the cue to it by more than silence; for he not only vaunts her
+acquaintance in the next world, but assumes that she returns his love in
+that region, as if no such person as her husband could have existed, or
+as if he himself had not been married also. This life-long pertinacity
+of will is illustrative of his whole career.
+
+Meantime, though the young poet's father had died, nothing was wanting
+on the part of his guardians, or perhaps his mother, to furnish him with
+an excellent education. It was so complete, as to enable him to become
+master of all the knowledge of his time; and he added to this learning
+more than a taste for drawing and music. He speaks of himself as drawing
+an angel in his tablets on the first anniversary of Beatrice's death.[9]
+One of his instructors was Brunetto Latini, the most famous scholar then
+living; and he studied both at the universities of Padua and Bologna. At
+eighteen, perhaps sooner, he had shown such a genius for poetry as
+to attract the friendship of Guido Cavalcante, a young noble of a
+philosophical as well as poetical turn of mind, who has retained a
+reputation with posterity: and it was probably at the same time he
+became acquainted with Giotto, who drew his likeness, and with Casella,
+the musician, whom he greets with so much tenderness in the other world.
+
+Nor were his duties as a citizen forgotten. The year before Beatrice's
+death, he was at the battle of Campaldino, which his countrymen gained
+against the people of Arezzo; and the year after it he was present at
+the taking of Caprona from the Pisans. It has been supposed that he once
+studied medicine with a view to it as a profession; but the conjecture
+probably originated in nothing more than his having entered himself of
+one of the city-companies (which happened to be the medical) for the
+purpose of qualifying himself to accept office; a condition exacted of
+the gentry by the then democratic tendencies of the republic. It is
+asserted also, by an early commentator, that he entered the Franciscan
+order of friars, but quitted it before he was professed; and, indeed,
+the circumstance is not unlikely, considering his agitated and impatient
+turn of mind. Perhaps he fancied that he had done with the world when it
+lost the wife of Simone de' Bardi.
+
+Weddings that might have taken place but do not, are like the reigns
+of deceased heirs-apparent; every thing is assumable in their favour,
+checked only by the histories of husbands and kings. Would the great
+but splenetic poet have made an angel and a saint of Beatrice, had he
+married her? He never utters the name of the woman whom he did marry.
+
+Gemma Donati was a kinswoman of the powerful family of that name. It
+seems not improbable, from some passages in his works, that she was the
+young lady whom he speaks of as taking pity on him on account of his
+passion for Beatrice;[10] and in common justice to his feelings as a man
+and a gentleman, it is surely to be concluded, that he felt some sort
+of passion for his bride, if not of a very spiritual sort; though he
+afterwards did not scruple to intimate that he was ashamed of it, and
+Beatrice is made to rebuke him in the other world for thinking of
+any body after herself.[11] At any rate, he probably roused what was
+excitable in his wife's temper, with provocations from his own; for the
+nature of the latter is not to be doubted, whereas there is nothing but
+tradition to shew for the bitterness of hers. Foscolo is of opinion
+that the tradition itself arose simply from a rhetorical flourish of
+Boccaccio's, in his Life of Dante, against the marriages of men of
+letters; though Boccaccio himself expressly adds, that he knows nothing
+to the disadvantage of the poet's wife, except that her husband, after
+quitting Florence, would never either come where she was, or suffer
+her to come to him, mother as she was by him of so many children;--a
+statement, it must be confessed, not a little encouraging to the
+tradition.[12] Be this as it may, Dante married in his twenty-sixth
+year; wrote an adoring account of his first love (the _Vita Nuova_) in
+his twenty-eighth; and among the six children which Gemma brought him,
+had a daughter whom he named Beatrice, in honour, it is understood, of
+the fair Portinari; which surely was either a very great compliment, or
+no mean trial to the temper of the mother.
+
+We shall see presently how their domestic intercourse was interrupted,
+and what absolute uncertainty there is respecting it, except as far as
+conclusions may be drawn from his own temper and history.
+
+Italy, in those days, was divided into the parties of Guelphs and
+Ghibellines; the former, the advocates of general church-ascendancy
+and local government; the latter, of the pretensions of the Emperor of
+Germany, who claimed to be the Roman Cæsar, and paramount over the
+Pope. In Florence, the Guelphs had for a long time been so triumphant as
+to keep the Ghibellines in a state of banishment. Dante was born and
+bred a Guelph: he had twice borne arms for his country against Ghibelline
+neighbours; and now, at the age of thirty-five, in the ninth of his
+marriage, and last of his residence with his wife, he was appointed chief
+of the temporary administrators of affairs, called Priors;--functionaries
+who held office only for two months.
+
+Unfortunately, at that moment, his party had become subdivided into the
+factions of the Whites and Blacks, or adherents of two different sides
+in a dispute that took place in Pistoia. The consequences becoming
+serious, the Blacks proposed to bring in, as mediator, the French
+Prince, Charles of Valois, then in arms for the Pope against the
+Emperor; but the Whites, of whom Dante was one, were hostile to the
+measure; and in order to prevent it, he and his brother magistrates
+expelled for a time the heads of both factions, to the satisfaction of
+neither. The Whites accused them of secretly leaning to the Ghibellines,
+and the Blacks of openly favouring the Whites; who being, indeed,
+allowed to come back before their time, on the alleged ground of the
+unwholesomeness of their place of exile, which was fatal to Dante's
+friend Cavalcante, gave a colour to the charge. Dante answered it by
+saying, that he had then quitted office; but he could not shew that he
+had lost his influence. Meantime, Charles was still urged to interfere,
+and Dante was sent ambassador to the Pope to obtain his disapprobation
+of the interference; but the Pope (Boniface the Eighth), who had
+probably discovered that the Whites had ceased to care for any thing but
+their own disputes, and who, at all events, did not like their objection
+to his representative, beguiled the ambassador and encouraged the French
+prince; the Blacks, in consequence, regained their ascendancy; and
+the luckless poet, during his absence, was denounced as a corrupt
+administrator of affairs, guilty of peculation; was severely
+mulcted; banished from Tuscany for two years; and subsequently, for
+contumaciousness, was sentenced to be _burnt alive_, in case he returned
+ever. He never did return.
+
+From that day forth, Dante never beheld again his home or his wife. Her
+relations obtained possession of power, but no use was made of it except
+to keep him in exile. He had not accorded with them; and perhaps half
+the secret of his conjugal discomfort was owing to politics. It is the
+opinion of some, that the married couple were not sorry to part; others
+think that the wife remained behind, solely to scrape together what
+property she could, and bring up the children. All that is known is,
+that she never lived with him more.
+
+Dante now certainly did what his enemies had accused him of wishing to
+do: he joined the old exiles whom he had helped to make such, the party
+of the Ghibellines. He alleges, that he never was really of any party
+but his own; a naïve confession, probably true in one sense, considering
+his scorn of other people, his great intellectual superiority, and the
+large views he had for the whole Italian people. And, indeed, he soon
+quarrelled in private with the individuals composing his new party,
+however stanch he apparently remained to their cause. His former
+associates he had learnt to hate for their differences with him and for
+their self-seeking; he hated the Pope for deceiving him; he hated
+the Pope's French allies for being his allies, and interfering with
+Florence; and he had come to love the Emperor for being hated by them
+all, and for holding out (as he fancied) the only chance of reuniting
+Italy to their confusion, and making her the restorer of himself, and
+the mistress of the world.
+
+With these feelings in his heart, no money in his purse, and no place in
+which to lay his head, except such as chance-patrons afforded him,
+he now began to wander over Italy, like some lonely lion of a man,
+"grudging in his great disdain." At one moment he was conspiring and
+hoping; at another, despairing and endeavouring to conciliate his
+beautiful Florence: now again catching hope from some new movement of
+the Emperor's; and then, not very handsomely threatening and re-abusing
+her; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his
+thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work. It is
+conjectured, that whenever anything particularly affected him, whether
+with joy or sorrow, he put it, hot with the impression, into his
+"sacred poem." Every body who jarred against his sense of right or his
+prejudices he sent to the infernal regions, friend or foe: the strangest
+people who sided with them (but certainly no personal foe) he exalted
+to heaven. He encouraged, if not personally assisted, two ineffectual
+attempts of the Ghibellines against Florence; wrote, besides his great
+work, a book of mixed prose and poetry on "Love and Virtue" (the
+_Convito_, or Banquet); a Latin treatise on Monarchy (_de Monarchia_),
+recommending the "divine right" of the Emperor; another in two parts,
+and in the same language, on the Vernacular Tongue (_de Vulgari
+Eloquio_); and learnt to know meanwhile, as he affectingly tells us,
+"how hard it was to climb other people's stairs, and how salt the taste
+of bread is that is not our own." It is even thought not improbable,
+from one awful passage of his poem, that he may have "placed himself in
+some public way," and, "stripping his visage of all shame, and trembling
+in his very vitals," have stretched out his hand "for charity" [13]--an
+image of suffering, which, proud as he was, yet considering how great a
+man, is almost enough to make one's common nature stoop down for pardon
+at his feet; and yet he should first prostrate himself at the feet of
+that nature for his outrages on God and man. Several of the princes and
+feudal chieftains of Italy entertained the poet for a while in their
+houses; but genius and worldly power, unless for worldly purposes, find
+it difficult to accord, especially in tempers like his. There must be
+great wisdom and amiableness on both sides to save them from jealousy
+of one another's pretensions. Dante was not the man to give and take in
+such matters on equal terms; and hence he is at one time in a palace,
+and at another in a solitude. Now he is in Sienna, now in Arezzo, now in
+Bologna; then probably in Verona with Can Grande's elder brother; then
+(if we are to believe those who have tracked his steps) in Casentino;
+then with the Marchese Moroello Malaspina in Lunigiana; then with the
+great Ghibelline chieftain Faggiuola in the mountains near Urbino; then
+in Romagna, in Padua, in _Paris_ (arguing with the churchmen), some say
+in Germany, and at _Oxford_; then again in Italy; in Lucca (where he is
+supposed to have relapsed from his fidelity to Beatrice in favour of
+a certain "Gentucca"); then again in Verona with the new prince, the
+famous Can Grande (where his sarcasms appear to have lost him a doubtful
+hospitality); then in a monastery in the mountains of Umbria; in Udine;
+in Ravenna; and there at length he put up for the rest of his life with
+his last and best friend, Guido Novello da Polenta, not the father, but
+the nephew of the hapless Francesca.
+
+It was probably in the middle period of his exile, that in one of the
+moments of his greatest longing for his native country, he wrote that
+affecting passage in the _Convito_, which was evidently a direct effort
+at conciliation. Excusing himself for some harshness and obscurity in
+the style of that work, he exclaims, "Ah! would it had pleased the
+Dispenser of all things that this excuse had never been needed;
+that neither others had done me wrong, nor myself undergone penalty
+undeservedly--the penalty, I say, of exile and of poverty. For it
+pleased the citizens of the fairest and most renowned daughter of
+Rome--Florence--to cast me out of her most sweet bosom, where I was
+born, and bred, and passed half of the life of man, and in which, with
+her good leave, I still desire with all my heart to repose my weary
+spirit, and finish the days allotted me; and so I have wandered in
+almost every place to which our language extends, a stranger, almost a
+beggar, exposing against my will the wounds given me by fortune, too
+often unjustly imputed to the sufferer's fault. Truly I have been a
+vessel without sail and without rudder, driven about upon different
+ports and shores by the dry wind that springs out of dolorous poverty;
+and hence have I appeared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps, by
+some better report had conceived of me a different impression, and in
+whose sight not only has my person become thus debased, but an unworthy
+opinion created of every thing which I did, or which I had to do." [14]
+
+How simply and strongly written! How full of the touching yet
+undegrading commiseration which adversity has a right to take upon
+itself, when accompanied with the consciousness of manly endeavour and a
+good motive! How could such a man condescend at other times to rage with
+abuse, and to delight himself in images of infernal torment!
+
+The dates of these fluctuations of feeling towards his native city are
+not known; but it is supposed to have been not very long before his
+abode with Can Grande that he received permission to return to Florence,
+on conditions which he justly refused and resented in the following
+noble letter to a kinsman. The old spelling of the original (in the
+note) is retained as given by Foscolo in the article on "Dante" in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ (vol. XXX. no. 60); and I have retained also, with
+little difference, the translation which accompanies it:
+
+"From your letter, which I received with due respect and affection, I
+observe how much you have at heart my restoration to my country. I am
+bound to you the more gratefully, inasmuch as an exile rarely finds a
+friend. But after mature consideration, I must, by my answer, disappoint
+the wishes of some little minds; and I confide in the judgment to which
+your impartiality and prudence will lead you. Your nephew and mine has
+written to me, what indeed had been mentioned by many other friends,
+that, by a decree concerning the exiles, I am allowed to return to
+Florence, provided I pay a certain sum of money, and submit to the
+humiliation of asking and receiving absolution: wherein, my father, I
+see two propositions that are ridiculous and impertinent. I speak of the
+impertinence of those who mention such conditions to me; for in your
+letter, dictated by judgment and discretion, there is no such thing. Is
+such an invitation, then, to return to his country glorious to d. all.
+(Dante Allighieri), after suffering in exile almost fifteen years? Is it
+thus they would recompense innocence which all the world knows, and
+the labour and fatigue of unremitting study? Far from the man who is
+familiar with philosophy be the senseless baseness of a heart of earth,
+that could act like a little sciolist, and imitate the infamy of some
+others, by offering himself up as it were in chains: far from the man
+who cries aloud for justice, this compromise by his money with his
+persecutors. No, my father, this is not the way that shall lead me back
+to my country. I will return with hasty steps, if you or any other can
+open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame and honour of d.
+(Dante); but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I
+shall never enter. What! shall I not everywhere enjoy the light of the
+sun and stars? and may I not seek and contemplate, in every corner of
+the earth, under the canopy of heaven, consoling and delightful truth,
+without first rendering myself inglorious, nay infamous, to the people
+and republic of Florence? Bread, I hope, will not fail me." [15]
+
+Had Dante's pride and indignation always vented themselves in this truly
+exalted manner, never could the admirers of his genius have refused him
+their sympathy; and never, I conceive, need he either have brought his
+exile upon him, or closed it as he did. To that close we have now come,
+and it is truly melancholy and mortifying. Failure in a negotiation with
+the Venetians for his patron, Guido Novello, is supposed to have been
+the last bitter drop which made the cup of his endurance run over. He
+returned from Venice to Ravenna, worn out, and there died, after fifteen
+years' absence from his country, in the year 1231, aged fifty-seven. His
+life had been so agitated, that it probably would not have lasted so
+long, but for the solace of his poetry, and the glory which he knew it
+must produce him. Guido gave him a sumptuous funeral, and intended to
+give him a monument; but such was the state of Italy in those times,
+that he himself died in exile the year after. The monument, however, and
+one of a noble sort, was subsequently bestowed by the father of Cardinal
+Bembo, in 1483; and another, still nobler, as late as 1780, by Cardinal
+Gonzaga. His countrymen, in after years, made two solemn applications
+for the removal of his dust to Florence; but the just pride of the
+Ravennese refused them.
+
+Of the exile's family, three sons died young; the daughter went into a
+nunnery; and the two remaining brothers, who ultimately joined their
+father in his banishment, became respectable men of letters, and left
+families in Ravenna; where the race, though extinct in the male line,
+still survives through a daughter, in the noble house of Serego
+Alighieri. No direct descent of the other kind from poets of former
+times is, I believe, known to exist.
+
+The manners and general appearance of Dante have been minutely recorded,
+and are in striking agreement with his character. Boccaccio and other
+novelists are the chief relaters; and their accounts will be received
+accordingly with the greater or less trust, as the reader considers them
+probable; but the author of the Decameron personally knew some of his
+friends and relations, and he intermingles his least favourable reports
+with expressions of undoubted reverence. The poet was of middle height,
+of slow and serious deportment, had a long dark visage, large piercing
+eyes, large jaws, an aquiline nose, a projecting under-lip, and thick
+curling hair--an aspect announcing determination and melancholy. There
+is a sketch of his countenance, in his younger days, from the immature
+but sweet pencil of Giotto; and it is a refreshment to look at it,
+though pride and discontent, I think, are discernible in its lineaments.
+It is idle, and no true compliment to his nature, to pretend, as his
+mere worshippers do, that his face owes all its subsequent gloom and
+exacerbation to external causes, and that he was in every respect the
+poor victim of events--the infant changed at nurse by the wicked. What
+came out of him, he must have had in him, at least in the germ; and so
+inconsistent was his nature altogether, or, at any rate, such an epitome
+of all the graver passions that are capable of co-existing, both sweet
+and bitter, thoughtful and outrageous, that one is sometimes tempted to
+think he must have had an angel for one parent, and--I shall leave his
+own toleration to say what--for the other.
+
+To continue the account of his manners and inclinations: He dressed with
+a becoming gravity; was temperate in his diet; a great student; seldom
+spoke, unless spoken to, but always to the purpose; and almost all the
+anecdotes recorded of him, except by himself, are full of pride and
+sarcasm. He was so swarthy, that a woman, as he was going by a door in
+Verona, is said to have pointed him out to another, with a remark
+which made the saturnine poet smile--"That is the man who goes to hell
+whenever he pleases, and brings back news of the people there." On which
+her companion observed--"Very likely; don't you see what a curly beard he
+has, and what a dark face? owing, I dare say, to the heat and smoke." He
+was evidently a passionate lover of painting and music--is thought to
+have been less strict in his conduct with regard to the sex than might
+be supposed from his platonical aspirations--(Boccaccio says, that even
+a goitre did not repel him from the pretty face of a mountaineer)--could
+be very social when he was young, as may be gathered from the sonnet
+addressed to his friend Cavalcante about a party for a boat--and though
+his poetry was so intense and weighty, the laudable minuteness of a
+biographer has informed us, that his hand-writing, besides being neat
+and precise, was of a long and particularly thin character: "meagre" is
+his word.
+
+There is a letter, said to be nearly coeval with his time, and to be
+written by the prior of a monastery to a celebrated Ghibelline leader, a
+friend of Dante's, which, though hitherto accounted apocryphal by most,
+has such an air of truth, and contains an image of the poet in his exile
+so exceedingly like what we conceive of the man, that it is difficult
+not to believe it genuine, especially as the handwriting has lately been
+discovered to be that of Boccaccio.[16] At all events, I am sure the
+reader will not be sorry to have the substance of it. The writer says,
+that he perceived one day a man coming into the monastery, whom none of
+its inmates knew. He asked him what he wanted; but the stranger saying
+nothing, and continuing to gaze on the building as though contemplating
+its architecture, the question was put a second time; upon which,
+looking round on his interrogators, he answered, "_Peace_!" The prior,
+whose curiosity was strongly excited, took the stranger apart, and
+discovering who he was, shewed him all the attention becoming his fame;
+and then Dante took a little book out of his bosom, aid observing that
+perhaps the prior had not seen it, expressed a wish to leave it with his
+new friend as a memorial. It was "a portion," he said, "of his work."
+The prior received the volume with respect; and politely opening it at
+once, and fixing his eyes on the contents, in order, it would seem,
+to shew the interest he took in it, appeared suddenly to check some
+observation which they suggested. Dante found that his reader was
+surprised at seeing the work written in the vulgar tongue instead of
+Latin. He explained, that he wished to address himself to readers of all
+classes; and concluded with requesting the prior to add some notes, with
+the spirit of which he furnished him, and then forward it (transcribed,
+I presume, by the monks) to their common friend, the Ghibelline
+chieftain--a commission, which, knowing the prior's intimacy with that
+personage, appears to have been the main object of his coming to the
+place[17].
+
+This letter has been adduced as an evidence of Dante's poem having
+transpired during his lifetime: a thing which, in the teeth of
+Boccaccio's statement to that effect, and indeed the poet's own
+testimony[18], Foscolo holds to be so impossible, that he turns the
+evidence against the letter. He thinks, that if such bitter invectives
+had been circulated, a hundred daggers would have been sheathed in the
+bosom of the exasperating poet[19]. But I cannot help being of opinion,
+with some writer whom I am unable at present to call to mind (Schlegel,
+I think), that the strong critical reaction of modern times in favour
+of Dante's genius has tended to exaggerate the idea conceived of him in
+relation to his own. That he was of importance, and bitterly hated in
+his native city, was a distinction he shared with other partisans who
+have obtained no celebrity, though his poetry, no doubt, must have
+increased the bitterness; that his genius also became more and more felt
+out of the city, by the few individuals capable of estimating a man of
+letters in those semi-barbarous times, may be regarded as certain; but
+that busy politicians in general, war-making statesmen, and princes
+constantly occupied in fighting for their existence with one another,
+were at all alive either to his merits or his invectives, or would have
+regarded him as anything but a poor wandering scholar, solacing his
+foolish interference in the politics of this world with the old clerical
+threats against his enemies in another, will hardly, I think, be doubted
+by any one who reflects on the difference between a fame accumulated by
+ages, and the living poverty that is obliged to seek its bread. A writer
+on a monkish subject may have acquired fame with monks, and even with
+a few distinguished persons, and yet have been little known, and less
+cared for, out of the pale of that very private literary public, which
+was almost exclusively their own. When we read, now-a-days, of the great
+poet's being so politely received by Can Grande, lord of Verona, and
+sitting at his princely table, we are apt to fancy that nothing but
+his great poetry procured him the reception, and that nobody present
+competed with him in the eyes of his host. But, to say nothing of the
+different kinds of retainers that could sit at a prince's table in those
+days, Can, who was more ostentatious than delicate in his munificence,
+kept a sort of caravansera for clever exiles, whom he distributed into
+lodgings classified according to their pursuits;[20] and Dante only
+shared his bounty with the rest, till the more delicate poet could no
+longer endure either the buffoonery of his companions, or the amusement
+derived from it by the master. On one occasion, his platter is slily
+heaped with their bones, which provokes him to call them dogs, as having
+none to shew for their own. Another time, Can Grande asks him how it is
+that his companions give more pleasure at court than himself; to which
+he answers, "Because like loves like." He then leaves the court, and his
+disgusted superiority is no doubt regarded as a pedantic assumption.
+
+He stopped long nowhere, except with Guido Novello; and when that
+prince, whose downfal was at hand, sent him on the journey above
+mentioned to Venice, the senate (whom the poet had never offended) were
+so little aware of his being of consequence, that they declined giving
+him an audience. He went back, and broke his heart. Boccaccio says, that
+he would get into such passions with the very boys and girls in the
+street, who plagued him with party-words, as to throw stones at them--a
+thing that would be incredible, if persons acquainted with his great but
+ultra-sensitive nation did not know what Italians could do in all ages,
+from Dante's own age down to the times of Alfieri and Foscolo. It
+would be as difficult, from the evidence of his own works and of the
+exasperation he created, to doubt the extremest reports of his irascible
+temper, as it would be not to give implicit faith to his honesty. The
+charge of peculation which his enemies brought against this great poet,
+the world has universally scouted with an indignation that does it
+honour. He himself seems never to have condescended to allude to it;
+and a biographer would feel bound to copy his silence, had not the
+accusation been so atrociously recorded. But, on the other hand, who
+can believe that a man so capable of doing his fellow-citizens good and
+honour, would have experienced such excessive enmity, had he not carried
+to excess the provocations of his pride and scorn? His whole history
+goes to prove it, not omitting the confession he makes of pride as his
+chief sin, and the eulogies he bestows on the favourite vice of the
+age--revenge. His Christianity (at least as shewn in his poem) was not
+that of Christ, but of a furious polemic. His motives for changing his
+party, though probably of a mixed nature, like those of most human
+beings, may reasonably be supposed to have originated in something
+better than interest or indignation. He had most likely not agreed
+thoroughly with any party, and had become hopeless of seeing dispute
+brought to an end, except by the representative of the Cæsars. The
+inconsistency of the personal characters of the popes with the sacred
+claims of the chair of St. Peter, was also calculated greatly to disgust
+him; but still his own infirmities of pride and vindictiveness
+spoiled all; and when he loaded every body else with reproach for the
+misfortunes of his country, he should have recollected that, had his own
+faults been kept in subjection to his understanding, he might possibly
+have been its saviour. Dante's modesty has been asserted on the ground
+of his humbling himself to the fame of Virgil, and at the feet of
+blessed spirits; but this kind of exalted humility does not repay a
+man's fellow-citizens for lording it over them with scorn and derision.
+We learn from Boccaccio, that when he was asked to go ambassador
+from his party to the pope, he put to them the following useless and
+mortifying queries--"If I go, who is to stay?--and if I stay, who is to
+go?" [21] Neither did his pride make him tolerant of pride in others.
+A neighbour applying for his intercession with a magistrate, who had
+summoned him for some offence, Dante, who disliked the man for riding in
+an overbearing manner along the streets (stretching out his legs as wide
+as he could, and hindering people from going by), did intercede with the
+magistrate, but it was in behalf of doubling the fine in consideration
+of the horsemanship. The neighbour, who was a man of family, was so
+exasperated, that Sacchetti the novelist says it was the principal cause
+of Dante's expatriation. This will be considered the less improbable,
+if, as some suppose, the delinquent obtained possession of his derider's
+confiscated property; but, at all events, nothing is more likely to
+have injured him. The bitterest animosities are generally of a personal
+nature; and bitter indeed must have been those which condemned a man of
+official dignity and of genius to such a penalty as the stake.[22]
+
+That the Florentines of old, like other half-Christianised people, were
+capable of any extremity against an opponent, burning included, was
+proved by the fates of Savonarola and others; and that Dante himself
+could admire the burners is evident from his eulogies and beatification
+of such men as Folco and St. Dominic. The tragical as well as "fantastic
+tricks" which
+
+  "Man, proud man,
+  Drest in a little brief authority,"
+
+plays with his energy and bad passions under the guise of duty, is among
+the most perplexing of those spectacles, which, according to a greater
+understanding than Dante's, "make the angels weep." (Dante, by the way,
+has introduced in his heaven no such angels as those; though he has
+plenty that scorn and denounce.) Lope de Vega, though a poet, was an
+officer of the Inquisition, and joined the famous Armada that was coming
+to thumb-screw and roast us into his views of Christian meekness.
+Whether the author of the story of _Paulo and Francesca_ could have
+carried the Dominican theories into practice, had he been the banisher
+instead of the banished, is a point that may happily be doubted; but at
+all events he revenged himself on his enemies after their own fashion;
+for he answered their decree of the stake by putting them into hell.
+
+Dante entitled the saddest poem in the world a Comedy, because it was
+written in a middle style; though some, by a strange confusion of ideas,
+think the reason must have been because it "ended happily!" that is,
+because, beginning with hell (to some), it terminated with "heaven" (to
+others). As well might they have said, that a morning's work in the
+Inquisition ended happily, because, while people were being racked in
+the dungeons, the officers were making merry in the drawing-room. For
+the much-injured epithet of "Divine," Dante's memory is not responsible.
+He entitled his poem, arrogantly enough, yet still not with that impiety
+of arrogance, "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by nation but
+not by habits." The word "divine" was added by some transcriber; and it
+heaped absurdity on absurdity, too much of it, alas! being literally
+infernal tragedy. I am not speaking in mockery, any further than the
+fact itself cannot help so speaking. I respect what is to be respected
+in Dante; I admire in him what is admirable; would love (if his
+infernalities would let me) what is loveable; but this must not hinder
+one of the human race from protesting against what is erroneous in his
+fame, when it jars against every best feeling, human and divine. Mr.
+Cary thinks that Dante had as much right to avail himself of "the
+popular creed in all its extravagance" as Homer had of his gods, or
+Shakspeare of his fairies. But the distinction is obvious. Homer did not
+personally identify himself with a creed, or do his utmost to perpetuate
+the worst parts of it in behalf of a ferocious inquisitorial church, and
+to the risk of endangering the peace of millions of gentle minds.
+
+The great poem thus misnomered is partly a system of theology, partly an
+abstract of the knowledge of the day, but chiefly a series of passionate
+and imaginative pictures, altogether forming an account of the author's
+times, his friends, his enemies, and himself, written to vent the spleen
+of his exile, and the rest of his feelings, good and bad, and to reform
+church and state by a spirit of resentment and obloquy, which highly
+needed reform itself. It has also a design strictly self-referential.
+The author feigns, that the beatified spirit of his mistress has
+obtained leave to warn and purify his soul by shewing him the state of
+things in the next world. She deputes the soul of his master Virgil
+to conduct him through hell and purgatory, and then takes him herself
+through the spheres of heaven, where Saint Peter catechises and confirms
+him, and where he is finally honoured with sights of the Virgin Mary, of
+Christ, and even a glimpse of the Supreme Being!
+
+His hell, considered as a place, is, to speak geologically, a most
+fantastical formation. It descends from beneath Jerusalem to the centre
+of the earth, and is a funnel graduated in circles, each circle being a
+separate place of torment for a different vice or its co-ordinates, and
+the point of the funnel terminating with Satan stuck into ice. Purgatory
+is a corresponding mountain on the other side of the globe, commencing
+with the antipodes of Jerusalem, and divided into exterior circles of
+expiation, which end in a table-land forming the terrestrial paradise.
+From this the hero and his mistress ascend by a flight, exquisitely
+conceived, to the stars; where the sun and the planets of the Ptolemaic
+system (for the true one was unknown in Dante's time) form a series of
+heavens for different virtues, the whole terminating in the empyrean, or
+region of pure light, and the presence of the Beatific Vision.
+
+The boundaries of old and new, strange as it may now seem to us, were so
+confused in those days, and books were so rare, and the Latin poets held
+in such invincible reverence, that Dante, in one and the same poem,
+speaks of the false gods of Paganism, and yet retains much of its lower
+mythology; nay, invokes Apollo himself at the door of paradise. There
+was, perhaps, some mystical and even philosophical inclusion of the
+past in this medley, as recognising the constant superintendence of
+Providence; but that Dante partook of what may be called the literary
+superstition of the time, even for want of better knowledge, is clear
+from the grave historical use he makes of poetic fables in his treatise
+on Monarchy, and in the very arguments which he puts into the mouths of
+saints and apostles. There are lingering feelings to this effect even
+now among the peasantry of Italy; where, the reader need not be told,
+Pagan customs of all sorts, including religious and most reverend ones,
+are existing under the sanction of other names;--heathenisms christened.
+A Tuscan postilion, once enumerating to me some of the native poets,
+concluded his list with Apollo; and a plaster-cast man over here, in
+London, appeared much puzzled, when conversing on the subject with a
+friend of mine, how to discrepate Samson from Hercules.
+
+Dante accordingly, while, with the frightful bigotry of the schools, he
+puts the whole Pagan world into hell-borders (with the exception of two
+or three, whose salvation adds to the absurdity), mingles the hell of
+Virgil with that of Tertullian and St. Dominic; sets Minos at the door
+as judge; retains Charon in his old office of boatman over the Stygian
+lake; puts fabulous people with real among the damned, Dido, and Cacus,
+and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope Nicholas the Fifth; and associates
+the Centaurs and the Furies with the agents of diabolical torture. It
+has pleased him also to elevate Cato of Utica to the office of warder of
+purgatory, though the censor's poor good wife, Marcia, is detained in
+the regions below. By these and other far greater inconsistencies,
+the whole place of punishment becomes a _reductio ad absurdum_, as
+ridiculous as it is melancholy; so that one is astonished how so great a
+man, and especially a man who thought himself so far advanced beyond his
+age, and who possessed such powers of discerning the good and beautiful,
+could endure to let his mind live in so foul and foolish a region for
+any length of time, and there wreak and harden the unworthiest of his
+passions. Genius, nevertheless, is so commensurate with absurdity
+throughout the book, and there are even such sweet and balmy as well as
+sublime pictures in it occasionally, nay often, that not only will
+the poem ever be worthy of admiration, but when those increasing
+purifications of Christianity which our blessed reformers began, shall
+finally precipitate the whole dregs of the author into the mythology to
+which they belong, the world will derive a pleasure from it to an amount
+not to be conceived till the arrival of that day. Dante, meantime, with
+an impartiality which has been admired by those who can approve the
+assumption of a theological tyranny at the expense of common feeling
+and decency, has put friends as well as foes into hell: tutors of his
+childhood, kinsmen of those who treated him hospitably, even the father
+of his beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante--the last for not believing in a
+God: therein doing the worst thing possible in behalf of the belief, and
+totally differing both with the pious heathen Plutarch, and the great
+Christian philosopher Bacon, who were of opinion that a contumelious
+belief is worse than none, and that it is far better and more pious to
+believe in "no God at all," than in a God who would "eat his children
+as soon as they were born." And Dante makes him do worse; for the whole
+unbaptised infant world, Christian as well as Pagan, is in his Tartarus.
+
+Milton has spoken of the "milder shades of Purgatory;" and truly they
+possess great beauties. Even in a theological point of view they are
+something like a bit of Christian refreshment after the horrors of the
+_Inferno_. The first emerging from the hideous gulf to the sight of the
+blue serenity of heaven, is painted in a manner inexpressibly charming.
+So is the sea-shore with the coming of the angel; the valley, with the
+angels in green; the repose at night on the rocks; and twenty other
+pictures of gentleness and love. And yet, special and great has been the
+escape of the Protestant world from this part of Roman Catholic belief;
+for Purgatory is the heaviest stone that hangs about the neck of the
+old and feeble in that communion. Hell is avoidable by repentance; but
+Purgatory, what modest conscience shall escape? Mr. Cary, in a note on a
+passage in which Dante recommends his readers to think on what follows
+this expiatory state, rather than what is suffered there,[23] looks upon
+the poet's injunction as an "unanswerable objection to the doctrine of
+purgatory," it being difficult to conceive "how the best can meet death
+without horror, if they believe it must be followed by immediate and
+intense suffering." Luckily, assent is not belief; and mankind's
+feelings are for the most part superior to their opinions; otherwise
+the world would have been in a bad way indeed, and nature not been
+vindicated of her children. But let us watch and be on our guard against
+all resuscitations of superstition.
+
+As to our Florentine's Heaven, it is full of beauties also, though
+sometimes of a more questionable and pantomimical sort than is to be
+found in either of the other books. I shall speak of some of them
+presently; but the general impression of the place is, that it is no
+heaven at all. He says it is, and talks much of its smiles and its
+beatitude; but always excepting the poetry--especially the similes
+brought from the more heavenly earth--we realise little but a
+fantastical assemblage of doctors and doubtful characters, far more
+angry and theological than celestial; giddy raptures of monks and
+inquisitors dancing in circles, and saints denouncing popes and
+Florentines; in short, a heaven libelling itself with invectives against
+earth, and terminating in a great presumption. Many of the people put
+there, a Calvinistic Dante would have consigned to the "other place;"
+and some, if now living, would not be admitted into decent society. At
+the beginning of one of the cantos, the poet congratulates himself,
+with a complacent superiority, on his being in heaven and occupied with
+celestial matters, while his poor fellow-creatures are wandering and
+blundering on earth. But he had never got there! A divine--worthy of
+that name--of the Church of England (Dr. Whichcote), has beautifully
+said, that "heaven is first a temper, and then a place." According to
+this truly celestial topography, the implacable Florentine had not
+reached its outermost court. Again, his heavenly mistress, Beatrice,
+besides being far too didactic to sustain the womanly part of her
+character properly, alternates her smiles and her sarcasms in a way that
+jars horribly against the occasional enchantment of her aspect. She does
+not scruple to burst into taunts of the Florentines in the presence of
+Jesus himself; and the spirit of his ancestor, Cacciaguida, in the very
+bosom of Christian bliss, promises him revenge on his enemies! Is this
+the kind of zeal that is to be exempt from objection in a man who
+objected to all the world? or will it be thought a profaneness against
+such profanity, to remind the reader of the philosopher in Swift, who
+"while gazing on the stars, was betrayed by his lower parts into a
+ditch!"
+
+The reader's time need not be wasted with the allegorical and other
+mystical significations given to the poem; still less on the question
+whether Beatrice is theology, or a young lady, or both; and least of all
+on the discovery of the ingenious Signor Rossetti, that Dante and all
+the other great old Italian writers meant nothing, either by their
+mistresses or their mythology, but attacks on the court of Rome. Suffice
+it, that besides all other possible meanings, Dante himself has told us
+that his poem has its obvious and literal meaning; that he means a spade
+by a spade, purgatory by purgatory, and truly and unaffectedly to devote
+his friends to the infernal regions whenever he does so. I confess I
+think it is a great pity that Guido Cavalcante did not live to read the
+poem, especially the passage about his father. The understanding of
+Guido, who had not the admiration for Virgil that Dante had (very likely
+for reasons that have been thought sound in modern times), was in all
+probability as good as that of his friend in many respects, and perhaps
+more so in one or two; and modern criticism might have been saved some
+of its pains of objection by the poet's contemporary.
+
+The author did not live to publish, in any formal manner, his
+extraordinary poem, probably did not intend to do so, except under those
+circumstances of political triumph which he was always looking for; but
+as he shewed portions of it to his friends, it was no doubt talked of
+to a certain extent, and must have exasperated such of his enemies as
+considered him worth their hostility. No wonder they did all they could
+to keep him out of Florence. What would they have said of him, could
+they have written a counter poem? What would even his friends have said
+of him? for we see in what manner he has treated even those; and yet how
+could he possibly know, with respect either to friends or enemies, what
+passed between them and their consciences? or who was it that gave
+him his right to generate the boasted distinction between an author's
+feelings as a man and his assumed office as a theologian, and parade
+the latter at the former's expense? His own spleen, hatred, and avowed
+sentiments of vengeance, are manifest throughout the poem; and there is
+this, indeed, to be said for the moral and religious inconsistencies
+both of the man and his verse, that in those violent times the spirit
+of Christian charity, and even the sentiment of personal shame, were so
+little understood, that the author in one part of it is made to blush by
+a friend for not having avenged him; and it is said to have been thought
+a compliment to put a lady herself into hell, that she might be talked
+of, provided it was for something not odious. An admirer of this
+infernal kind of celebrity, even in later times, declared that he would
+have given a sum of money (I forget to what amount) if Dante had but
+done as much for one of his ancestors. It has been argued, that in all
+the parties concerned in these curious ethics there is a generous love
+of distinction, and a strong craving after life, action, and sympathy
+of some kind or other. Granted; there are all sorts of half-good,
+half-barbarous feelings in Dante's poem. Let justice be done to the
+good half; but do not let us take the ferocity for wisdom and piety; or
+pretend, in the complacency of our own freedom from superstition, to see
+no danger of harm to the less fortunate among our fellow-creatures in
+the support it receives from a man of genius. Bedlams have been filled
+with such horrors; thousands, nay millions of feeble minds are suffering
+by them or from them, at this minute, all over the world. Dante's best
+critic, Foscolo, has said much of the heroical nature of the age in
+which the poet lived; but he adds, that its mixture of knowledge and
+absurdity is almost inexplicable. The truth is, that like everything
+else which appears harsh and unaccountable in nature, it was an excess
+of the materials for good, working in an over-active and inexperienced
+manner; but knowing this, we are bound, for the sake of the good, not
+to retard its improvement by ignoring existing impieties, or blind
+ourselves to the perpetuating tendencies of the bigotries of great men.
+Oh! had the first indoctrinators of Christian feeling, while enlisting
+the "divine Plato" into the service of diviner charity, only kept the
+latter just enough in mind to discern the beautiful difference between
+the philosopher's unmalignant and improvable evil, and their own
+malignant and eternal one, what a world of folly and misery they might
+have saved us! But as the evil has happened, let us hope that even this
+form of it has had its uses. If Dante thought it salutary to the world
+to maintain a system of religious terror, the same charity which can
+hope that it may once have been so, has taught us how to commence a
+better. But did he, after all, or did he not, think it salutary? Did
+he think so, believing the creed himself? or did he think it from an
+unwilling sense of its necessity? Or, lastly, did he write only as a
+mythologist, and care for nothing but the exercise of his spleen and
+genius? If he had no other object than that, his conscientiousness would
+be reduced to a low pitch indeed. Foscolo is of opinion he was not only
+in earnest, but that he was very near taking himself for an apostle, and
+would have done so had his prophecies succeeded, perhaps with success to
+the pretension.[24] Thank heaven, his "Hell" has not embittered the mild
+reading-desks of the Church of England.
+
+If King George the Third himself, with all his arbitrary notions, and
+willing religious acquiescence, could not endure the creed of St.
+Athanasius with its damnatory enjoinments of the impossible, what would
+have been said to the inscription over Dante's hell-gate, or the
+account of Ugolino eating an archbishop, in the gentle chapels of Queen
+Victoria? May those chapels have every beauty in them, and every air of
+heaven, that painting and music can bestow--divine gifts, not unworthy
+to be set before their Divine Bestower; but far from them be kept the
+foul fiends of inhumanity and superstition!
+
+It is certainly impossible to get at a thorough knowledge of the
+opinions of Dante even in theology; and his morals, if judged according
+to the received standard, are not seldom puzzling. He rarely thinks as
+the popes do; sometimes not as the Church does: he is lax, for instance,
+on the subject of absolution by the priest at death.[25] All you can be
+sure of is, the predominance of his will, the most wonderful poetry, and
+the notions he entertained of the degrees of vice and virtue. Towards
+the errors of love he is inclined to be so lenient (some think because
+he had indulged in them himself), that it is pretty clear he would not
+have put Paulo and Francesca into hell, if their story had not been
+too recent, and their death too sudden, to allow him to assume their
+repentance in the teeth of the evidence required. He avails himself of
+orthodox license to put "the harlot Rahab" into heaven ("cette bonne
+fille de Jericho," as Ginguéné calls her); nay, he puts her into the
+planet Venus, as if to compliment her on her profession; and one of her
+companions there is a fair Ghibelline, sister of the tyrant Ezzelino, a
+lady famous for her gallantries, of whom the poet good-naturedly says,
+that she "was overcome by her star"--to wit, the said planet Venus; and
+yet he makes her the organ of the most unfeminine triumphs over the
+Guelphs. But both these ladies, it is to be understood, repented--for
+they had time for repentance; their good fortune saved them. Poor
+murdered Francesca had no time to repent; therefore her mischance was
+her damnation! Such are the compliments theology pays to the Creator.
+In fact, nothing is really punished in Dante's Catholic hell but
+impenitence, deliberate or accidental. No delay of repentance, however
+dangerous, hinders the most hard-hearted villain from reaching his
+heaven. The best man goes to hell for ever, if he does not think he has
+sinned as Dante thinks; the worst is beatified, if he agrees with him:
+the only thing which every body is sure of, is some dreadful duration
+of agony in purgatory--the great horror of Catholic death beds.
+Protestantism may well hug itself on having escaped it. O Luther!
+vast was the good you did us. O gentle Church of England! let nothing
+persuade you that it is better to preach frightful and foolish ideas of
+God from your pulpits, than loving-kindness to all men, and peace above
+all things.
+
+If Dante had erred only on the side of indulgence, humanity could easily
+have forgiven him--for the excesses of charity are the extensions of
+hope; but, unfortunately, where he is sweet-natured once, he is bitter a
+hundred times. This is the impression he makes on universalists of all
+creeds and parties; that is to say, on men who having run the whole
+round of sympathy with their fellow-creatures, become the only final
+judges of sovereign pretension. It is very well for individuals to
+make a god of Dante for some encouragement of their own position or
+pretension; but a god for the world at large he never was, or can be;
+and I doubt if an impression to this effect was not always, from the
+very dawn of our literature, the one entertained of him by the genius
+of our native country, which could never long endure any kind of
+unwarrantable dictation. Chaucer evidently thought him a man who would
+spare no unnecessary probe to the feelings (see the close of his version
+of _Ugolino_). Spenser says not a word of him, though he copied Tasso,
+and eulogised Ariosto. Shakspeare would assuredly have put him into
+the list of those presumptuous lookers into eternity who "_take upon
+themselves to know" (Cymbeline_, act v. sc. 4). Milton, in his sonnet
+to Henry Lawes, calls him "that sad Florentine"--a lamenting epithet,
+by which we do not designate a man whom we desire to resemble. The
+historian of English poetry, admirably applying to him a passage out of
+Milton, says that "Hell grows darker at his frown." [26]
+
+Walter Scott could not read him, at least not with pleasure. He tells
+Miss Seward that the "plan" of the poem appeared to him "unhappy;
+the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and
+uninteresting." [27] Uninteresting, I think, it is impossible to consider
+it. The known world is there, and the unknown pretends to be there; and
+both are surely interesting to most people.
+
+Landor, in his delightful book the _Pentameron_--a book full of the
+profoundest as well as sweetest humanity--makes Petrarch follow up
+Boccaccio's eulogies of the episode of Paulo and Francesca with
+ebullitions of surprise and horror:
+
+"_Petrarca_. Perfection of poetry! The greater is my wonder at
+discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole section
+of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,
+
+  'And he who fell as a dead body falls'
+
+would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy! What
+execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, Genoa! what hatred
+against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal
+and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the
+_Inferno_ as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written.
+Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and
+certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged
+forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling it,
+if this had been his intention." [28]
+
+Most happily is the distinction here intimated between the
+undesirableness of Dante's book in a moral and religious point of view,
+and the greater desirableness of it, nevertheless, as a pattern of
+poetry; for absurdity, however potent, wears itself out in the end, and
+leaves what is good and beautiful to vindicate even so foul an origin.
+
+Again, Petrarch says, "What an object of sadness and of consternation,
+he who rises up from hell like a giant refreshed!
+
+"_Boccaccio_. Strange perversion! A pillar of smoke by day and of fire
+by night, to guide no one. Paradise had fewer wants for him to satisfy
+than hell had, all which he fed to repletion; but let us rather look to
+his poetry than his temper."
+
+See also what is said in that admirable book further on (p. 50),
+respecting the most impious and absurd passage in all Dante's poem, the
+assumption about Divine Love in the inscription over hell-gate--one of
+those monstrosities of conception which none ever had the effrontery to
+pretend to vindicate, except theologians who profess to be superior to
+the priests of Moloch, and who yet defy every feeling of decency and
+humanity for the purpose of explaining their own worldly, frightened,
+or hard-hearted submission to the mistakes of the most wretched
+understandings. Ugo Foscolo, an excellent critic where his own temper
+and violence did not interfere, sees nothing but jealousy in Petrarch's
+dislike of Dante, and nothing but Jesuitism in similar feelings
+entertained by such men as Tiraboschi. But all gentle and considerate
+hearts must dislike the rage and bigotry in Dante, even were it true (as
+the Dantesque Foscolo thinks) that Italy will never be regenerated till
+one-half of it is baptised in the blood of the other![29] Such men, with
+all their acuteness, are incapable of seeing what can be effected by
+nobler and serener times, and the progress of civilisation. They fancy,
+no doubt, that they are vindicating the energies of Nature herself, and
+the inevitable necessity of "doing evil that good may come." But Dante
+in so doing violated the Scripture he professed to revere; and men must
+not assume to themselves that final knowledge of results, which is the
+only warrant of the privilege, and the possession of which is to be
+arrogated by no earthly wisdom. One calm discovery of science may do
+away with all the boasted eternal necessities of the angry and the
+self-idolatrous. The passions that may be necessary to savages are not
+bound to remain so to civilised men, any more than the eating of man's
+flesh or the worship of Jugghernaut. When we think of the wonderful
+things lately done by science for the intercourse of the world, and
+the beautiful and tranquil books of philosophy written by men of equal
+energy and benevolence, and opening the peacefulest hopes for mankind,
+and views of creation to which Dante's universe was a nutshell,--such
+a vision as that of his poem (in a theological point of view) seems no
+better than the dream of an hypochondriacal savage, and his nutshell a
+rottenness to be spit out of the mouth.
+
+Heaven send that the great poet's want of charity has not made myself
+presumptuous and uncharitable! But it is in the name of society I
+speak; and words, at all events, now-a-days are not the terrible,
+stake-preceding things they were in his. Readers in general,
+however--even those of the literary world--have little conception of
+the extent to which Dante carries either his cruelty or his abuse. The
+former (of which I shall give some examples presently) shews appalling
+habits of personal resentment; the latter is outrageous to a pitch of
+the ludicrous--positively screaming. I will give some specimens of it
+out of Foscolo himself, who collects them for a different purpose;
+though, with all his idolatry of Dante, he was far from being insensible
+to his mistakes.
+
+"The people of Sienna," according to this national and Christian poet,
+were "a parcel of cox-combs; those of Arezzo, dogs; and of Casentino,
+hogs. Lucca made a trade of perjury. Pistoia was a den of beasts, and
+ought to be reduced to ashes; and the river Arno should overflow and
+drown every soul in Pisa. Almost all the women in Florence walked
+half-naked in public, and were abandoned in private. Every brother,
+husband, son, and father, in Bologna, set their women to sale. In all
+Lombardy were not to be found three men who were not rascals; and in
+Genoa and Romagna people went about pretending to be men, but in reality
+were bodies inhabited by devils, their souls having gone to the 'lowest
+pit of hell' to join the betrayers of their friends and kinsmen." [30]
+
+So much for his beloved countrymen. As for foreigners, particularly
+kings, "Edward the First of England, and Robert of Scotland, were a
+couple of grasping fools; the Emperor Albert was an usurper; Alphonso
+the Second, of Spain, a debauchee; the King of Bohemia a coward;
+Frederick of Arragon a coward and miser; the Kings of Portugal and
+Norway forgers; the King of Naples a man whose virtues were expressed
+by a unit, and his vices by a million; and the King of France, the
+descendant of a Paris butcher, and of progenitors who poisoned St.
+Thomas Aquinas, their descendants conquering with the arms of Judas
+rather than of soldiers, and selling the flesh of their daughters to old
+men, in order to extricate themselves from a danger." [31]
+
+When we add to these invectives, damnations of friends as well as foes,
+of companions, lawyers, men of letters, princes, philosophers, popes,
+pagans, innocent people as well as guilty, fools and wise, capable and
+incapable, men, women, and children,--it is really no better than a kind
+of diabolical sublimation of Lord Thurlow's anathemas in the _Rolliad_,
+which begins with
+
+  "Damnation seize ye all;"
+
+and ends with
+
+  "Damn them beyond what mortal tongue can tell,
+  Confound, sink, plunge them all to deepest blackest hell." [32]
+
+In the gross, indeed, this is ridiculous enough.
+
+No burlesque can beat it. But in the particular, one is astonished and
+saddened at the cruelties in which the poet allows his imagination to
+riot horrors generally described with too intense a verisimilitude not
+to excite our admiration, with too astounding a perseverance not to
+amaze our humanity, and sometimes with an amount of positive joy
+and delight that makes us ready to shut the book with disgust and
+indignation. Thus, in a circle in hell, where traitors are stuck up
+to their chins in ice (canto xxxii.), the visitor, in walking about,
+happens to give one of their faces a kick; the sufferer weeps, and
+then curses him--with such infernal truth does the writer combine the
+malignant with the pathetic! Dante replies to the curse by asking the
+man his name. He is refused it. He then seizes the miserable wretch
+by the hair, in order to force him to the disclosure; and Virgil is
+represented as commending the barbarity![33] But he does worse. To
+barbarity he adds treachery of his own. He tells another poor wretch,
+whose face is iced up with his tears, as if he had worn a crystal vizor,
+that if he will disclose his name and offence, he will relieve his eyes
+awhile, _that he may weep_. The man does so; and the ferocious poet
+then refuses to perform his promise, adding mockery to falsehood, and
+observing that ill manners are the only courtesy proper to wards such
+a fellow![34] It has been conjectured, that Macchiavelli apparently
+encouraged the enormities of the princes of his time, with a design to
+expose them to indignation. It might have been thought of Dante, if he
+had not taken a part in the cruelty, that he detailed the horrors of his
+hell out of a wish to disgust the world with its frightful notions of
+God. This is certainly the effect of the worst part of his descriptions
+in an age like the present. Black burning gulfs, full of outcries
+and blasphemy, feet red-hot with fire, men eternally eating their
+fellow-creatures, frozen wretches malignantly dashing their iced heads
+against one another, other adversaries mutually exchanging shapes by
+force of an attraction at once irresistible and loathing, and spitting
+with hate and disgust when it is done--Enough, enough, for God's sake!
+Take the disgust out of one's senses, O flower of true Christian wisdom
+and charity, now beginning to fill the air with fragrance!
+
+But it will be said that Dante did all this out of his hate of cruelty
+itself, and of treachery itself. Partly no doubt he did; and entirely he
+thought he did. But see how the notions of such retribution react upon
+the judge, and produce in him the bad passions he punishes. It is true
+the punishments are imaginary. Were a human being actually to see such
+things, he must be dehumanised or he would cry out against them with
+horror and detestation. But the poem draws them as truths; the writer's
+creed threatened them; he himself contributed to maintain the belief;
+and however we may suppose such a belief to have had its use in giving
+alarm to ruffian passions and barbarously ignorant times, an age arrives
+when a beneficent Providence permits itself to be better understood, and
+dissipates the superfluous horror.
+
+Many, indeed, of the absurdities of Dante's poem are too obvious
+now-a-days to need remark. Even the composition of the poem,
+egotistically said to be faultless by such critics as Alfieri, who
+thought they resembled him, partakes, as every body's style does, of the
+faults as well as good qualities of the man. It is nervous, concise,
+full almost as it can hold, picturesque, mighty, primeval; but it is
+often obscure, often harsh, and forced in its constructions, defective
+in melody, and wilful and superfluous in the rhyme. Sometimes, also,
+the writer is inconsistent in circumstance (probably from not having
+corrected the poem); and he is not above being filthy. Even in the
+episode of Paulo and Francesca, which has so often been pronounced
+faultless, and which is unquestionably one of the most beautiful
+pieces of writing in the world, some of these faults are observable,
+particularly in the obscurity of the passage about _tolta forma_, the
+cessation of the incessant tempest, and the non-adjuration of the two
+lovers in the manner that Virgil prescribes.
+
+But truly it is said, that when Dante is great, nobody surpasses him. I
+doubt if anybody equals him, as to the constant intensity and incessant
+variety of his pictures; and whatever he paints, he throws, as it were,
+upon its own powers; as though an artist should draw figures that
+started into life, and proceeded to action for themselves, frightening
+their creator. Every motion, word, and look of these creatures becomes
+full of sensibility and suggestions. The invisible is at the back of the
+visible; darkness becomes palpable; silence describes a character, nay,
+forms the most striking part of a story; a word acts as a flash of
+lightning, which displays some gloomy neighbourhood, where a tower is
+standing, with dreadful faces at the window; or where, at your feet,
+full of eternal voices, one abyss is beheld dropping out of another in
+the lurid light of torment. In the present volume a story will be found
+which tells a long tragedy in half-a-dozen lines. Dante has the
+minute probabilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest and most
+generalising poetry; and this feeling of matter-of-fact is impressed by
+fictions the most improbable, nay, the most ridiculous and revolting.
+You laugh at the absurdity; you are shocked at the detestable cruelty;
+yet, for the moment, the thing almost seems as if it must be true. You
+feel as you do in a dream, and after it;--you wake and laugh, but the
+absurdity seemed true at the time; and while you laugh you shudder.
+
+Enough of this crueller part of his genius has been exhibited; but it is
+seldom you can have the genius without sadness. In the circle of hell,
+soothsayers walk along weeping, with their faces turned the wrong way,
+so that their tears fall between their shoulders. The picture is still
+more dreadful. Warton thinks it ridiculous. But I cannot help feeling
+with the poet, that it is dreadfully pathetic. It is the last mortifying
+insult to human pretension. Warton, who has a grudge against Dante
+natural to a man of happier piety, thinks him ridiculous also in
+describing the monster Geryon lying upon the edge of one of the gulfs
+of hell "like a beaver" (canto xvii.). He is of opinion that the writer
+only does it to shew his knowledge of natural history. But surely the
+idea of so strange and awful a creature (a huge mild-faced man ending in
+a dragon's body) lying familiarly on the edge of the gulf, as a beaver
+does by the water, combines the supernatural with the familiar in a very
+impressive manner. It is this combination of extremes which is the life
+and soul of the whole poem; you have this world in the next; the same
+persons, passions, remembrances, intensified by superhuman despairs
+or beatitudes; the speechless entrancements of bliss, the purgatorial
+trials of hope and patience; the supports of hate and anger (such as
+they are) in hell itself; nay, of loving despairs, and a self-pity made
+unboundedly pathetic by endless suffering. Hence there it no love-story
+so affecting as that of Paulo and Francesca thus told and perpetuated in
+another world; no father's misery so enforced upon us as Ugolino's, who,
+for hundreds of years, has not grown tired of the revenge to which it
+wrought him. Dante even puts this weight and continuity of feeling into
+passages of mere transient emotion or illustration, unconnected with the
+next world; as in the famous instance of the verses about evening, and
+many others which the reader will meet with in this volume. Indeed, if
+pathos and the most impressive simplicity, and graceful beauty of all
+kinds, and abundant grandeur, can pay (as the reader, I believe, will
+think it does even in a prose abstract), for the pangs of moral discord
+and absurdity inflicted by the perusal of Dante's poem, it may challenge
+competition with any in point of interest. His Heaven, it is true,
+though containing both sublime and lovely passages, is not so good as
+his Earth. The more unearthly he tried to make it, the less heavenly
+it became. When he is content with earth in heaven itself,-when he
+literalises a metaphor, and with exquisite felicity finds himself
+_arrived there_ in consequence of fixing his eyes on the eyes of
+Beatrice, then he is most celestial. But his endeavours to express
+degrees of beatitude and holiness by varieties of flame and light,--of
+dancing lights, revolving lights, lights of smiles, of stars, of starry
+crosses, of didactic letters and sentences, of animal figures made up of
+stars full of blessed souls, with saints _forming an eagle's beak_ and
+David in its _eye!_--such superhuman attempts become for the most part
+tricks of theatrical machinery, on which we gaze with little curiosity
+and no respect.
+
+His angels, however, are another matter. Belief was prepared for those
+winged human forms, and they furnished him with some of his most
+beautiful combinations of the natural with the supernatural. Ginguéné
+has remarked the singular variety as well as beauty of Dante's angels.
+Milton's, indeed, are commonplace in the comparison. In the eighth canto
+of the _Inferno_, the devils insolently refuse the poet and his guide an
+entrance into the city of Dis:--an angel comes sweeping over the Stygian
+lake to enforce it; the noise of his wings makes the shores tremble, and
+is like a crashing whirlwind such as beats down the trees and sends the
+peasants and their herds flying before it. The heavenly messenger, after
+rebuking the devils, touches the portals of the city with his wand; they
+fly open; and he returns the way he came without uttering a word to the
+two companions. His face was that of one occupied with other thoughts.
+This angel is announced by a tempest. Another, who brings the souls of
+the departed to Purgatory, is first discovered at a distance, gradually
+disclosing white splendours, which are his wings and garments. He comes
+in a boat, of which his wings are the sails; and as he approaches, it is
+impossible to look him in the face for its brightness. Two other angels
+have green wings and green garments, and the drapery is kept in motion
+like a flag by the vehement action of the wings. A fifth has a face like
+the morning star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth is of a lustre
+so oppressive, that the poet feels a weight on his eyes before he knows
+what is coming. Another's presence affects the senses like the fragrance
+of a May-morning; and another is in garments dark as cinders, but has
+a sword in his hand too sparkling to be gazed at. Dante's occasional
+pictures of the beauties of external nature are worthy of these angelic
+creations, and to the last degree fresh and lovely. You long to bathe
+your eyes, smarting with the fumes of hell, in his dews. You gaze
+enchanted on his green fields and his celestial blue skies, the more so
+from the pain and sorrow in midst of which the visions are created.
+
+Dante's grandeur of every kind is proportionate to that of his angels,
+almost to his ferocity; and that is saying every thing. It is not
+always the spiritual grandeur of Milton, the subjection of the material
+impression to the moral; but it is equally such when he chooses, and
+far more abundant. His infernal precipices--his black whirlwinds--his
+innumerable cries and claspings of hands--his very odours of huge
+loathsomeness--his giants at twilight standing up to the middle in pits,
+like towers, and causing earthquakes when they move--his earthquake of
+the mountain in Purgatory, when a spirit is set free for heaven--his
+dignified Mantuan Sordello, silently regarding him and his guide as they
+go by, "like a lion on his watch"--his blasphemer, Capaneus, lying in
+unconquered rage and sullenness under an eternal rain of flakes of fire
+(human precursor of Milton's Satan)--his aspect of Paradise, "as if the
+universe had smiled"--his inhabitants of the whole planet Saturn crying
+out _so loud_, in accordance with the anti-papal indignation of Saint
+Pietro Damiano, that the poet, though among them, _could not hear what
+they said_--and the blushing eclipse, like red clouds at sunset, which
+takes place at the apostle Peter's denunciation of the sanguinary filth
+of the court of Rome--all these sublimities, and many more, make us not
+know whether to be more astonished at the greatness of the poet or the
+raging littleness of the man. Grievous is it to be forced to bring two
+such opposites together; and I wish, for the honour and glory of poetry,
+I did not feel compelled to do so. But the swarthy Florentine had not
+the healthy temperament of his brethren, and he fell upon evil times.
+Compared with Homer and Shakspeare, his very intensity seems only
+superior to theirs from an excess of the morbid; and he is inferior to
+both in other sovereign qualities of poetry--to the one, in giving you
+the healthiest general impression of nature itself--to Shakspeare, in
+boundless universality--to most great poets, in thorough harmony and
+delightfulness. He wanted (generally speaking) the music of a happy and
+a happy-making disposition. Homer, from his large vital bosom, breathes
+like a broad fresh air over the world, amidst alternate storm and
+sunshine, making you aware that there is rough work to be faced, but
+also activity and beauty to be enjoyed. The feeling of health and
+strength is predominant. Life laughs at death itself, or meets it with
+a noble confidence--is not taught to dread it as a malignant goblin.
+Shakspeare has all the smiles as well as tears of nature, and discerns
+the "soul of goodness in things evil." He is comedy as well as
+tragedy--the entire man in all his qualities, moods, and experiences;
+and he beautifies all. And both those truly divine poets make nature
+their subject through her own inspiriting medium--not through
+the darkened glass of one man's spleen and resentment. Dante, in
+constituting himself the hero of his poem, not only renders her, in the
+general impression, as dreary as himself, in spite of the occasional
+beautiful pictures he draws of her, but narrows her very immensity into
+his pettiness. He fancied, alas, that he could build her universe over
+again out of the politics of old Rome and the divinity of the schools!
+
+Dante, besides his great poem, and a few Latin eclogues of no great
+value, wrote lyrics full of Platonical sentiment, some of which
+anticipated the loveliest of Petrarch's; and he was the author of
+various prose works, political and philosophical, all more or less
+masterly for the time in which he lived, and all coadjutors of his
+poetry in fixing his native tongue. His account of his Early Life (the
+_Vita Nuova_) is a most engaging history of a boyish passion, evidently
+as real and true on his own side as love and truth can be, whatever
+might be its mistake as to its object. The treatise on the Vernacular
+Tongue (_de Vulgari Eloquio_) shews how critically he considered his
+materials for impressing the world, and what a reader he was of every
+production of his contemporaries. The Banquet (_Convito_) is but an
+abstruse commentary on some of his minor poems; but the book on Monarchy
+(_de Monarchia_) is a compound of ability and absurdity, in which his
+great genius is fairly overborne by the barbarous pedantry of the age.
+It is an argument to prove that the world must all be governed by one
+man; that this one man must be the successor of the Roman Emperor--God
+having manifestly designed the world to be subject for ever to the Roman
+empire; and lastly, that this Emperor is equally designed by God to be
+independent of the Pope--spiritually subject to him, indeed, but so far
+only as a good son is subject to the religious advice of his father;
+and thus making Church and State happy for ever in the two divided
+supremacies. And all this assumption of the obsolete and impossible the
+author gravely proves in all the forms of logic, by arguments drawn from
+the history of Æneas, and the providential cackle of the Roman geese!
+
+How can the patriots of modern Italy, justified as they are in extolling
+the poet to the skies, see him plunge into such depths of bigotry in his
+verse and childishness in his prose, and consent to perplex the friends
+of advancement with making a type of their success out of so erring
+though so great a man? Such slavishness, even to such greatness, is a
+poor and unpromising thing, compared with an altogether unprejudiced
+and forward-looking self-reliance. To have no faith in names has been
+announced as one of their principles; and "God and Humanity" is their
+motto. What, therefore, has Dante's name to do with their principles? or
+what have the semi-barbarisms of the thirteenth century to do with the
+final triumph of "God and Humanity?" Dante's lauded wish for that union
+of the Italian States, which his fame has led them so fondly to identify
+with their own, was but a portion of his greater and prouder wish to see
+the whole world at the feet of his boasted ancestress, Rome. Not,
+of course, that he had no view to what he considered good and just
+government (for what sane despot purposes to rule without that?); but
+his good and just government was always to be founded on the _sine qua
+non_ principle of universal Italian domination.[35]
+
+All that Dante said or did has its interest for us in spite of his
+errors, because he was an earnest and suffering man and a great genius;
+but his fame must ever continue to lie where his greatest blame does,
+in his principal work. He was a gratuitous logician, a preposterous
+politician, a cruel theologian; but his wonderful imagination, and
+(considering the bitterness that was in him) still more wonderful
+sweetness, have gone into the hearts of his fellow-creatures, and will
+remain there in spite of the moral and religious absurdities with which
+they are mingled, and of the inability which the best-natured readers
+feel to associate his entire memory, as a poet, with their usual
+personal delight in a poet and his name.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: As notices of Dante's life have often been little but
+repetitions of former ones, I think it due to the painstaking character
+of this volume to state, that besides consulting various commentators
+and critics, from Boccaccio to Fraticelli and others, I have diligently
+perused the _Vita di Dante_, by Cesare Balbo, with Rocco's annotations;
+the _Histoire Littéraire d'Italie,_ by Ginguéné; the _Discorso sul Testo
+della Commedia_, by Foscolo; the _Amori e Rime di Dante_ of Arrivabene;
+the _Veltro Allegorico di Dante_, by Troja; and Ozanam's _Dante et la
+Philosophie Catholique an Treixième Siècle._]
+
+[Footnote 2: Canto xv. 88.]
+
+[Footnote 3: For the doubt apparently implied respecting the district,
+see canto xvi. 43, or the summary of it in the present volume. The
+following is the passage alluded to in the philosophical treatise
+"Risponder si vorrebbe, non colle parole, ma col coltello, a tanta
+bestialità." _Convito,--Opere Minori_, 12mo, Fir. 1834, vol. II. p. 432.
+"Beautiful mode" (says Perticeri in a note) "of settling questions."]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Istorie Fiorentine, II_. 43 (in _Tutte le Opere_, 4to,
+1550).]
+
+[Footnote 5: The name has been varied into _Allagheri_, _Aligieri_,
+_Alleghieri_, _Alligheri_, _Aligeri_, with the accent generally on the
+third, but sometimes on the second syllable. See Foscolo, _Discorso sul
+Testo, p_. 432. He says, that in Verona, where descendants of the poet
+survive, they call it _Alìgeri_. But names, like other words, often
+wander so far from their source, that it is impossible to ascertain it.
+Who would suppose that _Pomfret_ came from _Pontefract_, or _wig_ from
+_parrucca_? Coats of arms, unless in very special instances, prove
+nothing but the whims of the heralds.
+
+Those who like to hear of anything in connexion with Dante or his
+name, may find something to stir their fancies in the following grim
+significations of the word in the dictionaries:
+
+"_Dante_, a kind of great wild beast in Africa, that hath a very hard
+skin."--_Florio's Dictionary_, edited by Torreggiano.
+
+"_Dante_, an animal called otherwise the Great Beast."--_Vocabolario
+della Crusca, Compendiato_, Ven. 1729.]
+
+[Footnote 6: See the passage in "Hell," where Virgil, to express his
+enthusiastic approbation of the scorn and cruelty which Dante chews to
+one of the condemned, embraces and kisses him for a right "disdainful
+soul," and blesses the "mother that bore him."]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Opere minori_, vol iii 12. Flor. 1839, pp. 292 &c.]
+
+[Footnote 8: "Béatrix quitta la terre dans tout l'éclat de la jeunesse
+et de la virginité." See the work as above entitled, Paris, 1840, p. 60.
+The words in Latin, as quoted from the will by the critic alluded to in
+the _Foreign Quarterly Review_ (No._ 65, art. _Dante Allighieri_), are,
+"Bici filiæ suæ et uxori D. (Domini) Simonis de Bardis." "Bici" is
+the Latin dative case of Bice, the abbreviation of Beatrice. This
+employment, by the way, of an abbreviated name in a will, may seem to
+go counter to the deductions respecting the name of Dante. And it
+may really do so. Yet a will is not an epitaph, nor the address of a
+beatified spirit; neither is equal familiarity perhaps implied, as a
+matter of course, in the abbreviated names of male and female.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Vita Nuova_. ut sup. p. 343]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Vita Nuova_, p. 345.]
+
+[Footnote 11: In the article on _Dante, in_ the _Foreign Quarterly
+Review_, (ut supra), the exordium of which made me hope that the
+eloquent and assumption-denouncing writer was going to supply a good
+final account of his author, equally satisfactory for its feeling
+and its facts, but which ended in little better than the customary
+gratuitousness of wholesale panegyric, I was surprised to find the
+union with Gemma Donati characterised as "calm and cold,--rather the
+accomplishment of a social duty than the result of an irresistible
+impulse of the heart," p. 15. The accomplishment of the "social duty" is
+an assumption, not very probable with regard to any body, and much less
+so in a fiery Italian of twenty-six; but the addition of the epithets,
+"calm and cold," gives it a sort of horror. A reader of this article,
+evidently the production of a man of ability but of great wilfulness, is
+tempted to express the disappointment it has given him in plainer terms
+than might be wished, in consequence of the extraordinary license which
+its writer does not scruple to allow to his own fancies, in expressing
+his opinion of what he is pleased to think the fancies of others.]
+
+[Footnote 12: "Le invettive contr' essa per tanti secoli originarono
+dalla enumerazione rettorica del Boccaccio di tutti gli inconvenienti
+del matrimonio, e dove per altro ei dichiara,--'Certo io non affermo
+queste cose a Dante essere avvenute, che non lo so; comechè vero sia,
+che o a simili cose a queste, o ad altro che ne fusse cagione, egli una
+volta da lei partitosi, che per consolazione de' suoi affanni gli era
+stata data, mai nè dove ella fusse volle venire, nè sofferse che dove
+egli fusse ella venisse giammai, con tutto che di più figliuoli egli
+insieme con lei fusse parente." _Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. Londra,
+Pickering, 1825, p. 184.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Foscolo, in the _Edinburgh review_, vol. xxx. p. 351. ]
+
+[Footnote 14: "Ahi piaciuto fosse al Dispensatore dell'universo, che la
+cagione della mia scusa mai non fosse stata; che nè altri contro a me
+avria fallato, nè io sofferto avrei pena ingiustamente; pena, dico,
+d'esilio e di povertà. Poichè fu piacere de' cittadini della bellissima
+e famosissima figlia di Roma, Florenza, di gettarmi fuori del suo
+dolcissimo seno (nel quale nato e nudrito fui sino al colmo della mia
+vita, e nel quale, con buona pace di quella, desidero con tutto il core
+di riposare l'animo stanco, e terminare il tempo che m'è dato); per le
+parti quasi tutte, alle quali questa lingua si stende, peregrino, quasi
+mendicando, sono andato, mostrando contro a mia voglia la piaga della
+fortuna, che suole ingiustamente al piagato molte volte essere imputata.
+Veramente io sono stato legno sanza vela e sanza governo, portato a
+diversi porti e foci e liti dal vento secco che vapora la dolorosa
+povertà; e sono vile apparito agli occhi a molti, che forse per alcuna
+fama in altra forma mi aveano immaginato; nel cospetto de' quali non
+solamente mia persona inviliò, ma di minor pregio si fece ogni opera, si
+già fatta, come quella che fosse a fare."-_Opere Minori_, ut sup. vol.
+ii. p. 20.]
+
+[Footnote 15: "In licteris vestris et reverentia debita et affectione
+receptis, quam repatriatio mea cure sit vobis ex animo grata mente ac
+diligenti animaversione concepi, etenim tanto me districtius obligastis,
+quanto rarius exules invenire amicos contingit. ad illam vero
+significata respondeo: et si non eatenus qualiter forsam pusillanimitas
+appeteret aliquorum, ut sub examine vestri consilii ante judicium,
+affectuose deposco. ecce igitur quod per licteras vestri mei: que
+nepotis, necnon aliorum quamplurium amicorum significatum est mihi. per
+ordinamentum nuper factum Florentie super absolutione bannitorum. quod
+si solvere vellem certam pecunie quantitatem, vellemque pati notam
+oblationis et absolvi possem et redire ut presens. in quo quidem duo
+ridenda et male perconciliata sunt. Pater, dico male perconciliata per
+illos qui tali expresserunt: nam vestre litere discretius et consultius
+clausulate nicil de talibus continebant. estne ista revocatio gloriosa
+qua d. all. (i. e. _Dantes Alligherius_) revocatur ad patriam per
+trilustrium fere perpessus exilium? becne meruit conscientia manifesta
+quibuslibet? hec sudor et labor continuatus in studiis? absit a viro
+philosophie domestica temeraria terreni cordis humilitas, ut more
+cujusdam cioli et aliorum infamiam quasi vinctus ipse se patiatur
+offerri. absit a viro predicante justitiam, ut perpessus injuriam
+inferentibus. velud benemerentibus, pecuniam suam solvat. non est hec
+via redeundi ad patriam, Pater mi, sed si alia per vos, aut deinde per
+alios invenietur que fame d. _(Dantis)_ que onori non deroget, illam non
+lentis passibus acceptabo. quod si per nullam talem Florentia introitur,
+nunquam Florentiam introibo. quidni? nonne solis astrorumque specula
+ubique conspiciam? nonne dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique
+sub celo, ni prius inglorium, imo ignominiosum populo, Florentineque
+civitati am reddam? quippe panis non deficiet."]
+
+
+[Footnote 16: _Opere minori_, ut sup. vol iii. p. 186.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Veltro Allegorico di Dante_, ut sup. p. 208, where the
+Appendix contains the Latin original.]
+
+[Footnote 18: See Fraticelli's Dissertation on the Convito, in _Opere
+Minori_, ut sup. vol. ii. p. 560.]
+
+[Footnote 19: _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Balbo_. Naples edition, p. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 21: "Di se stesso presunse maravigliosamente tanto, che
+essendo egli glorioso nel colmo del reggimento della republica, e
+ragionandosi trà maggiori cittadini di mandare, per alcuna gran bisogna,
+ambasciata a Bonifazio Papa VIII., e che principe della ambasciata fosse
+Dante, ed egli in ciò in presenzia di tutti quegli che ciò consigliavano
+richiesto, avvenne, che soprastando egli alla risposta, alcun disse, che
+pensi? alle quali parole egli rispose: penso, se io vo, chi rimane; e
+s'io rimango, chi va: quasi esso solo fosse colui che tra tutti valesse
+e per cui tutti gli altri valessero." And he goes on to say respecting
+the stone-throwing--"Appresso, come che il nostro poeta nelle sua
+avversità paziente o no si fosse, in una fu impazientissimo: ed egli
+infino al cominciamento del suo esilio stato guelfissimo, non essendogli
+aperta la via del ritornare in casa sua, si fuor di modo diventò
+ghibellino, che ogni femminella, ogni picciol fanciullo, e quante
+volte avesse voluto, ragionando di parte, e la guelfa proponendo alla
+ghibellino, l'avrebbe non solamente fatto turbare, ma a tanta insania
+commosso, che se taciuto non fosse, a gittar le pietre l'avrebbe
+condotto." (_Vita di Dante_, prefixed to the Paris edition of the
+Commedia, 1844, p. XXV.) And then the "buon Boccaccio," with his
+accustomed sweetness of nature, begs pardon of so great a man, for being
+obliged to relate such things of him, and doubts whether his spirit may
+not be looking down on him that moment _disdainfully_ from _heaven_!
+Such an association of ideas had Dante produced between the celestial
+and the scornful!]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Novelle di Franco Sacchetti_, Milan edition, 1804, vol.
+ii. p. 148. It forms the setting, or frame-work, of an inferior story,
+and is not mentioned in the heading.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante
+Alighieri, &c._ Smith's edition, 1844, p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Discorso sul Testo_, pp. 64, 77-90, 335-338.]
+
+[Footnote 25: _Purgatorio_, canto III. 118, 138; referred to by Foscolo,
+in the _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 383.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Warton's _History of English Poetry_, edition of 1840,
+vol. iii. p. 214.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott_, Bart. vol. ii.
+p. 122.]
+
+[Footnote 28: _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, pp. 44-50.]
+
+[Footnote 29: _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 226. The whole passage (sect.
+cx.) is very eloquent, horrible, and _self-betraying_.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _Discorso_, as above, p. 101.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Discorso_, p. 103.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Criticisms on the Rolliad, and Probationary Odes for the_
+_Laureateship_. Third edit. 17S5, p. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 33: The writer of the article on Dante in the _Foreign
+Quarterly Review_ (as above) concedes that his hero in this passage
+becomes "_almost_ cruel." Almost! Tormenting a man further, who is up to
+his chin in everlasting ice, and whose face he has kicked!]
+
+[Footnote 34: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." _Inferno_, canto xxxiii.
+150.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Every body sees this who is not wilfully blind.
+"Passionate," says the editor of the _Opere Minori_, "for the ancient
+Italian glories, and the greatness of the Roman name, he was of
+opinion that it was only by means of combined strength, and one common
+government, that Italy could be finally secured from discord in its own
+bosom and enemies from without, _and recover its ancient empire over
+the whole world_." "Amantissimo delle antiche glorie Italiane, e della
+grandezza del nome romano, ei considerava, che soltanto pel mezzo d'una
+general forza ed autorita poteva l'Italia dalle interne contese e dalle
+straniere invasioni restarsi sicura, _e recuperare l'antico imperio
+sopra tutte le genti_."--Ut sup. vol. iii. p. 8.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
+
+I.
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
+
+Argument.
+
+The infernal regions, according to Dante, are situate in the globe we
+inhabit, directly beneath Jerusalem, and consist of a succession of
+gulfs or circles, narrowing as they descend, and terminating in the
+centre; so that the general shape is that of a funnel. Commentators have
+differed as to their magnitude; but the latest calculation gives 315
+miles for the diameter of the mouth or crater, and a quarter of a mile
+for that of its terminating point. In the middle is the abyss, pervading
+the whole depth, and 245 miles in diameter at the opening; which reduces
+the different platforms, or territories that surround it, to a size
+comparatively small. These territories are more or less varied with land
+and water, lakes, precipices, &c. A precipice, fourteen miles high,
+divides the first of them from the second. The passages from the upper
+world to the entrance are various; and the descents from one circle
+to another are effected by the poet and his guide in different
+manners-sometimes on foot through by-ways, sometimes by the conveyance
+of supernatural beings. The crater he finds to be the abode of those who
+have done neither good nor evil, caring for nothing but themselves.
+In the first circle are the whole unbaptised world--heathens and
+infants--melancholy, though not tormented. Here also is found the
+Elysium of Virgil, whose Charon and other infernal beings are among the
+agents of torment. In the second circle the torments commence with the
+sin of incontinence; and the punishment goes deepening with the crime
+from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath,
+sullenness, or unwillingness to be pleased with the creation, disbelief
+in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences),
+usury, murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction and other carnal
+enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft,
+trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery (on
+the great Italian scale), sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the
+Church, heresy, false apostleship, alchemy, forgery, coining (all these,
+from seduction downwards, in one circle); then, in the frozen or lowest
+circle of all, treachery; and at the bottom of this is Satan, stuck into
+the centre of the earth.
+
+With the centre of the globe commences the antipodean attraction of its
+opposite side, together with a rocky ascent out of it, through a
+huge ravine. The poet and his guide, on their arrival at this spot,
+accordingly find their position reversed; and so conclude their
+_downward_ journey _upwards_, till they issue forth to light on the
+borders of the sea which contains the island of Purgatory.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
+
+Dante says, that when he was half-way on his pilgrimage through this
+life, he one day found himself, towards nightfall, in a wood where he
+could no longer discern the right path. It was a place so gloomy and
+terrible, every thing in it growing in such a strange and savage manner,
+that the horror he felt returned on him whenever he thought of it. The
+pass of death could hardly be more bitter. Travelling through it all
+night with a beating heart, he at length came to the foot of a hill, and
+looking up, as he began to ascend it, he perceived the shoulders of the
+hill clad in the beams of morning; a sight which gave him some little
+comfort. He felt like a man who has buffeted his way to land out of a
+shipwreck, and who, though still anxious to get farther from his peril,
+cannot help turning round to gaze on the wide waters. So did he stand
+looking back on the pass that contained that dreadful wood. After
+resting a while, he again betook him up the hill; but had not gone far
+when he beheld a leopard bounding in front of him, and hindering his
+progress. After the leopard came a lion, with his head aloft, mad with
+hunger, and seeming to frighten the very air;[1] and after the lion,
+more eager still, a she-wolf, so lean that she appeared to be sharpened
+with every wolfish want. The pilgrim fled back in terror to the wood,
+where he again found himself in a darkness to which the light never
+penetrated. In that place, he said, the sun never spoke word.[2] But the
+wolf was still close upon him.[3]
+
+While thus flying, he beheld coming towards him a man, who spoke
+something, but he knew not what. The voice sounded strange and feeble,
+as if from disuse. Dante loudly called out to him to save him, whether
+he was a man or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight the wild
+beasts disappeared, said that he was no longer man, though man he
+had been in the time of the false gods, and sung the history of the
+offspring of Anchises.
+
+"And art thou, then, that Virgil," said Dante, "who has filled the world
+with such floods of eloquence? O glory and light of all poets, thou art
+my master, and thou mine _author_; thou alone the book from which I have
+gathered beauties that have gained me praise. Behold the peril I am in,
+and help me, for I tremble in every vein and pulse."
+
+Virgil comforted Dante. He told him that he must quit the wood by
+another road, and that he himself would be his guide, leading him first
+to behold the regions of woe underground, and then the spirits that
+lived content in fire because it purified them for heaven; and then that
+he would consign him to other hands worthier than his own, which should
+raise him to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of whom he was
+one, had been rebels to the law of him that reigns there, nobody could
+arrive at Paradise by their means.[4]
+
+So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and Dante closely followed. He
+expressed a fear, however, as they went, lest being "neither Æneas nor
+St. Paul," his journey could not be worthily undertaken, nor end in
+wisdom. But Virgil, after sharply rebuking him for his faintheartedness,
+told him, that the spirit of her whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down
+from heaven on purpose to commend her lover to his care; upon which the
+drooping courage of the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confidence;
+as flowers that have been closed and bowed down by frosty nights, rise
+all up on their stems in the morning sun.[5]
+
+ "Non vuol che 'n sua città per me sì vegna."
+
+The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any
+more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther. But this is one of the
+absurdities with which the impious effrontery or scarcely less
+impious admissions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at
+defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for the
+impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd," as the poet says;
+for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued, much more so, they
+had at least an equal claim on the submission of the reason; since the
+greater the irrationality, the higher the theological triumph.
+
+  "Through me is the road to the dolorous city;
+  Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows;
+  Through me is the road to the lost people.
+  Justice was the motive of my exalted maker;
+  I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom, and by primal love;
+  Before me was no created thing, if not eternal; and eternal am I also.
+  Abandon hope, all ye who enter."
+
+Such were the words which Dante beheld written in dark characters over a
+portal. "Master," said he to Virgil, "I find their meaning hard."
+
+"A man," answered Virgil, "must conduct himself at this door like one
+prepared. Hither must he bring no mistrust. Hither can come and live no
+cowardice. We have arrived at the place I told thee of. Here thou art to
+behold the dolorous people who have lost all intellectual good." [6]
+
+So saying, Virgil placed his hand on Dante's, looking on him with a
+cheerful countenance; and the Florentine passed with him through the
+dreadful gate.
+
+They entered upon a sightless gulf, in which was a black air without
+stars; and immediately heard a hubbub of groans; and wailings, and
+terrible things said in many languages, words of wretchedness, outcries
+of rage, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of the smitings of hands one
+against another. Dante began to weep. The sound was as if the sand in
+a whirlwind were turned into noises, and filled the blind air with
+incessant conflict.
+
+Yet these were not the souls of the wicked. They were those only who had
+lived without praise or blame, thinking of nothing but themselves. These
+miserable creatures were mixed with the angels who stood neutral in the
+war with Satan. Heaven would not dull its brightness with those angels,
+nor would lower hell receive them, lest the bad ones should triumph in
+their company.
+
+"And what is it," said Dante, "which makes them so grievously suffer?"
+
+"Hopelessness of death," said Virgil. "Their blind existence here, and
+immemorable former life, make them so wretched, that they envy every
+other lot. Mercy and justice alike disdain them. Let us speak of them no
+more. Look, and pass."
+
+The companions went on till they came to a great river with a multitude
+waiting on the banks. A hoary old man appeared crossing the river
+towards them in a boat; and as he came, he said, "Woe to the wicked.
+Never expect to see heaven. I come to bear you across to the dark
+regions of everlasting fire and ice." Then looking at Dante, he said,
+"Get thee away from the dead, thou who standest there, live spirit."
+
+"Torment thyself not, Charon," said Virgil. "He has a passport beyond
+thy power to question."
+
+The shaggy cheeks of the boatman of the livid lake, who had wheels of
+fire about his eyes, fell at these words; and he was silent. But the
+naked multitude of souls whom he had spoken to changed colour, and
+gnashed their teeth, blaspheming God, and their parents, and the human
+species, and the place, and the hour, and the seed of the sowing of
+their birth; and all the while they felt themselves driven onwards, by a
+fear which became a desire, towards the cruel river-side, which awaits
+every one destitute of the fear of God. The demon Charon, beckoning to
+them with eyes like brasiers, collected them as they came, giving blows
+to those that lingered, with his oar. One by one they dropped into the
+boat like leaves from a bough in autumn, till the bough is left bare; or
+as birds drop into the decoy at the sound of the bird-call.
+
+There was then an earthquake, so terrible that the recollection of it
+made the poet burst into a sweat at every pore. A whirlwind issued from
+the lamenting ground, attended by vermilion flashes; and he lost his
+senses, and fell like a man stupefied.
+
+A crash of thunder through his brain woke up the pilgrim so hastily,
+that he shook himself like a person roused by force. He found that he
+was on the brink of a gulf, from which ascended a thunderous sound of
+innumerable groanings. He could see nothing down it. It was too dark
+with sooty clouds. Virgil himself turned pale, but said, "We are to go
+down here. I will lead the way."
+
+"O master," said Dante, "if even thou fearest, what is to become of
+myself?" "It is pity, not fear," replied Virgil, "that makes me change
+colour."
+
+With these words his guide led him into the first circle of hell,
+surrounding the abyss. The great noise gradually ceased to be heard, as
+they journeyed inwards, till at last they became aware of a world of
+sighs, which produced a trembling in the air. They were breathed by the
+souls of such as had died without baptism, men, women, and infants; no
+matter how good; no matter if they worshipped God before the coming of
+Christ, for they worshipped him not "properly." Virgil himself was
+one of them. They were all lost for no other reason; and their "only
+suffering" consisted in "hopeless desire!"
+
+Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard this, knowing how many
+good men must be in that place. He inquired if no one had ever been
+taken out of it into heaven. Virgil told him there had, and he named
+them; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the
+patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for
+whom Jacob did so much,--and "many more;" adding, however, that there
+was no instance of salvation before theirs.
+
+Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante perceived a
+lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evidently of
+great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the
+rest. Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their
+renown on earth. A voice was then heard exclaiming, "Honour and glory to
+the lofty poet! Lo, his shade returns." Dante then saw four other noble
+figures coming towards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful.
+
+"Observe him with the sword in his hand," said Virgil, as they were
+advancing. "That is Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him comes
+Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the last is Lucan."
+
+"And thus I beheld," says Dante, "the bright school of the loftiest of
+poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle."
+
+For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to
+the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and
+"further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, "for
+they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account
+I added a sixth." [7]
+
+The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived,
+talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a magnificent castle,
+girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which
+they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them
+into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with
+a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority,
+their voices sweet, and their speech seldom.[8] Dante was taken apart to
+an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly;
+and there, on the "enamelled green," [9] were pointed out to him the
+great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem.
+He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and Æneas,
+and Cæsar in armour with his hawk's eyes; and on another side he beheld
+old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled
+Tarquin, and Lucretia, and Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother
+of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin. He then
+raised his eyes a little, and beheld the "master of those who know" [10]
+(Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured
+by them all. Socrates and Plato were at his side. Among the rest was
+Democritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus,
+&c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he saw,
+and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and
+Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too
+numerous to mention. The company of six became diminished to two, and
+Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air
+for a stormy one; and so they descended again into darkness.
+
+It was the second circle into which they now came--a sphere narrower
+than the first, and by so much more the wretcheder. Minos sat at the
+entrance, gnarling--he that gives sentence on every one that comes, and
+intimates the circle into which each is to be plunged by the number of
+folds into which he casts his tail round about him. Minos admonished
+Dante to beware how he entered unbidden, and warned him against his
+conductor; but Virgil sharply rebuked the judge, and bade him not set
+his will against the will that was power.
+
+The pilgrims then descended through hell-mouth, till they came to a
+place dark as pitch, that bellowed with furious cross-winds, like a sea
+in a tempest. It was the first place of torment, and the habitation of
+carnal sinners. The winds, full of stifled voices, buffeted the souls
+for ever, whirling them away to and fro, and dashing them against one
+another. Whenever it seized them for that purpose, the wailing and the
+shrieking was loudest, crying out against the Divine Power. Sometimes a
+whole multitude came driven in a body like starlings before the wind,
+now hither and thither, now up, now down; sometimes they went in a line
+like cranes, when a company of those birds is beheld sailing along in
+the air, uttering its dolorous clangs.
+
+Dante, seeing a group of them advancing, inquired of Virgil who they
+were. "Who are these," said he, "coming hither, scourged in the blackest
+part of the hurricane?"
+
+"She at the head of them," said Virgil, "was empress over many nations.
+So foul grew her heart with lust, that she ordained license to be law,
+to the end that herself might be held blameless. She is Semiramis, of
+whom it is said that she gave suck to Ninus, and espoused him. Leading
+the multitude next to her is Dido, she that slew herself for love, and
+broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus; and she that follows with the next
+is the luxurious woman, Cleopatra."
+
+Dante then saw Helen, who produced such a world of misery; and the great
+Achilles, who fought for love till it slew him; and Paris; and Tristan;
+and a thousand more whom his guide pointed at, naming their names, every
+one of whom was lost through love.
+
+The poet stood for a while speechless for pity, and like one bereft of
+his wits. He then besought leave to speak to a particular couple who
+went side by side, and who appeared to be borne before the wind with
+speed lighter than the rest. His conductor bade him wait till they came
+nigher, and then to entreat them gently by the love which bore them in
+that manner, and they would stop and speak with him. Dante waited his
+time, and then lifted up his voice between the gusts of wind, and
+adjured the two "weary souls" to halt and have speech with him, if none
+forbade their doing so; upon which they came to him, like doves to the
+nest.[11]
+
+There was a lull in the tempest, as if on purpose to let them speak;
+and the female addressed Dante, saying, that as he showed such pity for
+their state, they would have prayed heaven to give peace and repose to
+his life, had they possessed the friendship of heaven.[12]
+
+"Love," she said, "which is soon kindled in a gentle heart, seized this
+my companion for the fair body I once inhabited--how deprived of it, my
+spirit is bowed to recollect. Love, which compels the beloved person
+upon thoughts of love, seized me in turn with a delight in his passion
+so strong, that, as thou seest, even here it forsakes me not. Love
+brought us both to one end. The punishment of Cain awaits him that slew
+us."
+
+The poet was struck dumb by this story. He hung down his head, and stood
+looking on the ground so long, that his guide asked him what was in his
+mind. "Alas!" answered he, "such then was this love, so full of sweet
+thoughts; and such the pass to which it brought them! Oh, Francesca!" he
+cried, turning again to the sad couple, "thy sufferings make me weep.
+But tell me, I pray thee, what was it that first made thee know, for a
+certainty, that his love was returned?--that thou couldst refuse him
+thine no longer?"
+
+"There is not a greater sorrow," answered she, "than calling to mind
+happy moments in the midst of wretchedness.[13] But since thy desire is
+so great to know our story to the root, hear me tell it as well as I
+may for tears. It chanced, one day, that we sat reading the tale of
+Sir Launcelot, how love took him in thrall. We were alone, and had no
+suspicion. Often, as we read, our eyes became suspended,[14] and we
+changed colour; but one passage alone it was that overcame us. When we
+read how Genevra smiled, and how the lover, out of the depth of his
+love, could not help kissing that smile, he that is never more to be
+parted from me kissed me himself on the mouth, all in a tremble. Never
+had we go-between but that book. The writer was the betrayer. That day
+we read no more."
+
+While these words were being uttered by one of the spirits, the other
+wailed so bitterly, that the poet thought he should have died for pity.
+His senses forsook him, and he fell flat on the ground, as a dead body
+falls.[15]
+
+On regaining his senses, the poet found himself in the third circle of
+hell, a place of everlasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush of
+hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. The triple-headed dog Cerberus,
+with red eyes and greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with claws,
+barked above the heads of the wretches who floundered in the mud,
+tearing, skinning, and dismembering them, as they turned their sore and
+soddened bodies from side to side. When he saw the two living men, he
+showed his fangs, and shook in every limb for desire of their flesh.
+Virgil threw lumps of dirt into his mouth, and so they passed him.
+
+It was the place of Gluttons. The travellers passed over them, as if
+they had been ground to walk upon. But one of them sat up, and addressed
+the Florentine as his acquaintance. Dante did not know him, for the
+agony in his countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog (Ciacco), and by no
+other name does the poet, or any one else, mention him. His countryman
+addressed him by it, though declaring at the same time that he wept to
+see him. Hog prophesied evil to his discordant native city, adding
+that there were but two just men in it--all the rest being given up to
+avarice, envy, and pride. Dante inquired by name respecting the fate of
+five other Florentines, _who had done good_, and was informed that they
+were all, for various offences, _in lower gulfs of hell_. Hog then
+begged that he would mention having seen him when he returned to the
+sweet world; and so, looking at him a little, bent his head, and
+disappeared among his blinded companions.
+
+"Satan! hoa, Satan!" roared the demon Plutus, as the poets were
+descending into the fourth circle.
+
+"Peace!" cried Virgil, "with thy swollen lip, thou accursed wolf. No one
+can hinder his coming down. God wills it." [16]
+
+Flat fell Plutus, collapsed, like the sails of a vessel when the mast is
+split.
+
+This circle was the most populous one they had yet come to. The
+sufferers, gifted with supernatural might, kept eternally rolling round
+it, one against another, with terrific violence, and so dashing apart,
+and returning. "Why grasp?" cried the one--"Why throw away?" cried the
+other; and thus exclaiming, they dashed furiously together.
+
+They were the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Multitudes of them were
+churchmen, including cardinals and popes. Not all the gold beneath the
+moon could have purchased them a moment's rest. Dante asked if none of
+them were to be recognised by their countenances. Virgil said, "No;" for
+the stupid and sullied lives which they led on earth swept their faces
+away from all distinction for ever.
+
+In discoursing of fortune, they descend by the side of a torrent, black
+as ink, into the fifth circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the
+Sullen, and the Proud. Here they first beheld a filthy marsh, full of
+dirty naked bodies, that in everlasting rage tore one another to pieces.
+In a quieter division of the pool were seen nothing but bubbles, carried
+by the ascent, from its slimy bottom, of the stifled words of the
+sullen. They were always saying, "We were sad and dark within us in the
+midst of the sweet sunshine, and now we live sadly in the dark bogs."
+The poets walked on till they came to the foot of a tower, which hung
+out two blazing signals to another just discernible in the distance. A
+boat came rapidly towards them, ferried by the wrathful Phlegyas;[17]
+who cried out, "Aha, felon! and so thou hast come at last!"
+
+"Thou errest," said Virgil. "We come for no longer time than it will
+take thee to ferry us across thy pool."
+
+Phlegyas looked like one defrauded of his right; but proceeded to convey
+them. During their course a spirit rose out of the mire, looking Dante
+in the face, and said, "Who art thou, that comest before thy time?"
+
+"Who art thou?" said Dante.
+
+"Thou seest who I am," answered the other; "one among the mourners."
+
+"Then mourn still, and howl, accursed spirit," returned the Florentine.
+"I know thee, all over filth as thou art."
+
+The wretch in fury laid hold of the boat, but Virgil thrust him back,
+exclaiming, "Down with thee! down among the other dogs!"
+
+Then turning to Dante, he embraced and kissed him, saying, "O soul, that
+knows how to disdain, blessed be she that bore thee! Arrogant, truly,
+upon earth was this sinner, nor is his memory graced by a single virtue.
+Hence the furiousness of his spirit now. How many kings are there at
+this moment lording it as gods, who shall wallow here, as he does, like
+swine in the mud, and be thought no better of by the world!" "I should
+like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, "before we go."
+
+"A right wish," said Virgil, "and thou shalt, to thy heart's content."
+
+On a sudden the wretch's muddy companions seized and drenched him so
+horribly that (exclaims Dante) "I laud and thank God for it now at this
+moment."
+
+"Have at him!" cried they; "have at Filippo Argenti;" and the wild fool
+of a Florentine dashed his teeth for rage into his own flesh.[18]
+
+The poet's attention was now drawn off by a noise of lamentation, and
+he perceived that he was approaching the city of Dis.[19] The turrets
+glowed vermilion with the fire within it, the walls appeared to be of
+iron, and moats were round about them. The boat circuited the walls till
+the travellers came to a gate, which Phlegyas, with a loud voice, told
+them to quit the boat and enter. But a thousand fallen angels crowded
+over the top of the gate, refusing to open it, and making furious
+gestures. At length they agreed to let Virgil speak with them inside;
+and he left Dante for a while, standing in terror without. The parley
+was in vain. They would not let them pass. Virgil, however, bade his
+companion be of good cheer, and then stood listening and talking to
+himself; disclosing by his words his expectation of some extraordinary
+assistance, and at the same time his anxiety for its arrival. On a
+sudden, three raging figures arose over the gate, coloured with gore.
+Green hydras twisted about them; and their fierce temples had snakes
+instead of hair.
+
+"Look," said Virgil. "The Furies! The one on the left is Megæra; Alecto
+is she that is wailing on the right; and in the middle is Tisiphone."
+Virgil then hushed. The Furies stood clawing their breasts, smiting
+their hands together, and raising such hideous cries, that Dante clung
+to his friend.
+
+"Bring the Gorgon's head!" cried the Furies, looking down; "turn him to
+adamant!"
+
+"Turn round," said Virgil, "and hide thy face; for if thou beholdest
+the Gorgon, never again wilt thou see the light of day." And with these
+words he seized Dante and turned him round himself, clapping his hands
+over his companion's eyes.
+
+And now was heard coming over the water a terrible crashing noise, that
+made the banks on either side of it tremble. It was like a hurricane
+which comes roaring through the vain shelter of the woods, splitting and
+hurling away the boughs, sweeping along proudly in a huge cloud of dust,
+and making herds and herdsmen fly before it. "Now stretch your eyesight
+across the water," said Virgil, letting loose his hands;--"there, where
+the smoke of the foam is thickest." Dante looked; and saw a thousand of
+the rebel angels, like frogs before a serpent, swept away into a heap
+before the coming of a single spirit, who flew over the tops of the
+billows with unwet feet. The spirit frequently pushed the gross air
+from before his face, as if tired of the base obstacle; and as he came
+nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messenger from heaven, looked anxiously
+at Virgil. Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow down.
+
+The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon as he arrived at the gate,
+touched it with a wand that he had in his hand, and it flew open.
+
+"Outcasts of heaven," said he; "despicable race! whence this fantastical
+arrogance? Do ye forget that your torments are laid oil thicker every
+time ye kick against the Fates? Do ye forget how your Cerberus was bound
+and chained till he lost the hair off his neck like a common dog?"
+
+So saying he turned swiftly and departed the way he came, not addressing
+a word to the travellers. His countenance had suddenly a look of some
+other business, totally different from the one he had terminated.
+
+The companions passed in, and beheld a place full of tombs red-hot. It
+was the region of Arch heretics and their followers. Dante and his guide
+passed round betwixt the walls and the sepulchres as in a churchyard,
+and came to the quarter which held Epicurus and his sect, who denied the
+existence of spirit apart from matter. The lids of the tombs remaining
+unclosed till the day of judgment, the soul of a noble Florentine,
+Farinata degli Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as a
+countryman, asking him to stop.[20] Dante, alarmed, beheld him rise half
+out of his sepulchre, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell itself.
+Finding who Dante was, he boasted of having three times expelled the
+Guelphs. "Perhaps so," said the poet; "but they came back again each
+time; an art which their enemies have not yet acquired."
+
+A visage then appeared from out another tomb, looking eagerly, as if it
+expected to see some one else. Being disappointed, the tears came into
+its eyes, and the sufferer said, "If it is thy genius that conducts thee
+hither, where is my son, and why is he not with thee?"
+
+"It is not my genius that conducts me," said Dante, "but that of one,
+whom perhaps thy son held in contempt."
+
+"How sayest thou?" cried the shade;--"_held_ in contempt? He is dead
+then? He beholds no longer the sweet light?" And with these words
+he dropped into his tomb, and was seen no more. It was Cavalcante
+Cavalcanti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido.[21]
+
+The shade of Farinata, who had meantime been looking on, now replied to
+the taunt of Dante, prophesying that he should soon have good reason to
+know that the art he spoke of _had_ been acquired; upon which Dante,
+speaking with more considerateness to the lofty sufferer, requested to
+know how the gift of prophecy could belong to spirits who were ignorant
+of the time present. Farinata answered that so it was; just as there was
+a kind of eyesight which could discern things at a distance though
+not at hand. Dante then expressed his remorse at not having informed
+Cavalcante that his son was alive. He said it was owing to his being
+overwhelmed with thought on the subject he had just mentioned, and
+entreated Farinata to tell him so.
+
+Quitting this part of the cemetery, Virgil led him through the midst
+of it towards a descent into a valley, from which there ascended a
+loathsome odour. They stood behind one of the tombs for a while, to
+accustom themselves to the breath of it; and then began to descend a
+wild fissure in a rock, near the mouth of which lay the infamy of Crete,
+the Minotaur. The monster beholding them gnawed himself for rage; and
+on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he
+is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in
+entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness
+to run at them; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of
+boiling blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed
+with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep according to the
+amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of the
+Inflicters of Violence; and if any of them emerged from it higher than
+he had a right to do, the Centaurs drove him down with their arrows.
+Nessus, the one that bequeathed Hercules the poisoned garment, came
+galloping towards the pilgrims, bending his bow, and calling out from
+a distance to know who they were; but Virgil, disdaining his hasty
+character, would explain himself only to Chiron, the Centaur who
+instructed Achilles. Chiron, in consequence, bade Nessus accompany
+them along the river; and there they saw tyrants immersed up to the
+eyebrows;--Alexander the Great among them, Dionysius of Syracuse, and
+Ezzelino the Paduan. There was one of the Pazzi of Florence, and Rinieri
+of Corneto (infestors of the public ways), now shedding bloody tears,
+and Attila the Scourge, and Pyrrhus king of Epirus. Further on, among
+those immersed up to the throat, was Guy de Montfort the Englishman, who
+slew his father's slayer, Prince Henry, during divine service, in
+the bosom of God; and then by degrees the river became shallower and
+shallower till it covered only the feet; and here the Centaur quitted
+the pilgrims, and they crossed over into a forest.
+
+The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest--the leaves not green,
+but black--the boughs not freely growing, but knotted and twisted--the
+fruit no fruit, but thorny poison. The Harpies wailed among the trees,
+occasionally showing their human faces; and on every side of him Dante
+heard lamenting human voices, but could see no one from whom they came.
+"Pluck one of the boughs," said Virgil. Dante did so; and blood and a
+cry followed it.
+
+"Why pluckest thou me?" said the trunk. "Men have we been, like thyself;
+but thou couldst not use us worse, had we been serpents." The blood and
+words came out together, as a green bough hisses and spits in the fire.
+
+The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the good chancellor of the
+Emperor Frederick the Second. Just though he had been to others, he
+was thus tormented for having been unjust to himself; for, envy having
+wronged him to his sovereign, who sentenced him to lose his eyes, he
+dashed his brains out against a wall. Piero entreated Dante to vindicate
+his memory. The poet could not speak for pity; so Virgil made the
+promise for him, inquiring at the same time in what manner it was that
+Suicides became thus identified with trees, and how their souls were to
+rejoin their bodies at the day of judgment. Piero said, that the moment
+the fierce self-murderer's spirit tore itself from the body, and passed
+before Charon, it fell, like a grain of corn, into that wood, and so
+grew into a tree. The Harpies then fed on its leaves, causing both pain
+and a vent for lamentation. The body it would never again enter, having
+thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag the body down to it by
+a violent attraction; and every suicide's carcass will be hung upon the
+thorn of its wretched shade.
+
+The naked souls of two men, whose profusion had brought them to a
+violent end, here came running through the wood from the fangs of black
+female mastiff's--leaving that of a suicide to mourn the havoc which
+their passage had made of his tree. He begged his countryman to gather
+his leaves up, and lay them at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so;
+and then he and Virgil proceeded on their journey.
+
+They issued from the wood on a barren sand, flaming hot, on which
+multitudes of naked souls lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly
+walked about, trying to throw from them incessant flakes of fire, which
+came down like a fall of snow. They were the souls of the Impious. Among
+them was a great spirit, who lay scornfully submitting himself to the
+fiery shower, as though it had not yet ripened him.[22] Overhearing
+Dante ask his guide who he was, he answered for himself, and said, "The
+same dead as living. Jove will tire his flames out before they conquer
+me."
+
+"Capaneus," exclaimed Virgil, "thy pride is thy punishment. No martyrdom
+were sufficient for thee, equal to thine own rage." The besieger of
+Thebes made no reply.
+
+In another quarter of the fiery shower the pilgrims met a crowd of
+Florentines, mostly churchmen, whose offence is not to be named; after
+which they beheld Usurers; and then arrived at a huge waterfall, which
+fell into the eighth circle, or that of the Fraudulent. Here Virgil, by
+way of bait to the monster Geryon, or Fraud, let down over the side
+of the waterfall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore about his
+waist,[23] and presently the dreadful creature came up, and sate on the
+margin of the fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him in
+the air, after the manner of a beaver; but the point of the tail was
+occasionally seen glancing upwards. He was a gigantic reptile, with the
+face of a just man, very mild. He had shaggy claws for arms, and a body
+variegated all over with colours that ran in knots and circles, each
+within the other, richer than any Eastern drapery. Virgil spoke apart
+to him, and then mounted on his back, bidding his companion, who was
+speechless for terror, do the salve. Geryon pushed back with them from
+the edge of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbour; and then,
+turning about, wheeled, like a sullen successless falcon, slowly down
+through the air in many a circuit. Dante would not have known that he
+was going downward, but for the air that struck up wards on his face.
+Presently they heard the crash of the waterfall on the circle below,
+and then distinguished flaming fires and the noises of suffering.
+The monster Geryon, ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a
+distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his riders from off his
+back to the water's side, and then shot away like an arrow.
+
+This eighth circle of hell is called Evil-Budget,[24] and consists of
+ten compartments, or gulfs of torment, crossed and connected with
+one another by bridges of flint. In the first were beheld Pimps and
+Seducers, scourged like children by horned devils; in the second,
+Flatterers, begrimed with ordure; in the third, Simonists, who were
+stuck like plugs into circular apertures, with their heads downwards,
+and their legs only discernible, the soles of their feet glowing with a
+fire which made them incessantly quiver. Dante, going down the side of
+the gulf with Virgil, was allowed to address one of them who seemed in
+greater agony than the rest; and, doing so, the sufferer cried out in a
+malignant rapture, "Aha, is it thou that standest there, Boniface?[25]
+Thou hast come sooner than it was prophesied." It was the soul of Pope
+Nicholas the Third that spoke. Dante undeceived and then sternly
+rebuked him for his avarice and depravity, telling him that nothing but
+reverence for the keys of St. Peter hindered him from using harsher
+words, and that it was such as he that the Evangelist beheld in the
+vision, when he saw the woman with seven heads and ten horns, who
+committed whoredom with the kings of the earth.
+
+"O Constantine!" exclaimed the poet, "of what a world of evil was that
+dowry the mother, which first converted the pastor of the church into a
+rich man!" [26] The feet of the guilty pope spun with fiercer agony at
+these words; and Virgil, looking pleased on Dante, returned with him
+the way he came, till they found themselves on the margin of the fourth
+gulf, the habitation of the souls of False Prophets.
+
+It was a valley, in which the souls came walking along, silent and
+weeping, at the pace of choristers who chant litanies. Their faces were
+turned the wrong way, so that the backs of their heads came foremost,
+and their tears fell on their loins. Dante was so overcome at the sight,
+that he leant against a rock and wept; but Virgil rebuked him, telling
+him that no pity at all was the only pity fit for that place.[27] There
+was Amphiaraus, whom the earth opened and swallowed up at Thebes; and
+Tiresias, who was transformed from sex to sex; and Aruns, who lived in
+a cavern on the side of the marble mountains of Carrara, looking out on
+the stars and ocean; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias (her hind tresses
+over her bosom), who wandered through the world till she came and lived
+in the solitary fen, whence afterwards arose the city of Mantua; and
+Michael Scot, the magician, with his slender loins;[28] and Eurypylus,
+the Grecian augur, who gave the signal with Calchas at Troy when to cut
+away the cables for home. He came stooping along, projecting his face
+over his swarthy shoulders. Guido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of
+Forli; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to
+his last; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff to
+wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of
+those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind
+them, and walked the reverse way of their looking.
+
+The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, constantly heaving and
+subsiding throughout, and bubbling with the breath of those within it.
+They were Public Peculators. Winged black devils were busy about the
+lake, pronging the sinners when they occasionally darted up their backs
+for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their jaws like frogs. Dante
+at first looked eagerly down into the gulf, like one who feels that he
+shall turn away instantly out of the very horror that attracts him.
+"See--look behind thee!" said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from
+the place where he stood, to a covert behind a crag. Dante looked round,
+and beheld a devil coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across his
+shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and then dashed down after him,
+like a mastiff let loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca, where
+every soul was a false dealer except Bonturo.[29] The devil called out
+to other devils, and a heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks as
+he rose to the surface; telling him, that he must practise there in
+secret, if he practised at all; and thrusting him back into the boiling
+pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot. The devils were of the
+lowest and most revolting habits, of which they made disgusting jest and
+parade.
+
+Some of them, on a sudden, perceived Dante and his guide, and were going
+to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a
+while they let him alone; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of
+the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter.
+The rest then fell upon him and flayed him.
+
+It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service of the good Thiebault, king
+of Navarre. One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita,
+governor of Gallura; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian.
+Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils,
+who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil,
+catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in
+a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction into the
+borders of gulf the sixth, the region of Hypocrites.
+
+The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked about in a wearisome and
+exhausted manner, as if ready to faint. They wore huge cowls, which hung
+over their eyes, and the outsides of which were gilded, but the insides
+of lead. Two of them had been rulers of Florence; and Dante was
+listening to their story, when his attention was called off by the sight
+of a cross, on which Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breathing
+hard all the while through his beard with sighs. It was his office to
+see that every soul which passed him, on its arrival in the place, was
+oppressed with the due weight. His father-in-law, Annas, and all his
+council, were stuck in like manner on crosses round the borders of the
+gulf. The pilgrims beheld little else in this region of weariness, and
+soon passed into the borders of one of the most terrible portions of
+Evil-budget, the land of the transformation of Robbers.
+
+The place was thronged with serpents of the most appalling and unwonted
+description, among which ran tormented the naked spirits of the
+robbers, agonised with fear. Their hands were bound behind them with
+serpents--their bodies pierced and enfolded with serpents. Dante saw one
+of the monsters leap up and transfix a man through the nape of the neck;
+when, lo! sooner than a pen could write _o_, or _i_, the sufferer burst
+into flames, burnt up, fell to the earth a heap of ashes--was again
+brought together, and again became a man, aghast with his agony, and
+staring about him, sighing.[30] Virgil asked him who he was.
+
+"I was but lately rained down into this dire gullet," said the man,
+"amidst a shower of Tuscans. The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led a
+brutal life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pistoia."
+
+"Compel him to stop," said Dante, "and relate what brought him hither. I
+knew the bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive."
+
+The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to these words, turned round
+to the speaker with the most painful shame in his face, and said, "I
+feel more bitterly at being caught here by thee in this condition, than
+when I first arrived. A power which I cannot resist compels me to let
+thee know, that I am here because I committed sacrilege and charged
+another with the crime; but now, mark me, that thou mayest hear
+something not to render this encounter so pleasant: Pistoia hates thy
+party of the Whites, and longs for the Blacks back again. It will have
+them, and so will Florence; and there will be a bloody cloud shall burst
+over the battlefield of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the
+earth. I tell thee this to make thee miserable."
+
+So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of contempt with his thumb and
+finger towards heaven, and said, "Take it, God--a fig for thee!" [31]
+
+"From that instant," said Dante, "the serpents and I were friends; for
+one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands
+into a knot behind his back. O Pistoia! Pistoia! why art not thou
+thyself turned into ashes, and swept from the face of the earth, since
+thy race has surpassed in evil thine ancestors? Never, through the
+whole darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire as this--not even
+Capaneus himself."
+
+The Pistoian fled away with the serpents upon him, followed by a
+Centaur, who came madly galloping up, crying, "Where is the caitiff?" It
+was the monster-thief Cacus, whose den upon earth often had a pond of
+blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in his rage, when he slew him,
+gave a whole hundred blows with his club, though the wretch perceived
+nothing after the ninth. He was all over adders up to the mouth; and
+upon his shoulders lay a dragon with its wings open, breathing fire on
+whomsoever it met.
+
+The Centaur tore away; and Dante and Virgil were gazing after him, when
+they heard voices beneath the bank on which they stood, crying, "Who are
+ye?" The pilgrims turned their eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits,
+one of whom, looking about him, said, "Where's Cianfa?" Dante made a
+sign to Virgil to say nothing.
+
+Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a serpent with six feet.[32]
+
+"If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I am about to tell thee,"
+says the poet, "be so; it is no marvel; for I myself, even now, scarcely
+credit what I beheld."
+
+The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front,
+clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into
+either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster
+grappled with every limb of that pinioned man. The two forms then
+gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of
+their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white
+in a piece of burning paper recedes before the brown, till it all
+becomes black. The other two human shapes looked on, exclaiming,
+"Oh, how thou changest, Agnello! See, thou art neither two nor yet one."
+And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained
+two countenances in the face. The four arms then became but two, and
+such also became the legs and thighs; and the two trunks became such a
+body as was never beheld; and the hideous twofold monster walked slowly
+away.[33]
+
+A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body
+of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on
+the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated
+and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand
+steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or
+fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and
+both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one
+volume.
+
+And now, let Lucan never speak more of the wretched Sabellus or
+Nisidius, but listen and be silent; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor
+speak again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his fountain that was
+Arethusa; for, says the Tuscan poet, I envy him not. Never did he change
+the natures of two creatures face to face, so that each received the
+form of the other.
+
+With corresponding impulse, the serpent split his train into a fork,
+while the man drew his legs together into a train; the skin of the
+serpent grew soft, while the man's hardened; the serpent acquired
+tresses of hair, the man grew hairless; the claws of the one projected
+into legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into his shoulders; the
+face of the serpent, as it rose from the ground, retreated towards the
+temples, pushing out human ears; that of the man, as he fell to the
+ground, thrust itself forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same time
+its ears into its head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature
+kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath
+the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then
+turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent,
+which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The
+new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and
+said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, "Let Buoso now take to
+his crawl, as I have done."
+
+The two then hastened away together, leaving Dante in a state of
+bewildered amazement, yet not so confused but that he recognised the
+unchanged one for another of his countrymen, Puccio the Lame. "Joy to
+thee, Florence!" cried the poet; "not content with having thy name
+bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell."
+
+The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier
+into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from
+one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies.
+
+"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls, each tormented with the fire
+that swathes it."
+
+"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the summit. Are the Theban
+brothers in it?"
+
+"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are Diomed and Ulysses." The
+sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors; and those two were
+the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse.
+
+Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures,
+not to be found in books: how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth
+again into the wide ocean; and how he sailed so far that he came into a
+region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever
+saw; when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell upon them from the shore,
+thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and
+the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads.
+
+"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more." The soul of Guido di
+Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect,
+asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how
+he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at
+once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes.[34] He
+was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on
+purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his
+absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim. "To repent evil, and to will
+to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel,
+"impossible: therefore wrong me not."
+
+"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "when he laid his hands upon
+me!" And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for
+agony, and so took its way.
+
+The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the
+Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False
+Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the
+sins of those whom they seduce.
+
+The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels,
+and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law,
+Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin; and the divisions in the church
+were punished in like manner upon all the schismatics in the place. They
+all walked round the circle, their gashes closing as they went; and on
+their reaching a certain point, a fiend hewed them open again with a
+sword. The Arabian prophet, ere he passed on, bade the pilgrims
+warn Friar Dolcino how he suffered himself to be surprised in his
+mountain-hold by the starvations of winter-time, if he did not wish
+speedily to follow him.[35]
+
+Among other mangled wretches, they beheld Piero of Medicina, a sower of
+dissension, exhibiting to them his face and throat all over wounds; and
+Curio, compelled to shew his tongue cut out for advising Cæsar to cross
+the Rubicon; and Mosca de' Lamberti, an adviser of assassination, and
+one of the authors of the Guelf and Ghibelline miseries, holding up
+the bleeding stumps of his arms, which dripped on his face. "Remember
+Mosca," cried he; "remember him, alas! who said, 'A deed done is a thing
+ended.' A bad saying of mine was that for the Tuscan nation."
+
+"And death to thy family," cried Dante.
+
+The assassin hurried away like a man driven mad with grief upon grief;
+and Dante now beheld a sight, which, if it were not, he says, for the
+testimony of a good conscience--that best of friends, which gives a
+man assurance of himself under the breastplate of a spotless
+innocence[36]--he should be afraid to relate without further proof. He
+saw--and while he was writing the account of it he still appeared to
+see--a headless trunk about to come past him with the others. It held
+its severed head by the hair, like a lantern; and the head looked up
+at the two pilgrims, and said, "Woe is me!" The head was, in fact, a
+lantern to the paths of the trunk; and thus there were two separated
+things in one, and one in two; and how that could be, he only can tell
+who ordained it. As the figure came nearer, it lifted the head aloft,
+that the pilgrims might hear better what it said. "Behold," it said,
+"behold, thou that walkest living among the dead, and say if there be
+any punishment like this. I am Bertrand de Born, he that incited John
+of England to rebel against his father. Father and son I set at
+variance--closest affections I set at variance--and hence do I bear my
+brain severed from the body on which it grew. In me behold the work of
+retribution." [37]
+
+The eyes of Dante were so inebriate with all that diversity of bleeding
+wounds, that they longed to stay and weep ere his guide proceeded
+further. Something also struck them on the sudden which added to his
+desire to stop. But Virgil asked what ailed him, and why he stood gazing
+still on the wretched multitude. "Thou hast not done so," continued he,
+"in any other portion of this circle; and the valley is twenty-two miles
+further about, and the moon already below us. Thou hast more yet to see
+than thou wottest of, and the time is short."
+
+Dante, excusing himself for the delay, and proceeding to follow his
+leader, said he thought he had seen, in the cavern at which he was
+gazing so hard, a spirit that was one of his own family--and it was so.
+It was the soul of Geri del Bello, a cousin of the poet's. Virgil said
+that he had observed him, while Dante was occupied with Bertrand de
+Born, pointing at his kinsman in a threatening manner. "Waste not a
+thought on him," concluded the Roman, "but leave him as he is." "O
+honoured guide!" said Dante, "he died a violent death, which his kinsmen
+have not yet avenged; and hence it is that he disdained to speak to me;
+and I must needs feel for him the more on that account." [38]
+
+They came now to the last partition of the circle of Evil-budget, and
+their ears were assailed with such a burst of sharp wailings, that Dante
+was fain to close his with his hands. The misery there, accompanied by
+a horrible odour, was as if all the hospitals in the sultry marshes of
+Valdichiana had brought their maladies together into one infernal ditch.
+It was the place of punishment for pretended Alchemists, Coiners,
+Personators of other people, False Accusers, and Impostors of all such
+descriptions. They lay on one another in heaps, or attempted to crawl
+about--some itching madly with leprosies--some swollen and gasping with
+dropsies--some wetly reeking, like hands washed in winter-time. One
+was an alchemist of Sienna, a nation vainer than the French; another a
+Florentine, who tricked a man into making a wrong will; another, Sinon
+of Troy; another, Myrrha; another, the wife of Potiphar. Their miseries
+did not hinder them from giving one another malignant blows; and Dante
+was listening eagerly to an abusive conversation between Sinon and
+a Brescian coiner, when Virgil rebuked him for the disgraceful
+condescension, and said it was a pleasure fit only for vulgar minds.[39]
+
+The blushing poet felt the reproof so deeply, that he could not speak
+for shame, though he manifested by his demeanour that he longed to do
+so, and thus obtained the pardon he despaired of. He says he felt like a
+man that, during an unhappy dream, wishes himself dreaming while he
+is so, and does not know it. Virgil understood his emotion, and, as
+Achilles did with his spear, healed the wound with the tongue that
+inflicted it.
+
+A silence now ensued between the companions; for they had quitted
+Evil-budget, and arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the mound
+of which they passed along, looking quietly and steadily before them.
+Daylight had given place to twilight; and Dante was advancing his head
+a little, and endeavouring to discern objects in the distance, when his
+whole attention was called to one particular spot, by a blast of a
+horn so loud, that a thunder clap was a whisper in comparison. Orlando
+himself blew no such terrific blast, after the dolorous rout, when
+Charlemagne was defeated in his holy enterprise.[40] The poet raised his
+head, thinking he perceived a multitude of lofty towers. He asked Virgil
+to what region they belonged; but Virgil said, "Those are no towers:
+they are giants, standing each up to his middle in the pit that goes
+round this circle." Dante looked harder; and as objects clear up by
+little and little in the departing mist, he saw, with alarm, the
+tremendous giants that warred against Jove, standing half in and
+half out of the pit, like the towers that crowned the citadel of
+Monteseggione. The one whom he saw plainest, and who stood with his arms
+hanging down on each side, appeared to him to have a face as huge as
+the pinnacle of St. Peter's, and limbs throughout in proportion. The
+monster, as the pilgrims were going by, opened his dreadful mouth, fit
+for no sweeter psalmody, and called after them, in the words of some
+unknown tongue, _Rafel, maee amech zabee almee_.[41] "Dull wretch!"
+exclaimed Virgil, "keep to thine horn, and so vent better whatsoever
+frenzy or other passion stuff thee. Feel the chain round thy throat,
+thou confusion! See, what a clenching hoop is about thy gorge!" Then he
+said to Dante, "His howl is its own mockery. This is Nimrod, he through
+whose evil ambition it was that mankind ceased to speak one language.
+Pass him, and say nothing; for every other tongue is to him, as his is
+to thee."
+
+The companions went on for about the length of a sling's throw, when
+they passed the second giant, who was much fiercer and linger than
+Nimrod. He was fettered round and round with chains, that fixed one arm
+before him and the other behind him--Ephialtes his name, the same that
+would needs make trial of his strength against Jove himself. The hands
+which he then wielded were now motionless, but he shook with passion;
+and Dante thought he should have died for terror, the effect on the
+ground about him was so fearful. It surpassed that of a tower shaken by
+an earthquake. The poet expressed a wish to look at Briareus, but he was
+too far off. He saw, however, Antæus, who, not having fought against
+heaven, was neither tongue-confounded nor shackled; and Virgil requested
+the "taker of a thousand lions," by the fame which the living poet had
+it in his power to give him, to bear the travellers in his arms down the
+steep descent into this deeper portion of hell, which was the region of
+tormenting cold. Antmus, stooping, like the leaning tower of Bologna,
+to take them up, gathered them in his arms, and, depositing them in the
+gulf below, raised himself to depart like the mast of a ship.[42]
+
+Had I hoarse and rugged words equal to my subject, says the poet, I
+would now make them fuller of expression, to suit the rocky horror of
+this hole of anguish; but I have not, and therefore approach it with
+fear, since it is no jesting enterprise to describe the depths of the
+universe, nor fit for a tongue that babbles of father and mother.[43]
+Let such of the Muses assist me as turned the words of Amphion into
+Theban walls; so shall the speech be not too far different from the
+matter.
+
+Oh, ill-starred creatures! wretched beyond all others, to inhabit a
+place so hard to speak of--better had ye been sheep or goats.
+
+The poet was beginning to walk with his guide along the place in which
+the giant had set them down, and was still looking up at the height from
+which he had descended, when a voice close to him said, "Have a care
+where thou treadest. Hurt not with thy feet the heads of thy unhappy
+brethren."
+
+Dante looked down and before him, and saw that he was walking on a lake
+of ice, in which were Murderous Traitors up to their chins, their teeth
+chattering, their faces held down, their eyes locked up frozen with
+tears. Dante saw two at his feet so closely stuck together, that the
+very hairs of their heads were mingled. He asked them who they were, and
+as they lifted up their heads for astonishment, and felt the cold doubly
+congeal them, they dashed their heads against one another for hate and
+fury. They were two brothers who had murdered each other.[44] Near them
+were other Tuscans, one of whom the cold had deprived of his ears; and
+thousands more were seen grinning like dogs, for the pain.
+
+Dante, as he went along, _kicked_ the face of one of them, whether by
+chance, or fate, or _will_,[45] he could not say. The sufferer burst
+into tears, and cried out, "Wherefore dost thou torment me? Art thou
+come to revenge the defeat at Montaperto?" The pilgrim at this question
+felt eager to know who he was; but the unhappy wretch would not tell.
+His countryman seized him by the hair to force him; but still he said
+he would not tell, were he to be scalped a thousand times. Dante, upon
+this, began plucking up his hairs by the roots, the man _barking_,[46]
+with his eyes squeezed up, at every pull; when another soul exclaimed,
+"Why, Bocca, what the devil ails thee? Must thou needs bark for cold as
+well as chatter?" [47]
+
+"Now, accursed traitor, betrayer of thy country's standard," said Dante,
+"be dumb if thou wilt; for I shall tell thy name to the world."
+
+"Tell and begone!" said Bocca; "but carry the name of this babbler with
+thee; 'tis Buoso, who left the pass open to the enemy between Piedmont
+and Parma; and near him is the traitor for the pope, Beccaria; and
+Ganellone, who betrayed Charlemagne; and Tribaldello, who opened Faenza
+to the enemy at night-time."
+
+The pilgrims went on, and beheld two other spirits so closely locked up
+together in one hole of the ice, that the head of one was right over the
+other's, like a cowl; and Dante, to his horror, saw that the upper head
+was devouring the lower with all the eagerness of a man who is famished.
+The poet asked what could possibly make him skew a hate so brutal;
+adding, that if there were any ground for it, he would tell the story to
+the world.[48]
+
+The sinner raised his head from the dire repast, and after wiping his
+jaws with the hair of it, said, "You ask a thing which it shakes me to
+the heart to think of. It is a story to renew all my misery. But since
+it will produce this wretch his due infamy, hear it, and you shall see
+me speak and weep at the same time. How thou tamest hither I know not;
+but I perceive by thy speech that thou art Florentine.
+
+"Learn, then, that I was the Count Ugolino, and this man was Ruggieri
+the Archbishop. How I trusted him, and was betrayed into prison, there
+is no need to relate; but of his treatment of me there, and how cruel a
+death I underwent, bear; and then judge if he has offended me.
+
+"I had been imprisoned with my children a long time in the tower which
+has since been called from me the Tower of Famine; and many a new moon
+had I seen through the hole that served us for a window, when I dreamt a
+dream that foreshadowed to me what was coming. Methought that this man
+headed a great chase against the wolf, in the mountains between Pisa
+and Lucca. Among the foremost in his party were Gualandi, Sismondi, and
+Lanfranchi, and the hounds were thin and eager, and high-bred; and in a
+little while I saw the hounds fasten on the flanks of the wolf and the
+wolf's children, and tear them. At that moment I awoke with the voices
+of my own children in my ears, asking for bread. Truly cruel must thou
+be, if thy heart does not ache to think of what I thought then. If thou
+feel not for a pang like that, what is it for which thou art accustomed
+to feel? We were now all awake; and the time was at hand when they
+brought us bread, and we had all dreamt dreams which made us anxious. At
+that moment I heard the key of the horrible tower turn in the lock of
+the door below, and fasten it. I looked at my children, and said not a
+word. I did not weep. I made a strong effort upon the soul within me.
+But my little Anselm said, 'Father, why do you look so? Is any thing the
+matter?' Nevertheless I did not weep, nor say a word all the day, nor
+the night that followed. In the morning a ray of light fell upon us
+through the window of our sad prison, and I beheld in those four little
+faces the likeness of my own face, and then I began to gnaw my hands for
+misery. My children, thinking I did it for hunger, raised themselves on
+the floor, and said, 'Father, we should be less miserable if you would
+eat our own flesh. It was you that gave it us. Take it again.' Then I
+sat still, in order not to make them unhappier: and that day and
+the next we all remained without speaking. On the fourth day, Gaddo
+stretched himself at my feet, and said, 'Father, why won't you help me?'
+and there he died. And as surely as thou lookest on me, so surely I
+beheld the whole three die in the same manner. So I began in my misery
+to grope about in the dark for them, for I had become blind; and three
+days I kept calling on them by name, though they were dead; till famine
+did for me what grief had been unable to do."
+
+With these words, the miserable man, his eyes starting from his head,
+seized that other wretch again with his teeth, and ground them against
+the skull as a dog does with a bone.
+
+O Pisa! scandal of the nations! since thy neighbours are so slow to
+punish thee, may the very islands tear themselves up from their roots in
+the sea, and come and block up the mouth of thy river, and drown every
+soul within thee. What if this Count Ugolino did, as report says he did,
+betray thy castles to the enemy? his children had not betrayed them; nor
+ought they to have been put to an agony like this. Their age was their
+innocence; and their deaths have given thee the infamy of a second
+Thebes.[49]
+
+The pilgrims passed on, and beheld other traitors frozen up in swathes
+of ice, with their heads upside down. Their very tears had hindered them
+from shedding more; for their eyes were encrusted with the first they
+shed, so as to be enclosed with them as in a crystal visor, which forced
+back the others into an accumulation of anguish. One of the sufferers
+begged Dante to relieve him of this ice, in order that he might vent a
+little of the burden which it repressed. The poet said he would do so,
+provided he would disclose who he was. The man said he was the friar
+Alberigo, who invited some of his brotherhood to a banquet in order to
+slay them.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Dante, "art thou no longer, then, among the living?"
+
+"Perhaps I appear to be," answered the friar; "for the moment any one
+commits a treachery like mine, his soul gives up his body to a demon,
+who thenceforward inhabits it in the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca
+Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche? He seems to be walking
+the earth still, and yet he has been in this place many years." [50]
+
+"Impossible!" cried Dante; "Branca Doria is still alive; he eats,
+drinks, and sleeps, like any other man."
+
+"I tell thee," returned the friar, "that the soul of the man he slew had
+not reached that lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him, ere the
+soul of his slayer was in this place, and his body occupied by a demon
+in its stead. But now stretch forth thy hand, and relieve mine eyes."
+
+Dante relieved them not. Ill manners, he said, were the only courtesy
+fit for such a wretch.[51]
+
+O ye Genoese! he exclaims,--men that are perversity all over, and full
+of every corruption to the core, why are ye not swept from the face of
+the earth? There is one of you whom you fancy to be walking about like
+other men, and he is all the while in the lowest pit of hell!
+
+"Look before thee," said Virgil, as they advanced: "behold the banners
+of the King of Hell."
+
+Dante looked, and beheld something which appeared like a windmill in
+motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable
+sharpness came from it.
+
+The souls of those who had been traitors to their benefactors were here
+frozen up in depths of pellucid ice, where they were seen in a variety
+of attitudes, motionless; some upright, some downward, some bent double,
+head to foot.
+
+At length they came to where the being stood who was once eminent for
+all fair seeming.[52] This was the figure that seemed tossing its arms
+at a distance like a windmill.
+
+"Satan," whispered Virgil; and put himself in front of Dante to
+re-assure him, halting him at the same time, and bidding him summon all
+his fortitude. Dante stood benumbed, though conscious; as if he himself
+had been turned to ice. He felt neither alive nor dead.
+
+The lord of the dolorous empire, each of his arms as big as a giant,
+stood in the ice half-way up his breast. He had one head, but three
+faces; the middle, vermilion; the one over the right shoulder a pale
+yellow; the other black. His sails of wings, huger than ever were beheld
+at sea, were in shape and texture those of a bat; and with these be
+constantly flapped, so as to send forth the wind that froze the depths
+of Tartarus. From his six eyes the tears ran down, mingling at his three
+chins with bloody foam; for at every mouth he crushed a sinner with his
+teeth, as substances are broken up by an engine. The middle sinner was
+the worst punished, for he was at once broken and flayed, and his head
+and trunk were inside the mouth. It was Judas Iscariot.
+
+Of the other two, whose heads were hanging out, one was Brutus, and the
+other Cassius. Cassius was very large-limbed. Brutus writhed with agony,
+but uttered not a word.[53]
+
+"Night has returned," said Virgil, "and all has been seen. It is time to
+depart onward."
+
+Dante then, at his bidding, clasped, as Virgil did, the huge inattentive
+being round the neck; and watching their opportunity, as the wings
+opened and shut, they slipped round it, and so down his shaggy and
+frozen sides, from pile to pile, clutching it as they went; till
+suddenly, with the greatest labour and pain, they were compelled to turn
+themselves upside down, as it seemed, but in reality to regain their
+proper footing; for they had passed the centre of gravity, and become
+Antipodes.
+
+Then looking down at what lately was upward, they saw Lucifer with his
+feet towards them; and so taking their departure, ascended a gloomy
+vault, till at a distance, through an opening above their heads, they
+beheld the loveliness of the stars.[54]
+
+
+[Footnote 1: "Parea che l'aer ne temesse."]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Là dove 'l sol tace." "The sun to me is dark, And _silent_
+is the moon, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."--Milton.]
+
+[Footnote 3: There is great difference among the commentators respecting
+the meaning of the three beasts; some supposing them passions, others
+political troubles, others personal enemies, &c. The point is not of
+much importance, especially as a mystery was intended; but nobody, as
+Mr. Cary says, can doubt that the passage was suggested by one in the
+prophet Jeremiah, v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay
+them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them; a leopard shall watch
+over their cities."]
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+  "Che quello 'mperador che là su regna
+  Perch' i' fu'ribellante à la sua legge,
+  Non vuol che 'n sua città per me sì vegna." ]
+
+
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+  "Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
+  Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl'imbianca,
+  Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo."
+
+  Like as the flowers that with the frosty night
+  Are bowed and closed, soon as the sun returns,
+  Rise on their stems, all open and upright.]
+
+[Footnote 6: This loss of intellectual good, and the confession of the
+poet that he finds the inscription over hell-portal hard to understand
+(_il senso lor m'è duro_), are among the passages in Dante which lead
+some critics to suppose that his hell is nothing but an allegory,
+intended at once to imply his own disbelief in it as understood by the
+vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it, nevertheless, as a
+salutary check both to the foolish and the reflecting;--to the foolish,
+as an alarm; and to the reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the
+teeth of many appearances to the contrary, that such may have been the
+case; but in the doubt that it affects either the foolish or the wise to
+any good purpose, and in the certainty that such doctrines do a world
+of mischief to tender consciences and the cause of sound piety, such
+monstrous contradictions, in terms, of every sense of justice and
+charity which God has implanted in the heart of man, are not to be
+passed over without indignant comment.]
+
+[Footnote 7: It is seldom that a boast of this kind--not, it must be
+owned, bashful--has been allowed by posterity to be just; nay, in four
+out of the five instances, below its claims.]
+
+[Footnote 8:
+
+  "Genti v'eran, con occhi tardi e gravi,
+  Di grande autorita ne' lor sembianti
+  Parlavan rado, con voci soavi." ]
+
+[Footnote 9: "Sopra 'l verde smalto." Mr. Cary has noticed the
+appearance, for the first time, of this beautiful but now commonplace
+image.]
+
+[Footnote 10: "Il maestro di color che sanno."]
+
+[Footnote 11: This is the famous episode of Paulo and Francesca. She
+was daughter to Count Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, and wife to
+Giovanni Malatesta, one of the sons, of the lord of Rimini. Paulo was
+her brother-in-law. They were surprised together by the husband, and
+slain on the spot. Particulars of their history will be found in the
+Appendix, together with the whole original passage.
+
+  "Quali colombe, dal disio chiamate,
+  Con l'ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
+  Volan per l'aer dal voler portate
+
+  Cotali uscir de la schiera ov'è Dido,
+  A noi venendo per l'aer maligno,
+  Sì forte fu l'affettuoso grido."
+
+  As doves, drawn home from where they circled still,
+  Set firm their open wings, and through the air
+  Come sweeping, wafted by their pure good-will
+
+  So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
+  Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign,
+  Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer. ]
+
+[Footnote 12: Francesca is to be conceived telling her story in anxious
+intermitting sentences--now all tenderness for her lover, now angry at
+their slayer; watching the poet's face, to see what he thinks, and
+at times averting her own. I take this excellent direction from Ugo
+Foscolo.]
+
+[Footnote 13:
+
+  "Nessun maggior dolore,
+  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
+  Ne la miseria." ]
+
+[Footnote 14:
+
+  "Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
+  Quella lettura."
+"To look at one another," says Boccaccio; and his interpretation
+has been followed by Cary and Foscolo; but, with deference to such
+authorities, I beg leave to think that the poet meant no more than he
+says, namely, that their eyes were simply "suspended"--hung, as it were,
+over the book, without being able to read on; which is what I intended
+to express (if I may allude to a production of which both those critics
+were pleased to speak well), when, in my youthful attempt to enlarge
+this story, I wrote "And o'er the book they hung, and nothing said,
+And every lingering page grew longer as they read."
+
+_Story of Rimini._]
+
+[Footnote 15:
+
+  "Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
+  L'altro piangeva sì, che di pietade
+  I' venni men così com'io morisse,
+  E caddi come corpo morto cade."
+
+This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deadness
+of its expression.
+
+  While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
+  With wail so woful, that at his remorse
+  I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd
+  Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.
+
+The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think)
+because he had sinned in the same way; and if Foscolo's opinion could
+be established--that the incident of the book is invention--their
+conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance
+of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough
+to have occurred to Dante. But the same probability applies in the case
+of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their
+own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's having been
+found in the room where they perished. The Pagans could not be rebels
+to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel
+to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious
+effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers
+avowedly set reason at defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of
+contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd,"
+as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued,
+much more so, they had at least an equal claim on the submission of the
+reason; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological
+triumph.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Plutus's exclamation about Satan is a great choke-pear to
+the commentators. The line in the original is
+
+  "Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe."
+
+The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not the business of
+this abstract to discuss such points; and therefore I content myself
+with believing that the context implies a call of alarm on the Prince of
+Hell at the sight of the living creature and his guide.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo for
+setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his
+daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in
+Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut
+is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle,
+involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a
+Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have written about it in
+Sanscrit.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Filippo Argenti (Philip _Silver_,--so called from his
+shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Florentine remarkable
+for bodily strength and extreme irascibility. What a barbarous strength
+and confusion of ideas is there in this whole passage about him!
+Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the
+unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed,
+passion arguing in a circle! Filippo himself might have written it.
+Dante says,
+
+  "Con piangere e con lutto
+  Spirito maladetto, ti rimani.
+  Via costà con gli altri cani," &c.
+
+Then Virgil, kissing and embracing him,
+
+  "Alma sdegnosa
+  Benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse," &c.
+
+And Dante again,
+
+  "Maestro, molto sarei vago
+  Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," &c. ]
+
+[Footnote 19: Dis, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for Satan.
+Within the walls of the city of Dis commence the punishments by fire.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Farinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of Dante,
+and had vanquished the poet's connexions at the battle of Montaperto.]
+
+[Footnote 21: What would Guido have said to this? More, I suspect, than
+Dante would have liked to hear, or known how to answer. But he died
+before the verses transpired; probably before they were written; for
+Dante, in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and seasons he
+finds most convenient.]
+
+[Footnote 22:
+
+  "Sì che la pioggia non par che 'l maturi."
+
+This is one of the grandest passages in Dante. It was probably (as
+English commentators have observed) in Milton's recollection when he
+conceived the character of Satan.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as
+Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery.
+
+The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (_Golden-sword_), and the
+Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (_Fair-flowing_), was rich in the possession
+of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this
+instrument of satire. The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point
+of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be.]
+
+[Footnote 24: "_Malebolge_," literally Evil-Budget. _Bolgia_ is an old
+form of the modern _baule_, the common term for a valise or portmanteau.
+"Bolgia" (says the _Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato_, Ven. 1792),
+"a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek]. In
+reference to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
+word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell." (Per
+similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di
+cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.)
+The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the
+contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional
+notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of
+their grandeur.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of
+the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his
+enemies in hell before their time.]
+
+[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by
+Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and
+others.]
+
+[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,
+
+  "Quì vive la pietà quand' è ben morta."
+  Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
+
+  "Chi è più scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui,
+  Ch'al giudicio divin passion porta."
+
+That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings
+against the judgments of God?" The answer is: He that attributes
+judgments to God which are to render humanity pitiless.]
+
+[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi così poco_. Michael Scot had been in
+Florence; to which circumstance we are most probably indebted for this
+curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to
+hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the
+vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice,
+considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to
+swallow.]
+
+[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a
+hearer of this passage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not
+one honest man in all Lucca!]
+
+[Footnote 30:
+
+  "Intorno si mira
+  Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
+  Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira."
+
+This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised
+astonishment ever painted.]
+
+[Footnote 31: I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant
+ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but
+a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by
+extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the
+Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the
+South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour,
+from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in
+England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the
+words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured
+fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was
+saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by
+attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more
+violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it
+best to run!]
+
+[Footnote 32: Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort,
+and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati
+family, connexions of the poet by marriage.]
+
+[Footnote 33: This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite
+the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he
+selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.
+They are the most appalling ever yet produced.]
+
+[Footnote 34: Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that
+day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins;
+but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode
+of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family,
+and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the
+opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to "promise much, and
+perform nothing" (_molto promettere, e nulla attendere_).]
+
+[Footnote 35: Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the
+fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods,
+including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming
+the church. He appears to have made a considerable impression, having
+thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where
+they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many
+others. Landino says he was very eloquent, and that "both he and
+Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause."
+Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such
+times bold enough to write it.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing himself to be
+pure:"
+
+  "Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura."
+
+The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in
+English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have
+met with in the whole poem. It might be argued, perhaps, against the
+perfection of the passage, that a good "conscience," and a man's
+"knowing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante himself has
+already used that word;
+
+  "Conscienzia m'assicura;
+  La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
+  Sotto l'osbergo," &c.
+
+But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could
+have kept it.]
+
+[Foonote 37: This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of
+physical horror with the truest pathos.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic
+instance of the ferocity of the time.]
+
+[Footnote 39: This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no
+ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante
+allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps
+it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into
+the unworthiness.]
+
+[Footnote 40: By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite
+a topic with the poets. The circumstance of the horn is taken from the
+Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv.]
+
+[Footnote 41: The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel _a_,
+is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is
+like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world.]
+
+[Footnote 42:
+
+  "Nè sì chinato li fece dimora,
+  E come albero in nave si levò."
+
+A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the
+original, _raised himself_, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to
+me to give the more grand and deliberate image.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Of "_màmma_" and "_bàbbo_," says the primitive poet. We
+have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not
+identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in
+some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the
+"artful" Italians.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto,
+lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death
+they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a
+mortal quarrel. The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late
+years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting
+surprise to meet with it.]
+
+[Footnote 45:
+
+  "Se _voler_ fu, o destino o fortuna,
+  Non so."
+
+What does the Christian reader think of that?]
+
+[Footnote 46: Latrando.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog,
+occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by
+treacherously cutting off the hand of the standard-bearer.]
+
+[Footnote 48: This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the
+castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in
+the Tower of Famine.]
+
+[Footnote 49: I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this
+story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too
+hasty in giving credit to parts of it, particularly the ages of some of
+his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop. See the Appendix
+to this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 50: This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware,
+in the whole circle of literature.]
+
+[Footnote 51: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." This is the foulest blot
+which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the
+cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to God). It is argued that he is
+cruel and false, out of hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then
+add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be suffering
+eternally? It is idle to discern in such barbarous inconsistencies any
+thing but the writer's own contributions to the stock of them. The
+utmost credit for right feeling is not to be given on every occasion to
+a man who refuses it to every one else.]
+
+[Footnote 52: "La creatura ch'ebbe il bel sembiante."
+
+This is touching; but the reader may as well be prepared for a total
+failure in Dante's conception of Satan, especially the English reader,
+accustomed to the sublimity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman
+Catholic poet intended to honour the fallen angel with no sublimity,
+but to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has overdone and
+degraded the picture into caricature. A great stupid being, stuck up in
+ice, with three faces, one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each
+eating a sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus, is an object
+for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting
+_bonnes-bouches,_ divides derision with disgust. The passage must be
+given, otherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete; but I
+cannot help thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a
+great poet.]
+
+[Footnote 53: This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus,
+especially from a man like Dante, and the more because it is extorted.
+Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, particularly treachery to the
+leader of his beloved Roman emperors; forgetting three things; first,
+that Cæsar was guilty of treachery himself to the Roman people; second,
+that he, Dante, has put Curio in hell for advising Cæsar to cross the
+Rubicon, though he has put the crosser among the good Pagans; and third,
+that Brutus was educated in the belief that the punishment of such
+treachery as Cæsar's by assassination was one of the first of duties.
+How differently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than
+democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of assassins in
+general, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic
+philosopher!]
+
+[Footnote 54: At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absurdity,
+sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossible for any
+reflecting heart to avoid asking, _Cui bono?_ What is the good of it
+to the poor wretches, if we are to suppose it true? and what to the
+world--except, indeed, as a poetic study and a warning against degrading
+notions of God--if we are to take it simply as a fiction? Theology,
+disdaining both questions, has an answer confessedly incomprehensible.
+Humanity replies: Assume not premises for which you have worse than no
+proofs.]
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
+
+Argument.
+
+Purgatory, in the system of Dante, is a mountain at the Antipodes, on
+the top of which is the Terrestrial Paradise, once the seat of Adam and
+Eve. It forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and possesses
+a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two exceptions of redeemed
+Pagans, is occupied by Excommunicated Penitents and by Delayers of
+Penitence, all of whom are compelled to lose time before their atonement
+commences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is divided into
+circles or plains, in which are expiated the Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet
+ascends from circle to circle with Virgil and Statius, and is met in
+a forest on the top by the spirit of Beatrice, who transports him to
+Heaven.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
+
+When the pilgrims emerged from the opening through which they beheld the
+stars, they found themselves in a scene which enchanted them with hope
+and joy. It was dawn: a sweet pure air came on their faces; and they
+beheld a sky of the loveliest oriental sapphire, whose colour seemed
+to pervade the whole serene hollow from earth to heaven. The beautiful
+planet which encourages loving thoughts made all the orient laugh,
+obscuring by its very radiance the stars in its train; and among those
+which were still lingering and sparkling in the southern horizon,
+Dante saw four in the shape of a cross, never beheld by man since they
+gladdened the eyes of our first parents. Heaven seemed to rejoice in
+their possession. O widowed northern pole! bereaved art thou, indeed,
+since thou canst not gaze upon them![1]
+
+The poet turned to look at the north where he had been accustomed to see
+stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who
+struck his beholder with a veneration like that of a son for his father.
+He had grey hairs, and a long beard which parted in two down his
+bosom; and the four southern stars beamed on his face with such lustre,
+that his aspect was as radiant as if he had stood in the sun.
+
+"Who are ye?" said the old man, "that have escaped from the dreadful
+prison-house? Can the laws of the abyss be violated? Or has Heaven
+changed its mind, that thus ye are allowed to come from the regions of
+condemnation into mine?"
+
+It was the spirit of Cato of Utica, the warder of the ascent of
+purgatory.
+
+The Roman poet explained to his countryman who they were, and how Dante
+was under heavenly protection; and then he prayed leave of passage of
+him by the love he bore to the chaste eyes of his Marcia, who sent him a
+message from the Pagan circle, hoping that he would still own her.
+
+Cato replied, that although he was so fond of Marcia while on earth that
+he could deny her nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new laws, to
+have any affection for her, now that she dwelt beyond the evil river;
+but as the pilgrim, his companion, was under heavenly protection, he
+would of course do what he desired.[2] He then desired him to gird his
+companion with one of the simplest and completest rushes he would see by
+the water's side, and to wash the stain of the lower world out of his
+face, and so take their journey up the mountain before them, by a
+path which the rising sun would disclose. And with these words he
+disappeared.[3]
+
+The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of one who thinks every step
+in vain till he finds the path he has lost. The full dawn by this time
+had arisen, and they saw the trembling of the sea in the distance.[4]
+Virgil then dipped his hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun
+had least affected it, and with the moisture bathed the face of Dante,
+who held it out to him, suffused with tears;[5] and then they went on
+till they came to a solitary shore, whence no voyager had ever returned,
+and there the loins of the Florentine were girt with the rush.
+
+On this shore they were standing in doubt how to proceed,--moving
+onward, as it were, in mind, while yet their feet were staying,--when
+they be held a light over the water at a distance, rayless at first as
+the planet Mars when he looks redly out of the horizon through a fog,
+but speedily growing brighter and brighter with amazing swiftness. Dante
+had but turned for an instant to ask his guide what it was, when, on
+looking again, it had grown far brighter. Two splendid phenomena, he
+knew not what, then developed themselves from it on either side; and, by
+degrees, another below it. The two splendours quickly turned out to be
+wings; and Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in silence, cried
+out, "Down, down,--on thy knees! It is God's angel. Clasp thine hands.
+Now thou shalt behold operancy indeed. Lo, how he needs neither sail nor
+oar, coming all this way with nothing but his wings! Lo, how he holds
+them aloft, using the air with them at his will, and knowing they can
+never be weary."
+
+The "divine bird" grew brighter and brighter as he came, so that the
+eye at last could not sustain the lustre; and Dante turned his to the
+ground. A boat then rushed to shore which the angel had brought with
+him, so light that it drew not a drop of water. The celestial pilot
+stood at the helm, with bliss written in his face; and a hundred spirits
+were seen within the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the psalm
+beginning "When Israel came out of Egypt." At the close of the psalm,
+the angel blessed them with the sign of the cross, and they all leaped
+to shore; upon which he turned round, and departed as swiftly as he
+came.
+
+The new-comers, after gazing about them for a while, in the manner of
+those who are astonished to see new sights, inquired of Virgil and his
+companion the best way to the mountain. Virgil explained who they were;
+and the spirits, pale with astonishment at beholding in Dante a living
+and breathing man, crowded about him, in spite of their anxiety to
+shorten the period of their trials. One of them came darting out of the
+press to embrace him, in a manner so affectionate as to move the poet to
+return his warmth; but his arms again and again found themselves crossed
+on his own bosom, having encircled nothing. The shadow, smiling at the
+astonishment in the other's face, drew back; and Dante hastened as much
+forward to shew his zeal in the greeting, when the spirit in a sweet
+voice recommended him to desist. The Florentine then knew who it
+was,--Casella, a musician, to whom he had been much attached. After
+mutual explanations as to their meeting, Dante requested his friend, if
+no ordinance opposed it, to refresh his spirit awhile with one of the
+tender airs that used to charm away all his troubles on earth. Casella
+immediately began one of his friend's own productions, commencing with
+the words,
+
+"Love, that delights to talk unto my soul Of all the wonders of my
+lady's nature."
+
+And he sang it so beautifully, that the sweetness rang within the poet's
+heart while recording the circumstance. The other spirits listened with
+such attention, that they seemed to have forgotten the very purpose
+of their coming; when suddenly the voice of Cato was heard, sternly
+rebuking their delay; and the whole party speeded in trepidation towards
+the mountain.[6]
+
+The two pilgrims, who had at first hastened with the others, in a little
+while slackened their steps; and Dante found that his body projected a
+shadow, while the form of Virgil had none. When arrived at the foot of
+the mountain, they were joined by a second party of spirits, of whom
+Virgil inquired the way up it. One of the spirits, of a noble aspect,
+but with a gaping wound in his forehead, stepped forth, and asked Dante
+if he remembered him. The poet humbly answering in the negative, the
+stranger disclosed a second wound, that was in his bosom; and then, with
+a smile, announced himself as Manfredi, king of Naples, who was slain in
+battle against Charles of Anjou, and died excommunicated. Manfredi gave
+Dante a message to his daughter Costanza, queen of Arragon, begging her
+to shorten the consequences of the excommunication by her prayers;
+since he, like the rest of the party with him, though repenting of his
+contumacy against the church, would have to wander on the outskirts of
+Purgatory three times as long as the presumption had lasted, unless
+relieved by such petitions from the living.[7]
+
+Dante went on, with his thoughts so full of this request, that he did
+not perceive he had arrived at the path which Virgil asked for, till the
+wandering spirits called out to them to say so. The pilgrims then, with
+great difficulty, began to ascend through an extremely narrow passage;
+and Virgil, after explaining to Dante how it was that in this antipodal
+region his eastward face beheld the sun in the north instead of the
+south, was encouraging him to proceed manfully in the hope of finding
+the path easier by degrees, and of reposing at the end of it, when they
+heard a voice observing, that they would most likely find it expedient
+to repose a little sooner. The pilgrims looked about them, and observed
+close at hand a crag of a rock, in the shade of which some spirits were
+standing, as men stand idly at noon. Another was sitting down, as if
+tired out, with his arms about his knees, and his face bent down between
+them.[8]
+
+"Dearest master!" exclaimed Dante to his guide, "what thinkest thou of a
+croucher like this, for manful journeying? Verily he seems to have been
+twin-born with Idleness herself."
+
+The croucher, lifting up his eyes at these words, looked hard at Dante,
+and said, "Since thou art so stout, push on."
+
+Dante then saw it was Belacqua, a pleasant acquaintance of his, famous
+for his indolence.
+
+"That was a good lesson," said Belacqua, "that was given thee just now
+in astronomy."
+
+The poet could not help smiling at the manner in which his acquaintance
+uttered these words, it was so like his ways of old. Belacqua pretended,
+even in another world, that it was of no use to make haste, since the
+angel had prohibited his going higher up the mountain. He and his
+companions had to walk round the foot of it as many years as they had
+delayed repenting; unless, as in the case of Manfredi, their time was
+shortened by the prayers of good people.
+
+A little further on, the pilgrims encountered the spirits of such
+Delayers of Penitence as, having died violent deaths, repented at the
+last moment. One of them, Buonconte da Montefeltro, who died in battle,
+and whose body could not be found, described how the devil, having been
+hindered from seizing him by the shedding of a single tear, had raised
+in his fury a tremendous tempest, which sent the body down the river
+Arno, and buried it in the mud.[9]
+
+Another spirit, a female, said to Dante, "Ah! when thou returnest to
+earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, remember me,--Pia.
+Sienna gave me life; the Marshes took it from me. This he knows, who put
+on my finger the wedding-ring."[10]
+
+The majority of this party were so importunate with the Florentine
+to procure them the prayers of their friends, that he had as much
+difficulty to get away, as a winner at dice has to free himself from the
+mercenary congratulations of the by-standers. On resuming their way,
+Dante quoted to Virgil a passage in the Æneid, decrying the utility of
+prayer, and begged him to explain how it was to be reconciled with what
+they had just heard. Virgil advised him to wait for the explanation till
+he saw Beatrice, whom, he now said, he should meet at the top of the
+mountain. Dante, at this information, expressed a desire to hasten their
+progress; and Virgil, seeing a spirit looking towards them as they
+advanced, requested him to acquaint them with the shortest road.
+
+The spirit, maintaining a lofty and reserved aspect, was as silent as if
+he had not heard the request; intimating by his manner that they might
+as well proceed without repeating it, and eyeing them like a lion on the
+watch. Virgil, however, went up to him, and gently urged it; but the
+only reply was a question as to who they were and of what country. The
+Latin poet beginning to answer him, had scarcely mentioned the word
+"Mantua," when the stranger went as eagerly up to his interrogator as
+the latter had done to him, and said, "Mantua! My own country! My name
+is Sordello." And the compatriots embraced.
+
+O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land without affections, without
+principle, without faith in any one good thing! here was a man who could
+not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his
+heart gush towards him, and there are no people now in any one of thy
+towns that do not hate and torment one another.
+
+Sordello, in another tone, now exclaimed, "But who are ye?"
+
+Virgil disclosed himself, and Sordello fell at his feet.[11]
+
+Sordello now undertook to accompany the great Roman poet and his friend
+to a certain distance on their ascent towards the penal quarters of the
+mountain; but as evening was drawing nigh, and the ascent could not
+be made properly in the dark, he proposed that they should await the
+dawning of the next day in a recess that overlooked a flowery hollow.
+The hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled with flowers that
+surpassed the exquisitest dyes, and green with a grass brighter than
+emeralds newly broken.[12] There rose from it also a fragrance of a
+thousand different kinds of sweetness, all mingled into one that was new
+and indescribable; and with the fragrance there ascended the chant of
+the prayer beginning "Hail, Queen of Heaven,"[13] which was sung by a
+multitude of souls that appeared sitting on the flowery sward.
+
+Virgil pointed them out. They were penitent delayers of penitence, of
+sovereign rank. Among them, however, were spirits who sat mute; one
+of whom was the Emperor Rodolph, who ought to have attended better to
+Italy, the garden of the empire; and another, Ottocar, king of Bohemia,
+his enemy, who now comforted him; and another, with a small nose,[14]
+Philip the Third of France, who died a fugitive, shedding the leaves of
+the lily; he sat beating his breast; and with him was Henry the Third of
+Navarre, sighing with his cheek on his hand. One was the father, and one
+the father-in-law of Philip the Handsome, the bane of France; and it was
+on account of his unworthiness they grieved.
+
+But among the singers Virgil pointed out the strong-limbed King of
+Arragon, Pedro; and Charles, king of Naples, with his masculine nose
+(these two were singing together); and Henry the Third of England, the
+king of the simple life, sitting by himself;[15] and below these, but
+with his eyes in heaven, Guglielmo marquis of Montferrat.
+
+It was now the hour when men at sea think longingly of home, and feel
+their hearts melt within them to remember the day on which they bade
+adieu to beloved friends; and now, too, was the hour when the pilgrim,
+new to his journey, is thrilled with the like tenderness, when he hears
+the vesper-bell in the distance, which seems to mourn for the expiring
+day.[16] At this hour of the coming darkness, Dante beheld one of the
+spirits in the flowery hollow arise, and after giving a signal to the
+others to do as he did, stretch forth both hands, palm to palm, towards
+the East, and with softest emotion commence the hymn beginning,
+
+"Thee before the closing light."[17]
+
+Upon which all the rest devoutly and softly followed him, keeping their
+eyes fixed on the heavens. At the end of it they remained, with pale
+countenances, in an attitude of humble expectation; and Dante saw the
+angels issue from the quarter to which they looked, and descend towards
+them with flaming swords in their hands, broken short of the point.
+Their wings were as green as the leaves in spring; and they wore
+garments equally green, which the fanning of the wings kept in a state
+of streaming fluctuation behind them as they came. One of them took his
+stand on a part of the hill just over where the pilgrims stood, and the
+other on a hill opposite, so that the party in the valley were between
+them. Dante could discern their heads of hair, notwithstanding its
+brightness; but their faces were so dazzling as to be undistinguishable.
+
+"They come from Mary's bosom," whispered Sordello, "to protect the
+valley from the designs of our enemy yonder,--the Serpent."
+
+Dante looked in trepidation towards the only undefended side of the
+valley, and beheld the Serpent of Eve coming softly among the grass and
+flowers, occasionally turning its head, and licking its polished back.
+Before he could take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two angels
+had come down like falcons, and at the whirring of their pinions the
+serpent fled. The angels returned as swiftly to their stations.
+
+Aurora was now looking palely over the eastern cliff on the other side
+of the globe, and the stars of midnight shining over the heads of Dante
+and his friends, when they seated themselves for rest on the mountain's
+side. The Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for weariness,
+and was overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamt that a golden eagle
+flashed down like lightning upon him, and bore him up to the region
+of fire, where the heat was so intense that it woke him, staring and
+looking round about with a pale face. His dream was a shadowing of
+the truth. He had actually come to another place,--to the entrance of
+Purgatory itself. Sordello had been left behind, Virgil alone remained,
+looking him cheerfully in the face. Saint Lucy had come from heaven,
+and shortened the fatigue of his journey by carrying him upwards as he
+slept, the heathen poet following them. On arriving where they stood,
+the fair saint intimated the entrance of Purgatory to Virgil by a glance
+thither of her beautiful eyes, and then vanished as Dante woke.[18]
+
+The portal by which Purgatory was entered was embedded in a cliff. It
+had three steps, each of a different colour; and on the highest of these
+there sat, mute and watching, an angel in ash-coloured garments, holding
+a naked sword, which glanced with such intolerable brightness on Dante,
+whenever he attempted to look, that he gave up the endeavour. The angel
+demanded who they were, and receiving the right answer, gently bade them
+advance.
+
+Dante now saw, that the lowest step was of marble, so white and clear
+that he beheld his face in it. The colour of the next was a deadly
+black, and it was all rough, scorched, and full of cracks. The third was
+of flaming porphyry, red as a man's blood when it leaps forth under
+the lancet.[19] The angel, whose feet were on the porphyry, sat on a
+threshold which appeared to be rock-diamond. Dante, ascending the steps,
+with the encouragement of Virgil, fell at the angel's feet, and, after
+thrice beating himself on the breast, humbly asked admittance. The
+angel, with the point of his sword, inscribed the first letter of the
+word _peccatum_ (sin) seven times on the petitioner's forehead; then,
+bidding him pray with tears for their erasement, and be cautious how he
+looked back, opened the portal with a silver and a golden key.[20]
+The hinges roared, as they turned, like thunder; and the pilgrims, on
+entering, thought they heard, mingling with the sound, a chorus of
+voices singing, "We praise thee, O God!"[21] It was like the chant that
+mingles with a cathedral organ, when the words that the choristers utter
+are at one moment to be distinguished, and at another fade away.
+
+The companions continued ascending till they reached a plain. It
+stretched as far as the eye could see, and was as lonely as roads across
+deserts.
+
+This was the first flat, or table-land, of the ascending gradations of
+Purgatory, and the place of trial for the souls of the Proud. It was
+bordered with a mound, or natural wall, of white marble, sculptured all
+over with stories of humility. Dante beheld among them the Annunciation,
+represented with so much life, that the sweet action of the angel seemed
+to be uttering the very word, "Hail!" and the submissive spirit of the
+Virgin to be no less impressed, like very wax, in her demeanour. The
+next story was that of David dancing and harping before the ark,--an
+action in which he seemed both less and greater than a king. Michal
+was looking out upon him from a window, like a lady full of scorn and
+sorrow. Next to the story of David was that of the Emperor Trajan, when
+he did a thing so glorious, as moved St. Gregory to gain the greatest of
+all his conquests--the delivering of the emperor's soul from hell.
+
+A widow, in tears and mourning, was laying hold of his bridle as he rode
+amidst his court with a noise of horses and horsemen, while the Roman
+eagles floated in gold over his head. The miserable creature spoke out
+loudly among them all, crying for vengeance on the murderers of her
+sons. The emperor seemed to say, "Wait till I return."
+
+But she, in the hastiness of her misery, said, "Suppose thou returnest
+not?"
+
+"Then my successor will attend to thee," replied the emperor.
+
+"And what hast thou to do with the duties of another man," cried she,
+"if thou attendest not to thine own?"
+
+"Now, be of good comfort," concluded Trajan, "for verily my duty shall
+be done before I go; justice wills it, and pity arrests me."
+
+Dante was proceeding to delight himself further with these sculptures,
+when Virgil whispered hint to look round and see what was coming. He did
+so, and beheld strange figures advancing, the nature of which he could
+not make out at first, for they seemed neither human, nor aught else
+which he could call to mind. They were souls of the proud, bent double
+under enormous burdens.
+
+"O proud, miserable, woe-begone Christians!" exclaims the poet; "ye who,
+in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the
+right path! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic
+butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede our flight?"[22]
+
+The souls came slowly on, each bending down in proportion to his burden.
+They looked like the crouching figures in architecture that are used
+to support roofs or balconies, and that excite piteous fancies in the
+beholders. The one that appeared to have the most patience, yet seemed
+as if he said, "I can endure no further."
+
+The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish, raised their voices in
+a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, which they concluded with humbly
+stating, that they repeated the clause against temptation, not for
+themselves, but for those who were yet living.
+
+Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance, requested them to spew the
+best way of going up to the next circle. Who it was that answered him
+could not be discerned, on account of their all being so bent down; but
+a voice gave them the required direction; the speaker adding, that he
+wished he could raise his eyes, so as to see the living creature that
+stood near him. He said that his name was Omberto--that he came of
+the great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco--and that his countrymen, the
+Siennese, murdered him on account of his arrogance.
+
+Dante had bent down his own head to listen, and in so doing he was
+recognised by one of the sufferers, who, eyeing him as well as he could,
+addressed him by name. The poet replied by exclaiming, "Art thou not
+Oderisi, the glory of Agubbio, the master of the art of illumination?"
+
+"Ah!" said Oderisi, "Franco of Bologna has all the glory now. His
+colours make the pages of books laugh with beauty, compared with what
+mine do.[23] I could not have owned it while on earth, for the sin which
+has brought me hither; but so it is; and so will it ever be, let a man's
+fame be never so green and flourishing, unless he can secure a dull age
+to come after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept the field against
+all comers, and now the cry is 'Giotto.' Thus, in song, a new Guido has
+deprived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is born who shall drive
+both out of the nest.[24] Fame is but a wind that changes about from all
+quarters. What does glory amount to at best, that a man should prefer
+living and growing old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and
+his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thousand years? A thousand
+years!--the twinkling of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before me;
+his name resounded once over all our Tuscany, and now it is scarcely
+whispered in his native place. He was lord there at the time that your
+once proud but now loathsome Florence had such a lesson given to its
+frenzy at the battle of Arbia."
+
+"And what is his name?" inquired Dante.
+
+"Salvani," returned the limner. "He is here, because he had the
+presumption to think that he could hold Sienna in the hollow of his
+hand. Fifty years has he paced in this manner. Such is the punishment
+for audacity."
+
+"But why is he here at all," said Dante, "and not in the outer region,
+among the delayers of repentance?"
+
+"Because," exclaimed the other, "in the height of his ascendancy he did
+not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in
+every vein, beg money from the people to ransom a friend from captivity.
+Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance? Thy
+countrymen shall too soon help thee to understand me."[25]
+
+Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the
+ground on which they were treading. It was pavement, wrought all over
+with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them,
+struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with
+the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his
+hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and
+Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children;
+and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider,
+at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence,
+flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmæon, who made his mother pay
+with her life for the ornament she received to betray his father; and
+Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple; and the head of Cyrus,
+thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might
+swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his
+Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow
+places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the
+loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps,
+bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of
+your ways.[26]
+
+"Behold," said Virgil, "there is an angel coming."
+
+The angel came on, clad in white, with a face that sent trembling beams
+before it, like the morning star. He skewed the pilgrims the way up to
+the second circle; and then, beating his wings against the forehead of
+Dante, on which the seven initials of sin were written, told him he
+should go safely, and disappeared.
+
+On reaching the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wailings that
+used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, "Blessed
+are the poor in spirit."[27] As he went, he perceived that he walked
+lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of
+the letters on his forehead. He put his hand up to make sure, as a man
+does in the street when people take notice of something on his head of
+which he is not aware; and Virgil smiled.
+
+In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated. After the pilgrims had
+proceeded a mile, they heard the voices of invisible spirits passing
+them, uttering sentiments of love and charity; for it was charity itself
+that had to punish envy.
+
+The souls of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for support and
+humiliation, partly against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly on
+one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near
+places of worship. Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks in
+training, but not so as to hinder them from shedding tears, which they
+did in abundance; and they cried, "Mary, pray for us!--Michael, Peter,
+and all the saints, pray for us!"
+
+Dante spoke to them; and one, a female, lifted up her chin as a blind
+person does when expressing consciousness of notice, and said she was
+Sapia of Sienna, who used to be pleased at people's misfortunes, and had
+rejoiced when her countrymen lost the battle of Colle. "_Sapia_ was
+my name," she said, "but _sapient_ I was not[28], for I prayed God to
+defeat my countrymen; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do),
+I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy
+worst, for I fear thee not!' I was like the bird in the fable, who
+thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my
+latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know
+not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers.
+But who art thou that goest with open eyes, and breathest in thy talk?"
+
+"Mine eyes," answered Dante, "may yet have to endure the blindness in
+this place, though for no long period. Far more do I fear the sufferings
+in the one that I have just left. I seem to feel the weight already upon
+me."[29]
+
+The Florentine then informed Sapia how he came thither, which, she said,
+was a great sign that God loved him; and she begged his prayers. The
+conversation excited the curiosity of two spirits who overheard it; and
+one of them, Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the poet of
+what country he was. Dante, without mentioning the name of the river,
+intimated that he came from the banks of the Arno; upon which the other
+spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked his friend why the stranger suppressed
+the name, as though it was something horrible. Guido said he well might;
+for the river, throughout its course, beheld none but bad men and
+persecutors of virtue. First, he said, it made its petty way by the
+sties of those brutal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then arrived at
+the dignity of watering the kennels of the curs of Arezzo, who excelled
+more in barking than in biting; then, growing unluckier as it grew
+larger, like the cursed and miserable ditch that it was, it found in
+Florence the dogs become wolves; and finally, ere it went into the sea,
+it passed the den of those foxes, the Pisans, who were full of such
+cunning that they held traps in contempt.
+
+"It will be well," continued Guido, "for this man to remember what he
+hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to
+Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked
+happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli
+which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in
+the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is
+the good Lizio?--where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have
+all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin
+di Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Faenza! Wonder not,
+Tuscan, to see me weep, when I think of the noble spirits that we have
+lived with--of the Guidos of Prata, and the Ugolins of Azzo--of Federigo
+Tignoso and his band--of the Traversaros and Anastagios, families now
+ruined--and all the ladies and the cavaliers, the alternate employments
+and delights which wrapped us in a round of love and courtesy, where now
+there is nothing but ill-will! O castle of Brettinoro! why dost thou
+not fall? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo done, who will have no more
+children. Who would propagate a race of Counties from such blood as the
+Castrocaros and the Conios? Is not the son of Pagani called the Demon?
+and would it not be better that such a son were swept out of the family?
+Nay, let him live to chew to what a pitch of villany it has arrived.
+Ubaldini alone is blest, for his name is good, and he is too old to
+leave a child after him. Go, Tuscan--go; for I would be left to my
+tears."
+
+Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and had scarcely done so, when a
+tremendous voice met them, splitting the air like peals of thunder, and
+crying out, "Whoever finds me will slay me!" then dashed apart, like the
+thunder-bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had scarcely recovered
+its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quarter near
+them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. "I am
+Aglauros," it said, "that was turned into stone." Dante drew closer to
+his guide, and there ensued a dead silence.[30]
+
+The sun was now in the west, and the pilgrims were journeying towards
+it, when Dante suddenly felt such a weight of splendour on his eyes, as
+forced him to screen them with both his hands. It was an angel coming to
+show them the ascent to the next circle, a way that was less steep than
+the last. While mounting, they heard the angel's voice singing behind
+them, "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy!" and on
+his leaving them to proceed by themselves, the second letter on Dante's
+forehead was found to have been effaced by the splendour.
+
+The poet looked round in wonder on the new circle, where the sin
+of Anger was expiated, and beheld, as in a dream, three successive
+spectacles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The first was that of
+a crowded temple, on the threshold of which a female said to her son, in
+the sweet manner of a mother, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
+Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing:"[31]--and here she
+became silent, and the vision ended. The next was the lord of Athens,
+Pisistratus, calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to put to death
+her daughter's lover, who, in a transport, had embraced her in public.
+"If we are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, "with those that love
+us, what is to be done with such as hate?" The last spectacle was that
+of a furious multitude shouting and stoning to death a youth, who, as he
+fell to the ground, still kept his face towards heaven, making his eyes
+the gates through which his soul reached it, and imploring forgiveness
+for his murderers.[32]
+
+The visions passed away, leaving the poet staggering as if but half
+awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he
+followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly
+telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in
+unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
+world." They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of
+them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by
+degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as
+the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in
+singing; Haman, retaining his look of spite and rage on the cross; and
+Lavinia, mourning for her mother, who slew herself for rage at the death
+of Turnus.[33]
+
+These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken; and
+Dante heard a voice out of it saying, "The ascent is here." He then, as
+Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face,
+as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance
+of the words, "Blessed are the peace-makers;" and his forehead was
+lightened of the third letter.[34]
+
+In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for
+good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making
+amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love
+that was in them. "Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, "to salute
+Elizabeth." "And Cæsar," cried another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida."[35]
+"And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, "died before
+they reached the promised land." "And the tired among the Trojans
+preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium."--It was now midnight, and
+Dante slept and had a dream.
+
+His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried
+ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
+towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked
+earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold.
+Her tongue was loosened; her feet made straight; she stood upright; her
+paleness became a lovely rose-colour; and she warbled so beautifully,
+that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it.
+
+"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made the mariners turn pale for
+pleasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song; and
+he that harbours with me once, rarely departs ever, so well I pay him
+for what he abandons."
+
+Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earliest
+countenance came up to shame her. "O Virgil!" she cried angrily, "who is
+this?" Virgil approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady; and the lady
+tore away the garments of the woman, and spewed her to be a creature so
+loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror.[36]
+
+Virgil said, "I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move,
+and find the place at which we are to go higher."
+
+It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante
+was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever
+heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them,
+who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against
+the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
+"Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for they shall be
+comforted."
+
+The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the expiators of
+Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could
+for the tears that choked them, "My soul hath cleaved to the dust."
+Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The
+poet fell on his knees; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. "I am no
+longer," said he, "spouse of the Church, here; but fellow-servant with
+thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my
+deliverance."
+
+The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the
+struggling tones of a woman in child-bed, "O blessed Virgin! That was a
+poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O
+good Fabricius! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with
+riches." And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a
+father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want
+of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for
+them all.
+
+Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was; and the spirit
+said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked
+elsewhere, but because of the shining grace that was in his questioner,
+though yet alive.
+
+"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil plant which overshadows all
+Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the
+Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the
+old race of kings was worn out.[37] We began by seizing the government
+in Paris; then plundered in Provence; then, to make amends, laid hold of
+Poitou, Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make amends, put Conradin
+to death and seized Naples; then, always to make amends, gave Saint
+Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a
+descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas
+_jousted with_[38] shall transfix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
+posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara.
+Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the
+person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to
+seize its money. O Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which
+even now thou huggest in delight to thy bosom![39]
+
+"Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, "we speak while it is
+light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the
+blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we
+denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each
+the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his
+wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems
+frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we
+accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
+hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] and Crassus, on whom we
+call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold.
+Thus we record our thoughts in the night-time, now high, now low, now at
+greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
+was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no
+respondent near me."
+
+The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their
+journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of
+Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of
+Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the
+twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that
+Virgil stood nigher to his companion, and bade him be of good heart.
+"Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
+gather the words only from those who were near him.
+
+It was Purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its
+bounds.[41]
+
+The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement
+onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted
+to Christianity in the reign of Domitian.[42] Mutual astonishment led to
+inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell
+at his master's feet.
+
+Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that
+vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
+
+An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead;
+and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the
+mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with
+reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a
+sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from
+a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin
+poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be
+chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
+visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine.' The women of oldest Rome
+drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst
+made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild
+honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel."
+
+The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the
+others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
+weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the
+psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips!" and the chanters were expiators
+of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to
+circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of
+the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid multitude,
+with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of
+their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped.[43] One of
+them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he
+heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate
+connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little
+forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
+expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers
+of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.
+Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife
+Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the
+contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the
+Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked
+savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
+
+"What is to be said of such creatures?" continued he. "O my dear cousin!
+I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from
+the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what
+infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in
+store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for
+howling."[44]
+
+Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished
+fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh
+and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.
+
+"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led
+together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks
+here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it
+is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now
+traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path."[45]
+
+After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among
+the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope
+Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels
+which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his
+teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on
+his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in
+the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante
+eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about
+a lady of the name of Gentucca.
+
+"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.
+
+"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta;
+"and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there
+shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning
+
+"Ladies, that understand the lore of love?"[46]
+
+"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding
+no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests."[47]
+
+"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see
+what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from
+hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking
+like one contented to have ascertained a truth.[48]
+
+The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift
+alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment
+to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end
+of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the
+heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites
+him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded
+after the others.
+
+The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude
+were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man
+who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a
+voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to
+stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve
+tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds,
+the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the
+Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their
+effeminate thirst."[49]
+
+The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of
+a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry
+hackney.
+
+"Of what value is thought," said the voice, "if it lose its way? The
+path lies hither."
+
+Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red as in
+a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him,
+nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fanning of its wings
+fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant
+as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and
+ascended with the two other poets into the seventh and last circle of
+the mountain.
+
+This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its
+precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind from outside of
+the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path; and in the
+midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They
+sang the hymn beginning "God of consummate mercy!"[50] Dante was
+compelled to divide his attention between his own footsteps and theirs,
+in order to move without destruction. At the close of the hymn they
+cried aloud, "I know not a man!"[51] and then recommenced it; after
+which they again cried aloud, saying, "Diana ran to the wood, and drove
+Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus!" And then
+again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste
+women and husbands; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as
+their time of trial lasted.
+
+Occasionally the multitude that went in one direction met another
+which mingled with and passed through it, individuals of both greeting
+tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in passing they touch
+the antennæ of one another. These two multitudes parted with loud and
+sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty;
+and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.
+
+The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature
+by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he
+learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry, Guido
+Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence,
+till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in
+the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The
+greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provençal poet, who, after begging
+the prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like manner.
+
+The sun by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, when an
+angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the
+edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, "Blessed are
+the pure in heart!" invited the three poets to plunge into the flames
+themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of
+the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them
+aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed
+made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion
+encouraged him to obey the angel; but he could not stir. Virgil said,
+"Now mark me, son; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee
+and Beatrice;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante
+followed them.
+
+"I could have cast myself," said he, "into molten glass to cool myself,
+so raging was the furnace." Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He
+said, "Methinks I see her eyes beholding us." There was, indeed, a great
+light upon the quarter to which they were crossing; and out of the light
+issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, "Come, blessed of my
+Father! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the
+ascent is to be gained."
+
+The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire; and the voice
+and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in
+the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock;
+and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying
+down for the night near two shepherds.
+
+Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a
+dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a lea,
+and bending every now and then to gather flowers; and as she bound the
+flowers into a garland, she sang, "I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn
+myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my
+sister Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless; contented with
+her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is
+mine."[52]
+
+When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now
+produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he
+awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already
+up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon
+it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial
+Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees
+and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance
+terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to
+be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the
+tried and purified lord over himself.
+
+The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions
+awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and
+lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the
+brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet
+unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the
+full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's
+radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with
+a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi,
+when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes
+rolling through the forest from bough to bough.[53]
+
+Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he
+entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with
+whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet
+it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun
+or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless
+diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration,
+looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took
+away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side
+of the water, singing and culling flowers.
+
+"Ah, lady!" said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy
+looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee
+nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou
+remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of
+what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she
+herself lost the spring-time on earth."
+
+As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with
+lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before
+the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and
+vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing
+so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she
+stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the
+flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display
+of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus
+herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt
+it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's
+Hellespont.
+
+The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet
+was the Lethe of Paradise;--Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe
+higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil
+deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It
+was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets
+had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence
+imagined their golden age;--and at these words she looked at Virgil and
+Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her
+kindly words.
+
+Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the
+contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on
+his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen!" and a
+light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed
+by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of
+expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs
+like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical
+and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car
+brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs,
+and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of
+which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.
+
+The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who
+it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for
+encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice
+herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and
+the tears ran down his cheeks.
+
+"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil
+leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming,
+at which it will behove thee to weep." Then assuming a sterner attitude,
+and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech
+for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest,
+Beatrice indeed;--Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to
+seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that
+here only can man be happy?"
+
+Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the
+water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.
+
+Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour
+of bitterness was mingled with her pity.
+
+She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, "In thee, O
+Lord, have I put my trust;" but went no farther in the psalm than the
+words, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room." The tears of Dante had
+hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled
+down his cheeks.
+
+Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, "This man, when he
+proposed to himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so
+gifted, that every good habit ought to have thrived with him; but the
+richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent
+light of my countenance drew him the right way; but when I quitted
+mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave
+himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased
+in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned
+into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their
+promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his
+behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little
+was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained
+but to shew him the state of the condemned; and therefore I went to
+their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that
+brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe
+could be passed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of
+remorse.[55]
+
+"O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, "who standest on
+the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth?"
+
+Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they passed
+his lips.
+
+"What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, "when I had given thee
+aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could end in nothing?"
+
+Dante said, "Thy face was taken from me, and the presence of false
+pleasure led me astray."
+
+"Never didst thou behold," cried the maiden, "loveliness like mine; and
+if bliss failed thee because of my death, how couldst thou be allured by
+mortal inferiority? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain
+all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before
+thee. How could thy spirit endure to stoop to further chances, or to a
+childish girl, or any other fleeting vanity? The bird that is newly out
+of the nest may be twice or thrice tempted by the snare; but in vain,
+surely, is the net spread in sight of one that is older."[56]
+
+Dante stood as silent and abashed as a sorry child.
+
+"If but to hear me," said Beatrice, "thus afflicts thee, lift up thy
+beard, and see what sight can do."
+
+Dante, though feeling the sting intended by the word "beard," did as he
+was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of flowers
+about the maiden; and be beheld her, though still beneath her veil, as
+far surpassing her former self in loveliness, as that self had surpassed
+others. The sight pierced him with such pangs, that the more he had
+loved any thing else, the more he now loathed it; and he fell senseless
+to the ground.
+
+When he recovered his senses, he found himself in the hands of the lady
+he had first seen in the place, who bidding him keep firm hold of her,
+drew him into the river Lethe, and so through and across it to the other
+side, speeding as she went like a weaver's shuttle, and immersing him
+when she arrived, the angels all the while singing, "Wash me, and I
+shall be whiter than snow."[57] She then delivered him into the hands of
+the nymphs that had danced about the car,--nymphs on earth, but stars
+and cardinal virtues in heaven; a song burst from the lips of the
+angels; and Faith, Hope, and Charity, calling upon Beatrice to unveil
+her face, she did so; and Dante quenched the ten-years thirst of his
+eyes in her ineffable beauty.[58]
+
+After a while he and Statius were made thoroughly regenerate with the
+waters of Eunoe; and he felt pure with a new being, and fit to soar into
+the stars.
+
+
+[Footnote 1:
+
+  "Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro
+  Che s'accoglieva nel serenoaspetto
+  De l'aer puro infino al primo giro,
+  A gli occhi miei ricomincio diletto,
+  Tosto ch'io usci' fuor de l'aura morta
+  Che m'avea contristati gli occhi e 'l petto.
+
+  Lo bel pianeta, ch'ad amar conforta,
+  Faceva tutto rider l'oriente,
+  Velando i Pesci, ch'erano in sua scorta.
+
+  Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente
+  All'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
+  Non viste mai, fuor ch'a la prima gente;
+
+  Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiammelle.
+  O settentrional vedovo sito,
+  Poi che privato sei di mirar quelle!"
+
+  The sweetest oriental sapphire blue,
+  Which the whole air in its pure bosom had,
+  Greeted mine eyes, far as the heavens withdrew;
+
+  So that again they felt assured and glad,
+  Soon as they issued forth from the dead air,
+  Where every sight and thought had made them sad.
+
+  The beauteous star, which lets no love despair,
+  Made all the orient laugh with loveliness,
+  Veiling the Fish that glimmered in its hair.
+
+  I turned me to the right to gaze and bless,
+  And saw four more, never of living wight
+  Beheld, since Adam brought us our distress;
+
+  Heaven seemed rejoicing in their happy light.
+  O widowed northern pole, bereaved indeed,
+  Since thou hast had no power to see that sight!
+
+Readers who may have gone thus far with the "Italian Pilgrim's
+Progress," will allow me to congratulate them on arriving at this lovely
+scene, one of the most admired in the poem.
+
+This is one of the passages which make the religious admirers of Dante
+inclined to pronounce him divinely inspired; for how could he otherwise
+have seen stars, they ask us, which were not discovered till after
+his time, and which compose the constellation of the Cross? But other
+commentators are of opinion, that the Cross, though not so named till
+subsequently (and Dante, we see, gives no prophetic hint about the
+name), _had_ been seen, probably by stray navigators. An Arabian globe
+is even mentioned by M. Artaud (see Cary), in which the Southern Cross
+is set down. Mr. Cary, in his note on the passage, refers to Seneca's
+prediction of the discovery of America; most likely suggested by similar
+information. "But whatever," he adds, "may be thought of this, it is
+certain that the four stars are here symbolical of the four cardinal
+virtues;" and he refers to canto xxxi, where those virtues are
+retrospectively associated with these stars. The symbol, however, is
+not, necessary. Dante was a very curious inquirer on all subjects, and
+evidently acquainted with ships and seamen as well as geography; and his
+imagination would eagerly have seized a magnificent novelty like this,
+and used it the first opportunity. Columbus's discovery, as the reader
+will see, was anticipated by Pulci.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Generous and disinterested!--Cato, the republican enemy of
+Cæsar, and committer of suicide, is not luckily chosen for his present
+office by the poet who has put Brutus into the devil's mouth in spite of
+his agreeing with Cato, and the suicide Piero delle Vigne into hell in
+spite of his virtues. But Dante thought Cato's austere manners like his
+own.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The girding with the rush (_giunco schietto_) is_ supposed
+by the commentators to be an injunction of simplicity and patience.
+Perhaps it is to enjoin sincerity; especially as the region of expiation
+has now been entered, and sincerity is the first step to repentance.
+It will be recollected that Dante's former girdle, the cord of the
+Franciscan friars, has been left in the hands of Fraud.]
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+  "L'alba vinceva l'ora mattutina
+  Che fuggia 'nnanzi, sì che di lontano
+  Conobbi il tremolar de la marina."
+
+  The lingering shadows now began to flee
+  Before the whitening dawn, so that mine eyes
+  Discerned far off the trembling of the sea.
+
+  "Conobbi il tremolar de la marina"
+is a beautiful verse, both for the picture and the sound.]
+
+[Footnote 5: This evidence of humility and gratitude on the part of
+Dante would be very affecting, if we could forget all the pride and
+passion he has been shewing elsewhere, and the torments in which he has
+left his fellow-creatures. With these recollections upon us, it looks
+like an overweening piece of self-congratulation at other people's
+expense.]
+
+[Footnote 6:
+
+  "Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona
+  De la mia donna disiosamente,"
+
+is the beginning of the ode sung by Dante's friend. The incident is
+beautifully introduced; and Casella's being made to select a production
+from the pen of the man who asks him to sing, very delicately implies a
+graceful cordiality in the musician's character.
+
+Milton alludes to the passage in his sonnet to Henry Lawes:
+
+  "Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
+  To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,
+  That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story.
+  Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
+  Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
+  Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."  ]
+
+[Footnote 7: Manfredi was the natural son of the Emperor Frederick the
+Second. "He was lively and agreeable in his manners," observes Mr. Cary,
+"and delighted in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious
+and ambitious, void of religion, and in his philosophy an epicurean."
+_Translation of Dante_, Smith's edition, p. 77. Thus King Manfredi ought
+to have been in a red-hot tomb, roasting for ever with Epicurus himself,
+and with the father of the poet's beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante: but
+he was the son of an emperor, and a foe to the house of Anjou; so Dante
+gives him a passport to heaven. There is no ground whatever for the
+repentance assumed in the text.]
+
+[Footnote 8: The unexpected bit of comedy here ensuing is very
+remarkable and pleasant. Belacqua, according to an old commentator, was
+a musician.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Buonconte was the son of that Guido da Montefeltro, whose
+soul we have seen carried off from St. Francis by a devil, for having
+violated the conditions of penitence. It is curious that both father and
+son should have been contested for in this manner.]
+
+[Footnote 10: This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all brief
+stories.
+
+  "Deh quando to sarai tornato al mondo,
+  E riposato de la lunga via,
+  Seguitò 'l terzo spirito al secondo,
+
+  Ricorditi di me che son la Pia:
+  Siena mi fè; disfecemi Maremma;
+  Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria
+
+  Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma."
+
+  Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth
+  (Said then a female soul), remember me,--
+  Pia. Sienna was my place of birth,
+
+  The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he,
+  Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring.
+
+"Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work entitled _De l'Amour,_
+"obtained in marriage the hand of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the
+Ptolomei, the richest and most noble family of Sienna. Her beauty, which
+was the admiration of all Tuscany, gave rise to a jealousy in the
+breast of her husband, that, envenomed by wrong reports and suspicions
+continually reviving, led to a frightful catastrophe. It is not easy to
+determine at this day if his wife was altogether innocent; but Dante
+has represented her as such. Her husband carried her with him into
+the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as now, for the pestiferous
+effects of the air. Never would he tell his wife the reason of her
+banishment into so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to
+pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a
+deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins on the seashore;
+he never broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of
+his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved
+by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of
+this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most
+beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a few
+months she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that
+Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in
+some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even
+to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest
+of his days in a silence which was never broken." Hazlitt's _Journey
+through France and Italy_, p. 315.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Sordello was a famous Provençal poet; with whose writings
+the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of
+M. Raynouard, in his _Choix des Poésies des Troubadours_, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 12: "Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca." An exquisite
+image of newness and brilliancy.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "Salve, Regina:" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant
+to the Virgin.]
+
+[Footnote 14: "With nose deprest," says Mr. Cary. But Dante says,
+literally, "small nose,"--_nasetto_. So, further on, he says, "masculine
+nose,"--_maschio naso_. He meant to imply the greater or less
+determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed
+to indicate.]
+
+[Footnote 15: An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign
+for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect. But Henry was a
+devout servant of the Church.]
+
+[Footnote 16:
+
+  "Era già l'ora che volge 'l desio
+  A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore
+  Lo dì ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;
+
+  E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore
+  Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
+  Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore."
+
+A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to
+be the voice of Evening herself.
+
+  'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
+  Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
+  The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
+  And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
+  Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
+  That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
+
+Every body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from
+Dante's--
+
+  "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
+
+Nothing can equal, however, the _tone_ in the Italian original,--the
+
+  "Pàia 'l giorno pianger the si muòre."
+
+Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his
+personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have
+left us a work truly to be called Divine?]
+
+[Footnote 17:
+
+"Te lucis ante terminum;"--a hymn sung at evening service.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Lucy, _Lucia_ (supposed to be derived from _lux, lucis_),
+is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic
+countries may be said to preside over _light_, and who is really invoked
+in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for
+that reason among others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
+they had been cured. In her spiritual character she represents the light
+of grace.]
+
+[Footnote 19: The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the second,
+horror of it; the third, zeal to amend.]
+
+[Footnote 20: The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the
+commentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the learning and
+judgment requisite to use it.]
+
+[Footnote 21: "Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and
+St. Augustine.]
+
+[Footnote 22:
+
+  "Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
+  Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
+  Che vola a giustizia senza schermi?"
+
+  "Know you not, we are worms
+  Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
+  That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms?"
+
+[Footnote 23:
+
+  "Più ridon le carte
+  Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
+  L'onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte."
+
+[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
+the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
+and the poet, who is to "chase them from the nest," _caccerà di nido_
+(as the not very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
+supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the statement becoming? It
+was certainly not necessary. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship
+with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti,
+probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition; far they
+could be proud themselves; and the son has the reputation of scepticism,
+as well as the father. See the _Decameron, Giorn_. vi. _Nov. 9_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
+Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein," from the awful
+necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with some other commentators, thinks
+that the "trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not
+rather mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case it certainly
+does; for it was in consideration of the pang to his pride, that the
+good deed rescued him from worse punishment.]
+
+[Footnote 26: The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of
+Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of
+such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose
+it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call
+to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on
+Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous,
+of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
+the reconcilement with absurdity.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;
+for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of
+the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and
+admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
+renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for
+them, and his impatience to see them triumph." So said the Inquisition.
+The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
+result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed,
+or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions.]
+
+[Footnote 28:
+
+  "_Sàvia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapìa_
+  Fosse chiamata."
+The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian
+name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is
+the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented
+on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in
+English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name." It
+is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the
+punsters.--It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at
+the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some
+zeal of faction]
+
+[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a
+little envy, but far more pride:
+
+  "Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
+  Ma picciol tempo; che poch' è l'offesa
+  Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
+  Troppa è più la paura ond' è sospesa
+  L'anima mia del tormento di sotto
+  Che già lo 'ncarco di là giù mi pesa."
+
+The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second,
+affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have
+allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to
+women.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned
+to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her
+sister Herse.
+
+The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful
+and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and
+violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to
+suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his
+thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for
+his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.
+
+Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros
+is thunder-claps crashing into one another--broken thunder. This is
+exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful
+music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness. If it were
+not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two
+silences; for I doubt whether they are not better even than one. At all
+events, the final silence is tremendous.]
+
+[Footnote 30: St. Luke ii. 48.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The stoning of Stephen.]
+
+[Footnote 32: These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
+inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not
+always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird
+as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
+Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as
+he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake,
+Philomela, in the _Metamorphoses_.]
+
+[Footnote 33: So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards; and
+I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite
+intimations at each successive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly
+having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the
+outset. The whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
+wanted his final revision.]
+
+[Footnote 34: What an instance to put among those of haste to do good!
+But the fame and accomplishments of Cæsar, and his being at the head of
+our Ghibelline's beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted
+impartiality.]
+
+[Footnote 35: A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of
+it in the original has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the
+last recesses of feeling, and disgusts us with the denouncer.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in
+the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association
+of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that
+Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his
+dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
+interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a
+metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when
+we find the man called, not _the_ butcher, or _that_ butcher, or butcher
+in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
+Paris" (_un beccaio di Parigi_), and when this designation is followed
+up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the
+ordinary construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems
+to have had no ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless
+considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed, condescended to
+feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it,
+in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt
+contradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeatedly said, that
+the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth
+excepted) are a heap of contradictions.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in which there
+is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an
+impression to the same effect.]
+
+[Footnote 38:
+
+  "O Signor mio, quando sarò io lieto
+  A veder la vendetta the nascosa
+  Fa dolce l'ira tua nel tuo segreto!"
+
+The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian,
+viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being
+"too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
+as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth
+century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine! God hugs
+revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a
+poor grinning Florentine!]
+
+[Footnote 39: A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The allusion
+is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her
+husband, the priest Sichæus, for his riches. The term "parricide" is
+here applied in its secondary sense of--the murderer of any one to whom
+we owe reverence.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
+supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael.]
+
+[Footnote 41: A grand and beautiful fiction.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation
+for this fancy, except in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in
+another passage, not necessary to give, confounds the poet Statius who
+was from Naples, with a rhetorician of the same name from Thoulouse.]
+
+[Footnote 43:
+
+  "Parèn l'occhiaje anella senza gemme."
+
+This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one
+of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the
+physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (_homo_, man), written in the face
+of the human being, might easily have seen the letter _m_ in theirs."
+
+  "Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge _o m o_,
+  Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_."
+
+The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples
+form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman
+domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin!]
+
+[Footnote 44:
+
+  "Se le svergognate fosser certe
+  Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
+  Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte."
+
+This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John
+Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted
+to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness,
+and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays.
+But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the
+worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer
+him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take
+good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
+
+Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those
+self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins
+they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." He was
+a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The
+defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
+testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having
+availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such
+candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The
+words in the original are
+
+  "Se ti riduci a mente
+  Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
+  Ancor fia grave il memorar presente."
+
+Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast
+with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee
+still."
+
+His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
+the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
+construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
+first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
+intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of Æneas's
+descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
+as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
+very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
+spotless.]
+
+[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
+the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
+any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
+present volume.) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
+gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
+person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
+record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
+record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
+Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
+some rumour.]
+
+[Footnote 47: A celebrated and charming passage:
+
+  "Io mi son un, che quando
+  Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo
+  Che detta dentro, vo significando."
+
+  I am one that notes
+  When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell
+  In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.
+
+[Footnote 48: Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment
+to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the
+Notary, and Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of
+the day. The latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his
+translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last
+day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under
+_crudel martire_), _because_ an inscription will then be seen on his
+forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love! An odd way for a
+poet to shew his feelings, and a friar his religion!]
+
+[Footnote 49: Judges vii. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _Summæ Deus clementiæ_. The ancient beginning of a hymn in
+the Roman Catholic church; now altered, say the commentators, to "Summæ
+parens clementiæ."]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Virum non cognosco_. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How
+shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"--_Luke_ i. 34.
+
+The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of
+Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by
+spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.
+A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question
+suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of
+letters.]
+
+[Footnote 52: An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;--not, I
+think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart
+from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is
+rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express
+love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be
+taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity.]
+
+[Footnote 53:
+
+  "Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
+  Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
+  Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie."
+
+  Even as from branch to branch
+  Along the piny forests on the shore
+  Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
+  When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
+  The dripping south."--_Cary_.
+
+"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's
+sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to
+the Decameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec., G. 5, N.
+8, and Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in
+it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta."--_Translation of
+Dante_, ut sup. p. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Lethe, _Forgetfulness_; Eunoe, _Well-mindedness_.]
+
+[Footnote 55:
+
+  "Senza alcuno scotto
+  Di pentimento."
+
+Literally, _scot-free_.--"Scotto," scot;--"payment for dinner or supper
+in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor
+of the _Parnaso Italiano_, and a very summary gentleman); "here used
+figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and
+grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that
+collection, vol. ii. p. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (_pargoletta_) or any
+other fleeting vanity,
+
+  "O altra vanità con sì breve use,"
+
+is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he
+liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they
+might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?
+
+Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as
+a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the
+sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape;
+and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells
+us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of
+Signor Rubbi, is no better than _snubbing_;--to say nothing of the
+vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.
+
+I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an
+exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out
+of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and
+his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in
+charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so
+many things, hates nothing. Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
+high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
+our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them.]
+
+[Footnote 57:
+
+"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
+clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."--Psalm li. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years.]
+
+
+III.
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. Argument.
+
+The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of
+astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets
+according to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
+Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond these, or that of the
+Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the
+moveless Earth; and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which
+is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by
+its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue; and Dante visits each
+under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes,
+on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally
+admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the
+Great First Cause.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
+
+It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in
+Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed
+his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself in Heaven.
+
+He had been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by
+his side.
+
+The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empyrean, and heard
+the music of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven,
+the circle of the orb of the moon.
+
+This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed,
+outside, as solid, though as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as
+sunbeams are admitted into water without dividing the substance. It now
+appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of
+which they saw but dimly; and they beheld many faces eagerly looking at
+them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding
+whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn.[1]
+Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom
+they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right; and he entered
+into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost
+him. It was Piccarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he
+had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason
+of her wonderful increase in beauty. She and her associates were such
+as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity and Religion, but had been
+Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in
+Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso.[2] On
+
+Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of bliss, she and
+her sister-spirits gently smiled; and then answered, with faces as happy
+as first love,[3] that they willed only what it pleased God to give
+them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer,
+that every place in Heaven was Paradise, though the bliss might be of
+different degrees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side,
+lustrous with all the glory of the region, Costanza, daughter of the
+king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the
+wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began
+singing _Ave Maria_; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as
+substances disappear in water.[4]
+
+A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next
+circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet Mercury, the
+residence of those who had acted rather out of Desire of Fame than Love
+of God. The spirits here, as in the former Heaven, crowded towards them,
+as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their
+eyes sparkled with celestial joy; and the more they thought of their
+joy, the brighter they grew; till one of them who addressed the poet
+became indistinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of
+the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman
+empire up to his time; and then gave an account of one of his associates
+in bliss, Romèo, who had been minister to Raymond Beranger, Count of
+Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every
+one became a queen; and all this had been brought about by Romèo, a poor
+stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romèo, incited
+Raymond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had
+brought his master's treasury twelve-fold for every ten it disbursed.
+Romeo quitted the court, poor and old; "and if the world," said
+Justinian, "could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his
+bread as he went, crust by crust--praise him as it does, it would praise
+him a great deal more."[5]
+
+  "Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth,
+  Superillumining with light of light
+  The happy fires of these thy Malahoth!"[6]
+
+Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian; and then, turning
+as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire.
+
+Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven,
+or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous.[7] He only knew it by the
+increased loveliness in the face of his companion.
+
+The spirits in this orb, who came and went in the light of it like
+sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun
+round in circles of delight, each with more or less swiftness, according
+to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out
+of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his
+patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why
+diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of
+the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth;
+and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and
+Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy
+Land, and whose place was next Folco.[8] Cunizza said that she did not
+at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar
+might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel
+who was close to her, Folco--contrasted his zeal with the inertness of
+her contemptible countrymen--and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the
+latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed
+in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is
+expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the
+lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or
+Hercules; but added, that he had no recollection of them, except a
+joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven),
+but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Folco concluded with
+explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing
+the indifference of popes and cardinals (those adulterers of the Church)
+to every thing but accursed money-getting.[9]
+
+In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth
+Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of
+them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon,
+singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be
+exported, was not conveyable by expression to mortal fancy. The spirits
+composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus,
+Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius
+the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede,
+Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the
+namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak; but
+when he had done speaking, they began resuming it, one by one, and
+circling as they moved, like the wheels of church-clocks that sound one
+after another with a sweet tinkling, when they summon the hearts of the
+devout to morning prayer.[10]
+
+Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of
+the order of St. Dominic; but with generous grace he held up the founder
+of the Franciscans, with his vow of poverty, as the example of what a
+pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On
+the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their
+appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling
+round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new
+circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle,
+and Saint Buonaventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.
+Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity, the holy wrestler,--benign
+to his friends and cruel to his enemies;[11]--and so confined his
+reproofs to his own Franciscan order. He then, as St. Thomas had done
+with the doctors in the inner circle, named those who constituted the
+outer: to wit, Illuminato, and Agostino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and
+Petrus Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty-first, Nathan the Prophet,
+Chrysostom, Anselmo of Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach grammar,
+Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of Calabria. The two circles then varied
+their movement by wheeling round one another in counter directions; and
+after they had chanted, not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of Three Persons
+in One, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's thoughts by intuition, again
+addressed him, discoursing of mysteries human and divine, exhorting
+him to be slow in giving assent or denial to propositions without
+examination, and bidding him warn people in general how they presumed
+to anticipate the divine judgment as to who should be saved and who
+not.[12] The spirit of Solomon then related how souls could resume their
+bodies glorified; and the two circles uttering a rapturous amen, glowed
+with such intolerable brightness, that the eyes of Beatrice only were
+able to sustain it. Dante gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and
+suddenly found himself in the fifth Heaven.
+
+It was the planet Mars, the receptacle of those who had Died Fighting
+for the Cross. In the middle of its ruddy light stood a cross itself, of
+enormous dimensions, made of light still greater, and exhibiting, first,
+in the body of it, the Crucified Presence, glittering all over with
+indescribable flashes like lightning; and secondly, in addition to and
+across the Presence, innumerable sparkles of the intensest mixture
+of white and red, darting to and fro through the whole extent of the
+crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a
+sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols,
+before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from
+the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which
+entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words,
+"Arise and conquer," as one who hears and yet hears not.
+
+On a sudden, with a glide like a falling star, there ran down from the
+right horn of the Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this
+cluster of splendours, distinguishing itself, as it went, like flame in
+alabaster.
+
+"O flesh of my flesh!" it exclaimed to Dante; "O superabounding Divine
+Grace! when was the door of Paradise ever twice opened, as it Shall have
+been to thee?"[13] Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice, and saw
+such a rapture of delight in her eyes, that he seemed, at that instant,
+as if his own had touched the depth of his acceptance and of his
+heaven.[14]
+
+The light resumed its speech, but in words too profound in their meaning
+for Dante to comprehend. They seemed to be returning thanks to God. This
+rapturous absorption being ended, the speaker expressed in more human
+terms his gratitude to Beatrice; and then, after inciting Dante to ask
+his name, declared himself thus:
+
+"O branch of mine, whom I have long desired to behold, I am the root of
+thy stock; of him thy great-grandsire, who first brought from his mother
+the family-name into thy house, and whom thou sawest expiating his sin
+of pride on the first circle of the mountain. Well it befitteth thee to
+shorten his long suffering with thy good works. Florence,[15] while yet
+she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the
+bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste
+and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy
+sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were
+not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries
+too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to
+separate; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared
+to practise. The heights of Rome had not been surpassed by your tower of
+Uccellatoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its aspiring. I saw
+Bellincion Berti walking the streets in a leathern girdle fastened with
+bone; and his wife come from her looking-glass without a painted face.
+I saw the Nerlis and the Vecchios contented with the simplest doublets,
+and their good dames hard at work at their spindles. O happy they! They
+were sure of burial in their native earth, and none were left desolate
+by husbands that loved France better than Italy. One kept awake to tend
+her child in its cradle, lulling it with the household words that had
+fondled her own infancy. Another, as she sat in the midst of her family,
+drawing the flax from the distaff, told them stories of Troy, and
+Fiesole, and Rome. It would have been as great a wonder, then, to see
+such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man as Lapo Salterello, as it
+would now be to meet with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia.[16]
+
+"It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful time," continued the poet's
+ancestor, "when we all lived in such good faith and fellowship, and in
+so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin vouchsafed the first sight
+of me to the cries of my mother; and there, in your old Baptistery, I
+became, at once, Christian and Cacciaguida. My brothers were called
+Moronto and Eliseo. It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdipado,
+thy family name of Alighieri. I then followed the Emperor Conrad, and
+he made me a knight for my good service, and I went with him to fight
+against the wicked Saracen law, whose people usurp the fold that remains
+lost through the fault of the shepherd. There, by that foul crew, was I
+delivered from the snares and pollutions of the world; and so, from the
+martyrdom, came to this peace."
+
+Cacciaguida was silent. But his descendant praying to be told more of
+his family and of the old state of Florence, the beatified soldier
+resumed. He would not, however, speak of his own predecessors. He said
+it would be more becoming to say nothing as to who they were, or the
+place they came from. All he disclosed was, that his father and
+mother lived near the gate San Piero.[17] With regard to Florence, he
+continued, the number of the inhabitants fit to carry arms was at that
+time not a fifth of its present amount; but then the blood of the
+whole city was pure. It had not been mixed up with that of Campi, and
+Certaldo, and Figghine. It ran clear in the veins of the humblest
+mechanic.
+
+"Oh, how much better would it have been," cried the soul of the old
+Florentine, "had my countrymen still kept it as it was, and not brought
+upon themselves the stench of the peasant knave out of Aguglione, and
+that other from Signa, with his eye to a bribe! Had Rome done its duty
+to the emperor, and so prevented the factions that have ruined us,
+Simifonte would have kept its beggarly upstart to itself; the Conti
+would have stuck to their parish of Acone, and perhaps the Buondelmonti
+to Valdigrieve. Crude mixtures do as much harm to the body politic as to
+the natural body; and size is not strength. The blind bull falls with a
+speedier plunge than the blind lamb. One sword often slashes round about
+it better than five. Cities themselves perish. See what has become of
+Luni and of Urbisaglia; and what will soon become of Sinigaglia too, and
+of Chiusi! And if cities perish, what is to be expected of families? In
+my time the Ughi, the Catellini, the Filippi, were great names. So were
+the Alberichi, the Ormanni, and twenty others. The golden sword of
+knighthood was then to be seen in the house of Galigaio. The Column,
+Verrey, was then a great thing in the herald's eye. The Galli, the
+Sacchetti, were great; so was the old trunk of the Calfucci; so was that
+of the peculators who now blush to hear of a measure of wheat; and the
+Sizii and the Arrigucci were drawn in pomp to their civic chairs. Oh,
+how mighty I saw them then, and how low has their pride brought them!
+_Florence_ in those days deserved her name. She _flourished_ indeed; and
+the balls of gold were ever at the top of the flower.[18] And now the
+descendants of these men sit in priestly stalls and grow fat. The
+over-weening Adimari, who are such dragons when their foes run, and such
+lambs when they turn, were then of note so little, that Albertino Donato
+was angry with Bellincion, his father-in-law, for making him brother
+to one of their females. On the other hand, thy foes, the Amidei, the
+origin of all thy tears through the just anger which has slain the
+happiness of thy life, were honoured in those days; and the honour was
+par taken by their friends. O Buondelmonte! why didst thou break thy
+troth to thy first love, and become wedded to another? Many who are now
+miserable would have been happy, had God given thee to the river Ema,
+when it rose against thy first coming to Florence. But the Arno had
+swept our Palladium from its bridge, and Florence was to be the victim
+on its altar."[19]
+
+Cacciaguida was again silent; but his descendant begged him to speak
+yet a little more. He had heard, as he came through the nether regions,
+alarming intimations of the ill fortune that awaited him, and he was
+anxious to know, from so high and certain an authority, what it would
+really be.
+
+Cacciaguida said, "As Hippolytus was forced to depart from Athens by the
+wiles of his cruel step-dame, so must even thou depart out of Florence.
+Such is the wish, such this very moment the plot, and soon will it be
+the deed, of those, the business of whose lives is to make a traffic of
+Christ with Rome. Thou shalt quit every thing that is dearest to thee
+in the world. That is the first arrow shot from the bow of exile. Thou
+shalt experience how salt is the taste of bread eaten at the expense of
+others; how hard is the going up and down others' stairs. But what shall
+most bow thee down, is the worthless and disgusting company with whom
+thy lot must be partaken; for they shall all turn against thee, the
+whole mad, heartless, and ungrateful set. Nevertheless, it shall not be
+long first, before themselves, and not thou, shall have cause to hang
+down their heads for shame. The brutishness of all they do, will shew
+how well it became thee to be of no party, but the party of thyself.[20]
+
+"Thy first refuge thou shalt owe to the courtesy of the great Lombard,
+who bears the Ladder charged with the Holy Bird.[21] So benignly
+shall he regard thee, that in the matter of asking and receiving, the
+customary order of things shall be reversed between you two, and the
+gift anticipate the request. With him thou shalt behold the mortal, born
+under so strong an influence of this our star, that the nations shall
+take note of him. They are not aware of him yet, by reason
+of his tender age; but ere the Gascon practise on the great
+Henry, sparkles of his worth shall break forth in his contempt
+of money and of ease; and when his munificence appears in all
+its lustre, his very enemies shall not be able to hold their
+tongues for admiration.[22] Look thou to this second benefactor
+also; for many a change of the lots of people shall he make, both rich
+and poor; and do thou bear in mind, but repeat not, what further I shall
+now tell thee of thy life." Here the spirit, says the poet,
+foretold things which afterwards appeared incredible to their very
+beholders;--and then added: "Such, my son, is the heart and mystery of
+the things thou hast desired to learn. The snares will shortly gather
+about thee; but wish not to change places with the contrivers; for thy
+days will outlast those of their retribution."
+
+Again was the spirit silent; and yet again once more did his descendant
+question him, anxious to have the advice of one that saw so far, and
+that spoke the truth so purely, and loved him so well.
+
+"Too plainly, my father," said Dante, "do I see the time coming, when a
+blow is to be struck me, heaviest ever to the man that is not true to
+himself. For which reason it is fit that I so far arm myself beforehand,
+that in losing the spot dearest to me on earth, I do not let my verses
+deprive me of every other refuge. Now I have been down below through the
+region whose grief is without end; and I have scaled the mountain from
+the top of which I was lifted by my lady's eyes; and I have come thus
+far through heaven, from luminary to luminary; and in the course of this
+my pilgrimage I have heard things which, if I tell again, may bitterly
+disrelish with many. Yet, on the other hand, if I prove but a timid
+friend to truth, I fear I shall not survive with the generations by whom
+the present times will be called times of old."
+
+The light that enclosed the treasure which its descendant had found in
+heaven, first flashed at this speech like a golden mirror against the
+sun, and then it replied thus:
+
+"Let the consciences blush at thy words that have reason to blush. Do
+thou, far from shadow of misrepresentation, make manifest all which thou
+hast seen, and let the sore places be galled that deserve it. Thy bitter
+truths shall carry with them vital nourishment--thy voice, as the wind
+does, shall smite loudest the loftiest summits; and no little shall that
+redound to thy praise. It is for this reason that, in all thy journey,
+thou hast been shewn none but spirits of note, since little heed would
+have been taken of such as excite doubt by their obscurity."
+
+The spirit of Cacciaguida now relapsed into the silent joy of its
+reflections, and the poet was standing absorbed in the mingled feelings
+of his own, when Beatrice said to him, "Change the current of thy
+thoughts. Consider how near I am in heaven to one that repayeth every
+wrong."
+
+Dante turned at the sound of this comfort, and felt no longer any other
+wish than to look upon her eyes; but she said, with a smile, "Turn thee
+round again, and attend. I am not thy only Paradise." And Dante again
+turned, and saw his ancestor prepared to say more.
+
+Cacciaguida bade him look again on the Cross, and he should see various
+spirits, as he named them, flash over it like lightning; and they did
+so. That of Joshua, which was first mentioned, darted along the Cross
+in a stream. The light of Judas Maccabeus went spinning, as if joy had
+scourged it.[23] Charlemagne and Orlando swept away together, pursued
+by the poet's eyes. Guglielmo[24] followed, and Rinaldo, and Godfrey of
+Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard of Naples; and the light of Cacciaguida
+himself darted back to its place, and, uttering another sort of voice,
+began shewing how sweet a singer he too was amidst the glittering choir.
+
+Dante turned to share the joy with Beatrice, and, by the lovely paling
+of her cheek, like a maiden's when it delivers itself of the burden of
+a blush,[25] knew that he was in another and whiter star. It was the
+planet Jupiter, the abode of blessed Administrators of Justice.
+
+Here he beheld troops of dazzling essences, warbling as they flew, and
+shaping their flights hither and thither, like birds when they rise from
+the banks of rivers, and rejoice with one another in new-found pasture.
+But the figures into which the flights were shaped were of a more
+special sort, being mystical compositions of letters of the alphabet,
+now a D, now an I, now an L, and so on, till the poet observed that they
+completed the whole text of Scripture, which says, _Diligite justitiam,
+qui judicatis terram_--(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the
+earth). The last letter, M, they did not decompose like the rest, but
+kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the
+silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a
+song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on the top, of
+the letter; and then, from the body of it, rose thousands of sparks, as
+from a shaken firebrand, and, gradually expanding into the form of an
+eagle, the lights which had descended like lilies distributed themselves
+over the whole bird, encrusting it with rubies flashing in the sun.
+
+But what, says the poet, was never yet heard of, written, or
+imagined,--the beak of the eagle spoke! It uttered many minds in one
+voice, just as one heat is given out by many embers; and proclaimed
+itself to have been thus exalted, because it united justice and mercy
+while on earth.
+
+Dante addressed this splendid phenomenon, and prayed it to ease his mind
+of the perplexities of its worldly reason respecting the Divine nature
+and government, and the exclusion from heaven of goodness itself, unless
+within the Christian pale.
+
+The celestial bird, rousing itself into motion with delight, like a
+falcon in the conscious energy of its will and beauty, when, upon being
+set free from its hood, it glances above it into the air, and claps its
+self-congratulating wings, answered nevertheless somewhat disdainfully,
+that it was impossible for man, in his mortal state, to comprehend such
+things; and that the astonishment he feels at them, though doubtless it
+would be excusable under other circumstances, must rest satisfied with
+the affirmations of Scripture.
+
+The bird then bent over its questioner, as a stork does over the
+nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and
+renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, "As my notes are to thee
+that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to
+thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly
+regions that did not believe in Christ, either after he was crucified or
+before it. Yet many, who call Christ! Christ! shall at the last day be
+found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings
+of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment
+opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dishonour? In
+that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict
+on Bohemia:[26]--in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that
+adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's
+teeth:--in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the
+Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds:--in
+that book, the luxury of the Spaniard, and the effeminate life of the
+Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy:--in that
+book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a
+unit, and his worthlessness by a million:--in that book, the avarice and
+cowardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died;
+and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness,
+the writing shall be in short-hand; and his uncle's and his brother's
+filthy doings shall be read in that book--they who have made such
+rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the
+Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner
+of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O
+blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer!--O blessed
+Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain
+walls! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest
+of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the
+beast, who keeps so close in the path of the herd his brethren."
+
+The blessed bird for a moment was silent; but as, at the going down of
+the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth into innumerable
+stars which the sun lights up,[27] so the splendours within the figure
+of the bird suddenly became more splendid, and broke forth into songs
+too beautiful for mortal to remember.
+
+O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy
+manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere
+thoughts of those pious hearts!
+
+After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their
+angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes
+falling from rock to rock, and chews, by the fulness of its tone, the
+abundance of its mountain spring; and as the sound of the guitar is
+modulated on the neck of it, and the breath of the pipe is accordant to
+the spiracle from which it issues, so the murmuring within the eagle
+suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in
+words. The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye; because,
+of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the
+eye were the noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the
+pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now
+enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment. Of the
+five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was
+Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it
+costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell
+before he was translated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah,
+whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death: next Hezekiah,
+Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of
+a pastor, he had unwittingly brought destruction on the world: next
+Constantine, William the Good of Sicily, whose death is not more
+lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown and lastly, next
+William, Riphaeus the Trojan. "What erring mortal," cried the bird,
+"would believe it possible to find Riphæus the Trojan among the
+blest?--but so it is; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace
+than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth."[28]
+
+The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the
+happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering and
+expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and content,
+having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness.[29]
+
+But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans
+in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.
+It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of
+justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same
+reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption;
+and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of
+Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to
+the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird
+mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they
+quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced
+by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes.[30]
+
+Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice,
+and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer
+there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at
+every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been
+able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the
+planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy
+Contemplation.
+
+In this crystal sphere, called after the name of the monarch who reigned
+over the Age of Innocence, Dante looked up, and beheld a ladder, the hue
+of which was like gold when the sun glisters it, and the height so great
+that its top was out of sight; and down the steps of this ladder he saw
+coming such multitudes of shining spirits, that it seemed as if all the
+lights of heaven must have been there poured forth; but not a sound was
+in the whole splendour. It was spared to the poet for the same reason
+that he missed the smile of Beatrice. When they came to a certain step
+in the ladder, some of the spirits flew off it in circles or other
+careers, like rooks when they issue from their trees in the morning
+to dry their feathers in the sun, part of them going away without
+returning, others returning to the point they left, and others
+contenting themselves with flying round about it. One of them came so
+near Dante and Beatrice, and brightened with such ardour, that the poet
+saw it was done in affection towards them, and begged the loving spirit
+to tell them who it was.
+
+"Between the two coasts of Italy," said the spirit, "and not far from
+thine own country, the stony mountains ascend into a ridge so lofty
+that the thunder rolls beneath it. Catria is its name. Beneath it is a
+consecrated cell; and in that cell I was called Pietro Damiano.[31] I so
+devoted myself to the service of God, that with no other sustenance than
+the juice of the olive, I forgot both heat and cold, happy in heavenly
+meditation. That cloister made abundant returns in its season to these
+granaries of the Lord; but so idle has it become now, that it is fit
+the world should know its barrenness. The days of my mortal life were
+drawing to a close, when I was besought and drawn into wearing the hat
+which descends every day from bad head to worse.[32] St. Peter and St.
+Paul came lean and barefoot, getting their bread where they could; but
+pastors now-a-days must be lifted from the ground, and have ushers going
+before them, and train-bearers behind them, and ride upon palfreys
+covered with their spreading mantles, so that two beasts go under one
+skin.[33] O Lord, how long!"
+
+At these words Dante saw more splendours come pouring down the ladder,
+and wheel round and round, and become at every wheel more beautiful.
+The whole dazzling body then gathered round the indignant speaker, and
+shouted something in a voice so tremendous, that the poet could liken it
+to nothing on earth. The thunder was so overwhelming, that he did not
+even hear what they said.[34]
+
+Pallid and stunned, he turned in affright to Beatrice, who comforted him
+as a mother comforts a child that wants breath to speak. The shout was
+prophetic of the vengeance about to overtake the Church. Beatrice then
+directed hisattention to a multitude of small orbs, which increased one
+another's beauty by interchanging their splendours. They enclosed the
+spirits of those who most combined meditation with love. One of them was
+Saint Benedict; and others Macarius and Romoaldo.[35] The light of St.
+Benedict issued forth from among its companions to address the poet;
+and after explaining how its occupant was unable farther to disclose
+himself, inveighed against the degeneracy of the religious orders. It
+then rejoined its fellows, and the whole company clustering into one
+meteor, swept aloft like a whirlwind. Beatrice beckoned the poet to
+ascend after them. He did so, gifted with the usual virtue by her eyes;
+and found himself in the twin light of the Gemini, the constellation
+that presided over his birth. He was now in the region of the fixed
+stars.
+
+"Thou art now," said his guide, "so near the summit of thy prayers, that
+it behoves thee to take a last look at things below thee, and see
+how little they should account in thine eyes." Dante turned his
+eyes downwards through all the seven spheres, and saw the earth so
+diminutive, that he smiled at its miserable appearance. Wisest, thought
+he, is the man that esteems it least; and truly worthy he that sets his
+thoughts on the world to come. He now saw the moon without those spots
+in it which made him formerly attribute the variation to dense and rare.
+He sustained the brightness of the face of the sun, and discerned all
+the signs and motions and relative distances of the planets. Finally, he
+saw, as he rolled round with the sphere in which he stood, and by virtue
+of his gifted sight, the petty arena, from hill to harbour, which filled
+his countrymen with such ferocious ambition; and then he turned his eyes
+to the sweet eyes beside him.[36]
+
+Beatrice stood wrapt in attention, looking earnestly towards the south,
+as if she expected some appearance. She resembled the bird that sits
+among the dewy leaves in the darkness of night, yearning for the coming
+of the morning, that she may again behold her young, and have light by
+which to seek the food, that renders her fatigue for them a joy. So
+stood Beatrice, looking; which caused Dante to watch in the same
+direction, with the feelings of one that is already possessed of some
+new delight by the assuredness of his expectation.[37]
+
+The quarter on which they were gazing soon became brighter and brighter,
+and Beatrice exclaimed, "Behold the armies of the triumph of Christ!"
+Her face appeared all fire, and her eyes so full of love, that the poet
+could find no words to express them.
+
+As the moon, when the depths of heaven are serene with her fulness,
+looks abroad smiling among her eternal handmaids the stars, that paint
+every gulf of the great hollow with beauty;[38] so brightest, above
+myriads of splendours around it, appeared a sun which gave radiance to
+them all, even as our earthly sun gives light to the constellations.
+
+"O Beatrice!" exclaimed Dante, overpowered, "sweet and beloved guide!"
+
+"Overwhelming," said Beatrice, "is the virtue with which nothing can
+compare. What thou hast seen is the Wisdom and the Power, by whom the
+path between heaven and earth has been laid open."[39]
+
+Dante's soul--like the fire which falls to earth out of the swollen
+thunder-cloud, instead of rising according to the wont of fire--had
+grown too great for his still mortal nature; and he could afterwards
+find within him no memory of what it did.
+
+"Open thine eyes," said Beatrice, "and see me now indeed. Thou hast
+beheld things that empower thee to sustain my smiling."
+
+Dante, while doing as he was desired, felt like one who has suddenly
+waked up from a dream, and endeavours in vain to recollect it.
+
+"Never," said he, "can that moment be erased from the book of the past.
+If all the tongues were granted me that were fed with the richest milk
+of Polyhymnia and her sisters, they could not express one thousandth
+part of the beauty of that divine smile, or of the thorough perfection
+which it made of the whole of her divine countenance."
+
+But Beatrice said, "Why dost thou so enamour thee of this face, and
+lose the sight of the beautiful guide, blossoming beneath the beams of
+Christ? Behold the rose, in which the Word was made flesh.[40] Behold
+the lilies, by whose odour the way of life is tracked."
+
+Dante looked, and gave battle to the sight with his weak eyes.[41]
+
+As flowers on a cloudy day in a meadow are suddenly lit up by a gleam of
+sunshine, he beheld multitudes of splendours effulgent with beaming rays
+that smote on them from above, though he could not discern the source of
+the effulgence. He had invoked the name of the Virgin when he looked;
+and the gracious fountain of the light had drawn itself higher up within
+the heaven, to accommodate the radiance to his faculties. He then beheld
+the Virgin herself bodily present,--her who is fairest now in heaven,
+as she was on earth; and while his eyes were being painted with her
+beauty,[42] there fell on a sudden a seraphic light from heaven, which,
+spinning into a circle as it came, formed a diadem round her head, still
+spinning, and warbling as it spun. The sweetest melody that ever drew
+the soul to it on earth would have seemed like the splitting of a
+thunder-cloud, compared with the music that sung around the head of that
+jewel of Paradise.[43]
+
+"I am Angelic Love," said the light, "and I spin for joy of the womb in
+which our Hope abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I thus attend
+thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his
+loving-kindness from sphere to sphere."
+
+All the other splendours now resounded the name of Mary. The Virgin
+began ascending to pursue the path of her Son; and Dante, unable to
+endure her beauty as it rose, turned his eyes to the angelical callers
+on the name of Mary, who remained yearning after her with their hands
+outstretched, as a babe yearns after the bosom withdrawn from his lips.
+Then rising after her themselves, they halted ere they went out of
+sight, and sung "O Queen of Heaven" so sweetly, that the delight never
+quitted the air.
+
+A flame now approached and thrice encircled Beatrice, singing all the
+while so divinely, that the poet could retain no idea expressive of its
+sweetness. Mortal imagination cannot unfold such wonder. It was Saint
+Peter, whom she had besought to come down from his higher sphere, in
+order to catechise and discourse with her companion on the subject of
+faith.
+
+The catechising and the discourse ensued, and were concluded by the
+Apostle's giving the poet the benediction, and encircling his forehead
+thrice with his holy light. "So well," says Dante, "was he pleased with
+my answers."[44]
+
+"If ever," continued the Florentine, "the sacred poem to which heaven
+and earth have set their hands, and which for years past has wasted my
+flesh in the writing, shall prevail against the cruelty that shut me out
+of the sweet fold in which I slept like a lamb, wishing harm to none but
+the wolves that beset it,--with another voice, and in another guise than
+now, will I return, a poet, and standing by the fount of my baptism,
+assume the crown that belongs to me; for I there first entered on the
+faith which gives souls to God; and for that faith did Peter thus
+encircle my forehead."[45]
+
+A flame enclosing Saint James now succeeded to that of Saint Peter, and
+after greeting his predecessor as doves greet one another, murmuring and
+moving round, proceeded to examine the mortal visitant on the subject
+of Hope. The examination was closed amidst resounding anthems of,"
+Let their hope be in thee;"[46] and a third apostolic flame ensued,
+enclosing Saint John, who completed the catechism with the topic of
+Charity. Dante acquitted himself with skill throughout; the spheres
+resounded with songs of "Holy, holy," Beatrice joining in the warble;
+and the poet suddenly found Adam beside him. The parent of the human
+race knew by intuition what his descendant wished to learn of him; and
+manifesting his assent before he spoke, as an animal sometimes does by
+movements and quiverings of the flesh within its coat, corresponding
+with its good-will,[47] told him, that his fall was not owing to the
+fruit which he tasted, but to the violation of the injunction not to
+taste it; that he remained in the Limbo on hell-borders upwards of five
+thousand years; and that the language he spoke had become obsolete
+before the days of Nimrod.
+
+The gentle fire of Saint Peter now began to assume an awful brightness,
+such as the planet Jupiter might assume, if Mars and it were birds,
+and exchanged the colour of their plumage.[48] Silence fell upon the
+celestial choristers; and the Apostle spoke thus:
+
+"Wonder not if thou seest me change colour. Thou wilt see, while I
+speak, all which is round about us colour in like manner. He who usurps
+my place on earth,--_my_ place, I say,--ay, _mine_,--which before God is
+now vacant,--has converted the city in which my dust lies buried into a
+common-sewer of filth and blood; so that the fiend who fell from hence
+rejoices himself down there."
+
+At these words of the Apostle the whole face of Heaven was covered with
+a blush, red as dawn or sunset; and Beatrice changed colour, like a
+maiden that shrinks in alarm from the report of blame in another. The
+eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the
+Cross.
+
+Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his
+appearance:
+
+"Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ
+fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,--the blood
+of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor
+Urban; men, for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They died that souls
+might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that
+the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom
+against the other; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the
+faithful; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying documents,
+which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm
+of God, why sleepest thou? Men out of Gascony and Cahors are even
+now making ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning, to what vile
+conclusion must thou come! But the high Providence, which made Scipio
+the sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the world, will fail not its
+timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing
+must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and
+hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself."
+
+As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the
+sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in
+the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apostle, as he turned with the
+other saints to depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they
+became viewless.[49]
+
+The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same
+instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or
+_Primum Mobile_, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of
+those beneath it.
+
+[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
+something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
+and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
+the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
+the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
+altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
+invective awful.
+
+Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of
+inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies.
+All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained
+many mysteries to him connected with that sight; and then vehemently
+denounced the false and foolish teachers that quit the authority of the
+Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the
+gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig.[50]
+
+Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face became so full
+of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to endeavour to speak of
+it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed
+by any save its Maker.[51] Her look carried him upward as before, and
+he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light;--of light made of
+intellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy; joy, transcendant
+above all sweetness.
+
+Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him,
+swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes
+against the blinded eyes; but the light was love here, and instead of
+injuring, gave new power to the object it embraced.
+
+With this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante
+looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours,
+and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest
+flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched
+themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile,
+like rubies set in gold; till inebriated with the odours, they recast
+themselves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as one returned,
+another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light,
+that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature; for the river,
+and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing
+flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which
+they included; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as
+without further assistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as
+they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an
+infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and his
+eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became
+a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him,
+like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined
+courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circumference larger
+than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was
+reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile
+below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's
+side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with
+all its verdure and its flowers; so, round about on all sides, upon
+thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat
+beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together
+formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which ascended above them,
+tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasurable rose,--all dilating
+itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises
+of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the
+flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew
+forward her companion, and said, "Behold the innumerable assemblage of
+the white garments! Behold our city, how large its circuit! Behold our
+seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comers are wanted to
+fill them! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, surmounted with
+the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal
+feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set
+Italy right before she is prepared for it.[52] The blind waywardness of
+which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of
+hunger, kicks away his nurse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot
+walk in the same path with such a man, whatever be the road.[53] But God
+will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon
+Magus; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of
+Alagna still lower.[54]"
+
+In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed multitude of human souls
+lay manifest before the eyes of the poet; and now he observed, that the
+winged portion of the blest, the angels, who fly up with their wings
+nearer to Him that fills them with love, came to and fro upon the rose
+like bees; now descending into its bosom, now streaming back to the
+source of their affection. Their faces were all fire, their wings
+golden, their garments whiter than snow. Whenever they descended on
+the flower, they went from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and
+communicating the peace and ardour which they gathered as they gave.
+Dante beheld all,--every flight and action of the whole winged
+multitude,--without let or shadow; for he stood in the region of light
+itself, and light has no obstacle where it is deservedly vouchsafed.
+
+"Oh," cries the poet, "if the barbarians that came from the north stood
+dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they
+saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who
+had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the
+people of Florence to beings just and sane?"
+
+Dante stood, without a wish either to speak or to hear. He felt like a
+pilgrim who has arrived within the place of his devotion, and who looks
+round about him, hoping some day to relate what he sees. He gazed
+upwards and downwards, and on every side round about, and saw movements
+graceful with every truth of innocence, and faces full of loving
+persuasion, rich in their own smiles and in the light of the smiles of
+others.
+
+He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone;--gone, as a messenger from
+herself told him, to resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the
+messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in the third circle from the
+top, as far from Dante as the bottom of the sea is from the region of
+thunder; and yet he saw her as plainly as if she had been close at hand.
+He addressed words to her of thanks for all she had done for him, and
+a hope for her assistance after death; and she looked down at him and
+smiled.
+
+The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade the poet lift his eyes higher;
+and Dante beheld the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in the centre
+of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels
+were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour
+and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and
+she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all
+the blessed.
+
+At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful--she that opened the wound
+which Mary closed; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice; and
+at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then
+Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the
+Miserere;[55] and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the
+flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived
+before Christ from those who lived after; a line which, on the opposite
+side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the
+Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was
+divided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and
+underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices,
+were the souls of such as were too young to have attained Heaven by
+assistance of good works.
+
+St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the Virgin, and
+gather from her countenance the power of beholding the face of Christ as
+God. Her aspect was flooded with gladness from the spirits around her;
+while the angel who had descended to her on earth now hailed her above
+with "Ave, Maria!" singing till the whole host of Heaven joined in
+the song. St. Bernard then prayed to her for help to his companion's
+eyesight. Beatrice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the
+prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the Virgin, after benignly
+looking on the petitioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the way with
+her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then looked also, and
+beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory to endure.
+
+He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever
+trickled to his heart.
+
+Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far
+vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey
+to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he
+saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose
+sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted,
+attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld,
+concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is
+diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the
+universe--all substance and accident and mode--all so compounded that
+they become one light. He thought he beheld at one and the same time
+the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies;
+because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the
+course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.
+
+But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he
+could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for
+completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain
+it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as
+short of right speech as the sounds of an infant's tongue while it is
+murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light,
+the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with
+the succession of the astonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear
+self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same
+breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does
+rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from
+both.[56]
+
+O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone
+understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so
+understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.
+
+The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted
+by its own colours with the likeness of a human face.[57]
+
+But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw
+his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician
+experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the
+principle by which he is to square it.
+
+He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed
+him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the
+discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire
+became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the
+particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the
+stars.[58]
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A curious and happy image.
+
+  "Tornan de' nostri visi le postille
+  Debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte
+  Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille:
+  Tali vid' io più facce a parlar pronte." ]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Rodolfo da Tossignano, _Hist. Seraph. Relig._ P. i. p.
+138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda:
+'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister,
+having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other
+abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried
+away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her
+religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her
+nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new
+husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity
+to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as
+to strike grief and horror into the beholders; and thus, in a few days,
+through the divine disposal, she passed with a palm of virginity to the
+Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to
+certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has chosen to pass it over
+discreetly, by making Piccarda say, 'God knows how, after that, my life
+was framed.'"--_Cary_, ut sup. p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 3: A lovely simile indeed.
+
+  "Tanto lieta
+  Ch' arder parea d'amor nel primo foco."
+
+[Footnote 4: Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken
+out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second.
+"She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting
+from Muratori and others); "and because it was not credited that she
+could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion; and it
+was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty to see her. Many
+came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased."--_Translation of Dante_, ut
+sup. p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings.]
+
+[Footnote 6:
+
+  "Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth
+  Superillustrans claritate tuâ
+  Felices ignes horum Malahoth."
+  _Malahoth_; Hebrew, _kingdoms_.]
+
+
+[Footnote 7: The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the
+nature of the inhabitants.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Charles Martel, son of the king of Naples and Sicily, and
+crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become acquainted with Dante
+during the poet's youth, when the prince met his royal father in the
+city of Florence. He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father,
+and who was the friend of Petrarch.
+
+"The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star," says
+Cary, "are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i. cap. 3,
+in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. viii. p. 173. She eloped from her
+first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello (see
+Purg. canto vi. and vii.); with whom she is supposed to have cohabited
+before her marriage: then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife
+was living at the same time in the same city; and, on his being murdered
+by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of
+Braganzo: lastly, when he also had fallen by the same hand, she, after
+her brother's death, was again wedded in Verona."--_Translation of
+Dante_, ut sup. p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in the _Discorso
+sul Testo_, p. 329.
+
+Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab,
+is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the
+Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being
+asked, during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the orthodox
+and heterodox were to be distinguished, he said, "Kill all: God will
+know his own."
+
+For Rahab, see _Joshua_, chap. ii. and vi.; and _Hebrews_. xi. 31]
+
+[Footnote 9: The reader need not be required to attend to the
+extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding
+passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology
+or the poet might have desired.]
+
+[Footnote 10: These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and
+schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no
+longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after
+them.
+
+Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every
+respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity
+of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church,
+Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many
+dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with
+voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much
+light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the
+old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our
+imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must
+be gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted
+enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the
+forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is
+more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all these dances and
+tinklings.]
+
+[Footnote 11:
+
+  "Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo."
+
+Cruel indeed;--the founder of the Inquisition! The "loving minion"
+is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of "_amoroso drudo_." But what a
+minion, and how loving! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of
+course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down
+other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia.
+So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent
+semi-barbarism in the character of Spain, which it has never got rid of
+to this day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern patriots, it
+would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even
+Lope de Vega was an inquisitor; and Mendoza, the entertaining author of
+Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cervantes, however, is enough to
+sweeten a whole peninsula.]
+
+[Footnote 12: What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility
+enough to apply it to himself!]
+
+[Footnote 13:
+
+  "O sanguis meus, o superinfusa
+  Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui
+  Bis unquam coeli janua reclusa?"
+
+The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet
+in "the obscurity of a learned language." And in truth it is a little
+strong.]
+
+[Footnote 14:
+
+  "Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso
+  Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo
+  De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso."
+
+That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more
+favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei
+essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)--_Variorum edition of
+Dante_, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times
+in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the
+original passage, with another version, in the Appendix.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of
+the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman,
+of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the
+co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who
+appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old
+commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate
+that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so,
+Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved
+Cæsar;--that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip
+of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks.]
+
+
+[Footnote 17:
+
+  "Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,
+  Più è tacer che ragionare onesto."
+
+Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the
+lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a
+boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general
+character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts
+(see the opening of canto xvi., Paradise, in the original), that while
+he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto
+xv. 73, &c.), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble
+condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity
+of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic,
+may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious
+specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours
+is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that
+Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a
+harbinger.
+
+All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on
+the Cross!]
+
+[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with
+argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old
+families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names,
+of which nothing else is recorded.]
+
+[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious
+popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue
+of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
+
+With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have
+first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to
+marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
+Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that
+he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his
+engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 20:
+
+  "Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
+  Più caramente; e questo e quello strale
+  Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
+
+  Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
+  Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle
+  Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
+
+  E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,
+  Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia
+  Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
+
+  Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
+  Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso
+  Ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.
+
+  Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
+  Farà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia bello
+  Averti fatta parte per te stesso."
+
+[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of
+Verona.]
+
+[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who
+had received Dante at his court.]
+
+[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paléo"]
+
+[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
+Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne,
+or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the
+former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin?)
+seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text
+brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante)
+might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second
+William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
+
+[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
+
+  "Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
+  De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia."
+
+In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the
+verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the
+beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats
+them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings
+against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my
+heart (like hers) contented.
+
+"_Boccaccio._--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of
+the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_
+quite enough without _che la sazia?_The picture is before us, the
+sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
+
+"_Petrarch._--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your
+remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as
+blemishes, and even more."--p. 92.
+
+Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety
+itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety.]
+
+[Footnote 30:
+
+  "E come a buon cantor buon citarista
+  Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda
+  In che più di piacer lo canto acquista;
+
+  Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda,
+  Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
+  Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
+
+  Con le parole muover le fiammette." ]
+
+[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
+and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a
+private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to
+Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age." Petrarch also makes honourable
+mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while
+in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem
+there.--_Lombardi in loc._ vol. III. p. 547.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat.]
+
+[Footnote 33: "Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle."]
+
+[Footnote 34:
+
+  "Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
+  E fero un grido di sì alto suono,
+  Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
+
+  Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono."
+
+  Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
+  And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
+  Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
+
+  Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
+
+If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage
+into his treatise on the Sublime.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.
+Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the
+Camaldoli.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage
+in Cowley
+
+  "Lo, I mount; and lo,
+  How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!
+  Where shall I find the noble British land?
+  Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
+  Which in the sea does lie,
+  And seems a grain o' the sand.
+  For this will any sin, or bleed?
+  Of civil wars is this the meed?
+  And is it this, alas, which we,
+  Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie?"
+
+And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very
+finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the
+Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--
+
+  "Where am I now? angels and God is here."
+
+All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full
+of grandeur and loveliness.]
+
+[Footnote 37:
+
+  "Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,
+  Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
+  La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
+
+  Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
+  E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
+  In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
+
+  Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,
+  E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
+  Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
+
+  Così la donna mia si stava eretta
+  E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
+  Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
+
+  Sì the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
+  Fecimi quale è quei che disiando
+  Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga." ]
+
+[Footnote 38:
+
+  "Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
+  Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
+  Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni."
+
+[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person.]
+
+[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary.]
+
+[Footnote 41:
+
+  "Mi rendei
+  A la battaglia de' debili cigli."]
+
+[Footnote 42:
+
+  "Ambo le luci mi dipinse."
+
+[Footnote 43:
+
+  "Qualunque melodia più dolce suona
+  Qua giù, e più a se l'anima tira,
+  Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
+
+  Comparata al sonar di quella lira
+  Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
+  Del quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira." ]
+
+  [Footnote 44:
+
+  "Benedicendomi cantando
+  Tre volte cinse me, sì com' io tacqui,
+  L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
+
+  Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui."
+
+It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to
+suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion
+which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his
+_Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
+of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_,
+12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by
+the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough
+to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he
+expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed
+to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of
+Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist!]
+
+[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the
+twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just
+given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
+
+  "Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
+  Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
+  Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
+
+  Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra
+  Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
+  Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
+
+  Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
+  Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
+  Del mio battesmo prenderò 'l capello:
+
+  Perocchè ne la fede che fa conte
+  L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
+  Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte." ]
+
+[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te." _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says,
+"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee."]
+
+[Footnote 47:
+
+  "Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
+  Sì che l' affetto convien che si paia
+  Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia."
+
+A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for
+the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in
+which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of
+doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian
+sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles
+to one's imagination.]
+
+[Footnote 48:
+
+  "Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
+  Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
+  Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne."
+
+Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical
+image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the
+tremendous passage that ensues!]
+
+[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
+something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
+and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
+the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
+the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
+altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
+invective awful.
+
+A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope
+would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the
+hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
+poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic?--I am afraid, all things considered,
+we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius
+the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine
+Church-hymns he would have written!]
+
+[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence!) that
+for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The
+preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings
+them into Heaven!]
+
+[Footnote 51:
+
+  "Certo io credo
+  Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda." ]
+
+[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the
+close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of
+restoration to his country were at an end.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now
+dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had
+prepared for him.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to
+thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle
+Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical!]
+
+[Footnote 55: David.]
+
+[Footnote 56: The Trinity.]
+
+[Footnote 57: The Incarnation.]
+
+[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p.
+845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe
+de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the
+curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of
+his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy
+augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention,
+however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations
+terminated.]
+
+
+
+PULCI:
+
+
+Critical Notice
+
+of
+
+PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.
+
+Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after
+Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after
+tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he
+seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety
+of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the
+absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be
+the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet
+of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a
+susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in
+earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most
+laughable sallies.
+
+Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble
+family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into
+Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of
+December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of
+a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo,
+the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and
+Lucca wrote a romance called the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, and is commended
+for his _Heroic Epistles_. Little else is known of these brothers; and
+not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the
+name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was
+one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary
+circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always
+meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens.
+Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little
+credit (Zilioli _On the Italian Poets_), and an earlier printed book,
+which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone _De
+Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinæ_), say that he died miserably in Padua,
+and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is
+not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici
+family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its
+troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their
+enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite
+allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their
+master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I
+have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible
+death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther,
+calling them both the greatest villains (_sceleratissimi_); and adding,
+that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his
+bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
+
+Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a
+ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical
+paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a
+Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good
+humour--sport to amuse their friends--a perilous speculation. Besides
+his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his
+brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems,
+and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, _La Beca_, in
+emulation of the charming poem _La Nencia_, the first of its kind,
+written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo,
+who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power
+of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs
+for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
+
+The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind.
+Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such
+differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the
+latter's youth, probably from his birth--is spoken of in a tone of
+domestic intimacy by his wife--and is enumerated by him among his
+companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on
+Hawking _(La Caccia col Falcone_), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen
+about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into
+a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a
+sonnet:
+
+"'Luigi Pulci ov' è, che non si sente?' 'Egli se n' andò dianzi in quel
+boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr à fantasticar
+forse un sonetto.'"
+
+"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw _him_." "Oh, in the wood there. Gone,
+depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain--some whim, That will
+not let him rest till it's a sonnet."
+
+In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his
+seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the
+courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down
+the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he
+says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make
+of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or
+other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here--he
+who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it." Such is the
+first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the
+sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial
+listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with
+the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by
+Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in
+somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della
+Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in
+turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in
+the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of
+Lorenzo.
+
+"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia,
+Che questa non è storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la
+via,
+
+Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la
+pazzia;
+
+Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi è infinita.
+
+La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei
+boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con
+lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E così fuggo mille
+urban dispetti: Sì ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur
+sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
+
+I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this
+side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that
+the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and
+contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such
+crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to
+know 'em.
+
+Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods
+and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me
+baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And
+thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew
+your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites."
+
+He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted
+by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the
+laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little
+troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
+
+Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his
+"refuge." The _Morgante Maggiore_, the work which has rendered the name
+of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely
+narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production
+that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points.
+The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which
+prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance
+of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome.
+The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then
+settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied
+with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think,
+and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the
+Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams
+to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity
+itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian
+theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect.
+Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to
+an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's
+friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise
+with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its
+liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in
+combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a
+mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the
+same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors;
+second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious
+dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of
+charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding;
+third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics,
+"sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly,
+a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended
+to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest
+at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he
+opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the
+piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix
+levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and
+the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his
+description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in
+all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question,
+as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind,
+which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi,
+who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if
+not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses
+himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his
+cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are
+constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner
+capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this
+monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo
+di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of
+profane derision." [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively
+and impassioned people of the south take what may be called
+household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than
+northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does
+not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as
+it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others,
+perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like
+some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is
+such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the
+representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest
+when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his
+own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to
+affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more
+acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to,
+ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more
+levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If
+Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well
+as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in
+something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation
+of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might
+explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse,
+if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever
+present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been
+interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening
+with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal
+seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards
+in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred
+invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the
+like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as
+gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the
+reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that
+ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout
+the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant
+officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the
+circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet
+perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest
+at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends,
+and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a
+captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling
+than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only
+warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.
+
+If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our
+author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by
+himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother,
+Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest woman, herself a poetess, who
+wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than
+once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. The _Morgante_
+concludes with an address respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with
+a hope that her "devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him
+in Paradise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that
+expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have
+had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his
+mother as to a jest?
+
+I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived,
+Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
+orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
+Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
+appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
+Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
+eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
+may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
+spheres." He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
+to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
+of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
+fellow-creature.
+
+Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
+pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
+appearance of Columbus.[3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
+Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
+rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
+aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
+of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
+doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
+adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
+Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
+the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
+stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
+bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
+hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
+Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
+persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
+him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
+Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
+ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
+screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
+
+Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
+regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
+style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
+and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
+eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
+point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
+and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
+disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
+render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
+this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
+of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
+Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci."[5] And all minds, in
+which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
+
+The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
+of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
+and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
+Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
+monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
+is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
+received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
+became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
+upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
+seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
+the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
+place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
+poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
+champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
+vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
+for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
+history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
+exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
+chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
+all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
+weak.[6]
+
+The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
+Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
+emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
+with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many
+adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins,
+his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more
+or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they
+assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne;
+and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most
+of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself
+and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's
+fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious;
+and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice
+better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a
+halter.
+
+There is, perhaps, no pure invention in the whole of this enlargement of
+old ballads and chronicles, except the characters of another giant, and
+of a rebel angel; for even Morgante's history, though told in a very
+different manner, has its prototype in the fictions of the pretended
+archbishop.[7] The Paladins are well distinguished from one another;
+Orlando as foremost alike in prowess and magnanimity, Rinaldo by his
+vehemence, Ricciardetto by his amours, Astolfo by an ostentatious
+rashness and self-committal; but in all these respects they appear to
+have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit
+any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular
+idiomatic phraseology; still less, though it has plenty of infernal
+magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring
+order, as in Ariosto; or with love-stories as good as Boiardo's, or even
+with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be
+found in both of those poets; albeit, in the fourteenth canto, there is
+a long _catalogue raisonné_ of the whole animal creation, which a lady
+has worked for Rinaldo on a pavilion of silk and gold.
+
+To these negative faults must be added the positive ones of too many
+trifling, unconnected, and uninteresting incidents (at least to readers
+who cannot taste the flavour of the racy Tuscan idiom); great occasional
+prolixity, even in the best as well as worst passages, not excepting
+Orlando's dying speeches; harshness in spite of his fluency (according
+to Foscolo), and even bad grammar; too many low or over-familiar forms
+of speech (so the graver critics allege, though, perhaps, from want of
+animal spirits or a more comprehensive discernment); and lastly (to say
+nothing of the question as to the gravity or levity of the theology),
+the strange exhibition of whole successive stanzas, containing as many
+questions or affirmations as lines, and commencing each line with the
+same words. They meet the eye like palisadoes, or a file of soldiers,
+and turn truth and pathos itself into a jest. They were most likely
+imitated from the popular ballads. The following is the order of words
+in which a young lady thinks fit to complain of a desert, into which she
+has been carried away by a giant. After seven initiatory O's addressed
+to her friends and to life in general, she changes the key into E:
+
+"E' questa, la mia patria dov' io nacqui? E' questo il mio palagio e 'l
+mio castello? E' questo il nido ov' alcun tempo giacqui? E' questo il
+padre e 'l mio dolce fratello? E' questo il popol dov' io tanto piacqui?
+E' questo il regno giusto antico e bello? E' questo il porto de la mia
+salute? E' questo il premio d' ogni mia virtute?
+
+Ove son or le mie purpuree veste? Ove son or le gemme e le ricchezze?
+Ove son or già le notturne feste? Ove son or le mie delicatezze? Ove son
+or le mie compagne oneste? Ove son or le fuggite dolcezze? Ove son or le
+damigelle mie? Ove son, dice? omè, non son già quie."[8]
+
+Is this the country, then, where I was born? Is this my palace, and my
+castle this? Is this the nest I woke in, every morn? Is this my father's
+and my brother's kiss? Is this the land they bred me to adorn? Is this
+the good old bower of all my bliss? Is this the haven of my youth and
+beauty? Is this the sure reward of all my duty?
+
+Where now are all my wardrobes and their treasures? Where now are all
+my riches and my rights? Where now are all the midnight feasts and
+measures? Where now are all the delicate delights? Where now are all the
+partners of my pleasures? Where now are all the sweets of sounds and
+sights? Where now are all my maidens ever near? Where, do I say? Alas,
+alas, not here!
+
+There are seven more "where nows," including lovers, and "proffered
+husbands," and "romances," and ending with the startling question and
+answer,--the counterpoint of the former close,--
+
+"Ove son l' aspre selve e i lupi adesso, E gli orsi, e i draghi, e i
+tigri? Son qui presso."
+
+Where now are all the woods and forests drear, Wolves, tigers, bears,
+and dragons? Alas, here!
+
+These are all very natural thoughts, and such, no doubt, as would
+actually pass through the mind of the young lady, in the candour of
+desolation; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them
+renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by
+the poor queen in the play of _Richard the Second_, when she overhears
+the discourse of the gardener:
+
+"My wretchedness _unto a roar of pins_, They'll talk of state."
+
+Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during
+the recital of these passages? Or did he flatter himself, that the
+comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be
+amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new
+one?[9]
+
+The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external
+nature, in the _Morgante_, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of
+heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost
+absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and
+delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion. The
+fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues
+it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to
+accept; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that "she
+wishes she could give him the sun;" and that if she were to say, after
+all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should
+be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is
+so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his
+lips. The way also in which another of these loving admirers of Paladins
+conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently
+hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with
+a ring and a graceful speech, is in a taste as high as any thing in
+Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their
+great successor.[10] Yet the tenderness of Pulci rather shews itself in
+the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little
+escapes of generous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great
+charms of the _Morgante_. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's
+encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he
+discovers a kinsman; and this goodness and relationship combined move
+the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who
+is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such
+a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without
+peril out of the clutches of a devil, he longs to go and set free the
+whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his
+affection for him. Rinaldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest
+till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part
+with him without manifesting a tenderness proportionate to their
+valour,--the old Homeric candour of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth
+himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he
+has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (_gentilezza_) even
+in hell; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, answers that he has no
+doubt of it, or of the capability of "friendship" in that quarter; and
+he says he is as "sorry to part with him as with a brother." The passage
+will be found in our abstract. There are no such devils as these in
+Dante; though Milton has something like them:
+
+  "Devil with devil damn'd
+  Firm concord holds: men only disagree."
+
+It is supposed that the character of Ashtaroth, which is a very new
+and extraordinary one, and does great honour to the daring goodness
+of Pulci's imagination, was not lost upon Milton, who was not only
+acquainted with the poem, but expressly intimates the pleasure he took
+in it.[11] Rinaldo advises this devil, as Burns did Lucifer, to "take a
+thought and mend." Ashtaroth, who had been a seraph, takes no notice of
+the advice, except with a waving of the recollection of happier times.
+He bids the hero farewell, and says he has only to summon him in order
+to receive his aid. This retention of a sense of his former angelical
+dignity has been noticed by Foscolo and Panizzi, the two best writers on
+these Italian poems.[12] A Calvinist would call the expression of the
+sympathy "hardened." A humanist knows it to be the result of a spirit
+exquisitely softened. An unbounded tenderness is the secret of all that
+is beautiful in the serious portion of our author's genius. Orlando's
+good-natured giant weeps even for the death of the scoundrel Margutte;
+and the awful hero himself, at whose death nature is convulsed and the
+heavens open, begs his dying horse to forgive him if ever he has wronged
+it.
+
+A charm of another sort in Pulci, and yet in most instances, perhaps,
+owing the best part of its charmingness to its being connected with the
+same feeling, is his wit. Foscolo, it is true, says it is, in general,
+more severe than refined; and it is perilous to differ with such a
+critic on such a point; for much of it, unfortunately, is lost to a
+foreign reader, in consequence of its dependance on the piquant old
+Tuscan idiom, and on popular sayings and allusions. Yet I should think
+it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some
+more agreeable quality; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most
+obvious to a foreigner may claim, if not to have originated, at least
+to have been very like the style of one who was among its declared
+admirers,--and who was a very polished writer,--Voltaire. It consists in
+treating an absurdity with an air as if it were none; or as if it had
+been a pure matter of course, erroneously mistaken for an absurdity.
+Thus the good abbot, whose monastery is blockaded by the giants (for the
+virtue and simplicity of his character must be borne in mind), after
+observing that the ancient fathers in the desert had not only locusts to
+eat, but manna, which he has no doubt was rained down on purpose from
+heaven, laments that the "relishes" provided for himself and his
+brethren should have consisted of "showers of stones." The stones, while
+the abbot is speaking, come thundering down, and he exclaims, "For God's
+sake, knight, come in, for the manna is falling!" This is exactly in the
+style of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. So when Margutte is asked
+what he believes in, and says he believes in "neither black nor blue,"
+but in a good capon, "whether roast or boiled," the reader is forcibly
+reminded of Voltaire's Traveller, _Scarmentado_, who, when he is desired
+by the Tartars to declare which of their two parties he is for, the
+party of the black-mutton or the white-mutton, answers, that the dish is
+"equally indifferent to him, provided it is tender." Voltaire, however,
+does injustice to Pulci, when he pretends that in matters of belief he
+is like himself,--a mere scoffer. The friend of Lucrezia Tornabuoni has
+evidently the tenderest veneration for all that is good and lovely in
+the Catholic faith; and whatever liberties he might have allowed himself
+in professed _extravaganzas_, when an age without Church-authority
+encouraged them, and a reverend canon could take part in those (it must
+be acknowledged) unseemly "high jinks," he never, in the _Morgante_,
+when speaking in his own person, and not in that of the worst
+characters, intimates disrespect towards any opinion which he did not
+hold to be irrelevant to a right faith. It is observable that his freest
+expressions are put in the mouth of the giant Margutte, the lowest
+of these characters, who is an invention of the author's, and a most
+extraordinary personage. He is the first unmitigated blackguard in
+fiction, and is the greatest as well as first. Pulci is conjectured,
+with great probability, to have designed him as a caricature of some
+real person; for Margutte is a Greek who, in point of morals, has been
+horribly brought up, and some of the Greek refugees in Italy were
+greatly disliked for the cynicism of their manners and the grossness of
+their lives. Margutte is a glutton, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and
+a blasphemer. He boasts of having every vice, and no virtue except
+fidelity; which is meant to reconcile Morgante to his company; but
+though the latter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives
+him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by
+the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The
+respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on
+what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs
+himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as
+though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt of
+a merely and grossly anti-serious mode of existence, and his
+consideration, nevertheless, towards the poor selfish wretch who had had
+no better training.
+
+To this wit and this pathos let the reader add a style of singular ease
+and fluency,--rhymes often the most unexpected, but never at a loss,--a
+purity of Tuscan acknowledged by every body, and ranking him among the
+authorities of the language,--and a modesty in speaking of his own
+pretensions equalled only by his enthusiastic extolments of genius in
+others; and the reader has before him the lively and affecting, hopeful,
+charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci, the precursor, and in some
+respects exemplar, of Ariosto, and, in Milton's opinion, a poet worth
+reading for the "good use" that may be made of him. It has been
+strangely supposed that his friend Politian, and Ficino the Platonist,
+not merely helped him with their books (as he takes a pride in telling
+us), but wrote a good deal of the latter part of the Morgante,
+particularly the speculations in matters of opinion. As if (to say
+nothing of the difference of style) a man of genius, however lively, did
+not go through the gravest reflections in the course of his life, or
+could not enter into any theological or metaphysical question, to which
+he chose to direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too
+often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy; and one
+fit of jaundice or hypochondria might have enabled the poet to see more
+visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps
+ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the
+disciple of Plato.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _Literature of the South of Europe_, Thomas Roscoe's
+Translation, vol. ii. p.54. For the opinions of other writers, here and
+elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him),
+_Storia della Poesia Italiana_, cap. v. sect. 25; Gravina, who is more
+so, _Della Ragion Poetica_ (quoted in Ginguéné, as below); Crescimbeni,
+_Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Poesia_, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3
+(Mathias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work,
+4to, Rome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was
+perhaps the "modestest sad most temperate writer" of his age ("il pin
+modesto e moderato"); Ginguéné, _Histoire Littéraire d'Italie_, tom. iv.
+p. 214; Foscolo, in the _Quarterly Review_, as further on; Panizzi on
+the _Romantic Poetry of the Italians_, ditto; Stebbing, _Lives of the
+Italian Poets_, second edition, vol, i.; and the first volume of _Lives
+of Literary and Scientific Men_, in _Lardner's Cyclopædia_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Canto xxv. The passage will be found in the present
+volume.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Id. And this also.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Canto xxvii. stanza 2.
+
+  "S' altro ajuto qui non si dimostra,
+  Sarà pur tragedía la istoria nostra.
+
+  Ed io pur commedía pensato avea
+  Iscriver del mio Carlo finalmente,
+  Ed _Alcuin_ così mi promettea," &c. ]
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+"In fine to adorerai l'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ma tu amerai il
+Pulci."--_Parn. Ital_. vol. ix. p. 344.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Ellis's _Specimens of Early English Poetical Romances_,
+vol. ii. p. 287; and Panizzi's _Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry
+of the Italians_; in his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p.
+113.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia_, &c. cap. xviii.
+p. 39 (Ciampi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferracutus, or
+Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had the strength of forty men,
+and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat
+with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which
+its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful
+beggings of the question; after which the giant stakes the credit of
+their respective beliefs on the event of their encounter.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Canto xix. st. 21.]
+
+[Footnote 9: When a proper name happens to be a part of the tautology,
+the look is still more extraordinary. Orlando is remonstrating with
+Rinaldo on his being unseasonably in love:
+
+  "Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gagliardia?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo sommo potere?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo senno di pria?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo antivedere?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua fantasia?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, l' arme e 'l tuo destriere?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gloria e fama?
+  Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo core? a la dama."
+
+Canto xvi. st. 50.
+
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy gagliardize?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy might indeed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy repute for wise?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy sagacious heed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy free-thoughted eyes?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy good arms and steed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy renown and glory?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, _thou?_--In a love-story.
+
+The incessant repetition of the names in the burdens of modern songs
+is hardly so bad as this. The single line questions and answers in the
+Greek drama were nothing to it. Yet there is a still more extraordinary
+play upon words in canto xxiii. st. 49, consisting of the description
+of a hermitage. It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the
+poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration
+mad with envy:--
+
+  "La _casa cosa_ parea _bretta_ e _brutta_,
+  _Vinta_ dal _vento_; e la _notta_ e la _notte_
+  _Stilla_ le _stelle_, ch' a _tetto_ era _tutto_:
+  Del _pane appena_ ne _dette_ ta' _dotte_.
+  _Pere_ avea _pure_, e qualche _fratta frutta_;
+  E _svina_ e _svena_ di _botto_ una _botte_
+  _Poscia_ per _pesci lasche_ prese a _l'esca_;
+  Ma il _letto allotta_ a la _frasca_ fu _fresca_."
+
+  This _holy hole_ was a vile _thin_-built _thing_,
+  _Blown_ by the _blast_; the _night nought_ else o'erhead
+  But _staring stars_ the _rude roof_ entering;
+  Their _sup_ of _supper_ was no _splendid spread_;
+  _Poor pears_ their fare, and such-_like libelling_
+  Of quantum suff;--their _butt_ all _but_;--_bad bread_;--
+  A _flash_ of _fish_ instead of _flush_ of _flesh_;
+  Their bed a _frisk al-fresco_, _freezing fresh_.
+
+Really, if Sir Philip Sidney and other serious and exquisite gentlemen
+had not sometimes taken a positively grave interest in the like pastimes
+of paronomasia, one should hardly conceive it possible to meet with
+them even in tragi-comedy. Did Pulci find these also in his
+ballad-authorities? If his Greek-loving critics made objections here,
+they had the advantage of him: unless indeed they too, in their
+Alexandrian predilections, had a sneaking regard for certain shapings
+of verse into altars and hatchets, such as have been charged upon
+Theocritus himself, and which might be supposed to warrant any other
+conceit on occasion.]
+
+[Footnote 10: See, in the original, the story of Meridiana, canto vii.
+King Manfredonio has come in loving hostility against her to endeavour
+to win her affection by his prowess. He finds her assisted by the
+Paladins, and engaged by her own heart to Uliviero; and in he despair of
+his discomfiture, expresses a wish to die by her hand. Meridiana, with
+graceful pity, begs his acceptance of a jewel, and recommends him to
+go home with his army; to which he grievingly consents. This indeed is
+beautiful; and perhaps I ought to have given an abstract of it, as a
+specimen of what Pulci could have done in this way, had he chosen.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "Perhaps it was from that same politic drift that the
+devil whipt St. Jerome in a lenten dream for reading Cicero; or else it
+was a fantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an
+angel been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon
+Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading and not the vanity, it had
+been plainly partial; first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not
+for scurrile Plautus, whom he confesses to have been reading not long
+before; next, to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers
+wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of such a
+tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may
+be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer;
+and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same
+purpose?"--_Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
+Printing_, Prose Works, folio, 1697, p. 378. I quote the passage
+as extracted by Mr. Merivale in the preface to his "Orlando in
+Roncesvalles,"--_Poems_, vol. ii. p. 41.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Ut sup. p. 222. Foscolo's remark is to be found in his
+admirable article on the _Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians_,
+in the _Quarterly Review_, vol. xxi. p. 525.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+HUMOURS OF GIANTS
+
+Twelve Paladins had the Emperor Charlemagne in his court; and the most
+wise and famous of them was Orlando. It is of him I am about to speak,
+and of his friend Morgante, and of Gan the traitor, who beguiled him to
+his death in Roncesvalles, where he sounded his horn so mightily after
+the dolorous rout.
+
+It was Easter, and Charles had all his court with him in Paris, making
+high feast and triumph. There was Orlando, the first among them, and
+Ogier the Dane, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Ansuigi; and there came
+Angiolin of Bayonne, and Uliviero, and the gentle Berlinghieri; and
+there was also Avolio and Avino, and Otho of Normandy, and Richard, and
+the wise Namo, and the aged Salamon, and Walter of Monlione, and Baldwin
+who was the son of the wretched Gan. The good emperor was too happy, and
+oftentimes fairly groaned for joy at seeing all his Paladins together.
+Now Morgante, the only surviving brother, had a palace made, after
+giant's fashion, of earth, and boughs, and shingles, in which he shut
+himself up at night. Orlando knocked, and disturbed him from his sleep,
+so that he came staring to the door like a madman, for he had had a
+bewildering dream.
+
+"Who knocks there?" quoth he.
+
+"You will know too soon," answered Orlando; "I am come to make you do
+penance for your sins, like your brothers. Divine Providence has sent me
+to avenge the wrongs of the monks upon the whole set of you. Doubt it
+not; for Passamonte and Alabastro are already as cold as a couple of
+pilasters.".
+
+"Noble knight," said Morgante, "do me no ill; but if you are a
+Christian, tell me in courtesy who you are."
+
+"I will satisfy you of my faith," replied Orlando; "I adore Christ; and
+if you please, you may adore him also."
+
+"I have had a strange vision," replied Morgante, with a low voice was
+assailed by a dreadful serpent, and called upon Mahomet in vain; then I
+called upon your God who was crucified, and he succoured me, and I was
+delivered from the serpent; so I am disposed to become a Christian."
+
+"If you keep in this mind," returned Orlando, "you shall worship the
+true God, and come with me and be my companion, and I will love you with
+perfect love. Your idols are false and vain; the true God is the God of
+the Christians. Deny the unjust and villanous worship of your Mahomet,
+and be baptised in the name of my God, who alone is worthy."
+
+"I am content," said Morgante.
+
+Then Orlando embraced him, and said, "I will lead you to the abbey."
+
+"Let us go quickly," replied Morgante, for he was impatient to make his
+peace with the monks.
+
+Orlando rejoiced, saying, "My good brother, and devout withal, you must
+ask pardon of the abbot; for God has enlightened you, and accepted you,
+and he would have you practise humility."
+
+"Yes," said Morgante, "thanks to you, your God shall henceforth be my
+God. Tell me your name, and afterwards dispose of me as you will." And
+he told him that he was Orlando.
+
+But Fortune stands watching in secret to baffle our designs. While
+Charles was thus hugging himself with delight, Orlando governed every
+thing at court, and this made Gan burst with envy; so that he began one
+day talking with Charles after the following manner--"Are we always to
+have Orlando for our master? I have thought of speaking to you about it
+a thousand times. Orlando has a great deal too much presumption. Here
+are we, counts, dukes, and kings, at your service, but not at his; and
+we have resolved not to be governed any longer by one so much younger
+than ourselves. You began in Aspramont to give him to understand how
+valiant he was, and that he did great things at that fountain; whereas,
+if it had not been for the good Gerard, I know very well where the
+victory would have been. The truth is, he has an eye upon the crown.
+This, Charles, is the worthy who has deserved so much! All your generals
+are afflicted at it. As for me, I shall repass those mountains over
+which I came to you with seventy-two counts. Do you take him for a
+Mars?"
+
+Orlando happened to hear these words as he sat apart, and it displeased
+him with the lord of Pontiers that he should speak so, but much more
+that Charles should believe him. He would have killed Gan, if Uliviero
+had not prevented him and taken his sword out of his hand; nay, he would
+have killed Charlemagne; but at last he went from Paris by himself,
+raging with scorn and grief. He borrowed, as he went, of Ermillina
+the wife of Ogier, the Dane's sword Cortana and his horse Rondel, and
+proceeded on his way to Brava. His wife, Alda the Fair, hastened to
+embrace him; but while she was saying, "Welcome, my Orlando," he was
+going to strike her with his sword, for his head was bewildered, and he
+took her for the traitor. The fair Alda marvelled greatly, but Orlando
+recollected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped from
+his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested himself with her
+for some days.
+
+He then took his leave, being still carried away by his disdain, and
+resolved to pass over into Heathendom; and as he rode, he thought, every
+step of the way, of the traitor Gan; and so, riding on wherever the road
+took him, he reached the confines between the Christian countries and
+the Pagan, and came upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert.
+
+Now above the abbey was a great mountain, inhabited by three fierce
+giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, another Alabastro, and the
+third Morgante; and these giants used to disturb the abbey by throwing
+things down upon it from the mountain with slings, so that the poor
+little monks could not go out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked,
+but nobody would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot
+came himself, and opening the door bade him welcome. The good man told
+him the reason of the delay, and said that since the arrival of the
+giants they had been so perplexed that they did not know what to do.
+"Our ancient fathers in the desert," quoth he, "were rewarded according
+to their holiness. It is not to be supposed that they lived only upon
+locusts; doubtless, it also rained manna upon them from heaven; but
+here one is regaled with stones, which the giants pour on us from the
+mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest of the
+three, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great trees by the roots, and
+casts them on us." While they were talking thus in the cemetery, there
+came a stone which seemed as if it would break Rondel's back.
+
+"For God's sake, cavalier," said the abbot, "come in, for the manna is
+falling."
+
+"My dear abbot," answered Orlando, "this fellow, methinks, does not wish
+to let my horse feed; he wants to cure him of being restive; the stone
+seems as if it came from a good arm." "Yes," replied the holy father,
+"I did not deceive you. I think, some day or other, they will cast the
+mountain itself on us."
+
+Orlando quieted his horse, and then sat down to a meal; after which he
+said, "Abbot, I must go and return the present that has been made to my
+horse." The abbot with great tenderness endeavoured to dissuade him, but
+in vain; upon which he crossed him on the forehead, and said, "Go, then;
+and the blessing of God be with you."
+
+Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing
+him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would
+stay with him for a page, promising to make him comfortable. "Stupid
+Saracen," said Orlando, "I come to you, according to the will of God, to
+be your death, and not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants
+here, and are no longer to be endured, dog that you are!"
+
+The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to his weapons;
+and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, which struck him
+on the head with such force, as not only made his helmet ring again, but
+felled him to the earth. Passamonte thought he was dead. "What could
+have brought that paltry fellow here?" said he, as he turned away. But
+Christ never forsakes his followers. While Passamonte was going away,
+Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, "How now, giant? do you fancy you
+have killed me? Turn back, for unless you have wings, your escape is
+out of the question, dog of a renegade!" The giant, greatly marvelling,
+turned back; and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cortana
+naked in his hand, cleft his skull; upon which, cursing Mahomet, the
+monster tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blaspheming fell
+the sour-hearted and cruel wretch; but Orlando, in the mean while,
+thanked the Father and the Word.
+
+The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant; who, when
+he saw him, endeavoured to pluck up a great piece of stony earth by the
+roots. "Ho, ho!" cried Orlando, "you too are for throwing stones,
+are you?" Then Alabastro took his sling, and flung at him so large a
+fragment as forced Orlando to defend himself, for if it had struck him,
+he would no more have needed a surgeon;[1] but collecting his strength,
+he thrust his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell
+dead.
+
+"Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, "for I have always heard you
+called a perfect knight; and as I said, I will follow you all my life
+long."
+
+And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey; and by the way
+Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort
+him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our
+Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we
+must submit to the will of God. The doctors of our Church," continued
+he, "are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in heaven were to
+feel pity for their miserable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion
+in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing; and this, you see, would
+plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of their
+faith, that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do what he
+may, they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible for him to
+err; so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering everlasting
+punishment, it does not disturb them an atom. This is the custom, I
+assure you, in the choirs above."[2]
+
+"A word to the wise," said Morgante; "you shall see if I grieve for my
+brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God, and behave
+myself like an angel. So dust to dust; and now let us enjoy ourselves. I
+will cut off their hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy
+monks, that they may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out
+alone into the desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has
+purified me, and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom
+of heaven." So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, and
+left their bodies to the beasts and birds.
+
+They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Orlando in great
+anxiety; but the monks not knowing what had happened, ran to the abbot
+in great haste and alarm, saying, "Will you suffer this giant to come
+in?" And when the abbot saw the giant, he changed countenance. Orlando,
+perceiving him thus disturbed, made haste and said, "Abbot, peace be
+with you! The giant is a Christian; he believes in Christ, and has
+renounced his false prophet, Mahomet." And Morgante shewing the hands in
+proof of his faith, the abbot thanked Heaven with great contentment of
+mind.
+
+The abbot did much honour to Morgante, comparing him with St. Paul; and
+they rested there many days. One day, wandering over the house, they
+entered a room where the abbot kept a quantity of armour; and Morgante
+saw a bow which pleased him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in
+the place a great scarcity of water; and Orlando said, like his good
+brother, "Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water." "Command me
+as you please," said he; and placing a great tub on his shoulders, he
+went towards a spring at which he had been accustomed to drink, at the
+foot of the mountain. Having reached the spring, he suddenly heard a
+great noise in the forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it
+in the bow, and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing
+towards the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean
+through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in revenge, ran
+towards the giant, without giving him time to use a second arrow; so he
+lent him a cuff on the head which broke the bone, and killed him also;
+which stroke the rest seeing fled in haste through the valley. Morgante
+then placed the tub full of water upon one of his shoulders, and the
+two porkers on the other, and returned to the abbey which was at some
+distance, without spilling a drop.
+
+The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still more the
+pork; for there is no animal to whom food comes amiss. They let their
+breviaries therefore go to sleep a while, and fell heartily to work, so
+that the cats and dogs had reason to lament the polish of the bones.
+
+"But why do we stay here doing nothing?" said Orlando one day to
+Morgante; and he shook hands with the abbot, and told him he must take
+his leave. "I must go," said he, "and make up for lost time. I ought to
+have gone long ago, my good father; but I cannot tell you what I feel
+within me, at the content I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall
+bear in mind and in heart with me for ever the abbot, the abbey, and
+this desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a
+time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for me, in his
+own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do not forget us in your
+prayers."
+
+When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, his heart melted
+within him for tenderness, and he said, "Knight, if we have failed in
+any courtesy due to your prowess and great gentleness (and indeed what
+we have done has been but little), pray put it to the account of our
+ignorance, and of the place which we inhabit. We are but poor men of
+the cloister, better able to regale you with masses and orisons and
+paternosters, than with dinners and suppers. You have so taken this
+heart of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I
+shall be with you still wherever you go; and, on the other hand, you
+will always be present here with me. This seems a contradiction; but you
+are wise, and will take my meaning discreetly. You have saved the very
+life and spirit within us; for so much perplexity had those giants cast
+about our place, that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May
+He who sent you into these woods reward the justice and piety by which
+we are delivered from our trouble. Thanks be to him and to you. We shall
+all be disconsolate at your departure. We shall grieve that we cannot
+detain you among us for months and years; but you do not wear these
+weeds; you bear arms and armour; and you may possibly merit as well in
+carrying those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your
+virtue has been the means of shewing the giant the way to heaven. Go in
+peace then, and prosper, whoever you may be. I do not seek your name;
+but if ever I am asked who it was that came among us, I shall say that
+it was an angel from God. If there is any armour or other thing that you
+would have, go into the room where it is, and take it."
+
+"If you have any armour that would suit my companion," replied Orlando,
+"that I will accept with pleasure."
+
+"Come and see," said the abbot; and they went to a room that was full of
+armour. Morgante looked all about, but could find nothing large enough,
+except a rusty breast-plate, which fitted him marvellously. It had
+belonged to an enormous giant, who was killed there of old by Orlando's
+father, Milo of Angrante. There was a painting on the wall which told
+the whole story: how the giant had laid cruel and long siege to the
+abbey; and how he had been overthrown at last by the great Milo. Orlando
+seeing this, said within himself: "O God, unto whom all things are
+known, how came Milo here, who destroyed this giant?" And reading
+certain inscriptions which were there, he could no longer keep a firm
+countenance, but the tears ran down his cheeks.
+
+When the abbot saw Orlando weep, and his brow redden, and the light of
+his eyes become child-like for sweetness, he asked him the reason; but,
+finding him still dumb with emotion, he said, "I do not know whether you
+are overpowered by admiration of what is painted in this chamber. You
+must know that I am of high descent, though not through lawful wedlock.
+I believe I may say I am nephew or sister's son to no less a man than
+that Rinaldo, who was so great a Paladin in the world, though my own
+father was not of a lawful mother. Ansuigi was his name; my own, out in
+the world, was Chiaramonte; and this Milo was my father's brother. Ah,
+gentle baron, for blessed Jesus' sake, tell me what name is yours!"
+
+Orlando, all glowing with affection, and bathed in tears, replied, "My
+dear abbot and cousin, he before you is your Orlando." Upon this, they
+ran for tenderness into each other's arms, weeping on both sides with
+a sovereign affection, too high to be expressed. The abbot was so
+over-joyed, that he seemed as if he would never have done embracing
+Orlando. "By what fortune," said the knight, "do I find you in this
+obscure place? Tell me, my dear abbot, how was it you became a monk, and
+did not follow arms, like myself and the rest of us?"
+
+"It is the will of God," replied the abbot, hastening to give his
+feelings utterance. "Many and divers are the paths he points out for us
+by which to arrive at his city; some walk it with the sword--some with
+pastoral staff. Nature makes the inclination different, and therefore
+there are different ways for us to take: enough if we all arrive safely
+at one and the same place, the last as well as the first. We are all
+pilgrims through many kingdoms. We all wish to go to Rome, Orlando;
+but we go picking out our journey through different roads. Such is the
+trouble in body and soul brought upon us by that sin of the old apple.
+Day and night am I here with my book in hand--day and night do you ride
+about, holding your sword, and sweating oft both in sun and shadow; and
+all to get round at last to the home from which we departed--I say, all
+out of anxiety and hope to get back to our home of old." And the giant
+hearing them talk of these things, shed tears also.
+
+The Paladin and the giant quitted the abbey, the one on horseback and
+the other on foot, and journeyed through the desert till they came to
+a magnificent castle, the door of which stood open. They entered, and
+found rooms furnished in the most splendid manner--beds covered with
+cloth of gold, and floors rejoicing in variegated marbles. There was
+even a feast prepared in the saloon, but nobody to eat it, or to speak
+to them.
+
+Orlando suspected some trap, and did not quite like it; but Morgante
+thought nothing worth considering but the feast. "Who cares for the
+host," said he, "when there's such a dinner? Let us eat as much as we
+can, and bear off the rest. I always do that when I have the picking of
+castles."
+
+They accordingly sat down, and being very hungry with their day's
+journey, devoured heaps of the good things before them, eating with all
+the vigour of health, and drinking to a pitch of weakness.[3] They sat
+late in this manner enjoying themselves, and then retired for the night
+into rich beds.
+
+But what was their astonishment in the morning at finding that they
+could not get out of the place! There was no door. All the entrances had
+vanished, even to any feasible window.
+
+"We must be dreaming," said Orlando.
+
+"My dinner was no dream, I'll swear," said the giant. "As for the rest,
+let it be a dream if it pleases."
+
+Continuing to search up and down, they at length found a vault with
+a tomb in it; and out of the tomb came a voice, saying, "You must
+encounter with me, or stay here for ever. Lift, therefore, the stone
+that covers me."
+
+"Do you hear that?" said Morgante; "I'll have him out, if it's the devil
+himself. Perhaps it's two devils, Filthy-dog and Foul-mouth, or Itching
+and Evil-tail."[4]
+
+"Have him out," said Orlando, "whoever he is, even were it as many
+devils as were rained out of heaven into the centre."
+
+Morgante lifted up the stone, and out leaped, surely enough, a devil in
+the likeness of a dried-up dead body, black as a coal. Orlando seized
+him, and the devil grappled with Orlando. Morgante was for joining him,
+but the Paladin bade him keep back. It was a hard struggle, and
+the devil grinned and laughed, till the giant, who was a master of
+wrestling, could bear it no longer: so he doubled him up, and, in spite
+of all his efforts, thrust him back into the tomb.
+
+"You'll never get out," said the devil, "if you leave me shut up."
+
+"Why not?" inquired the Paladin.
+
+"Because your giant's baptism and my deliverance must go together,"
+answered the devil. "If he is not baptised, you can have no deliverance;
+and if I am not delivered, I can prevent it still, take my word for it."
+
+Orlando baptised the giant. The two companions then issued forth,
+and hearing a mighty noise in the house, looked back, and saw it all
+vanished.
+
+"I could find it in my heart," said Morgante, "to go down to those same
+regions below, and make all the devils disappear in like manner. Why
+shouldn't we do it? We'd set free all the poor souls there. Egad, I'd
+cut off Minos's tail--I'd pull out Charon's beard by the roots--make a
+sop of Phlegyas, and a sup of Phlegethon--unseat Pluto,--kill Cerberus
+and the Furies with a punch of the face a-piece--and set Beelzebub
+scampering like a dromedary."
+
+"You might find more trouble than you wot of," quoth Orlando, "and get
+worsted besides. Better keep the straight path, than thrust your head
+into out-of-the-way places."
+
+Morgante took his lord's advice, and went straightforward with him
+through many great adventures, helping him with loving good-will as
+often as he was permitted, sometimes as his pioneer, and sometimes as
+his finisher of troublesome work, such as a slaughter of some thousands
+of infidels. Now he chucked a spy into a river--now felled a rude
+ambassador to the earth (for he didn't stand upon ceremony)--now cleared
+a space round him in battle with the clapper of an old bell which he had
+found at the monastery--now doubled up a king in his tent, and bore him
+away, tent and all, and a Paladin with him, because he would not let the
+Paladin go.
+
+In the course of these services, the giant was left to take care of a
+lady, and lost his master for a time; but the office being at an end, he
+set out to rejoin him, and, arriving at a cross-road, met with a very
+extraordinary personage.
+
+This was a giant huger than himself, swarthy-faced, horrible, brutish.
+He came out of a wood, and appeared to be journeying somewhere.
+Morgante, who had the great bell-clapper in his hand above-mentioned,
+struck it on the ground with astonishment, as much as to say, "Who the
+devil is this?" and then set himself on a stone by the way-side to
+observe the creature.
+
+"What's your name, traveller?" said Morgante, as it came up.
+
+"My name's Margutte," said the phenomenon. "I intended to be a giant
+myself, but altered my mind, you see, and stopped half-way; so that I am
+only twenty feet or so."
+
+"I'm glad to see you," quoth his brother-giant. "But tell me, are you
+Christian or Saracen? Do you believe in Christ or in _Apollo_?"
+
+"To tell you the truth," said the other, "I believe neither in black
+nor blue, but in a good capon, whether it be roast or boiled. I
+believe sometimes also in butter, and, when I can get it, in new wine,
+particularly the rough sort; but, above all, I believe in wine that's
+good and old. Mahomet's prohibition of it is all moonshine. I am the
+son, you must know, of a Greek nun and a Turkish bishop; and the first
+thing I learned was to play the fiddle. I used to sing Homer to it.
+I was then concerned in a brawl in a mosque, in which the old bishop
+somehow happened to be killed; so I tied a sword to my side, and went to
+seek my fortune, accompanied by all the possible sins of Turk and Greek.
+People talk of the seven deadly sins; but I have seventy-seven that
+never quit me, summer or winter; by which you may judge of the amount
+of my venial ones. I am a gambler, a cheat, a ruffian, a highwayman, a
+pick-pocket, a glutton (at beef or blows); have no shame whatever; love
+to let every body know what I can do; lie, besides, about what I can't
+do; have a particular attachment to sacrilege; swallow perjuries like
+figs; never give a farthing to any body, but beg of every body, and
+abuse them into the bargain; look upon not spilling a drop of liquor as
+the chief of all the cardinal virtues; but must own I am not much given
+to assassination, murder being inconvenient; and one thing I am bound to
+acknowledge, which is, that I never betrayed a messmate."
+
+"That's as well," observed Morgante; "because you see, as you don't
+believe in any thing else, I'd have you believe in this bell-clapper of
+mine. So now, as you have been candid with me, and I am well instructed
+in your ways, we'll pursue our journey together."
+
+The best of giants, in those days, were not scrupulous in their modes of
+living; so that one of the best and one of the worst got on pretty well
+together, emptying the larders on the road, and paying nothing but
+douses on the chops. When they could find no inn, they hunted elephants
+and crocodiles. Morgante, who was the braver of the two, delighted to
+banter, and sometimes to cheat, Margutte; and he ate up all the fare;
+which made the other, notwithstanding the credit he gave himself for
+readiness of wit and tongue, cut a very sorry figure, and seriously
+remonstrate: "I reverence you," said Margutte, "in other matters; but in
+eating, you really don't behave well. He who deprives me of my share at
+meals is no friend; at every mouthful of which he robs me, I seem to
+lose an eye. I'm for sharing every thing to a nicety, even if it be no
+better than a fig."
+
+"You are a fine fellow," said Morgante; "you gain upon me very much. You
+are 'the master of those who know.'"[6]
+
+So saying, he made him put some wood on the fire, and perform a hundred
+other offices to render every thing snug; and then he slept: and next
+day he cheated his great scoundrelly companion at drink, as he had
+done the day before at meat; and the poor shabby devil complained; and
+Morgante laughed till he was ready to burst, and again and again always
+cheated him.
+
+There was a levity, nevertheless, in Margutte, which restored his
+spirits on the slightest glimpse of good fortune; and if he realised a
+hearty meal, he became the happiest, beastliest, and most confident of
+giants. The companions, in the course of their journey, delivered a
+damsel from the clutches of three other giants. She was the daughter of
+a great lord; and when she got home, she did honour to Morgante as to
+an equal, and put Margutte into the kitchen, where he was in a state of
+bliss. He did nothing but swill, stuff, surfeit, be sick, play at dice,
+cheat, filch, go to sleep, guzzle again, laugh, chatter, and tell a
+thousand lies.
+
+Morgante took leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents.
+Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and impudent, daubed his
+face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in
+his hand, demanded "something for the cook." The fair hostess gave him
+a jewel; and the vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it
+with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that
+when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the
+earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had disgraced
+him for ever.
+
+"Softly!" said the brute-beast. "Didn't you take me with you, knowing
+what sort of fellow I was? Didn't I tell you I had every sin and shame
+under heaven; and have I deceived you by the exhibition of a single
+virtue?"
+
+Morgante could not help laughing at a candour of this excessive nature.
+So they went on their way till they came to a wood, where they rested
+themselves by a fountain, and Margutte fell fast asleep. He had a pair
+of boots on, which Morgante felt tempted to draw off, that he might see
+what he would do on waking. He accordingly did so, and threw them to a
+little distance among the bushes. The sleeper awoke in good time,
+and, looking and searching round about, suddenly burst into roars of
+laughter. A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off,
+making the most ridiculous gestures. The monkey busied himself, and the
+light-minded drunkard laughed; and at every fresh gesticulation of the
+new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at
+length it was found impossible to be restrained. The glutton had a
+laughing-fit. In vain he tried to stop himself; in vain his fingers
+would have loosened the buttons of his doublet, to give his lungs room
+to play. They couldn't do it; so he laughed and roared till he burst.
+The snap was like the splitting of a cannon. Morgante ran up to him, but
+it was of no use. He was dead.
+
+Alas! it was not the only death; it was not even the most trivial cause
+of a death. Giants are big fellows, but Death's a bigger, though he may
+come in a little shape. Morgante had succeeded in joining his master.
+He helped him to take Babylon; he killed a whale for him at sea that
+obstructed his passage; he played the part of a main-sail during a
+storm, holding out his arms and a great hide; but on coming to shore,
+a crab bit him in the heel; and behold the lot of the great giant--he
+died! He laughed, and thought it a very little thing, but it proved a
+mighty one.
+
+"He made the East tremble," said Orlando; "and the bite of a crab has
+slain him!"
+
+O life of ours, weak, and a fallacy![7]
+
+Orlando embalmed his huge friend, and had him taken to Babylon, and
+honourably interred; and, after many an adventure, in which he regretted
+him, his own days were closed by a far baser, though not so petty a
+cause.
+
+How shall I speak of it? exclaims the poet. How think of the horrible
+slaughter about to fall on the Christians and their greatest men, so
+that not a dry eye shall be left in France? How express my disgust at
+the traitor Gan, whose heart a thousand pardons from his sovereign, and
+the most undeserved rescues of him by the warrior he betrayed, could not
+shame or soften? How mourn the weakness of Charles, always deceived by
+him, and always trusting? How dare to present to my mind the good,
+the great, the ever-generous Orlando, brought by the traitor into the
+doleful pass of Roncesvalles and the hands of myriads of his enemies, so
+that even his superhuman strength availed not to deliver him out of the
+slaughterhouse, and he blew the blast with his dying breath, which was
+the mightiest, the farthest heard, and the most melancholy sound that
+ever came to the ears of the undeceived?
+
+Gan was known well to every body but his confiding sovereign. The
+Paladins knew him well; and in their moments of indignant disgust often
+told him so, though they spared him the consequences of his misdeeds,
+and even incurred the most frightful perils to deliver him out of the
+hands of his enemies. But he was brave; he was in favour with the
+sovereign, who was also their kinsman; and they were loyal and loving
+men, and knew that the wretch envied them for the greatness of their
+achievements, and might do the state a mischief; so they allowed
+themselves to take a kind of scornful pleasure in putting up with him.
+Their cousin Malagigi, the enchanter, had himself assisted Gan, though
+he knew him best of all, and had prophesied that the innumerable
+endeavours of his envy to destroy his king and country would bring some
+terrible evil at last to all Chistendom. The evil, alas! is at hand. The
+doleful time has come. It will be followed, it is true, by a worse fate
+of the wretch himself; but not till the valleys of the Pyrenees have run
+rivers of blood, and all France is in mourning.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A common pleasantry in the old romances--"Galaor went in,
+and then the halberders attacked him on one side, and the knight on the
+other. He snatched an axe from one, and turned to the knight and smote
+him, so that he had no need of a surgeon."--Southey's _Amadis of Gaul_,
+vol. i. p. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 2:
+
+  "Sonsi i nostri dottori accordati,
+  Pigliando tutti una conclusione,
+  Che que' che son nel ciel glorificati,
+  S' avessin nel pensier compassione
+  De' miseri parenti che dannati
+  Son ne lo inferno in gran confusione,
+  La lor felicità nulla sarebbe
+  E vedi the qui ingiusto Iddio parebbe.
+
+  Ma egli anno posto in Gesù ferma spene;
+  E tanto pare a lor, quanto a lui pare:
+  Afferman cio ch' e' fu, che facci bene,
+  E che non possi in nessun modo errare:
+  Se padre o madre è ne l'eterne pene,
+  Di questo non si posson conturbare:
+  Che quel che piace a Dio, sol piace a loro
+  Questo s'osserva ne l'eterno core.
+
+  Al savio suol bastar poche parole,
+  Disse Morgante: tu il potrai vedere,
+  De' miei fratelli, Orlando, se mi duole,
+  E s'io m'accordero di Dio al volere,
+  Come tu di che in ciel servar si suole:
+  Morti co' morti; or pensiam di godere:
+  Io vo' tagliar le mani a tutti quanti,
+  E porterolle a que' monaci santi."
+
+This doctrine, which is horrible blasphemy in the eyes of natural
+feeling, is good reasoning in Catholic and Calvinistic theology.
+They first make the Deity's actions a necessity from some barbarous
+assumption, then square them according to a dictum of the Councils, then
+compliment him by laying all that he has made good and kindly within us
+mangled and mad at his feet. Meantime they think themselves qualified to
+denounce Moloch and Jugghanaut!]
+
+[Footnote 3:
+
+  "E furno al here infermi, al mangiar sani."
+
+I am not sure that I am right in my construction of this passage.
+Perhaps Pulci means to say, that they had the appetites of men in
+health, and the thirst of a fever.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Cagnazzo, Farfarello. Libicocco, and Malacoda; names of
+devils in Dante.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Il maestro di color che sanno." A jocose application of
+Dante's praise of Aristotle.]
+
+[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace!"]
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
+
+Notice.
+
+This is the
+
+  "sad and fearful story
+  Of the Roncesvalles fight;"
+
+an event which national and religious exaggeration impressed deeply on
+the popular mind of Europe. Hence Italian romances and Spanish ballads:
+hence the famous passage in Milton,
+
+  "When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
+  By Fontarabbia:"
+
+hence Dante's record of the _dolorosa rotta_ (dolorous rout) in the
+_Inferno_, where he compares the voice of Nimrod with the horn sounded
+by the dying Orlando: hence the peasant in Cervantes, who is met by Don
+Quixote singing the battle as he comes along the road in the morning:
+and hence the song of Roland actually thundered forth by the army of
+William the Conqueror as they advanced against the English.
+
+But Charlemagne did not "fall," as Milton has stated. Nor does Pulci
+make him do so. In this respect, if in little else, the Italian poet
+adhered to the fact. The whole story is a remarkable instance of what
+can be done by poetry and popularity towards misrepresenting and
+aggrandising a petty though striking adventure. The simple fact was the
+cutting off the rear of Charlemagne's army by the revolted Gascons, as
+he returned from a successful expedition into Spain. Two or three only
+of his nobles perished, among whom was his nephew Roland, the obscure
+warden of his marches of Brittany. But Charlemagne was the temporal head
+of Christendom; the poets constituted his nephew its champion; and hence
+all the glories and superhuman exploits of the Orlando of Pulci and
+Ariosto. The whole assumption of the wickedness of the Saracens,
+particularly of the then Saracen king of Spain, whom Pulci's authority,
+the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, strangely called Marsilius, was nothing
+but a pious fraud; the pretended Marsilius having been no less a person
+than the great and good Abdoùlrahmaùn the First, who wrested the
+dominion of that country out of the hands of the usurpers of his
+family-rights. Yet so potent and long-lived are the most extravagant
+fictions, when genius has put its heart into them, that to this day we
+read of the devoted Orlando and his friends not only with gravity, but
+with the liveliest emotion.
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
+
+A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died
+in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses. Altogether
+impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of
+this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, than
+melancholy; but though Gan will die at last, Orlando must die
+before him, and that makes a tragedy of all. I had a doubt whether,
+consistently with the truth, I could give the reader even that sorry
+satisfaction; for at the beginning of the dreadful battle, Orlando's
+cousin, Rinaldo, who is said to have joined it before it was over, and
+there, as well as afterwards, to have avenged his death, was far away
+from the seat of slaughter, in Egypt; and how was I to suppose that he
+could arrive soon enough in the valleys of the Pyrenees? But an angel
+upon earth shewed me the secret, even Angelo Poliziano, the glory of his
+age and country. He informed me how Arnauld, the Provençal poet, had
+written of this very matter, and brought the Paladin from Egypt to
+France by means of the wonderful skill in occult science possessed by
+his cousin Malagigi--a wonder to the ignorant, but not so marvellous to
+those who know that all the creation is full of wonders, and who have
+different modes of relating the same events. By and by, a great many
+things will be done in the world, of which we have no conception now,
+and people will be inclined to believe them works of the devil, when, in
+fact, they will be very good works, and contribute to angelical effects,
+whether the devil be forced to have a hand in them or not; for evil
+itself can work only in subordination to good. So listen when the
+astonishment comes, and reflect and think the best. Meantime, we must
+speak of another and more truly devilish astonishment, and of the pangs
+of mortal flesh and blood.
+
+The traitor Gan, for the fiftieth time, had secretly brought the
+infidels from all quarters against his friend and master, the Emperor
+Charles; and Charles, by the help of Orlando, had conquered them all.
+The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court
+of France tribute; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited
+in this particular instance, and his known villany at all times, had
+succeeded in persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador
+into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting
+the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando.
+Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too; but the one
+was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes. The
+traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying
+him to write if he had any thing to say before the arrangements with
+Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his
+villany was manifest to every one but the old monarch. He fastened with
+equal tenderness on Uliviero, who smiled contemptuously in his face, and
+thought to himself, "You may make as many fair speeches as you choose,
+but you lie." All the other Paladins who were present thought the same
+and they said as much to the emperor; adding, that on no account should
+Gan be sent ambassador to Marsilius. But Charles was infatuated. His
+beard and his credulity had grown old together.
+
+Gan was received with great honour in Spain by Marsilius. The king,
+attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Saragossa to meet him,
+and then conducted him into the city amid tumults of delight. There
+was nothing for several days but balls, and games, and exhibitions
+of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French
+knights, and the people shouting "France! France! Mountjoy and St.
+Denis!"
+
+Gan made a speech, "like a Demosthenes," to King Marsilius in public;
+but he made him another in private, like nobody but himself. The king
+and he were sitting in a garden; they were traitors both, and began
+to understand, from one another's looks, that the real object of the
+ambassador was yet to be discussed. Marsilius accordingly assumed a more
+than usually cheerful and confidential aspect; and, taking his visitor
+by the hand, said, "You know the proverb, Mr. Ambassador--'At dawn, the
+mountain; afternoon, the fountain.' Different things at different hours.
+So here is a fountain to accommodate us."
+
+It was a very beautiful fountain, so clear that you saw your face in
+it as in a mirror; and the spot was encircled with fruit-trees that
+quivered with the fresh air. Gan praised it very much, contriving to
+insinuate, on one subject, his satisfaction with the glimpses he
+got into another. Marsilius understood him; and as he resumed the
+conversation, and gradually encouraged a mutual disclosure of their
+thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was enabled to
+do so by contemplating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its
+expression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime,
+saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan. By degrees, he began to touch
+on that dissatisfaction with Charlemagne and his court, which he knew
+was in both their minds: he lamented, not as to the ambassador, but as
+to the friend, the injuries which he said he had received from Charles
+in the repeated attacks on his dominions, and the emperor's wish to
+crown Orlando king of them; till at length he plainly uttered his
+belief, that if that tremendous Paladin were but dead, good men would
+get their rights, and his visitor and himself have all things at their
+disposal.
+
+Gan heaved a sigh, as if he was unwillingly compelled to allow the force
+of what the king said; but, unable to contain himself long, he lifted up
+his face, radiant with triumphant wickedness, and exclaimed, "Every word
+you utter is truth. Die he must; and die also must Uliviero, who struck
+me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like
+those? I have planned every thing--I have settled every thing already
+with their besotted master. Orlando could not be expected to be brought
+hither, where he has been accustomed to look for a crown; but he will
+come to the Spanish borders--to Roncesvalles--for the purpose of
+receiving the tribute. Charles will await him, at no great distance, in
+St. John Pied de Port. Orlando will bring but a small band with him;
+you, when you meet him, will have secretly your whole army at your back.
+You surround him; and who receives tribute then?"
+
+The new Judas had scarcely uttered these words, when the delight of him
+and his associate was interrupted by a change in the face of nature.
+The sky was suddenly overcast; it thundered and lightened; a laurel was
+split in two from head to foot; the fountain ran into burning blood;
+there was an earthquake, and the carob-tree under which Gan was sitting,
+and which was of the species on which Judas Iscariot hung himself,
+dropped some of its fruit on his head. The hair of the head rose in
+horror.
+
+Marsilius, as well as Gan, was appalled at this omen; but on assembling
+his soothsayers, they came to the conclusion that the laurel-tree turned
+the omen against the emperor, the successor of the Cæsars; though one
+of them renewed the consternation of Gan, by saying that he did not
+understand the meaning of the tree of Judas, and intimating that perhaps
+the ambassador could explain it. Gan relieved his consternation with
+anger; the habit of wickedness prevailed over all considerations; and
+the king prepared to march for Roncesvalles at the head of all his
+forces.
+
+Gan wrote to Charlemagne, to say how humbly and properly Marsilius was
+coming to pay the tribute into the hands of Orlando, and how handsome it
+would be of the emperor to meet him halfway, as agreed upon, at St. John
+Pied de Port, and so be ready to receive him, after the payment, at
+his footstool. He added a brilliant account of the tribute and its
+accompanying presents. They included a crown in the shape of a garland
+which had a carbuncle in it that gave light in darkness; two lions of
+an "immeasurable length, and aspects that frightened every body;" some
+"lively buffalos," leopards, crocodiles, and giraffes; arms and armour
+of all sorts; and apes and monkeys seated among the rich merchandise
+that loaded the backs of the camels. This imaginary treasure contained,
+furthermore, two enchanted spirits, called "Floro and Faresse," who were
+confined in a mirror, and were to tell the emperor wonderful things,
+particularly Floro (for there is nothing so nice in its details as
+lying): and Orlando was to have heaps of caravans full of Eastern
+wealth, and a hundred white horses, all with saddles and bridles of
+gold. There was a beautiful vest, too, for Uliviero, all over jewels,
+worth ten thousand "seraffi," or more.
+
+The good emperor wrote in turn to say how pleased he was with the
+ambassador's diligence, and that matters were arranged precisely as
+he wished. His court, however, had its suspicions still. Nobody could
+believe that Gan had not some new mischief in contemplation. Little,
+nevertheless, did they imagine, after the base endeavours he had but
+lately made against them, that he had immediately plotted a new
+and greater one, and that his object in bringing Charles into the
+neighbourhood of Roncesvalles was to deliver him more speedily into the
+hands of Marsilius, in the event of the latter's destruction of Orlando.
+
+Orlando, however, did as his lord and sovereign desired. He went to
+Roncesvalles, accompanied by a moderate train of warriors, not dreaming
+of the atrocity that awaited him. Gan himself, meantime, had hastened on
+to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in
+the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while
+Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of
+Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on
+the Paladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers.
+He had also, by Gan's advice, brought heaps of wine and good cheer to
+be set before his victims in the first instance; "for that," said the
+traitor, "will render the onset the more effective, the feasters being
+unarmed; and, supposing prodigies of valour to await even the attack of
+your second army, you will have no trouble with your third. One thing,
+however, I must not forget," added he; "my son Baldwin is sure to be
+with Orlando; you must take care of his life for my sake." "I give him
+this vest off my own body," said the king; "let him wear it in the
+battle, and have no fear. My soldiers shall be directed not to touch
+him."
+
+Gan went away rejoicing to France. He embraced the court and his
+sovereign all round, with the air of a man who had brought them nothing
+but blessings; and the old king wept for very tenderness and delight.
+
+"Something is going on wrong, and looks very black," thought Malagigi,
+the good wizard; "and Rinaldo is not here, and it is indispensably
+necessary that he should be. I must find out where he is, and
+Ricciardetto too, and send for them with all speed, and at any price."
+Malagigi called up, by his art, a wise, terrible, and cruel spirit,
+named Ashtaroth;--no light personage to deal with--no little spirit,
+such as plays tricks with you like a fairy. A much blacker visitant was
+this.
+
+"Tell me, and tell me truly of Rinaldo," said Malagigi to the spirit.
+
+Hard looked the demon at the Paladin, and said nothing. His aspect was
+clouded and violent. He wished to see whether his summoner retained all
+the force of his art.
+
+The enchanter, with an aspect still cloudier, bade Ashtaroth lay down
+that look. While giving this order, he also made signs indicative of a
+disposition to resort to angrier compulsion; and the devil, apprehending
+that he would confine him in some hateful place, loosened his tongue,
+and said, "You have not told me what you desire to know of Rinaldo."
+
+"I desire to know what he has been doing, and where he is," returned the
+enchanter.
+
+"He has been conquering and baptising the world, east and west," said
+the demon, "and is now in Egypt with Ricciardetto."
+
+"And what has Gan been plotting with Marsilius," inquired Malagigi, "and
+what is to come of it?"
+
+"On neither of those points can I enlighten you," said the devil. "I was
+not attending to Gan at the time, and we fallen spirits know not the
+future. Had we done so, we had not been so willing to incur the danger
+of falling. All I discern is, that, by the signs and comets in the
+heavens, something dreadful is about to happen--something very strange,
+treacherous, and bloody; and that Gan has a seat ready prepared for him
+in hell."
+
+"Within three days," cried the enchanter, loudly, "fetch Rinaldo
+and Ricciardetto into the pass of Roncesvalles. Do it, and I hereby
+undertake never to summon thee more."
+
+"Suppose they will not trust themselves with me," said the spirit.
+
+"Enter Rinaldo's horse, and bring him, whether he trust thee or not."
+
+"It shall be done," returned the demon; "and my serving-devil
+Foul-Mouth, or Fire-Red, shall enter the horse of Ricciardetto. Doubt it
+not. Am I not wise, and thyself powerful?"
+
+There was an earthquake, and Ashtaroth disappeared.
+
+Marsilius has now made his first movement towards the destruction of
+Orlando, by sending before him his vassal-king Blanchardin with his
+presents of wines and other luxuries. The temperate but courteous hero
+took them in good part, and distributed them as the traitor wished; and
+then Blanchardin, on pretence of going forward to salute Charlemagne
+at St. John Pied de Port, returned and put himself at the head of the
+second army, which was the post assigned him by his liege lord. The
+device on his flag was an "Apollo" on a field azure. King Falseron,
+whose son Orlando had slain in battle, headed the first army, the device
+of which was a black figure of the devil Belphegor on a dapple-grey
+field. The third army was under King Balugante, and had for ensign a
+Mahomet with golden wings in a field of red. Marsilius made a speech to
+them at night, in which he confessed his ill faith, but defended it on
+the ground of Charles's hatred of their religion, and of the example
+of "Judith and Holofernes." He said, that he had not come there to pay
+tribute, and sell his countrymen for slaves, but to make all Christendom
+pay tribute to them as conquerors; and he concluded by recommending to
+their good-will the son of his friend Gan, whom they would know by the
+vest he had sent him, and who was the only soul among the Christians
+they were to spare.
+
+This son of Gan, meantime, and several of the Paladins who were
+disgusted with Charles's credulity, and anxious at all events to be with
+Orlando, had joined the hero in the fated valley; so that the little
+Christian host, considering the tremendous valour of their lord and his
+friends, and the comparative inefficiency of that of the infidels,
+were at any rate not to be sold for nothing. Rinaldo, alas! the second
+thunderbolt of Christendom, was destined not to be there in time to save
+their lives. He could only avenge the dreadful tragedy, and prevent
+still worse consequences to the whole Christian court and empire.
+The Paladins had in vain begged Orlando to be on his guard against
+treachery, and send for a more numerous body of men. The great heart of
+the Champion of the Faith was unwilling to think the worst as long as
+he could help it. He refused to summon aid that might be superfluous;
+neither would he do any thing but what his liege lord had desired. And
+yet he could not wholly repress a misgiving. A shadow had fallen on his
+heart, great and cheerful as it was. The anticipations of his friends
+disturbed him, in spite of the face with which he met them. I am not
+sure that he did not, by a certain instinctive foresight, expect death
+itself; but he felt bound not to encourage the impression. Besides, time
+pressed; the moment of the looked-for tribute was at hand; and little
+combinations of circumstances determine often the greatest events.
+
+King Blanchardin had brought Orlando's people a luxurious supper; King
+Marsilius was to arrive early next day with the tribute; and Uliviero
+accordingly, with the morning sun, rode forth to reconnoitre, and see
+if he could discover the peaceful pomp of the Spanish court in the
+distance. Guottibuoffi was with him, a warrior who had expected the very
+worst, and repeatedly implored Orlando to believe it possible. Uliviero
+and he rode up the mountain nearest them, and from the top of it beheld
+the first army of Marsilius already forming in the passes.
+
+"O Guottibuoffi!" exclaimed he, "behold thy prophecies come true! behold
+the last day of the glory of Charles! Every where I see the arms of the
+traitors around us. I feel Paris tremble all the way through France, to
+the ground beneath my feet. O Malagigi, too much in the right wert thou!
+O devil Gan, this then is the consummation of thy good offices!"
+
+Uliviero put spurs to his horse, and galloped back down the mountain to
+Orlando.
+
+"Well," cried the hero, "what news?"
+
+"Bad news," said his cousin; "such as you would not hear of yesterday.
+Marsilius is here in arms, and all the world has come with him."
+
+The Paladins pressed round Orlando, and entreated him to sound his horn,
+in token that he needed help. His only answer was, to mount his horse,
+and ride up the mountain with Sansonetto.
+
+As soon, however, as he cast forth his eyes and beheld what was round
+about him, he turned in sorrow, and looked down into Roncesvalles, and
+said, "O valley, miserable indeed! the blood that is shed in thee this
+day will colour thy name for ever."
+
+Many of the Paladins had ridden after him, and they again pressed him to
+sound his horn, if only in pity to his own people. He said, "If Cæsar
+and Alexander were here, Scipio and Hannibal, and Nebuchadnezzar with
+all his flags, and Death stared me in the face with his knife in his
+hand, never would I sound my horn for the baseness of fear."
+
+Orlando's little camp were furious against the Saracens. They armed
+themselves with the greatest impatience. There was nothing but lacing
+of helmets and mounting of horses; and good Archbishop Turpin went
+from rank to rank, exhorting and encouraging the warriors of Christ.
+Accoutrements and habiliments were put on the wrong way; words and
+deeds mixed in confusion; men running against one another out of very
+absorption in themselves; all the place full of cries of "Arm! arm! the
+enemy!" and the trumpets clanged over all against the mountain-echoes.
+
+Orlando and his captains withdrew for a moment to consultation. He
+fairly groaned for sorrow, and at first had not a word to say; so
+wretched he felt at having brought his people to die in Roncesvalles.
+
+Uliviero spoke first. He could not resist the opportunity of comforting
+himself a little in his despair, with referring to his unheeded advice.
+
+"You see, cousin," said he, "what has come at last. Would to God you had
+attended to what I said; to what Malagigi said; to what we all said! I
+told you Marsilius was nothing but an anointed scoundrel. Yet forsooth,
+he was to bring us tribute! and Charles is this moment expecting his
+mummeries at St. John Pied de Port! Did ever any body believe a word
+that Gan said, but Charles? And now you see this rotten fruit has come
+to a head;--this medlar has got its crown."
+
+Orlando said nothing in answer to Uliviero; for in truth he had nothing
+to say. He broke away to give orders to the camp; bade them take
+refreshment; and then addressing both officers and men, he said, "I
+confess, that if it had entered my heart to conceive the king of Spain
+to be such a villain, never would you have seen this day. He has
+exchanged with me a thousand courtesies and good words; and I thought
+that the worse enemies we had been before, the better friends we had
+become now. I fancied every human being capable of this kind of virtue
+on a good opportunity, saving, indeed, such base-hearted wretches as can
+never forgive their very forgivers; and of these I certainly did not
+suppose him to be one. Let us die, if we must die, like honest and
+gallant men; so that it shall be said of us, it was only our bodies that
+died. It becomes our souls to be invincible, and our glory immortal.
+Our motto must be, 'A good heart and no hope.' The reason why I did not
+sound the horn was, partly because I thought it did not become us, and
+partly because our liege lord could be of little use, even if he heard
+it. Let Gan have his glut of us like a carrion crow; but let him find
+us under heaps of his Saracens, an example for all time. Heaven, my
+friends, is with us, if earth is against us. Methinks I see it open
+this moment, ready to receive our souls amidst crowns of glory; and
+therefore, as the champion of God's church, I give you my benediction;
+and the good archbishop here will absolve you; and so, please God, we
+shall all go to Heaven and be happy."
+
+And with these words Orlando sprang to his horse, crying, "Away against
+the Saracens!" but he had no sooner turned his face than he wept
+bitterly, and said, "O holy Virgin, think not of me, the sinner Orlando,
+but have pity on these thy servants."
+
+Archbishop Turpin did as Orlando said, giving the whole band his
+benediction at once, and absolving them from their sins, so that every
+body took comfort in the thought of dying for Christ, and thus they
+embraced one another, weeping; and then lance was put to thigh, and the
+banner was raised that was won in the jousting at Aspramont.
+
+And now with a mighty dust, and an infinite sound of horns, and
+tambours, and trumpets, which came filling the valley, the first army
+of the infidels made its appearance, horses neighing, and a thousand
+pennons flying in the air. King Falseron led them on, saying to his
+officers, "Now, gentlemen, recollect what I said. The first battle is
+for the leaders only;--and, above all, let nobody dare to lay a finger
+on Orlando. He belongs to myself. The revenge of my son's death is mine.
+I will cut the man down that comes between us."
+
+"Now, friends," said Orlando, "every man for himself, and St. Michael
+for us all. There is no one here that is not a perfect knight."
+
+And he might well say it; for the flower of all France was there, except
+Rinaldo and Ricciardetto; every man a picked man; all friends and
+constant companions of Orlando. There was Richard of Normandy, and
+Guottibuoffi, and Uliviero, and Count Anselm, and Avolio, and Avino, and
+the gentle Berlinghieri, and his brother, and Sansonetto, and the good
+Duke Egibard, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Angiolin of Bayona, and
+all the other Paladins of France, excepting those two whom I have
+mentioned. And so the captains of the little troop and of the great
+array sat looking at one another, and singling one another out, as the
+latter came on; and then either side began raising their war-cries, and
+the mob of the infidels halted, and the knights put spear in rest, and
+ran for a while, two and two in succession, each one against the other.
+
+Astolfo was the first to move. He ran against Arlotto of Soria; and
+Angiolin then ran against Malducco; and Mazzarigi the Renegade came
+against Avino; and Uliviero was borne forth by his horse Rondel, who
+couldn't stand still, against Malprimo, the first of the captains of
+Falseron.
+
+And now lances began to be painted red, without any brush but
+themselves; and the new colour extended itself to the bucklers, and the
+cuishes, and the cuirasses, and the trappings of the steeds.
+
+Astolfo thrust his antagonist's body out of the saddle, and his soul
+into the other world; and Angiolin gave and took a terrible blow with
+Malducco; but his horse bore him onward; and Avino had something of the
+like encounter with Mazzarigi; but Uliviero, though he received a thrust
+which hurt him, sent his lance right through the heart of Malprimo.
+
+Falseron was daunted at this blow. "Verily," thought he, "this is a
+miracle." Uliviero did not press on among the Saracens, his wound was
+too painful; but Orlando now put himself and his whole band into motion,
+and you may guess what an uproar ensued. The sound of the rattling of
+the blows and helmets was as if the forge of Vulcan had been thrown
+open. Falseron beheld Orlando coming so furiously, that he thought him a
+Lucifer who had burst his chain, and was quite of another mind than when
+he proposed to have him all to himself. On the contrary, he recommended
+himself to his gods; and turning away, begged for a more auspicious
+season of revenge. But Orlando hailed and arrested him with a terrible
+voice, saying, "O thou traitor! Was this the end to which old quarrels
+were made up? Dost thou not blush, thou and thy fellow-traitor
+Marsilius, to have kissed me on the cheek like a Judas, when last thou
+wert in France?"
+
+Orlando had never shewn such anger in his countenance as he did that
+day. He dashed at Falseron with a fury so swift, and at the same time
+a mastery of his lance so marvellous, that though he plunged it in the
+man's body so as instantly to kill him, the body did not move in the
+saddle. The hero himself, as he rushed onwards, was fain to see the end
+of a stroke so perfect, and, turning his horse back, he touched the
+carcass with his sword, and it fell on the instant. They say, that it
+had no sooner fallen than it disappeared. People got off their horses
+to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being
+left; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found as empty as
+the shell that is cast by a lobster. O new, and strange, and portentous
+event!--proof manifest of the anger with which God regards treachery.
+
+When the first infidel army beheld their leader dead, such fear fell
+upon them, that they were for leaving the field to the Paladins; but
+they were unable. Marsilius had drawn the rest of his forces round the
+valley like a net, so that their shoulders were turned in vain. Orlando
+rode into the thick of them, with Count Anselm by his side. He rushed
+like a tempest; and wherever he went, thunderbolts fell upon helmets.
+The Paladins drove here and there after them, each making a whirlwind
+round about him, and a bloody circle. Uliviero was again in the _mêlée_;
+and Walter of Amulion threw himself into it; and Baldwin roared like
+a lion; and Avino and Avolio reaped the wretches' heads like a
+turnip-field; and blows blinded men's eyes; and Archbishop Turpin
+himself had changed his crozier for a lance, and chased a new flock
+before him to the mountains.
+
+Yet what could be done against foes without number? Multitudes fill
+up the spaces left by the dead without stopping. Marsilius, from his
+anxious and raging post, constantly pours them in. The Paladins are as
+units to thousands. Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto?
+
+The horses did not tarry; but fate had been quicker than enchantment.
+Ashtaroth, nevertheless, had presented himself to Rinaldo in Egypt, as
+though he had issued out of a flash of lightning. After telling his
+mission, and giving orders to hundreds of invisible spirits round about
+him (for the air was full of them), he and Foul-Mouth, his servant,
+entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh and
+snort and leap with the fiends within them, till off they flew through
+the air over the pyramids, crowds of spirits going like a tempest before
+them. Ricciardetto shut his eyes at first, on perceiving himself so high
+in the air; but he speedily became used to it, though he looked down
+on the sun at last. In this manner they passed the desert, and the
+sea-coast, and the ocean, and swept the tops of the Pyrenees, Ashtaroth
+talking to them of wonders by the way; for he was one of the wisest of
+the devils, and knew a great many things which were then unknown to man.
+He laughed, for instance, as they went over sea, at the notion, among
+other vain fancies, that nothing was to be found beyond the pillars of
+Hercules; "for," said he, "the earth is round, and the sea has an even
+surface all over it; and there are nations on the other side of the
+globe, who walk with their feet opposed to yours, and worship other gods
+than the Christians."
+
+"Hah!" said Rinaldo; "and may I ask whether they can be saved?"
+
+"It is a bold thing to ask," said the devil; "but do you take the
+Redeemer for a partisan, and fancy he died for you only? Be assured he
+died for the whole world, Antipodes and all. Perhaps not one soul will
+be left out the pale of salvation at last, but the whole human race
+adore the truth, and find mercy. The Christian is the only true
+religion; but Heaven loves all goodness that believes honestly,
+whatsoever the belief may be."
+
+Rinaldo was mightily taken with the humanity of the devil's opinions:
+but they were now approaching the end of their journey, and began to
+hear the noise of the battle; and he could no longer think of any thing
+but the delight of being near Orlando, and plunging into the middle of
+it.
+
+"You shall be in the very heart of it instantly," said his bearer.
+"I love you, and would fain do all you desire. Do not fancy that all
+nobleness of spirit is lost among us people below. You know what the
+proverb says, 'There's never a fruit, however degenerate, but will taste
+of its stock.' I was of a different order of beings once, and--But it is
+as well not to talk of happy times. Yonder is Marsilius; and there goes
+Orlando. Farewell, and give me a place in your memory."
+
+Rinaldo could not find words to express his sense of the devil's
+good-will, nor of that of Foul Mouth himself. He said: "Ashtaroth, I am
+as sorry to part with you as if you were a brother; and I certainly do
+believe that nobleness of spirit exists, as you say, among your people
+below. I shall be glad to see you both sometimes, if you can come; and I
+pray God (if my poor prayer be worth any thing) that you may all repent,
+and obtain his pardon; for without repentance, you know, nothing can be
+done for you."
+
+"If I might suggest a favour," returned Ashtaroth, "since you are so
+good as to wish to do me one, persuade Malagigi to free me from his
+service, and I am yours for ever. To serve you will be a pleasure to me.
+You will only have to say, 'Ashtaroth,' and my good friend here will be
+with you in an instant."
+
+"I am obliged to you," cried Rinaldo, "and so is my brother. I will
+write Malagigi, not merely a letter, but a whole packet-full of your
+praises; and so I will to Orlando; and you shall be set free, depend on
+it, your company has been so perfectly agreeable."
+
+"Your humble servant," said Ashtaroth, and vanished with his companion
+like lightning.
+
+But they did not go far.
+
+There was a little chapel by the road-side in Roncesvalles, which had
+a couple of bells; and on the top of that chapel did the devils place
+themselves, in order that they might catch the souls of the infidels as
+they died, and so carry them off to the infernal regions. Guess if their
+wings had plenty to do that day! Guess if Minos and Rhadamanthus were
+busy, and Charon sung in his boat, and Lucifer hugged himself for joy.
+Guess, also, if the tables in heaven groaned with nectar and ambrosia,
+and good old St. Peter had a dry hair in his beard.
+
+The two Paladins, on their horses, dropped right into the middle of the
+Saracens, and began making such havoc about them, that Marsilius, who
+overlooked the fight from a mountain, thought his soldiers had turned
+one against the other. He therefore descended in fury with his third
+army; and Rinaldo, seeing him coming, said to Ricciardetto, "We had
+better be off here, and join Orlando;" and with these words, he gave his
+horse one turn round before he retreated, so as to enable his sword to
+make a bloody circle about him; and stories say, that he sheared off
+twenty heads in the whirl of it. He then dashed through the astonished
+beholders towards the battle of Orlando, who guessed it could be no
+other than his cousin, and almost dropped from his horse, out of desire
+to meet him. Ricciardetto followed Rinaldo; and Uliviero coming up at
+the same moment, the rapture of the whole party is not to be expressed.
+They almost died for joy. After a thousand embraces, and questions, and
+explanations, and expressions of astonishment (for the infidels held
+aloof awhile, to take breath from the horror and mischief they had
+undergone), Orlando refreshed his little band of heroes, and then drew
+Rinaldo apart, and said, "O my brother, I feel such delight at seeing
+you, I can hardly persuade myself I am not dreaming. Heaven be praised
+for it. I have no other wish on earth, now that I see you before I die.
+Why didn't you write? But never mind. Here you are, and I shall not die
+for nothing."
+
+"I did write," said Rinaldo, "and so did Ricciardetto; but villany
+intercepted our letters. Tell me what to do, my dear cousin; for time
+presses, and all the world is upon us."
+
+"Gan has brought us here," said Orlando, "under pretence of receiving
+tribute from Marsilius--you see of what sort; and Charles, poor old man,
+is waiting to receive his homage at the town of St. John! I have never
+seen a lucky day since you left us. I believe I have done for Charles
+more than in duty bound, and that my sins pursue me, and I and mine must
+all perish in Roncesvalles."
+
+"Look to Marsilius," exclaimed Rinaldo; "he is right upon us."
+
+Marsilius was upon them, surely enough, at once furious and frightened
+at the coming of the new Paladins; for his camp, numerous as it was, had
+not only held aloof, but turned about to fly like herds before the lion;
+so he was forced to drive them back, and bring up his other troops,
+reasonably thinking that such numbers must overwhelm at last, if they
+could but be kept together.
+
+Not the less, however, for this, did the Paladins continue to fight as
+if with joy. They killed and trampled wheresoever they went; Rinaldo
+fatiguing himself with sending infinite numbers of souls to Ashtaroth,
+and Orlando making a bloody passage towards Marsilius, whom he hoped to
+settle as he had done Falseron.
+
+In the course of this his tremendous progress, the hero struck a youth
+on the head, whose helmet was so good as to resist the blow, but at the
+same time flew off; and Orlando seized him by the hair to kill him.
+"Hold!" cried the youth, as loud as want of breath could let him; "you
+loved my father--I'm Bujaforte."
+
+The Paladin had never seen Bujaforte; but he saw the likeness to the
+good old Man of the Mountain, his father; and he let go the youth's
+hair, and embraced and kissed him. "O Bujaforte!" said he; "I loved him
+indeed my good old man; but what does his son do here, fighting against
+his friend?"
+
+Bujaforte was a long time before he could speak for weeping. At length
+he said, "Orlando, let not your noble heart be pained with ill thoughts
+of my father's son. I am forced to be here by my lord and master
+Marsilius. I had no friend left me in the world, and he took me into his
+court, and has brought me here before I knew what it was for; and I have
+made a shew of fighting, but have not hurt a single Christian. Treachery
+is on every side of you. Baldwin himself has a vest given him by
+Marsilius, that every body may know the son of his friend Gan, and do
+him no injury. See there--look how the lances avoid him."
+
+"Put your helmet on again," said Orlando, "and behave just as you have
+done. Never will your father's friend be an enemy to the son. Only take
+care not to come across Rinaldo."
+
+The hero then turned in fury to look for Baldwin, who was hastening
+towards him at that moment with friendliness in his looks.
+
+"'Tis strange," said Baldwin; "I have done my duty as well as I could,
+yet no body will come against me. I have slain right and left, and
+cannot comprehend what it is that makes the stoutest infidels avoid me."
+
+"Take off your vest," cried Orlando, contemptuously, "and you will soon
+discover the secret, if you wish to know it. Your father has sold us to
+Marsilius, all but his honourable son."
+
+"If my father," cried Baldwin, impetuously tearing off the vest, "has
+been such a villain, and I escape dying any longer, by God! I will
+plunge this sword through his heart. But I am no traitor, Orlando;
+and you do me wrong to say it. You do me foul dishonour, and I'll not
+survive it. Never more shall you behold me alive."
+
+Baldwin spurred off into the fight, not waiting to hear another word
+from Orlando, but constantly crying out, "You have done me dishonour;"
+and Orlando was very sorry for what he had said, for he perceived that
+the youth was in despair.
+
+And now the fight raged beyond all it had done before; and the Paladins
+themselves began to fall, the enemy were driven forward in such
+multitudes by Marsilius. There was unhorsing of foes, and re-seating of
+friends, and great cries, and anguish, and unceasing labour; and twenty
+Pagans went down for one Christian; but still the Christians fell. One
+Paladin disappeared after another, having too much to do for mortal men.
+Some could not make way through the press for very fatigue of killing,
+and others were hampered with the falling horses and men. Sansonetto was
+thus beaten to earth by the club of Grandonio; and Walter d'Amulion had
+his shoulders broken; and Angiolin of Bayona, having lost his lance,
+was thrust down by Marsilius, and Angiolin of Bellonda by Sirionne; and
+Berlinghieri and Ottone are gone; and then Astolfo went, in revenge of
+whose death Orlando turned the spot on which he died into a gulf of
+Saracen blood. Rinaldo met the luckless Bujaforte, who had just begun to
+explain how he seemed to be fighting on the side which his father hated,
+when the impatient hero exclaimed, "He who is not with me is against
+me;" and gave him a volley of such horrible cuffs about the head and
+ears, that Bujaforte died without being able to speak another word.
+Orlando, cutting his way to a spot in which there was a great struggle
+and uproar, found the poor youth Baldwin, the son of Gan, with two
+spears in his breast. "I am no traitor now," said Baldwin; and so
+saying, fell dead to the earth; and Orlando lifted up his voice and
+wept, for he was bitterly sorry to have been the cause of his death. He
+then joined Rinaldo in the hottest of the tumult; and all the surviving
+Paladins gathered about them, including Turpin the archbishop, who
+fought as hardily as the rest; and the slaughter was lavish and
+horrible, so that the eddies of the wind chucked the blood into the air,
+and earth appeared a very seething-cauldron of hell. At length down went
+Uliviero himself. He had become blind with his own blood, and smitten
+Orlando without knowing him, who had never received such a blow in his
+life.
+
+"How now, cousin!" cried Orlando; "have you too gone over to the enemy?"
+
+"O, my lord and master, Orlando," cried the other, "I ask your pardon,
+if I have struck you. I can see nothing--I am dying. The traitor
+Arcaliffe has stabbed me in the back; but I killed him for it. If you
+love me, lead my horse into the thick of them, so that I may not die
+unavenged."
+
+"I shall die myself before long," said Orlando, "out of very toil and
+grief; so we will go together. I have lost all hope, all pride, all wish
+to live any longer; but not my love for Uliviero. Come--let us give them
+a few blows yet; let them see what you can do with your dying hands. One
+faith, one death, one only wish be ours."
+
+Orlando led his cousin's horse where the press was thickest, and
+dreadful was the strength of the dying man and of his half-dying
+companion. They made a street, through which they passed out of the
+battle; and Orlando led his cousin away to his tent, and said, "Wait
+a little till I return, for I will go and sound the horn on the hill
+yonder."
+
+"'Tis of no use," said Uliviero; "and my spirit is fast going, and
+desires to be with its Lord and Saviour." He would have said more, but
+his words came from him imperfectly, like those of a man in a dream;
+only his cousin gathered that he meant to commend to him his sister,
+Orlando's wife, Alda the Fair, of whom indeed the great Paladin had not
+thought so much in this world as he might have done. And with these
+imperfect words he expired.
+
+But Orlando no sooner saw him dead, than he felt as if he was left alone
+on the earth; and he was quite willing to leave it; only he wished that
+Charles at St. John Pied de Port should hear how the case stood before
+he went; and so he took up the horn, and blew it three times with such
+force that the blood burst out of his nose and mouth. Turpin says, that
+at the third blast the horn broke in two.
+
+In spite of all the noise of the battle, the sound of the horn broke
+over it like a voice out of the other world. They say that birds fell
+dead at it, and that the whole Saracen army drew back in terror. But
+fearfuller still was its effect at St. John Pied de Port. Charlemagne
+was sitting in the midst of his court when the sound reached him; and
+Gan was there. The emperor was the first to hear it.
+
+"Do you hear that?" said he to his nobles. "Did you hear the horn, as I
+heard it?"
+
+Upon this they all listened; and Gan felt his heart misgive him.
+
+The horn sounded the second time.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" said Charles.
+
+"Orlando is hunting," observed Gan, "and the stag is killed. He is at
+the old pastime that he was so fond of in Aspramonte."
+
+But when the horn sounded yet a third time, and the blast was one of so
+dreadful a vehemence, every body looked at the other, and then they all
+looked at Gan in fury. Charles rose from his seat. "This is no hunting
+of the stag," said he. "The sound goes to my very heart, and, I confess,
+makes me tremble. I am awakened out of a great dream. O Gan! O Gan! Not
+for thee do I blush, but for myself, and for nobody else. O my God, what
+is to be done! But whatever is to be done, must be done quickly. Take
+this villain, gentlemen, and keep him in hard prison. O foul and
+monstrous villain! Would to God I had not lived to see this day! O
+obstinate and enormous folly! O Malagigi, had I but believed thy
+foresight! 'Tis thou went the wise man, and I the grey-headed fool."
+
+Ogier the Dane, and Namo and others, in the bitterness of their grief
+and anger, could not help reminding the emperor of all which they had
+foretold. But it was no time for words. They put the traitor into
+prison; and then Charles, with all his court, took his way to
+Roncesvalles, grieving and praying.
+
+It was afternoon when the horn sounded, and half an hour after it when
+the emperor set out; and meantime Orlando had returned to the fight that
+he might do his duty, however hopeless, as long as he could sit his
+horse, and the Paladins were now reduced to four; and though the
+Saracens suffered themselves to be mowed down like grass by them and
+their little band, he found his end approaching for toil and fever,
+and so at length he withdrew out of the fight, and rode all alone to a
+fountain which he knew of, where he had before quenched his thirst.
+
+His horse was wearier still than he, and no sooner had its master
+alighted, than the beast, kneeling down as if to take leave, and to
+say, "I have brought you to your place of rest," fell dead at his feet.
+Orlando cast water on him from the fountain, not wishing to believe him
+dead; but when he found it to no purpose, he grieved for him as if he
+had been a human being, and addressed him by name in tears, and asked
+forgiveness if ever he had done him wrong. They say, that the horse at
+these words once more opened his eyes a little, and looked kindly at his
+master, and so stirred never more.
+
+They say also that Orlando then, summoning all his strength, smote a
+rock near him with his beautiful sword Durlindana, thinking to shiver
+the steel in pieces, and so prevent its falling into the hands of the
+enemy; but though the rock split like a slate, and a deep fissure
+remained ever after to astonish the eyes of pilgrims, the sword remained
+unhurt.
+
+"O strong Durlindana," cried he, "O noble and worthy sword, had I known
+thee from the first, as I know thee now, never would I have been brought
+to this pass."
+
+And now Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and Turpin came up, having given chase
+to the Saracens till they were weary, and Orlando gave joyful welcome to
+his cousin, and they told him how the battle was won, and then Orlando
+knelt before Turpin, his face all in tears, and begged remission of his
+sins and confessed them, and Turpin gave him absolution; and suddenly a
+light came down upon him from heaven like a rainbow, accompanied with
+a sound of music, and an angel stood in the air blessing him, and then
+disappeared; upon which Orlando fixed his eyes on the hilt of his sword
+as on a crucifix, and embraced it, and said, "Lord, vouchsafe that I may
+look on this poor instrument as on the symbol of the tree upon which
+Thou sufferedst thy unspeakable martyrdom!" and so adjusting the sword
+to his bosom, and embracing it closer, he raised his eyes, and appeared
+like a creature seraphical and transfigured; and in bowing his head he
+breathed out his pure soul. A thunder was then heard in the heavens,
+and the heavens opened and seemed to stoop to the earth, and a flock of
+angels was seen like a white cloud ascending with his spirit, who were
+known to be what they were by the trembling of their wings. The white
+cloud shot out golden fires, so that the whole air was full of them; and
+the voices of the angels mingled in song with the instruments of their
+brethren above, which made an inexpressible harmony, at once deep and
+dulcet. The priestly warrior Turpin, and the two Paladins, and the
+hero's squire Terigi, who were all on their knees, forgot their own
+beings, in following the miracle with their eyes.
+
+It was now the office of that squire to take horse and ride off to
+the emperor at Saint John Pied de Port, and tell him of all that had
+occurred; but in spite of what he had just seen, he lay for a time
+overwhelmed with grief. He then rose, and mounted his steed, and left
+the Paladins and the archbishop with the dead body, who knelt about it,
+guarding it with weeping love.
+
+The good squire Terigi met the emperor and his cavalcade coming towards
+Roncesvalles, and alighted and fell on his knees, telling him the
+miserable news, and how all his people were slain but two of his
+Paladins, and himself, and the good archbishop. Charles for anguish
+began tearing his white locks; but Terigi comforted him against so
+doing, by giving an account of the manner of Orlando's death, and how
+he had surely gone to heaven. Nevertheless, the squire himself was
+broken-hearted with grief and toil; and he had scarcely added a
+denouncement of the traitor Gan, and a hope that the emperor would
+appease Heaven finally by giving his body to the winds, than he said,
+"The cold of death is upon me;" and so he fell dead at the emperor's
+feet.
+
+Charles was ready to drop from his saddle for wretchedness. He cried
+out, "Let nobody comfort me more. I will have no comfort. Cursed be Gan,
+and cursed this horrible day, and this place, and every thing. Let us go
+on, like blind miserable men that we are, into Roncesvalles; and have
+patience if we can, out of pure misery, like Job, till we do all that
+can be done."
+
+So Charles rode on with his nobles; and they say, that for the sake of
+the champion of Christendom and the martyrs that died with him, the sun
+stood still in the sky till the emperor had seen Orlando, and till the
+dead were buried.
+
+Horrible to his eyes was the sight of the field of Roncesvalles. The
+Saracens, indeed, had forsaken it, conquered; but all his Paladins but
+two were left on it dead, and the slaughtered heaps among which they lay
+made the whole valley like a great dumb slaughter-house, trampled up
+into blood and dirt, and reeking to the heat. The very trees were
+dropping with blood; and every thing, so to speak, seemed tired out, and
+gone to a horrible sleep.
+
+Charles trembled to his heart's core for wonder and agony. After dumbly
+gazing on the place, he again cursed it with a solemn curse, and wished
+that never grass might grow within it again, nor seed of any kind,
+neither within it, nor on any of its mountains around with their proud
+shoulders; but the anger of Heaven abide over it for ever, as on a pit
+made by hell upon earth.
+
+Then he rode on, and came up to where the body of Orlando awaited him
+with the Paladins, and the old man, weeping, threw himself as if he had
+been a reckless youth from his horse, and embraced and kissed the dead
+body, and said, "I bless thee, Orlando. I bless thy whole life, and all
+that thou wast, and all that thou ever didst, and thy mighty and holy
+valour, and the father that begot thee; and I ask pardon of thee for
+believing those who brought thee to thine end. They shall have their
+reward, O thou beloved one! But, indeed, it is thou that livest, and I
+that am worse than dead."
+
+And now, behold a wonder. For the emperor, in the fervour of his heart
+and of the memory of what had passed between them, called to mind that
+Orlando had promised to give him his sword, should he die before him;
+and he lifted up his voice more bravely, and adjured him even now to
+return it to him gladly; and it pleased God that the dead body of
+Orlando should rise on its feet, and kneel as he was wont to do at the
+feet of his liege lord, and gladly, and with a smile on its face, return
+the sword to the Emperor Charles. As Orlando rose, the Paladins and
+Turpin knelt down out of fear and horror, especially seeing him look
+with a stern countenance; but when they saw that he knelt also, and
+smiled, and returned the sword, their hearts became re-assured, and
+Charles took the sword like his liege lord, though trembling with wonder
+and affection: and in truth he could hardly clench his fingers around
+it.
+
+Orlando was buried in a great sepulchre in Aquisgrana, and the dead
+Paladins were all embalmed and sent with majestic cavalcades to their
+respective counties and principalities, and every Christian was
+honourably and reverently put in the earth, and recorded among the
+martyrs of the Church.
+
+But meantime the flying Saracens, thinking to bury their own dead, and
+ignorant of what still awaited them, came back into the valley, and
+Rinaldo beheld them with a dreadful joy, and shewed them to Charles. Now
+the emperor's cavalcade had increased every moment; and they fell upon
+the Saracens with a new and unexpected battle, and the old emperor,
+addressing the sword of Orlando, exclaimed, "My strength is little, but
+do thou do thy duty to thy master, thou famous sword, seeing that he
+returned it to me smiling, and that his revenge is in my hands." And so
+saying, he met Balugante, the leader of the infidels, as he came borne
+along by his frightened horse; and the old man, raising the sword with
+both hands, cleaved him, with a delighted mind, to the chin.
+
+O sacred Emperor Charles! O well-lived old man! Defender of the Faith!
+light and glory of the old time! thou hast cut off the other ear of
+Malchus, and shown how rightly thou wert born into the world, to save it
+a second time from the abyss.
+
+Again fled the Saracens, never to come to Christendom more: but Charles
+went after them into Spain, he and Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and the good
+Turpin; and they took and fired Saragossa; and Marsilius was hung to the
+carob-tree under which he had planned his villany with Gan; and Gan was
+hung, and drawn and quartered, in Roncesvalles, amidst the execrations
+of the country.
+
+And if you ask, how it happened that Charles ever put faith in such a
+wretch, I shall tell you that it was because the good old emperor, with
+all his faults, was a divine man, and believed in others out of the
+excellence of his own heart and truth. And such was the case with
+Orlando himself.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+No. I.
+
+STORY OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA.
+
+  Poscia ch' i' ebbi il mio dottore udito
+  Nomar le donne antiche e i cavalieri,
+  Pietà mi vinse, e fui quasi smarrito.
+
+  I' cominciai: Poeta, volentieri
+  Parlerei a que' duo the 'nsieme vanno,
+  E pajon sì al vento esser leggieri.
+
+  Ed egli a me: Vedrai, quando saranno
+  Più presso a noi: e tu allor gli piega,
+  Per quell' amor ch' ei mena; e quei verranno.
+
+  Si tosto come 'l vento a noi gli piega,
+  Mossi la voce: O anime affannate,
+  Venite a not parlar, s' altri nol niega.
+
+  Quali colombe dal disio chiamate,
+  Con l' ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
+  Volan per l' aer dal voter portate:
+
+  Cotali uscir de la schiera ov' è Dido,
+  A noi venendo per l' aer maligno,
+  Si forte fu l' affettuoso grido.
+
+  O animal grazioso e benigno,
+  Che visitando vai per l' aer perso
+  Noi che tignemmo it mondo di sanguigno;
+  Se fosse amico il Re de l'Universo,
+  Noi pregheremmo lui per la tua pace,
+  Poich' hai pietà del nostro mal perverso.
+
+  Di quel ch'udire e che parlar ti piace,
+  Noi udiremo, e parleremo a vui,
+  Mentre che 'l vento, come fa, si tace.
+
+  Siede la terra, dove nata fui,
+  Su la marina, dove 'l Pò discende,
+  Per aver pace co' seguaci sui.
+
+  Amor ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,
+  Prese costui de la bella persona
+  Che mi fu tolta, e 'l modo ancor m'offende
+
+  Amer ch'a null'amato amar perdona,
+  Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
+  Che come vedi ancor non m'abbandona
+
+  Amor condusse noi ad una morte
+  Caina attende chi 'n vita ci spense.
+  Queste parole da lor ci fur porte.
+
+  Da ch'io 'ntesi quell'anime offense,
+  Chinai 'l viso, e tanto 'l tenni basso,
+  Finchè 'l poeta mi disse: Che pense?
+
+  Quando risposi, cominciai: O lasso,
+  Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio
+  Menò costoro al doloroso passo!
+
+  Po' mi rivolsi a loro, e parla' io,
+  E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri
+  A lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pie.
+
+  Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri,
+  A che, e come concedette amore
+  Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri?
+
+  Ed ella a me: Nessun maggior dolore,
+  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
+  Ne la miseria; e ciò sa 'l tuo dottore.
+  Ma s'a conoscer la prima radice
+  Del nostro amor to hai cotanto affetto,
+  Farò come colui the piange e dice.
+
+  Noi leggiavamo tin giorno per diletto
+  Di Lancilotto, come amor to strinse
+  Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto.
+
+  Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
+  Quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso
+  Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse.
+
+  Quando leggemmo il disiato riso
+  Esser baciato da cotanto amante,
+  Questi che mai da me non sia diviso,
+
+  La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:
+  Galeotto fu il libro, e chi to scrisse:
+  Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.
+
+  Mentre the l'uno spirto questo disse,
+  L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade
+  I' venni men cosi com' io morisse,
+
+  E caddi come corpo morto cade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Translation in the terza rima of the original._
+
+  Scarce had I learnt the names of all that press
+  Of knights and dames, than I beheld a sight
+  Nigh reft my wits for very tenderness.
+
+  "O guide!" I said, "fain would I, if I might,
+  Have speech with yonder pair, that hand in hand
+  Seem borne before the dreadful wind so light."
+
+  "Wait," said my guide, "until then seest their band
+  Sweep round. Then beg them, by that lose, to stay;
+  And they will come, and hover where we stand."
+
+  Anon the whirlwind flung them round that way;
+  And then I cried, "Oh, if I ask nought ill,
+  Poor weary souls, have speech with me, I pray."
+
+  As doves, that leave some bevy circling still,
+  Set firm their open wings, and through the air
+  Sweep homewards, wafted by their pure good will;
+
+  So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
+  Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign;
+  Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer.
+
+  The female spoke. "O living soul benign!"
+  She said, "thus, in this lost air, visiting
+  Us who with blood stain'd the sweet earth divine;
+
+  Had we a friend in heaven's eternal King,
+  We would beseech him keep thy conscience clear,
+  Since to our anguish thou dost pity bring.
+
+  Of what it pleaseth thee to speak and hear,
+  To that we also, till this lull be o'er
+  That falleth now, will speak and will give ear.
+
+  The place where I was born is on the shore,
+  Where Po brings all his rivers to depart
+  In peace, and fuse them with the ocean floor.
+
+  Love, that soon kindleth in a gentle heart,
+  Seized him thou look'st on for the form and face,
+  Whose end still haunts me like a rankling dart.
+
+  Love, which by love will be denied no grace,
+  Gave me a transport in my turn so true,
+  That to! 'tis with me, even in this place.
+
+  Love brought us to one grave. The hand that slew
+  Is doom'd to mourn us in the pit of Cain."
+  Such were the words that told me of those two.
+
+  Downcast I stood, looking so full of pain
+  To think how hard and sad a case it was,
+  That my guide ask'd what held me in that vein.
+
+  His voiced aroused me; and I said, "Alas
+  All their sweet thoughts then, all the steps that led
+  To love, but brought them to this dolorous pass."
+
+  Then turning my sad eyes to theirs, I said,
+  "Francesca, see--these human cheeks are wet--
+  Truer and sadder tears were never shed.
+
+  But tell me. At the time when sighs were sweet,
+  What made thee strive no longer?--hurried thee
+  To the last step where bliss and sorrow meet?"
+
+  "There is no greater sorrow," answered she,
+  "And this thy teacher here knoweth full well,
+  Than calling to mind joy in misery.
+
+  But since thy wish be great to hear us tell
+  How we lost all but love, tell it I will,
+  As well as tears will let me. It befel,
+
+  One day, we read how Lancelot gazed his fill
+  At her he loved, and what his lady said.
+  We were alone, thinking of nothing ill.
+
+  Oft were our eyes suspended as we read,
+  And in our cheeks the colour went and came;
+  Yet one sole passage struck resistance dead.
+
+  'Twas where the lover, moth-like in his flame,
+  Drawn by her sweet smile, kiss'd it. O then, he
+  Whose lot and mine are now for aye the same,
+
+  All in a tremble, on the mouth kiss'd _me_.
+  The book did all. Our hearts within us burn'd
+  Through that alone. That day no more read we."
+
+  While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
+  With wail so woful, that at his remorse
+  I felt as though I should have died. I turned
+
+  Stone-stiff; and to the ground fell like a corse.]
+
+
+No. II.
+
+ACCOUNTS GIVEN BY DIFFERENT WRITERS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES RELATING TO
+PAULO AND FRANCESCA; CONCLUDING WITH THE ONLY FACTS ASCERTAINED.
+
+BOCCACCIO'S ACCOUNT
+
+Translated from his Commentary on the Passage.
+
+"You must know, that this lady, Madonna Francesca, was daughter of
+Messer Guido the Elder, lord of Ravenna and of Cervia, and that a long
+and grievous war having been waged between him and the lords Malatesta
+of Rimini, a treaty of peace by certain mediators was at length
+concluded between them; the which, to the end that it might be the more
+firmly established, it pleased both parties to desire to fortify by
+relationship; and the matter of this relationship was so discoursed,
+that the said Messer Guido agreed to give his young and fair daughter
+in marriage to Gianciotto, the son of Messer Malatesta. Now, this being
+made known to certain of the friends of Messer Guido, one of them
+said to him, 'Take care what you do; for if you contrive not matters
+discreetly, such relationship will beget scandal. You know what manner
+of person your daughter is, and of how lofty a spirit; and if she see
+Gianciotto before the bond is tied, neither you nor any one else will
+have power to persuade her to marry him; therefore, if it so please you,
+it seems to me that it would be good to conduct the matter thus: namely,
+that Gianciotto should not come hither himself to marry her, but that a
+brother of his should come and espouse her in his name.'
+
+"Gianciotto was a man of great spirit, and hoped, after his father's
+death, to become lord of Rimini; in the contemplation of which event,
+albeit he was rude in appearance and a cripple, Messer Guido desired him
+for a son-in-law above any one of his brothers. Discerning, therefore,
+the reasonableness of what his friend counselled, he secretly disposed
+matters according to his device; and a day being appointed, Polo, a
+brother of Gianciotto, came to Ravenna with full authority to espouse
+Madonna Francesca. Polo was a handsome man, very pleasant, and of a
+courteous breeding; and passing with other gentlemen over the court-yard
+of the palace of Messer Guido, a damsel who knew him pointed him out to
+Madonna Francesca through an opening in the casement, saying, 'That is
+he that is to be your husband;' and so indeed the poor lady believed,
+and incontinently placed in him her whole affection; and the ceremony of
+the marriage having been thus brought about, and the lady conveyed to
+Rimini, she became not aware of the deceit till the morning ensuing
+the marriage, when she beheld Gianciotto rise from her side; the which
+discovery moved her to such disdain, that she became not a whit the less
+rooted in her love for Polo. Nevertheless, that it grew to be unlawful
+I never heard, except in what is written by this author (Dante), and
+possibly it might so have become; albeit I take what he says to have
+been an invention framed on the possibility, rather than any thing
+which he knew of his own knowledge. Be this as it may, Polo and Madonna
+Francesca living in the same house, and Gianciotto being gone into
+a certain neighbouring district as governor, they fell into great
+companionship with one another, suspecting nothing; but a servant of
+Gianciotto's noting it, went to his master and told him how matters
+looked; with the which Gianciotto being fiercely moved, secretly
+returned to Rimini; and seeing Polo enter the room of Madonna Francesca
+the while he himself was arriving, went straight to the door, and
+finding it locked inside, called to his lady to come out; for, Madonna
+Francesca and Polo having descried him, Polo thought to escape suddenly
+through an opening in the wall, by means of which there was a descent
+into another room; and therefore, thinking to conceal his fault either
+wholly or in part, he threw himself into the opening, telling the lady
+to go and open the door. But his hope did not turn out as he expected;
+for the hem of a mantle which he had on caught upon a nail, and the
+lady opening the door meantime, in the belief that all would be well by
+reason of Polo's not being there, Gianciotto caught sight of Polo as
+he was detained by the hem of the mantle, and straightway ran with his
+dagger in his hand to kill him; whereupon the lady, to prevent it, ran
+between them; but Gianciotto having lifted the dagger, and put the whole
+force of his arm into the blow, there came to pass what he had not
+desired--namely, that he struck the dagger into the bosom of the lady
+before it could reach Polo; by which accident, being as one who had
+loved the lady better than himself, he withdrew the dagger, and again
+struck at Polo, and slew him; and so leaving them both dead, he hastily
+went his way and betook him to his wonted affairs; and the next morning
+the two lovers, with many tears, were buried together in the same
+grave."
+
+The reader of this account will have observed, that while Dante assumes
+the guilt of all parties, and puts them into the infernal regions, the
+good-natured Boccaccio is for doubting it, and consequently for sending
+them all to heaven. He will ignore as much of the business as a
+gentleman can; boldly doubts any guilt in the case; says nothing of the
+circumstance of the book; and affirms that the husband loved his wife,
+and was miserable at having slain her. There is, however, one negative
+point in common between the two narrators; they both say nothing of
+certain particulars connected with the date of Francesca's marriage, and
+not a little qualifying the first romantic look of the story.
+
+Now, it is the absence of these particulars, combined with the tradition
+of the father's artifice (omitted perhaps by Dante out of personal
+favour), and with that of the husband's ferocity of character (the
+belief in which Boccaccio did not succeed in displacing), that has
+left the prevailing impression on the minds of posterity, which is
+this:--that Francesca was beguiled by her father into the marriage with
+the deformed and unamiable Giovanni, and that the unconscious medium of
+the artifice was the amiable and handsome Paulo; that one or both of
+the victims of the artifice fell in love with the other; that their
+intercourse, whatever it was, took place not long after the marriage;
+and that when Paulo and Francesca were slain in consequence, they were
+young lovers, with no other ties to the world.
+
+It is not pleasant in general to dispel the illusions of romance, though
+Dante's will bear the operation with less hurt to a reader's feelings
+than most; and I suspect, that if nine out of ten of all the implied
+conclusions of other narratives in his poem could be compared with the
+facts, he would be found to be one of the greatest of romancers in a new
+and not very desirable sense, however excusable he may have been in his
+party-prejudice. But a romance may be displaced, only to substitute
+perhaps matters of fact more really touching, by reason of their greater
+probability. The following is the whole of what modern inquirers have
+ascertained respecting Paulo and Francesca. Future enlargers on the
+story may suppress what they please, as Dante did; but if any one of
+them, like the writer of the present remarks, is anxious to speak
+nothing but the truth, I advise him (especially if he is for troubling
+himself with making changes in his story) not to think that he has seen
+all the authorities on the subject, or even remembered all he has seen,
+until he has searched every corner of his library and his memory. All
+the poems hitherto written upon this popular subject are indeed only to
+be regarded as so many probable pieces of fancy, that of Dante himself
+included.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ONLY PARTICULARS HITHERTO REALLY ASCERTAINED RESPECTING THE HISTORY
+OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA.
+
+Francesca was daughter of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna.
+
+She was married to Giovanni, surnamed the Lame, one of the sons of
+Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini.
+
+Giovanni the Lame had a brother named Paulo the Handsome, who was a
+widower, and left a son.
+
+Twelve years after Francesca's marriage, by which time she had become
+mother of a son who died, and of a daughter who survived her, she and
+her brother-in-law Paulo were slain together by the husband, and buried
+in one grave.
+
+Two hundred years afterwards, the grave was opened, and the bodies found
+lying together in silken garments, the silk itself being entire.
+
+Now, a far more touching history may have lurked under these facts than
+in the half-concealed and misleading circumstances of the received
+story--long patience, long duty, struggling conscience, exhausted hope.
+
+On the other hand, it may have been a mere heartless case of intrigue
+and folly.
+
+But tradition is to be allowed its reasonable weight; and the
+probability is, that the marriage was an affair of state, the lady
+unhappy, and the brothers too different from one another.
+
+The event took place in Dante's twenty-fourth year; so that he, who
+looks so much older to our imaginations than his heroine, was younger;
+and this renders more than probable what the latest biographers have
+asserted--namely, that the lord of Ravenna, at whose house he finished
+his days, was not her father, Guido da Polenta, the third of that name,
+but her nephew, Guido the Fifth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. IIII
+
+STORY OF UGOLINO.
+
+  Non eravam partiti già da ello,
+  Ch' i' vidi duo ghiacciati in una buca
+  Si, che l'un capo a l'altro era capello:
+
+  E come 'l pan per fame si manduca,
+  Così 'l sovran li denti a l'altro pose
+  Là've 'l cervel s'aggiunge con la nuca.
+
+  Non altrimenti Tideo sì rose
+  Le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno,
+  Che quei faceva 'l teschio e l'altre cose.
+
+  O tu che mostri per sì bestial segno
+  Odio sovra colui che tu ti mangi
+  Dimmi 'l perchè, diss' io, per tal convegno,
+
+  Che se tu a ragion di lui ti piangi,
+  Sappiendo chi voi siete, e la sua pecca,
+  Nel mondo suso ancor io te ne cangi,
+
+  Se quella con ch' i' parlo non si secca.
+
+  La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto
+  Quel peccator, forbendola a' capelli
+  Del capo ch' egli avea diretro guasto:
+
+  Poi cominciò: tu vuoi ch' i' rinnovelli
+  Disperato dolor the 'l cuor mi preme
+  Già pur pensando, pria ch' i' ne favelli.
+
+  Ma se le mie parole esser den seme,
+  Che frutti infamia al traditor ch' i' rodo,
+  Parlare e lagrimar vedrai insieme.
+
+  I' non so chi tu sei, nè per che modo
+  Venuto se' qua giù: ma Fiorentino
+  Mi sembri veramente, quand' i' t' odo.
+
+  Tu de' saper ch' i' fu 'l Conte Ugolino,
+  E questi l' Arcivescovo Ruggieri:
+  Or ti dirò perch' i' son tal vicino.
+
+  Che per l' effetto de' suo' ma' pensieri,
+  Fidandomi di lui, io fossi preso,
+  E poscia morto, dir non è mestieri.
+
+  Però quel che non puoi avere inteso,
+  Cioè, come la morte mia fu cruda,
+  Udirai e saprai se m' ha offeso.
+
+  Breve pertugio dentro da la muda,
+  La qual per me ha 'l titol da la fame,
+  E 'n che conviene ancor ch' altrui si chiuda,
+
+  M' avea mostrato per lo suo forame
+  Più lone già, quand' i' feci 'l mal sonno,
+  Che del futuro mi squarciò 'l velame.
+
+  Questi pareva a me maestro e donno,
+  Cacciando 'l lupo e i lupicirui al monte,
+  Perchè i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno.
+
+  Con cagne magre studiose e conte
+  Gualandi con Sismondi e con Lanfranchi
+  S' avea messi dinanzi da la fronte.
+
+  In picciol corso mi pareano stanchi
+  Lo padre e i figli, e con l' agute scane
+  Mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi.
+
+  Quando fui desto innanzi la dimane,
+  Pianger senti' fra 'l sonno miei figliuoli
+  Ch' eran con meco, e dimandar del pane.
+
+  Ben se' crudel, se uo già non ti duoli
+  Pensando ciò ch' al mio cuor s' annunziava
+  E se non piangi, di che pianger suoli?
+
+  Già eram desti, e l'ora s'appressava
+  Che 'l cibo ne soleva essere addotto,
+  E per suo sogno ciascun dubitava,
+
+  Ed io senti' chiavar l'uscio di sotto
+  A l'orribile torre: ond' io guardai
+  Nel viso a miei figliuoi senza far motto:
+
+  I' non piangeva, sì dentro impietrai:
+  Piangevan' elli; ed Anselmuccio mio
+  Disse, Tu guardi sì, padre: che hai?
+
+  Però non lagrimai nè rispos' io
+  Tutto quel giorno nè la notte appresso,
+  Infin che l'altro sol nel mondo uscío.
+
+  Com' un poco di raggio si fu messo
+  Nel doloroso carcere, ed io scorsi
+  Per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso,
+
+  Ambo le mani per dolor mi morsi:
+  E quei pensando ch' i 'l fessi per voglia
+  Di manicar, di subito levorsi
+
+  E disser: Padre, assai ci sia men doglia,
+  Se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti
+  Queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia.
+
+  Quetàmi allor per non fargli più tristi:
+  Quel dì e l'altro stemmo tutti muti:
+  Ahi dura terra, perchè non t'apristi?
+
+  Posciachè fummo al quarto di venuti,
+  Gaddo mi si gittò disteso a' piedi,
+  Dicendo: Padre mio, che non m' ajuti?
+
+  Quivi morì: e come tu mi vedi,
+  Vid' io cascar li tre ad uno ad uno
+  Tra 'l quinto di, e 'l sesto: ond' i' mi diedi
+
+  Già cieco a brancolar sovra ciascuno,
+  E tre di gli chiamai poich' e 'fur morti:
+  Poscia, più che 'l dolor, pote 'l digiuno.
+
+  Quand' ebbe detto ciò, con gli occhj torti
+  Riprese 'l teschio misero co' denti,
+  Che furo a l'osso come d' un can forti.
+
+  Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti,
+  Del bel paese là dove 'l sì suona;
+  Poiche i vicini a te punir son lenti,
+
+  Muovasi la Capraja e la Gorgona,
+  E faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce,
+  Si ch' egli annieghi in te ogni persona:
+
+  Che se 'l Conte Ugolino aveva voce
+  D'aver tradita te de le castella,
+  Non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce.
+
+  Innocenti facea 'l eta novella;
+  Novella Tebe, Uguccione, e 'l Brigata,
+  E gli altri duo che 'l canto suso appella.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  _Translation in the heroic couplet._
+
+  Quitting the traitor Bocca's barking soul,
+  We saw two more, so iced up in one hole,
+  That the one's visage capp'd the other's head;
+  And as a famish'd man devoureth bread,
+  So rent the top one's teeth the skull below
+  'Twixt nape and brain. Tydeus, as stories show,
+  Thus to the brain of Menalippus ate:--
+  "O thou!" I cried, "showing such bestial hate
+  To him thou tearest, read us whence it rose;
+  That, if thy cause be juster than thy foe's,
+  The world, when I return, knowing the truth,
+  May of thy story have the greater ruth."
+
+  His mouth he lifted from his dreadful fare,
+  That sinner, wiping it with the grey hair
+  Whose roots he had laid waste; and thus he said:--
+  "A desperate thing thou askest; what I dread
+  Even to think of. Yet, to sow a seed
+  Of infamy to him on whom I feed,
+  Tell it I will:--ay, and thine eyes shall see
+  Mine own weep all the while for misery.
+  Who thou may'st be, I know not; nor can dream
+  How thou cam'st hither; but thy tongue doth seem
+  To skew thee, of a surety, Florentine.
+  Know then, that I was once Count Ugoline,
+  And this man was Ruggieri, the archpriest.
+  Still thou may'st wonder at my raging feast;
+  For though his snares be known, and how his key
+  He turn'd upon my trust, and murder'd me,
+  Yet what the murder was, of what strange sort
+  And cruel, few have had the true report.
+  Hear then, and judge.--In the tower, called since then
+  The Tower of Famine, I had lain and seen
+  Full many a moon fade through the narrow bars.
+  When, in a dream one night, mine evil stars
+  Shew'd me the future with its dreadful face.
+  Methought this man led a great lordly chase
+  Against a wolf and cubs, across the height
+  Which barreth Lucca from the Pisan's sight.
+  Lean were the hounds, high-bred, and sharp for blood;
+  And foremost in the press Gualandi rode,
+  Lanfranchi, and Sismondi. Soon were seen
+  The father and his sons, those wolves I mean,
+  Limping, and by the hounds all crush'd and torn
+  And as the cry awoke me in the morn,
+  I heard my boys, the while they dozed in bed
+  (For they were with me), wail, and ask for bread.
+  Full cruel, if it move thee not, thou art,
+  To think what thoughts then rush'd into my heart.
+  What wouldst thou weep at, weeping not at this?
+  All had now waked, and something seem'd amiss,
+  For 'twas the time they used to bring us bread,
+  And from our dreams had grown a horrid dread.
+  I listen'd; and a key, down stairs, I heard
+  Lock up the dreadful turret. Not a word
+  I spoke, but look'd my children in the face
+  No tear I shed, so firmly did I brace
+  My soul; but _they_ did; and my Anselm said,
+  'Father, you look so!--Won't they bring us bread?'
+  E'en then I wept not, nor did answer word
+  All day, nor the next night. And now was stirr'd,
+  Upon the world without, another day;
+  And of its light there came a little ray,
+  Which mingled with the gloom of our sad jail;
+  And looking to my children's bed, full pale,
+  In four small faces mine own face I saw.
+  Oh, then both hands for misery did I gnaw;
+  And they, thinking I did it, being mad
+  For food, said, 'Father, we should be less sad
+  If you would feed on us. Children, they say,
+  Are their own father's flesh. Starve not to-day.'
+  Thenceforth they saw me shake not, hand nor foot.
+  That day, and next, we all continued mute.
+  O thou hard Earth!--why opened'st thou not?
+  Next day (it was the fourth in our sad lot)
+  My Gaddo stretched him at my feet, and cried,
+  'Dear father, won't you help me?' and he died.
+  And surely as thou seest me here undone,
+  I saw my whole three children, one by one,
+  Between the fifth day and the sixth, all die.
+  I became blind; and in my misery
+  Went groping for them, as I knelt and crawl'd
+  About the room; and for three days I call'd
+  Upon their names, as though they could speak too,
+  Till famine did what grief had fail'd to do."
+
+  Having spoke thus, he seiz'd with fiery eyes
+  That wretch again, his feast and sacrifice,
+  And fasten'd on the skull, over a groan,
+  With teeth as strong as mastiff's on a bone.
+  Ah, Pisa! thou that shame and scandal be
+  To the sweet land that speaks the tongue of Sì.[1]
+
+  Since Florence spareth thy vile neck the yoke,
+  Would that the very isles would rise, and choke
+  Thy river, and drown every soul within
+  Thy loathsome walls. What if this Ugolin
+  Did play the traitor, and give up (for so
+  The rumour runs) thy castles to the foe,
+  Thou hadst no right to put to rack like this
+  His children. Childhood innocency is.
+  But that same innocence, and that man's name,
+  Have damn'd thee, Pisa, to a Theban fame?[2]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REAL STORY OF UGOLINO,
+
+AND CHAUCER'S FEELING RESPECTING THE POEM.
+
+Chaucer has told the greater part of this story beautifully in his
+"Canterbury Tales;" but he had not the heart to finish it. He refers
+for the conclusion to his original, hight "Dant," the "grete poete
+of Itaille;" adding, that Dante will not fail his readers a single
+word--that is to say, not an atom of the cruelty.
+
+Our great gentle-hearted countryman, who tells Fortune that it was
+
+  "great cruelty
+  Such birdes for to put in such a cage,"
+
+adds a touch of pathos in the behaviour of one of the children, which
+Dante does not seem to have thought of:
+
+  "There day by day this child began to cry,
+  Till in his father's barme (lap) adown he lay;
+  And said, 'Farewell, father, I muste die,'
+  And _kiss'd his father_, and died the same day."
+
+It will be a relief, perhaps, instead of a disappointment, to the
+readers of this appalling story, to hear that Dante's particulars of it
+are as little to be relied on as those of the Paulo and Francesca. The
+only facts known of Ugolino are, that he was an ambitious traitor, who
+did actually deliver up the fortified places, as Dante acknowledges; and
+that his rivals, infamous as he, or more infamous, prevailed against
+him, and did shut him up and starve him and some of his family. But
+the "little" children are an invention of the poet's, or probably his
+belief, when he was a young man, and first heard the story; for some of
+Ugolino's fellow-prisoners may have been youths, but others were grown
+up--none so childish as he intimates; and they were not all his own
+sons; some were his nephews.
+
+And as to Archbishop Ruggieri, there is no proof whatever of his having
+had any share in the business--hardly a ground of suspicion; so that
+historians look upon him as an "ill-used gentleman." Dante, in all
+probability, must have learnt the real circumstances of the case, as he
+advanced in years; but if charity is bound to hope that he would have
+altered the passage accordingly, had he revised his poem, it is forced
+to admit that he left it unaltered, and that his "will and pleasure"
+might have found means of reconciling the retention to his conscience.
+Pride, unfortunately, includes the power to do things which it pretends
+to be very foreign to its nature; and in proportion as detraction is
+easy to it, retraction becomes insupportable.[3]
+
+Rabelais, to shew his contempt for the knights of chivalry, has made
+them galley-slaves in the next world, their business being to help
+Charon row his boat over the river Styx, and their payment a piece of
+mouldy bread and a fillip on the nose. Somebody should write a burlesque
+of the enormities in Dante's poem, and invent some Rabelaesque
+punishment for a great poet's pride and presumption. What should it be?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. IV.
+
+PICTURE OF FLORENCE IN THE TIME OF DANTE'S ANCESTORS.
+
+  Fiorenza dentro da la cerchia antica,
+  Ond' ella toglie ancora e Terza e Nona,
+  Si stava in pace sobria e pudica.
+
+  Non avea catenella, non corona,
+  Non donne contigiate, non cintura
+  Che fosse a veder più che la persona.
+
+  Non faceva nascendo ancor paura
+  La figlia al padre, che 'l tempo e la dotte
+  Non fuggian quindi e quindi la misura.
+
+  Non avea case di famiglia vote
+  Non v'era giunto ancor Sardanapalo
+  A mostrar ciò che 'n camera si puote.
+
+  Non era vinto ancora Montemalo
+  Dal vostro Uccellatojo, che com' è vinto
+  Nel montar su, così sarà nel calo.
+
+  Bellincion Berti vid' io andar cinto
+  Di cuojo e d'osso, e venir da lo specchio
+  La donna sua sanza 'l viso dipinto:
+
+  E vidi quel de' Nerli e quel del Vecchio
+  Esser contenti a la pelle scoverta,
+  E le sue donne al fuso ed al pennecchio.
+
+  O fortunate! e ciascuna era certa
+  De la sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla
+  Era per Francia nel lotto deserta.
+
+  L'una vegghiava a studio de la culla,
+  E consolando usava l'idioma
+  Che pria li padri e le madri trastulla:
+
+  L'altra traendo a la rocca la chioma
+  Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia
+  Di Trojani e di Fiesole e di Roma.
+
+  Saria tenuta allor tal maraviglia
+  Una Cianghella, un Lapo Salterello,
+  Qual or saria Cincinnato e Corniglia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Translation in blank verse._
+
+  Florence, before she broke the good old bounds,
+  Whence yet are heard the chimes of eve and morn.
+  Abided well in modesty and peace.
+  No coronets had she--no chains of gold--
+  No gaudy sandals--no rich girdles rare
+  That caught the eye more than the person did.
+  Fathers then feared no daughter's birth, for dread
+  Of wantons courting wealth; nor were their homes
+  Emptied with exile. Chamberers had not shown
+  What they could dare, to prove their scorn of shame.
+  Your neighbouring uplands then beheld no towers
+  Prouder than Rome's, only to know worse fall.
+  I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
+  Girt with a thong of leather; and his wife
+  Come from the glass without a painted face.
+  Nerlis I saw, and Vecchios, and the like,
+  In doublets without cloaks; and their good dames
+  Contented while they spun. Blest women those
+  They know the place where they should lie when dead;
+  Nor were their beds deserted while they liv'd.
+  They nurs'd their babies; lull'd them with the songs
+  And household words of their own infancy;
+  And while they drew the distaff's hair away,
+  In the sweet bosoms of their families,
+  Told tales of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome.
+  It had been then as marvellous to see
+  A man of Lapo Salterello's sort,
+  Or woman like Cianghella, as to find
+  A Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. V.
+
+THE MONKS AND THE GIANTS.
+
+PULCI.
+
+  L'abate si chiamava Chiaramonte,
+  Era del sangue disceso d'Angrante:
+  Di sopra a la badia v'era un gran monte,
+  Dove abitava alcun fiero gigante,
+  De' quali uno avea nome Passamonte,
+  L'altro Alabastro, e 'l terzo era Morgante:
+  Con certe frombe gittavan da alto,
+  Ed ogni di facevan qualche assalto.
+
+  I monachetti non potieno uscire
+  Del monistero, o per legne, o per acque.
+  Orlando picchia, e non volieno aprire,
+  Fin che a l'abate a la fine pur piacque:
+  Entrato drento cominciava a dire,
+  Come colui che di Maria già nacque,
+  Adora, ed era cristian battezzato,
+  E com' egli era a la badia arrivato.
+
+  Disse l' abate: Il ben venuto sia:
+  Di quel ch' io ho, volentier ti daremo,
+  Poi the tu credi al figliuol di Maria;
+  E la cagion, cavalier, ti diremo,
+  Acciò che non l'imputi a villania,
+  Perchè a l'entrar resistenza facemo,
+  E non ti volle aprir quel monachetto;
+  Così intervien chi vive con sospetto.
+
+  Quando ci venni al principio abitare
+  Queste montagne, benchè sieno oscure
+  Come tu vedi, pur si potea stare
+  Sanza sospetto, ch' ell' eran sicure:
+  Sol da le fiere t'avevi a guardare:
+  Fernoci spesso di brutte paure;
+  Or ci bisogna, se vogliamo starci,
+  Da le bestie dimestiche guardarci.
+
+  Queste ci fan piutosto stare a segno:
+  Sonci appariti tre fiere giganti,
+  Non so di qual paese o di qual regno,
+  Ma molto son feroci tutti quanti:
+  La forza e 'l malvoler giunt' a lo 'ngegno
+  Sai che può 'l tutto; e noi non siam bastanti:
+  Questi perturban si l'orazion nostra,
+  Che non so più che far, s'altri nol mostra.
+
+  Gli antichi padri nostri nel deserto,
+  Se le lor opre sante erano e giuste,
+  Del ben servir da Dio n'avean buon merto:
+  Nè creder sol vivessin di locuste:
+  Piovea dal ciel la manna, guesto è certo;
+  Ma qui convien che spesso assaggi e gust
+  Sassi, che piovon di sopra quel monte,
+  Che gettano Alabastro e Passamonte.
+
+  E 'l terzo ch' è Morgante, assai più fiero,
+  Isveglie e pini e faggi e cerri e gli oppi,
+  E gettagli infin quì; questo è pur vero:
+  Non posso far che d'ira non iscoppi.
+  Mentre che parlan così in cimitero,
+  Un sasso par che Rondel quasi sgroppi;
+  Che da' giganti giù venne da altro
+  Tanto, ch' e' prese sotto il tetto un salto.
+
+  Tirati drento, cavalier, per Dio,
+  Disse l'abate, che la manna casca.
+  Rispose Orlando: Caro abate mio,
+  Costui non vuol che 'l mio caval più pasca:
+  Veggo che lo guarebbe del restio:
+  Quel sasso par che di buon braccio nasca.
+  Rispose il santo padre: Io non t' inganno;
+  Credo che 'l monte un giorno gitteranno.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. VI.
+
+PASSAGES IN THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
+
+THE SAME.
+
+_Orlando and Bujaforte._
+
+  La battaglia veniva rinforzando,
+  E in ogni parte apparisce la morte:
+  E mentre in quà e in là, combatte Orlando,
+  Un tratto a caso trovò Bujaforte,
+  E in su la testa gli dette col brando:
+  E perchè l'elmo è temperato e forte,
+  O forse incantato era, al colpo ha retto:
+  Ma de la testa gli balzò di netto.
+
+  Orlando prese costui per le chiome,
+  E disse: Dimmi, se non ch' io t'uccido.
+  Di questo tradimento appunto e come:
+  E se tu il di', de la morte ti fido,
+  E vo' che tu mi dica presto il nome.
+  Onde il pagan rispose con gran grido,
+  Aspetta: Bujaforte io te lo dico,
+  De la montagna del Veglio tuo amico.
+
+  Orlando, quando intese il giovinetto,
+  Subito al padre suo raffigurollo:
+  Lasciò la chioma, e poi l'abbracciò stretto
+  Per tenerezza, e con l'elmo baciollo;
+  E disse: O Bujaforte, il vero hai detto
+  Il Veglio mio: e da canto tirollo:
+  Di questo tradimento dimmi appunto,
+  Poi the così la fortuna m' ha giunto.
+
+  Ma ben ti dico per la fede mia,
+  Che di combatter con mie genti hai torto;
+  E so che 'l padre tuo, dovunque e' sia,
+  Non ti perdona questo, così morto.
+  Bujaforte piangeva tuttavia;
+  Poi disse: Orlando mio, datti conforto;
+  Il mio signore a forza quà mi manda;
+  E obbedir convien quel che comanda.
+
+  Io son de la mia patria sbandeggiato:
+  Marsilio in corte sua m' ha ritenuto,
+  E promesso rimettermi in istato:
+  Io vo cercando consiglio ed ajuto,
+  Poi ch' io son da ognuno abbandonato:
+  E per questa cagion quà son venuto:
+  E bench' i mostri far grande schermaglia.
+  Non ho morto nessun ne la battaglia.
+
+  Io t' ho tanto per fama ricordare
+  Sentito a tutto il mondo, che nel core
+  Sempre poi t' ebbi: e mi puoi comandare:
+  E so del padre mio l'antico amore:
+  Del tradimento tu tel puoi pensare:
+  Sai che Gano e Marsilio è traditore:
+  E so per discrezion tu intendi bene,
+  Che tanta gente per tua morte viene.
+
+  E Baldovin di Marsilio ha la vesta;
+  Che così il vostro Gano ba ordinato:
+  Vedi che ignun non gli pon lancia in resta:
+  Che 'l signor nostro ce l'ha comandato.
+  Disse Orlando: Rimetti l'elmo in testa,
+  E torna a la battaglia al modo usato:
+  Vedrem che segnirà: tanto ti dico,
+  Ch' io t'arò sempre come il Veglio amico.
+
+  Poi disse: Aspetta un poco, intendi saldo,
+  Che non ti punga qualche strana ortica:
+  Sappi ch' egli è ne la zuffa Rinaldo:
+  Guarda che il nome per nulla non dica:
+  Che non dicesse in quella furia caldo,
+  Dunque tu se' da la parte nimica:
+  Si che tu giuochi netto, destro e largo:
+  Che ti bisogua aver quì gli occhi d'Argo.
+
+  Rispose Bujaforte: Bene hai detto:
+  Se la battaglia passerà a tuo modo,
+  Ti mostrerò che amico son perfetto,
+  Come fu il padre mio, ch' ancor ne godo.
+
+The poor youth takes his way through the fight, and unfortunately meets
+with Rinaldo.
+
+  Rinaldo ritrovò quel Bujaforte,
+  Al mio parer, che sarebbe scoppiato,
+  Se non avesse trovato la morte:
+  E come egli ebbe a parlar cominciato
+  Del re Marsilio, e di stare in suo corte.
+  Rinaldo gli rispose infuriato:
+  Chi non è ineco, avverso me sia detto;
+  E cominciogli a trassinar l'elmetto.
+  E trasse un mandiretto e due e tre
+  Con tanta furia, e quattro e cinque e sei,
+  Che non ebbe agio a domandar merzè,
+  E morto cadde sanza dire omei.
+
+  _Orlando and Baldwin._
+
+  Orlando, poi che lasciò Bujaforte,
+  Pargli mill'anni trovar Baldovino,
+  Che cerca pure e non truova la morte:
+  E ricognobbe il caval Vegliantino
+  Per la battaglia, e va correndo forte
+  Dov' era Orlando, e diceva il meschino:
+  Sappi ch' io ho fatto oggi il mio dovuto;
+  E contra me nessun mai e venuto.
+
+  Molti pagani ho pur fatti morire;
+  Però quel che ciò sia pensar non posso,
+  Se non ch' io veggo la gente fuggire.
+  Rispose Orlando: Tu ti fai ben grosso;
+  Di questo fatto stu ti vuoi chiarire,
+  La soppravvesta ti cava di dosso:
+  Vedrai che Gan, come tu te la cavi,
+  Ci ha venduti a Marsilio per ischiavi.
+
+  Rispose Baldwin: Se il padre mio
+  Ci ha qui condotti come traditore,
+  S' i' posso oggi campar, pel nostro Iddio
+  Con questa spada passerogli il core:
+  Ma traditore, Orlando, non so io,
+  Ch' io t' ho seguito con perfetto amore:
+  Non mi potresti dir maggiore ingiuria.--
+  Poi si stracciò la vesta con gran furia,
+
+  E disse: Io tornerò ne la battaglia,
+  Poi che tu m' hai per traditore scorto:
+  Io non son traditor, se Dio mi vaglia:
+  Non mi vedrai più oggi se non morto.
+  E in verso l'oste de' pagan si scaglia
+  Dicendo sempre: Tu m' hai fatto torto.
+  Orlando si pentea d'aver cio detto,
+  Che disperato vide il giovinetto.
+
+  Per la battaglia cornea Baldovino,
+  E riscontrò quel crudel Mazzarigi,
+  E disse: Tu se' qui, can Saracino,
+  Per distrugger la gente di Parigi?
+  O marran rinnegato paterino,
+  Tu sarai presto giù ne' bassi Stigi:
+  E trasse con la spada in modo a questo,
+  Che lo mandò dov' egli disse presto.
+
+Orlando meets again with Baldwin, who has kept his word.
+
+  Orlando corse a le grida e 'l romore,
+  E trovò Baldovino il poveretto
+  Ch' era gia presso a l'ultime sue ore,
+  E da due lance avea passato il petto;
+  E disse. Or non son io più traditore--
+  E cadde in terra morto così detto:
+  De la qual cosa duolsi Orlando forte,
+  E pianse esser cagion de la sua morte.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Sì, the Italian _yes_. A similar territorial designation is
+familiar to the reader in the word "Languedoc," meaning _langue d'oc_,
+or tongue of Oc, which was the pronunciation of the _oui_ or _yes_ of
+the French in that quarter.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Alluding to the cruel stories in the mythology of Boeotia.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The controversial character of Dante's genius, and the
+discordant estimate formed of it in so many respects by different
+writers, have already carried the author of this book so far beyond his
+intended limits, that he is obliged to refer for evidence in the cases
+of Ugolino and Francesca to Balbo, _Vita di Dante_ (Napoli, 1840), p.
+33; and to Troya, _Del Vettro Allegorico di Dante_ (Firenze, _1826), pp.
+28, 32, and 176.]
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives
+of the Writers, Volume 1, by Leigh Hunt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1
+
+Author: Leigh Hunt
+
+Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10885]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stan Goodman, Jayam Subramanian and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS: WITH LIVES OF THE WRITERS.
+
+
+BY LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+MDCCCXLVI.
+
+
+
+
+TO SIR PERCY SHELLEY, BART.
+
+
+MY DEAR SIR PERCY,
+
+As I know no man who surpasses yourself either in combining a love of
+the most romantic fiction with the coolest good sense, or in passing
+from the driest metaphysical questions to the heartiest enjoyment of
+humour,--I trust that even a modesty so true as yours will not grudge me
+the satisfaction of inscribing these volumes with your name.
+
+That you should possess such varieties of taste is no wonder,
+considering what an abundance of intellectual honours you inherit; nor
+might the world have been the better for it, had they been tastes, and
+nothing more. But that you should inherit also that zeal for justice to
+mankind, which has become so Christian a feature in the character of the
+age, and that you should include in that zeal a special regard for the
+welfare of your Father's Friend, are subjects of constant pleasurable
+reflection to
+
+Your obliged and affectionate
+
+LEIGH HUNT.
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The purpose of these volumes is, to add to the stock of tales from the
+Italian writers; to retain as much of the poetry of the originals as it
+is in the power of the writer's prose to compass; and to furnish careful
+biographical notices of the authors. There have been several collections
+of stories from the Novellists of Italy, but none from the Poets; and it
+struck me that prose versions from these, of the kind here offered to
+the public, might not be unwillingly received. The stories are selected
+from the five principal narrative poets, Dante, Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto,
+and Tasso; they comprise the most popular of such as are fit for
+translation; are reduced into one continuous narrative, when diffused
+and interrupted, as in the instances of those of Angelica, and Armida;
+are accompanied with critical and explanatory notes; and, in the case of
+Dante, consist of an abstract of the poet's whole work. The volumes are,
+furthermore, interspersed with the most favourite _morceaux_ of the
+originals, followed sometimes with attempts to versify them; and in the
+Appendix, for the furtherance of the study of the Italian language, are
+given entire stories, also in the original, and occasionally rendered
+in like manner. The book is particularly intended for such students or
+other lovers of the language as are pleased with any fresh endeavours to
+recommend it; and, at the same time, for such purely English readers as
+wish to know something about Italian poetry, without having leisure to
+cultivate its acquaintance.
+
+I did not intend in the first instance to depart from the plan
+of selection in the case of Dante; but when I considered what an
+extraordinary person he was,--how intense is every thing which he
+says,--how widely he has re-attracted of late the attention of the
+world,--how willingly perhaps his poem might be regarded by the reader
+as being itself one continued story (which, in fact, it is), related
+personally of the writer,--and lastly, what a combination of
+difficulties have prevented his best translators in verse from giving
+the public a just idea of his almost Scriptural simplicity,--I began to
+think that an abstract of his entire work might possibly be looked upon
+as supplying something of a desideratum. I am aware that nothing but
+verse can do perfect justice to verse; but besides the imperfections
+which are pardonable, because inevitable, in all such metrical
+endeavours, the desire to impress a grand and worshipful idea of Dante
+has been too apt to lead his translators into a tone and manner the
+reverse of his passionate, practical, and creative style--a style which
+may be said to write things instead of words; and thus to render every
+word that is put out of its place, or brought in for help and filling
+up, a misrepresentation. I do not mean to say, that he himself never
+does any thing of the sort, or does not occasionally assume too much
+of the oracle and the schoolmaster, in manner as well as matter;
+but passion, and the absence of the superfluous, are the chief
+characteristics of his poetry. Fortunately, this sincerity of purpose
+and utterance in Dante render him the least pervertible of poets in a
+sincere prose translation; and, since I ventured on attempting one, I
+have had the pleasure of meeting with an express recommendation of such
+a version in an early number of the _Edinburgh Review_.[1]
+
+The abstract of Dante, therefore, in these volumes (with every
+deprecation that becomes me of being supposed to pretend to give a
+thorough idea of any poetry whatsoever, especially without its metrical
+form) aspires to be regarded as, at all events, not exhibiting a false
+idea of the Dantesque spirit in point of feeling and expression. It is
+true, I have omitted long tedious lectures of scholastic divinity, and
+other learned absurdities of the time, which are among the bars to the
+poem's being read through, even in Italy (which Foscolo tells us is
+never the case); and I have compressed the work in other passages not
+essentially necessary to the formation of a just idea of the author.
+But quite enough remains to suggest it to the intelligent; and in no
+instance have I made additions or alterations. There is warrant--I hope
+I may say letter--for every thing put down. Dante is the greatest poet
+for intensity that ever lived; and he excites a corresponding emotion
+in his reader--I wish I could say, always on the poet's side; but his
+ferocious hates and bigotries too often tempt us to hate the bigot,
+and always compel us to take part with the fellow-creatures whom he
+outrages. At least, such is their effect on myself. Nor will he or his
+worshippers suffer us to criticise his faults with mere reference to the
+age in which he lived. I should have been glad to do so; but the claims
+made for him, even by himself, will not allow it. We are called upon to
+look on him as a divine, a prophet, an oracle in all respects for all
+time. Such a man, however, is the last whom a reporter is inclined to
+misrepresent. We respect his sincerity too much, ferocious and arrogant
+though it be; and we like to give him the full benefit of the recoil of
+his curses and maledictions. I hope I have not omitted one. On the
+other hand, as little have I closed my feelings against the lovely
+and enchanting sweetness which this great semi-barbarian sometimes so
+affectingly utters. On those occasions he is like an angel enclosed
+for penance in some furious giant, and permitted to weep through the
+creature's eyes.
+
+The stories from goodnatured Pulci I have been obliged to compress for
+other reasons--chiefly their excessive diffuseness. A paragraph of the
+version will sometimes comprise many pages. Those of Boiardo and Ariosto
+are more exact; and the reader will be good enough to bear in mind, that
+nothing is added to any of the poets, different as the case might seem
+here and there on comparison with the originals. An equivalent for
+whatever is said is to be found in some part of the context--generally
+in letter, always in spirit. The least characteristically exact passages
+are some in the love-scenes of Tasso; for I have omitted the plays upon
+words and other corruptions in style, in which that poet permitted
+himself to indulge. But I have noticed the circumstance in the comment.
+In other respects, I have endeavoured to make my version convey some
+idea of the different styles and genius of the writers,--of the severe
+passion of Dante; of the overflowing gaiety and affecting sympathies
+of Pulci, several of whose passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles are
+masterpieces of pathos; of the romantic and inventive elegance of
+Boiardo; the great cheerful universality of Ariosto, like a healthy
+_anima mundi_; and the ambitious irritability, the fairy imagination,
+and tender but somewhat effeminate voluptuousness of the poet of Armida
+and Rinaldo. I do not pretend that prose versions of passages from these
+writers can supersede the necessity of metrical ones, supposing proper
+metrical ones attainable. They suffice for them, in some respects, less
+than for Dante, the manner in their case being of more importance to
+the effect. But with all due respect to such translators as Harrington,
+Rose, and Wiffen, their books are not Ariosto and Tasso, even in manner.
+Harrington, the gay "godson" of Queen Elizabeth, is not always unlike
+Ariosto; but when not in good spirits he becomes as dull as if her
+majesty had frowned on him. Rose was a man of wit, and a scholar; yet
+he has undoubtedly turned the ease and animation of his original into
+inversion and insipidity. And Wiffen, though elegant and even poetical,
+did an unfortunate thing for Tasso, when he gave an additional line and
+a number of paraphrastic thoughts to a stanza already tending to the
+superfluous. Fairfax himself, who, upon the whole, and with regard to
+a work of any length, is the best metrical translator our language has
+seen, and, like Chapman, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the sins
+of prettiness and conceit in his original, and added to them a love
+of tautology amounting to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below
+criticism; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if I had
+no acquaintance with the Italian language, I confess I would rather get
+any friend who had, to read to me a passage out of Dante, Tasso, or
+Ariosto, into the first simple prose that offered itself, than go to any
+of the above translators for a taste of it, Fairfax excepted; and we
+have seen with how much allowance his sample would have to be taken.
+I have therefore, with some restrictions, only ventured to do for the
+public what I would have had a friend do for myself.
+
+The _Critical and Biographical Notices_ I did not intend to make so long
+at first; but the interest grew upon me; and I hope the reader will
+regard some of them--Dante's and Tasso's in particular--as being
+"stories" themselves, after their kind,--"stories, alas, too true;"
+"romances of real life." The extraordinary character of Dante, which is
+personally mixed up with his writings beyond that of any other poet, has
+led me into references to his church and creed, unavoidable at any
+time in the endeavour to give a thorough estimate of his genius, and
+singularly demanded by certain phenomena of the present day. I hold
+those phenomena to be alike feeble and fugitive; but only so by reason
+of their being openly so proclaimed; for mankind have a tendency to the
+absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed; and one of the
+uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it
+to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and
+the strange identification of his knowledge with all that was knowable,
+would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a
+prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was
+reversing the duty of a Christian and a great man; and there happen to
+be existing reasons why it is salutary to chew that he had no right to
+do so, and must not have his barbarism confounded with his strength.
+Machiavelli was of opinion, that if Christianity had not reverted to its
+first principles, by means of the poverty and pious lives of St. Francis
+and St. Dominic,[2] the faith would have been lost. It may have been;
+but such are not the secrets of its preservation in times of science and
+progression, when the spirit of inquiry has established itself among
+all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as it used to be. A few
+persons here and there, who confound a small superstitious reaction in
+England with the reverse of the fact all over the rest of Europe, may
+persuade themselves, if they please, that the world has not advanced in
+knowledge for the last three centuries, and so get up and cry aloud to
+us out of obsolete horn-books; but the community laugh at them. Every
+body else is inquiring into first principles, while they are dogmatising
+on a forty-ninth proposition. The Irish themselves, as they ought to do,
+care more for their pastors than for the Pope; and if any body wishes to
+know what is thought of his Holiness at head-quarters, let him consult
+the remarkable and admirable pamphlet which has lately issued from the
+pen of Mr. Mazzini.[3] I have the pleasure of knowing excellent Roman
+Catholics; I have suffered in behalf of their emancipation, and would do
+so again to-morrow; but I believe that if even their external form of
+Christianity has any chance of survival three hundred years hence, it
+will have been owing to the appearance meanwhile of some extraordinary
+man in power, who, in the teeth of worldly interests, or rather in
+charitable and sage inclusion of them, shall have proclaimed that the
+time had arrived for living in the flower of Christian charity, instead
+of the husks and thorns which may have been necessary to guard it. If it
+were possible for some new and wonderful Pope to make this change, and
+draw a line between these two Christian epochs, like that between the
+Old and New Testaments, the world would feel inclined to prostrate
+itself again and for ever at the feet of Rome. In a catholic state
+of things like that, delighted should I be, for one, to be among the
+humblest of its communicants. How beautiful would their organs be then!
+how ascending to an unperplexing Heaven their incense! how unselfish
+their salvation! how intelligible their talk about justice and love! It
+would be far more easy, however, for the Church of England to do this
+than the Church of Rome; since the former would not feel itself hampered
+with pretensions to infallibility. A Church once reformed, may reform
+itself again and again, till it remove every blemish in the way of its
+perfection. And God grant this may be the lot of the Church of my native
+country. Its beautiful old ivied places of worship would then want
+no harmony of accordance with its gentle and tranquil scenery; no
+completeness of attraction to the reflecting and the kind.
+
+But if Charity (and by Charity I do not mean mere toleration, or any
+other pretended right to permit others to have eyes like ourselves, but
+whatever the delightful Greek word implies of good and lovely), if this
+truly and only divine consummation of all Christian doctrine be not
+thought capable of taking a form of belief "strong" enough, apart from
+threats that revolt alike the heart and the understanding, Superstition
+must look out for some new mode of dictation altogether; for the world
+is outgrowing the old.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I cannot, in gratitude for the facilities afforded to myself, as well
+as for a more obvious and public reason, dismiss this Preface without
+congratulating men of letters on the establishment and increasing
+prosperity of the _London Library_, an institution founded for the
+purpose of accommodating subscribers with such books, at their own
+houses, as could only be consulted hitherto at the British Museum. The
+sole objection to the Museum is thus done away, and the literary world
+has a fair prospect of possessing two book-institutions instead of one,
+each with its distinct claims to regard, and presenting in combination
+all that the student can wish; for while it is highly desirable that
+authors should be able to have standard works at their command, when
+sickness or other circumstances render it impossible for them to go to
+the Museum, it is undoubtedly requisite that one great collection should
+exist in which they are sure to find the same works unremoved, in case
+of necessity,--not to mention curious volumes of all sorts, manuscripts,
+and a world of books of reference.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: "It is probable that a prose translation would give a
+better idea of the genius and manner of this poet than any metrical
+one." Vol. i. p. 310.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Discorsi sopra la Prinza Deca di Tito Livio_, lib. iii.
+cap. i. At p. 230 of the present volume I have too hastily called
+St. Dominic the "founder of the Inquisition." It is generally conceded, I
+believe, by candid Protestant inquirers, that he was not; whatever zeal
+in the foundation and support of the tribunal may have been manifested
+by his order. But this does not acquit him of the cruelty for which he
+has been praised by Dante. He joined in the sanguinary persecution of
+the Albigenses.]
+
+[Footnote: 3 It is entitled, "_Italy, Austria, and the Pope_;" and
+is full, not only of the eloquence of zeal, and of evidences
+of intellectual power, but of the most curious and instructive
+information.]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+OF
+
+THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DANTE.
+
+CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS
+
+THE ITALIAN PILGRIMS PROGRESS
+
+I. The Journey through Hell  II.   Purgatory.   III. Heaven
+
+
+PULCI.
+
+CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS
+
+HUMOURS OF GIANTS
+
+THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+I. Story of Paulo and Francesca. Translation.
+
+II. Accounts given by different writers of the circumstances relating to
+Paulo and Francesca; concluding with the only facts ascertained.
+
+III. Story of Ugolino. Translation. Real Story of Ugolino, and Chaucer's
+feeling respecting the Poem.
+
+IV. Picture of Florence in the time of Dante's Ancestors. Translation.
+
+V. The Monks and the Giants
+
+VI. Passages in the Battle of Roncesvalles.
+
+
+
+DANTE
+
+
+Critical Notice
+
+OF
+
+DANTE'S LIFE AND GENIUS.[1]
+
+
+Dante was a very great poet, a man of the strongest passions, a claimant
+of unbounded powers to lead and enlighten the world; and he lived in a
+semi-barbarous age, as favourable to the intensity of his imagination,
+as it was otherwise to the rest of his pretensions. Party zeal, and the
+fluctuations of moral and critical opinion, have at different periods
+over-rated and depreciated his memory; and if, in the following attempt
+to form its just estimate, I have found myself compelled, in some
+important respects, to differ with preceding writers, and to protest in
+particular against his being regarded as a proper teacher on any one
+point, poetry excepted, and as far as all such genius and energy cannot
+in some degree help being, I have not been the less sensible of the
+wonderful nature of that genius, while acting within the circle to which
+it belongs. Dante was indeed so great a poet, and at the same time
+exhibited in his personal character such a mortifying exception to what
+we conceive to be the natural wisdom and temper of great poets; in
+other words, he was such a bigoted and exasperated man, and sullied
+his imagination with so much that is contradictory to good feeling, in
+matters divine as well as human; that I should not have thought myself
+justified in assisting, however humbly, to extend the influence of his
+writings, had I not believed a time to have arrived, when the community
+may profit both from the marvels of his power and the melancholy
+absurdity of its contradictions.
+
+Dante Alighieri, who has always been known by his Christian rather than
+surname (partly owing to the Italian predilection for Christian names,
+and partly to the unsettled state of patronymics in his time), was the
+son of a lawyer of good family in Florence, and was born in that city on
+the 14th of May 1265 (sixty-three years before the birth of Chaucer).
+The stock is said to have been of Roman origin, of the race of the
+Frangipani; but the only certain trace of it is to Cacciaguida, a
+Florentine cavalier of the house of the Elisei, who died in the
+Crusades. Dante gives an account of him in his _Paradiso_.[2]
+Cacciaguida married a lady of the Alighieri family of the Valdipado;
+and, giving the name to one of his children, they subsequently retained
+it as a patronymic in preference to their own. It would appear, from the
+same poem, not only that the Alighieri were the more important house,
+but that some blot had darkened the scutcheon of the Elisei; perhaps
+their having been poor, and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from
+some disreputable district. Perhaps they were known to have been of
+ignoble origin; for, in the course of one of his most philosophical
+treatises, he bursts into an extraordinary ebullition of ferocity
+against such as adduce a knowledge of that kind as an argument against a
+family's acquired nobility; affirming that such brutal stuff should be
+answered not with words, but with the dagger.[3]
+
+The Elisei, however, must have been of some standing; for Macchiavelli,
+in his History of Florence, mentions them in his list of the early
+Guelph and Ghibelline parties, where the side which they take is
+different from that of the poet's immediate progenitors.[4] The arms of
+the Alighieri (probably occasioned by the change in that name, for it
+was previously written Aldighieri) are interesting on account of their
+poetical and aspiring character. They are a golden wing on a field
+azure.[5]
+
+It is generally supposed that the name Dante is an abbreviation of
+Durante; but this is not certain, though the poet had a nephew so
+called. Dante is the name he goes by in the gravest records, in
+law-proceedings, in his epitaph, in the mention of him put by himself
+into the mouth of a blessed spirit. Boccaccio intimates that he was
+christened Dante, and derives the name from the ablative case of _dans_
+(giving)--a probable etymology, especially for a Christian appellation.
+As an abbreviation of Durante, it would correspond in familiarity with
+the Ben of Ben Jonson--a diminutive that would assuredly not have been
+used by grave people on occasions like those mentioned, though a wit of
+the day gave the masons a shilling to carve "O rare Ben Jonson!" on his
+grave stone. On the other hand, if given at the font, the name of Ben
+would have acquired all the legal gravity of Benjamin. In the English
+Navy List, not long ago, one of our gallant admirals used to figure as
+"Billy Douglas."
+
+Of the mother of Dante nothing is known except that she was his father's
+second wife, and that her Christian name was Bella, or perhaps surname
+Bello. It might, however, be conjectured, from the remarkable and only
+opportunity which our author has taken of alluding to her, that he
+derived his disdainful character rather from his mother than father.[6]
+The father appears to have died during the boyhood of his illustrious
+son.
+
+The future poet, before he had completed his ninth year, conceived a
+romantic attachment to a little lady who had just entered hers, and who
+has attained a celebrity of which she was destined to know nothing. This
+was the famous Beatrice Portinari, daughter of a rich Florentine who
+founded more than one charitable institution. She married another man,
+and died in her youth; but retained the Platonical homage of her young
+admirer, living and dead, and became the heroine of his great poem.
+
+It is unpleasant to reduce any portion of a romance to the events of
+ordinary life; but with the exception of those who merely copy from
+one another, there has been such a conspiracy on the part of Dante's
+biographers to overlook at least one disenchanting conclusion to be
+drawn to that effect from the poet's own writings, that the probable
+truth of the matter must here for the first time be stated. The case,
+indeed, is clear enough from his account of it. The natural tendencies
+of a poetical temperament (oftener evinced in a like manner than the
+world in general suppose) not only made the boy-poet fall in love, but,
+in the truly Elysian state of the heart at that innocent and adoring
+time of life, made him fancy he had discovered a goddess in the object
+of his love; and strength of purpose as well as imagination made him
+grow up in the fancy. He disclosed himself, as time advanced, only by
+his manner--received complacent recognitions in company from the young
+lady--offended her by seeming to devote himself to another (see the poem
+in the _Vita Nuova_, beginning "Ballata io vo")--rendered himself the
+sport of her and her young friends by his adoring timidity (see the 5th
+and 6th sonnets in the same work)--in short, constituted her a paragon
+of perfection, and enabled her, by so doing, to shew that she was none.
+He says, that finding himself unexpectedly near her one day in company,
+he trembled so, and underwent such change of countenance, that many of
+the ladies present began to laugh with her about him--"_si gabbavano di
+me_." And he adds, in verse,
+
+  "Con l'altre donne mia vista gabbate,
+  E non pensate, donna, onde si mova
+  Ch'io vi rassembri si figura nova,
+  Quando riguardo la vostra beltate," &c.          Son. 5.
+
+"You laugh with the other ladies to see how I look (literally, you mock
+my appearance); and do not think, lady, what it is that renders me so
+strange a figure at sight of your beauty."
+
+And in the sonnet that follows, he accuses her of preventing pity of him
+in others, by such "killing mockery" as makes him wish for death ("_la
+pieta, che 'l vostro gabbo recinde_," &c.)[7]
+
+Now, it is to be admitted, that a young lady, if she is not very wise,
+may laugh at her lover with her companions, and yet return his love,
+after her fashion; but the fair Portinari laughs and marries another.
+Some less melancholy face, some more intelligible courtship, triumphed
+over the questionable flattery of the poet's gratuitous worship; and the
+idol of Dante Alighieri became the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi. Not
+a word does he say on that mortifying point. It transpired from a clause
+in her father's will. And yet so bent are the poet's biographers on
+leaving a romantic doubt in one's mind, whether Beatrice may not have
+returned his passion, that not only do all of them (as far as I have
+observed) agree in taking no notice of these sonnets, but the author
+of the treatise entitled _Dante and the Catholic Philosophy of the
+Thirteenth Century_, "in spite" (as a critic says) "of the _Beatrice,
+his daughter, wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi_, of the paternal will,"
+describes her as dying in "all the lustre of virginity." [8] The
+assumption appears to be thus gloriously stated, as a counterpart to the
+notoriety of its untruth. It must be acknowledged, that Dante himself
+gave the cue to it by more than silence; for he not only vaunts her
+acquaintance in the next world, but assumes that she returns his love in
+that region, as if no such person as her husband could have existed, or
+as if he himself had not been married also. This life-long pertinacity
+of will is illustrative of his whole career.
+
+Meantime, though the young poet's father had died, nothing was wanting
+on the part of his guardians, or perhaps his mother, to furnish him with
+an excellent education. It was so complete, as to enable him to become
+master of all the knowledge of his time; and he added to this learning
+more than a taste for drawing and music. He speaks of himself as drawing
+an angel in his tablets on the first anniversary of Beatrice's death.[9]
+One of his instructors was Brunetto Latini, the most famous scholar then
+living; and he studied both at the universities of Padua and Bologna. At
+eighteen, perhaps sooner, he had shown such a genius for poetry as
+to attract the friendship of Guido Cavalcante, a young noble of a
+philosophical as well as poetical turn of mind, who has retained a
+reputation with posterity: and it was probably at the same time he
+became acquainted with Giotto, who drew his likeness, and with Casella,
+the musician, whom he greets with so much tenderness in the other world.
+
+Nor were his duties as a citizen forgotten. The year before Beatrice's
+death, he was at the battle of Campaldino, which his countrymen gained
+against the people of Arezzo; and the year after it he was present at
+the taking of Caprona from the Pisans. It has been supposed that he once
+studied medicine with a view to it as a profession; but the conjecture
+probably originated in nothing more than his having entered himself of
+one of the city-companies (which happened to be the medical) for the
+purpose of qualifying himself to accept office; a condition exacted of
+the gentry by the then democratic tendencies of the republic. It is
+asserted also, by an early commentator, that he entered the Franciscan
+order of friars, but quitted it before he was professed; and, indeed,
+the circumstance is not unlikely, considering his agitated and impatient
+turn of mind. Perhaps he fancied that he had done with the world when it
+lost the wife of Simone de' Bardi.
+
+Weddings that might have taken place but do not, are like the reigns
+of deceased heirs-apparent; every thing is assumable in their favour,
+checked only by the histories of husbands and kings. Would the great
+but splenetic poet have made an angel and a saint of Beatrice, had he
+married her? He never utters the name of the woman whom he did marry.
+
+Gemma Donati was a kinswoman of the powerful family of that name. It
+seems not improbable, from some passages in his works, that she was the
+young lady whom he speaks of as taking pity on him on account of his
+passion for Beatrice;[10] and in common justice to his feelings as a man
+and a gentleman, it is surely to be concluded, that he felt some sort
+of passion for his bride, if not of a very spiritual sort; though he
+afterwards did not scruple to intimate that he was ashamed of it, and
+Beatrice is made to rebuke him in the other world for thinking of
+any body after herself.[11] At any rate, he probably roused what was
+excitable in his wife's temper, with provocations from his own; for the
+nature of the latter is not to be doubted, whereas there is nothing but
+tradition to shew for the bitterness of hers. Foscolo is of opinion
+that the tradition itself arose simply from a rhetorical flourish of
+Boccaccio's, in his Life of Dante, against the marriages of men of
+letters; though Boccaccio himself expressly adds, that he knows nothing
+to the disadvantage of the poet's wife, except that her husband, after
+quitting Florence, would never either come where she was, or suffer
+her to come to him, mother as she was by him of so many children;--a
+statement, it must be confessed, not a little encouraging to the
+tradition.[12] Be this as it may, Dante married in his twenty-sixth
+year; wrote an adoring account of his first love (the _Vita Nuova_) in
+his twenty-eighth; and among the six children which Gemma brought him,
+had a daughter whom he named Beatrice, in honour, it is understood, of
+the fair Portinari; which surely was either a very great compliment, or
+no mean trial to the temper of the mother.
+
+We shall see presently how their domestic intercourse was interrupted,
+and what absolute uncertainty there is respecting it, except as far as
+conclusions may be drawn from his own temper and history.
+
+Italy, in those days, was divided into the parties of Guelphs and
+Ghibellines; the former, the advocates of general church-ascendancy
+and local government; the latter, of the pretensions of the Emperor of
+Germany, who claimed to be the Roman Caesar, and paramount over the
+Pope. In Florence, the Guelphs had for a long time been so triumphant as
+to keep the Ghibellines in a state of banishment. Dante was born and
+bred a Guelph: he had twice borne arms for his country against Ghibelline
+neighbours; and now, at the age of thirty-five, in the ninth of his
+marriage, and last of his residence with his wife, he was appointed chief
+of the temporary administrators of affairs, called Priors;--functionaries
+who held office only for two months.
+
+Unfortunately, at that moment, his party had become subdivided into the
+factions of the Whites and Blacks, or adherents of two different sides
+in a dispute that took place in Pistoia. The consequences becoming
+serious, the Blacks proposed to bring in, as mediator, the French
+Prince, Charles of Valois, then in arms for the Pope against the
+Emperor; but the Whites, of whom Dante was one, were hostile to the
+measure; and in order to prevent it, he and his brother magistrates
+expelled for a time the heads of both factions, to the satisfaction of
+neither. The Whites accused them of secretly leaning to the Ghibellines,
+and the Blacks of openly favouring the Whites; who being, indeed,
+allowed to come back before their time, on the alleged ground of the
+unwholesomeness of their place of exile, which was fatal to Dante's
+friend Cavalcante, gave a colour to the charge. Dante answered it by
+saying, that he had then quitted office; but he could not shew that he
+had lost his influence. Meantime, Charles was still urged to interfere,
+and Dante was sent ambassador to the Pope to obtain his disapprobation
+of the interference; but the Pope (Boniface the Eighth), who had
+probably discovered that the Whites had ceased to care for any thing but
+their own disputes, and who, at all events, did not like their objection
+to his representative, beguiled the ambassador and encouraged the French
+prince; the Blacks, in consequence, regained their ascendancy; and
+the luckless poet, during his absence, was denounced as a corrupt
+administrator of affairs, guilty of peculation; was severely
+mulcted; banished from Tuscany for two years; and subsequently, for
+contumaciousness, was sentenced to be _burnt alive_, in case he returned
+ever. He never did return.
+
+From that day forth, Dante never beheld again his home or his wife. Her
+relations obtained possession of power, but no use was made of it except
+to keep him in exile. He had not accorded with them; and perhaps half
+the secret of his conjugal discomfort was owing to politics. It is the
+opinion of some, that the married couple were not sorry to part; others
+think that the wife remained behind, solely to scrape together what
+property she could, and bring up the children. All that is known is,
+that she never lived with him more.
+
+Dante now certainly did what his enemies had accused him of wishing to
+do: he joined the old exiles whom he had helped to make such, the party
+of the Ghibellines. He alleges, that he never was really of any party
+but his own; a naive confession, probably true in one sense, considering
+his scorn of other people, his great intellectual superiority, and the
+large views he had for the whole Italian people. And, indeed, he soon
+quarrelled in private with the individuals composing his new party,
+however stanch he apparently remained to their cause. His former
+associates he had learnt to hate for their differences with him and for
+their self-seeking; he hated the Pope for deceiving him; he hated
+the Pope's French allies for being his allies, and interfering with
+Florence; and he had come to love the Emperor for being hated by them
+all, and for holding out (as he fancied) the only chance of reuniting
+Italy to their confusion, and making her the restorer of himself, and
+the mistress of the world.
+
+With these feelings in his heart, no money in his purse, and no place in
+which to lay his head, except such as chance-patrons afforded him,
+he now began to wander over Italy, like some lonely lion of a man,
+"grudging in his great disdain." At one moment he was conspiring and
+hoping; at another, despairing and endeavouring to conciliate his
+beautiful Florence: now again catching hope from some new movement of
+the Emperor's; and then, not very handsomely threatening and re-abusing
+her; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his
+thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work. It is
+conjectured, that whenever anything particularly affected him, whether
+with joy or sorrow, he put it, hot with the impression, into his
+"sacred poem." Every body who jarred against his sense of right or his
+prejudices he sent to the infernal regions, friend or foe: the strangest
+people who sided with them (but certainly no personal foe) he exalted
+to heaven. He encouraged, if not personally assisted, two ineffectual
+attempts of the Ghibellines against Florence; wrote, besides his great
+work, a book of mixed prose and poetry on "Love and Virtue" (the
+_Convito_, or Banquet); a Latin treatise on Monarchy (_de Monarchia_),
+recommending the "divine right" of the Emperor; another in two parts,
+and in the same language, on the Vernacular Tongue (_de Vulgari
+Eloquio_); and learnt to know meanwhile, as he affectingly tells us,
+"how hard it was to climb other people's stairs, and how salt the taste
+of bread is that is not our own." It is even thought not improbable,
+from one awful passage of his poem, that he may have "placed himself in
+some public way," and, "stripping his visage of all shame, and trembling
+in his very vitals," have stretched out his hand "for charity" [13]--an
+image of suffering, which, proud as he was, yet considering how great a
+man, is almost enough to make one's common nature stoop down for pardon
+at his feet; and yet he should first prostrate himself at the feet of
+that nature for his outrages on God and man. Several of the princes and
+feudal chieftains of Italy entertained the poet for a while in their
+houses; but genius and worldly power, unless for worldly purposes, find
+it difficult to accord, especially in tempers like his. There must be
+great wisdom and amiableness on both sides to save them from jealousy
+of one another's pretensions. Dante was not the man to give and take in
+such matters on equal terms; and hence he is at one time in a palace,
+and at another in a solitude. Now he is in Sienna, now in Arezzo, now in
+Bologna; then probably in Verona with Can Grande's elder brother; then
+(if we are to believe those who have tracked his steps) in Casentino;
+then with the Marchese Moroello Malaspina in Lunigiana; then with the
+great Ghibelline chieftain Faggiuola in the mountains near Urbino; then
+in Romagna, in Padua, in _Paris_ (arguing with the churchmen), some say
+in Germany, and at _Oxford_; then again in Italy; in Lucca (where he is
+supposed to have relapsed from his fidelity to Beatrice in favour of
+a certain "Gentucca"); then again in Verona with the new prince, the
+famous Can Grande (where his sarcasms appear to have lost him a doubtful
+hospitality); then in a monastery in the mountains of Umbria; in Udine;
+in Ravenna; and there at length he put up for the rest of his life with
+his last and best friend, Guido Novello da Polenta, not the father, but
+the nephew of the hapless Francesca.
+
+It was probably in the middle period of his exile, that in one of the
+moments of his greatest longing for his native country, he wrote that
+affecting passage in the _Convito_, which was evidently a direct effort
+at conciliation. Excusing himself for some harshness and obscurity in
+the style of that work, he exclaims, "Ah! would it had pleased the
+Dispenser of all things that this excuse had never been needed;
+that neither others had done me wrong, nor myself undergone penalty
+undeservedly--the penalty, I say, of exile and of poverty. For it
+pleased the citizens of the fairest and most renowned daughter of
+Rome--Florence--to cast me out of her most sweet bosom, where I was
+born, and bred, and passed half of the life of man, and in which, with
+her good leave, I still desire with all my heart to repose my weary
+spirit, and finish the days allotted me; and so I have wandered in
+almost every place to which our language extends, a stranger, almost a
+beggar, exposing against my will the wounds given me by fortune, too
+often unjustly imputed to the sufferer's fault. Truly I have been a
+vessel without sail and without rudder, driven about upon different
+ports and shores by the dry wind that springs out of dolorous poverty;
+and hence have I appeared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps, by
+some better report had conceived of me a different impression, and in
+whose sight not only has my person become thus debased, but an unworthy
+opinion created of every thing which I did, or which I had to do." [14]
+
+How simply and strongly written! How full of the touching yet
+undegrading commiseration which adversity has a right to take upon
+itself, when accompanied with the consciousness of manly endeavour and a
+good motive! How could such a man condescend at other times to rage with
+abuse, and to delight himself in images of infernal torment!
+
+The dates of these fluctuations of feeling towards his native city are
+not known; but it is supposed to have been not very long before his
+abode with Can Grande that he received permission to return to Florence,
+on conditions which he justly refused and resented in the following
+noble letter to a kinsman. The old spelling of the original (in the
+note) is retained as given by Foscolo in the article on "Dante" in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ (vol. XXX. no. 60); and I have retained also, with
+little difference, the translation which accompanies it:
+
+"From your letter, which I received with due respect and affection, I
+observe how much you have at heart my restoration to my country. I am
+bound to you the more gratefully, inasmuch as an exile rarely finds a
+friend. But after mature consideration, I must, by my answer, disappoint
+the wishes of some little minds; and I confide in the judgment to which
+your impartiality and prudence will lead you. Your nephew and mine has
+written to me, what indeed had been mentioned by many other friends,
+that, by a decree concerning the exiles, I am allowed to return to
+Florence, provided I pay a certain sum of money, and submit to the
+humiliation of asking and receiving absolution: wherein, my father, I
+see two propositions that are ridiculous and impertinent. I speak of the
+impertinence of those who mention such conditions to me; for in your
+letter, dictated by judgment and discretion, there is no such thing. Is
+such an invitation, then, to return to his country glorious to d. all.
+(Dante Allighieri), after suffering in exile almost fifteen years? Is it
+thus they would recompense innocence which all the world knows, and
+the labour and fatigue of unremitting study? Far from the man who is
+familiar with philosophy be the senseless baseness of a heart of earth,
+that could act like a little sciolist, and imitate the infamy of some
+others, by offering himself up as it were in chains: far from the man
+who cries aloud for justice, this compromise by his money with his
+persecutors. No, my father, this is not the way that shall lead me back
+to my country. I will return with hasty steps, if you or any other can
+open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame and honour of d.
+(Dante); but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I
+shall never enter. What! shall I not everywhere enjoy the light of the
+sun and stars? and may I not seek and contemplate, in every corner of
+the earth, under the canopy of heaven, consoling and delightful truth,
+without first rendering myself inglorious, nay infamous, to the people
+and republic of Florence? Bread, I hope, will not fail me." [15]
+
+Had Dante's pride and indignation always vented themselves in this truly
+exalted manner, never could the admirers of his genius have refused him
+their sympathy; and never, I conceive, need he either have brought his
+exile upon him, or closed it as he did. To that close we have now come,
+and it is truly melancholy and mortifying. Failure in a negotiation with
+the Venetians for his patron, Guido Novello, is supposed to have been
+the last bitter drop which made the cup of his endurance run over. He
+returned from Venice to Ravenna, worn out, and there died, after fifteen
+years' absence from his country, in the year 1231, aged fifty-seven. His
+life had been so agitated, that it probably would not have lasted so
+long, but for the solace of his poetry, and the glory which he knew it
+must produce him. Guido gave him a sumptuous funeral, and intended to
+give him a monument; but such was the state of Italy in those times,
+that he himself died in exile the year after. The monument, however, and
+one of a noble sort, was subsequently bestowed by the father of Cardinal
+Bembo, in 1483; and another, still nobler, as late as 1780, by Cardinal
+Gonzaga. His countrymen, in after years, made two solemn applications
+for the removal of his dust to Florence; but the just pride of the
+Ravennese refused them.
+
+Of the exile's family, three sons died young; the daughter went into a
+nunnery; and the two remaining brothers, who ultimately joined their
+father in his banishment, became respectable men of letters, and left
+families in Ravenna; where the race, though extinct in the male line,
+still survives through a daughter, in the noble house of Serego
+Alighieri. No direct descent of the other kind from poets of former
+times is, I believe, known to exist.
+
+The manners and general appearance of Dante have been minutely recorded,
+and are in striking agreement with his character. Boccaccio and other
+novelists are the chief relaters; and their accounts will be received
+accordingly with the greater or less trust, as the reader considers them
+probable; but the author of the Decameron personally knew some of his
+friends and relations, and he intermingles his least favourable reports
+with expressions of undoubted reverence. The poet was of middle height,
+of slow and serious deportment, had a long dark visage, large piercing
+eyes, large jaws, an aquiline nose, a projecting under-lip, and thick
+curling hair--an aspect announcing determination and melancholy. There
+is a sketch of his countenance, in his younger days, from the immature
+but sweet pencil of Giotto; and it is a refreshment to look at it,
+though pride and discontent, I think, are discernible in its lineaments.
+It is idle, and no true compliment to his nature, to pretend, as his
+mere worshippers do, that his face owes all its subsequent gloom and
+exacerbation to external causes, and that he was in every respect the
+poor victim of events--the infant changed at nurse by the wicked. What
+came out of him, he must have had in him, at least in the germ; and so
+inconsistent was his nature altogether, or, at any rate, such an epitome
+of all the graver passions that are capable of co-existing, both sweet
+and bitter, thoughtful and outrageous, that one is sometimes tempted to
+think he must have had an angel for one parent, and--I shall leave his
+own toleration to say what--for the other.
+
+To continue the account of his manners and inclinations: He dressed with
+a becoming gravity; was temperate in his diet; a great student; seldom
+spoke, unless spoken to, but always to the purpose; and almost all the
+anecdotes recorded of him, except by himself, are full of pride and
+sarcasm. He was so swarthy, that a woman, as he was going by a door in
+Verona, is said to have pointed him out to another, with a remark
+which made the saturnine poet smile--"That is the man who goes to hell
+whenever he pleases, and brings back news of the people there." On which
+her companion observed--"Very likely; don't you see what a curly beard he
+has, and what a dark face? owing, I dare say, to the heat and smoke." He
+was evidently a passionate lover of painting and music--is thought to
+have been less strict in his conduct with regard to the sex than might
+be supposed from his platonical aspirations--(Boccaccio says, that even
+a goitre did not repel him from the pretty face of a mountaineer)--could
+be very social when he was young, as may be gathered from the sonnet
+addressed to his friend Cavalcante about a party for a boat--and though
+his poetry was so intense and weighty, the laudable minuteness of a
+biographer has informed us, that his hand-writing, besides being neat
+and precise, was of a long and particularly thin character: "meagre" is
+his word.
+
+There is a letter, said to be nearly coeval with his time, and to be
+written by the prior of a monastery to a celebrated Ghibelline leader, a
+friend of Dante's, which, though hitherto accounted apocryphal by most,
+has such an air of truth, and contains an image of the poet in his exile
+so exceedingly like what we conceive of the man, that it is difficult
+not to believe it genuine, especially as the handwriting has lately been
+discovered to be that of Boccaccio.[16] At all events, I am sure the
+reader will not be sorry to have the substance of it. The writer says,
+that he perceived one day a man coming into the monastery, whom none of
+its inmates knew. He asked him what he wanted; but the stranger saying
+nothing, and continuing to gaze on the building as though contemplating
+its architecture, the question was put a second time; upon which,
+looking round on his interrogators, he answered, "_Peace_!" The prior,
+whose curiosity was strongly excited, took the stranger apart, and
+discovering who he was, shewed him all the attention becoming his fame;
+and then Dante took a little book out of his bosom, aid observing that
+perhaps the prior had not seen it, expressed a wish to leave it with his
+new friend as a memorial. It was "a portion," he said, "of his work."
+The prior received the volume with respect; and politely opening it at
+once, and fixing his eyes on the contents, in order, it would seem,
+to shew the interest he took in it, appeared suddenly to check some
+observation which they suggested. Dante found that his reader was
+surprised at seeing the work written in the vulgar tongue instead of
+Latin. He explained, that he wished to address himself to readers of all
+classes; and concluded with requesting the prior to add some notes, with
+the spirit of which he furnished him, and then forward it (transcribed,
+I presume, by the monks) to their common friend, the Ghibelline
+chieftain--a commission, which, knowing the prior's intimacy with that
+personage, appears to have been the main object of his coming to the
+place[17].
+
+This letter has been adduced as an evidence of Dante's poem having
+transpired during his lifetime: a thing which, in the teeth of
+Boccaccio's statement to that effect, and indeed the poet's own
+testimony[18], Foscolo holds to be so impossible, that he turns the
+evidence against the letter. He thinks, that if such bitter invectives
+had been circulated, a hundred daggers would have been sheathed in the
+bosom of the exasperating poet[19]. But I cannot help being of opinion,
+with some writer whom I am unable at present to call to mind (Schlegel,
+I think), that the strong critical reaction of modern times in favour
+of Dante's genius has tended to exaggerate the idea conceived of him in
+relation to his own. That he was of importance, and bitterly hated in
+his native city, was a distinction he shared with other partisans who
+have obtained no celebrity, though his poetry, no doubt, must have
+increased the bitterness; that his genius also became more and more felt
+out of the city, by the few individuals capable of estimating a man of
+letters in those semi-barbarous times, may be regarded as certain; but
+that busy politicians in general, war-making statesmen, and princes
+constantly occupied in fighting for their existence with one another,
+were at all alive either to his merits or his invectives, or would have
+regarded him as anything but a poor wandering scholar, solacing his
+foolish interference in the politics of this world with the old clerical
+threats against his enemies in another, will hardly, I think, be doubted
+by any one who reflects on the difference between a fame accumulated by
+ages, and the living poverty that is obliged to seek its bread. A writer
+on a monkish subject may have acquired fame with monks, and even with
+a few distinguished persons, and yet have been little known, and less
+cared for, out of the pale of that very private literary public, which
+was almost exclusively their own. When we read, now-a-days, of the great
+poet's being so politely received by Can Grande, lord of Verona, and
+sitting at his princely table, we are apt to fancy that nothing but
+his great poetry procured him the reception, and that nobody present
+competed with him in the eyes of his host. But, to say nothing of the
+different kinds of retainers that could sit at a prince's table in those
+days, Can, who was more ostentatious than delicate in his munificence,
+kept a sort of caravansera for clever exiles, whom he distributed into
+lodgings classified according to their pursuits;[20] and Dante only
+shared his bounty with the rest, till the more delicate poet could no
+longer endure either the buffoonery of his companions, or the amusement
+derived from it by the master. On one occasion, his platter is slily
+heaped with their bones, which provokes him to call them dogs, as having
+none to shew for their own. Another time, Can Grande asks him how it is
+that his companions give more pleasure at court than himself; to which
+he answers, "Because like loves like." He then leaves the court, and his
+disgusted superiority is no doubt regarded as a pedantic assumption.
+
+He stopped long nowhere, except with Guido Novello; and when that
+prince, whose downfal was at hand, sent him on the journey above
+mentioned to Venice, the senate (whom the poet had never offended) were
+so little aware of his being of consequence, that they declined giving
+him an audience. He went back, and broke his heart. Boccaccio says, that
+he would get into such passions with the very boys and girls in the
+street, who plagued him with party-words, as to throw stones at them--a
+thing that would be incredible, if persons acquainted with his great but
+ultra-sensitive nation did not know what Italians could do in all ages,
+from Dante's own age down to the times of Alfieri and Foscolo. It
+would be as difficult, from the evidence of his own works and of the
+exasperation he created, to doubt the extremest reports of his irascible
+temper, as it would be not to give implicit faith to his honesty. The
+charge of peculation which his enemies brought against this great poet,
+the world has universally scouted with an indignation that does it
+honour. He himself seems never to have condescended to allude to it;
+and a biographer would feel bound to copy his silence, had not the
+accusation been so atrociously recorded. But, on the other hand, who
+can believe that a man so capable of doing his fellow-citizens good and
+honour, would have experienced such excessive enmity, had he not carried
+to excess the provocations of his pride and scorn? His whole history
+goes to prove it, not omitting the confession he makes of pride as his
+chief sin, and the eulogies he bestows on the favourite vice of the
+age--revenge. His Christianity (at least as shewn in his poem) was not
+that of Christ, but of a furious polemic. His motives for changing his
+party, though probably of a mixed nature, like those of most human
+beings, may reasonably be supposed to have originated in something
+better than interest or indignation. He had most likely not agreed
+thoroughly with any party, and had become hopeless of seeing dispute
+brought to an end, except by the representative of the Caesars. The
+inconsistency of the personal characters of the popes with the sacred
+claims of the chair of St. Peter, was also calculated greatly to disgust
+him; but still his own infirmities of pride and vindictiveness
+spoiled all; and when he loaded every body else with reproach for the
+misfortunes of his country, he should have recollected that, had his own
+faults been kept in subjection to his understanding, he might possibly
+have been its saviour. Dante's modesty has been asserted on the ground
+of his humbling himself to the fame of Virgil, and at the feet of
+blessed spirits; but this kind of exalted humility does not repay a
+man's fellow-citizens for lording it over them with scorn and derision.
+We learn from Boccaccio, that when he was asked to go ambassador
+from his party to the pope, he put to them the following useless and
+mortifying queries--"If I go, who is to stay?--and if I stay, who is to
+go?" [21] Neither did his pride make him tolerant of pride in others.
+A neighbour applying for his intercession with a magistrate, who had
+summoned him for some offence, Dante, who disliked the man for riding in
+an overbearing manner along the streets (stretching out his legs as wide
+as he could, and hindering people from going by), did intercede with the
+magistrate, but it was in behalf of doubling the fine in consideration
+of the horsemanship. The neighbour, who was a man of family, was so
+exasperated, that Sacchetti the novelist says it was the principal cause
+of Dante's expatriation. This will be considered the less improbable,
+if, as some suppose, the delinquent obtained possession of his derider's
+confiscated property; but, at all events, nothing is more likely to
+have injured him. The bitterest animosities are generally of a personal
+nature; and bitter indeed must have been those which condemned a man of
+official dignity and of genius to such a penalty as the stake.[22]
+
+That the Florentines of old, like other half-Christianised people, were
+capable of any extremity against an opponent, burning included, was
+proved by the fates of Savonarola and others; and that Dante himself
+could admire the burners is evident from his eulogies and beatification
+of such men as Folco and St. Dominic. The tragical as well as "fantastic
+tricks" which
+
+  "Man, proud man,
+  Drest in a little brief authority,"
+
+plays with his energy and bad passions under the guise of duty, is among
+the most perplexing of those spectacles, which, according to a greater
+understanding than Dante's, "make the angels weep." (Dante, by the way,
+has introduced in his heaven no such angels as those; though he has
+plenty that scorn and denounce.) Lope de Vega, though a poet, was an
+officer of the Inquisition, and joined the famous Armada that was coming
+to thumb-screw and roast us into his views of Christian meekness.
+Whether the author of the story of _Paulo and Francesca_ could have
+carried the Dominican theories into practice, had he been the banisher
+instead of the banished, is a point that may happily be doubted; but at
+all events he revenged himself on his enemies after their own fashion;
+for he answered their decree of the stake by putting them into hell.
+
+Dante entitled the saddest poem in the world a Comedy, because it was
+written in a middle style; though some, by a strange confusion of ideas,
+think the reason must have been because it "ended happily!" that is,
+because, beginning with hell (to some), it terminated with "heaven" (to
+others). As well might they have said, that a morning's work in the
+Inquisition ended happily, because, while people were being racked in
+the dungeons, the officers were making merry in the drawing-room. For
+the much-injured epithet of "Divine," Dante's memory is not responsible.
+He entitled his poem, arrogantly enough, yet still not with that impiety
+of arrogance, "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by nation but
+not by habits." The word "divine" was added by some transcriber; and it
+heaped absurdity on absurdity, too much of it, alas! being literally
+infernal tragedy. I am not speaking in mockery, any further than the
+fact itself cannot help so speaking. I respect what is to be respected
+in Dante; I admire in him what is admirable; would love (if his
+infernalities would let me) what is loveable; but this must not hinder
+one of the human race from protesting against what is erroneous in his
+fame, when it jars against every best feeling, human and divine. Mr.
+Cary thinks that Dante had as much right to avail himself of "the
+popular creed in all its extravagance" as Homer had of his gods, or
+Shakspeare of his fairies. But the distinction is obvious. Homer did not
+personally identify himself with a creed, or do his utmost to perpetuate
+the worst parts of it in behalf of a ferocious inquisitorial church, and
+to the risk of endangering the peace of millions of gentle minds.
+
+The great poem thus misnomered is partly a system of theology, partly an
+abstract of the knowledge of the day, but chiefly a series of passionate
+and imaginative pictures, altogether forming an account of the author's
+times, his friends, his enemies, and himself, written to vent the spleen
+of his exile, and the rest of his feelings, good and bad, and to reform
+church and state by a spirit of resentment and obloquy, which highly
+needed reform itself. It has also a design strictly self-referential.
+The author feigns, that the beatified spirit of his mistress has
+obtained leave to warn and purify his soul by shewing him the state of
+things in the next world. She deputes the soul of his master Virgil
+to conduct him through hell and purgatory, and then takes him herself
+through the spheres of heaven, where Saint Peter catechises and confirms
+him, and where he is finally honoured with sights of the Virgin Mary, of
+Christ, and even a glimpse of the Supreme Being!
+
+His hell, considered as a place, is, to speak geologically, a most
+fantastical formation. It descends from beneath Jerusalem to the centre
+of the earth, and is a funnel graduated in circles, each circle being a
+separate place of torment for a different vice or its co-ordinates, and
+the point of the funnel terminating with Satan stuck into ice. Purgatory
+is a corresponding mountain on the other side of the globe, commencing
+with the antipodes of Jerusalem, and divided into exterior circles of
+expiation, which end in a table-land forming the terrestrial paradise.
+From this the hero and his mistress ascend by a flight, exquisitely
+conceived, to the stars; where the sun and the planets of the Ptolemaic
+system (for the true one was unknown in Dante's time) form a series of
+heavens for different virtues, the whole terminating in the empyrean, or
+region of pure light, and the presence of the Beatific Vision.
+
+The boundaries of old and new, strange as it may now seem to us, were so
+confused in those days, and books were so rare, and the Latin poets held
+in such invincible reverence, that Dante, in one and the same poem,
+speaks of the false gods of Paganism, and yet retains much of its lower
+mythology; nay, invokes Apollo himself at the door of paradise. There
+was, perhaps, some mystical and even philosophical inclusion of the
+past in this medley, as recognising the constant superintendence of
+Providence; but that Dante partook of what may be called the literary
+superstition of the time, even for want of better knowledge, is clear
+from the grave historical use he makes of poetic fables in his treatise
+on Monarchy, and in the very arguments which he puts into the mouths of
+saints and apostles. There are lingering feelings to this effect even
+now among the peasantry of Italy; where, the reader need not be told,
+Pagan customs of all sorts, including religious and most reverend ones,
+are existing under the sanction of other names;--heathenisms christened.
+A Tuscan postilion, once enumerating to me some of the native poets,
+concluded his list with Apollo; and a plaster-cast man over here, in
+London, appeared much puzzled, when conversing on the subject with a
+friend of mine, how to discrepate Samson from Hercules.
+
+Dante accordingly, while, with the frightful bigotry of the schools, he
+puts the whole Pagan world into hell-borders (with the exception of two
+or three, whose salvation adds to the absurdity), mingles the hell of
+Virgil with that of Tertullian and St. Dominic; sets Minos at the door
+as judge; retains Charon in his old office of boatman over the Stygian
+lake; puts fabulous people with real among the damned, Dido, and Cacus,
+and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope Nicholas the Fifth; and associates
+the Centaurs and the Furies with the agents of diabolical torture. It
+has pleased him also to elevate Cato of Utica to the office of warder of
+purgatory, though the censor's poor good wife, Marcia, is detained in
+the regions below. By these and other far greater inconsistencies,
+the whole place of punishment becomes a _reductio ad absurdum_, as
+ridiculous as it is melancholy; so that one is astonished how so great a
+man, and especially a man who thought himself so far advanced beyond his
+age, and who possessed such powers of discerning the good and beautiful,
+could endure to let his mind live in so foul and foolish a region for
+any length of time, and there wreak and harden the unworthiest of his
+passions. Genius, nevertheless, is so commensurate with absurdity
+throughout the book, and there are even such sweet and balmy as well as
+sublime pictures in it occasionally, nay often, that not only will
+the poem ever be worthy of admiration, but when those increasing
+purifications of Christianity which our blessed reformers began, shall
+finally precipitate the whole dregs of the author into the mythology to
+which they belong, the world will derive a pleasure from it to an amount
+not to be conceived till the arrival of that day. Dante, meantime, with
+an impartiality which has been admired by those who can approve the
+assumption of a theological tyranny at the expense of common feeling
+and decency, has put friends as well as foes into hell: tutors of his
+childhood, kinsmen of those who treated him hospitably, even the father
+of his beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante--the last for not believing in a
+God: therein doing the worst thing possible in behalf of the belief, and
+totally differing both with the pious heathen Plutarch, and the great
+Christian philosopher Bacon, who were of opinion that a contumelious
+belief is worse than none, and that it is far better and more pious to
+believe in "no God at all," than in a God who would "eat his children
+as soon as they were born." And Dante makes him do worse; for the whole
+unbaptised infant world, Christian as well as Pagan, is in his Tartarus.
+
+Milton has spoken of the "milder shades of Purgatory;" and truly they
+possess great beauties. Even in a theological point of view they are
+something like a bit of Christian refreshment after the horrors of the
+_Inferno_. The first emerging from the hideous gulf to the sight of the
+blue serenity of heaven, is painted in a manner inexpressibly charming.
+So is the sea-shore with the coming of the angel; the valley, with the
+angels in green; the repose at night on the rocks; and twenty other
+pictures of gentleness and love. And yet, special and great has been the
+escape of the Protestant world from this part of Roman Catholic belief;
+for Purgatory is the heaviest stone that hangs about the neck of the
+old and feeble in that communion. Hell is avoidable by repentance; but
+Purgatory, what modest conscience shall escape? Mr. Cary, in a note on a
+passage in which Dante recommends his readers to think on what follows
+this expiatory state, rather than what is suffered there,[23] looks upon
+the poet's injunction as an "unanswerable objection to the doctrine of
+purgatory," it being difficult to conceive "how the best can meet death
+without horror, if they believe it must be followed by immediate and
+intense suffering." Luckily, assent is not belief; and mankind's
+feelings are for the most part superior to their opinions; otherwise
+the world would have been in a bad way indeed, and nature not been
+vindicated of her children. But let us watch and be on our guard against
+all resuscitations of superstition.
+
+As to our Florentine's Heaven, it is full of beauties also, though
+sometimes of a more questionable and pantomimical sort than is to be
+found in either of the other books. I shall speak of some of them
+presently; but the general impression of the place is, that it is no
+heaven at all. He says it is, and talks much of its smiles and its
+beatitude; but always excepting the poetry--especially the similes
+brought from the more heavenly earth--we realise little but a
+fantastical assemblage of doctors and doubtful characters, far more
+angry and theological than celestial; giddy raptures of monks and
+inquisitors dancing in circles, and saints denouncing popes and
+Florentines; in short, a heaven libelling itself with invectives against
+earth, and terminating in a great presumption. Many of the people put
+there, a Calvinistic Dante would have consigned to the "other place;"
+and some, if now living, would not be admitted into decent society. At
+the beginning of one of the cantos, the poet congratulates himself,
+with a complacent superiority, on his being in heaven and occupied with
+celestial matters, while his poor fellow-creatures are wandering and
+blundering on earth. But he had never got there! A divine--worthy of
+that name--of the Church of England (Dr. Whichcote), has beautifully
+said, that "heaven is first a temper, and then a place." According to
+this truly celestial topography, the implacable Florentine had not
+reached its outermost court. Again, his heavenly mistress, Beatrice,
+besides being far too didactic to sustain the womanly part of her
+character properly, alternates her smiles and her sarcasms in a way that
+jars horribly against the occasional enchantment of her aspect. She does
+not scruple to burst into taunts of the Florentines in the presence of
+Jesus himself; and the spirit of his ancestor, Cacciaguida, in the very
+bosom of Christian bliss, promises him revenge on his enemies! Is this
+the kind of zeal that is to be exempt from objection in a man who
+objected to all the world? or will it be thought a profaneness against
+such profanity, to remind the reader of the philosopher in Swift, who
+"while gazing on the stars, was betrayed by his lower parts into a
+ditch!"
+
+The reader's time need not be wasted with the allegorical and other
+mystical significations given to the poem; still less on the question
+whether Beatrice is theology, or a young lady, or both; and least of all
+on the discovery of the ingenious Signor Rossetti, that Dante and all
+the other great old Italian writers meant nothing, either by their
+mistresses or their mythology, but attacks on the court of Rome. Suffice
+it, that besides all other possible meanings, Dante himself has told us
+that his poem has its obvious and literal meaning; that he means a spade
+by a spade, purgatory by purgatory, and truly and unaffectedly to devote
+his friends to the infernal regions whenever he does so. I confess I
+think it is a great pity that Guido Cavalcante did not live to read the
+poem, especially the passage about his father. The understanding of
+Guido, who had not the admiration for Virgil that Dante had (very likely
+for reasons that have been thought sound in modern times), was in all
+probability as good as that of his friend in many respects, and perhaps
+more so in one or two; and modern criticism might have been saved some
+of its pains of objection by the poet's contemporary.
+
+The author did not live to publish, in any formal manner, his
+extraordinary poem, probably did not intend to do so, except under those
+circumstances of political triumph which he was always looking for; but
+as he shewed portions of it to his friends, it was no doubt talked of
+to a certain extent, and must have exasperated such of his enemies as
+considered him worth their hostility. No wonder they did all they could
+to keep him out of Florence. What would they have said of him, could
+they have written a counter poem? What would even his friends have said
+of him? for we see in what manner he has treated even those; and yet how
+could he possibly know, with respect either to friends or enemies, what
+passed between them and their consciences? or who was it that gave
+him his right to generate the boasted distinction between an author's
+feelings as a man and his assumed office as a theologian, and parade
+the latter at the former's expense? His own spleen, hatred, and avowed
+sentiments of vengeance, are manifest throughout the poem; and there is
+this, indeed, to be said for the moral and religious inconsistencies
+both of the man and his verse, that in those violent times the spirit
+of Christian charity, and even the sentiment of personal shame, were so
+little understood, that the author in one part of it is made to blush by
+a friend for not having avenged him; and it is said to have been thought
+a compliment to put a lady herself into hell, that she might be talked
+of, provided it was for something not odious. An admirer of this
+infernal kind of celebrity, even in later times, declared that he would
+have given a sum of money (I forget to what amount) if Dante had but
+done as much for one of his ancestors. It has been argued, that in all
+the parties concerned in these curious ethics there is a generous love
+of distinction, and a strong craving after life, action, and sympathy
+of some kind or other. Granted; there are all sorts of half-good,
+half-barbarous feelings in Dante's poem. Let justice be done to the
+good half; but do not let us take the ferocity for wisdom and piety; or
+pretend, in the complacency of our own freedom from superstition, to see
+no danger of harm to the less fortunate among our fellow-creatures in
+the support it receives from a man of genius. Bedlams have been filled
+with such horrors; thousands, nay millions of feeble minds are suffering
+by them or from them, at this minute, all over the world. Dante's best
+critic, Foscolo, has said much of the heroical nature of the age in
+which the poet lived; but he adds, that its mixture of knowledge and
+absurdity is almost inexplicable. The truth is, that like everything
+else which appears harsh and unaccountable in nature, it was an excess
+of the materials for good, working in an over-active and inexperienced
+manner; but knowing this, we are bound, for the sake of the good, not
+to retard its improvement by ignoring existing impieties, or blind
+ourselves to the perpetuating tendencies of the bigotries of great men.
+Oh! had the first indoctrinators of Christian feeling, while enlisting
+the "divine Plato" into the service of diviner charity, only kept the
+latter just enough in mind to discern the beautiful difference between
+the philosopher's unmalignant and improvable evil, and their own
+malignant and eternal one, what a world of folly and misery they might
+have saved us! But as the evil has happened, let us hope that even this
+form of it has had its uses. If Dante thought it salutary to the world
+to maintain a system of religious terror, the same charity which can
+hope that it may once have been so, has taught us how to commence a
+better. But did he, after all, or did he not, think it salutary? Did
+he think so, believing the creed himself? or did he think it from an
+unwilling sense of its necessity? Or, lastly, did he write only as a
+mythologist, and care for nothing but the exercise of his spleen and
+genius? If he had no other object than that, his conscientiousness would
+be reduced to a low pitch indeed. Foscolo is of opinion he was not only
+in earnest, but that he was very near taking himself for an apostle, and
+would have done so had his prophecies succeeded, perhaps with success to
+the pretension.[24] Thank heaven, his "Hell" has not embittered the mild
+reading-desks of the Church of England.
+
+If King George the Third himself, with all his arbitrary notions, and
+willing religious acquiescence, could not endure the creed of St.
+Athanasius with its damnatory enjoinments of the impossible, what would
+have been said to the inscription over Dante's hell-gate, or the
+account of Ugolino eating an archbishop, in the gentle chapels of Queen
+Victoria? May those chapels have every beauty in them, and every air of
+heaven, that painting and music can bestow--divine gifts, not unworthy
+to be set before their Divine Bestower; but far from them be kept the
+foul fiends of inhumanity and superstition!
+
+It is certainly impossible to get at a thorough knowledge of the
+opinions of Dante even in theology; and his morals, if judged according
+to the received standard, are not seldom puzzling. He rarely thinks as
+the popes do; sometimes not as the Church does: he is lax, for instance,
+on the subject of absolution by the priest at death.[25] All you can be
+sure of is, the predominance of his will, the most wonderful poetry, and
+the notions he entertained of the degrees of vice and virtue. Towards
+the errors of love he is inclined to be so lenient (some think because
+he had indulged in them himself), that it is pretty clear he would not
+have put Paulo and Francesca into hell, if their story had not been
+too recent, and their death too sudden, to allow him to assume their
+repentance in the teeth of the evidence required. He avails himself of
+orthodox license to put "the harlot Rahab" into heaven ("cette bonne
+fille de Jericho," as Ginguene calls her); nay, he puts her into the
+planet Venus, as if to compliment her on her profession; and one of her
+companions there is a fair Ghibelline, sister of the tyrant Ezzelino, a
+lady famous for her gallantries, of whom the poet good-naturedly says,
+that she "was overcome by her star"--to wit, the said planet Venus; and
+yet he makes her the organ of the most unfeminine triumphs over the
+Guelphs. But both these ladies, it is to be understood, repented--for
+they had time for repentance; their good fortune saved them. Poor
+murdered Francesca had no time to repent; therefore her mischance was
+her damnation! Such are the compliments theology pays to the Creator.
+In fact, nothing is really punished in Dante's Catholic hell but
+impenitence, deliberate or accidental. No delay of repentance, however
+dangerous, hinders the most hard-hearted villain from reaching his
+heaven. The best man goes to hell for ever, if he does not think he has
+sinned as Dante thinks; the worst is beatified, if he agrees with him:
+the only thing which every body is sure of, is some dreadful duration
+of agony in purgatory--the great horror of Catholic death beds.
+Protestantism may well hug itself on having escaped it. O Luther!
+vast was the good you did us. O gentle Church of England! let nothing
+persuade you that it is better to preach frightful and foolish ideas of
+God from your pulpits, than loving-kindness to all men, and peace above
+all things.
+
+If Dante had erred only on the side of indulgence, humanity could easily
+have forgiven him--for the excesses of charity are the extensions of
+hope; but, unfortunately, where he is sweet-natured once, he is bitter a
+hundred times. This is the impression he makes on universalists of all
+creeds and parties; that is to say, on men who having run the whole
+round of sympathy with their fellow-creatures, become the only final
+judges of sovereign pretension. It is very well for individuals to
+make a god of Dante for some encouragement of their own position or
+pretension; but a god for the world at large he never was, or can be;
+and I doubt if an impression to this effect was not always, from the
+very dawn of our literature, the one entertained of him by the genius
+of our native country, which could never long endure any kind of
+unwarrantable dictation. Chaucer evidently thought him a man who would
+spare no unnecessary probe to the feelings (see the close of his version
+of _Ugolino_). Spenser says not a word of him, though he copied Tasso,
+and eulogised Ariosto. Shakspeare would assuredly have put him into
+the list of those presumptuous lookers into eternity who "_take upon
+themselves to know" (Cymbeline_, act v. sc. 4). Milton, in his sonnet
+to Henry Lawes, calls him "that sad Florentine"--a lamenting epithet,
+by which we do not designate a man whom we desire to resemble. The
+historian of English poetry, admirably applying to him a passage out of
+Milton, says that "Hell grows darker at his frown." [26]
+
+Walter Scott could not read him, at least not with pleasure. He tells
+Miss Seward that the "plan" of the poem appeared to him "unhappy;
+the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and
+uninteresting." [27] Uninteresting, I think, it is impossible to consider
+it. The known world is there, and the unknown pretends to be there; and
+both are surely interesting to most people.
+
+Landor, in his delightful book the _Pentameron_--a book full of the
+profoundest as well as sweetest humanity--makes Petrarch follow up
+Boccaccio's eulogies of the episode of Paulo and Francesca with
+ebullitions of surprise and horror:
+
+"_Petrarca_. Perfection of poetry! The greater is my wonder at
+discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole section
+of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,
+
+  'And he who fell as a dead body falls'
+
+would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy! What
+execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, Genoa! what hatred
+against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal
+and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the
+_Inferno_ as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written.
+Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and
+certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged
+forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling it,
+if this had been his intention." [28]
+
+Most happily is the distinction here intimated between the
+undesirableness of Dante's book in a moral and religious point of view,
+and the greater desirableness of it, nevertheless, as a pattern of
+poetry; for absurdity, however potent, wears itself out in the end, and
+leaves what is good and beautiful to vindicate even so foul an origin.
+
+Again, Petrarch says, "What an object of sadness and of consternation,
+he who rises up from hell like a giant refreshed!
+
+"_Boccaccio_. Strange perversion! A pillar of smoke by day and of fire
+by night, to guide no one. Paradise had fewer wants for him to satisfy
+than hell had, all which he fed to repletion; but let us rather look to
+his poetry than his temper."
+
+See also what is said in that admirable book further on (p. 50),
+respecting the most impious and absurd passage in all Dante's poem, the
+assumption about Divine Love in the inscription over hell-gate--one of
+those monstrosities of conception which none ever had the effrontery to
+pretend to vindicate, except theologians who profess to be superior to
+the priests of Moloch, and who yet defy every feeling of decency and
+humanity for the purpose of explaining their own worldly, frightened,
+or hard-hearted submission to the mistakes of the most wretched
+understandings. Ugo Foscolo, an excellent critic where his own temper
+and violence did not interfere, sees nothing but jealousy in Petrarch's
+dislike of Dante, and nothing but Jesuitism in similar feelings
+entertained by such men as Tiraboschi. But all gentle and considerate
+hearts must dislike the rage and bigotry in Dante, even were it true (as
+the Dantesque Foscolo thinks) that Italy will never be regenerated till
+one-half of it is baptised in the blood of the other![29] Such men, with
+all their acuteness, are incapable of seeing what can be effected by
+nobler and serener times, and the progress of civilisation. They fancy,
+no doubt, that they are vindicating the energies of Nature herself, and
+the inevitable necessity of "doing evil that good may come." But Dante
+in so doing violated the Scripture he professed to revere; and men must
+not assume to themselves that final knowledge of results, which is the
+only warrant of the privilege, and the possession of which is to be
+arrogated by no earthly wisdom. One calm discovery of science may do
+away with all the boasted eternal necessities of the angry and the
+self-idolatrous. The passions that may be necessary to savages are not
+bound to remain so to civilised men, any more than the eating of man's
+flesh or the worship of Jugghernaut. When we think of the wonderful
+things lately done by science for the intercourse of the world, and
+the beautiful and tranquil books of philosophy written by men of equal
+energy and benevolence, and opening the peacefulest hopes for mankind,
+and views of creation to which Dante's universe was a nutshell,--such
+a vision as that of his poem (in a theological point of view) seems no
+better than the dream of an hypochondriacal savage, and his nutshell a
+rottenness to be spit out of the mouth.
+
+Heaven send that the great poet's want of charity has not made myself
+presumptuous and uncharitable! But it is in the name of society I
+speak; and words, at all events, now-a-days are not the terrible,
+stake-preceding things they were in his. Readers in general,
+however--even those of the literary world--have little conception of
+the extent to which Dante carries either his cruelty or his abuse. The
+former (of which I shall give some examples presently) shews appalling
+habits of personal resentment; the latter is outrageous to a pitch of
+the ludicrous--positively screaming. I will give some specimens of it
+out of Foscolo himself, who collects them for a different purpose;
+though, with all his idolatry of Dante, he was far from being insensible
+to his mistakes.
+
+"The people of Sienna," according to this national and Christian poet,
+were "a parcel of cox-combs; those of Arezzo, dogs; and of Casentino,
+hogs. Lucca made a trade of perjury. Pistoia was a den of beasts, and
+ought to be reduced to ashes; and the river Arno should overflow and
+drown every soul in Pisa. Almost all the women in Florence walked
+half-naked in public, and were abandoned in private. Every brother,
+husband, son, and father, in Bologna, set their women to sale. In all
+Lombardy were not to be found three men who were not rascals; and in
+Genoa and Romagna people went about pretending to be men, but in reality
+were bodies inhabited by devils, their souls having gone to the 'lowest
+pit of hell' to join the betrayers of their friends and kinsmen." [30]
+
+So much for his beloved countrymen. As for foreigners, particularly
+kings, "Edward the First of England, and Robert of Scotland, were a
+couple of grasping fools; the Emperor Albert was an usurper; Alphonso
+the Second, of Spain, a debauchee; the King of Bohemia a coward;
+Frederick of Arragon a coward and miser; the Kings of Portugal and
+Norway forgers; the King of Naples a man whose virtues were expressed
+by a unit, and his vices by a million; and the King of France, the
+descendant of a Paris butcher, and of progenitors who poisoned St.
+Thomas Aquinas, their descendants conquering with the arms of Judas
+rather than of soldiers, and selling the flesh of their daughters to old
+men, in order to extricate themselves from a danger." [31]
+
+When we add to these invectives, damnations of friends as well as foes,
+of companions, lawyers, men of letters, princes, philosophers, popes,
+pagans, innocent people as well as guilty, fools and wise, capable and
+incapable, men, women, and children,--it is really no better than a kind
+of diabolical sublimation of Lord Thurlow's anathemas in the _Rolliad_,
+which begins with
+
+  "Damnation seize ye all;"
+
+and ends with
+
+  "Damn them beyond what mortal tongue can tell,
+  Confound, sink, plunge them all to deepest blackest hell." [32]
+
+In the gross, indeed, this is ridiculous enough.
+
+No burlesque can beat it. But in the particular, one is astonished and
+saddened at the cruelties in which the poet allows his imagination to
+riot horrors generally described with too intense a verisimilitude not
+to excite our admiration, with too astounding a perseverance not to
+amaze our humanity, and sometimes with an amount of positive joy
+and delight that makes us ready to shut the book with disgust and
+indignation. Thus, in a circle in hell, where traitors are stuck up
+to their chins in ice (canto xxxii.), the visitor, in walking about,
+happens to give one of their faces a kick; the sufferer weeps, and
+then curses him--with such infernal truth does the writer combine the
+malignant with the pathetic! Dante replies to the curse by asking the
+man his name. He is refused it. He then seizes the miserable wretch
+by the hair, in order to force him to the disclosure; and Virgil is
+represented as commending the barbarity![33] But he does worse. To
+barbarity he adds treachery of his own. He tells another poor wretch,
+whose face is iced up with his tears, as if he had worn a crystal vizor,
+that if he will disclose his name and offence, he will relieve his eyes
+awhile, _that he may weep_. The man does so; and the ferocious poet
+then refuses to perform his promise, adding mockery to falsehood, and
+observing that ill manners are the only courtesy proper to wards such
+a fellow![34] It has been conjectured, that Macchiavelli apparently
+encouraged the enormities of the princes of his time, with a design to
+expose them to indignation. It might have been thought of Dante, if he
+had not taken a part in the cruelty, that he detailed the horrors of his
+hell out of a wish to disgust the world with its frightful notions of
+God. This is certainly the effect of the worst part of his descriptions
+in an age like the present. Black burning gulfs, full of outcries
+and blasphemy, feet red-hot with fire, men eternally eating their
+fellow-creatures, frozen wretches malignantly dashing their iced heads
+against one another, other adversaries mutually exchanging shapes by
+force of an attraction at once irresistible and loathing, and spitting
+with hate and disgust when it is done--Enough, enough, for God's sake!
+Take the disgust out of one's senses, O flower of true Christian wisdom
+and charity, now beginning to fill the air with fragrance!
+
+But it will be said that Dante did all this out of his hate of cruelty
+itself, and of treachery itself. Partly no doubt he did; and entirely he
+thought he did. But see how the notions of such retribution react upon
+the judge, and produce in him the bad passions he punishes. It is true
+the punishments are imaginary. Were a human being actually to see such
+things, he must be dehumanised or he would cry out against them with
+horror and detestation. But the poem draws them as truths; the writer's
+creed threatened them; he himself contributed to maintain the belief;
+and however we may suppose such a belief to have had its use in giving
+alarm to ruffian passions and barbarously ignorant times, an age arrives
+when a beneficent Providence permits itself to be better understood, and
+dissipates the superfluous horror.
+
+Many, indeed, of the absurdities of Dante's poem are too obvious
+now-a-days to need remark. Even the composition of the poem,
+egotistically said to be faultless by such critics as Alfieri, who
+thought they resembled him, partakes, as every body's style does, of the
+faults as well as good qualities of the man. It is nervous, concise,
+full almost as it can hold, picturesque, mighty, primeval; but it is
+often obscure, often harsh, and forced in its constructions, defective
+in melody, and wilful and superfluous in the rhyme. Sometimes, also,
+the writer is inconsistent in circumstance (probably from not having
+corrected the poem); and he is not above being filthy. Even in the
+episode of Paulo and Francesca, which has so often been pronounced
+faultless, and which is unquestionably one of the most beautiful
+pieces of writing in the world, some of these faults are observable,
+particularly in the obscurity of the passage about _tolta forma_, the
+cessation of the incessant tempest, and the non-adjuration of the two
+lovers in the manner that Virgil prescribes.
+
+But truly it is said, that when Dante is great, nobody surpasses him. I
+doubt if anybody equals him, as to the constant intensity and incessant
+variety of his pictures; and whatever he paints, he throws, as it were,
+upon its own powers; as though an artist should draw figures that
+started into life, and proceeded to action for themselves, frightening
+their creator. Every motion, word, and look of these creatures becomes
+full of sensibility and suggestions. The invisible is at the back of the
+visible; darkness becomes palpable; silence describes a character, nay,
+forms the most striking part of a story; a word acts as a flash of
+lightning, which displays some gloomy neighbourhood, where a tower is
+standing, with dreadful faces at the window; or where, at your feet,
+full of eternal voices, one abyss is beheld dropping out of another in
+the lurid light of torment. In the present volume a story will be found
+which tells a long tragedy in half-a-dozen lines. Dante has the
+minute probabilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest and most
+generalising poetry; and this feeling of matter-of-fact is impressed by
+fictions the most improbable, nay, the most ridiculous and revolting.
+You laugh at the absurdity; you are shocked at the detestable cruelty;
+yet, for the moment, the thing almost seems as if it must be true. You
+feel as you do in a dream, and after it;--you wake and laugh, but the
+absurdity seemed true at the time; and while you laugh you shudder.
+
+Enough of this crueller part of his genius has been exhibited; but it is
+seldom you can have the genius without sadness. In the circle of hell,
+soothsayers walk along weeping, with their faces turned the wrong way,
+so that their tears fall between their shoulders. The picture is still
+more dreadful. Warton thinks it ridiculous. But I cannot help feeling
+with the poet, that it is dreadfully pathetic. It is the last mortifying
+insult to human pretension. Warton, who has a grudge against Dante
+natural to a man of happier piety, thinks him ridiculous also in
+describing the monster Geryon lying upon the edge of one of the gulfs
+of hell "like a beaver" (canto xvii.). He is of opinion that the writer
+only does it to shew his knowledge of natural history. But surely the
+idea of so strange and awful a creature (a huge mild-faced man ending in
+a dragon's body) lying familiarly on the edge of the gulf, as a beaver
+does by the water, combines the supernatural with the familiar in a very
+impressive manner. It is this combination of extremes which is the life
+and soul of the whole poem; you have this world in the next; the same
+persons, passions, remembrances, intensified by superhuman despairs
+or beatitudes; the speechless entrancements of bliss, the purgatorial
+trials of hope and patience; the supports of hate and anger (such as
+they are) in hell itself; nay, of loving despairs, and a self-pity made
+unboundedly pathetic by endless suffering. Hence there it no love-story
+so affecting as that of Paulo and Francesca thus told and perpetuated in
+another world; no father's misery so enforced upon us as Ugolino's, who,
+for hundreds of years, has not grown tired of the revenge to which it
+wrought him. Dante even puts this weight and continuity of feeling into
+passages of mere transient emotion or illustration, unconnected with the
+next world; as in the famous instance of the verses about evening, and
+many others which the reader will meet with in this volume. Indeed, if
+pathos and the most impressive simplicity, and graceful beauty of all
+kinds, and abundant grandeur, can pay (as the reader, I believe, will
+think it does even in a prose abstract), for the pangs of moral discord
+and absurdity inflicted by the perusal of Dante's poem, it may challenge
+competition with any in point of interest. His Heaven, it is true,
+though containing both sublime and lovely passages, is not so good as
+his Earth. The more unearthly he tried to make it, the less heavenly
+it became. When he is content with earth in heaven itself,-when he
+literalises a metaphor, and with exquisite felicity finds himself
+_arrived there_ in consequence of fixing his eyes on the eyes of
+Beatrice, then he is most celestial. But his endeavours to express
+degrees of beatitude and holiness by varieties of flame and light,--of
+dancing lights, revolving lights, lights of smiles, of stars, of starry
+crosses, of didactic letters and sentences, of animal figures made up of
+stars full of blessed souls, with saints _forming an eagle's beak_ and
+David in its _eye!_--such superhuman attempts become for the most part
+tricks of theatrical machinery, on which we gaze with little curiosity
+and no respect.
+
+His angels, however, are another matter. Belief was prepared for those
+winged human forms, and they furnished him with some of his most
+beautiful combinations of the natural with the supernatural. Ginguene
+has remarked the singular variety as well as beauty of Dante's angels.
+Milton's, indeed, are commonplace in the comparison. In the eighth canto
+of the _Inferno_, the devils insolently refuse the poet and his guide an
+entrance into the city of Dis:--an angel comes sweeping over the Stygian
+lake to enforce it; the noise of his wings makes the shores tremble, and
+is like a crashing whirlwind such as beats down the trees and sends the
+peasants and their herds flying before it. The heavenly messenger, after
+rebuking the devils, touches the portals of the city with his wand; they
+fly open; and he returns the way he came without uttering a word to the
+two companions. His face was that of one occupied with other thoughts.
+This angel is announced by a tempest. Another, who brings the souls of
+the departed to Purgatory, is first discovered at a distance, gradually
+disclosing white splendours, which are his wings and garments. He comes
+in a boat, of which his wings are the sails; and as he approaches, it is
+impossible to look him in the face for its brightness. Two other angels
+have green wings and green garments, and the drapery is kept in motion
+like a flag by the vehement action of the wings. A fifth has a face like
+the morning star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth is of a lustre
+so oppressive, that the poet feels a weight on his eyes before he knows
+what is coming. Another's presence affects the senses like the fragrance
+of a May-morning; and another is in garments dark as cinders, but has
+a sword in his hand too sparkling to be gazed at. Dante's occasional
+pictures of the beauties of external nature are worthy of these angelic
+creations, and to the last degree fresh and lovely. You long to bathe
+your eyes, smarting with the fumes of hell, in his dews. You gaze
+enchanted on his green fields and his celestial blue skies, the more so
+from the pain and sorrow in midst of which the visions are created.
+
+Dante's grandeur of every kind is proportionate to that of his angels,
+almost to his ferocity; and that is saying every thing. It is not
+always the spiritual grandeur of Milton, the subjection of the material
+impression to the moral; but it is equally such when he chooses, and
+far more abundant. His infernal precipices--his black whirlwinds--his
+innumerable cries and claspings of hands--his very odours of huge
+loathsomeness--his giants at twilight standing up to the middle in pits,
+like towers, and causing earthquakes when they move--his earthquake of
+the mountain in Purgatory, when a spirit is set free for heaven--his
+dignified Mantuan Sordello, silently regarding him and his guide as they
+go by, "like a lion on his watch"--his blasphemer, Capaneus, lying in
+unconquered rage and sullenness under an eternal rain of flakes of fire
+(human precursor of Milton's Satan)--his aspect of Paradise, "as if the
+universe had smiled"--his inhabitants of the whole planet Saturn crying
+out _so loud_, in accordance with the anti-papal indignation of Saint
+Pietro Damiano, that the poet, though among them, _could not hear what
+they said_--and the blushing eclipse, like red clouds at sunset, which
+takes place at the apostle Peter's denunciation of the sanguinary filth
+of the court of Rome--all these sublimities, and many more, make us not
+know whether to be more astonished at the greatness of the poet or the
+raging littleness of the man. Grievous is it to be forced to bring two
+such opposites together; and I wish, for the honour and glory of poetry,
+I did not feel compelled to do so. But the swarthy Florentine had not
+the healthy temperament of his brethren, and he fell upon evil times.
+Compared with Homer and Shakspeare, his very intensity seems only
+superior to theirs from an excess of the morbid; and he is inferior to
+both in other sovereign qualities of poetry--to the one, in giving you
+the healthiest general impression of nature itself--to Shakspeare, in
+boundless universality--to most great poets, in thorough harmony and
+delightfulness. He wanted (generally speaking) the music of a happy and
+a happy-making disposition. Homer, from his large vital bosom, breathes
+like a broad fresh air over the world, amidst alternate storm and
+sunshine, making you aware that there is rough work to be faced, but
+also activity and beauty to be enjoyed. The feeling of health and
+strength is predominant. Life laughs at death itself, or meets it with
+a noble confidence--is not taught to dread it as a malignant goblin.
+Shakspeare has all the smiles as well as tears of nature, and discerns
+the "soul of goodness in things evil." He is comedy as well as
+tragedy--the entire man in all his qualities, moods, and experiences;
+and he beautifies all. And both those truly divine poets make nature
+their subject through her own inspiriting medium--not through
+the darkened glass of one man's spleen and resentment. Dante, in
+constituting himself the hero of his poem, not only renders her, in the
+general impression, as dreary as himself, in spite of the occasional
+beautiful pictures he draws of her, but narrows her very immensity into
+his pettiness. He fancied, alas, that he could build her universe over
+again out of the politics of old Rome and the divinity of the schools!
+
+Dante, besides his great poem, and a few Latin eclogues of no great
+value, wrote lyrics full of Platonical sentiment, some of which
+anticipated the loveliest of Petrarch's; and he was the author of
+various prose works, political and philosophical, all more or less
+masterly for the time in which he lived, and all coadjutors of his
+poetry in fixing his native tongue. His account of his Early Life (the
+_Vita Nuova_) is a most engaging history of a boyish passion, evidently
+as real and true on his own side as love and truth can be, whatever
+might be its mistake as to its object. The treatise on the Vernacular
+Tongue (_de Vulgari Eloquio_) shews how critically he considered his
+materials for impressing the world, and what a reader he was of every
+production of his contemporaries. The Banquet (_Convito_) is but an
+abstruse commentary on some of his minor poems; but the book on Monarchy
+(_de Monarchia_) is a compound of ability and absurdity, in which his
+great genius is fairly overborne by the barbarous pedantry of the age.
+It is an argument to prove that the world must all be governed by one
+man; that this one man must be the successor of the Roman Emperor--God
+having manifestly designed the world to be subject for ever to the Roman
+empire; and lastly, that this Emperor is equally designed by God to be
+independent of the Pope--spiritually subject to him, indeed, but so far
+only as a good son is subject to the religious advice of his father;
+and thus making Church and State happy for ever in the two divided
+supremacies. And all this assumption of the obsolete and impossible the
+author gravely proves in all the forms of logic, by arguments drawn from
+the history of AEneas, and the providential cackle of the Roman geese!
+
+How can the patriots of modern Italy, justified as they are in extolling
+the poet to the skies, see him plunge into such depths of bigotry in his
+verse and childishness in his prose, and consent to perplex the friends
+of advancement with making a type of their success out of so erring
+though so great a man? Such slavishness, even to such greatness, is a
+poor and unpromising thing, compared with an altogether unprejudiced
+and forward-looking self-reliance. To have no faith in names has been
+announced as one of their principles; and "God and Humanity" is their
+motto. What, therefore, has Dante's name to do with their principles? or
+what have the semi-barbarisms of the thirteenth century to do with the
+final triumph of "God and Humanity?" Dante's lauded wish for that union
+of the Italian States, which his fame has led them so fondly to identify
+with their own, was but a portion of his greater and prouder wish to see
+the whole world at the feet of his boasted ancestress, Rome. Not,
+of course, that he had no view to what he considered good and just
+government (for what sane despot purposes to rule without that?); but
+his good and just government was always to be founded on the _sine qua
+non_ principle of universal Italian domination.[35]
+
+All that Dante said or did has its interest for us in spite of his
+errors, because he was an earnest and suffering man and a great genius;
+but his fame must ever continue to lie where his greatest blame does,
+in his principal work. He was a gratuitous logician, a preposterous
+politician, a cruel theologian; but his wonderful imagination, and
+(considering the bitterness that was in him) still more wonderful
+sweetness, have gone into the hearts of his fellow-creatures, and will
+remain there in spite of the moral and religious absurdities with which
+they are mingled, and of the inability which the best-natured readers
+feel to associate his entire memory, as a poet, with their usual
+personal delight in a poet and his name.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: As notices of Dante's life have often been little but
+repetitions of former ones, I think it due to the painstaking character
+of this volume to state, that besides consulting various commentators
+and critics, from Boccaccio to Fraticelli and others, I have diligently
+perused the _Vita di Dante_, by Cesare Balbo, with Rocco's annotations;
+the _Histoire Litteraire d'Italie,_ by Ginguene; the _Discorso sul Testo
+della Commedia_, by Foscolo; the _Amori e Rime di Dante_ of Arrivabene;
+the _Veltro Allegorico di Dante_, by Troja; and Ozanam's _Dante et la
+Philosophie Catholique an Treixieme Siecle._]
+
+[Footnote 2: Canto xv. 88.]
+
+[Footnote 3: For the doubt apparently implied respecting the district,
+see canto xvi. 43, or the summary of it in the present volume. The
+following is the passage alluded to in the philosophical treatise
+"Risponder si vorrebbe, non colle parole, ma col coltello, a tanta
+bestialita." _Convito,--Opere Minori_, 12mo, Fir. 1834, vol. II. p. 432.
+"Beautiful mode" (says Perticeri in a note) "of settling questions."]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Istorie Fiorentine, II_. 43 (in _Tutte le Opere_, 4to,
+1550).]
+
+[Footnote 5: The name has been varied into _Allagheri_, _Aligieri_,
+_Alleghieri_, _Alligheri_, _Aligeri_, with the accent generally on the
+third, but sometimes on the second syllable. See Foscolo, _Discorso sul
+Testo, p_. 432. He says, that in Verona, where descendants of the poet
+survive, they call it _Aligeri_. But names, like other words, often
+wander so far from their source, that it is impossible to ascertain it.
+Who would suppose that _Pomfret_ came from _Pontefract_, or _wig_ from
+_parrucca_? Coats of arms, unless in very special instances, prove
+nothing but the whims of the heralds.
+
+Those who like to hear of anything in connexion with Dante or his
+name, may find something to stir their fancies in the following grim
+significations of the word in the dictionaries:
+
+"_Dante_, a kind of great wild beast in Africa, that hath a very hard
+skin."--_Florio's Dictionary_, edited by Torreggiano.
+
+"_Dante_, an animal called otherwise the Great Beast."--_Vocabolario
+della Crusca, Compendiato_, Ven. 1729.]
+
+[Footnote 6: See the passage in "Hell," where Virgil, to express his
+enthusiastic approbation of the scorn and cruelty which Dante chews to
+one of the condemned, embraces and kisses him for a right "disdainful
+soul," and blesses the "mother that bore him."]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Opere minori_, vol iii 12. Flor. 1839, pp. 292 &c.]
+
+[Footnote 8: "Beatrix quitta la terre dans tout l'eclat de la jeunesse
+et de la virginite." See the work as above entitled, Paris, 1840, p. 60.
+The words in Latin, as quoted from the will by the critic alluded to in
+the _Foreign Quarterly Review_ (No._ 65, art. _Dante Allighieri_), are,
+"Bici filiae suae et uxori D. (Domini) Simonis de Bardis." "Bici" is
+the Latin dative case of Bice, the abbreviation of Beatrice. This
+employment, by the way, of an abbreviated name in a will, may seem to
+go counter to the deductions respecting the name of Dante. And it
+may really do so. Yet a will is not an epitaph, nor the address of a
+beatified spirit; neither is equal familiarity perhaps implied, as a
+matter of course, in the abbreviated names of male and female.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Vita Nuova_. ut sup. p. 343]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Vita Nuova_, p. 345.]
+
+[Footnote 11: In the article on _Dante, in_ the _Foreign Quarterly
+Review_, (ut supra), the exordium of which made me hope that the
+eloquent and assumption-denouncing writer was going to supply a good
+final account of his author, equally satisfactory for its feeling
+and its facts, but which ended in little better than the customary
+gratuitousness of wholesale panegyric, I was surprised to find the
+union with Gemma Donati characterised as "calm and cold,--rather the
+accomplishment of a social duty than the result of an irresistible
+impulse of the heart," p. 15. The accomplishment of the "social duty" is
+an assumption, not very probable with regard to any body, and much less
+so in a fiery Italian of twenty-six; but the addition of the epithets,
+"calm and cold," gives it a sort of horror. A reader of this article,
+evidently the production of a man of ability but of great wilfulness, is
+tempted to express the disappointment it has given him in plainer terms
+than might be wished, in consequence of the extraordinary license which
+its writer does not scruple to allow to his own fancies, in expressing
+his opinion of what he is pleased to think the fancies of others.]
+
+[Footnote 12: "Le invettive contr' essa per tanti secoli originarono
+dalla enumerazione rettorica del Boccaccio di tutti gli inconvenienti
+del matrimonio, e dove per altro ei dichiara,--'Certo io non affermo
+queste cose a Dante essere avvenute, che non lo so; comeche vero sia,
+che o a simili cose a queste, o ad altro che ne fusse cagione, egli una
+volta da lei partitosi, che per consolazione de' suoi affanni gli era
+stata data, mai ne dove ella fusse volle venire, ne sofferse che dove
+egli fusse ella venisse giammai, con tutto che di piu figliuoli egli
+insieme con lei fusse parente." _Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. Londra,
+Pickering, 1825, p. 184.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Foscolo, in the _Edinburgh review_, vol. xxx. p. 351. ]
+
+[Footnote 14: "Ahi piaciuto fosse al Dispensatore dell'universo, che la
+cagione della mia scusa mai non fosse stata; che ne altri contro a me
+avria fallato, ne io sofferto avrei pena ingiustamente; pena, dico,
+d'esilio e di poverta. Poiche fu piacere de' cittadini della bellissima
+e famosissima figlia di Roma, Florenza, di gettarmi fuori del suo
+dolcissimo seno (nel quale nato e nudrito fui sino al colmo della mia
+vita, e nel quale, con buona pace di quella, desidero con tutto il core
+di riposare l'animo stanco, e terminare il tempo che m'e dato); per le
+parti quasi tutte, alle quali questa lingua si stende, peregrino, quasi
+mendicando, sono andato, mostrando contro a mia voglia la piaga della
+fortuna, che suole ingiustamente al piagato molte volte essere imputata.
+Veramente io sono stato legno sanza vela e sanza governo, portato a
+diversi porti e foci e liti dal vento secco che vapora la dolorosa
+poverta; e sono vile apparito agli occhi a molti, che forse per alcuna
+fama in altra forma mi aveano immaginato; nel cospetto de' quali non
+solamente mia persona invilio, ma di minor pregio si fece ogni opera, si
+gia fatta, come quella che fosse a fare."-_Opere Minori_, ut sup. vol.
+ii. p. 20.]
+
+[Footnote 15: "In licteris vestris et reverentia debita et affectione
+receptis, quam repatriatio mea cure sit vobis ex animo grata mente ac
+diligenti animaversione concepi, etenim tanto me districtius obligastis,
+quanto rarius exules invenire amicos contingit. ad illam vero
+significata respondeo: et si non eatenus qualiter forsam pusillanimitas
+appeteret aliquorum, ut sub examine vestri consilii ante judicium,
+affectuose deposco. ecce igitur quod per licteras vestri mei: que
+nepotis, necnon aliorum quamplurium amicorum significatum est mihi. per
+ordinamentum nuper factum Florentie super absolutione bannitorum. quod
+si solvere vellem certam pecunie quantitatem, vellemque pati notam
+oblationis et absolvi possem et redire ut presens. in quo quidem duo
+ridenda et male perconciliata sunt. Pater, dico male perconciliata per
+illos qui tali expresserunt: nam vestre litere discretius et consultius
+clausulate nicil de talibus continebant. estne ista revocatio gloriosa
+qua d. all. (i. e. _Dantes Alligherius_) revocatur ad patriam per
+trilustrium fere perpessus exilium? becne meruit conscientia manifesta
+quibuslibet? hec sudor et labor continuatus in studiis? absit a viro
+philosophie domestica temeraria terreni cordis humilitas, ut more
+cujusdam cioli et aliorum infamiam quasi vinctus ipse se patiatur
+offerri. absit a viro predicante justitiam, ut perpessus injuriam
+inferentibus. velud benemerentibus, pecuniam suam solvat. non est hec
+via redeundi ad patriam, Pater mi, sed si alia per vos, aut deinde per
+alios invenietur que fame d. _(Dantis)_ que onori non deroget, illam non
+lentis passibus acceptabo. quod si per nullam talem Florentia introitur,
+nunquam Florentiam introibo. quidni? nonne solis astrorumque specula
+ubique conspiciam? nonne dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique
+sub celo, ni prius inglorium, imo ignominiosum populo, Florentineque
+civitati am reddam? quippe panis non deficiet."]
+
+
+[Footnote 16: _Opere minori_, ut sup. vol iii. p. 186.]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Veltro Allegorico di Dante_, ut sup. p. 208, where the
+Appendix contains the Latin original.]
+
+[Footnote 18: See Fraticelli's Dissertation on the Convito, in _Opere
+Minori_, ut sup. vol. ii. p. 560.]
+
+[Footnote 19: _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Balbo_. Naples edition, p. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 21: "Di se stesso presunse maravigliosamente tanto, che
+essendo egli glorioso nel colmo del reggimento della republica, e
+ragionandosi tra maggiori cittadini di mandare, per alcuna gran bisogna,
+ambasciata a Bonifazio Papa VIII., e che principe della ambasciata fosse
+Dante, ed egli in cio in presenzia di tutti quegli che cio consigliavano
+richiesto, avvenne, che soprastando egli alla risposta, alcun disse, che
+pensi? alle quali parole egli rispose: penso, se io vo, chi rimane; e
+s'io rimango, chi va: quasi esso solo fosse colui che tra tutti valesse
+e per cui tutti gli altri valessero." And he goes on to say respecting
+the stone-throwing--"Appresso, come che il nostro poeta nelle sua
+avversita paziente o no si fosse, in una fu impazientissimo: ed egli
+infino al cominciamento del suo esilio stato guelfissimo, non essendogli
+aperta la via del ritornare in casa sua, si fuor di modo divento
+ghibellino, che ogni femminella, ogni picciol fanciullo, e quante
+volte avesse voluto, ragionando di parte, e la guelfa proponendo alla
+ghibellino, l'avrebbe non solamente fatto turbare, ma a tanta insania
+commosso, che se taciuto non fosse, a gittar le pietre l'avrebbe
+condotto." (_Vita di Dante_, prefixed to the Paris edition of the
+Commedia, 1844, p. XXV.) And then the "buon Boccaccio," with his
+accustomed sweetness of nature, begs pardon of so great a man, for being
+obliged to relate such things of him, and doubts whether his spirit may
+not be looking down on him that moment _disdainfully_ from _heaven_!
+Such an association of ideas had Dante produced between the celestial
+and the scornful!]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Novelle di Franco Sacchetti_, Milan edition, 1804, vol.
+ii. p. 148. It forms the setting, or frame-work, of an inferior story,
+and is not mentioned in the heading.]
+
+[Footnote 23: _The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante
+Alighieri, &c._ Smith's edition, 1844, p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Discorso sul Testo_, pp. 64, 77-90, 335-338.]
+
+[Footnote 25: _Purgatorio_, canto III. 118, 138; referred to by Foscolo,
+in the _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 383.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Warton's _History of English Poetry_, edition of 1840,
+vol. iii. p. 214.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott_, Bart. vol. ii.
+p. 122.]
+
+[Footnote 28: _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, pp. 44-50.]
+
+[Footnote 29: _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 226. The whole passage (sect.
+cx.) is very eloquent, horrible, and _self-betraying_.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _Discorso_, as above, p. 101.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Discorso_, p. 103.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Criticisms on the Rolliad, and Probationary Odes for the_
+_Laureateship_. Third edit. 17S5, p. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 33: The writer of the article on Dante in the _Foreign
+Quarterly Review_ (as above) concedes that his hero in this passage
+becomes "_almost_ cruel." Almost! Tormenting a man further, who is up to
+his chin in everlasting ice, and whose face he has kicked!]
+
+[Footnote 34: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." _Inferno_, canto xxxiii.
+150.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Every body sees this who is not wilfully blind.
+"Passionate," says the editor of the _Opere Minori_, "for the ancient
+Italian glories, and the greatness of the Roman name, he was of
+opinion that it was only by means of combined strength, and one common
+government, that Italy could be finally secured from discord in its own
+bosom and enemies from without, _and recover its ancient empire over
+the whole world_." "Amantissimo delle antiche glorie Italiane, e della
+grandezza del nome romano, ei considerava, che soltanto pel mezzo d'una
+general forza ed autorita poteva l'Italia dalle interne contese e dalle
+straniere invasioni restarsi sicura, _e recuperare l'antico imperio
+sopra tutte le genti_."--Ut sup. vol. iii. p. 8.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
+
+I.
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
+
+Argument.
+
+The infernal regions, according to Dante, are situate in the globe we
+inhabit, directly beneath Jerusalem, and consist of a succession of
+gulfs or circles, narrowing as they descend, and terminating in the
+centre; so that the general shape is that of a funnel. Commentators have
+differed as to their magnitude; but the latest calculation gives 315
+miles for the diameter of the mouth or crater, and a quarter of a mile
+for that of its terminating point. In the middle is the abyss, pervading
+the whole depth, and 245 miles in diameter at the opening; which reduces
+the different platforms, or territories that surround it, to a size
+comparatively small. These territories are more or less varied with land
+and water, lakes, precipices, &c. A precipice, fourteen miles high,
+divides the first of them from the second. The passages from the upper
+world to the entrance are various; and the descents from one circle
+to another are effected by the poet and his guide in different
+manners-sometimes on foot through by-ways, sometimes by the conveyance
+of supernatural beings. The crater he finds to be the abode of those who
+have done neither good nor evil, caring for nothing but themselves.
+In the first circle are the whole unbaptised world--heathens and
+infants--melancholy, though not tormented. Here also is found the
+Elysium of Virgil, whose Charon and other infernal beings are among the
+agents of torment. In the second circle the torments commence with the
+sin of incontinence; and the punishment goes deepening with the crime
+from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath,
+sullenness, or unwillingness to be pleased with the creation, disbelief
+in God and the soul (with which the punishment by fire commences),
+usury, murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction and other carnal
+enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology, witchcraft,
+trafficking with the public interest, hypocrisy, highway robbery (on
+the great Italian scale), sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the
+Church, heresy, false apostleship, alchemy, forgery, coining (all these,
+from seduction downwards, in one circle); then, in the frozen or lowest
+circle of all, treachery; and at the bottom of this is Satan, stuck into
+the centre of the earth.
+
+With the centre of the globe commences the antipodean attraction of its
+opposite side, together with a rocky ascent out of it, through a
+huge ravine. The poet and his guide, on their arrival at this spot,
+accordingly find their position reversed; and so conclude their
+_downward_ journey _upwards_, till they issue forth to light on the
+borders of the sea which contains the island of Purgatory.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
+
+Dante says, that when he was half-way on his pilgrimage through this
+life, he one day found himself, towards nightfall, in a wood where he
+could no longer discern the right path. It was a place so gloomy and
+terrible, every thing in it growing in such a strange and savage manner,
+that the horror he felt returned on him whenever he thought of it. The
+pass of death could hardly be more bitter. Travelling through it all
+night with a beating heart, he at length came to the foot of a hill, and
+looking up, as he began to ascend it, he perceived the shoulders of the
+hill clad in the beams of morning; a sight which gave him some little
+comfort. He felt like a man who has buffeted his way to land out of a
+shipwreck, and who, though still anxious to get farther from his peril,
+cannot help turning round to gaze on the wide waters. So did he stand
+looking back on the pass that contained that dreadful wood. After
+resting a while, he again betook him up the hill; but had not gone far
+when he beheld a leopard bounding in front of him, and hindering his
+progress. After the leopard came a lion, with his head aloft, mad with
+hunger, and seeming to frighten the very air;[1] and after the lion,
+more eager still, a she-wolf, so lean that she appeared to be sharpened
+with every wolfish want. The pilgrim fled back in terror to the wood,
+where he again found himself in a darkness to which the light never
+penetrated. In that place, he said, the sun never spoke word.[2] But the
+wolf was still close upon him.[3]
+
+While thus flying, he beheld coming towards him a man, who spoke
+something, but he knew not what. The voice sounded strange and feeble,
+as if from disuse. Dante loudly called out to him to save him, whether
+he was a man or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight the wild
+beasts disappeared, said that he was no longer man, though man he
+had been in the time of the false gods, and sung the history of the
+offspring of Anchises.
+
+"And art thou, then, that Virgil," said Dante, "who has filled the world
+with such floods of eloquence? O glory and light of all poets, thou art
+my master, and thou mine _author_; thou alone the book from which I have
+gathered beauties that have gained me praise. Behold the peril I am in,
+and help me, for I tremble in every vein and pulse."
+
+Virgil comforted Dante. He told him that he must quit the wood by
+another road, and that he himself would be his guide, leading him first
+to behold the regions of woe underground, and then the spirits that
+lived content in fire because it purified them for heaven; and then that
+he would consign him to other hands worthier than his own, which should
+raise him to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of whom he was
+one, had been rebels to the law of him that reigns there, nobody could
+arrive at Paradise by their means.[4]
+
+So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and Dante closely followed. He
+expressed a fear, however, as they went, lest being "neither AEneas nor
+St. Paul," his journey could not be worthily undertaken, nor end in
+wisdom. But Virgil, after sharply rebuking him for his faintheartedness,
+told him, that the spirit of her whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down
+from heaven on purpose to commend her lover to his care; upon which the
+drooping courage of the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confidence;
+as flowers that have been closed and bowed down by frosty nights, rise
+all up on their stems in the morning sun.[5]
+
+ "Non vuol che 'n sua citta per me si vegna."
+
+The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any
+more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther. But this is one of the
+absurdities with which the impious effrontery or scarcely less
+impious admissions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at
+defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for the
+impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd," as the poet says;
+for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued, much more so, they
+had at least an equal claim on the submission of the reason; since the
+greater the irrationality, the higher the theological triumph.
+
+  "Through me is the road to the dolorous city;
+  Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows;
+  Through me is the road to the lost people.
+  Justice was the motive of my exalted maker;
+  I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom, and by primal love;
+  Before me was no created thing, if not eternal; and eternal am I also.
+  Abandon hope, all ye who enter."
+
+Such were the words which Dante beheld written in dark characters over a
+portal. "Master," said he to Virgil, "I find their meaning hard."
+
+"A man," answered Virgil, "must conduct himself at this door like one
+prepared. Hither must he bring no mistrust. Hither can come and live no
+cowardice. We have arrived at the place I told thee of. Here thou art to
+behold the dolorous people who have lost all intellectual good." [6]
+
+So saying, Virgil placed his hand on Dante's, looking on him with a
+cheerful countenance; and the Florentine passed with him through the
+dreadful gate.
+
+They entered upon a sightless gulf, in which was a black air without
+stars; and immediately heard a hubbub of groans; and wailings, and
+terrible things said in many languages, words of wretchedness, outcries
+of rage, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of the smitings of hands one
+against another. Dante began to weep. The sound was as if the sand in
+a whirlwind were turned into noises, and filled the blind air with
+incessant conflict.
+
+Yet these were not the souls of the wicked. They were those only who had
+lived without praise or blame, thinking of nothing but themselves. These
+miserable creatures were mixed with the angels who stood neutral in the
+war with Satan. Heaven would not dull its brightness with those angels,
+nor would lower hell receive them, lest the bad ones should triumph in
+their company.
+
+"And what is it," said Dante, "which makes them so grievously suffer?"
+
+"Hopelessness of death," said Virgil. "Their blind existence here, and
+immemorable former life, make them so wretched, that they envy every
+other lot. Mercy and justice alike disdain them. Let us speak of them no
+more. Look, and pass."
+
+The companions went on till they came to a great river with a multitude
+waiting on the banks. A hoary old man appeared crossing the river
+towards them in a boat; and as he came, he said, "Woe to the wicked.
+Never expect to see heaven. I come to bear you across to the dark
+regions of everlasting fire and ice." Then looking at Dante, he said,
+"Get thee away from the dead, thou who standest there, live spirit."
+
+"Torment thyself not, Charon," said Virgil. "He has a passport beyond
+thy power to question."
+
+The shaggy cheeks of the boatman of the livid lake, who had wheels of
+fire about his eyes, fell at these words; and he was silent. But the
+naked multitude of souls whom he had spoken to changed colour, and
+gnashed their teeth, blaspheming God, and their parents, and the human
+species, and the place, and the hour, and the seed of the sowing of
+their birth; and all the while they felt themselves driven onwards, by a
+fear which became a desire, towards the cruel river-side, which awaits
+every one destitute of the fear of God. The demon Charon, beckoning to
+them with eyes like brasiers, collected them as they came, giving blows
+to those that lingered, with his oar. One by one they dropped into the
+boat like leaves from a bough in autumn, till the bough is left bare; or
+as birds drop into the decoy at the sound of the bird-call.
+
+There was then an earthquake, so terrible that the recollection of it
+made the poet burst into a sweat at every pore. A whirlwind issued from
+the lamenting ground, attended by vermilion flashes; and he lost his
+senses, and fell like a man stupefied.
+
+A crash of thunder through his brain woke up the pilgrim so hastily,
+that he shook himself like a person roused by force. He found that he
+was on the brink of a gulf, from which ascended a thunderous sound of
+innumerable groanings. He could see nothing down it. It was too dark
+with sooty clouds. Virgil himself turned pale, but said, "We are to go
+down here. I will lead the way."
+
+"O master," said Dante, "if even thou fearest, what is to become of
+myself?" "It is pity, not fear," replied Virgil, "that makes me change
+colour."
+
+With these words his guide led him into the first circle of hell,
+surrounding the abyss. The great noise gradually ceased to be heard, as
+they journeyed inwards, till at last they became aware of a world of
+sighs, which produced a trembling in the air. They were breathed by the
+souls of such as had died without baptism, men, women, and infants; no
+matter how good; no matter if they worshipped God before the coming of
+Christ, for they worshipped him not "properly." Virgil himself was
+one of them. They were all lost for no other reason; and their "only
+suffering" consisted in "hopeless desire!"
+
+Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard this, knowing how many
+good men must be in that place. He inquired if no one had ever been
+taken out of it into heaven. Virgil told him there had, and he named
+them; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the
+patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for
+whom Jacob did so much,--and "many more;" adding, however, that there
+was no instance of salvation before theirs.
+
+Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante perceived a
+lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evidently of
+great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the
+rest. Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their
+renown on earth. A voice was then heard exclaiming, "Honour and glory to
+the lofty poet! Lo, his shade returns." Dante then saw four other noble
+figures coming towards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful.
+
+"Observe him with the sword in his hand," said Virgil, as they were
+advancing. "That is Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him comes
+Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the last is Lucan."
+
+"And thus I beheld," says Dante, "the bright school of the loftiest of
+poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle."
+
+For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to
+the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and
+"further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, "for
+they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account
+I added a sixth." [7]
+
+The spirits returned towards the bright light in which they lived,
+talking with Dante by the way, and brought him to a magnificent castle,
+girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which
+they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them
+into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with
+a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority,
+their voices sweet, and their speech seldom.[8] Dante was taken apart to
+an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly;
+and there, on the "enamelled green," [9] were pointed out to him the
+great spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in his own esteem.
+He saw Electra with many companions, among whom were Hector and AEneas,
+and Caesar in armour with his hawk's eyes; and on another side he beheld
+old King Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the Brutus that expelled
+Tarquin, and Lucretia, and Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother
+of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan Saladin. He then
+raised his eyes a little, and beheld the "master of those who know" [10]
+(Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philosophers, and honoured
+by them all. Socrates and Plato were at his side. Among the rest was
+Democritus, who made the world a chance, and Diogenes, and Heraclitus,
+&c. and Dioscorides, the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he saw,
+and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and Euclid, and Hippocrates, and
+Avicen, and Averroes, who wrote the great commentary, and others too
+numerous to mention. The company of six became diminished to two, and
+Virgil took him forth on a far different road, leaving that serene air
+for a stormy one; and so they descended again into darkness.
+
+It was the second circle into which they now came--a sphere narrower
+than the first, and by so much more the wretcheder. Minos sat at the
+entrance, gnarling--he that gives sentence on every one that comes, and
+intimates the circle into which each is to be plunged by the number of
+folds into which he casts his tail round about him. Minos admonished
+Dante to beware how he entered unbidden, and warned him against his
+conductor; but Virgil sharply rebuked the judge, and bade him not set
+his will against the will that was power.
+
+The pilgrims then descended through hell-mouth, till they came to a
+place dark as pitch, that bellowed with furious cross-winds, like a sea
+in a tempest. It was the first place of torment, and the habitation of
+carnal sinners. The winds, full of stifled voices, buffeted the souls
+for ever, whirling them away to and fro, and dashing them against one
+another. Whenever it seized them for that purpose, the wailing and the
+shrieking was loudest, crying out against the Divine Power. Sometimes a
+whole multitude came driven in a body like starlings before the wind,
+now hither and thither, now up, now down; sometimes they went in a line
+like cranes, when a company of those birds is beheld sailing along in
+the air, uttering its dolorous clangs.
+
+Dante, seeing a group of them advancing, inquired of Virgil who they
+were. "Who are these," said he, "coming hither, scourged in the blackest
+part of the hurricane?"
+
+"She at the head of them," said Virgil, "was empress over many nations.
+So foul grew her heart with lust, that she ordained license to be law,
+to the end that herself might be held blameless. She is Semiramis, of
+whom it is said that she gave suck to Ninus, and espoused him. Leading
+the multitude next to her is Dido, she that slew herself for love, and
+broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus; and she that follows with the next
+is the luxurious woman, Cleopatra."
+
+Dante then saw Helen, who produced such a world of misery; and the great
+Achilles, who fought for love till it slew him; and Paris; and Tristan;
+and a thousand more whom his guide pointed at, naming their names, every
+one of whom was lost through love.
+
+The poet stood for a while speechless for pity, and like one bereft of
+his wits. He then besought leave to speak to a particular couple who
+went side by side, and who appeared to be borne before the wind with
+speed lighter than the rest. His conductor bade him wait till they came
+nigher, and then to entreat them gently by the love which bore them in
+that manner, and they would stop and speak with him. Dante waited his
+time, and then lifted up his voice between the gusts of wind, and
+adjured the two "weary souls" to halt and have speech with him, if none
+forbade their doing so; upon which they came to him, like doves to the
+nest.[11]
+
+There was a lull in the tempest, as if on purpose to let them speak;
+and the female addressed Dante, saying, that as he showed such pity for
+their state, they would have prayed heaven to give peace and repose to
+his life, had they possessed the friendship of heaven.[12]
+
+"Love," she said, "which is soon kindled in a gentle heart, seized this
+my companion for the fair body I once inhabited--how deprived of it, my
+spirit is bowed to recollect. Love, which compels the beloved person
+upon thoughts of love, seized me in turn with a delight in his passion
+so strong, that, as thou seest, even here it forsakes me not. Love
+brought us both to one end. The punishment of Cain awaits him that slew
+us."
+
+The poet was struck dumb by this story. He hung down his head, and stood
+looking on the ground so long, that his guide asked him what was in his
+mind. "Alas!" answered he, "such then was this love, so full of sweet
+thoughts; and such the pass to which it brought them! Oh, Francesca!" he
+cried, turning again to the sad couple, "thy sufferings make me weep.
+But tell me, I pray thee, what was it that first made thee know, for a
+certainty, that his love was returned?--that thou couldst refuse him
+thine no longer?"
+
+"There is not a greater sorrow," answered she, "than calling to mind
+happy moments in the midst of wretchedness.[13] But since thy desire is
+so great to know our story to the root, hear me tell it as well as I
+may for tears. It chanced, one day, that we sat reading the tale of
+Sir Launcelot, how love took him in thrall. We were alone, and had no
+suspicion. Often, as we read, our eyes became suspended,[14] and we
+changed colour; but one passage alone it was that overcame us. When we
+read how Genevra smiled, and how the lover, out of the depth of his
+love, could not help kissing that smile, he that is never more to be
+parted from me kissed me himself on the mouth, all in a tremble. Never
+had we go-between but that book. The writer was the betrayer. That day
+we read no more."
+
+While these words were being uttered by one of the spirits, the other
+wailed so bitterly, that the poet thought he should have died for pity.
+His senses forsook him, and he fell flat on the ground, as a dead body
+falls.[15]
+
+On regaining his senses, the poet found himself in the third circle of
+hell, a place of everlasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush of
+hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. The triple-headed dog Cerberus,
+with red eyes and greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with claws,
+barked above the heads of the wretches who floundered in the mud,
+tearing, skinning, and dismembering them, as they turned their sore and
+soddened bodies from side to side. When he saw the two living men, he
+showed his fangs, and shook in every limb for desire of their flesh.
+Virgil threw lumps of dirt into his mouth, and so they passed him.
+
+It was the place of Gluttons. The travellers passed over them, as if
+they had been ground to walk upon. But one of them sat up, and addressed
+the Florentine as his acquaintance. Dante did not know him, for the
+agony in his countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog (Ciacco), and by no
+other name does the poet, or any one else, mention him. His countryman
+addressed him by it, though declaring at the same time that he wept to
+see him. Hog prophesied evil to his discordant native city, adding
+that there were but two just men in it--all the rest being given up to
+avarice, envy, and pride. Dante inquired by name respecting the fate of
+five other Florentines, _who had done good_, and was informed that they
+were all, for various offences, _in lower gulfs of hell_. Hog then
+begged that he would mention having seen him when he returned to the
+sweet world; and so, looking at him a little, bent his head, and
+disappeared among his blinded companions.
+
+"Satan! hoa, Satan!" roared the demon Plutus, as the poets were
+descending into the fourth circle.
+
+"Peace!" cried Virgil, "with thy swollen lip, thou accursed wolf. No one
+can hinder his coming down. God wills it." [16]
+
+Flat fell Plutus, collapsed, like the sails of a vessel when the mast is
+split.
+
+This circle was the most populous one they had yet come to. The
+sufferers, gifted with supernatural might, kept eternally rolling round
+it, one against another, with terrific violence, and so dashing apart,
+and returning. "Why grasp?" cried the one--"Why throw away?" cried the
+other; and thus exclaiming, they dashed furiously together.
+
+They were the Avaricious and the Prodigal. Multitudes of them were
+churchmen, including cardinals and popes. Not all the gold beneath the
+moon could have purchased them a moment's rest. Dante asked if none of
+them were to be recognised by their countenances. Virgil said, "No;" for
+the stupid and sullied lives which they led on earth swept their faces
+away from all distinction for ever.
+
+In discoursing of fortune, they descend by the side of a torrent, black
+as ink, into the fifth circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the
+Sullen, and the Proud. Here they first beheld a filthy marsh, full of
+dirty naked bodies, that in everlasting rage tore one another to pieces.
+In a quieter division of the pool were seen nothing but bubbles, carried
+by the ascent, from its slimy bottom, of the stifled words of the
+sullen. They were always saying, "We were sad and dark within us in the
+midst of the sweet sunshine, and now we live sadly in the dark bogs."
+The poets walked on till they came to the foot of a tower, which hung
+out two blazing signals to another just discernible in the distance. A
+boat came rapidly towards them, ferried by the wrathful Phlegyas;[17]
+who cried out, "Aha, felon! and so thou hast come at last!"
+
+"Thou errest," said Virgil. "We come for no longer time than it will
+take thee to ferry us across thy pool."
+
+Phlegyas looked like one defrauded of his right; but proceeded to convey
+them. During their course a spirit rose out of the mire, looking Dante
+in the face, and said, "Who art thou, that comest before thy time?"
+
+"Who art thou?" said Dante.
+
+"Thou seest who I am," answered the other; "one among the mourners."
+
+"Then mourn still, and howl, accursed spirit," returned the Florentine.
+"I know thee, all over filth as thou art."
+
+The wretch in fury laid hold of the boat, but Virgil thrust him back,
+exclaiming, "Down with thee! down among the other dogs!"
+
+Then turning to Dante, he embraced and kissed him, saying, "O soul, that
+knows how to disdain, blessed be she that bore thee! Arrogant, truly,
+upon earth was this sinner, nor is his memory graced by a single virtue.
+Hence the furiousness of his spirit now. How many kings are there at
+this moment lording it as gods, who shall wallow here, as he does, like
+swine in the mud, and be thought no better of by the world!" "I should
+like to see him smothering in it," said Dante, "before we go."
+
+"A right wish," said Virgil, "and thou shalt, to thy heart's content."
+
+On a sudden the wretch's muddy companions seized and drenched him so
+horribly that (exclaims Dante) "I laud and thank God for it now at this
+moment."
+
+"Have at him!" cried they; "have at Filippo Argenti;" and the wild fool
+of a Florentine dashed his teeth for rage into his own flesh.[18]
+
+The poet's attention was now drawn off by a noise of lamentation, and
+he perceived that he was approaching the city of Dis.[19] The turrets
+glowed vermilion with the fire within it, the walls appeared to be of
+iron, and moats were round about them. The boat circuited the walls till
+the travellers came to a gate, which Phlegyas, with a loud voice, told
+them to quit the boat and enter. But a thousand fallen angels crowded
+over the top of the gate, refusing to open it, and making furious
+gestures. At length they agreed to let Virgil speak with them inside;
+and he left Dante for a while, standing in terror without. The parley
+was in vain. They would not let them pass. Virgil, however, bade his
+companion be of good cheer, and then stood listening and talking to
+himself; disclosing by his words his expectation of some extraordinary
+assistance, and at the same time his anxiety for its arrival. On a
+sudden, three raging figures arose over the gate, coloured with gore.
+Green hydras twisted about them; and their fierce temples had snakes
+instead of hair.
+
+"Look," said Virgil. "The Furies! The one on the left is Megaera; Alecto
+is she that is wailing on the right; and in the middle is Tisiphone."
+Virgil then hushed. The Furies stood clawing their breasts, smiting
+their hands together, and raising such hideous cries, that Dante clung
+to his friend.
+
+"Bring the Gorgon's head!" cried the Furies, looking down; "turn him to
+adamant!"
+
+"Turn round," said Virgil, "and hide thy face; for if thou beholdest
+the Gorgon, never again wilt thou see the light of day." And with these
+words he seized Dante and turned him round himself, clapping his hands
+over his companion's eyes.
+
+And now was heard coming over the water a terrible crashing noise, that
+made the banks on either side of it tremble. It was like a hurricane
+which comes roaring through the vain shelter of the woods, splitting and
+hurling away the boughs, sweeping along proudly in a huge cloud of dust,
+and making herds and herdsmen fly before it. "Now stretch your eyesight
+across the water," said Virgil, letting loose his hands;--"there, where
+the smoke of the foam is thickest." Dante looked; and saw a thousand of
+the rebel angels, like frogs before a serpent, swept away into a heap
+before the coming of a single spirit, who flew over the tops of the
+billows with unwet feet. The spirit frequently pushed the gross air
+from before his face, as if tired of the base obstacle; and as he came
+nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messenger from heaven, looked anxiously
+at Virgil. Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow down.
+
+The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon as he arrived at the gate,
+touched it with a wand that he had in his hand, and it flew open.
+
+"Outcasts of heaven," said he; "despicable race! whence this fantastical
+arrogance? Do ye forget that your torments are laid oil thicker every
+time ye kick against the Fates? Do ye forget how your Cerberus was bound
+and chained till he lost the hair off his neck like a common dog?"
+
+So saying he turned swiftly and departed the way he came, not addressing
+a word to the travellers. His countenance had suddenly a look of some
+other business, totally different from the one he had terminated.
+
+The companions passed in, and beheld a place full of tombs red-hot. It
+was the region of Arch heretics and their followers. Dante and his guide
+passed round betwixt the walls and the sepulchres as in a churchyard,
+and came to the quarter which held Epicurus and his sect, who denied the
+existence of spirit apart from matter. The lids of the tombs remaining
+unclosed till the day of judgment, the soul of a noble Florentine,
+Farinata degli Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as a
+countryman, asking him to stop.[20] Dante, alarmed, beheld him rise half
+out of his sepulchre, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell itself.
+Finding who Dante was, he boasted of having three times expelled the
+Guelphs. "Perhaps so," said the poet; "but they came back again each
+time; an art which their enemies have not yet acquired."
+
+A visage then appeared from out another tomb, looking eagerly, as if it
+expected to see some one else. Being disappointed, the tears came into
+its eyes, and the sufferer said, "If it is thy genius that conducts thee
+hither, where is my son, and why is he not with thee?"
+
+"It is not my genius that conducts me," said Dante, "but that of one,
+whom perhaps thy son held in contempt."
+
+"How sayest thou?" cried the shade;--"_held_ in contempt? He is dead
+then? He beholds no longer the sweet light?" And with these words
+he dropped into his tomb, and was seen no more. It was Cavalcante
+Cavalcanti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido.[21]
+
+The shade of Farinata, who had meantime been looking on, now replied to
+the taunt of Dante, prophesying that he should soon have good reason to
+know that the art he spoke of _had_ been acquired; upon which Dante,
+speaking with more considerateness to the lofty sufferer, requested to
+know how the gift of prophecy could belong to spirits who were ignorant
+of the time present. Farinata answered that so it was; just as there was
+a kind of eyesight which could discern things at a distance though
+not at hand. Dante then expressed his remorse at not having informed
+Cavalcante that his son was alive. He said it was owing to his being
+overwhelmed with thought on the subject he had just mentioned, and
+entreated Farinata to tell him so.
+
+Quitting this part of the cemetery, Virgil led him through the midst
+of it towards a descent into a valley, from which there ascended a
+loathsome odour. They stood behind one of the tombs for a while, to
+accustom themselves to the breath of it; and then began to descend a
+wild fissure in a rock, near the mouth of which lay the infamy of Crete,
+the Minotaur. The monster beholding them gnawed himself for rage; and
+on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he
+is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in
+entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness
+to run at them; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of
+boiling blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed
+with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep according to the
+amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of the
+Inflicters of Violence; and if any of them emerged from it higher than
+he had a right to do, the Centaurs drove him down with their arrows.
+Nessus, the one that bequeathed Hercules the poisoned garment, came
+galloping towards the pilgrims, bending his bow, and calling out from
+a distance to know who they were; but Virgil, disdaining his hasty
+character, would explain himself only to Chiron, the Centaur who
+instructed Achilles. Chiron, in consequence, bade Nessus accompany
+them along the river; and there they saw tyrants immersed up to the
+eyebrows;--Alexander the Great among them, Dionysius of Syracuse, and
+Ezzelino the Paduan. There was one of the Pazzi of Florence, and Rinieri
+of Corneto (infestors of the public ways), now shedding bloody tears,
+and Attila the Scourge, and Pyrrhus king of Epirus. Further on, among
+those immersed up to the throat, was Guy de Montfort the Englishman, who
+slew his father's slayer, Prince Henry, during divine service, in
+the bosom of God; and then by degrees the river became shallower and
+shallower till it covered only the feet; and here the Centaur quitted
+the pilgrims, and they crossed over into a forest.
+
+The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest--the leaves not green,
+but black--the boughs not freely growing, but knotted and twisted--the
+fruit no fruit, but thorny poison. The Harpies wailed among the trees,
+occasionally showing their human faces; and on every side of him Dante
+heard lamenting human voices, but could see no one from whom they came.
+"Pluck one of the boughs," said Virgil. Dante did so; and blood and a
+cry followed it.
+
+"Why pluckest thou me?" said the trunk. "Men have we been, like thyself;
+but thou couldst not use us worse, had we been serpents." The blood and
+words came out together, as a green bough hisses and spits in the fire.
+
+The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the good chancellor of the
+Emperor Frederick the Second. Just though he had been to others, he
+was thus tormented for having been unjust to himself; for, envy having
+wronged him to his sovereign, who sentenced him to lose his eyes, he
+dashed his brains out against a wall. Piero entreated Dante to vindicate
+his memory. The poet could not speak for pity; so Virgil made the
+promise for him, inquiring at the same time in what manner it was that
+Suicides became thus identified with trees, and how their souls were to
+rejoin their bodies at the day of judgment. Piero said, that the moment
+the fierce self-murderer's spirit tore itself from the body, and passed
+before Charon, it fell, like a grain of corn, into that wood, and so
+grew into a tree. The Harpies then fed on its leaves, causing both pain
+and a vent for lamentation. The body it would never again enter, having
+thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag the body down to it by
+a violent attraction; and every suicide's carcass will be hung upon the
+thorn of its wretched shade.
+
+The naked souls of two men, whose profusion had brought them to a
+violent end, here came running through the wood from the fangs of black
+female mastiff's--leaving that of a suicide to mourn the havoc which
+their passage had made of his tree. He begged his countryman to gather
+his leaves up, and lay them at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so;
+and then he and Virgil proceeded on their journey.
+
+They issued from the wood on a barren sand, flaming hot, on which
+multitudes of naked souls lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly
+walked about, trying to throw from them incessant flakes of fire, which
+came down like a fall of snow. They were the souls of the Impious. Among
+them was a great spirit, who lay scornfully submitting himself to the
+fiery shower, as though it had not yet ripened him.[22] Overhearing
+Dante ask his guide who he was, he answered for himself, and said, "The
+same dead as living. Jove will tire his flames out before they conquer
+me."
+
+"Capaneus," exclaimed Virgil, "thy pride is thy punishment. No martyrdom
+were sufficient for thee, equal to thine own rage." The besieger of
+Thebes made no reply.
+
+In another quarter of the fiery shower the pilgrims met a crowd of
+Florentines, mostly churchmen, whose offence is not to be named; after
+which they beheld Usurers; and then arrived at a huge waterfall, which
+fell into the eighth circle, or that of the Fraudulent. Here Virgil, by
+way of bait to the monster Geryon, or Fraud, let down over the side
+of the waterfall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore about his
+waist,[23] and presently the dreadful creature came up, and sate on the
+margin of the fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him in
+the air, after the manner of a beaver; but the point of the tail was
+occasionally seen glancing upwards. He was a gigantic reptile, with the
+face of a just man, very mild. He had shaggy claws for arms, and a body
+variegated all over with colours that ran in knots and circles, each
+within the other, richer than any Eastern drapery. Virgil spoke apart
+to him, and then mounted on his back, bidding his companion, who was
+speechless for terror, do the salve. Geryon pushed back with them from
+the edge of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbour; and then,
+turning about, wheeled, like a sullen successless falcon, slowly down
+through the air in many a circuit. Dante would not have known that he
+was going downward, but for the air that struck up wards on his face.
+Presently they heard the crash of the waterfall on the circle below,
+and then distinguished flaming fires and the noises of suffering.
+The monster Geryon, ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a
+distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his riders from off his
+back to the water's side, and then shot away like an arrow.
+
+This eighth circle of hell is called Evil-Budget,[24] and consists of
+ten compartments, or gulfs of torment, crossed and connected with
+one another by bridges of flint. In the first were beheld Pimps and
+Seducers, scourged like children by horned devils; in the second,
+Flatterers, begrimed with ordure; in the third, Simonists, who were
+stuck like plugs into circular apertures, with their heads downwards,
+and their legs only discernible, the soles of their feet glowing with a
+fire which made them incessantly quiver. Dante, going down the side of
+the gulf with Virgil, was allowed to address one of them who seemed in
+greater agony than the rest; and, doing so, the sufferer cried out in a
+malignant rapture, "Aha, is it thou that standest there, Boniface?[25]
+Thou hast come sooner than it was prophesied." It was the soul of Pope
+Nicholas the Third that spoke. Dante undeceived and then sternly
+rebuked him for his avarice and depravity, telling him that nothing but
+reverence for the keys of St. Peter hindered him from using harsher
+words, and that it was such as he that the Evangelist beheld in the
+vision, when he saw the woman with seven heads and ten horns, who
+committed whoredom with the kings of the earth.
+
+"O Constantine!" exclaimed the poet, "of what a world of evil was that
+dowry the mother, which first converted the pastor of the church into a
+rich man!" [26] The feet of the guilty pope spun with fiercer agony at
+these words; and Virgil, looking pleased on Dante, returned with him
+the way he came, till they found themselves on the margin of the fourth
+gulf, the habitation of the souls of False Prophets.
+
+It was a valley, in which the souls came walking along, silent and
+weeping, at the pace of choristers who chant litanies. Their faces were
+turned the wrong way, so that the backs of their heads came foremost,
+and their tears fell on their loins. Dante was so overcome at the sight,
+that he leant against a rock and wept; but Virgil rebuked him, telling
+him that no pity at all was the only pity fit for that place.[27] There
+was Amphiaraus, whom the earth opened and swallowed up at Thebes; and
+Tiresias, who was transformed from sex to sex; and Aruns, who lived in
+a cavern on the side of the marble mountains of Carrara, looking out on
+the stars and ocean; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias (her hind tresses
+over her bosom), who wandered through the world till she came and lived
+in the solitary fen, whence afterwards arose the city of Mantua; and
+Michael Scot, the magician, with his slender loins;[28] and Eurypylus,
+the Grecian augur, who gave the signal with Calchas at Troy when to cut
+away the cables for home. He came stooping along, projecting his face
+over his swarthy shoulders. Guido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of
+Forli; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to
+his last; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff to
+wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of
+those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind
+them, and walked the reverse way of their looking.
+
+The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, constantly heaving and
+subsiding throughout, and bubbling with the breath of those within it.
+They were Public Peculators. Winged black devils were busy about the
+lake, pronging the sinners when they occasionally darted up their backs
+for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their jaws like frogs. Dante
+at first looked eagerly down into the gulf, like one who feels that he
+shall turn away instantly out of the very horror that attracts him.
+"See--look behind thee!" said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from
+the place where he stood, to a covert behind a crag. Dante looked round,
+and beheld a devil coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across his
+shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and then dashed down after him,
+like a mastiff let loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca, where
+every soul was a false dealer except Bonturo.[29] The devil called out
+to other devils, and a heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks as
+he rose to the surface; telling him, that he must practise there in
+secret, if he practised at all; and thrusting him back into the boiling
+pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot. The devils were of the
+lowest and most revolting habits, of which they made disgusting jest and
+parade.
+
+Some of them, on a sudden, perceived Dante and his guide, and were going
+to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a
+while they let him alone; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of
+the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter.
+The rest then fell upon him and flayed him.
+
+It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service of the good Thiebault, king
+of Navarre. One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita,
+governor of Gallura; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian.
+Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils,
+who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil,
+catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in
+a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction into the
+borders of gulf the sixth, the region of Hypocrites.
+
+The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked about in a wearisome and
+exhausted manner, as if ready to faint. They wore huge cowls, which hung
+over their eyes, and the outsides of which were gilded, but the insides
+of lead. Two of them had been rulers of Florence; and Dante was
+listening to their story, when his attention was called off by the sight
+of a cross, on which Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breathing
+hard all the while through his beard with sighs. It was his office to
+see that every soul which passed him, on its arrival in the place, was
+oppressed with the due weight. His father-in-law, Annas, and all his
+council, were stuck in like manner on crosses round the borders of the
+gulf. The pilgrims beheld little else in this region of weariness, and
+soon passed into the borders of one of the most terrible portions of
+Evil-budget, the land of the transformation of Robbers.
+
+The place was thronged with serpents of the most appalling and unwonted
+description, among which ran tormented the naked spirits of the
+robbers, agonised with fear. Their hands were bound behind them with
+serpents--their bodies pierced and enfolded with serpents. Dante saw one
+of the monsters leap up and transfix a man through the nape of the neck;
+when, lo! sooner than a pen could write _o_, or _i_, the sufferer burst
+into flames, burnt up, fell to the earth a heap of ashes--was again
+brought together, and again became a man, aghast with his agony, and
+staring about him, sighing.[30] Virgil asked him who he was.
+
+"I was but lately rained down into this dire gullet," said the man,
+"amidst a shower of Tuscans. The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led a
+brutal life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pistoia."
+
+"Compel him to stop," said Dante, "and relate what brought him hither. I
+knew the bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive."
+
+The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to these words, turned round
+to the speaker with the most painful shame in his face, and said, "I
+feel more bitterly at being caught here by thee in this condition, than
+when I first arrived. A power which I cannot resist compels me to let
+thee know, that I am here because I committed sacrilege and charged
+another with the crime; but now, mark me, that thou mayest hear
+something not to render this encounter so pleasant: Pistoia hates thy
+party of the Whites, and longs for the Blacks back again. It will have
+them, and so will Florence; and there will be a bloody cloud shall burst
+over the battlefield of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the
+earth. I tell thee this to make thee miserable."
+
+So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of contempt with his thumb and
+finger towards heaven, and said, "Take it, God--a fig for thee!" [31]
+
+"From that instant," said Dante, "the serpents and I were friends; for
+one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands
+into a knot behind his back. O Pistoia! Pistoia! why art not thou
+thyself turned into ashes, and swept from the face of the earth, since
+thy race has surpassed in evil thine ancestors? Never, through the
+whole darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire as this--not even
+Capaneus himself."
+
+The Pistoian fled away with the serpents upon him, followed by a
+Centaur, who came madly galloping up, crying, "Where is the caitiff?" It
+was the monster-thief Cacus, whose den upon earth often had a pond of
+blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in his rage, when he slew him,
+gave a whole hundred blows with his club, though the wretch perceived
+nothing after the ninth. He was all over adders up to the mouth; and
+upon his shoulders lay a dragon with its wings open, breathing fire on
+whomsoever it met.
+
+The Centaur tore away; and Dante and Virgil were gazing after him, when
+they heard voices beneath the bank on which they stood, crying, "Who are
+ye?" The pilgrims turned their eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits,
+one of whom, looking about him, said, "Where's Cianfa?" Dante made a
+sign to Virgil to say nothing.
+
+Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a serpent with six feet.[32]
+
+"If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I am about to tell thee,"
+says the poet, "be so; it is no marvel; for I myself, even now, scarcely
+credit what I beheld."
+
+The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front,
+clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into
+either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster
+grappled with every limb of that pinioned man. The two forms then
+gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of
+their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white
+in a piece of burning paper recedes before the brown, till it all
+becomes black. The other two human shapes looked on, exclaiming,
+"Oh, how thou changest, Agnello! See, thou art neither two nor yet one."
+And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained
+two countenances in the face. The four arms then became but two, and
+such also became the legs and thighs; and the two trunks became such a
+body as was never beheld; and the hideous twofold monster walked slowly
+away.[33]
+
+A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body
+of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on
+the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated
+and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand
+steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or
+fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and
+both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one
+volume.
+
+And now, let Lucan never speak more of the wretched Sabellus or
+Nisidius, but listen and be silent; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor
+speak again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his fountain that was
+Arethusa; for, says the Tuscan poet, I envy him not. Never did he change
+the natures of two creatures face to face, so that each received the
+form of the other.
+
+With corresponding impulse, the serpent split his train into a fork,
+while the man drew his legs together into a train; the skin of the
+serpent grew soft, while the man's hardened; the serpent acquired
+tresses of hair, the man grew hairless; the claws of the one projected
+into legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into his shoulders; the
+face of the serpent, as it rose from the ground, retreated towards the
+temples, pushing out human ears; that of the man, as he fell to the
+ground, thrust itself forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same time
+its ears into its head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature
+kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath
+the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then
+turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent,
+which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The
+new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and
+said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, "Let Buoso now take to
+his crawl, as I have done."
+
+The two then hastened away together, leaving Dante in a state of
+bewildered amazement, yet not so confused but that he recognised the
+unchanged one for another of his countrymen, Puccio the Lame. "Joy to
+thee, Florence!" cried the poet; "not content with having thy name
+bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell."
+
+The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier
+into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from
+one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies.
+
+"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls, each tormented with the fire
+that swathes it."
+
+"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the summit. Are the Theban
+brothers in it?"
+
+"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are Diomed and Ulysses." The
+sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors; and those two were
+the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse.
+
+Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures,
+not to be found in books: how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth
+again into the wide ocean; and how he sailed so far that he came into a
+region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever
+saw; when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell upon them from the shore,
+thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and
+the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads.
+
+"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more." The soul of Guido di
+Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect,
+asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how
+he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at
+once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes.[34] He
+was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on
+purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his
+absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim. "To repent evil, and to will
+to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel,
+"impossible: therefore wrong me not."
+
+"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "when he laid his hands upon
+me!" And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for
+agony, and so took its way.
+
+The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the
+Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False
+Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the
+sins of those whom they seduce.
+
+The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels,
+and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law,
+Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin; and the divisions in the church
+were punished in like manner upon all the schismatics in the place. They
+all walked round the circle, their gashes closing as they went; and on
+their reaching a certain point, a fiend hewed them open again with a
+sword. The Arabian prophet, ere he passed on, bade the pilgrims
+warn Friar Dolcino how he suffered himself to be surprised in his
+mountain-hold by the starvations of winter-time, if he did not wish
+speedily to follow him.[35]
+
+Among other mangled wretches, they beheld Piero of Medicina, a sower of
+dissension, exhibiting to them his face and throat all over wounds; and
+Curio, compelled to shew his tongue cut out for advising Caesar to cross
+the Rubicon; and Mosca de' Lamberti, an adviser of assassination, and
+one of the authors of the Guelf and Ghibelline miseries, holding up
+the bleeding stumps of his arms, which dripped on his face. "Remember
+Mosca," cried he; "remember him, alas! who said, 'A deed done is a thing
+ended.' A bad saying of mine was that for the Tuscan nation."
+
+"And death to thy family," cried Dante.
+
+The assassin hurried away like a man driven mad with grief upon grief;
+and Dante now beheld a sight, which, if it were not, he says, for the
+testimony of a good conscience--that best of friends, which gives a
+man assurance of himself under the breastplate of a spotless
+innocence[36]--he should be afraid to relate without further proof. He
+saw--and while he was writing the account of it he still appeared to
+see--a headless trunk about to come past him with the others. It held
+its severed head by the hair, like a lantern; and the head looked up
+at the two pilgrims, and said, "Woe is me!" The head was, in fact, a
+lantern to the paths of the trunk; and thus there were two separated
+things in one, and one in two; and how that could be, he only can tell
+who ordained it. As the figure came nearer, it lifted the head aloft,
+that the pilgrims might hear better what it said. "Behold," it said,
+"behold, thou that walkest living among the dead, and say if there be
+any punishment like this. I am Bertrand de Born, he that incited John
+of England to rebel against his father. Father and son I set at
+variance--closest affections I set at variance--and hence do I bear my
+brain severed from the body on which it grew. In me behold the work of
+retribution." [37]
+
+The eyes of Dante were so inebriate with all that diversity of bleeding
+wounds, that they longed to stay and weep ere his guide proceeded
+further. Something also struck them on the sudden which added to his
+desire to stop. But Virgil asked what ailed him, and why he stood gazing
+still on the wretched multitude. "Thou hast not done so," continued he,
+"in any other portion of this circle; and the valley is twenty-two miles
+further about, and the moon already below us. Thou hast more yet to see
+than thou wottest of, and the time is short."
+
+Dante, excusing himself for the delay, and proceeding to follow his
+leader, said he thought he had seen, in the cavern at which he was
+gazing so hard, a spirit that was one of his own family--and it was so.
+It was the soul of Geri del Bello, a cousin of the poet's. Virgil said
+that he had observed him, while Dante was occupied with Bertrand de
+Born, pointing at his kinsman in a threatening manner. "Waste not a
+thought on him," concluded the Roman, "but leave him as he is." "O
+honoured guide!" said Dante, "he died a violent death, which his kinsmen
+have not yet avenged; and hence it is that he disdained to speak to me;
+and I must needs feel for him the more on that account." [38]
+
+They came now to the last partition of the circle of Evil-budget, and
+their ears were assailed with such a burst of sharp wailings, that Dante
+was fain to close his with his hands. The misery there, accompanied by
+a horrible odour, was as if all the hospitals in the sultry marshes of
+Valdichiana had brought their maladies together into one infernal ditch.
+It was the place of punishment for pretended Alchemists, Coiners,
+Personators of other people, False Accusers, and Impostors of all such
+descriptions. They lay on one another in heaps, or attempted to crawl
+about--some itching madly with leprosies--some swollen and gasping with
+dropsies--some wetly reeking, like hands washed in winter-time. One
+was an alchemist of Sienna, a nation vainer than the French; another a
+Florentine, who tricked a man into making a wrong will; another, Sinon
+of Troy; another, Myrrha; another, the wife of Potiphar. Their miseries
+did not hinder them from giving one another malignant blows; and Dante
+was listening eagerly to an abusive conversation between Sinon and
+a Brescian coiner, when Virgil rebuked him for the disgraceful
+condescension, and said it was a pleasure fit only for vulgar minds.[39]
+
+The blushing poet felt the reproof so deeply, that he could not speak
+for shame, though he manifested by his demeanour that he longed to do
+so, and thus obtained the pardon he despaired of. He says he felt like a
+man that, during an unhappy dream, wishes himself dreaming while he
+is so, and does not know it. Virgil understood his emotion, and, as
+Achilles did with his spear, healed the wound with the tongue that
+inflicted it.
+
+A silence now ensued between the companions; for they had quitted
+Evil-budget, and arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the mound
+of which they passed along, looking quietly and steadily before them.
+Daylight had given place to twilight; and Dante was advancing his head
+a little, and endeavouring to discern objects in the distance, when his
+whole attention was called to one particular spot, by a blast of a
+horn so loud, that a thunder clap was a whisper in comparison. Orlando
+himself blew no such terrific blast, after the dolorous rout, when
+Charlemagne was defeated in his holy enterprise.[40] The poet raised his
+head, thinking he perceived a multitude of lofty towers. He asked Virgil
+to what region they belonged; but Virgil said, "Those are no towers:
+they are giants, standing each up to his middle in the pit that goes
+round this circle." Dante looked harder; and as objects clear up by
+little and little in the departing mist, he saw, with alarm, the
+tremendous giants that warred against Jove, standing half in and
+half out of the pit, like the towers that crowned the citadel of
+Monteseggione. The one whom he saw plainest, and who stood with his arms
+hanging down on each side, appeared to him to have a face as huge as
+the pinnacle of St. Peter's, and limbs throughout in proportion. The
+monster, as the pilgrims were going by, opened his dreadful mouth, fit
+for no sweeter psalmody, and called after them, in the words of some
+unknown tongue, _Rafel, maee amech zabee almee_.[41] "Dull wretch!"
+exclaimed Virgil, "keep to thine horn, and so vent better whatsoever
+frenzy or other passion stuff thee. Feel the chain round thy throat,
+thou confusion! See, what a clenching hoop is about thy gorge!" Then he
+said to Dante, "His howl is its own mockery. This is Nimrod, he through
+whose evil ambition it was that mankind ceased to speak one language.
+Pass him, and say nothing; for every other tongue is to him, as his is
+to thee."
+
+The companions went on for about the length of a sling's throw, when
+they passed the second giant, who was much fiercer and linger than
+Nimrod. He was fettered round and round with chains, that fixed one arm
+before him and the other behind him--Ephialtes his name, the same that
+would needs make trial of his strength against Jove himself. The hands
+which he then wielded were now motionless, but he shook with passion;
+and Dante thought he should have died for terror, the effect on the
+ground about him was so fearful. It surpassed that of a tower shaken by
+an earthquake. The poet expressed a wish to look at Briareus, but he was
+too far off. He saw, however, Antaeus, who, not having fought against
+heaven, was neither tongue-confounded nor shackled; and Virgil requested
+the "taker of a thousand lions," by the fame which the living poet had
+it in his power to give him, to bear the travellers in his arms down the
+steep descent into this deeper portion of hell, which was the region of
+tormenting cold. Antmus, stooping, like the leaning tower of Bologna,
+to take them up, gathered them in his arms, and, depositing them in the
+gulf below, raised himself to depart like the mast of a ship.[42]
+
+Had I hoarse and rugged words equal to my subject, says the poet, I
+would now make them fuller of expression, to suit the rocky horror of
+this hole of anguish; but I have not, and therefore approach it with
+fear, since it is no jesting enterprise to describe the depths of the
+universe, nor fit for a tongue that babbles of father and mother.[43]
+Let such of the Muses assist me as turned the words of Amphion into
+Theban walls; so shall the speech be not too far different from the
+matter.
+
+Oh, ill-starred creatures! wretched beyond all others, to inhabit a
+place so hard to speak of--better had ye been sheep or goats.
+
+The poet was beginning to walk with his guide along the place in which
+the giant had set them down, and was still looking up at the height from
+which he had descended, when a voice close to him said, "Have a care
+where thou treadest. Hurt not with thy feet the heads of thy unhappy
+brethren."
+
+Dante looked down and before him, and saw that he was walking on a lake
+of ice, in which were Murderous Traitors up to their chins, their teeth
+chattering, their faces held down, their eyes locked up frozen with
+tears. Dante saw two at his feet so closely stuck together, that the
+very hairs of their heads were mingled. He asked them who they were, and
+as they lifted up their heads for astonishment, and felt the cold doubly
+congeal them, they dashed their heads against one another for hate and
+fury. They were two brothers who had murdered each other.[44] Near them
+were other Tuscans, one of whom the cold had deprived of his ears; and
+thousands more were seen grinning like dogs, for the pain.
+
+Dante, as he went along, _kicked_ the face of one of them, whether by
+chance, or fate, or _will_,[45] he could not say. The sufferer burst
+into tears, and cried out, "Wherefore dost thou torment me? Art thou
+come to revenge the defeat at Montaperto?" The pilgrim at this question
+felt eager to know who he was; but the unhappy wretch would not tell.
+His countryman seized him by the hair to force him; but still he said
+he would not tell, were he to be scalped a thousand times. Dante, upon
+this, began plucking up his hairs by the roots, the man _barking_,[46]
+with his eyes squeezed up, at every pull; when another soul exclaimed,
+"Why, Bocca, what the devil ails thee? Must thou needs bark for cold as
+well as chatter?" [47]
+
+"Now, accursed traitor, betrayer of thy country's standard," said Dante,
+"be dumb if thou wilt; for I shall tell thy name to the world."
+
+"Tell and begone!" said Bocca; "but carry the name of this babbler with
+thee; 'tis Buoso, who left the pass open to the enemy between Piedmont
+and Parma; and near him is the traitor for the pope, Beccaria; and
+Ganellone, who betrayed Charlemagne; and Tribaldello, who opened Faenza
+to the enemy at night-time."
+
+The pilgrims went on, and beheld two other spirits so closely locked up
+together in one hole of the ice, that the head of one was right over the
+other's, like a cowl; and Dante, to his horror, saw that the upper head
+was devouring the lower with all the eagerness of a man who is famished.
+The poet asked what could possibly make him skew a hate so brutal;
+adding, that if there were any ground for it, he would tell the story to
+the world.[48]
+
+The sinner raised his head from the dire repast, and after wiping his
+jaws with the hair of it, said, "You ask a thing which it shakes me to
+the heart to think of. It is a story to renew all my misery. But since
+it will produce this wretch his due infamy, hear it, and you shall see
+me speak and weep at the same time. How thou tamest hither I know not;
+but I perceive by thy speech that thou art Florentine.
+
+"Learn, then, that I was the Count Ugolino, and this man was Ruggieri
+the Archbishop. How I trusted him, and was betrayed into prison, there
+is no need to relate; but of his treatment of me there, and how cruel a
+death I underwent, bear; and then judge if he has offended me.
+
+"I had been imprisoned with my children a long time in the tower which
+has since been called from me the Tower of Famine; and many a new moon
+had I seen through the hole that served us for a window, when I dreamt a
+dream that foreshadowed to me what was coming. Methought that this man
+headed a great chase against the wolf, in the mountains between Pisa
+and Lucca. Among the foremost in his party were Gualandi, Sismondi, and
+Lanfranchi, and the hounds were thin and eager, and high-bred; and in a
+little while I saw the hounds fasten on the flanks of the wolf and the
+wolf's children, and tear them. At that moment I awoke with the voices
+of my own children in my ears, asking for bread. Truly cruel must thou
+be, if thy heart does not ache to think of what I thought then. If thou
+feel not for a pang like that, what is it for which thou art accustomed
+to feel? We were now all awake; and the time was at hand when they
+brought us bread, and we had all dreamt dreams which made us anxious. At
+that moment I heard the key of the horrible tower turn in the lock of
+the door below, and fasten it. I looked at my children, and said not a
+word. I did not weep. I made a strong effort upon the soul within me.
+But my little Anselm said, 'Father, why do you look so? Is any thing the
+matter?' Nevertheless I did not weep, nor say a word all the day, nor
+the night that followed. In the morning a ray of light fell upon us
+through the window of our sad prison, and I beheld in those four little
+faces the likeness of my own face, and then I began to gnaw my hands for
+misery. My children, thinking I did it for hunger, raised themselves on
+the floor, and said, 'Father, we should be less miserable if you would
+eat our own flesh. It was you that gave it us. Take it again.' Then I
+sat still, in order not to make them unhappier: and that day and
+the next we all remained without speaking. On the fourth day, Gaddo
+stretched himself at my feet, and said, 'Father, why won't you help me?'
+and there he died. And as surely as thou lookest on me, so surely I
+beheld the whole three die in the same manner. So I began in my misery
+to grope about in the dark for them, for I had become blind; and three
+days I kept calling on them by name, though they were dead; till famine
+did for me what grief had been unable to do."
+
+With these words, the miserable man, his eyes starting from his head,
+seized that other wretch again with his teeth, and ground them against
+the skull as a dog does with a bone.
+
+O Pisa! scandal of the nations! since thy neighbours are so slow to
+punish thee, may the very islands tear themselves up from their roots in
+the sea, and come and block up the mouth of thy river, and drown every
+soul within thee. What if this Count Ugolino did, as report says he did,
+betray thy castles to the enemy? his children had not betrayed them; nor
+ought they to have been put to an agony like this. Their age was their
+innocence; and their deaths have given thee the infamy of a second
+Thebes.[49]
+
+The pilgrims passed on, and beheld other traitors frozen up in swathes
+of ice, with their heads upside down. Their very tears had hindered them
+from shedding more; for their eyes were encrusted with the first they
+shed, so as to be enclosed with them as in a crystal visor, which forced
+back the others into an accumulation of anguish. One of the sufferers
+begged Dante to relieve him of this ice, in order that he might vent a
+little of the burden which it repressed. The poet said he would do so,
+provided he would disclose who he was. The man said he was the friar
+Alberigo, who invited some of his brotherhood to a banquet in order to
+slay them.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Dante, "art thou no longer, then, among the living?"
+
+"Perhaps I appear to be," answered the friar; "for the moment any one
+commits a treachery like mine, his soul gives up his body to a demon,
+who thenceforward inhabits it in the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca
+Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche? He seems to be walking
+the earth still, and yet he has been in this place many years." [50]
+
+"Impossible!" cried Dante; "Branca Doria is still alive; he eats,
+drinks, and sleeps, like any other man."
+
+"I tell thee," returned the friar, "that the soul of the man he slew had
+not reached that lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him, ere the
+soul of his slayer was in this place, and his body occupied by a demon
+in its stead. But now stretch forth thy hand, and relieve mine eyes."
+
+Dante relieved them not. Ill manners, he said, were the only courtesy
+fit for such a wretch.[51]
+
+O ye Genoese! he exclaims,--men that are perversity all over, and full
+of every corruption to the core, why are ye not swept from the face of
+the earth? There is one of you whom you fancy to be walking about like
+other men, and he is all the while in the lowest pit of hell!
+
+"Look before thee," said Virgil, as they advanced: "behold the banners
+of the King of Hell."
+
+Dante looked, and beheld something which appeared like a windmill in
+motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable
+sharpness came from it.
+
+The souls of those who had been traitors to their benefactors were here
+frozen up in depths of pellucid ice, where they were seen in a variety
+of attitudes, motionless; some upright, some downward, some bent double,
+head to foot.
+
+At length they came to where the being stood who was once eminent for
+all fair seeming.[52] This was the figure that seemed tossing its arms
+at a distance like a windmill.
+
+"Satan," whispered Virgil; and put himself in front of Dante to
+re-assure him, halting him at the same time, and bidding him summon all
+his fortitude. Dante stood benumbed, though conscious; as if he himself
+had been turned to ice. He felt neither alive nor dead.
+
+The lord of the dolorous empire, each of his arms as big as a giant,
+stood in the ice half-way up his breast. He had one head, but three
+faces; the middle, vermilion; the one over the right shoulder a pale
+yellow; the other black. His sails of wings, huger than ever were beheld
+at sea, were in shape and texture those of a bat; and with these be
+constantly flapped, so as to send forth the wind that froze the depths
+of Tartarus. From his six eyes the tears ran down, mingling at his three
+chins with bloody foam; for at every mouth he crushed a sinner with his
+teeth, as substances are broken up by an engine. The middle sinner was
+the worst punished, for he was at once broken and flayed, and his head
+and trunk were inside the mouth. It was Judas Iscariot.
+
+Of the other two, whose heads were hanging out, one was Brutus, and the
+other Cassius. Cassius was very large-limbed. Brutus writhed with agony,
+but uttered not a word.[53]
+
+"Night has returned," said Virgil, "and all has been seen. It is time to
+depart onward."
+
+Dante then, at his bidding, clasped, as Virgil did, the huge inattentive
+being round the neck; and watching their opportunity, as the wings
+opened and shut, they slipped round it, and so down his shaggy and
+frozen sides, from pile to pile, clutching it as they went; till
+suddenly, with the greatest labour and pain, they were compelled to turn
+themselves upside down, as it seemed, but in reality to regain their
+proper footing; for they had passed the centre of gravity, and become
+Antipodes.
+
+Then looking down at what lately was upward, they saw Lucifer with his
+feet towards them; and so taking their departure, ascended a gloomy
+vault, till at a distance, through an opening above their heads, they
+beheld the loveliness of the stars.[54]
+
+
+[Footnote 1: "Parea che l'aer ne temesse."]
+
+[Footnote 2: "La dove 'l sol tace." "The sun to me is dark, And _silent_
+is the moon, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."--Milton.]
+
+[Footnote 3: There is great difference among the commentators respecting
+the meaning of the three beasts; some supposing them passions, others
+political troubles, others personal enemies, &c. The point is not of
+much importance, especially as a mystery was intended; but nobody, as
+Mr. Cary says, can doubt that the passage was suggested by one in the
+prophet Jeremiah, v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay
+them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them; a leopard shall watch
+over their cities."]
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+  "Che quello 'mperador che la su regna
+  Perch' i' fu'ribellante a la sua legge,
+  Non vuol che 'n sua citta per me si vegna." ]
+
+
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+  "Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
+  Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl'imbianca,
+  Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo."
+
+  Like as the flowers that with the frosty night
+  Are bowed and closed, soon as the sun returns,
+  Rise on their stems, all open and upright.]
+
+[Footnote 6: This loss of intellectual good, and the confession of the
+poet that he finds the inscription over hell-portal hard to understand
+(_il senso lor m'e duro_), are among the passages in Dante which lead
+some critics to suppose that his hell is nothing but an allegory,
+intended at once to imply his own disbelief in it as understood by the
+vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it, nevertheless, as a
+salutary check both to the foolish and the reflecting;--to the foolish,
+as an alarm; and to the reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the
+teeth of many appearances to the contrary, that such may have been the
+case; but in the doubt that it affects either the foolish or the wise to
+any good purpose, and in the certainty that such doctrines do a world
+of mischief to tender consciences and the cause of sound piety, such
+monstrous contradictions, in terms, of every sense of justice and
+charity which God has implanted in the heart of man, are not to be
+passed over without indignant comment.]
+
+[Footnote 7: It is seldom that a boast of this kind--not, it must be
+owned, bashful--has been allowed by posterity to be just; nay, in four
+out of the five instances, below its claims.]
+
+[Footnote 8:
+
+  "Genti v'eran, con occhi tardi e gravi,
+  Di grande autorita ne' lor sembianti
+  Parlavan rado, con voci soavi." ]
+
+[Footnote 9: "Sopra 'l verde smalto." Mr. Cary has noticed the
+appearance, for the first time, of this beautiful but now commonplace
+image.]
+
+[Footnote 10: "Il maestro di color che sanno."]
+
+[Footnote 11: This is the famous episode of Paulo and Francesca. She
+was daughter to Count Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, and wife to
+Giovanni Malatesta, one of the sons, of the lord of Rimini. Paulo was
+her brother-in-law. They were surprised together by the husband, and
+slain on the spot. Particulars of their history will be found in the
+Appendix, together with the whole original passage.
+
+  "Quali colombe, dal disio chiamate,
+  Con l'ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
+  Volan per l'aer dal voler portate
+
+  Cotali uscir de la schiera ov'e Dido,
+  A noi venendo per l'aer maligno,
+  Si forte fu l'affettuoso grido."
+
+  As doves, drawn home from where they circled still,
+  Set firm their open wings, and through the air
+  Come sweeping, wafted by their pure good-will
+
+  So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
+  Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign,
+  Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer. ]
+
+[Footnote 12: Francesca is to be conceived telling her story in anxious
+intermitting sentences--now all tenderness for her lover, now angry at
+their slayer; watching the poet's face, to see what he thinks, and
+at times averting her own. I take this excellent direction from Ugo
+Foscolo.]
+
+[Footnote 13:
+
+  "Nessun maggior dolore,
+  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
+  Ne la miseria." ]
+
+[Footnote 14:
+
+  "Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
+  Quella lettura."
+"To look at one another," says Boccaccio; and his interpretation
+has been followed by Cary and Foscolo; but, with deference to such
+authorities, I beg leave to think that the poet meant no more than he
+says, namely, that their eyes were simply "suspended"--hung, as it were,
+over the book, without being able to read on; which is what I intended
+to express (if I may allude to a production of which both those critics
+were pleased to speak well), when, in my youthful attempt to enlarge
+this story, I wrote "And o'er the book they hung, and nothing said,
+And every lingering page grew longer as they read."
+
+_Story of Rimini._]
+
+[Footnote 15:
+
+  "Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
+  L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade
+  I' venni men cosi com'io morisse,
+  E caddi come corpo morto cade."
+
+This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deadness
+of its expression.
+
+  While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
+  With wail so woful, that at his remorse
+  I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd
+  Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.
+
+The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think)
+because he had sinned in the same way; and if Foscolo's opinion could
+be established--that the incident of the book is invention--their
+conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance
+of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough
+to have occurred to Dante. But the same probability applies in the case
+of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their
+own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's having been
+found in the room where they perished. The Pagans could not be rebels
+to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel
+to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious
+effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers
+avowedly set reason at defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of
+contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd,"
+as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued,
+much more so, they had at least an equal claim on the submission of the
+reason; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological
+triumph.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Plutus's exclamation about Satan is a great choke-pear to
+the commentators. The line in the original is
+
+  "Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe."
+
+The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not the business of
+this abstract to discuss such points; and therefore I content myself
+with believing that the context implies a call of alarm on the Prince of
+Hell at the sight of the living creature and his guide.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo for
+setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his
+daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in
+Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut
+is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle,
+involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a
+Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have written about it in
+Sanscrit.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Filippo Argenti (Philip _Silver_,--so called from his
+shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Florentine remarkable
+for bodily strength and extreme irascibility. What a barbarous strength
+and confusion of ideas is there in this whole passage about him!
+Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the
+unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed,
+passion arguing in a circle! Filippo himself might have written it.
+Dante says,
+
+  "Con piangere e con lutto
+  Spirito maladetto, ti rimani.
+  Via costa con gli altri cani," &c.
+
+Then Virgil, kissing and embracing him,
+
+  "Alma sdegnosa
+  Benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse," &c.
+
+And Dante again,
+
+  "Maestro, molto sarei vago
+  Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," &c. ]
+
+[Footnote 19: Dis, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for Satan.
+Within the walls of the city of Dis commence the punishments by fire.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Farinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of Dante,
+and had vanquished the poet's connexions at the battle of Montaperto.]
+
+[Footnote 21: What would Guido have said to this? More, I suspect, than
+Dante would have liked to hear, or known how to answer. But he died
+before the verses transpired; probably before they were written; for
+Dante, in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and seasons he
+finds most convenient.]
+
+[Footnote 22:
+
+  "Si che la pioggia non par che 'l maturi."
+
+This is one of the grandest passages in Dante. It was probably (as
+English commentators have observed) in Milton's recollection when he
+conceived the character of Satan.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as
+Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery.
+
+The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (_Golden-sword_), and the
+Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (_Fair-flowing_), was rich in the possession
+of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this
+instrument of satire. The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point
+of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be.]
+
+[Footnote 24: "_Malebolge_," literally Evil-Budget. _Bolgia_ is an old
+form of the modern _baule_, the common term for a valise or portmanteau.
+"Bolgia" (says the _Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato_, Ven. 1792),
+"a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek]. In
+reference to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
+word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell." (Per
+similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di
+cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.)
+The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the
+contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional
+notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of
+their grandeur.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of
+the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his
+enemies in hell before their time.]
+
+[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by
+Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and
+others.]
+
+[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,
+
+  "Qui vive la pieta quand' e ben morta."
+  Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
+
+  "Chi e piu scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui,
+  Ch'al giudicio divin passion porta."
+
+That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings
+against the judgments of God?" The answer is: He that attributes
+judgments to God which are to render humanity pitiless.]
+
+[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi cosi poco_. Michael Scot had been in
+Florence; to which circumstance we are most probably indebted for this
+curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to
+hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the
+vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice,
+considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to
+swallow.]
+
+[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a
+hearer of this passage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not
+one honest man in all Lucca!]
+
+[Footnote 30:
+
+  "Intorno si mira
+  Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
+  Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira."
+
+This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised
+astonishment ever painted.]
+
+[Footnote 31: I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant
+ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but
+a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by
+extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the
+Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the
+South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour,
+from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in
+England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the
+words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured
+fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was
+saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by
+attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more
+violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it
+best to run!]
+
+[Footnote 32: Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort,
+and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati
+family, connexions of the poet by marriage.]
+
+[Footnote 33: This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite
+the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he
+selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.
+They are the most appalling ever yet produced.]
+
+[Footnote 34: Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that
+day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins;
+but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode
+of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family,
+and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the
+opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to "promise much, and
+perform nothing" (_molto promettere, e nulla attendere_).]
+
+[Footnote 35: Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the
+fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods,
+including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming
+the church. He appears to have made a considerable impression, having
+thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where
+they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many
+others. Landino says he was very eloquent, and that "both he and
+Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause."
+Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such
+times bold enough to write it.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing himself to be
+pure:"
+
+  "Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura."
+
+The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in
+English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have
+met with in the whole poem. It might be argued, perhaps, against the
+perfection of the passage, that a good "conscience," and a man's
+"knowing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante himself has
+already used that word;
+
+  "Conscienzia m'assicura;
+  La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
+  Sotto l'osbergo," &c.
+
+But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could
+have kept it.]
+
+[Foonote 37: This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of
+physical horror with the truest pathos.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic
+instance of the ferocity of the time.]
+
+[Footnote 39: This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no
+ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante
+allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps
+it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into
+the unworthiness.]
+
+[Footnote 40: By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite
+a topic with the poets. The circumstance of the horn is taken from the
+Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv.]
+
+[Footnote 41: The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel _a_,
+is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is
+like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world.]
+
+[Footnote 42:
+
+  "Ne si chinato li fece dimora,
+  E come albero in nave si levo."
+
+A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the
+original, _raised himself_, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to
+me to give the more grand and deliberate image.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Of "_mamma_" and "_babbo_," says the primitive poet. We
+have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not
+identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in
+some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the
+"artful" Italians.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto,
+lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death
+they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a
+mortal quarrel. The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late
+years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting
+surprise to meet with it.]
+
+[Footnote 45:
+
+  "Se _voler_ fu, o destino o fortuna,
+  Non so."
+
+What does the Christian reader think of that?]
+
+[Footnote 46: Latrando.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog,
+occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by
+treacherously cutting off the hand of the standard-bearer.]
+
+[Footnote 48: This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the
+castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in
+the Tower of Famine.]
+
+[Footnote 49: I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this
+story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too
+hasty in giving credit to parts of it, particularly the ages of some of
+his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop. See the Appendix
+to this volume.]
+
+[Footnote 50: This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware,
+in the whole circle of literature.]
+
+[Footnote 51: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." This is the foulest blot
+which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the
+cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to God). It is argued that he is
+cruel and false, out of hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then
+add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be suffering
+eternally? It is idle to discern in such barbarous inconsistencies any
+thing but the writer's own contributions to the stock of them. The
+utmost credit for right feeling is not to be given on every occasion to
+a man who refuses it to every one else.]
+
+[Footnote 52: "La creatura ch'ebbe il bel sembiante."
+
+This is touching; but the reader may as well be prepared for a total
+failure in Dante's conception of Satan, especially the English reader,
+accustomed to the sublimity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman
+Catholic poet intended to honour the fallen angel with no sublimity,
+but to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has overdone and
+degraded the picture into caricature. A great stupid being, stuck up in
+ice, with three faces, one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each
+eating a sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus, is an object
+for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting
+_bonnes-bouches,_ divides derision with disgust. The passage must be
+given, otherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete; but I
+cannot help thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a
+great poet.]
+
+[Footnote 53: This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus,
+especially from a man like Dante, and the more because it is extorted.
+Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, particularly treachery to the
+leader of his beloved Roman emperors; forgetting three things; first,
+that Caesar was guilty of treachery himself to the Roman people; second,
+that he, Dante, has put Curio in hell for advising Caesar to cross the
+Rubicon, though he has put the crosser among the good Pagans; and third,
+that Brutus was educated in the belief that the punishment of such
+treachery as Caesar's by assassination was one of the first of duties.
+How differently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than
+democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of assassins in
+general, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic
+philosopher!]
+
+[Footnote 54: At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absurdity,
+sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossible for any
+reflecting heart to avoid asking, _Cui bono?_ What is the good of it
+to the poor wretches, if we are to suppose it true? and what to the
+world--except, indeed, as a poetic study and a warning against degrading
+notions of God--if we are to take it simply as a fiction? Theology,
+disdaining both questions, has an answer confessedly incomprehensible.
+Humanity replies: Assume not premises for which you have worse than no
+proofs.]
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
+
+Argument.
+
+Purgatory, in the system of Dante, is a mountain at the Antipodes, on
+the top of which is the Terrestrial Paradise, once the seat of Adam and
+Eve. It forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and possesses
+a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two exceptions of redeemed
+Pagans, is occupied by Excommunicated Penitents and by Delayers of
+Penitence, all of whom are compelled to lose time before their atonement
+commences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is divided into
+circles or plains, in which are expiated the Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet
+ascends from circle to circle with Virgil and Statius, and is met in
+a forest on the top by the spirit of Beatrice, who transports him to
+Heaven.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
+
+When the pilgrims emerged from the opening through which they beheld the
+stars, they found themselves in a scene which enchanted them with hope
+and joy. It was dawn: a sweet pure air came on their faces; and they
+beheld a sky of the loveliest oriental sapphire, whose colour seemed
+to pervade the whole serene hollow from earth to heaven. The beautiful
+planet which encourages loving thoughts made all the orient laugh,
+obscuring by its very radiance the stars in its train; and among those
+which were still lingering and sparkling in the southern horizon,
+Dante saw four in the shape of a cross, never beheld by man since they
+gladdened the eyes of our first parents. Heaven seemed to rejoice in
+their possession. O widowed northern pole! bereaved art thou, indeed,
+since thou canst not gaze upon them![1]
+
+The poet turned to look at the north where he had been accustomed to see
+stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who
+struck his beholder with a veneration like that of a son for his father.
+He had grey hairs, and a long beard which parted in two down his
+bosom; and the four southern stars beamed on his face with such lustre,
+that his aspect was as radiant as if he had stood in the sun.
+
+"Who are ye?" said the old man, "that have escaped from the dreadful
+prison-house? Can the laws of the abyss be violated? Or has Heaven
+changed its mind, that thus ye are allowed to come from the regions of
+condemnation into mine?"
+
+It was the spirit of Cato of Utica, the warder of the ascent of
+purgatory.
+
+The Roman poet explained to his countryman who they were, and how Dante
+was under heavenly protection; and then he prayed leave of passage of
+him by the love he bore to the chaste eyes of his Marcia, who sent him a
+message from the Pagan circle, hoping that he would still own her.
+
+Cato replied, that although he was so fond of Marcia while on earth that
+he could deny her nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new laws, to
+have any affection for her, now that she dwelt beyond the evil river;
+but as the pilgrim, his companion, was under heavenly protection, he
+would of course do what he desired.[2] He then desired him to gird his
+companion with one of the simplest and completest rushes he would see by
+the water's side, and to wash the stain of the lower world out of his
+face, and so take their journey up the mountain before them, by a
+path which the rising sun would disclose. And with these words he
+disappeared.[3]
+
+The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of one who thinks every step
+in vain till he finds the path he has lost. The full dawn by this time
+had arisen, and they saw the trembling of the sea in the distance.[4]
+Virgil then dipped his hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun
+had least affected it, and with the moisture bathed the face of Dante,
+who held it out to him, suffused with tears;[5] and then they went on
+till they came to a solitary shore, whence no voyager had ever returned,
+and there the loins of the Florentine were girt with the rush.
+
+On this shore they were standing in doubt how to proceed,--moving
+onward, as it were, in mind, while yet their feet were staying,--when
+they be held a light over the water at a distance, rayless at first as
+the planet Mars when he looks redly out of the horizon through a fog,
+but speedily growing brighter and brighter with amazing swiftness. Dante
+had but turned for an instant to ask his guide what it was, when, on
+looking again, it had grown far brighter. Two splendid phenomena, he
+knew not what, then developed themselves from it on either side; and, by
+degrees, another below it. The two splendours quickly turned out to be
+wings; and Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in silence, cried
+out, "Down, down,--on thy knees! It is God's angel. Clasp thine hands.
+Now thou shalt behold operancy indeed. Lo, how he needs neither sail nor
+oar, coming all this way with nothing but his wings! Lo, how he holds
+them aloft, using the air with them at his will, and knowing they can
+never be weary."
+
+The "divine bird" grew brighter and brighter as he came, so that the
+eye at last could not sustain the lustre; and Dante turned his to the
+ground. A boat then rushed to shore which the angel had brought with
+him, so light that it drew not a drop of water. The celestial pilot
+stood at the helm, with bliss written in his face; and a hundred spirits
+were seen within the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the psalm
+beginning "When Israel came out of Egypt." At the close of the psalm,
+the angel blessed them with the sign of the cross, and they all leaped
+to shore; upon which he turned round, and departed as swiftly as he
+came.
+
+The new-comers, after gazing about them for a while, in the manner of
+those who are astonished to see new sights, inquired of Virgil and his
+companion the best way to the mountain. Virgil explained who they were;
+and the spirits, pale with astonishment at beholding in Dante a living
+and breathing man, crowded about him, in spite of their anxiety to
+shorten the period of their trials. One of them came darting out of the
+press to embrace him, in a manner so affectionate as to move the poet to
+return his warmth; but his arms again and again found themselves crossed
+on his own bosom, having encircled nothing. The shadow, smiling at the
+astonishment in the other's face, drew back; and Dante hastened as much
+forward to shew his zeal in the greeting, when the spirit in a sweet
+voice recommended him to desist. The Florentine then knew who it
+was,--Casella, a musician, to whom he had been much attached. After
+mutual explanations as to their meeting, Dante requested his friend, if
+no ordinance opposed it, to refresh his spirit awhile with one of the
+tender airs that used to charm away all his troubles on earth. Casella
+immediately began one of his friend's own productions, commencing with
+the words,
+
+"Love, that delights to talk unto my soul Of all the wonders of my
+lady's nature."
+
+And he sang it so beautifully, that the sweetness rang within the poet's
+heart while recording the circumstance. The other spirits listened with
+such attention, that they seemed to have forgotten the very purpose
+of their coming; when suddenly the voice of Cato was heard, sternly
+rebuking their delay; and the whole party speeded in trepidation towards
+the mountain.[6]
+
+The two pilgrims, who had at first hastened with the others, in a little
+while slackened their steps; and Dante found that his body projected a
+shadow, while the form of Virgil had none. When arrived at the foot of
+the mountain, they were joined by a second party of spirits, of whom
+Virgil inquired the way up it. One of the spirits, of a noble aspect,
+but with a gaping wound in his forehead, stepped forth, and asked Dante
+if he remembered him. The poet humbly answering in the negative, the
+stranger disclosed a second wound, that was in his bosom; and then, with
+a smile, announced himself as Manfredi, king of Naples, who was slain in
+battle against Charles of Anjou, and died excommunicated. Manfredi gave
+Dante a message to his daughter Costanza, queen of Arragon, begging her
+to shorten the consequences of the excommunication by her prayers;
+since he, like the rest of the party with him, though repenting of his
+contumacy against the church, would have to wander on the outskirts of
+Purgatory three times as long as the presumption had lasted, unless
+relieved by such petitions from the living.[7]
+
+Dante went on, with his thoughts so full of this request, that he did
+not perceive he had arrived at the path which Virgil asked for, till the
+wandering spirits called out to them to say so. The pilgrims then, with
+great difficulty, began to ascend through an extremely narrow passage;
+and Virgil, after explaining to Dante how it was that in this antipodal
+region his eastward face beheld the sun in the north instead of the
+south, was encouraging him to proceed manfully in the hope of finding
+the path easier by degrees, and of reposing at the end of it, when they
+heard a voice observing, that they would most likely find it expedient
+to repose a little sooner. The pilgrims looked about them, and observed
+close at hand a crag of a rock, in the shade of which some spirits were
+standing, as men stand idly at noon. Another was sitting down, as if
+tired out, with his arms about his knees, and his face bent down between
+them.[8]
+
+"Dearest master!" exclaimed Dante to his guide, "what thinkest thou of a
+croucher like this, for manful journeying? Verily he seems to have been
+twin-born with Idleness herself."
+
+The croucher, lifting up his eyes at these words, looked hard at Dante,
+and said, "Since thou art so stout, push on."
+
+Dante then saw it was Belacqua, a pleasant acquaintance of his, famous
+for his indolence.
+
+"That was a good lesson," said Belacqua, "that was given thee just now
+in astronomy."
+
+The poet could not help smiling at the manner in which his acquaintance
+uttered these words, it was so like his ways of old. Belacqua pretended,
+even in another world, that it was of no use to make haste, since the
+angel had prohibited his going higher up the mountain. He and his
+companions had to walk round the foot of it as many years as they had
+delayed repenting; unless, as in the case of Manfredi, their time was
+shortened by the prayers of good people.
+
+A little further on, the pilgrims encountered the spirits of such
+Delayers of Penitence as, having died violent deaths, repented at the
+last moment. One of them, Buonconte da Montefeltro, who died in battle,
+and whose body could not be found, described how the devil, having been
+hindered from seizing him by the shedding of a single tear, had raised
+in his fury a tremendous tempest, which sent the body down the river
+Arno, and buried it in the mud.[9]
+
+Another spirit, a female, said to Dante, "Ah! when thou returnest to
+earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, remember me,--Pia.
+Sienna gave me life; the Marshes took it from me. This he knows, who put
+on my finger the wedding-ring."[10]
+
+The majority of this party were so importunate with the Florentine
+to procure them the prayers of their friends, that he had as much
+difficulty to get away, as a winner at dice has to free himself from the
+mercenary congratulations of the by-standers. On resuming their way,
+Dante quoted to Virgil a passage in the AEneid, decrying the utility of
+prayer, and begged him to explain how it was to be reconciled with what
+they had just heard. Virgil advised him to wait for the explanation till
+he saw Beatrice, whom, he now said, he should meet at the top of the
+mountain. Dante, at this information, expressed a desire to hasten their
+progress; and Virgil, seeing a spirit looking towards them as they
+advanced, requested him to acquaint them with the shortest road.
+
+The spirit, maintaining a lofty and reserved aspect, was as silent as if
+he had not heard the request; intimating by his manner that they might
+as well proceed without repeating it, and eyeing them like a lion on the
+watch. Virgil, however, went up to him, and gently urged it; but the
+only reply was a question as to who they were and of what country. The
+Latin poet beginning to answer him, had scarcely mentioned the word
+"Mantua," when the stranger went as eagerly up to his interrogator as
+the latter had done to him, and said, "Mantua! My own country! My name
+is Sordello." And the compatriots embraced.
+
+O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land without affections, without
+principle, without faith in any one good thing! here was a man who could
+not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his
+heart gush towards him, and there are no people now in any one of thy
+towns that do not hate and torment one another.
+
+Sordello, in another tone, now exclaimed, "But who are ye?"
+
+Virgil disclosed himself, and Sordello fell at his feet.[11]
+
+Sordello now undertook to accompany the great Roman poet and his friend
+to a certain distance on their ascent towards the penal quarters of the
+mountain; but as evening was drawing nigh, and the ascent could not
+be made properly in the dark, he proposed that they should await the
+dawning of the next day in a recess that overlooked a flowery hollow.
+The hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled with flowers that
+surpassed the exquisitest dyes, and green with a grass brighter than
+emeralds newly broken.[12] There rose from it also a fragrance of a
+thousand different kinds of sweetness, all mingled into one that was new
+and indescribable; and with the fragrance there ascended the chant of
+the prayer beginning "Hail, Queen of Heaven,"[13] which was sung by a
+multitude of souls that appeared sitting on the flowery sward.
+
+Virgil pointed them out. They were penitent delayers of penitence, of
+sovereign rank. Among them, however, were spirits who sat mute; one
+of whom was the Emperor Rodolph, who ought to have attended better to
+Italy, the garden of the empire; and another, Ottocar, king of Bohemia,
+his enemy, who now comforted him; and another, with a small nose,[14]
+Philip the Third of France, who died a fugitive, shedding the leaves of
+the lily; he sat beating his breast; and with him was Henry the Third of
+Navarre, sighing with his cheek on his hand. One was the father, and one
+the father-in-law of Philip the Handsome, the bane of France; and it was
+on account of his unworthiness they grieved.
+
+But among the singers Virgil pointed out the strong-limbed King of
+Arragon, Pedro; and Charles, king of Naples, with his masculine nose
+(these two were singing together); and Henry the Third of England, the
+king of the simple life, sitting by himself;[15] and below these, but
+with his eyes in heaven, Guglielmo marquis of Montferrat.
+
+It was now the hour when men at sea think longingly of home, and feel
+their hearts melt within them to remember the day on which they bade
+adieu to beloved friends; and now, too, was the hour when the pilgrim,
+new to his journey, is thrilled with the like tenderness, when he hears
+the vesper-bell in the distance, which seems to mourn for the expiring
+day.[16] At this hour of the coming darkness, Dante beheld one of the
+spirits in the flowery hollow arise, and after giving a signal to the
+others to do as he did, stretch forth both hands, palm to palm, towards
+the East, and with softest emotion commence the hymn beginning,
+
+"Thee before the closing light."[17]
+
+Upon which all the rest devoutly and softly followed him, keeping their
+eyes fixed on the heavens. At the end of it they remained, with pale
+countenances, in an attitude of humble expectation; and Dante saw the
+angels issue from the quarter to which they looked, and descend towards
+them with flaming swords in their hands, broken short of the point.
+Their wings were as green as the leaves in spring; and they wore
+garments equally green, which the fanning of the wings kept in a state
+of streaming fluctuation behind them as they came. One of them took his
+stand on a part of the hill just over where the pilgrims stood, and the
+other on a hill opposite, so that the party in the valley were between
+them. Dante could discern their heads of hair, notwithstanding its
+brightness; but their faces were so dazzling as to be undistinguishable.
+
+"They come from Mary's bosom," whispered Sordello, "to protect the
+valley from the designs of our enemy yonder,--the Serpent."
+
+Dante looked in trepidation towards the only undefended side of the
+valley, and beheld the Serpent of Eve coming softly among the grass and
+flowers, occasionally turning its head, and licking its polished back.
+Before he could take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two angels
+had come down like falcons, and at the whirring of their pinions the
+serpent fled. The angels returned as swiftly to their stations.
+
+Aurora was now looking palely over the eastern cliff on the other side
+of the globe, and the stars of midnight shining over the heads of Dante
+and his friends, when they seated themselves for rest on the mountain's
+side. The Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for weariness,
+and was overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamt that a golden eagle
+flashed down like lightning upon him, and bore him up to the region
+of fire, where the heat was so intense that it woke him, staring and
+looking round about with a pale face. His dream was a shadowing of
+the truth. He had actually come to another place,--to the entrance of
+Purgatory itself. Sordello had been left behind, Virgil alone remained,
+looking him cheerfully in the face. Saint Lucy had come from heaven,
+and shortened the fatigue of his journey by carrying him upwards as he
+slept, the heathen poet following them. On arriving where they stood,
+the fair saint intimated the entrance of Purgatory to Virgil by a glance
+thither of her beautiful eyes, and then vanished as Dante woke.[18]
+
+The portal by which Purgatory was entered was embedded in a cliff. It
+had three steps, each of a different colour; and on the highest of these
+there sat, mute and watching, an angel in ash-coloured garments, holding
+a naked sword, which glanced with such intolerable brightness on Dante,
+whenever he attempted to look, that he gave up the endeavour. The angel
+demanded who they were, and receiving the right answer, gently bade them
+advance.
+
+Dante now saw, that the lowest step was of marble, so white and clear
+that he beheld his face in it. The colour of the next was a deadly
+black, and it was all rough, scorched, and full of cracks. The third was
+of flaming porphyry, red as a man's blood when it leaps forth under
+the lancet.[19] The angel, whose feet were on the porphyry, sat on a
+threshold which appeared to be rock-diamond. Dante, ascending the steps,
+with the encouragement of Virgil, fell at the angel's feet, and, after
+thrice beating himself on the breast, humbly asked admittance. The
+angel, with the point of his sword, inscribed the first letter of the
+word _peccatum_ (sin) seven times on the petitioner's forehead; then,
+bidding him pray with tears for their erasement, and be cautious how he
+looked back, opened the portal with a silver and a golden key.[20]
+The hinges roared, as they turned, like thunder; and the pilgrims, on
+entering, thought they heard, mingling with the sound, a chorus of
+voices singing, "We praise thee, O God!"[21] It was like the chant that
+mingles with a cathedral organ, when the words that the choristers utter
+are at one moment to be distinguished, and at another fade away.
+
+The companions continued ascending till they reached a plain. It
+stretched as far as the eye could see, and was as lonely as roads across
+deserts.
+
+This was the first flat, or table-land, of the ascending gradations of
+Purgatory, and the place of trial for the souls of the Proud. It was
+bordered with a mound, or natural wall, of white marble, sculptured all
+over with stories of humility. Dante beheld among them the Annunciation,
+represented with so much life, that the sweet action of the angel seemed
+to be uttering the very word, "Hail!" and the submissive spirit of the
+Virgin to be no less impressed, like very wax, in her demeanour. The
+next story was that of David dancing and harping before the ark,--an
+action in which he seemed both less and greater than a king. Michal
+was looking out upon him from a window, like a lady full of scorn and
+sorrow. Next to the story of David was that of the Emperor Trajan, when
+he did a thing so glorious, as moved St. Gregory to gain the greatest of
+all his conquests--the delivering of the emperor's soul from hell.
+
+A widow, in tears and mourning, was laying hold of his bridle as he rode
+amidst his court with a noise of horses and horsemen, while the Roman
+eagles floated in gold over his head. The miserable creature spoke out
+loudly among them all, crying for vengeance on the murderers of her
+sons. The emperor seemed to say, "Wait till I return."
+
+But she, in the hastiness of her misery, said, "Suppose thou returnest
+not?"
+
+"Then my successor will attend to thee," replied the emperor.
+
+"And what hast thou to do with the duties of another man," cried she,
+"if thou attendest not to thine own?"
+
+"Now, be of good comfort," concluded Trajan, "for verily my duty shall
+be done before I go; justice wills it, and pity arrests me."
+
+Dante was proceeding to delight himself further with these sculptures,
+when Virgil whispered hint to look round and see what was coming. He did
+so, and beheld strange figures advancing, the nature of which he could
+not make out at first, for they seemed neither human, nor aught else
+which he could call to mind. They were souls of the proud, bent double
+under enormous burdens.
+
+"O proud, miserable, woe-begone Christians!" exclaims the poet; "ye who,
+in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the
+right path! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic
+butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede our flight?"[22]
+
+The souls came slowly on, each bending down in proportion to his burden.
+They looked like the crouching figures in architecture that are used
+to support roofs or balconies, and that excite piteous fancies in the
+beholders. The one that appeared to have the most patience, yet seemed
+as if he said, "I can endure no further."
+
+The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish, raised their voices in
+a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, which they concluded with humbly
+stating, that they repeated the clause against temptation, not for
+themselves, but for those who were yet living.
+
+Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance, requested them to spew the
+best way of going up to the next circle. Who it was that answered him
+could not be discerned, on account of their all being so bent down; but
+a voice gave them the required direction; the speaker adding, that he
+wished he could raise his eyes, so as to see the living creature that
+stood near him. He said that his name was Omberto--that he came of
+the great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco--and that his countrymen, the
+Siennese, murdered him on account of his arrogance.
+
+Dante had bent down his own head to listen, and in so doing he was
+recognised by one of the sufferers, who, eyeing him as well as he could,
+addressed him by name. The poet replied by exclaiming, "Art thou not
+Oderisi, the glory of Agubbio, the master of the art of illumination?"
+
+"Ah!" said Oderisi, "Franco of Bologna has all the glory now. His
+colours make the pages of books laugh with beauty, compared with what
+mine do.[23] I could not have owned it while on earth, for the sin which
+has brought me hither; but so it is; and so will it ever be, let a man's
+fame be never so green and flourishing, unless he can secure a dull age
+to come after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept the field against
+all comers, and now the cry is 'Giotto.' Thus, in song, a new Guido has
+deprived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is born who shall drive
+both out of the nest.[24] Fame is but a wind that changes about from all
+quarters. What does glory amount to at best, that a man should prefer
+living and growing old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and
+his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thousand years? A thousand
+years!--the twinkling of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before me;
+his name resounded once over all our Tuscany, and now it is scarcely
+whispered in his native place. He was lord there at the time that your
+once proud but now loathsome Florence had such a lesson given to its
+frenzy at the battle of Arbia."
+
+"And what is his name?" inquired Dante.
+
+"Salvani," returned the limner. "He is here, because he had the
+presumption to think that he could hold Sienna in the hollow of his
+hand. Fifty years has he paced in this manner. Such is the punishment
+for audacity."
+
+"But why is he here at all," said Dante, "and not in the outer region,
+among the delayers of repentance?"
+
+"Because," exclaimed the other, "in the height of his ascendancy he did
+not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in
+every vein, beg money from the people to ransom a friend from captivity.
+Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance? Thy
+countrymen shall too soon help thee to understand me."[25]
+
+Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the
+ground on which they were treading. It was pavement, wrought all over
+with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them,
+struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with
+the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his
+hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and
+Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children;
+and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider,
+at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence,
+flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmaeon, who made his mother pay
+with her life for the ornament she received to betray his father; and
+Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple; and the head of Cyrus,
+thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might
+swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his
+Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow
+places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the
+loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps,
+bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of
+your ways.[26]
+
+"Behold," said Virgil, "there is an angel coming."
+
+The angel came on, clad in white, with a face that sent trembling beams
+before it, like the morning star. He skewed the pilgrims the way up to
+the second circle; and then, beating his wings against the forehead of
+Dante, on which the seven initials of sin were written, told him he
+should go safely, and disappeared.
+
+On reaching the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wailings that
+used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, "Blessed
+are the poor in spirit."[27] As he went, he perceived that he walked
+lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of
+the letters on his forehead. He put his hand up to make sure, as a man
+does in the street when people take notice of something on his head of
+which he is not aware; and Virgil smiled.
+
+In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated. After the pilgrims had
+proceeded a mile, they heard the voices of invisible spirits passing
+them, uttering sentiments of love and charity; for it was charity itself
+that had to punish envy.
+
+The souls of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for support and
+humiliation, partly against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly on
+one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near
+places of worship. Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks in
+training, but not so as to hinder them from shedding tears, which they
+did in abundance; and they cried, "Mary, pray for us!--Michael, Peter,
+and all the saints, pray for us!"
+
+Dante spoke to them; and one, a female, lifted up her chin as a blind
+person does when expressing consciousness of notice, and said she was
+Sapia of Sienna, who used to be pleased at people's misfortunes, and had
+rejoiced when her countrymen lost the battle of Colle. "_Sapia_ was
+my name," she said, "but _sapient_ I was not[28], for I prayed God to
+defeat my countrymen; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do),
+I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy
+worst, for I fear thee not!' I was like the bird in the fable, who
+thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my
+latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know
+not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers.
+But who art thou that goest with open eyes, and breathest in thy talk?"
+
+"Mine eyes," answered Dante, "may yet have to endure the blindness in
+this place, though for no long period. Far more do I fear the sufferings
+in the one that I have just left. I seem to feel the weight already upon
+me."[29]
+
+The Florentine then informed Sapia how he came thither, which, she said,
+was a great sign that God loved him; and she begged his prayers. The
+conversation excited the curiosity of two spirits who overheard it; and
+one of them, Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the poet of
+what country he was. Dante, without mentioning the name of the river,
+intimated that he came from the banks of the Arno; upon which the other
+spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked his friend why the stranger suppressed
+the name, as though it was something horrible. Guido said he well might;
+for the river, throughout its course, beheld none but bad men and
+persecutors of virtue. First, he said, it made its petty way by the
+sties of those brutal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then arrived at
+the dignity of watering the kennels of the curs of Arezzo, who excelled
+more in barking than in biting; then, growing unluckier as it grew
+larger, like the cursed and miserable ditch that it was, it found in
+Florence the dogs become wolves; and finally, ere it went into the sea,
+it passed the den of those foxes, the Pisans, who were full of such
+cunning that they held traps in contempt.
+
+"It will be well," continued Guido, "for this man to remember what he
+hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to
+Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked
+happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli
+which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in
+the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is
+the good Lizio?--where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have
+all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin
+di Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Faenza! Wonder not,
+Tuscan, to see me weep, when I think of the noble spirits that we have
+lived with--of the Guidos of Prata, and the Ugolins of Azzo--of Federigo
+Tignoso and his band--of the Traversaros and Anastagios, families now
+ruined--and all the ladies and the cavaliers, the alternate employments
+and delights which wrapped us in a round of love and courtesy, where now
+there is nothing but ill-will! O castle of Brettinoro! why dost thou
+not fall? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo done, who will have no more
+children. Who would propagate a race of Counties from such blood as the
+Castrocaros and the Conios? Is not the son of Pagani called the Demon?
+and would it not be better that such a son were swept out of the family?
+Nay, let him live to chew to what a pitch of villany it has arrived.
+Ubaldini alone is blest, for his name is good, and he is too old to
+leave a child after him. Go, Tuscan--go; for I would be left to my
+tears."
+
+Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and had scarcely done so, when a
+tremendous voice met them, splitting the air like peals of thunder, and
+crying out, "Whoever finds me will slay me!" then dashed apart, like the
+thunder-bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had scarcely recovered
+its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quarter near
+them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. "I am
+Aglauros," it said, "that was turned into stone." Dante drew closer to
+his guide, and there ensued a dead silence.[30]
+
+The sun was now in the west, and the pilgrims were journeying towards
+it, when Dante suddenly felt such a weight of splendour on his eyes, as
+forced him to screen them with both his hands. It was an angel coming to
+show them the ascent to the next circle, a way that was less steep than
+the last. While mounting, they heard the angel's voice singing behind
+them, "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy!" and on
+his leaving them to proceed by themselves, the second letter on Dante's
+forehead was found to have been effaced by the splendour.
+
+The poet looked round in wonder on the new circle, where the sin
+of Anger was expiated, and beheld, as in a dream, three successive
+spectacles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The first was that of
+a crowded temple, on the threshold of which a female said to her son, in
+the sweet manner of a mother, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
+Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing:"[31]--and here she
+became silent, and the vision ended. The next was the lord of Athens,
+Pisistratus, calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to put to death
+her daughter's lover, who, in a transport, had embraced her in public.
+"If we are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, "with those that love
+us, what is to be done with such as hate?" The last spectacle was that
+of a furious multitude shouting and stoning to death a youth, who, as he
+fell to the ground, still kept his face towards heaven, making his eyes
+the gates through which his soul reached it, and imploring forgiveness
+for his murderers.[32]
+
+The visions passed away, leaving the poet staggering as if but half
+awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he
+followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly
+telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in
+unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
+world." They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of
+them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by
+degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as
+the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in
+singing; Haman, retaining his look of spite and rage on the cross; and
+Lavinia, mourning for her mother, who slew herself for rage at the death
+of Turnus.[33]
+
+These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken; and
+Dante heard a voice out of it saying, "The ascent is here." He then, as
+Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face,
+as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance
+of the words, "Blessed are the peace-makers;" and his forehead was
+lightened of the third letter.[34]
+
+In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for
+good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making
+amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love
+that was in them. "Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, "to salute
+Elizabeth." "And Caesar," cried another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida."[35]
+"And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, "died before
+they reached the promised land." "And the tired among the Trojans
+preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium."--It was now midnight, and
+Dante slept and had a dream.
+
+His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried
+ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
+towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked
+earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold.
+Her tongue was loosened; her feet made straight; she stood upright; her
+paleness became a lovely rose-colour; and she warbled so beautifully,
+that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it.
+
+"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made the mariners turn pale for
+pleasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song; and
+he that harbours with me once, rarely departs ever, so well I pay him
+for what he abandons."
+
+Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earliest
+countenance came up to shame her. "O Virgil!" she cried angrily, "who is
+this?" Virgil approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady; and the lady
+tore away the garments of the woman, and spewed her to be a creature so
+loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror.[36]
+
+Virgil said, "I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move,
+and find the place at which we are to go higher."
+
+It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante
+was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever
+heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them,
+who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against
+the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
+"Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for they shall be
+comforted."
+
+The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the expiators of
+Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could
+for the tears that choked them, "My soul hath cleaved to the dust."
+Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The
+poet fell on his knees; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. "I am no
+longer," said he, "spouse of the Church, here; but fellow-servant with
+thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my
+deliverance."
+
+The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the
+struggling tones of a woman in child-bed, "O blessed Virgin! That was a
+poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O
+good Fabricius! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with
+riches." And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a
+father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want
+of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for
+them all.
+
+Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was; and the spirit
+said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked
+elsewhere, but because of the shining grace that was in his questioner,
+though yet alive.
+
+"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil plant which overshadows all
+Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the
+Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the
+old race of kings was worn out.[37] We began by seizing the government
+in Paris; then plundered in Provence; then, to make amends, laid hold of
+Poitou, Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make amends, put Conradin
+to death and seized Naples; then, always to make amends, gave Saint
+Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a
+descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas
+_jousted with_[38] shall transfix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
+posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara.
+Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the
+person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to
+seize its money. O Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which
+even now thou huggest in delight to thy bosom![39]
+
+"Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, "we speak while it is
+light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the
+blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we
+denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each
+the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his
+wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems
+frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we
+accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
+hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] and Crassus, on whom we
+call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold.
+Thus we record our thoughts in the night-time, now high, now low, now at
+greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
+was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no
+respondent near me."
+
+The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their
+journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of
+Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of
+Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the
+twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that
+Virgil stood nigher to his companion, and bade him be of good heart.
+"Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
+gather the words only from those who were near him.
+
+It was Purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its
+bounds.[41]
+
+The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement
+onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted
+to Christianity in the reign of Domitian.[42] Mutual astonishment led to
+inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell
+at his master's feet.
+
+Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that
+vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
+
+An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead;
+and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the
+mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with
+reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a
+sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from
+a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin
+poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be
+chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
+visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine.' The women of oldest Rome
+drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst
+made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild
+honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel."
+
+The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the
+others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
+weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the
+psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips!" and the chanters were expiators
+of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to
+circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of
+the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid multitude,
+with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of
+their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped.[43] One of
+them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he
+heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate
+connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little
+forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
+expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers
+of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.
+Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife
+Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the
+contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the
+Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked
+savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
+
+"What is to be said of such creatures?" continued he. "O my dear cousin!
+I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from
+the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what
+infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in
+store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for
+howling."[44]
+
+Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished
+fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh
+and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.
+
+"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led
+together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks
+here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it
+is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now
+traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path."[45]
+
+After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among
+the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope
+Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels
+which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his
+teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on
+his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in
+the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante
+eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about
+a lady of the name of Gentucca.
+
+"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.
+
+"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta;
+"and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there
+shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning
+
+"Ladies, that understand the lore of love?"[46]
+
+"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding
+no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests."[47]
+
+"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see
+what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from
+hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking
+like one contented to have ascertained a truth.[48]
+
+The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift
+alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment
+to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end
+of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the
+heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites
+him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded
+after the others.
+
+The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude
+were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man
+who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a
+voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to
+stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve
+tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds,
+the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the
+Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their
+effeminate thirst."[49]
+
+The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of
+a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry
+hackney.
+
+"Of what value is thought," said the voice, "if it lose its way? The
+path lies hither."
+
+Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red as in
+a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him,
+nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fanning of its wings
+fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant
+as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and
+ascended with the two other poets into the seventh and last circle of
+the mountain.
+
+This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its
+precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind from outside of
+the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path; and in the
+midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They
+sang the hymn beginning "God of consummate mercy!"[50] Dante was
+compelled to divide his attention between his own footsteps and theirs,
+in order to move without destruction. At the close of the hymn they
+cried aloud, "I know not a man!"[51] and then recommenced it; after
+which they again cried aloud, saying, "Diana ran to the wood, and drove
+Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus!" And then
+again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste
+women and husbands; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as
+their time of trial lasted.
+
+Occasionally the multitude that went in one direction met another
+which mingled with and passed through it, individuals of both greeting
+tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in passing they touch
+the antennae of one another. These two multitudes parted with loud and
+sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty;
+and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.
+
+The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature
+by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he
+learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry, Guido
+Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence,
+till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in
+the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The
+greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provencal poet, who, after begging
+the prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like manner.
+
+The sun by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, when an
+angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the
+edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, "Blessed are
+the pure in heart!" invited the three poets to plunge into the flames
+themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of
+the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them
+aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed
+made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion
+encouraged him to obey the angel; but he could not stir. Virgil said,
+"Now mark me, son; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee
+and Beatrice;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante
+followed them.
+
+"I could have cast myself," said he, "into molten glass to cool myself,
+so raging was the furnace." Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He
+said, "Methinks I see her eyes beholding us." There was, indeed, a great
+light upon the quarter to which they were crossing; and out of the light
+issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, "Come, blessed of my
+Father! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the
+ascent is to be gained."
+
+The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire; and the voice
+and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in
+the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock;
+and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying
+down for the night near two shepherds.
+
+Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a
+dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a lea,
+and bending every now and then to gather flowers; and as she bound the
+flowers into a garland, she sang, "I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn
+myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my
+sister Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless; contented with
+her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is
+mine."[52]
+
+When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now
+produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he
+awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already
+up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon
+it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial
+Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees
+and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance
+terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to
+be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the
+tried and purified lord over himself.
+
+The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions
+awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and
+lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the
+brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet
+unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the
+full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's
+radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with
+a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi,
+when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes
+rolling through the forest from bough to bough.[53]
+
+Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he
+entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with
+whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet
+it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun
+or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless
+diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration,
+looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took
+away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side
+of the water, singing and culling flowers.
+
+"Ah, lady!" said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy
+looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee
+nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou
+remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of
+what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she
+herself lost the spring-time on earth."
+
+As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with
+lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before
+the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and
+vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing
+so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she
+stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the
+flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display
+of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus
+herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt
+it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's
+Hellespont.
+
+The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet
+was the Lethe of Paradise;--Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe
+higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil
+deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It
+was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets
+had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence
+imagined their golden age;--and at these words she looked at Virgil and
+Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her
+kindly words.
+
+Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the
+contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on
+his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen!" and a
+light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed
+by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of
+expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs
+like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical
+and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car
+brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs,
+and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of
+which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.
+
+The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who
+it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for
+encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice
+herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and
+the tears ran down his cheeks.
+
+"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil
+leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming,
+at which it will behove thee to weep." Then assuming a sterner attitude,
+and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech
+for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest,
+Beatrice indeed;--Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to
+seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that
+here only can man be happy?"
+
+Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the
+water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.
+
+Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour
+of bitterness was mingled with her pity.
+
+She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, "In thee, O
+Lord, have I put my trust;" but went no farther in the psalm than the
+words, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room." The tears of Dante had
+hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled
+down his cheeks.
+
+Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, "This man, when he
+proposed to himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so
+gifted, that every good habit ought to have thrived with him; but the
+richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent
+light of my countenance drew him the right way; but when I quitted
+mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave
+himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased
+in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned
+into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their
+promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his
+behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little
+was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained
+but to shew him the state of the condemned; and therefore I went to
+their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that
+brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe
+could be passed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of
+remorse.[55]
+
+"O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, "who standest on
+the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth?"
+
+Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they passed
+his lips.
+
+"What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, "when I had given thee
+aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could end in nothing?"
+
+Dante said, "Thy face was taken from me, and the presence of false
+pleasure led me astray."
+
+"Never didst thou behold," cried the maiden, "loveliness like mine; and
+if bliss failed thee because of my death, how couldst thou be allured by
+mortal inferiority? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain
+all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before
+thee. How could thy spirit endure to stoop to further chances, or to a
+childish girl, or any other fleeting vanity? The bird that is newly out
+of the nest may be twice or thrice tempted by the snare; but in vain,
+surely, is the net spread in sight of one that is older."[56]
+
+Dante stood as silent and abashed as a sorry child.
+
+"If but to hear me," said Beatrice, "thus afflicts thee, lift up thy
+beard, and see what sight can do."
+
+Dante, though feeling the sting intended by the word "beard," did as he
+was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of flowers
+about the maiden; and be beheld her, though still beneath her veil, as
+far surpassing her former self in loveliness, as that self had surpassed
+others. The sight pierced him with such pangs, that the more he had
+loved any thing else, the more he now loathed it; and he fell senseless
+to the ground.
+
+When he recovered his senses, he found himself in the hands of the lady
+he had first seen in the place, who bidding him keep firm hold of her,
+drew him into the river Lethe, and so through and across it to the other
+side, speeding as she went like a weaver's shuttle, and immersing him
+when she arrived, the angels all the while singing, "Wash me, and I
+shall be whiter than snow."[57] She then delivered him into the hands of
+the nymphs that had danced about the car,--nymphs on earth, but stars
+and cardinal virtues in heaven; a song burst from the lips of the
+angels; and Faith, Hope, and Charity, calling upon Beatrice to unveil
+her face, she did so; and Dante quenched the ten-years thirst of his
+eyes in her ineffable beauty.[58]
+
+After a while he and Statius were made thoroughly regenerate with the
+waters of Eunoe; and he felt pure with a new being, and fit to soar into
+the stars.
+
+
+[Footnote 1:
+
+  "Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro
+  Che s'accoglieva nel serenoaspetto
+  De l'aer puro infino al primo giro,
+  A gli occhi miei ricomincio diletto,
+  Tosto ch'io usci' fuor de l'aura morta
+  Che m'avea contristati gli occhi e 'l petto.
+
+  Lo bel pianeta, ch'ad amar conforta,
+  Faceva tutto rider l'oriente,
+  Velando i Pesci, ch'erano in sua scorta.
+
+  Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente
+  All'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
+  Non viste mai, fuor ch'a la prima gente;
+
+  Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiammelle.
+  O settentrional vedovo sito,
+  Poi che privato sei di mirar quelle!"
+
+  The sweetest oriental sapphire blue,
+  Which the whole air in its pure bosom had,
+  Greeted mine eyes, far as the heavens withdrew;
+
+  So that again they felt assured and glad,
+  Soon as they issued forth from the dead air,
+  Where every sight and thought had made them sad.
+
+  The beauteous star, which lets no love despair,
+  Made all the orient laugh with loveliness,
+  Veiling the Fish that glimmered in its hair.
+
+  I turned me to the right to gaze and bless,
+  And saw four more, never of living wight
+  Beheld, since Adam brought us our distress;
+
+  Heaven seemed rejoicing in their happy light.
+  O widowed northern pole, bereaved indeed,
+  Since thou hast had no power to see that sight!
+
+Readers who may have gone thus far with the "Italian Pilgrim's
+Progress," will allow me to congratulate them on arriving at this lovely
+scene, one of the most admired in the poem.
+
+This is one of the passages which make the religious admirers of Dante
+inclined to pronounce him divinely inspired; for how could he otherwise
+have seen stars, they ask us, which were not discovered till after
+his time, and which compose the constellation of the Cross? But other
+commentators are of opinion, that the Cross, though not so named till
+subsequently (and Dante, we see, gives no prophetic hint about the
+name), _had_ been seen, probably by stray navigators. An Arabian globe
+is even mentioned by M. Artaud (see Cary), in which the Southern Cross
+is set down. Mr. Cary, in his note on the passage, refers to Seneca's
+prediction of the discovery of America; most likely suggested by similar
+information. "But whatever," he adds, "may be thought of this, it is
+certain that the four stars are here symbolical of the four cardinal
+virtues;" and he refers to canto xxxi, where those virtues are
+retrospectively associated with these stars. The symbol, however, is
+not, necessary. Dante was a very curious inquirer on all subjects, and
+evidently acquainted with ships and seamen as well as geography; and his
+imagination would eagerly have seized a magnificent novelty like this,
+and used it the first opportunity. Columbus's discovery, as the reader
+will see, was anticipated by Pulci.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Generous and disinterested!--Cato, the republican enemy of
+Caesar, and committer of suicide, is not luckily chosen for his present
+office by the poet who has put Brutus into the devil's mouth in spite of
+his agreeing with Cato, and the suicide Piero delle Vigne into hell in
+spite of his virtues. But Dante thought Cato's austere manners like his
+own.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The girding with the rush (_giunco schietto_) is_ supposed
+by the commentators to be an injunction of simplicity and patience.
+Perhaps it is to enjoin sincerity; especially as the region of expiation
+has now been entered, and sincerity is the first step to repentance.
+It will be recollected that Dante's former girdle, the cord of the
+Franciscan friars, has been left in the hands of Fraud.]
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+  "L'alba vinceva l'ora mattutina
+  Che fuggia 'nnanzi, si che di lontano
+  Conobbi il tremolar de la marina."
+
+  The lingering shadows now began to flee
+  Before the whitening dawn, so that mine eyes
+  Discerned far off the trembling of the sea.
+
+  "Conobbi il tremolar de la marina"
+is a beautiful verse, both for the picture and the sound.]
+
+[Footnote 5: This evidence of humility and gratitude on the part of
+Dante would be very affecting, if we could forget all the pride and
+passion he has been shewing elsewhere, and the torments in which he has
+left his fellow-creatures. With these recollections upon us, it looks
+like an overweening piece of self-congratulation at other people's
+expense.]
+
+[Footnote 6:
+
+  "Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona
+  De la mia donna disiosamente,"
+
+is the beginning of the ode sung by Dante's friend. The incident is
+beautifully introduced; and Casella's being made to select a production
+from the pen of the man who asks him to sing, very delicately implies a
+graceful cordiality in the musician's character.
+
+Milton alludes to the passage in his sonnet to Henry Lawes:
+
+  "Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
+  To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,
+  That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story.
+  Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
+  Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
+  Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."  ]
+
+[Footnote 7: Manfredi was the natural son of the Emperor Frederick the
+Second. "He was lively and agreeable in his manners," observes Mr. Cary,
+"and delighted in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious
+and ambitious, void of religion, and in his philosophy an epicurean."
+_Translation of Dante_, Smith's edition, p. 77. Thus King Manfredi ought
+to have been in a red-hot tomb, roasting for ever with Epicurus himself,
+and with the father of the poet's beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante: but
+he was the son of an emperor, and a foe to the house of Anjou; so Dante
+gives him a passport to heaven. There is no ground whatever for the
+repentance assumed in the text.]
+
+[Footnote 8: The unexpected bit of comedy here ensuing is very
+remarkable and pleasant. Belacqua, according to an old commentator, was
+a musician.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Buonconte was the son of that Guido da Montefeltro, whose
+soul we have seen carried off from St. Francis by a devil, for having
+violated the conditions of penitence. It is curious that both father and
+son should have been contested for in this manner.]
+
+[Footnote 10: This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all brief
+stories.
+
+  "Deh quando to sarai tornato al mondo,
+  E riposato de la lunga via,
+  Seguito 'l terzo spirito al secondo,
+
+  Ricorditi di me che son la Pia:
+  Siena mi fe; disfecemi Maremma;
+  Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria
+
+  Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma."
+
+  Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth
+  (Said then a female soul), remember me,--
+  Pia. Sienna was my place of birth,
+
+  The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he,
+  Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring.
+
+"Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work entitled _De l'Amour,_
+"obtained in marriage the hand of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the
+Ptolomei, the richest and most noble family of Sienna. Her beauty, which
+was the admiration of all Tuscany, gave rise to a jealousy in the
+breast of her husband, that, envenomed by wrong reports and suspicions
+continually reviving, led to a frightful catastrophe. It is not easy to
+determine at this day if his wife was altogether innocent; but Dante
+has represented her as such. Her husband carried her with him into
+the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as now, for the pestiferous
+effects of the air. Never would he tell his wife the reason of her
+banishment into so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to
+pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a
+deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins on the seashore;
+he never broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of
+his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved
+by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of
+this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most
+beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a few
+months she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that
+Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in
+some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even
+to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest
+of his days in a silence which was never broken." Hazlitt's _Journey
+through France and Italy_, p. 315.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Sordello was a famous Provencal poet; with whose writings
+the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of
+M. Raynouard, in his _Choix des Poesies des Troubadours_, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 12: "Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca." An exquisite
+image of newness and brilliancy.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "Salve, Regina:" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant
+to the Virgin.]
+
+[Footnote 14: "With nose deprest," says Mr. Cary. But Dante says,
+literally, "small nose,"--_nasetto_. So, further on, he says, "masculine
+nose,"--_maschio naso_. He meant to imply the greater or less
+determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed
+to indicate.]
+
+[Footnote 15: An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign
+for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect. But Henry was a
+devout servant of the Church.]
+
+[Footnote 16:
+
+  "Era gia l'ora che volge 'l desio
+  A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore
+  Lo di ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;
+
+  E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore
+  Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
+  Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore."
+
+A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to
+be the voice of Evening herself.
+
+  'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
+  Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
+  The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
+  And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
+  Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
+  That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
+
+Every body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from
+Dante's--
+
+  "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
+
+Nothing can equal, however, the _tone_ in the Italian original,--the
+
+  "Paia 'l giorno pianger the si muore."
+
+Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his
+personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have
+left us a work truly to be called Divine?]
+
+[Footnote 17:
+
+"Te lucis ante terminum;"--a hymn sung at evening service.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Lucy, _Lucia_ (supposed to be derived from _lux, lucis_),
+is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic
+countries may be said to preside over _light_, and who is really invoked
+in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for
+that reason among others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
+they had been cured. In her spiritual character she represents the light
+of grace.]
+
+[Footnote 19: The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the second,
+horror of it; the third, zeal to amend.]
+
+[Footnote 20: The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the
+commentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the learning and
+judgment requisite to use it.]
+
+[Footnote 21: "Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and
+St. Augustine.]
+
+[Footnote 22:
+
+  "Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
+  Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
+  Che vola a giustizia senza schermi?"
+
+  "Know you not, we are worms
+  Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
+  That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms?"
+
+[Footnote 23:
+
+  "Piu ridon le carte
+  Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
+  L'onore e tutto or suo, e mio in parte."
+
+[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
+the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
+and the poet, who is to "chase them from the nest," _caccera di nido_
+(as the not very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
+supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the statement becoming? It
+was certainly not necessary. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship
+with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti,
+probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition; far they
+could be proud themselves; and the son has the reputation of scepticism,
+as well as the father. See the _Decameron, Giorn_. vi. _Nov. 9_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
+Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein," from the awful
+necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with some other commentators, thinks
+that the "trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not
+rather mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case it certainly
+does; for it was in consideration of the pang to his pride, that the
+good deed rescued him from worse punishment.]
+
+[Footnote 26: The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of
+Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of
+such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose
+it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call
+to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on
+Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous,
+of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
+the reconcilement with absurdity.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;
+for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of
+the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and
+admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
+renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for
+them, and his impatience to see them triumph." So said the Inquisition.
+The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
+result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed,
+or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions.]
+
+[Footnote 28:
+
+  "_Savia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapia_
+  Fosse chiamata."
+The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian
+name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is
+the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented
+on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in
+English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name." It
+is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the
+punsters.--It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at
+the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some
+zeal of faction]
+
+[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a
+little envy, but far more pride:
+
+  "Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
+  Ma picciol tempo; che poch' e l'offesa
+  Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
+  Troppa e piu la paura ond' e sospesa
+  L'anima mia del tormento di sotto
+  Che gia lo 'ncarco di la giu mi pesa."
+
+The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second,
+affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have
+allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to
+women.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned
+to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her
+sister Herse.
+
+The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful
+and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and
+violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to
+suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his
+thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for
+his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.
+
+Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros
+is thunder-claps crashing into one another--broken thunder. This is
+exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful
+music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness. If it were
+not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two
+silences; for I doubt whether they are not better even than one. At all
+events, the final silence is tremendous.]
+
+[Footnote 30: St. Luke ii. 48.]
+
+[Footnote 31: The stoning of Stephen.]
+
+[Footnote 32: These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
+inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not
+always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird
+as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
+Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as
+he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake,
+Philomela, in the _Metamorphoses_.]
+
+[Footnote 33: So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards; and
+I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite
+intimations at each successive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly
+having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the
+outset. The whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
+wanted his final revision.]
+
+[Footnote 34: What an instance to put among those of haste to do good!
+But the fame and accomplishments of Caesar, and his being at the head of
+our Ghibelline's beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted
+impartiality.]
+
+[Footnote 35: A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of
+it in the original has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the
+last recesses of feeling, and disgusts us with the denouncer.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in
+the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association
+of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that
+Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his
+dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
+interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a
+metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when
+we find the man called, not _the_ butcher, or _that_ butcher, or butcher
+in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
+Paris" (_un beccaio di Parigi_), and when this designation is followed
+up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the
+ordinary construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems
+to have had no ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless
+considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed, condescended to
+feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it,
+in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt
+contradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeatedly said, that
+the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth
+excepted) are a heap of contradictions.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in which there
+is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an
+impression to the same effect.]
+
+[Footnote 38:
+
+  "O Signor mio, quando saro io lieto
+  A veder la vendetta the nascosa
+  Fa dolce l'ira tua nel tuo segreto!"
+
+The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian,
+viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being
+"too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
+as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth
+century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine! God hugs
+revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a
+poor grinning Florentine!]
+
+[Footnote 39: A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The allusion
+is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her
+husband, the priest Sichaeus, for his riches. The term "parricide" is
+here applied in its secondary sense of--the murderer of any one to whom
+we owe reverence.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
+supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael.]
+
+[Footnote 41: A grand and beautiful fiction.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation
+for this fancy, except in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in
+another passage, not necessary to give, confounds the poet Statius who
+was from Naples, with a rhetorician of the same name from Thoulouse.]
+
+[Footnote 43:
+
+  "Paren l'occhiaje anella senza gemme."
+
+This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one
+of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the
+physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (_homo_, man), written in the face
+of the human being, might easily have seen the letter _m_ in theirs."
+
+  "Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge _o m o_,
+  Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_."
+
+The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples
+form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman
+domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin!]
+
+[Footnote 44:
+
+  "Se le svergognate fosser certe
+  Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
+  Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte."
+
+This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John
+Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted
+to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness,
+and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays.
+But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the
+worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer
+him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take
+good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
+
+Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those
+self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins
+they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." He was
+a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The
+defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
+testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having
+availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such
+candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The
+words in the original are
+
+  "Se ti riduci a mente
+  Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
+  Ancor fia grave il memorar presente."
+
+Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast
+with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee
+still."
+
+His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
+the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
+construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
+first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
+intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of AEneas's
+descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
+as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
+very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
+spotless.]
+
+[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
+the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
+any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
+present volume.) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
+gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
+person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
+record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
+record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
+Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
+some rumour.]
+
+[Footnote 47: A celebrated and charming passage:
+
+  "Io mi son un, che quando
+  Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo
+  Che detta dentro, vo significando."
+
+  I am one that notes
+  When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell
+  In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.
+
+[Footnote 48: Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment
+to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the
+Notary, and Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of
+the day. The latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his
+translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last
+day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under
+_crudel martire_), _because_ an inscription will then be seen on his
+forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love! An odd way for a
+poet to shew his feelings, and a friar his religion!]
+
+[Footnote 49: Judges vii. 6.]
+
+[Footnote 50: _Summae Deus clementiae_. The ancient beginning of a hymn in
+the Roman Catholic church; now altered, say the commentators, to "Summae
+parens clementiae."]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Virum non cognosco_. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How
+shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"--_Luke_ i. 34.
+
+The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of
+Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by
+spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.
+A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question
+suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of
+letters.]
+
+[Footnote 52: An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;--not, I
+think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart
+from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is
+rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express
+love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be
+taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity.]
+
+[Footnote 53:
+
+  "Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
+  Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
+  Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie."
+
+  Even as from branch to branch
+  Along the piny forests on the shore
+  Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
+  When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
+  The dripping south."--_Cary_.
+
+"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's
+sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to
+the Decameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec., G. 5, N.
+8, and Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in
+it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta."--_Translation of
+Dante_, ut sup. p. 121.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Lethe, _Forgetfulness_; Eunoe, _Well-mindedness_.]
+
+[Footnote 55:
+
+  "Senza alcuno scotto
+  Di pentimento."
+
+Literally, _scot-free_.--"Scotto," scot;--"payment for dinner or supper
+in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor
+of the _Parnaso Italiano_, and a very summary gentleman); "here used
+figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and
+grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that
+collection, vol. ii. p. 297.]
+
+[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (_pargoletta_) or any
+other fleeting vanity,
+
+  "O altra vanita con si breve use,"
+
+is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he
+liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they
+might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?
+
+Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as
+a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the
+sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape;
+and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells
+us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of
+Signor Rubbi, is no better than _snubbing_;--to say nothing of the
+vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.
+
+I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an
+exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out
+of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and
+his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in
+charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so
+many things, hates nothing. Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
+high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
+our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them.]
+
+[Footnote 57:
+
+"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
+clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."--Psalm li. 7.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years.]
+
+
+III.
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. Argument.
+
+The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of
+astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets
+according to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
+Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond these, or that of the
+Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the
+moveless Earth; and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which
+is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by
+its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue; and Dante visits each
+under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes,
+on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally
+admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the
+Great First Cause.
+
+
+THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
+
+It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in
+Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed
+his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself in Heaven.
+
+He had been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by
+his side.
+
+The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empyrean, and heard
+the music of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven,
+the circle of the orb of the moon.
+
+This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed,
+outside, as solid, though as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as
+sunbeams are admitted into water without dividing the substance. It now
+appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of
+which they saw but dimly; and they beheld many faces eagerly looking at
+them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding
+whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn.[1]
+Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom
+they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right; and he entered
+into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost
+him. It was Piccarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he
+had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason
+of her wonderful increase in beauty. She and her associates were such
+as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity and Religion, but had been
+Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in
+Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso.[2] On
+
+Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of bliss, she and
+her sister-spirits gently smiled; and then answered, with faces as happy
+as first love,[3] that they willed only what it pleased God to give
+them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer,
+that every place in Heaven was Paradise, though the bliss might be of
+different degrees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side,
+lustrous with all the glory of the region, Costanza, daughter of the
+king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the
+wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began
+singing _Ave Maria_; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as
+substances disappear in water.[4]
+
+A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next
+circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet Mercury, the
+residence of those who had acted rather out of Desire of Fame than Love
+of God. The spirits here, as in the former Heaven, crowded towards them,
+as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their
+eyes sparkled with celestial joy; and the more they thought of their
+joy, the brighter they grew; till one of them who addressed the poet
+became indistinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of
+the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman
+empire up to his time; and then gave an account of one of his associates
+in bliss, Romeo, who had been minister to Raymond Beranger, Count of
+Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every
+one became a queen; and all this had been brought about by Romeo, a poor
+stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romeo, incited
+Raymond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had
+brought his master's treasury twelve-fold for every ten it disbursed.
+Romeo quitted the court, poor and old; "and if the world," said
+Justinian, "could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his
+bread as he went, crust by crust--praise him as it does, it would praise
+him a great deal more."[5]
+
+  "Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth,
+  Superillumining with light of light
+  The happy fires of these thy Malahoth!"[6]
+
+Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian; and then, turning
+as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire.
+
+Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven,
+or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous.[7] He only knew it by the
+increased loveliness in the face of his companion.
+
+The spirits in this orb, who came and went in the light of it like
+sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun
+round in circles of delight, each with more or less swiftness, according
+to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out
+of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his
+patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why
+diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of
+the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth;
+and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and
+Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy
+Land, and whose place was next Folco.[8] Cunizza said that she did not
+at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar
+might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel
+who was close to her, Folco--contrasted his zeal with the inertness of
+her contemptible countrymen--and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the
+latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed
+in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is
+expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the
+lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or
+Hercules; but added, that he had no recollection of them, except a
+joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven),
+but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Folco concluded with
+explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing
+the indifference of popes and cardinals (those adulterers of the Church)
+to every thing but accursed money-getting.[9]
+
+In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth
+Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of
+them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon,
+singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be
+exported, was not conveyable by expression to mortal fancy. The spirits
+composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus,
+Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius
+the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede,
+Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the
+namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak; but
+when he had done speaking, they began resuming it, one by one, and
+circling as they moved, like the wheels of church-clocks that sound one
+after another with a sweet tinkling, when they summon the hearts of the
+devout to morning prayer.[10]
+
+Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of
+the order of St. Dominic; but with generous grace he held up the founder
+of the Franciscans, with his vow of poverty, as the example of what a
+pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On
+the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their
+appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling
+round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new
+circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle,
+and Saint Buonaventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.
+Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity, the holy wrestler,--benign
+to his friends and cruel to his enemies;[11]--and so confined his
+reproofs to his own Franciscan order. He then, as St. Thomas had done
+with the doctors in the inner circle, named those who constituted the
+outer: to wit, Illuminato, and Agostino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and
+Petrus Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty-first, Nathan the Prophet,
+Chrysostom, Anselmo of Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach grammar,
+Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of Calabria. The two circles then varied
+their movement by wheeling round one another in counter directions; and
+after they had chanted, not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of Three Persons
+in One, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's thoughts by intuition, again
+addressed him, discoursing of mysteries human and divine, exhorting
+him to be slow in giving assent or denial to propositions without
+examination, and bidding him warn people in general how they presumed
+to anticipate the divine judgment as to who should be saved and who
+not.[12] The spirit of Solomon then related how souls could resume their
+bodies glorified; and the two circles uttering a rapturous amen, glowed
+with such intolerable brightness, that the eyes of Beatrice only were
+able to sustain it. Dante gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and
+suddenly found himself in the fifth Heaven.
+
+It was the planet Mars, the receptacle of those who had Died Fighting
+for the Cross. In the middle of its ruddy light stood a cross itself, of
+enormous dimensions, made of light still greater, and exhibiting, first,
+in the body of it, the Crucified Presence, glittering all over with
+indescribable flashes like lightning; and secondly, in addition to and
+across the Presence, innumerable sparkles of the intensest mixture
+of white and red, darting to and fro through the whole extent of the
+crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a
+sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols,
+before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from
+the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which
+entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words,
+"Arise and conquer," as one who hears and yet hears not.
+
+On a sudden, with a glide like a falling star, there ran down from the
+right horn of the Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this
+cluster of splendours, distinguishing itself, as it went, like flame in
+alabaster.
+
+"O flesh of my flesh!" it exclaimed to Dante; "O superabounding Divine
+Grace! when was the door of Paradise ever twice opened, as it Shall have
+been to thee?"[13] Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice, and saw
+such a rapture of delight in her eyes, that he seemed, at that instant,
+as if his own had touched the depth of his acceptance and of his
+heaven.[14]
+
+The light resumed its speech, but in words too profound in their meaning
+for Dante to comprehend. They seemed to be returning thanks to God. This
+rapturous absorption being ended, the speaker expressed in more human
+terms his gratitude to Beatrice; and then, after inciting Dante to ask
+his name, declared himself thus:
+
+"O branch of mine, whom I have long desired to behold, I am the root of
+thy stock; of him thy great-grandsire, who first brought from his mother
+the family-name into thy house, and whom thou sawest expiating his sin
+of pride on the first circle of the mountain. Well it befitteth thee to
+shorten his long suffering with thy good works. Florence,[15] while yet
+she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the
+bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste
+and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy
+sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were
+not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries
+too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to
+separate; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared
+to practise. The heights of Rome had not been surpassed by your tower of
+Uccellatoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its aspiring. I saw
+Bellincion Berti walking the streets in a leathern girdle fastened with
+bone; and his wife come from her looking-glass without a painted face.
+I saw the Nerlis and the Vecchios contented with the simplest doublets,
+and their good dames hard at work at their spindles. O happy they! They
+were sure of burial in their native earth, and none were left desolate
+by husbands that loved France better than Italy. One kept awake to tend
+her child in its cradle, lulling it with the household words that had
+fondled her own infancy. Another, as she sat in the midst of her family,
+drawing the flax from the distaff, told them stories of Troy, and
+Fiesole, and Rome. It would have been as great a wonder, then, to see
+such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man as Lapo Salterello, as it
+would now be to meet with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia.[16]
+
+"It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful time," continued the poet's
+ancestor, "when we all lived in such good faith and fellowship, and in
+so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin vouchsafed the first sight
+of me to the cries of my mother; and there, in your old Baptistery, I
+became, at once, Christian and Cacciaguida. My brothers were called
+Moronto and Eliseo. It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdipado,
+thy family name of Alighieri. I then followed the Emperor Conrad, and
+he made me a knight for my good service, and I went with him to fight
+against the wicked Saracen law, whose people usurp the fold that remains
+lost through the fault of the shepherd. There, by that foul crew, was I
+delivered from the snares and pollutions of the world; and so, from the
+martyrdom, came to this peace."
+
+Cacciaguida was silent. But his descendant praying to be told more of
+his family and of the old state of Florence, the beatified soldier
+resumed. He would not, however, speak of his own predecessors. He said
+it would be more becoming to say nothing as to who they were, or the
+place they came from. All he disclosed was, that his father and
+mother lived near the gate San Piero.[17] With regard to Florence, he
+continued, the number of the inhabitants fit to carry arms was at that
+time not a fifth of its present amount; but then the blood of the
+whole city was pure. It had not been mixed up with that of Campi, and
+Certaldo, and Figghine. It ran clear in the veins of the humblest
+mechanic.
+
+"Oh, how much better would it have been," cried the soul of the old
+Florentine, "had my countrymen still kept it as it was, and not brought
+upon themselves the stench of the peasant knave out of Aguglione, and
+that other from Signa, with his eye to a bribe! Had Rome done its duty
+to the emperor, and so prevented the factions that have ruined us,
+Simifonte would have kept its beggarly upstart to itself; the Conti
+would have stuck to their parish of Acone, and perhaps the Buondelmonti
+to Valdigrieve. Crude mixtures do as much harm to the body politic as to
+the natural body; and size is not strength. The blind bull falls with a
+speedier plunge than the blind lamb. One sword often slashes round about
+it better than five. Cities themselves perish. See what has become of
+Luni and of Urbisaglia; and what will soon become of Sinigaglia too, and
+of Chiusi! And if cities perish, what is to be expected of families? In
+my time the Ughi, the Catellini, the Filippi, were great names. So were
+the Alberichi, the Ormanni, and twenty others. The golden sword of
+knighthood was then to be seen in the house of Galigaio. The Column,
+Verrey, was then a great thing in the herald's eye. The Galli, the
+Sacchetti, were great; so was the old trunk of the Calfucci; so was that
+of the peculators who now blush to hear of a measure of wheat; and the
+Sizii and the Arrigucci were drawn in pomp to their civic chairs. Oh,
+how mighty I saw them then, and how low has their pride brought them!
+_Florence_ in those days deserved her name. She _flourished_ indeed; and
+the balls of gold were ever at the top of the flower.[18] And now the
+descendants of these men sit in priestly stalls and grow fat. The
+over-weening Adimari, who are such dragons when their foes run, and such
+lambs when they turn, were then of note so little, that Albertino Donato
+was angry with Bellincion, his father-in-law, for making him brother
+to one of their females. On the other hand, thy foes, the Amidei, the
+origin of all thy tears through the just anger which has slain the
+happiness of thy life, were honoured in those days; and the honour was
+par taken by their friends. O Buondelmonte! why didst thou break thy
+troth to thy first love, and become wedded to another? Many who are now
+miserable would have been happy, had God given thee to the river Ema,
+when it rose against thy first coming to Florence. But the Arno had
+swept our Palladium from its bridge, and Florence was to be the victim
+on its altar."[19]
+
+Cacciaguida was again silent; but his descendant begged him to speak
+yet a little more. He had heard, as he came through the nether regions,
+alarming intimations of the ill fortune that awaited him, and he was
+anxious to know, from so high and certain an authority, what it would
+really be.
+
+Cacciaguida said, "As Hippolytus was forced to depart from Athens by the
+wiles of his cruel step-dame, so must even thou depart out of Florence.
+Such is the wish, such this very moment the plot, and soon will it be
+the deed, of those, the business of whose lives is to make a traffic of
+Christ with Rome. Thou shalt quit every thing that is dearest to thee
+in the world. That is the first arrow shot from the bow of exile. Thou
+shalt experience how salt is the taste of bread eaten at the expense of
+others; how hard is the going up and down others' stairs. But what shall
+most bow thee down, is the worthless and disgusting company with whom
+thy lot must be partaken; for they shall all turn against thee, the
+whole mad, heartless, and ungrateful set. Nevertheless, it shall not be
+long first, before themselves, and not thou, shall have cause to hang
+down their heads for shame. The brutishness of all they do, will shew
+how well it became thee to be of no party, but the party of thyself.[20]
+
+"Thy first refuge thou shalt owe to the courtesy of the great Lombard,
+who bears the Ladder charged with the Holy Bird.[21] So benignly
+shall he regard thee, that in the matter of asking and receiving, the
+customary order of things shall be reversed between you two, and the
+gift anticipate the request. With him thou shalt behold the mortal, born
+under so strong an influence of this our star, that the nations shall
+take note of him. They are not aware of him yet, by reason
+of his tender age; but ere the Gascon practise on the great
+Henry, sparkles of his worth shall break forth in his contempt
+of money and of ease; and when his munificence appears in all
+its lustre, his very enemies shall not be able to hold their
+tongues for admiration.[22] Look thou to this second benefactor
+also; for many a change of the lots of people shall he make, both rich
+and poor; and do thou bear in mind, but repeat not, what further I shall
+now tell thee of thy life." Here the spirit, says the poet,
+foretold things which afterwards appeared incredible to their very
+beholders;--and then added: "Such, my son, is the heart and mystery of
+the things thou hast desired to learn. The snares will shortly gather
+about thee; but wish not to change places with the contrivers; for thy
+days will outlast those of their retribution."
+
+Again was the spirit silent; and yet again once more did his descendant
+question him, anxious to have the advice of one that saw so far, and
+that spoke the truth so purely, and loved him so well.
+
+"Too plainly, my father," said Dante, "do I see the time coming, when a
+blow is to be struck me, heaviest ever to the man that is not true to
+himself. For which reason it is fit that I so far arm myself beforehand,
+that in losing the spot dearest to me on earth, I do not let my verses
+deprive me of every other refuge. Now I have been down below through the
+region whose grief is without end; and I have scaled the mountain from
+the top of which I was lifted by my lady's eyes; and I have come thus
+far through heaven, from luminary to luminary; and in the course of this
+my pilgrimage I have heard things which, if I tell again, may bitterly
+disrelish with many. Yet, on the other hand, if I prove but a timid
+friend to truth, I fear I shall not survive with the generations by whom
+the present times will be called times of old."
+
+The light that enclosed the treasure which its descendant had found in
+heaven, first flashed at this speech like a golden mirror against the
+sun, and then it replied thus:
+
+"Let the consciences blush at thy words that have reason to blush. Do
+thou, far from shadow of misrepresentation, make manifest all which thou
+hast seen, and let the sore places be galled that deserve it. Thy bitter
+truths shall carry with them vital nourishment--thy voice, as the wind
+does, shall smite loudest the loftiest summits; and no little shall that
+redound to thy praise. It is for this reason that, in all thy journey,
+thou hast been shewn none but spirits of note, since little heed would
+have been taken of such as excite doubt by their obscurity."
+
+The spirit of Cacciaguida now relapsed into the silent joy of its
+reflections, and the poet was standing absorbed in the mingled feelings
+of his own, when Beatrice said to him, "Change the current of thy
+thoughts. Consider how near I am in heaven to one that repayeth every
+wrong."
+
+Dante turned at the sound of this comfort, and felt no longer any other
+wish than to look upon her eyes; but she said, with a smile, "Turn thee
+round again, and attend. I am not thy only Paradise." And Dante again
+turned, and saw his ancestor prepared to say more.
+
+Cacciaguida bade him look again on the Cross, and he should see various
+spirits, as he named them, flash over it like lightning; and they did
+so. That of Joshua, which was first mentioned, darted along the Cross
+in a stream. The light of Judas Maccabeus went spinning, as if joy had
+scourged it.[23] Charlemagne and Orlando swept away together, pursued
+by the poet's eyes. Guglielmo[24] followed, and Rinaldo, and Godfrey of
+Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard of Naples; and the light of Cacciaguida
+himself darted back to its place, and, uttering another sort of voice,
+began shewing how sweet a singer he too was amidst the glittering choir.
+
+Dante turned to share the joy with Beatrice, and, by the lovely paling
+of her cheek, like a maiden's when it delivers itself of the burden of
+a blush,[25] knew that he was in another and whiter star. It was the
+planet Jupiter, the abode of blessed Administrators of Justice.
+
+Here he beheld troops of dazzling essences, warbling as they flew, and
+shaping their flights hither and thither, like birds when they rise from
+the banks of rivers, and rejoice with one another in new-found pasture.
+But the figures into which the flights were shaped were of a more
+special sort, being mystical compositions of letters of the alphabet,
+now a D, now an I, now an L, and so on, till the poet observed that they
+completed the whole text of Scripture, which says, _Diligite justitiam,
+qui judicatis terram_--(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the
+earth). The last letter, M, they did not decompose like the rest, but
+kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the
+silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a
+song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on the top, of
+the letter; and then, from the body of it, rose thousands of sparks, as
+from a shaken firebrand, and, gradually expanding into the form of an
+eagle, the lights which had descended like lilies distributed themselves
+over the whole bird, encrusting it with rubies flashing in the sun.
+
+But what, says the poet, was never yet heard of, written, or
+imagined,--the beak of the eagle spoke! It uttered many minds in one
+voice, just as one heat is given out by many embers; and proclaimed
+itself to have been thus exalted, because it united justice and mercy
+while on earth.
+
+Dante addressed this splendid phenomenon, and prayed it to ease his mind
+of the perplexities of its worldly reason respecting the Divine nature
+and government, and the exclusion from heaven of goodness itself, unless
+within the Christian pale.
+
+The celestial bird, rousing itself into motion with delight, like a
+falcon in the conscious energy of its will and beauty, when, upon being
+set free from its hood, it glances above it into the air, and claps its
+self-congratulating wings, answered nevertheless somewhat disdainfully,
+that it was impossible for man, in his mortal state, to comprehend such
+things; and that the astonishment he feels at them, though doubtless it
+would be excusable under other circumstances, must rest satisfied with
+the affirmations of Scripture.
+
+The bird then bent over its questioner, as a stork does over the
+nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and
+renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, "As my notes are to thee
+that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to
+thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly
+regions that did not believe in Christ, either after he was crucified or
+before it. Yet many, who call Christ! Christ! shall at the last day be
+found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings
+of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment
+opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dishonour? In
+that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict
+on Bohemia:[26]--in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that
+adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's
+teeth:--in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the
+Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds:--in
+that book, the luxury of the Spaniard, and the effeminate life of the
+Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy:--in that
+book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a
+unit, and his worthlessness by a million:--in that book, the avarice and
+cowardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died;
+and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness,
+the writing shall be in short-hand; and his uncle's and his brother's
+filthy doings shall be read in that book--they who have made such
+rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the
+Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner
+of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O
+blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer!--O blessed
+Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain
+walls! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest
+of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the
+beast, who keeps so close in the path of the herd his brethren."
+
+The blessed bird for a moment was silent; but as, at the going down of
+the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth into innumerable
+stars which the sun lights up,[27] so the splendours within the figure
+of the bird suddenly became more splendid, and broke forth into songs
+too beautiful for mortal to remember.
+
+O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy
+manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere
+thoughts of those pious hearts!
+
+After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their
+angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes
+falling from rock to rock, and chews, by the fulness of its tone, the
+abundance of its mountain spring; and as the sound of the guitar is
+modulated on the neck of it, and the breath of the pipe is accordant to
+the spiracle from which it issues, so the murmuring within the eagle
+suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in
+words. The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye; because,
+of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the
+eye were the noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the
+pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now
+enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment. Of the
+five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was
+Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it
+costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell
+before he was translated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah,
+whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death: next Hezekiah,
+Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of
+a pastor, he had unwittingly brought destruction on the world: next
+Constantine, William the Good of Sicily, whose death is not more
+lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown and lastly, next
+William, Riphaeus the Trojan. "What erring mortal," cried the bird,
+"would believe it possible to find Riphaeus the Trojan among the
+blest?--but so it is; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace
+than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth."[28]
+
+The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the
+happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering and
+expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and content,
+having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness.[29]
+
+But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans
+in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.
+It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of
+justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same
+reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption;
+and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of
+Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to
+the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird
+mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they
+quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced
+by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes.[30]
+
+Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice,
+and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer
+there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at
+every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been
+able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the
+planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy
+Contemplation.
+
+In this crystal sphere, called after the name of the monarch who reigned
+over the Age of Innocence, Dante looked up, and beheld a ladder, the hue
+of which was like gold when the sun glisters it, and the height so great
+that its top was out of sight; and down the steps of this ladder he saw
+coming such multitudes of shining spirits, that it seemed as if all the
+lights of heaven must have been there poured forth; but not a sound was
+in the whole splendour. It was spared to the poet for the same reason
+that he missed the smile of Beatrice. When they came to a certain step
+in the ladder, some of the spirits flew off it in circles or other
+careers, like rooks when they issue from their trees in the morning
+to dry their feathers in the sun, part of them going away without
+returning, others returning to the point they left, and others
+contenting themselves with flying round about it. One of them came so
+near Dante and Beatrice, and brightened with such ardour, that the poet
+saw it was done in affection towards them, and begged the loving spirit
+to tell them who it was.
+
+"Between the two coasts of Italy," said the spirit, "and not far from
+thine own country, the stony mountains ascend into a ridge so lofty
+that the thunder rolls beneath it. Catria is its name. Beneath it is a
+consecrated cell; and in that cell I was called Pietro Damiano.[31] I so
+devoted myself to the service of God, that with no other sustenance than
+the juice of the olive, I forgot both heat and cold, happy in heavenly
+meditation. That cloister made abundant returns in its season to these
+granaries of the Lord; but so idle has it become now, that it is fit
+the world should know its barrenness. The days of my mortal life were
+drawing to a close, when I was besought and drawn into wearing the hat
+which descends every day from bad head to worse.[32] St. Peter and St.
+Paul came lean and barefoot, getting their bread where they could; but
+pastors now-a-days must be lifted from the ground, and have ushers going
+before them, and train-bearers behind them, and ride upon palfreys
+covered with their spreading mantles, so that two beasts go under one
+skin.[33] O Lord, how long!"
+
+At these words Dante saw more splendours come pouring down the ladder,
+and wheel round and round, and become at every wheel more beautiful.
+The whole dazzling body then gathered round the indignant speaker, and
+shouted something in a voice so tremendous, that the poet could liken it
+to nothing on earth. The thunder was so overwhelming, that he did not
+even hear what they said.[34]
+
+Pallid and stunned, he turned in affright to Beatrice, who comforted him
+as a mother comforts a child that wants breath to speak. The shout was
+prophetic of the vengeance about to overtake the Church. Beatrice then
+directed hisattention to a multitude of small orbs, which increased one
+another's beauty by interchanging their splendours. They enclosed the
+spirits of those who most combined meditation with love. One of them was
+Saint Benedict; and others Macarius and Romoaldo.[35] The light of St.
+Benedict issued forth from among its companions to address the poet;
+and after explaining how its occupant was unable farther to disclose
+himself, inveighed against the degeneracy of the religious orders. It
+then rejoined its fellows, and the whole company clustering into one
+meteor, swept aloft like a whirlwind. Beatrice beckoned the poet to
+ascend after them. He did so, gifted with the usual virtue by her eyes;
+and found himself in the twin light of the Gemini, the constellation
+that presided over his birth. He was now in the region of the fixed
+stars.
+
+"Thou art now," said his guide, "so near the summit of thy prayers, that
+it behoves thee to take a last look at things below thee, and see
+how little they should account in thine eyes." Dante turned his
+eyes downwards through all the seven spheres, and saw the earth so
+diminutive, that he smiled at its miserable appearance. Wisest, thought
+he, is the man that esteems it least; and truly worthy he that sets his
+thoughts on the world to come. He now saw the moon without those spots
+in it which made him formerly attribute the variation to dense and rare.
+He sustained the brightness of the face of the sun, and discerned all
+the signs and motions and relative distances of the planets. Finally, he
+saw, as he rolled round with the sphere in which he stood, and by virtue
+of his gifted sight, the petty arena, from hill to harbour, which filled
+his countrymen with such ferocious ambition; and then he turned his eyes
+to the sweet eyes beside him.[36]
+
+Beatrice stood wrapt in attention, looking earnestly towards the south,
+as if she expected some appearance. She resembled the bird that sits
+among the dewy leaves in the darkness of night, yearning for the coming
+of the morning, that she may again behold her young, and have light by
+which to seek the food, that renders her fatigue for them a joy. So
+stood Beatrice, looking; which caused Dante to watch in the same
+direction, with the feelings of one that is already possessed of some
+new delight by the assuredness of his expectation.[37]
+
+The quarter on which they were gazing soon became brighter and brighter,
+and Beatrice exclaimed, "Behold the armies of the triumph of Christ!"
+Her face appeared all fire, and her eyes so full of love, that the poet
+could find no words to express them.
+
+As the moon, when the depths of heaven are serene with her fulness,
+looks abroad smiling among her eternal handmaids the stars, that paint
+every gulf of the great hollow with beauty;[38] so brightest, above
+myriads of splendours around it, appeared a sun which gave radiance to
+them all, even as our earthly sun gives light to the constellations.
+
+"O Beatrice!" exclaimed Dante, overpowered, "sweet and beloved guide!"
+
+"Overwhelming," said Beatrice, "is the virtue with which nothing can
+compare. What thou hast seen is the Wisdom and the Power, by whom the
+path between heaven and earth has been laid open."[39]
+
+Dante's soul--like the fire which falls to earth out of the swollen
+thunder-cloud, instead of rising according to the wont of fire--had
+grown too great for his still mortal nature; and he could afterwards
+find within him no memory of what it did.
+
+"Open thine eyes," said Beatrice, "and see me now indeed. Thou hast
+beheld things that empower thee to sustain my smiling."
+
+Dante, while doing as he was desired, felt like one who has suddenly
+waked up from a dream, and endeavours in vain to recollect it.
+
+"Never," said he, "can that moment be erased from the book of the past.
+If all the tongues were granted me that were fed with the richest milk
+of Polyhymnia and her sisters, they could not express one thousandth
+part of the beauty of that divine smile, or of the thorough perfection
+which it made of the whole of her divine countenance."
+
+But Beatrice said, "Why dost thou so enamour thee of this face, and
+lose the sight of the beautiful guide, blossoming beneath the beams of
+Christ? Behold the rose, in which the Word was made flesh.[40] Behold
+the lilies, by whose odour the way of life is tracked."
+
+Dante looked, and gave battle to the sight with his weak eyes.[41]
+
+As flowers on a cloudy day in a meadow are suddenly lit up by a gleam of
+sunshine, he beheld multitudes of splendours effulgent with beaming rays
+that smote on them from above, though he could not discern the source of
+the effulgence. He had invoked the name of the Virgin when he looked;
+and the gracious fountain of the light had drawn itself higher up within
+the heaven, to accommodate the radiance to his faculties. He then beheld
+the Virgin herself bodily present,--her who is fairest now in heaven,
+as she was on earth; and while his eyes were being painted with her
+beauty,[42] there fell on a sudden a seraphic light from heaven, which,
+spinning into a circle as it came, formed a diadem round her head, still
+spinning, and warbling as it spun. The sweetest melody that ever drew
+the soul to it on earth would have seemed like the splitting of a
+thunder-cloud, compared with the music that sung around the head of that
+jewel of Paradise.[43]
+
+"I am Angelic Love," said the light, "and I spin for joy of the womb in
+which our Hope abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I thus attend
+thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his
+loving-kindness from sphere to sphere."
+
+All the other splendours now resounded the name of Mary. The Virgin
+began ascending to pursue the path of her Son; and Dante, unable to
+endure her beauty as it rose, turned his eyes to the angelical callers
+on the name of Mary, who remained yearning after her with their hands
+outstretched, as a babe yearns after the bosom withdrawn from his lips.
+Then rising after her themselves, they halted ere they went out of
+sight, and sung "O Queen of Heaven" so sweetly, that the delight never
+quitted the air.
+
+A flame now approached and thrice encircled Beatrice, singing all the
+while so divinely, that the poet could retain no idea expressive of its
+sweetness. Mortal imagination cannot unfold such wonder. It was Saint
+Peter, whom she had besought to come down from his higher sphere, in
+order to catechise and discourse with her companion on the subject of
+faith.
+
+The catechising and the discourse ensued, and were concluded by the
+Apostle's giving the poet the benediction, and encircling his forehead
+thrice with his holy light. "So well," says Dante, "was he pleased with
+my answers."[44]
+
+"If ever," continued the Florentine, "the sacred poem to which heaven
+and earth have set their hands, and which for years past has wasted my
+flesh in the writing, shall prevail against the cruelty that shut me out
+of the sweet fold in which I slept like a lamb, wishing harm to none but
+the wolves that beset it,--with another voice, and in another guise than
+now, will I return, a poet, and standing by the fount of my baptism,
+assume the crown that belongs to me; for I there first entered on the
+faith which gives souls to God; and for that faith did Peter thus
+encircle my forehead."[45]
+
+A flame enclosing Saint James now succeeded to that of Saint Peter, and
+after greeting his predecessor as doves greet one another, murmuring and
+moving round, proceeded to examine the mortal visitant on the subject
+of Hope. The examination was closed amidst resounding anthems of,"
+Let their hope be in thee;"[46] and a third apostolic flame ensued,
+enclosing Saint John, who completed the catechism with the topic of
+Charity. Dante acquitted himself with skill throughout; the spheres
+resounded with songs of "Holy, holy," Beatrice joining in the warble;
+and the poet suddenly found Adam beside him. The parent of the human
+race knew by intuition what his descendant wished to learn of him; and
+manifesting his assent before he spoke, as an animal sometimes does by
+movements and quiverings of the flesh within its coat, corresponding
+with its good-will,[47] told him, that his fall was not owing to the
+fruit which he tasted, but to the violation of the injunction not to
+taste it; that he remained in the Limbo on hell-borders upwards of five
+thousand years; and that the language he spoke had become obsolete
+before the days of Nimrod.
+
+The gentle fire of Saint Peter now began to assume an awful brightness,
+such as the planet Jupiter might assume, if Mars and it were birds,
+and exchanged the colour of their plumage.[48] Silence fell upon the
+celestial choristers; and the Apostle spoke thus:
+
+"Wonder not if thou seest me change colour. Thou wilt see, while I
+speak, all which is round about us colour in like manner. He who usurps
+my place on earth,--_my_ place, I say,--ay, _mine_,--which before God is
+now vacant,--has converted the city in which my dust lies buried into a
+common-sewer of filth and blood; so that the fiend who fell from hence
+rejoices himself down there."
+
+At these words of the Apostle the whole face of Heaven was covered with
+a blush, red as dawn or sunset; and Beatrice changed colour, like a
+maiden that shrinks in alarm from the report of blame in another. The
+eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the
+Cross.
+
+Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his
+appearance:
+
+"Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ
+fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,--the blood
+of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor
+Urban; men, for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They died that souls
+might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that
+the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom
+against the other; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the
+faithful; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying documents,
+which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm
+of God, why sleepest thou? Men out of Gascony and Cahors are even
+now making ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning, to what vile
+conclusion must thou come! But the high Providence, which made Scipio
+the sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the world, will fail not its
+timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing
+must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and
+hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself."
+
+As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the
+sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in
+the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apostle, as he turned with the
+other saints to depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they
+became viewless.[49]
+
+The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same
+instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or
+_Primum Mobile_, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of
+those beneath it.
+
+[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
+something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
+and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
+the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
+the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
+altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
+invective awful.
+
+Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of
+inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies.
+All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained
+many mysteries to him connected with that sight; and then vehemently
+denounced the false and foolish teachers that quit the authority of the
+Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the
+gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig.[50]
+
+Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face became so full
+of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to endeavour to speak of
+it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed
+by any save its Maker.[51] Her look carried him upward as before, and
+he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light;--of light made of
+intellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy; joy, transcendant
+above all sweetness.
+
+Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him,
+swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes
+against the blinded eyes; but the light was love here, and instead of
+injuring, gave new power to the object it embraced.
+
+With this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante
+looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours,
+and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest
+flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched
+themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile,
+like rubies set in gold; till inebriated with the odours, they recast
+themselves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as one returned,
+another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light,
+that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature; for the river,
+and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing
+flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which
+they included; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as
+without further assistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as
+they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an
+infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and his
+eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became
+a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him,
+like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined
+courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circumference larger
+than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was
+reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile
+below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's
+side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with
+all its verdure and its flowers; so, round about on all sides, upon
+thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat
+beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together
+formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which ascended above them,
+tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasurable rose,--all dilating
+itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises
+of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the
+flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew
+forward her companion, and said, "Behold the innumerable assemblage of
+the white garments! Behold our city, how large its circuit! Behold our
+seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comers are wanted to
+fill them! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, surmounted with
+the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal
+feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set
+Italy right before she is prepared for it.[52] The blind waywardness of
+which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of
+hunger, kicks away his nurse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot
+walk in the same path with such a man, whatever be the road.[53] But God
+will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon
+Magus; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of
+Alagna still lower.[54]"
+
+In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed multitude of human souls
+lay manifest before the eyes of the poet; and now he observed, that the
+winged portion of the blest, the angels, who fly up with their wings
+nearer to Him that fills them with love, came to and fro upon the rose
+like bees; now descending into its bosom, now streaming back to the
+source of their affection. Their faces were all fire, their wings
+golden, their garments whiter than snow. Whenever they descended on
+the flower, they went from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and
+communicating the peace and ardour which they gathered as they gave.
+Dante beheld all,--every flight and action of the whole winged
+multitude,--without let or shadow; for he stood in the region of light
+itself, and light has no obstacle where it is deservedly vouchsafed.
+
+"Oh," cries the poet, "if the barbarians that came from the north stood
+dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they
+saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who
+had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the
+people of Florence to beings just and sane?"
+
+Dante stood, without a wish either to speak or to hear. He felt like a
+pilgrim who has arrived within the place of his devotion, and who looks
+round about him, hoping some day to relate what he sees. He gazed
+upwards and downwards, and on every side round about, and saw movements
+graceful with every truth of innocence, and faces full of loving
+persuasion, rich in their own smiles and in the light of the smiles of
+others.
+
+He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone;--gone, as a messenger from
+herself told him, to resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the
+messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in the third circle from the
+top, as far from Dante as the bottom of the sea is from the region of
+thunder; and yet he saw her as plainly as if she had been close at hand.
+He addressed words to her of thanks for all she had done for him, and
+a hope for her assistance after death; and she looked down at him and
+smiled.
+
+The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade the poet lift his eyes higher;
+and Dante beheld the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in the centre
+of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels
+were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour
+and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and
+she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all
+the blessed.
+
+At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful--she that opened the wound
+which Mary closed; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice; and
+at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then
+Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the
+Miserere;[55] and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the
+flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived
+before Christ from those who lived after; a line which, on the opposite
+side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the
+Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was
+divided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and
+underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices,
+were the souls of such as were too young to have attained Heaven by
+assistance of good works.
+
+St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the Virgin, and
+gather from her countenance the power of beholding the face of Christ as
+God. Her aspect was flooded with gladness from the spirits around her;
+while the angel who had descended to her on earth now hailed her above
+with "Ave, Maria!" singing till the whole host of Heaven joined in
+the song. St. Bernard then prayed to her for help to his companion's
+eyesight. Beatrice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the
+prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the Virgin, after benignly
+looking on the petitioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the way with
+her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then looked also, and
+beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory to endure.
+
+He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever
+trickled to his heart.
+
+Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far
+vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey
+to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he
+saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose
+sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted,
+attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld,
+concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is
+diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the
+universe--all substance and accident and mode--all so compounded that
+they become one light. He thought he beheld at one and the same time
+the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies;
+because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the
+course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.
+
+But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he
+could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for
+completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain
+it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as
+short of right speech as the sounds of an infant's tongue while it is
+murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light,
+the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with
+the succession of the astonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear
+self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same
+breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does
+rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from
+both.[56]
+
+O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone
+understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so
+understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.
+
+The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted
+by its own colours with the likeness of a human face.[57]
+
+But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw
+his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician
+experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the
+principle by which he is to square it.
+
+He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed
+him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the
+discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire
+became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the
+particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the
+stars.[58]
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A curious and happy image.
+
+  "Tornan de' nostri visi le postille
+  Debili si, che perla in bianca fronte
+  Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille:
+  Tali vid' io piu facce a parlar pronte." ]
+
+[Footnote 2: "Rodolfo da Tossignano, _Hist. Seraph. Relig._ P. i. p.
+138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda:
+'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister,
+having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other
+abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried
+away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her
+religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her
+nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new
+husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity
+to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as
+to strike grief and horror into the beholders; and thus, in a few days,
+through the divine disposal, she passed with a palm of virginity to the
+Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to
+certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has chosen to pass it over
+discreetly, by making Piccarda say, 'God knows how, after that, my life
+was framed.'"--_Cary_, ut sup. p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 3: A lovely simile indeed.
+
+  "Tanto lieta
+  Ch' arder parea d'amor nel primo foco."
+
+[Footnote 4: Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken
+out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second.
+"She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting
+from Muratori and others); "and because it was not credited that she
+could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion; and it
+was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty to see her. Many
+came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased."--_Translation of Dante_, ut
+sup. p. 137.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings.]
+
+[Footnote 6:
+
+  "Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth
+  Superillustrans claritate tua
+  Felices ignes horum Malahoth."
+  _Malahoth_; Hebrew, _kingdoms_.]
+
+
+[Footnote 7: The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the
+nature of the inhabitants.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Charles Martel, son of the king of Naples and Sicily, and
+crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become acquainted with Dante
+during the poet's youth, when the prince met his royal father in the
+city of Florence. He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father,
+and who was the friend of Petrarch.
+
+"The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star," says
+Cary, "are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i. cap. 3,
+in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. viii. p. 173. She eloped from her
+first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello (see
+Purg. canto vi. and vii.); with whom she is supposed to have cohabited
+before her marriage: then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife
+was living at the same time in the same city; and, on his being murdered
+by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of
+Braganzo: lastly, when he also had fallen by the same hand, she, after
+her brother's death, was again wedded in Verona."--_Translation of
+Dante_, ut sup. p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in the _Discorso
+sul Testo_, p. 329.
+
+Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab,
+is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the
+Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being
+asked, during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the orthodox
+and heterodox were to be distinguished, he said, "Kill all: God will
+know his own."
+
+For Rahab, see _Joshua_, chap. ii. and vi.; and _Hebrews_. xi. 31]
+
+[Footnote 9: The reader need not be required to attend to the
+extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding
+passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology
+or the poet might have desired.]
+
+[Footnote 10: These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and
+schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no
+longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after
+them.
+
+Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every
+respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity
+of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church,
+Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many
+dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with
+voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much
+light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the
+old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our
+imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must
+be gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted
+enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the
+forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is
+more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all these dances and
+tinklings.]
+
+[Footnote 11:
+
+  "Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo."
+
+Cruel indeed;--the founder of the Inquisition! The "loving minion"
+is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of "_amoroso drudo_." But what a
+minion, and how loving! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of
+course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down
+other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia.
+So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent
+semi-barbarism in the character of Spain, which it has never got rid of
+to this day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern patriots, it
+would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even
+Lope de Vega was an inquisitor; and Mendoza, the entertaining author of
+Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cervantes, however, is enough to
+sweeten a whole peninsula.]
+
+[Footnote 12: What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility
+enough to apply it to himself!]
+
+[Footnote 13:
+
+  "O sanguis meus, o superinfusa
+  Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui
+  Bis unquam coeli janua reclusa?"
+
+The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet
+in "the obscurity of a learned language." And in truth it is a little
+strong.]
+
+[Footnote 14:
+
+  "Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso
+  Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo
+  De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso."
+
+That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more
+favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei
+essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)--_Variorum edition of
+Dante_, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times
+in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the
+original passage, with another version, in the Appendix.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of
+the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman,
+of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the
+co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who
+appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old
+commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate
+that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so,
+Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved
+Caesar;--that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip
+of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks.]
+
+
+[Footnote 17:
+
+  "Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,
+  Piu e tacer che ragionare onesto."
+
+Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the
+lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a
+boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general
+character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts
+(see the opening of canto xvi., Paradise, in the original), that while
+he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto
+xv. 73, &c.), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble
+condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity
+of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic,
+may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious
+specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours
+is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that
+Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a
+harbinger.
+
+All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on
+the Cross!]
+
+[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with
+argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old
+families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names,
+of which nothing else is recorded.]
+
+[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious
+popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue
+of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
+
+With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have
+first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to
+marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
+Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that
+he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his
+engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 20:
+
+  "Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
+  Piu caramente; e questo e quello strale
+  Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
+
+  Tu proverai si come sa di sale
+  Lo pane altrui, e com'e duro calle
+  Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
+
+  E quel che piu ti gravera le spalle,
+  Sara la compagnia malvagia e scempia
+  Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
+
+  Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
+  Si fara contra te: ma poco appresso
+  Ella, non tu, n'avra rossa la tempia.
+
+  Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
+  Fara la pruova, si ch' a te fia bello
+  Averti fatta parte per te stesso."
+
+[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of
+Verona.]
+
+[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who
+had received Dante at his court.]
+
+[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paleo"]
+
+[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
+Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne,
+or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the
+former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin?)
+seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text
+brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante)
+might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second
+William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
+
+[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
+
+  "Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
+  De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia."
+
+In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the
+verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the
+beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats
+them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings
+against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my
+heart (like hers) contented.
+
+"_Boccaccio._--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of
+the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_
+quite enough without _che la sazia?_The picture is before us, the
+sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
+
+"_Petrarch._--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your
+remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as
+blemishes, and even more."--p. 92.
+
+Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety
+itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety.]
+
+[Footnote 30:
+
+  "E come a buon cantor buon citarista
+  Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda
+  In che piu di piacer lo canto acquista;
+
+  Si, mentre che parlo, mi si ricorda,
+  Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
+  Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
+
+  Con le parole muover le fiammette." ]
+
+[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
+and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a
+private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to
+Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age." Petrarch also makes honourable
+mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while
+in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem
+there.--_Lombardi in loc._ vol. III. p. 547.]
+
+[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat.]
+
+[Footnote 33: "Si che duo bestie van sott' una pelle."]
+
+[Footnote 34:
+
+  "Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
+  E fero un grido di si alto suono,
+  Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
+
+  Ne io lo 'ntesi, si mi vinse il tuono."
+
+  Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
+  And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
+  Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
+
+  Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
+
+If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage
+into his treatise on the Sublime.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.
+Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the
+Camaldoli.]
+
+[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage
+in Cowley
+
+  "Lo, I mount; and lo,
+  How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!
+  Where shall I find the noble British land?
+  Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
+  Which in the sea does lie,
+  And seems a grain o' the sand.
+  For this will any sin, or bleed?
+  Of civil wars is this the meed?
+  And is it this, alas, which we,
+  Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie?"
+
+And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very
+finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the
+Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--
+
+  "Where am I now? angels and God is here."
+
+All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full
+of grandeur and loveliness.]
+
+[Footnote 37:
+
+  "Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,
+  Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
+  La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
+
+  Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
+  E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
+  In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
+
+  Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,
+  E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
+  Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
+
+  Cosi la donna mia si stava eretta
+  E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
+  Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
+
+  Si the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
+  Fecimi quale e quei che disiando
+  Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga." ]
+
+[Footnote 38:
+
+  "Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
+  Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
+  Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni."
+
+[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person.]
+
+[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary.]
+
+[Footnote 41:
+
+  "Mi rendei
+  A la battaglia de' debili cigli."]
+
+[Footnote 42:
+
+  "Ambo le luci mi dipinse."
+
+[Footnote 43:
+
+  "Qualunque melodia piu dolce suona
+  Qua giu, e piu a se l'anima tira,
+  Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
+
+  Comparata al sonar di quella lira
+  Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
+  Del quale il ciel piu chiaro s' inzaffira." ]
+
+  [Footnote 44:
+
+  "Benedicendomi cantando
+  Tre volte cinse me, si com' io tacqui,
+  L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
+
+  Io avea detto; si nel dir gli piacqui."
+
+It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to
+suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion
+which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his
+_Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
+of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_,
+12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by
+the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough
+to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he
+expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed
+to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of
+Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist!]
+
+[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the
+twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just
+given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
+
+  "Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
+  Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
+  Si che m' ha fatto per piu anni macro,
+
+  Vinca la crudelta che fuor mi serra
+  Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
+  Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
+
+  Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
+  Ritornero poeta, ed in sul fonte
+  Del mio battesmo prendero 'l capello:
+
+  Perocche ne la fede che fa conte
+  L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
+  Pietro per lei si mi giro la fronte." ]
+
+[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te." _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says,
+"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee."]
+
+[Footnote 47:
+
+  "Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
+  Si che l' affetto convien che si paia
+  Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia."
+
+A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for
+the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in
+which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of
+doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian
+sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles
+to one's imagination.]
+
+[Footnote 48:
+
+  "Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
+  Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
+  Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne."
+
+Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical
+image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the
+tremendous passage that ensues!]
+
+[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
+something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
+and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
+the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
+the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
+altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
+invective awful.
+
+A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope
+would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the
+hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
+poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic?--I am afraid, all things considered,
+we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius
+the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine
+Church-hymns he would have written!]
+
+[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence!) that
+for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The
+preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings
+them into Heaven!]
+
+[Footnote 51:
+
+  "Certo io credo
+  Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda." ]
+
+[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the
+close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of
+restoration to his country were at an end.]
+
+[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now
+dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had
+prepared for him.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to
+thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle
+Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical!]
+
+[Footnote 55: David.]
+
+[Footnote 56: The Trinity.]
+
+[Footnote 57: The Incarnation.]
+
+[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p.
+845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe
+de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the
+curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of
+his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy
+augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention,
+however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations
+terminated.]
+
+
+
+PULCI:
+
+
+Critical Notice
+
+of
+
+PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.
+
+Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after
+Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after
+tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he
+seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety
+of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the
+absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be
+the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet
+of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a
+susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in
+earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most
+laughable sallies.
+
+Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble
+family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into
+Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of
+December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of
+a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo,
+the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and
+Lucca wrote a romance called the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, and is commended
+for his _Heroic Epistles_. Little else is known of these brothers; and
+not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the
+name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was
+one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary
+circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always
+meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens.
+Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little
+credit (Zilioli _On the Italian Poets_), and an earlier printed book,
+which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone _De
+Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinae_), say that he died miserably in Padua,
+and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is
+not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici
+family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its
+troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their
+enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite
+allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their
+master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I
+have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible
+death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther,
+calling them both the greatest villains (_sceleratissimi_); and adding,
+that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his
+bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
+
+Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a
+ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical
+paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a
+Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good
+humour--sport to amuse their friends--a perilous speculation. Besides
+his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his
+brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems,
+and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, _La Beca_, in
+emulation of the charming poem _La Nencia_, the first of its kind,
+written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo,
+who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power
+of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs
+for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
+
+The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind.
+Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such
+differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the
+latter's youth, probably from his birth--is spoken of in a tone of
+domestic intimacy by his wife--and is enumerated by him among his
+companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on
+Hawking _(La Caccia col Falcone_), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen
+about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into
+a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a
+sonnet:
+
+"'Luigi Pulci ov' e, che non si sente?' 'Egli se n' ando dianzi in quel
+boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr a fantasticar
+forse un sonetto.'"
+
+"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw _him_." "Oh, in the wood there. Gone,
+depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain--some whim, That will
+not let him rest till it's a sonnet."
+
+In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his
+seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the
+courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down
+the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he
+says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make
+of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or
+other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here--he
+who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it." Such is the
+first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the
+sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial
+listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with
+the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by
+Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in
+somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della
+Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in
+turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in
+the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of
+Lorenzo.
+
+"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia,
+Che questa non e storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la
+via,
+
+Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la
+pazzia;
+
+Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi e infinita.
+
+La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei
+boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con
+lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E cosi fuggo mille
+urban dispetti: Si ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur
+sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
+
+I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this
+side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that
+the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and
+contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such
+crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to
+know 'em.
+
+Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods
+and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me
+baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And
+thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew
+your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites."
+
+He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted
+by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the
+laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little
+troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
+
+Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his
+"refuge." The _Morgante Maggiore_, the work which has rendered the name
+of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely
+narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production
+that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points.
+The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which
+prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance
+of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome.
+The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then
+settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied
+with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think,
+and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the
+Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams
+to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity
+itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian
+theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect.
+Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to
+an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's
+friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise
+with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its
+liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in
+combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a
+mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the
+same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors;
+second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious
+dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of
+charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding;
+third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics,
+"sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly,
+a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended
+to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest
+at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he
+opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the
+piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix
+levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and
+the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his
+description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in
+all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question,
+as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind,
+which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi,
+who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if
+not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses
+himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his
+cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are
+constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner
+capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this
+monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo
+di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of
+profane derision." [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively
+and impassioned people of the south take what may be called
+household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than
+northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does
+not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as
+it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others,
+perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like
+some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is
+such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the
+representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest
+when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his
+own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to
+affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more
+acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to,
+ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more
+levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If
+Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well
+as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in
+something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation
+of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might
+explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse,
+if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever
+present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been
+interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening
+with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal
+seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards
+in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred
+invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the
+like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as
+gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the
+reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that
+ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout
+the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant
+officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the
+circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet
+perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest
+at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends,
+and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a
+captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling
+than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only
+warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.
+
+If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our
+author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by
+himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother,
+Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest woman, herself a poetess, who
+wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than
+once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. The _Morgante_
+concludes with an address respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with
+a hope that her "devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him
+in Paradise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that
+expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have
+had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his
+mother as to a jest?
+
+I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived,
+Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
+orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
+Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
+appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
+Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
+eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
+may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
+spheres." He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
+to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
+of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
+fellow-creature.
+
+Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
+pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
+appearance of Columbus.[3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
+Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
+rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
+aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
+of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
+doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
+adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
+Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
+the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
+stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
+bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
+hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
+Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
+persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
+him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
+Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
+ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
+screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
+
+Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
+regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
+style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
+and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
+eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
+point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
+and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
+disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
+render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
+this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
+of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
+Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci."[5] And all minds, in
+which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
+
+The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
+of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
+and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
+Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
+monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
+is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
+received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
+became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
+upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
+seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
+the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
+place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
+poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
+champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
+vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
+for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
+history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
+exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
+chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
+all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
+weak.[6]
+
+The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
+Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
+emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
+with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many
+adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins,
+his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more
+or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they
+assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne;
+and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most
+of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself
+and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's
+fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious;
+and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice
+better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a
+halter.
+
+There is, perhaps, no pure invention in the whole of this enlargement of
+old ballads and chronicles, except the characters of another giant, and
+of a rebel angel; for even Morgante's history, though told in a very
+different manner, has its prototype in the fictions of the pretended
+archbishop.[7] The Paladins are well distinguished from one another;
+Orlando as foremost alike in prowess and magnanimity, Rinaldo by his
+vehemence, Ricciardetto by his amours, Astolfo by an ostentatious
+rashness and self-committal; but in all these respects they appear to
+have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit
+any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular
+idiomatic phraseology; still less, though it has plenty of infernal
+magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring
+order, as in Ariosto; or with love-stories as good as Boiardo's, or even
+with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be
+found in both of those poets; albeit, in the fourteenth canto, there is
+a long _catalogue raisonne_ of the whole animal creation, which a lady
+has worked for Rinaldo on a pavilion of silk and gold.
+
+To these negative faults must be added the positive ones of too many
+trifling, unconnected, and uninteresting incidents (at least to readers
+who cannot taste the flavour of the racy Tuscan idiom); great occasional
+prolixity, even in the best as well as worst passages, not excepting
+Orlando's dying speeches; harshness in spite of his fluency (according
+to Foscolo), and even bad grammar; too many low or over-familiar forms
+of speech (so the graver critics allege, though, perhaps, from want of
+animal spirits or a more comprehensive discernment); and lastly (to say
+nothing of the question as to the gravity or levity of the theology),
+the strange exhibition of whole successive stanzas, containing as many
+questions or affirmations as lines, and commencing each line with the
+same words. They meet the eye like palisadoes, or a file of soldiers,
+and turn truth and pathos itself into a jest. They were most likely
+imitated from the popular ballads. The following is the order of words
+in which a young lady thinks fit to complain of a desert, into which she
+has been carried away by a giant. After seven initiatory O's addressed
+to her friends and to life in general, she changes the key into E:
+
+"E' questa, la mia patria dov' io nacqui? E' questo il mio palagio e 'l
+mio castello? E' questo il nido ov' alcun tempo giacqui? E' questo il
+padre e 'l mio dolce fratello? E' questo il popol dov' io tanto piacqui?
+E' questo il regno giusto antico e bello? E' questo il porto de la mia
+salute? E' questo il premio d' ogni mia virtute?
+
+Ove son or le mie purpuree veste? Ove son or le gemme e le ricchezze?
+Ove son or gia le notturne feste? Ove son or le mie delicatezze? Ove son
+or le mie compagne oneste? Ove son or le fuggite dolcezze? Ove son or le
+damigelle mie? Ove son, dice? ome, non son gia quie."[8]
+
+Is this the country, then, where I was born? Is this my palace, and my
+castle this? Is this the nest I woke in, every morn? Is this my father's
+and my brother's kiss? Is this the land they bred me to adorn? Is this
+the good old bower of all my bliss? Is this the haven of my youth and
+beauty? Is this the sure reward of all my duty?
+
+Where now are all my wardrobes and their treasures? Where now are all
+my riches and my rights? Where now are all the midnight feasts and
+measures? Where now are all the delicate delights? Where now are all the
+partners of my pleasures? Where now are all the sweets of sounds and
+sights? Where now are all my maidens ever near? Where, do I say? Alas,
+alas, not here!
+
+There are seven more "where nows," including lovers, and "proffered
+husbands," and "romances," and ending with the startling question and
+answer,--the counterpoint of the former close,--
+
+"Ove son l' aspre selve e i lupi adesso, E gli orsi, e i draghi, e i
+tigri? Son qui presso."
+
+Where now are all the woods and forests drear, Wolves, tigers, bears,
+and dragons? Alas, here!
+
+These are all very natural thoughts, and such, no doubt, as would
+actually pass through the mind of the young lady, in the candour of
+desolation; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them
+renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by
+the poor queen in the play of _Richard the Second_, when she overhears
+the discourse of the gardener:
+
+"My wretchedness _unto a roar of pins_, They'll talk of state."
+
+Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during
+the recital of these passages? Or did he flatter himself, that the
+comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be
+amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new
+one?[9]
+
+The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external
+nature, in the _Morgante_, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of
+heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost
+absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and
+delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion. The
+fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues
+it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to
+accept; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that "she
+wishes she could give him the sun;" and that if she were to say, after
+all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should
+be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is
+so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his
+lips. The way also in which another of these loving admirers of Paladins
+conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently
+hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with
+a ring and a graceful speech, is in a taste as high as any thing in
+Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their
+great successor.[10] Yet the tenderness of Pulci rather shews itself in
+the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little
+escapes of generous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great
+charms of the _Morgante_. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's
+encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he
+discovers a kinsman; and this goodness and relationship combined move
+the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who
+is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such
+a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without
+peril out of the clutches of a devil, he longs to go and set free the
+whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his
+affection for him. Rinaldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest
+till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part
+with him without manifesting a tenderness proportionate to their
+valour,--the old Homeric candour of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth
+himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he
+has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (_gentilezza_) even
+in hell; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, answers that he has no
+doubt of it, or of the capability of "friendship" in that quarter; and
+he says he is as "sorry to part with him as with a brother." The passage
+will be found in our abstract. There are no such devils as these in
+Dante; though Milton has something like them:
+
+  "Devil with devil damn'd
+  Firm concord holds: men only disagree."
+
+It is supposed that the character of Ashtaroth, which is a very new
+and extraordinary one, and does great honour to the daring goodness
+of Pulci's imagination, was not lost upon Milton, who was not only
+acquainted with the poem, but expressly intimates the pleasure he took
+in it.[11] Rinaldo advises this devil, as Burns did Lucifer, to "take a
+thought and mend." Ashtaroth, who had been a seraph, takes no notice of
+the advice, except with a waving of the recollection of happier times.
+He bids the hero farewell, and says he has only to summon him in order
+to receive his aid. This retention of a sense of his former angelical
+dignity has been noticed by Foscolo and Panizzi, the two best writers on
+these Italian poems.[12] A Calvinist would call the expression of the
+sympathy "hardened." A humanist knows it to be the result of a spirit
+exquisitely softened. An unbounded tenderness is the secret of all that
+is beautiful in the serious portion of our author's genius. Orlando's
+good-natured giant weeps even for the death of the scoundrel Margutte;
+and the awful hero himself, at whose death nature is convulsed and the
+heavens open, begs his dying horse to forgive him if ever he has wronged
+it.
+
+A charm of another sort in Pulci, and yet in most instances, perhaps,
+owing the best part of its charmingness to its being connected with the
+same feeling, is his wit. Foscolo, it is true, says it is, in general,
+more severe than refined; and it is perilous to differ with such a
+critic on such a point; for much of it, unfortunately, is lost to a
+foreign reader, in consequence of its dependance on the piquant old
+Tuscan idiom, and on popular sayings and allusions. Yet I should think
+it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some
+more agreeable quality; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most
+obvious to a foreigner may claim, if not to have originated, at least
+to have been very like the style of one who was among its declared
+admirers,--and who was a very polished writer,--Voltaire. It consists in
+treating an absurdity with an air as if it were none; or as if it had
+been a pure matter of course, erroneously mistaken for an absurdity.
+Thus the good abbot, whose monastery is blockaded by the giants (for the
+virtue and simplicity of his character must be borne in mind), after
+observing that the ancient fathers in the desert had not only locusts to
+eat, but manna, which he has no doubt was rained down on purpose from
+heaven, laments that the "relishes" provided for himself and his
+brethren should have consisted of "showers of stones." The stones, while
+the abbot is speaking, come thundering down, and he exclaims, "For God's
+sake, knight, come in, for the manna is falling!" This is exactly in the
+style of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. So when Margutte is asked
+what he believes in, and says he believes in "neither black nor blue,"
+but in a good capon, "whether roast or boiled," the reader is forcibly
+reminded of Voltaire's Traveller, _Scarmentado_, who, when he is desired
+by the Tartars to declare which of their two parties he is for, the
+party of the black-mutton or the white-mutton, answers, that the dish is
+"equally indifferent to him, provided it is tender." Voltaire, however,
+does injustice to Pulci, when he pretends that in matters of belief he
+is like himself,--a mere scoffer. The friend of Lucrezia Tornabuoni has
+evidently the tenderest veneration for all that is good and lovely in
+the Catholic faith; and whatever liberties he might have allowed himself
+in professed _extravaganzas_, when an age without Church-authority
+encouraged them, and a reverend canon could take part in those (it must
+be acknowledged) unseemly "high jinks," he never, in the _Morgante_,
+when speaking in his own person, and not in that of the worst
+characters, intimates disrespect towards any opinion which he did not
+hold to be irrelevant to a right faith. It is observable that his freest
+expressions are put in the mouth of the giant Margutte, the lowest
+of these characters, who is an invention of the author's, and a most
+extraordinary personage. He is the first unmitigated blackguard in
+fiction, and is the greatest as well as first. Pulci is conjectured,
+with great probability, to have designed him as a caricature of some
+real person; for Margutte is a Greek who, in point of morals, has been
+horribly brought up, and some of the Greek refugees in Italy were
+greatly disliked for the cynicism of their manners and the grossness of
+their lives. Margutte is a glutton, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and
+a blasphemer. He boasts of having every vice, and no virtue except
+fidelity; which is meant to reconcile Morgante to his company; but
+though the latter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives
+him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by
+the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The
+respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on
+what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs
+himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as
+though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt of
+a merely and grossly anti-serious mode of existence, and his
+consideration, nevertheless, towards the poor selfish wretch who had had
+no better training.
+
+To this wit and this pathos let the reader add a style of singular ease
+and fluency,--rhymes often the most unexpected, but never at a loss,--a
+purity of Tuscan acknowledged by every body, and ranking him among the
+authorities of the language,--and a modesty in speaking of his own
+pretensions equalled only by his enthusiastic extolments of genius in
+others; and the reader has before him the lively and affecting, hopeful,
+charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci, the precursor, and in some
+respects exemplar, of Ariosto, and, in Milton's opinion, a poet worth
+reading for the "good use" that may be made of him. It has been
+strangely supposed that his friend Politian, and Ficino the Platonist,
+not merely helped him with their books (as he takes a pride in telling
+us), but wrote a good deal of the latter part of the Morgante,
+particularly the speculations in matters of opinion. As if (to say
+nothing of the difference of style) a man of genius, however lively, did
+not go through the gravest reflections in the course of his life, or
+could not enter into any theological or metaphysical question, to which
+he chose to direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too
+often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy; and one
+fit of jaundice or hypochondria might have enabled the poet to see more
+visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps
+ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the
+disciple of Plato.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _Literature of the South of Europe_, Thomas Roscoe's
+Translation, vol. ii. p.54. For the opinions of other writers, here and
+elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him),
+_Storia della Poesia Italiana_, cap. v. sect. 25; Gravina, who is more
+so, _Della Ragion Poetica_ (quoted in Ginguene, as below); Crescimbeni,
+_Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Poesia_, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3
+(Mathias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work,
+4to, Rome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was
+perhaps the "modestest sad most temperate writer" of his age ("il pin
+modesto e moderato"); Ginguene, _Histoire Litteraire d'Italie_, tom. iv.
+p. 214; Foscolo, in the _Quarterly Review_, as further on; Panizzi on
+the _Romantic Poetry of the Italians_, ditto; Stebbing, _Lives of the
+Italian Poets_, second edition, vol, i.; and the first volume of _Lives
+of Literary and Scientific Men_, in _Lardner's Cyclopaedia_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Canto xxv. The passage will be found in the present
+volume.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Id. And this also.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Canto xxvii. stanza 2.
+
+  "S' altro ajuto qui non si dimostra,
+  Sara pur tragedia la istoria nostra.
+
+  Ed io pur commedia pensato avea
+  Iscriver del mio Carlo finalmente,
+  Ed _Alcuin_ cosi mi promettea," &c. ]
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+"In fine to adorerai l'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ma tu amerai il
+Pulci."--_Parn. Ital_. vol. ix. p. 344.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Ellis's _Specimens of Early English Poetical Romances_,
+vol. ii. p. 287; and Panizzi's _Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry
+of the Italians_; in his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p.
+113.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia_, &c. cap. xviii.
+p. 39 (Ciampi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferracutus, or
+Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had the strength of forty men,
+and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat
+with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which
+its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful
+beggings of the question; after which the giant stakes the credit of
+their respective beliefs on the event of their encounter.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Canto xix. st. 21.]
+
+[Footnote 9: When a proper name happens to be a part of the tautology,
+the look is still more extraordinary. Orlando is remonstrating with
+Rinaldo on his being unseasonably in love:
+
+  "Ov' e, Rinaldo, la tua gagliardia?
+  Ov' e, Rinaldo, il tuo sommo potere?
+  Ov' e, Rinaldo, il tuo senno di pria?
+  Ov' e, Rinaldo, il tuo antivedere?
+  Ov' e, Rinaldo, la tua fantasia?
+  Ov' e, Rinaldo, l' arme e 'l tuo destriere?
+  Ov' e, Rinaldo, la tua gloria e fama?
+  Ov' e, Rinaldo, il tuo core? a la dama."
+
+Canto xvi. st. 50.
+
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy gagliardize?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy might indeed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy repute for wise?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy sagacious heed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy free-thoughted eyes?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy good arms and steed?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, thy renown and glory?
+  Oh where, Rinaldo, _thou?_--In a love-story.
+
+The incessant repetition of the names in the burdens of modern songs
+is hardly so bad as this. The single line questions and answers in the
+Greek drama were nothing to it. Yet there is a still more extraordinary
+play upon words in canto xxiii. st. 49, consisting of the description
+of a hermitage. It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the
+poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration
+mad with envy:--
+
+  "La _casa cosa_ parea _bretta_ e _brutta_,
+  _Vinta_ dal _vento_; e la _notta_ e la _notte_
+  _Stilla_ le _stelle_, ch' a _tetto_ era _tutto_:
+  Del _pane appena_ ne _dette_ ta' _dotte_.
+  _Pere_ avea _pure_, e qualche _fratta frutta_;
+  E _svina_ e _svena_ di _botto_ una _botte_
+  _Poscia_ per _pesci lasche_ prese a _l'esca_;
+  Ma il _letto allotta_ a la _frasca_ fu _fresca_."
+
+  This _holy hole_ was a vile _thin_-built _thing_,
+  _Blown_ by the _blast_; the _night nought_ else o'erhead
+  But _staring stars_ the _rude roof_ entering;
+  Their _sup_ of _supper_ was no _splendid spread_;
+  _Poor pears_ their fare, and such-_like libelling_
+  Of quantum suff;--their _butt_ all _but_;--_bad bread_;--
+  A _flash_ of _fish_ instead of _flush_ of _flesh_;
+  Their bed a _frisk al-fresco_, _freezing fresh_.
+
+Really, if Sir Philip Sidney and other serious and exquisite gentlemen
+had not sometimes taken a positively grave interest in the like pastimes
+of paronomasia, one should hardly conceive it possible to meet with
+them even in tragi-comedy. Did Pulci find these also in his
+ballad-authorities? If his Greek-loving critics made objections here,
+they had the advantage of him: unless indeed they too, in their
+Alexandrian predilections, had a sneaking regard for certain shapings
+of verse into altars and hatchets, such as have been charged upon
+Theocritus himself, and which might be supposed to warrant any other
+conceit on occasion.]
+
+[Footnote 10: See, in the original, the story of Meridiana, canto vii.
+King Manfredonio has come in loving hostility against her to endeavour
+to win her affection by his prowess. He finds her assisted by the
+Paladins, and engaged by her own heart to Uliviero; and in he despair of
+his discomfiture, expresses a wish to die by her hand. Meridiana, with
+graceful pity, begs his acceptance of a jewel, and recommends him to
+go home with his army; to which he grievingly consents. This indeed is
+beautiful; and perhaps I ought to have given an abstract of it, as a
+specimen of what Pulci could have done in this way, had he chosen.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "Perhaps it was from that same politic drift that the
+devil whipt St. Jerome in a lenten dream for reading Cicero; or else it
+was a fantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an
+angel been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon
+Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading and not the vanity, it had
+been plainly partial; first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not
+for scurrile Plautus, whom he confesses to have been reading not long
+before; next, to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers
+wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of such a
+tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may
+be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer;
+and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same
+purpose?"--_Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
+Printing_, Prose Works, folio, 1697, p. 378. I quote the passage
+as extracted by Mr. Merivale in the preface to his "Orlando in
+Roncesvalles,"--_Poems_, vol. ii. p. 41.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Ut sup. p. 222. Foscolo's remark is to be found in his
+admirable article on the _Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians_,
+in the _Quarterly Review_, vol. xxi. p. 525.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+HUMOURS OF GIANTS
+
+Twelve Paladins had the Emperor Charlemagne in his court; and the most
+wise and famous of them was Orlando. It is of him I am about to speak,
+and of his friend Morgante, and of Gan the traitor, who beguiled him to
+his death in Roncesvalles, where he sounded his horn so mightily after
+the dolorous rout.
+
+It was Easter, and Charles had all his court with him in Paris, making
+high feast and triumph. There was Orlando, the first among them, and
+Ogier the Dane, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Ansuigi; and there came
+Angiolin of Bayonne, and Uliviero, and the gentle Berlinghieri; and
+there was also Avolio and Avino, and Otho of Normandy, and Richard, and
+the wise Namo, and the aged Salamon, and Walter of Monlione, and Baldwin
+who was the son of the wretched Gan. The good emperor was too happy, and
+oftentimes fairly groaned for joy at seeing all his Paladins together.
+Now Morgante, the only surviving brother, had a palace made, after
+giant's fashion, of earth, and boughs, and shingles, in which he shut
+himself up at night. Orlando knocked, and disturbed him from his sleep,
+so that he came staring to the door like a madman, for he had had a
+bewildering dream.
+
+"Who knocks there?" quoth he.
+
+"You will know too soon," answered Orlando; "I am come to make you do
+penance for your sins, like your brothers. Divine Providence has sent me
+to avenge the wrongs of the monks upon the whole set of you. Doubt it
+not; for Passamonte and Alabastro are already as cold as a couple of
+pilasters.".
+
+"Noble knight," said Morgante, "do me no ill; but if you are a
+Christian, tell me in courtesy who you are."
+
+"I will satisfy you of my faith," replied Orlando; "I adore Christ; and
+if you please, you may adore him also."
+
+"I have had a strange vision," replied Morgante, with a low voice was
+assailed by a dreadful serpent, and called upon Mahomet in vain; then I
+called upon your God who was crucified, and he succoured me, and I was
+delivered from the serpent; so I am disposed to become a Christian."
+
+"If you keep in this mind," returned Orlando, "you shall worship the
+true God, and come with me and be my companion, and I will love you with
+perfect love. Your idols are false and vain; the true God is the God of
+the Christians. Deny the unjust and villanous worship of your Mahomet,
+and be baptised in the name of my God, who alone is worthy."
+
+"I am content," said Morgante.
+
+Then Orlando embraced him, and said, "I will lead you to the abbey."
+
+"Let us go quickly," replied Morgante, for he was impatient to make his
+peace with the monks.
+
+Orlando rejoiced, saying, "My good brother, and devout withal, you must
+ask pardon of the abbot; for God has enlightened you, and accepted you,
+and he would have you practise humility."
+
+"Yes," said Morgante, "thanks to you, your God shall henceforth be my
+God. Tell me your name, and afterwards dispose of me as you will." And
+he told him that he was Orlando.
+
+But Fortune stands watching in secret to baffle our designs. While
+Charles was thus hugging himself with delight, Orlando governed every
+thing at court, and this made Gan burst with envy; so that he began one
+day talking with Charles after the following manner--"Are we always to
+have Orlando for our master? I have thought of speaking to you about it
+a thousand times. Orlando has a great deal too much presumption. Here
+are we, counts, dukes, and kings, at your service, but not at his; and
+we have resolved not to be governed any longer by one so much younger
+than ourselves. You began in Aspramont to give him to understand how
+valiant he was, and that he did great things at that fountain; whereas,
+if it had not been for the good Gerard, I know very well where the
+victory would have been. The truth is, he has an eye upon the crown.
+This, Charles, is the worthy who has deserved so much! All your generals
+are afflicted at it. As for me, I shall repass those mountains over
+which I came to you with seventy-two counts. Do you take him for a
+Mars?"
+
+Orlando happened to hear these words as he sat apart, and it displeased
+him with the lord of Pontiers that he should speak so, but much more
+that Charles should believe him. He would have killed Gan, if Uliviero
+had not prevented him and taken his sword out of his hand; nay, he would
+have killed Charlemagne; but at last he went from Paris by himself,
+raging with scorn and grief. He borrowed, as he went, of Ermillina
+the wife of Ogier, the Dane's sword Cortana and his horse Rondel, and
+proceeded on his way to Brava. His wife, Alda the Fair, hastened to
+embrace him; but while she was saying, "Welcome, my Orlando," he was
+going to strike her with his sword, for his head was bewildered, and he
+took her for the traitor. The fair Alda marvelled greatly, but Orlando
+recollected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped from
+his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested himself with her
+for some days.
+
+He then took his leave, being still carried away by his disdain, and
+resolved to pass over into Heathendom; and as he rode, he thought, every
+step of the way, of the traitor Gan; and so, riding on wherever the road
+took him, he reached the confines between the Christian countries and
+the Pagan, and came upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert.
+
+Now above the abbey was a great mountain, inhabited by three fierce
+giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, another Alabastro, and the
+third Morgante; and these giants used to disturb the abbey by throwing
+things down upon it from the mountain with slings, so that the poor
+little monks could not go out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked,
+but nobody would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot
+came himself, and opening the door bade him welcome. The good man told
+him the reason of the delay, and said that since the arrival of the
+giants they had been so perplexed that they did not know what to do.
+"Our ancient fathers in the desert," quoth he, "were rewarded according
+to their holiness. It is not to be supposed that they lived only upon
+locusts; doubtless, it also rained manna upon them from heaven; but
+here one is regaled with stones, which the giants pour on us from the
+mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest of the
+three, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great trees by the roots, and
+casts them on us." While they were talking thus in the cemetery, there
+came a stone which seemed as if it would break Rondel's back.
+
+"For God's sake, cavalier," said the abbot, "come in, for the manna is
+falling."
+
+"My dear abbot," answered Orlando, "this fellow, methinks, does not wish
+to let my horse feed; he wants to cure him of being restive; the stone
+seems as if it came from a good arm." "Yes," replied the holy father,
+"I did not deceive you. I think, some day or other, they will cast the
+mountain itself on us."
+
+Orlando quieted his horse, and then sat down to a meal; after which he
+said, "Abbot, I must go and return the present that has been made to my
+horse." The abbot with great tenderness endeavoured to dissuade him, but
+in vain; upon which he crossed him on the forehead, and said, "Go, then;
+and the blessing of God be with you."
+
+Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing
+him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would
+stay with him for a page, promising to make him comfortable. "Stupid
+Saracen," said Orlando, "I come to you, according to the will of God, to
+be your death, and not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants
+here, and are no longer to be endured, dog that you are!"
+
+The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to his weapons;
+and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, which struck him
+on the head with such force, as not only made his helmet ring again, but
+felled him to the earth. Passamonte thought he was dead. "What could
+have brought that paltry fellow here?" said he, as he turned away. But
+Christ never forsakes his followers. While Passamonte was going away,
+Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, "How now, giant? do you fancy you
+have killed me? Turn back, for unless you have wings, your escape is
+out of the question, dog of a renegade!" The giant, greatly marvelling,
+turned back; and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cortana
+naked in his hand, cleft his skull; upon which, cursing Mahomet, the
+monster tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blaspheming fell
+the sour-hearted and cruel wretch; but Orlando, in the mean while,
+thanked the Father and the Word.
+
+The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant; who, when
+he saw him, endeavoured to pluck up a great piece of stony earth by the
+roots. "Ho, ho!" cried Orlando, "you too are for throwing stones,
+are you?" Then Alabastro took his sling, and flung at him so large a
+fragment as forced Orlando to defend himself, for if it had struck him,
+he would no more have needed a surgeon;[1] but collecting his strength,
+he thrust his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell
+dead.
+
+"Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, "for I have always heard you
+called a perfect knight; and as I said, I will follow you all my life
+long."
+
+And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey; and by the way
+Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort
+him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our
+Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we
+must submit to the will of God. The doctors of our Church," continued
+he, "are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in heaven were to
+feel pity for their miserable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion
+in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing; and this, you see, would
+plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of their
+faith, that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do what he
+may, they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible for him to
+err; so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering everlasting
+punishment, it does not disturb them an atom. This is the custom, I
+assure you, in the choirs above."[2]
+
+"A word to the wise," said Morgante; "you shall see if I grieve for my
+brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God, and behave
+myself like an angel. So dust to dust; and now let us enjoy ourselves. I
+will cut off their hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy
+monks, that they may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out
+alone into the desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has
+purified me, and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom
+of heaven." So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, and
+left their bodies to the beasts and birds.
+
+They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Orlando in great
+anxiety; but the monks not knowing what had happened, ran to the abbot
+in great haste and alarm, saying, "Will you suffer this giant to come
+in?" And when the abbot saw the giant, he changed countenance. Orlando,
+perceiving him thus disturbed, made haste and said, "Abbot, peace be
+with you! The giant is a Christian; he believes in Christ, and has
+renounced his false prophet, Mahomet." And Morgante shewing the hands in
+proof of his faith, the abbot thanked Heaven with great contentment of
+mind.
+
+The abbot did much honour to Morgante, comparing him with St. Paul; and
+they rested there many days. One day, wandering over the house, they
+entered a room where the abbot kept a quantity of armour; and Morgante
+saw a bow which pleased him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in
+the place a great scarcity of water; and Orlando said, like his good
+brother, "Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water." "Command me
+as you please," said he; and placing a great tub on his shoulders, he
+went towards a spring at which he had been accustomed to drink, at the
+foot of the mountain. Having reached the spring, he suddenly heard a
+great noise in the forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it
+in the bow, and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing
+towards the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean
+through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in revenge, ran
+towards the giant, without giving him time to use a second arrow; so he
+lent him a cuff on the head which broke the bone, and killed him also;
+which stroke the rest seeing fled in haste through the valley. Morgante
+then placed the tub full of water upon one of his shoulders, and the
+two porkers on the other, and returned to the abbey which was at some
+distance, without spilling a drop.
+
+The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still more the
+pork; for there is no animal to whom food comes amiss. They let their
+breviaries therefore go to sleep a while, and fell heartily to work, so
+that the cats and dogs had reason to lament the polish of the bones.
+
+"But why do we stay here doing nothing?" said Orlando one day to
+Morgante; and he shook hands with the abbot, and told him he must take
+his leave. "I must go," said he, "and make up for lost time. I ought to
+have gone long ago, my good father; but I cannot tell you what I feel
+within me, at the content I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall
+bear in mind and in heart with me for ever the abbot, the abbey, and
+this desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a
+time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for me, in his
+own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do not forget us in your
+prayers."
+
+When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, his heart melted
+within him for tenderness, and he said, "Knight, if we have failed in
+any courtesy due to your prowess and great gentleness (and indeed what
+we have done has been but little), pray put it to the account of our
+ignorance, and of the place which we inhabit. We are but poor men of
+the cloister, better able to regale you with masses and orisons and
+paternosters, than with dinners and suppers. You have so taken this
+heart of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I
+shall be with you still wherever you go; and, on the other hand, you
+will always be present here with me. This seems a contradiction; but you
+are wise, and will take my meaning discreetly. You have saved the very
+life and spirit within us; for so much perplexity had those giants cast
+about our place, that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May
+He who sent you into these woods reward the justice and piety by which
+we are delivered from our trouble. Thanks be to him and to you. We shall
+all be disconsolate at your departure. We shall grieve that we cannot
+detain you among us for months and years; but you do not wear these
+weeds; you bear arms and armour; and you may possibly merit as well in
+carrying those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your
+virtue has been the means of shewing the giant the way to heaven. Go in
+peace then, and prosper, whoever you may be. I do not seek your name;
+but if ever I am asked who it was that came among us, I shall say that
+it was an angel from God. If there is any armour or other thing that you
+would have, go into the room where it is, and take it."
+
+"If you have any armour that would suit my companion," replied Orlando,
+"that I will accept with pleasure."
+
+"Come and see," said the abbot; and they went to a room that was full of
+armour. Morgante looked all about, but could find nothing large enough,
+except a rusty breast-plate, which fitted him marvellously. It had
+belonged to an enormous giant, who was killed there of old by Orlando's
+father, Milo of Angrante. There was a painting on the wall which told
+the whole story: how the giant had laid cruel and long siege to the
+abbey; and how he had been overthrown at last by the great Milo. Orlando
+seeing this, said within himself: "O God, unto whom all things are
+known, how came Milo here, who destroyed this giant?" And reading
+certain inscriptions which were there, he could no longer keep a firm
+countenance, but the tears ran down his cheeks.
+
+When the abbot saw Orlando weep, and his brow redden, and the light of
+his eyes become child-like for sweetness, he asked him the reason; but,
+finding him still dumb with emotion, he said, "I do not know whether you
+are overpowered by admiration of what is painted in this chamber. You
+must know that I am of high descent, though not through lawful wedlock.
+I believe I may say I am nephew or sister's son to no less a man than
+that Rinaldo, who was so great a Paladin in the world, though my own
+father was not of a lawful mother. Ansuigi was his name; my own, out in
+the world, was Chiaramonte; and this Milo was my father's brother. Ah,
+gentle baron, for blessed Jesus' sake, tell me what name is yours!"
+
+Orlando, all glowing with affection, and bathed in tears, replied, "My
+dear abbot and cousin, he before you is your Orlando." Upon this, they
+ran for tenderness into each other's arms, weeping on both sides with
+a sovereign affection, too high to be expressed. The abbot was so
+over-joyed, that he seemed as if he would never have done embracing
+Orlando. "By what fortune," said the knight, "do I find you in this
+obscure place? Tell me, my dear abbot, how was it you became a monk, and
+did not follow arms, like myself and the rest of us?"
+
+"It is the will of God," replied the abbot, hastening to give his
+feelings utterance. "Many and divers are the paths he points out for us
+by which to arrive at his city; some walk it with the sword--some with
+pastoral staff. Nature makes the inclination different, and therefore
+there are different ways for us to take: enough if we all arrive safely
+at one and the same place, the last as well as the first. We are all
+pilgrims through many kingdoms. We all wish to go to Rome, Orlando;
+but we go picking out our journey through different roads. Such is the
+trouble in body and soul brought upon us by that sin of the old apple.
+Day and night am I here with my book in hand--day and night do you ride
+about, holding your sword, and sweating oft both in sun and shadow; and
+all to get round at last to the home from which we departed--I say, all
+out of anxiety and hope to get back to our home of old." And the giant
+hearing them talk of these things, shed tears also.
+
+The Paladin and the giant quitted the abbey, the one on horseback and
+the other on foot, and journeyed through the desert till they came to
+a magnificent castle, the door of which stood open. They entered, and
+found rooms furnished in the most splendid manner--beds covered with
+cloth of gold, and floors rejoicing in variegated marbles. There was
+even a feast prepared in the saloon, but nobody to eat it, or to speak
+to them.
+
+Orlando suspected some trap, and did not quite like it; but Morgante
+thought nothing worth considering but the feast. "Who cares for the
+host," said he, "when there's such a dinner? Let us eat as much as we
+can, and bear off the rest. I always do that when I have the picking of
+castles."
+
+They accordingly sat down, and being very hungry with their day's
+journey, devoured heaps of the good things before them, eating with all
+the vigour of health, and drinking to a pitch of weakness.[3] They sat
+late in this manner enjoying themselves, and then retired for the night
+into rich beds.
+
+But what was their astonishment in the morning at finding that they
+could not get out of the place! There was no door. All the entrances had
+vanished, even to any feasible window.
+
+"We must be dreaming," said Orlando.
+
+"My dinner was no dream, I'll swear," said the giant. "As for the rest,
+let it be a dream if it pleases."
+
+Continuing to search up and down, they at length found a vault with
+a tomb in it; and out of the tomb came a voice, saying, "You must
+encounter with me, or stay here for ever. Lift, therefore, the stone
+that covers me."
+
+"Do you hear that?" said Morgante; "I'll have him out, if it's the devil
+himself. Perhaps it's two devils, Filthy-dog and Foul-mouth, or Itching
+and Evil-tail."[4]
+
+"Have him out," said Orlando, "whoever he is, even were it as many
+devils as were rained out of heaven into the centre."
+
+Morgante lifted up the stone, and out leaped, surely enough, a devil in
+the likeness of a dried-up dead body, black as a coal. Orlando seized
+him, and the devil grappled with Orlando. Morgante was for joining him,
+but the Paladin bade him keep back. It was a hard struggle, and
+the devil grinned and laughed, till the giant, who was a master of
+wrestling, could bear it no longer: so he doubled him up, and, in spite
+of all his efforts, thrust him back into the tomb.
+
+"You'll never get out," said the devil, "if you leave me shut up."
+
+"Why not?" inquired the Paladin.
+
+"Because your giant's baptism and my deliverance must go together,"
+answered the devil. "If he is not baptised, you can have no deliverance;
+and if I am not delivered, I can prevent it still, take my word for it."
+
+Orlando baptised the giant. The two companions then issued forth,
+and hearing a mighty noise in the house, looked back, and saw it all
+vanished.
+
+"I could find it in my heart," said Morgante, "to go down to those same
+regions below, and make all the devils disappear in like manner. Why
+shouldn't we do it? We'd set free all the poor souls there. Egad, I'd
+cut off Minos's tail--I'd pull out Charon's beard by the roots--make a
+sop of Phlegyas, and a sup of Phlegethon--unseat Pluto,--kill Cerberus
+and the Furies with a punch of the face a-piece--and set Beelzebub
+scampering like a dromedary."
+
+"You might find more trouble than you wot of," quoth Orlando, "and get
+worsted besides. Better keep the straight path, than thrust your head
+into out-of-the-way places."
+
+Morgante took his lord's advice, and went straightforward with him
+through many great adventures, helping him with loving good-will as
+often as he was permitted, sometimes as his pioneer, and sometimes as
+his finisher of troublesome work, such as a slaughter of some thousands
+of infidels. Now he chucked a spy into a river--now felled a rude
+ambassador to the earth (for he didn't stand upon ceremony)--now cleared
+a space round him in battle with the clapper of an old bell which he had
+found at the monastery--now doubled up a king in his tent, and bore him
+away, tent and all, and a Paladin with him, because he would not let the
+Paladin go.
+
+In the course of these services, the giant was left to take care of a
+lady, and lost his master for a time; but the office being at an end, he
+set out to rejoin him, and, arriving at a cross-road, met with a very
+extraordinary personage.
+
+This was a giant huger than himself, swarthy-faced, horrible, brutish.
+He came out of a wood, and appeared to be journeying somewhere.
+Morgante, who had the great bell-clapper in his hand above-mentioned,
+struck it on the ground with astonishment, as much as to say, "Who the
+devil is this?" and then set himself on a stone by the way-side to
+observe the creature.
+
+"What's your name, traveller?" said Morgante, as it came up.
+
+"My name's Margutte," said the phenomenon. "I intended to be a giant
+myself, but altered my mind, you see, and stopped half-way; so that I am
+only twenty feet or so."
+
+"I'm glad to see you," quoth his brother-giant. "But tell me, are you
+Christian or Saracen? Do you believe in Christ or in _Apollo_?"
+
+"To tell you the truth," said the other, "I believe neither in black
+nor blue, but in a good capon, whether it be roast or boiled. I
+believe sometimes also in butter, and, when I can get it, in new wine,
+particularly the rough sort; but, above all, I believe in wine that's
+good and old. Mahomet's prohibition of it is all moonshine. I am the
+son, you must know, of a Greek nun and a Turkish bishop; and the first
+thing I learned was to play the fiddle. I used to sing Homer to it.
+I was then concerned in a brawl in a mosque, in which the old bishop
+somehow happened to be killed; so I tied a sword to my side, and went to
+seek my fortune, accompanied by all the possible sins of Turk and Greek.
+People talk of the seven deadly sins; but I have seventy-seven that
+never quit me, summer or winter; by which you may judge of the amount
+of my venial ones. I am a gambler, a cheat, a ruffian, a highwayman, a
+pick-pocket, a glutton (at beef or blows); have no shame whatever; love
+to let every body know what I can do; lie, besides, about what I can't
+do; have a particular attachment to sacrilege; swallow perjuries like
+figs; never give a farthing to any body, but beg of every body, and
+abuse them into the bargain; look upon not spilling a drop of liquor as
+the chief of all the cardinal virtues; but must own I am not much given
+to assassination, murder being inconvenient; and one thing I am bound to
+acknowledge, which is, that I never betrayed a messmate."
+
+"That's as well," observed Morgante; "because you see, as you don't
+believe in any thing else, I'd have you believe in this bell-clapper of
+mine. So now, as you have been candid with me, and I am well instructed
+in your ways, we'll pursue our journey together."
+
+The best of giants, in those days, were not scrupulous in their modes of
+living; so that one of the best and one of the worst got on pretty well
+together, emptying the larders on the road, and paying nothing but
+douses on the chops. When they could find no inn, they hunted elephants
+and crocodiles. Morgante, who was the braver of the two, delighted to
+banter, and sometimes to cheat, Margutte; and he ate up all the fare;
+which made the other, notwithstanding the credit he gave himself for
+readiness of wit and tongue, cut a very sorry figure, and seriously
+remonstrate: "I reverence you," said Margutte, "in other matters; but in
+eating, you really don't behave well. He who deprives me of my share at
+meals is no friend; at every mouthful of which he robs me, I seem to
+lose an eye. I'm for sharing every thing to a nicety, even if it be no
+better than a fig."
+
+"You are a fine fellow," said Morgante; "you gain upon me very much. You
+are 'the master of those who know.'"[6]
+
+So saying, he made him put some wood on the fire, and perform a hundred
+other offices to render every thing snug; and then he slept: and next
+day he cheated his great scoundrelly companion at drink, as he had
+done the day before at meat; and the poor shabby devil complained; and
+Morgante laughed till he was ready to burst, and again and again always
+cheated him.
+
+There was a levity, nevertheless, in Margutte, which restored his
+spirits on the slightest glimpse of good fortune; and if he realised a
+hearty meal, he became the happiest, beastliest, and most confident of
+giants. The companions, in the course of their journey, delivered a
+damsel from the clutches of three other giants. She was the daughter of
+a great lord; and when she got home, she did honour to Morgante as to
+an equal, and put Margutte into the kitchen, where he was in a state of
+bliss. He did nothing but swill, stuff, surfeit, be sick, play at dice,
+cheat, filch, go to sleep, guzzle again, laugh, chatter, and tell a
+thousand lies.
+
+Morgante took leave of the young lady, who made him rich presents.
+Margutte, seeing this, and being always drunk and impudent, daubed his
+face like a Christmas clown, and making up to her with a frying-pan in
+his hand, demanded "something for the cook." The fair hostess gave him
+a jewel; and the vagabond skewed such a brutal eagerness in seizing it
+with his filthy hands, and making not the least acknowledgment, that
+when they got out of the house, Morgante was ready to fell him to the
+earth. He called him scoundrel and poltroon, and said he had disgraced
+him for ever.
+
+"Softly!" said the brute-beast. "Didn't you take me with you, knowing
+what sort of fellow I was? Didn't I tell you I had every sin and shame
+under heaven; and have I deceived you by the exhibition of a single
+virtue?"
+
+Morgante could not help laughing at a candour of this excessive nature.
+So they went on their way till they came to a wood, where they rested
+themselves by a fountain, and Margutte fell fast asleep. He had a pair
+of boots on, which Morgante felt tempted to draw off, that he might see
+what he would do on waking. He accordingly did so, and threw them to a
+little distance among the bushes. The sleeper awoke in good time,
+and, looking and searching round about, suddenly burst into roars of
+laughter. A monkey had got the boots, and sat pulling them on and off,
+making the most ridiculous gestures. The monkey busied himself, and the
+light-minded drunkard laughed; and at every fresh gesticulation of the
+new boot-wearer, the laugh grew louder and more tremendous, till at
+length it was found impossible to be restrained. The glutton had a
+laughing-fit. In vain he tried to stop himself; in vain his fingers
+would have loosened the buttons of his doublet, to give his lungs room
+to play. They couldn't do it; so he laughed and roared till he burst.
+The snap was like the splitting of a cannon. Morgante ran up to him, but
+it was of no use. He was dead.
+
+Alas! it was not the only death; it was not even the most trivial cause
+of a death. Giants are big fellows, but Death's a bigger, though he may
+come in a little shape. Morgante had succeeded in joining his master.
+He helped him to take Babylon; he killed a whale for him at sea that
+obstructed his passage; he played the part of a main-sail during a
+storm, holding out his arms and a great hide; but on coming to shore,
+a crab bit him in the heel; and behold the lot of the great giant--he
+died! He laughed, and thought it a very little thing, but it proved a
+mighty one.
+
+"He made the East tremble," said Orlando; "and the bite of a crab has
+slain him!"
+
+O life of ours, weak, and a fallacy![7]
+
+Orlando embalmed his huge friend, and had him taken to Babylon, and
+honourably interred; and, after many an adventure, in which he regretted
+him, his own days were closed by a far baser, though not so petty a
+cause.
+
+How shall I speak of it? exclaims the poet. How think of the horrible
+slaughter about to fall on the Christians and their greatest men, so
+that not a dry eye shall be left in France? How express my disgust at
+the traitor Gan, whose heart a thousand pardons from his sovereign, and
+the most undeserved rescues of him by the warrior he betrayed, could not
+shame or soften? How mourn the weakness of Charles, always deceived by
+him, and always trusting? How dare to present to my mind the good,
+the great, the ever-generous Orlando, brought by the traitor into the
+doleful pass of Roncesvalles and the hands of myriads of his enemies, so
+that even his superhuman strength availed not to deliver him out of the
+slaughterhouse, and he blew the blast with his dying breath, which was
+the mightiest, the farthest heard, and the most melancholy sound that
+ever came to the ears of the undeceived?
+
+Gan was known well to every body but his confiding sovereign. The
+Paladins knew him well; and in their moments of indignant disgust often
+told him so, though they spared him the consequences of his misdeeds,
+and even incurred the most frightful perils to deliver him out of the
+hands of his enemies. But he was brave; he was in favour with the
+sovereign, who was also their kinsman; and they were loyal and loving
+men, and knew that the wretch envied them for the greatness of their
+achievements, and might do the state a mischief; so they allowed
+themselves to take a kind of scornful pleasure in putting up with him.
+Their cousin Malagigi, the enchanter, had himself assisted Gan, though
+he knew him best of all, and had prophesied that the innumerable
+endeavours of his envy to destroy his king and country would bring some
+terrible evil at last to all Chistendom. The evil, alas! is at hand. The
+doleful time has come. It will be followed, it is true, by a worse fate
+of the wretch himself; but not till the valleys of the Pyrenees have run
+rivers of blood, and all France is in mourning.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: A common pleasantry in the old romances--"Galaor went in,
+and then the halberders attacked him on one side, and the knight on the
+other. He snatched an axe from one, and turned to the knight and smote
+him, so that he had no need of a surgeon."--Southey's _Amadis of Gaul_,
+vol. i. p. 146.]
+
+[Footnote 2:
+
+  "Sonsi i nostri dottori accordati,
+  Pigliando tutti una conclusione,
+  Che que' che son nel ciel glorificati,
+  S' avessin nel pensier compassione
+  De' miseri parenti che dannati
+  Son ne lo inferno in gran confusione,
+  La lor felicita nulla sarebbe
+  E vedi the qui ingiusto Iddio parebbe.
+
+  Ma egli anno posto in Gesu ferma spene;
+  E tanto pare a lor, quanto a lui pare:
+  Afferman cio ch' e' fu, che facci bene,
+  E che non possi in nessun modo errare:
+  Se padre o madre e ne l'eterne pene,
+  Di questo non si posson conturbare:
+  Che quel che piace a Dio, sol piace a loro
+  Questo s'osserva ne l'eterno core.
+
+  Al savio suol bastar poche parole,
+  Disse Morgante: tu il potrai vedere,
+  De' miei fratelli, Orlando, se mi duole,
+  E s'io m'accordero di Dio al volere,
+  Come tu di che in ciel servar si suole:
+  Morti co' morti; or pensiam di godere:
+  Io vo' tagliar le mani a tutti quanti,
+  E porterolle a que' monaci santi."
+
+This doctrine, which is horrible blasphemy in the eyes of natural
+feeling, is good reasoning in Catholic and Calvinistic theology.
+They first make the Deity's actions a necessity from some barbarous
+assumption, then square them according to a dictum of the Councils, then
+compliment him by laying all that he has made good and kindly within us
+mangled and mad at his feet. Meantime they think themselves qualified to
+denounce Moloch and Jugghanaut!]
+
+[Footnote 3:
+
+  "E furno al here infermi, al mangiar sani."
+
+I am not sure that I am right in my construction of this passage.
+Perhaps Pulci means to say, that they had the appetites of men in
+health, and the thirst of a fever.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Cagnazzo, Farfarello. Libicocco, and Malacoda; names of
+devils in Dante.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Il maestro di color che sanno." A jocose application of
+Dante's praise of Aristotle.]
+
+[Footnote 7: "O vita nostra, debole e fallace!"]
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
+
+Notice.
+
+This is the
+
+  "sad and fearful story
+  Of the Roncesvalles fight;"
+
+an event which national and religious exaggeration impressed deeply on
+the popular mind of Europe. Hence Italian romances and Spanish ballads:
+hence the famous passage in Milton,
+
+  "When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
+  By Fontarabbia:"
+
+hence Dante's record of the _dolorosa rotta_ (dolorous rout) in the
+_Inferno_, where he compares the voice of Nimrod with the horn sounded
+by the dying Orlando: hence the peasant in Cervantes, who is met by Don
+Quixote singing the battle as he comes along the road in the morning:
+and hence the song of Roland actually thundered forth by the army of
+William the Conqueror as they advanced against the English.
+
+But Charlemagne did not "fall," as Milton has stated. Nor does Pulci
+make him do so. In this respect, if in little else, the Italian poet
+adhered to the fact. The whole story is a remarkable instance of what
+can be done by poetry and popularity towards misrepresenting and
+aggrandising a petty though striking adventure. The simple fact was the
+cutting off the rear of Charlemagne's army by the revolted Gascons, as
+he returned from a successful expedition into Spain. Two or three only
+of his nobles perished, among whom was his nephew Roland, the obscure
+warden of his marches of Brittany. But Charlemagne was the temporal head
+of Christendom; the poets constituted his nephew its champion; and hence
+all the glories and superhuman exploits of the Orlando of Pulci and
+Ariosto. The whole assumption of the wickedness of the Saracens,
+particularly of the then Saracen king of Spain, whom Pulci's authority,
+the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, strangely called Marsilius, was nothing
+but a pious fraud; the pretended Marsilius having been no less a person
+than the great and good Abdoulrahmaun the First, who wrested the
+dominion of that country out of the hands of the usurpers of his
+family-rights. Yet so potent and long-lived are the most extravagant
+fictions, when genius has put its heart into them, that to this day we
+read of the devoted Orlando and his friends not only with gravity, but
+with the liveliest emotion.
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES
+
+A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died
+in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses. Altogether
+impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of
+this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, than
+melancholy; but though Gan will die at last, Orlando must die
+before him, and that makes a tragedy of all. I had a doubt whether,
+consistently with the truth, I could give the reader even that sorry
+satisfaction; for at the beginning of the dreadful battle, Orlando's
+cousin, Rinaldo, who is said to have joined it before it was over, and
+there, as well as afterwards, to have avenged his death, was far away
+from the seat of slaughter, in Egypt; and how was I to suppose that he
+could arrive soon enough in the valleys of the Pyrenees? But an angel
+upon earth shewed me the secret, even Angelo Poliziano, the glory of his
+age and country. He informed me how Arnauld, the Provencal poet, had
+written of this very matter, and brought the Paladin from Egypt to
+France by means of the wonderful skill in occult science possessed by
+his cousin Malagigi--a wonder to the ignorant, but not so marvellous to
+those who know that all the creation is full of wonders, and who have
+different modes of relating the same events. By and by, a great many
+things will be done in the world, of which we have no conception now,
+and people will be inclined to believe them works of the devil, when, in
+fact, they will be very good works, and contribute to angelical effects,
+whether the devil be forced to have a hand in them or not; for evil
+itself can work only in subordination to good. So listen when the
+astonishment comes, and reflect and think the best. Meantime, we must
+speak of another and more truly devilish astonishment, and of the pangs
+of mortal flesh and blood.
+
+The traitor Gan, for the fiftieth time, had secretly brought the
+infidels from all quarters against his friend and master, the Emperor
+Charles; and Charles, by the help of Orlando, had conquered them all.
+The worst of them, Marsilius, king of Spain, had agreed to pay the court
+of France tribute; and Gan, in spite of all the suspicions he excited
+in this particular instance, and his known villany at all times, had
+succeeded in persuading his credulous sovereign to let him go ambassador
+into Spain, where he put a final seal to his enormities, by plotting
+the destruction of his employer, and the special overthrow of Orlando.
+Charles was now old and white-haired, and Gan was so too; but the one
+was only confirmed in his credulity, and the other in his crimes. The
+traitor embraced Orlando over and over again at taking leave, praying
+him to write if he had any thing to say before the arrangements with
+Marsilius, and taking such pains to seem loving and sincere, that his
+villany was manifest to every one but the old monarch. He fastened with
+equal tenderness on Uliviero, who smiled contemptuously in his face, and
+thought to himself, "You may make as many fair speeches as you choose,
+but you lie." All the other Paladins who were present thought the same
+and they said as much to the emperor; adding, that on no account should
+Gan be sent ambassador to Marsilius. But Charles was infatuated. His
+beard and his credulity had grown old together.
+
+Gan was received with great honour in Spain by Marsilius. The king,
+attended by his lords, came fifteen miles out of Saragossa to meet him,
+and then conducted him into the city amid tumults of delight. There
+was nothing for several days but balls, and games, and exhibitions
+of chivalry, the ladies throwing flowers on the heads of the French
+knights, and the people shouting "France! France! Mountjoy and St.
+Denis!"
+
+Gan made a speech, "like a Demosthenes," to King Marsilius in public;
+but he made him another in private, like nobody but himself. The king
+and he were sitting in a garden; they were traitors both, and began
+to understand, from one another's looks, that the real object of the
+ambassador was yet to be discussed. Marsilius accordingly assumed a more
+than usually cheerful and confidential aspect; and, taking his visitor
+by the hand, said, "You know the proverb, Mr. Ambassador--'At dawn, the
+mountain; afternoon, the fountain.' Different things at different hours.
+So here is a fountain to accommodate us."
+
+It was a very beautiful fountain, so clear that you saw your face in
+it as in a mirror; and the spot was encircled with fruit-trees that
+quivered with the fresh air. Gan praised it very much, contriving to
+insinuate, on one subject, his satisfaction with the glimpses he
+got into another. Marsilius understood him; and as he resumed the
+conversation, and gradually encouraged a mutual disclosure of their
+thoughts, Gan, without appearing to look him in the face, was enabled to
+do so by contemplating the royal visage in the water, where he saw its
+expression become more and more what he desired. Marsilius, meantime,
+saw the like symptoms in the face of Gan. By degrees, he began to touch
+on that dissatisfaction with Charlemagne and his court, which he knew
+was in both their minds: he lamented, not as to the ambassador, but as
+to the friend, the injuries which he said he had received from Charles
+in the repeated attacks on his dominions, and the emperor's wish to
+crown Orlando king of them; till at length he plainly uttered his
+belief, that if that tremendous Paladin were but dead, good men would
+get their rights, and his visitor and himself have all things at their
+disposal.
+
+Gan heaved a sigh, as if he was unwillingly compelled to allow the force
+of what the king said; but, unable to contain himself long, he lifted up
+his face, radiant with triumphant wickedness, and exclaimed, "Every word
+you utter is truth. Die he must; and die also must Uliviero, who struck
+me that foul blow at court. Is it treachery to punish affronts like
+those? I have planned every thing--I have settled every thing already
+with their besotted master. Orlando could not be expected to be brought
+hither, where he has been accustomed to look for a crown; but he will
+come to the Spanish borders--to Roncesvalles--for the purpose of
+receiving the tribute. Charles will await him, at no great distance, in
+St. John Pied de Port. Orlando will bring but a small band with him;
+you, when you meet him, will have secretly your whole army at your back.
+You surround him; and who receives tribute then?"
+
+The new Judas had scarcely uttered these words, when the delight of him
+and his associate was interrupted by a change in the face of nature.
+The sky was suddenly overcast; it thundered and lightened; a laurel was
+split in two from head to foot; the fountain ran into burning blood;
+there was an earthquake, and the carob-tree under which Gan was sitting,
+and which was of the species on which Judas Iscariot hung himself,
+dropped some of its fruit on his head. The hair of the head rose in
+horror.
+
+Marsilius, as well as Gan, was appalled at this omen; but on assembling
+his soothsayers, they came to the conclusion that the laurel-tree turned
+the omen against the emperor, the successor of the Caesars; though one
+of them renewed the consternation of Gan, by saying that he did not
+understand the meaning of the tree of Judas, and intimating that perhaps
+the ambassador could explain it. Gan relieved his consternation with
+anger; the habit of wickedness prevailed over all considerations; and
+the king prepared to march for Roncesvalles at the head of all his
+forces.
+
+Gan wrote to Charlemagne, to say how humbly and properly Marsilius was
+coming to pay the tribute into the hands of Orlando, and how handsome it
+would be of the emperor to meet him halfway, as agreed upon, at St. John
+Pied de Port, and so be ready to receive him, after the payment, at
+his footstool. He added a brilliant account of the tribute and its
+accompanying presents. They included a crown in the shape of a garland
+which had a carbuncle in it that gave light in darkness; two lions of
+an "immeasurable length, and aspects that frightened every body;" some
+"lively buffalos," leopards, crocodiles, and giraffes; arms and armour
+of all sorts; and apes and monkeys seated among the rich merchandise
+that loaded the backs of the camels. This imaginary treasure contained,
+furthermore, two enchanted spirits, called "Floro and Faresse," who were
+confined in a mirror, and were to tell the emperor wonderful things,
+particularly Floro (for there is nothing so nice in its details as
+lying): and Orlando was to have heaps of caravans full of Eastern
+wealth, and a hundred white horses, all with saddles and bridles of
+gold. There was a beautiful vest, too, for Uliviero, all over jewels,
+worth ten thousand "seraffi," or more.
+
+The good emperor wrote in turn to say how pleased he was with the
+ambassador's diligence, and that matters were arranged precisely as
+he wished. His court, however, had its suspicions still. Nobody could
+believe that Gan had not some new mischief in contemplation. Little,
+nevertheless, did they imagine, after the base endeavours he had but
+lately made against them, that he had immediately plotted a new
+and greater one, and that his object in bringing Charles into the
+neighbourhood of Roncesvalles was to deliver him more speedily into the
+hands of Marsilius, in the event of the latter's destruction of Orlando.
+
+Orlando, however, did as his lord and sovereign desired. He went to
+Roncesvalles, accompanied by a moderate train of warriors, not dreaming
+of the atrocity that awaited him. Gan himself, meantime, had hastened on
+to France before Marsilius, in order to shew himself free and easy in
+the presence of Charles, and secure the success of his plot; while
+Marsilius, to make assurance doubly sure, brought into the passes of
+Roncesvalles no less than three armies, who were successively to fall on
+the Paladin, in case of the worst, and so extinguish him with numbers.
+He had also, by Gan's advice, brought heaps of wine and good cheer to
+be set before his victims in the first instance; "for that," said the
+traitor, "will render the onset the more effective, the feasters being
+unarmed; and, supposing prodigies of valour to await even the attack of
+your second army, you will have no trouble with your third. One thing,
+however, I must not forget," added he; "my son Baldwin is sure to be
+with Orlando; you must take care of his life for my sake." "I give him
+this vest off my own body," said the king; "let him wear it in the
+battle, and have no fear. My soldiers shall be directed not to touch
+him."
+
+Gan went away rejoicing to France. He embraced the court and his
+sovereign all round, with the air of a man who had brought them nothing
+but blessings; and the old king wept for very tenderness and delight.
+
+"Something is going on wrong, and looks very black," thought Malagigi,
+the good wizard; "and Rinaldo is not here, and it is indispensably
+necessary that he should be. I must find out where he is, and
+Ricciardetto too, and send for them with all speed, and at any price."
+Malagigi called up, by his art, a wise, terrible, and cruel spirit,
+named Ashtaroth;--no light personage to deal with--no little spirit,
+such as plays tricks with you like a fairy. A much blacker visitant was
+this.
+
+"Tell me, and tell me truly of Rinaldo," said Malagigi to the spirit.
+
+Hard looked the demon at the Paladin, and said nothing. His aspect was
+clouded and violent. He wished to see whether his summoner retained all
+the force of his art.
+
+The enchanter, with an aspect still cloudier, bade Ashtaroth lay down
+that look. While giving this order, he also made signs indicative of a
+disposition to resort to angrier compulsion; and the devil, apprehending
+that he would confine him in some hateful place, loosened his tongue,
+and said, "You have not told me what you desire to know of Rinaldo."
+
+"I desire to know what he has been doing, and where he is," returned the
+enchanter.
+
+"He has been conquering and baptising the world, east and west," said
+the demon, "and is now in Egypt with Ricciardetto."
+
+"And what has Gan been plotting with Marsilius," inquired Malagigi, "and
+what is to come of it?"
+
+"On neither of those points can I enlighten you," said the devil. "I was
+not attending to Gan at the time, and we fallen spirits know not the
+future. Had we done so, we had not been so willing to incur the danger
+of falling. All I discern is, that, by the signs and comets in the
+heavens, something dreadful is about to happen--something very strange,
+treacherous, and bloody; and that Gan has a seat ready prepared for him
+in hell."
+
+"Within three days," cried the enchanter, loudly, "fetch Rinaldo
+and Ricciardetto into the pass of Roncesvalles. Do it, and I hereby
+undertake never to summon thee more."
+
+"Suppose they will not trust themselves with me," said the spirit.
+
+"Enter Rinaldo's horse, and bring him, whether he trust thee or not."
+
+"It shall be done," returned the demon; "and my serving-devil
+Foul-Mouth, or Fire-Red, shall enter the horse of Ricciardetto. Doubt it
+not. Am I not wise, and thyself powerful?"
+
+There was an earthquake, and Ashtaroth disappeared.
+
+Marsilius has now made his first movement towards the destruction of
+Orlando, by sending before him his vassal-king Blanchardin with his
+presents of wines and other luxuries. The temperate but courteous hero
+took them in good part, and distributed them as the traitor wished; and
+then Blanchardin, on pretence of going forward to salute Charlemagne
+at St. John Pied de Port, returned and put himself at the head of the
+second army, which was the post assigned him by his liege lord. The
+device on his flag was an "Apollo" on a field azure. King Falseron,
+whose son Orlando had slain in battle, headed the first army, the device
+of which was a black figure of the devil Belphegor on a dapple-grey
+field. The third army was under King Balugante, and had for ensign a
+Mahomet with golden wings in a field of red. Marsilius made a speech to
+them at night, in which he confessed his ill faith, but defended it on
+the ground of Charles's hatred of their religion, and of the example
+of "Judith and Holofernes." He said, that he had not come there to pay
+tribute, and sell his countrymen for slaves, but to make all Christendom
+pay tribute to them as conquerors; and he concluded by recommending to
+their good-will the son of his friend Gan, whom they would know by the
+vest he had sent him, and who was the only soul among the Christians
+they were to spare.
+
+This son of Gan, meantime, and several of the Paladins who were
+disgusted with Charles's credulity, and anxious at all events to be with
+Orlando, had joined the hero in the fated valley; so that the little
+Christian host, considering the tremendous valour of their lord and his
+friends, and the comparative inefficiency of that of the infidels,
+were at any rate not to be sold for nothing. Rinaldo, alas! the second
+thunderbolt of Christendom, was destined not to be there in time to save
+their lives. He could only avenge the dreadful tragedy, and prevent
+still worse consequences to the whole Christian court and empire.
+The Paladins had in vain begged Orlando to be on his guard against
+treachery, and send for a more numerous body of men. The great heart of
+the Champion of the Faith was unwilling to think the worst as long as
+he could help it. He refused to summon aid that might be superfluous;
+neither would he do any thing but what his liege lord had desired. And
+yet he could not wholly repress a misgiving. A shadow had fallen on his
+heart, great and cheerful as it was. The anticipations of his friends
+disturbed him, in spite of the face with which he met them. I am not
+sure that he did not, by a certain instinctive foresight, expect death
+itself; but he felt bound not to encourage the impression. Besides, time
+pressed; the moment of the looked-for tribute was at hand; and little
+combinations of circumstances determine often the greatest events.
+
+King Blanchardin had brought Orlando's people a luxurious supper; King
+Marsilius was to arrive early next day with the tribute; and Uliviero
+accordingly, with the morning sun, rode forth to reconnoitre, and see
+if he could discover the peaceful pomp of the Spanish court in the
+distance. Guottibuoffi was with him, a warrior who had expected the very
+worst, and repeatedly implored Orlando to believe it possible. Uliviero
+and he rode up the mountain nearest them, and from the top of it beheld
+the first army of Marsilius already forming in the passes.
+
+"O Guottibuoffi!" exclaimed he, "behold thy prophecies come true! behold
+the last day of the glory of Charles! Every where I see the arms of the
+traitors around us. I feel Paris tremble all the way through France, to
+the ground beneath my feet. O Malagigi, too much in the right wert thou!
+O devil Gan, this then is the consummation of thy good offices!"
+
+Uliviero put spurs to his horse, and galloped back down the mountain to
+Orlando.
+
+"Well," cried the hero, "what news?"
+
+"Bad news," said his cousin; "such as you would not hear of yesterday.
+Marsilius is here in arms, and all the world has come with him."
+
+The Paladins pressed round Orlando, and entreated him to sound his horn,
+in token that he needed help. His only answer was, to mount his horse,
+and ride up the mountain with Sansonetto.
+
+As soon, however, as he cast forth his eyes and beheld what was round
+about him, he turned in sorrow, and looked down into Roncesvalles, and
+said, "O valley, miserable indeed! the blood that is shed in thee this
+day will colour thy name for ever."
+
+Many of the Paladins had ridden after him, and they again pressed him to
+sound his horn, if only in pity to his own people. He said, "If Caesar
+and Alexander were here, Scipio and Hannibal, and Nebuchadnezzar with
+all his flags, and Death stared me in the face with his knife in his
+hand, never would I sound my horn for the baseness of fear."
+
+Orlando's little camp were furious against the Saracens. They armed
+themselves with the greatest impatience. There was nothing but lacing
+of helmets and mounting of horses; and good Archbishop Turpin went
+from rank to rank, exhorting and encouraging the warriors of Christ.
+Accoutrements and habiliments were put on the wrong way; words and
+deeds mixed in confusion; men running against one another out of very
+absorption in themselves; all the place full of cries of "Arm! arm! the
+enemy!" and the trumpets clanged over all against the mountain-echoes.
+
+Orlando and his captains withdrew for a moment to consultation. He
+fairly groaned for sorrow, and at first had not a word to say; so
+wretched he felt at having brought his people to die in Roncesvalles.
+
+Uliviero spoke first. He could not resist the opportunity of comforting
+himself a little in his despair, with referring to his unheeded advice.
+
+"You see, cousin," said he, "what has come at last. Would to God you had
+attended to what I said; to what Malagigi said; to what we all said! I
+told you Marsilius was nothing but an anointed scoundrel. Yet forsooth,
+he was to bring us tribute! and Charles is this moment expecting his
+mummeries at St. John Pied de Port! Did ever any body believe a word
+that Gan said, but Charles? And now you see this rotten fruit has come
+to a head;--this medlar has got its crown."
+
+Orlando said nothing in answer to Uliviero; for in truth he had nothing
+to say. He broke away to give orders to the camp; bade them take
+refreshment; and then addressing both officers and men, he said, "I
+confess, that if it had entered my heart to conceive the king of Spain
+to be such a villain, never would you have seen this day. He has
+exchanged with me a thousand courtesies and good words; and I thought
+that the worse enemies we had been before, the better friends we had
+become now. I fancied every human being capable of this kind of virtue
+on a good opportunity, saving, indeed, such base-hearted wretches as can
+never forgive their very forgivers; and of these I certainly did not
+suppose him to be one. Let us die, if we must die, like honest and
+gallant men; so that it shall be said of us, it was only our bodies that
+died. It becomes our souls to be invincible, and our glory immortal.
+Our motto must be, 'A good heart and no hope.' The reason why I did not
+sound the horn was, partly because I thought it did not become us, and
+partly because our liege lord could be of little use, even if he heard
+it. Let Gan have his glut of us like a carrion crow; but let him find
+us under heaps of his Saracens, an example for all time. Heaven, my
+friends, is with us, if earth is against us. Methinks I see it open
+this moment, ready to receive our souls amidst crowns of glory; and
+therefore, as the champion of God's church, I give you my benediction;
+and the good archbishop here will absolve you; and so, please God, we
+shall all go to Heaven and be happy."
+
+And with these words Orlando sprang to his horse, crying, "Away against
+the Saracens!" but he had no sooner turned his face than he wept
+bitterly, and said, "O holy Virgin, think not of me, the sinner Orlando,
+but have pity on these thy servants."
+
+Archbishop Turpin did as Orlando said, giving the whole band his
+benediction at once, and absolving them from their sins, so that every
+body took comfort in the thought of dying for Christ, and thus they
+embraced one another, weeping; and then lance was put to thigh, and the
+banner was raised that was won in the jousting at Aspramont.
+
+And now with a mighty dust, and an infinite sound of horns, and
+tambours, and trumpets, which came filling the valley, the first army
+of the infidels made its appearance, horses neighing, and a thousand
+pennons flying in the air. King Falseron led them on, saying to his
+officers, "Now, gentlemen, recollect what I said. The first battle is
+for the leaders only;--and, above all, let nobody dare to lay a finger
+on Orlando. He belongs to myself. The revenge of my son's death is mine.
+I will cut the man down that comes between us."
+
+"Now, friends," said Orlando, "every man for himself, and St. Michael
+for us all. There is no one here that is not a perfect knight."
+
+And he might well say it; for the flower of all France was there, except
+Rinaldo and Ricciardetto; every man a picked man; all friends and
+constant companions of Orlando. There was Richard of Normandy, and
+Guottibuoffi, and Uliviero, and Count Anselm, and Avolio, and Avino, and
+the gentle Berlinghieri, and his brother, and Sansonetto, and the good
+Duke Egibard, and Astolfo the Englishman, and Angiolin of Bayona, and
+all the other Paladins of France, excepting those two whom I have
+mentioned. And so the captains of the little troop and of the great
+array sat looking at one another, and singling one another out, as the
+latter came on; and then either side began raising their war-cries, and
+the mob of the infidels halted, and the knights put spear in rest, and
+ran for a while, two and two in succession, each one against the other.
+
+Astolfo was the first to move. He ran against Arlotto of Soria; and
+Angiolin then ran against Malducco; and Mazzarigi the Renegade came
+against Avino; and Uliviero was borne forth by his horse Rondel, who
+couldn't stand still, against Malprimo, the first of the captains of
+Falseron.
+
+And now lances began to be painted red, without any brush but
+themselves; and the new colour extended itself to the bucklers, and the
+cuishes, and the cuirasses, and the trappings of the steeds.
+
+Astolfo thrust his antagonist's body out of the saddle, and his soul
+into the other world; and Angiolin gave and took a terrible blow with
+Malducco; but his horse bore him onward; and Avino had something of the
+like encounter with Mazzarigi; but Uliviero, though he received a thrust
+which hurt him, sent his lance right through the heart of Malprimo.
+
+Falseron was daunted at this blow. "Verily," thought he, "this is a
+miracle." Uliviero did not press on among the Saracens, his wound was
+too painful; but Orlando now put himself and his whole band into motion,
+and you may guess what an uproar ensued. The sound of the rattling of
+the blows and helmets was as if the forge of Vulcan had been thrown
+open. Falseron beheld Orlando coming so furiously, that he thought him a
+Lucifer who had burst his chain, and was quite of another mind than when
+he proposed to have him all to himself. On the contrary, he recommended
+himself to his gods; and turning away, begged for a more auspicious
+season of revenge. But Orlando hailed and arrested him with a terrible
+voice, saying, "O thou traitor! Was this the end to which old quarrels
+were made up? Dost thou not blush, thou and thy fellow-traitor
+Marsilius, to have kissed me on the cheek like a Judas, when last thou
+wert in France?"
+
+Orlando had never shewn such anger in his countenance as he did that
+day. He dashed at Falseron with a fury so swift, and at the same time
+a mastery of his lance so marvellous, that though he plunged it in the
+man's body so as instantly to kill him, the body did not move in the
+saddle. The hero himself, as he rushed onwards, was fain to see the end
+of a stroke so perfect, and, turning his horse back, he touched the
+carcass with his sword, and it fell on the instant. They say, that it
+had no sooner fallen than it disappeared. People got off their horses
+to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being
+left; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found as empty as
+the shell that is cast by a lobster. O new, and strange, and portentous
+event!--proof manifest of the anger with which God regards treachery.
+
+When the first infidel army beheld their leader dead, such fear fell
+upon them, that they were for leaving the field to the Paladins; but
+they were unable. Marsilius had drawn the rest of his forces round the
+valley like a net, so that their shoulders were turned in vain. Orlando
+rode into the thick of them, with Count Anselm by his side. He rushed
+like a tempest; and wherever he went, thunderbolts fell upon helmets.
+The Paladins drove here and there after them, each making a whirlwind
+round about him, and a bloody circle. Uliviero was again in the _melee_;
+and Walter of Amulion threw himself into it; and Baldwin roared like
+a lion; and Avino and Avolio reaped the wretches' heads like a
+turnip-field; and blows blinded men's eyes; and Archbishop Turpin
+himself had changed his crozier for a lance, and chased a new flock
+before him to the mountains.
+
+Yet what could be done against foes without number? Multitudes fill
+up the spaces left by the dead without stopping. Marsilius, from his
+anxious and raging post, constantly pours them in. The Paladins are as
+units to thousands. Why tarry the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto?
+
+The horses did not tarry; but fate had been quicker than enchantment.
+Ashtaroth, nevertheless, had presented himself to Rinaldo in Egypt, as
+though he had issued out of a flash of lightning. After telling his
+mission, and giving orders to hundreds of invisible spirits round about
+him (for the air was full of them), he and Foul-Mouth, his servant,
+entered the horses of Rinaldo and Ricciardetto, which began to neigh and
+snort and leap with the fiends within them, till off they flew through
+the air over the pyramids, crowds of spirits going like a tempest before
+them. Ricciardetto shut his eyes at first, on perceiving himself so high
+in the air; but he speedily became used to it, though he looked down
+on the sun at last. In this manner they passed the desert, and the
+sea-coast, and the ocean, and swept the tops of the Pyrenees, Ashtaroth
+talking to them of wonders by the way; for he was one of the wisest of
+the devils, and knew a great many things which were then unknown to man.
+He laughed, for instance, as they went over sea, at the notion, among
+other vain fancies, that nothing was to be found beyond the pillars of
+Hercules; "for," said he, "the earth is round, and the sea has an even
+surface all over it; and there are nations on the other side of the
+globe, who walk with their feet opposed to yours, and worship other gods
+than the Christians."
+
+"Hah!" said Rinaldo; "and may I ask whether they can be saved?"
+
+"It is a bold thing to ask," said the devil; "but do you take the
+Redeemer for a partisan, and fancy he died for you only? Be assured he
+died for the whole world, Antipodes and all. Perhaps not one soul will
+be left out the pale of salvation at last, but the whole human race
+adore the truth, and find mercy. The Christian is the only true
+religion; but Heaven loves all goodness that believes honestly,
+whatsoever the belief may be."
+
+Rinaldo was mightily taken with the humanity of the devil's opinions:
+but they were now approaching the end of their journey, and began to
+hear the noise of the battle; and he could no longer think of any thing
+but the delight of being near Orlando, and plunging into the middle of
+it.
+
+"You shall be in the very heart of it instantly," said his bearer.
+"I love you, and would fain do all you desire. Do not fancy that all
+nobleness of spirit is lost among us people below. You know what the
+proverb says, 'There's never a fruit, however degenerate, but will taste
+of its stock.' I was of a different order of beings once, and--But it is
+as well not to talk of happy times. Yonder is Marsilius; and there goes
+Orlando. Farewell, and give me a place in your memory."
+
+Rinaldo could not find words to express his sense of the devil's
+good-will, nor of that of Foul Mouth himself. He said: "Ashtaroth, I am
+as sorry to part with you as if you were a brother; and I certainly do
+believe that nobleness of spirit exists, as you say, among your people
+below. I shall be glad to see you both sometimes, if you can come; and I
+pray God (if my poor prayer be worth any thing) that you may all repent,
+and obtain his pardon; for without repentance, you know, nothing can be
+done for you."
+
+"If I might suggest a favour," returned Ashtaroth, "since you are so
+good as to wish to do me one, persuade Malagigi to free me from his
+service, and I am yours for ever. To serve you will be a pleasure to me.
+You will only have to say, 'Ashtaroth,' and my good friend here will be
+with you in an instant."
+
+"I am obliged to you," cried Rinaldo, "and so is my brother. I will
+write Malagigi, not merely a letter, but a whole packet-full of your
+praises; and so I will to Orlando; and you shall be set free, depend on
+it, your company has been so perfectly agreeable."
+
+"Your humble servant," said Ashtaroth, and vanished with his companion
+like lightning.
+
+But they did not go far.
+
+There was a little chapel by the road-side in Roncesvalles, which had
+a couple of bells; and on the top of that chapel did the devils place
+themselves, in order that they might catch the souls of the infidels as
+they died, and so carry them off to the infernal regions. Guess if their
+wings had plenty to do that day! Guess if Minos and Rhadamanthus were
+busy, and Charon sung in his boat, and Lucifer hugged himself for joy.
+Guess, also, if the tables in heaven groaned with nectar and ambrosia,
+and good old St. Peter had a dry hair in his beard.
+
+The two Paladins, on their horses, dropped right into the middle of the
+Saracens, and began making such havoc about them, that Marsilius, who
+overlooked the fight from a mountain, thought his soldiers had turned
+one against the other. He therefore descended in fury with his third
+army; and Rinaldo, seeing him coming, said to Ricciardetto, "We had
+better be off here, and join Orlando;" and with these words, he gave his
+horse one turn round before he retreated, so as to enable his sword to
+make a bloody circle about him; and stories say, that he sheared off
+twenty heads in the whirl of it. He then dashed through the astonished
+beholders towards the battle of Orlando, who guessed it could be no
+other than his cousin, and almost dropped from his horse, out of desire
+to meet him. Ricciardetto followed Rinaldo; and Uliviero coming up at
+the same moment, the rapture of the whole party is not to be expressed.
+They almost died for joy. After a thousand embraces, and questions, and
+explanations, and expressions of astonishment (for the infidels held
+aloof awhile, to take breath from the horror and mischief they had
+undergone), Orlando refreshed his little band of heroes, and then drew
+Rinaldo apart, and said, "O my brother, I feel such delight at seeing
+you, I can hardly persuade myself I am not dreaming. Heaven be praised
+for it. I have no other wish on earth, now that I see you before I die.
+Why didn't you write? But never mind. Here you are, and I shall not die
+for nothing."
+
+"I did write," said Rinaldo, "and so did Ricciardetto; but villany
+intercepted our letters. Tell me what to do, my dear cousin; for time
+presses, and all the world is upon us."
+
+"Gan has brought us here," said Orlando, "under pretence of receiving
+tribute from Marsilius--you see of what sort; and Charles, poor old man,
+is waiting to receive his homage at the town of St. John! I have never
+seen a lucky day since you left us. I believe I have done for Charles
+more than in duty bound, and that my sins pursue me, and I and mine must
+all perish in Roncesvalles."
+
+"Look to Marsilius," exclaimed Rinaldo; "he is right upon us."
+
+Marsilius was upon them, surely enough, at once furious and frightened
+at the coming of the new Paladins; for his camp, numerous as it was, had
+not only held aloof, but turned about to fly like herds before the lion;
+so he was forced to drive them back, and bring up his other troops,
+reasonably thinking that such numbers must overwhelm at last, if they
+could but be kept together.
+
+Not the less, however, for this, did the Paladins continue to fight as
+if with joy. They killed and trampled wheresoever they went; Rinaldo
+fatiguing himself with sending infinite numbers of souls to Ashtaroth,
+and Orlando making a bloody passage towards Marsilius, whom he hoped to
+settle as he had done Falseron.
+
+In the course of this his tremendous progress, the hero struck a youth
+on the head, whose helmet was so good as to resist the blow, but at the
+same time flew off; and Orlando seized him by the hair to kill him.
+"Hold!" cried the youth, as loud as want of breath could let him; "you
+loved my father--I'm Bujaforte."
+
+The Paladin had never seen Bujaforte; but he saw the likeness to the
+good old Man of the Mountain, his father; and he let go the youth's
+hair, and embraced and kissed him. "O Bujaforte!" said he; "I loved him
+indeed my good old man; but what does his son do here, fighting against
+his friend?"
+
+Bujaforte was a long time before he could speak for weeping. At length
+he said, "Orlando, let not your noble heart be pained with ill thoughts
+of my father's son. I am forced to be here by my lord and master
+Marsilius. I had no friend left me in the world, and he took me into his
+court, and has brought me here before I knew what it was for; and I have
+made a shew of fighting, but have not hurt a single Christian. Treachery
+is on every side of you. Baldwin himself has a vest given him by
+Marsilius, that every body may know the son of his friend Gan, and do
+him no injury. See there--look how the lances avoid him."
+
+"Put your helmet on again," said Orlando, "and behave just as you have
+done. Never will your father's friend be an enemy to the son. Only take
+care not to come across Rinaldo."
+
+The hero then turned in fury to look for Baldwin, who was hastening
+towards him at that moment with friendliness in his looks.
+
+"'Tis strange," said Baldwin; "I have done my duty as well as I could,
+yet no body will come against me. I have slain right and left, and
+cannot comprehend what it is that makes the stoutest infidels avoid me."
+
+"Take off your vest," cried Orlando, contemptuously, "and you will soon
+discover the secret, if you wish to know it. Your father has sold us to
+Marsilius, all but his honourable son."
+
+"If my father," cried Baldwin, impetuously tearing off the vest, "has
+been such a villain, and I escape dying any longer, by God! I will
+plunge this sword through his heart. But I am no traitor, Orlando;
+and you do me wrong to say it. You do me foul dishonour, and I'll not
+survive it. Never more shall you behold me alive."
+
+Baldwin spurred off into the fight, not waiting to hear another word
+from Orlando, but constantly crying out, "You have done me dishonour;"
+and Orlando was very sorry for what he had said, for he perceived that
+the youth was in despair.
+
+And now the fight raged beyond all it had done before; and the Paladins
+themselves began to fall, the enemy were driven forward in such
+multitudes by Marsilius. There was unhorsing of foes, and re-seating of
+friends, and great cries, and anguish, and unceasing labour; and twenty
+Pagans went down for one Christian; but still the Christians fell. One
+Paladin disappeared after another, having too much to do for mortal men.
+Some could not make way through the press for very fatigue of killing,
+and others were hampered with the falling horses and men. Sansonetto was
+thus beaten to earth by the club of Grandonio; and Walter d'Amulion had
+his shoulders broken; and Angiolin of Bayona, having lost his lance,
+was thrust down by Marsilius, and Angiolin of Bellonda by Sirionne; and
+Berlinghieri and Ottone are gone; and then Astolfo went, in revenge of
+whose death Orlando turned the spot on which he died into a gulf of
+Saracen blood. Rinaldo met the luckless Bujaforte, who had just begun to
+explain how he seemed to be fighting on the side which his father hated,
+when the impatient hero exclaimed, "He who is not with me is against
+me;" and gave him a volley of such horrible cuffs about the head and
+ears, that Bujaforte died without being able to speak another word.
+Orlando, cutting his way to a spot in which there was a great struggle
+and uproar, found the poor youth Baldwin, the son of Gan, with two
+spears in his breast. "I am no traitor now," said Baldwin; and so
+saying, fell dead to the earth; and Orlando lifted up his voice and
+wept, for he was bitterly sorry to have been the cause of his death. He
+then joined Rinaldo in the hottest of the tumult; and all the surviving
+Paladins gathered about them, including Turpin the archbishop, who
+fought as hardily as the rest; and the slaughter was lavish and
+horrible, so that the eddies of the wind chucked the blood into the air,
+and earth appeared a very seething-cauldron of hell. At length down went
+Uliviero himself. He had become blind with his own blood, and smitten
+Orlando without knowing him, who had never received such a blow in his
+life.
+
+"How now, cousin!" cried Orlando; "have you too gone over to the enemy?"
+
+"O, my lord and master, Orlando," cried the other, "I ask your pardon,
+if I have struck you. I can see nothing--I am dying. The traitor
+Arcaliffe has stabbed me in the back; but I killed him for it. If you
+love me, lead my horse into the thick of them, so that I may not die
+unavenged."
+
+"I shall die myself before long," said Orlando, "out of very toil and
+grief; so we will go together. I have lost all hope, all pride, all wish
+to live any longer; but not my love for Uliviero. Come--let us give them
+a few blows yet; let them see what you can do with your dying hands. One
+faith, one death, one only wish be ours."
+
+Orlando led his cousin's horse where the press was thickest, and
+dreadful was the strength of the dying man and of his half-dying
+companion. They made a street, through which they passed out of the
+battle; and Orlando led his cousin away to his tent, and said, "Wait
+a little till I return, for I will go and sound the horn on the hill
+yonder."
+
+"'Tis of no use," said Uliviero; "and my spirit is fast going, and
+desires to be with its Lord and Saviour." He would have said more, but
+his words came from him imperfectly, like those of a man in a dream;
+only his cousin gathered that he meant to commend to him his sister,
+Orlando's wife, Alda the Fair, of whom indeed the great Paladin had not
+thought so much in this world as he might have done. And with these
+imperfect words he expired.
+
+But Orlando no sooner saw him dead, than he felt as if he was left alone
+on the earth; and he was quite willing to leave it; only he wished that
+Charles at St. John Pied de Port should hear how the case stood before
+he went; and so he took up the horn, and blew it three times with such
+force that the blood burst out of his nose and mouth. Turpin says, that
+at the third blast the horn broke in two.
+
+In spite of all the noise of the battle, the sound of the horn broke
+over it like a voice out of the other world. They say that birds fell
+dead at it, and that the whole Saracen army drew back in terror. But
+fearfuller still was its effect at St. John Pied de Port. Charlemagne
+was sitting in the midst of his court when the sound reached him; and
+Gan was there. The emperor was the first to hear it.
+
+"Do you hear that?" said he to his nobles. "Did you hear the horn, as I
+heard it?"
+
+Upon this they all listened; and Gan felt his heart misgive him.
+
+The horn sounded the second time.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" said Charles.
+
+"Orlando is hunting," observed Gan, "and the stag is killed. He is at
+the old pastime that he was so fond of in Aspramonte."
+
+But when the horn sounded yet a third time, and the blast was one of so
+dreadful a vehemence, every body looked at the other, and then they all
+looked at Gan in fury. Charles rose from his seat. "This is no hunting
+of the stag," said he. "The sound goes to my very heart, and, I confess,
+makes me tremble. I am awakened out of a great dream. O Gan! O Gan! Not
+for thee do I blush, but for myself, and for nobody else. O my God, what
+is to be done! But whatever is to be done, must be done quickly. Take
+this villain, gentlemen, and keep him in hard prison. O foul and
+monstrous villain! Would to God I had not lived to see this day! O
+obstinate and enormous folly! O Malagigi, had I but believed thy
+foresight! 'Tis thou went the wise man, and I the grey-headed fool."
+
+Ogier the Dane, and Namo and others, in the bitterness of their grief
+and anger, could not help reminding the emperor of all which they had
+foretold. But it was no time for words. They put the traitor into
+prison; and then Charles, with all his court, took his way to
+Roncesvalles, grieving and praying.
+
+It was afternoon when the horn sounded, and half an hour after it when
+the emperor set out; and meantime Orlando had returned to the fight that
+he might do his duty, however hopeless, as long as he could sit his
+horse, and the Paladins were now reduced to four; and though the
+Saracens suffered themselves to be mowed down like grass by them and
+their little band, he found his end approaching for toil and fever,
+and so at length he withdrew out of the fight, and rode all alone to a
+fountain which he knew of, where he had before quenched his thirst.
+
+His horse was wearier still than he, and no sooner had its master
+alighted, than the beast, kneeling down as if to take leave, and to
+say, "I have brought you to your place of rest," fell dead at his feet.
+Orlando cast water on him from the fountain, not wishing to believe him
+dead; but when he found it to no purpose, he grieved for him as if he
+had been a human being, and addressed him by name in tears, and asked
+forgiveness if ever he had done him wrong. They say, that the horse at
+these words once more opened his eyes a little, and looked kindly at his
+master, and so stirred never more.
+
+They say also that Orlando then, summoning all his strength, smote a
+rock near him with his beautiful sword Durlindana, thinking to shiver
+the steel in pieces, and so prevent its falling into the hands of the
+enemy; but though the rock split like a slate, and a deep fissure
+remained ever after to astonish the eyes of pilgrims, the sword remained
+unhurt.
+
+"O strong Durlindana," cried he, "O noble and worthy sword, had I known
+thee from the first, as I know thee now, never would I have been brought
+to this pass."
+
+And now Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and Turpin came up, having given chase
+to the Saracens till they were weary, and Orlando gave joyful welcome to
+his cousin, and they told him how the battle was won, and then Orlando
+knelt before Turpin, his face all in tears, and begged remission of his
+sins and confessed them, and Turpin gave him absolution; and suddenly a
+light came down upon him from heaven like a rainbow, accompanied with
+a sound of music, and an angel stood in the air blessing him, and then
+disappeared; upon which Orlando fixed his eyes on the hilt of his sword
+as on a crucifix, and embraced it, and said, "Lord, vouchsafe that I may
+look on this poor instrument as on the symbol of the tree upon which
+Thou sufferedst thy unspeakable martyrdom!" and so adjusting the sword
+to his bosom, and embracing it closer, he raised his eyes, and appeared
+like a creature seraphical and transfigured; and in bowing his head he
+breathed out his pure soul. A thunder was then heard in the heavens,
+and the heavens opened and seemed to stoop to the earth, and a flock of
+angels was seen like a white cloud ascending with his spirit, who were
+known to be what they were by the trembling of their wings. The white
+cloud shot out golden fires, so that the whole air was full of them; and
+the voices of the angels mingled in song with the instruments of their
+brethren above, which made an inexpressible harmony, at once deep and
+dulcet. The priestly warrior Turpin, and the two Paladins, and the
+hero's squire Terigi, who were all on their knees, forgot their own
+beings, in following the miracle with their eyes.
+
+It was now the office of that squire to take horse and ride off to
+the emperor at Saint John Pied de Port, and tell him of all that had
+occurred; but in spite of what he had just seen, he lay for a time
+overwhelmed with grief. He then rose, and mounted his steed, and left
+the Paladins and the archbishop with the dead body, who knelt about it,
+guarding it with weeping love.
+
+The good squire Terigi met the emperor and his cavalcade coming towards
+Roncesvalles, and alighted and fell on his knees, telling him the
+miserable news, and how all his people were slain but two of his
+Paladins, and himself, and the good archbishop. Charles for anguish
+began tearing his white locks; but Terigi comforted him against so
+doing, by giving an account of the manner of Orlando's death, and how
+he had surely gone to heaven. Nevertheless, the squire himself was
+broken-hearted with grief and toil; and he had scarcely added a
+denouncement of the traitor Gan, and a hope that the emperor would
+appease Heaven finally by giving his body to the winds, than he said,
+"The cold of death is upon me;" and so he fell dead at the emperor's
+feet.
+
+Charles was ready to drop from his saddle for wretchedness. He cried
+out, "Let nobody comfort me more. I will have no comfort. Cursed be Gan,
+and cursed this horrible day, and this place, and every thing. Let us go
+on, like blind miserable men that we are, into Roncesvalles; and have
+patience if we can, out of pure misery, like Job, till we do all that
+can be done."
+
+So Charles rode on with his nobles; and they say, that for the sake of
+the champion of Christendom and the martyrs that died with him, the sun
+stood still in the sky till the emperor had seen Orlando, and till the
+dead were buried.
+
+Horrible to his eyes was the sight of the field of Roncesvalles. The
+Saracens, indeed, had forsaken it, conquered; but all his Paladins but
+two were left on it dead, and the slaughtered heaps among which they lay
+made the whole valley like a great dumb slaughter-house, trampled up
+into blood and dirt, and reeking to the heat. The very trees were
+dropping with blood; and every thing, so to speak, seemed tired out, and
+gone to a horrible sleep.
+
+Charles trembled to his heart's core for wonder and agony. After dumbly
+gazing on the place, he again cursed it with a solemn curse, and wished
+that never grass might grow within it again, nor seed of any kind,
+neither within it, nor on any of its mountains around with their proud
+shoulders; but the anger of Heaven abide over it for ever, as on a pit
+made by hell upon earth.
+
+Then he rode on, and came up to where the body of Orlando awaited him
+with the Paladins, and the old man, weeping, threw himself as if he had
+been a reckless youth from his horse, and embraced and kissed the dead
+body, and said, "I bless thee, Orlando. I bless thy whole life, and all
+that thou wast, and all that thou ever didst, and thy mighty and holy
+valour, and the father that begot thee; and I ask pardon of thee for
+believing those who brought thee to thine end. They shall have their
+reward, O thou beloved one! But, indeed, it is thou that livest, and I
+that am worse than dead."
+
+And now, behold a wonder. For the emperor, in the fervour of his heart
+and of the memory of what had passed between them, called to mind that
+Orlando had promised to give him his sword, should he die before him;
+and he lifted up his voice more bravely, and adjured him even now to
+return it to him gladly; and it pleased God that the dead body of
+Orlando should rise on its feet, and kneel as he was wont to do at the
+feet of his liege lord, and gladly, and with a smile on its face, return
+the sword to the Emperor Charles. As Orlando rose, the Paladins and
+Turpin knelt down out of fear and horror, especially seeing him look
+with a stern countenance; but when they saw that he knelt also, and
+smiled, and returned the sword, their hearts became re-assured, and
+Charles took the sword like his liege lord, though trembling with wonder
+and affection: and in truth he could hardly clench his fingers around
+it.
+
+Orlando was buried in a great sepulchre in Aquisgrana, and the dead
+Paladins were all embalmed and sent with majestic cavalcades to their
+respective counties and principalities, and every Christian was
+honourably and reverently put in the earth, and recorded among the
+martyrs of the Church.
+
+But meantime the flying Saracens, thinking to bury their own dead, and
+ignorant of what still awaited them, came back into the valley, and
+Rinaldo beheld them with a dreadful joy, and shewed them to Charles. Now
+the emperor's cavalcade had increased every moment; and they fell upon
+the Saracens with a new and unexpected battle, and the old emperor,
+addressing the sword of Orlando, exclaimed, "My strength is little, but
+do thou do thy duty to thy master, thou famous sword, seeing that he
+returned it to me smiling, and that his revenge is in my hands." And so
+saying, he met Balugante, the leader of the infidels, as he came borne
+along by his frightened horse; and the old man, raising the sword with
+both hands, cleaved him, with a delighted mind, to the chin.
+
+O sacred Emperor Charles! O well-lived old man! Defender of the Faith!
+light and glory of the old time! thou hast cut off the other ear of
+Malchus, and shown how rightly thou wert born into the world, to save it
+a second time from the abyss.
+
+Again fled the Saracens, never to come to Christendom more: but Charles
+went after them into Spain, he and Rinaldo and Ricciardetto and the good
+Turpin; and they took and fired Saragossa; and Marsilius was hung to the
+carob-tree under which he had planned his villany with Gan; and Gan was
+hung, and drawn and quartered, in Roncesvalles, amidst the execrations
+of the country.
+
+And if you ask, how it happened that Charles ever put faith in such a
+wretch, I shall tell you that it was because the good old emperor, with
+all his faults, was a divine man, and believed in others out of the
+excellence of his own heart and truth. And such was the case with
+Orlando himself.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+No. I.
+
+STORY OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA.
+
+  Poscia ch' i' ebbi il mio dottore udito
+  Nomar le donne antiche e i cavalieri,
+  Pieta mi vinse, e fui quasi smarrito.
+
+  I' cominciai: Poeta, volentieri
+  Parlerei a que' duo the 'nsieme vanno,
+  E pajon si al vento esser leggieri.
+
+  Ed egli a me: Vedrai, quando saranno
+  Piu presso a noi: e tu allor gli piega,
+  Per quell' amor ch' ei mena; e quei verranno.
+
+  Si tosto come 'l vento a noi gli piega,
+  Mossi la voce: O anime affannate,
+  Venite a not parlar, s' altri nol niega.
+
+  Quali colombe dal disio chiamate,
+  Con l' ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
+  Volan per l' aer dal voter portate:
+
+  Cotali uscir de la schiera ov' e Dido,
+  A noi venendo per l' aer maligno,
+  Si forte fu l' affettuoso grido.
+
+  O animal grazioso e benigno,
+  Che visitando vai per l' aer perso
+  Noi che tignemmo it mondo di sanguigno;
+  Se fosse amico il Re de l'Universo,
+  Noi pregheremmo lui per la tua pace,
+  Poich' hai pieta del nostro mal perverso.
+
+  Di quel ch'udire e che parlar ti piace,
+  Noi udiremo, e parleremo a vui,
+  Mentre che 'l vento, come fa, si tace.
+
+  Siede la terra, dove nata fui,
+  Su la marina, dove 'l Po discende,
+  Per aver pace co' seguaci sui.
+
+  Amor ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,
+  Prese costui de la bella persona
+  Che mi fu tolta, e 'l modo ancor m'offende
+
+  Amer ch'a null'amato amar perdona,
+  Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
+  Che come vedi ancor non m'abbandona
+
+  Amor condusse noi ad una morte
+  Caina attende chi 'n vita ci spense.
+  Queste parole da lor ci fur porte.
+
+  Da ch'io 'ntesi quell'anime offense,
+  Chinai 'l viso, e tanto 'l tenni basso,
+  Finche 'l poeta mi disse: Che pense?
+
+  Quando risposi, cominciai: O lasso,
+  Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio
+  Meno costoro al doloroso passo!
+
+  Po' mi rivolsi a loro, e parla' io,
+  E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri
+  A lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pie.
+
+  Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri,
+  A che, e come concedette amore
+  Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri?
+
+  Ed ella a me: Nessun maggior dolore,
+  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
+  Ne la miseria; e cio sa 'l tuo dottore.
+  Ma s'a conoscer la prima radice
+  Del nostro amor to hai cotanto affetto,
+  Faro come colui the piange e dice.
+
+  Noi leggiavamo tin giorno per diletto
+  Di Lancilotto, come amor to strinse
+  Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto.
+
+  Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
+  Quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso
+  Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse.
+
+  Quando leggemmo il disiato riso
+  Esser baciato da cotanto amante,
+  Questi che mai da me non sia diviso,
+
+  La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante:
+  Galeotto fu il libro, e chi to scrisse:
+  Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante.
+
+  Mentre the l'uno spirto questo disse,
+  L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade
+  I' venni men cosi com' io morisse,
+
+  E caddi come corpo morto cade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Translation in the terza rima of the original._
+
+  Scarce had I learnt the names of all that press
+  Of knights and dames, than I beheld a sight
+  Nigh reft my wits for very tenderness.
+
+  "O guide!" I said, "fain would I, if I might,
+  Have speech with yonder pair, that hand in hand
+  Seem borne before the dreadful wind so light."
+
+  "Wait," said my guide, "until then seest their band
+  Sweep round. Then beg them, by that lose, to stay;
+  And they will come, and hover where we stand."
+
+  Anon the whirlwind flung them round that way;
+  And then I cried, "Oh, if I ask nought ill,
+  Poor weary souls, have speech with me, I pray."
+
+  As doves, that leave some bevy circling still,
+  Set firm their open wings, and through the air
+  Sweep homewards, wafted by their pure good will;
+
+  So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
+  Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign;
+  Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer.
+
+  The female spoke. "O living soul benign!"
+  She said, "thus, in this lost air, visiting
+  Us who with blood stain'd the sweet earth divine;
+
+  Had we a friend in heaven's eternal King,
+  We would beseech him keep thy conscience clear,
+  Since to our anguish thou dost pity bring.
+
+  Of what it pleaseth thee to speak and hear,
+  To that we also, till this lull be o'er
+  That falleth now, will speak and will give ear.
+
+  The place where I was born is on the shore,
+  Where Po brings all his rivers to depart
+  In peace, and fuse them with the ocean floor.
+
+  Love, that soon kindleth in a gentle heart,
+  Seized him thou look'st on for the form and face,
+  Whose end still haunts me like a rankling dart.
+
+  Love, which by love will be denied no grace,
+  Gave me a transport in my turn so true,
+  That to! 'tis with me, even in this place.
+
+  Love brought us to one grave. The hand that slew
+  Is doom'd to mourn us in the pit of Cain."
+  Such were the words that told me of those two.
+
+  Downcast I stood, looking so full of pain
+  To think how hard and sad a case it was,
+  That my guide ask'd what held me in that vein.
+
+  His voiced aroused me; and I said, "Alas
+  All their sweet thoughts then, all the steps that led
+  To love, but brought them to this dolorous pass."
+
+  Then turning my sad eyes to theirs, I said,
+  "Francesca, see--these human cheeks are wet--
+  Truer and sadder tears were never shed.
+
+  But tell me. At the time when sighs were sweet,
+  What made thee strive no longer?--hurried thee
+  To the last step where bliss and sorrow meet?"
+
+  "There is no greater sorrow," answered she,
+  "And this thy teacher here knoweth full well,
+  Than calling to mind joy in misery.
+
+  But since thy wish be great to hear us tell
+  How we lost all but love, tell it I will,
+  As well as tears will let me. It befel,
+
+  One day, we read how Lancelot gazed his fill
+  At her he loved, and what his lady said.
+  We were alone, thinking of nothing ill.
+
+  Oft were our eyes suspended as we read,
+  And in our cheeks the colour went and came;
+  Yet one sole passage struck resistance dead.
+
+  'Twas where the lover, moth-like in his flame,
+  Drawn by her sweet smile, kiss'd it. O then, he
+  Whose lot and mine are now for aye the same,
+
+  All in a tremble, on the mouth kiss'd _me_.
+  The book did all. Our hearts within us burn'd
+  Through that alone. That day no more read we."
+
+  While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
+  With wail so woful, that at his remorse
+  I felt as though I should have died. I turned
+
+  Stone-stiff; and to the ground fell like a corse.]
+
+
+No. II.
+
+ACCOUNTS GIVEN BY DIFFERENT WRITERS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES RELATING TO
+PAULO AND FRANCESCA; CONCLUDING WITH THE ONLY FACTS ASCERTAINED.
+
+BOCCACCIO'S ACCOUNT
+
+Translated from his Commentary on the Passage.
+
+"You must know, that this lady, Madonna Francesca, was daughter of
+Messer Guido the Elder, lord of Ravenna and of Cervia, and that a long
+and grievous war having been waged between him and the lords Malatesta
+of Rimini, a treaty of peace by certain mediators was at length
+concluded between them; the which, to the end that it might be the more
+firmly established, it pleased both parties to desire to fortify by
+relationship; and the matter of this relationship was so discoursed,
+that the said Messer Guido agreed to give his young and fair daughter
+in marriage to Gianciotto, the son of Messer Malatesta. Now, this being
+made known to certain of the friends of Messer Guido, one of them
+said to him, 'Take care what you do; for if you contrive not matters
+discreetly, such relationship will beget scandal. You know what manner
+of person your daughter is, and of how lofty a spirit; and if she see
+Gianciotto before the bond is tied, neither you nor any one else will
+have power to persuade her to marry him; therefore, if it so please you,
+it seems to me that it would be good to conduct the matter thus: namely,
+that Gianciotto should not come hither himself to marry her, but that a
+brother of his should come and espouse her in his name.'
+
+"Gianciotto was a man of great spirit, and hoped, after his father's
+death, to become lord of Rimini; in the contemplation of which event,
+albeit he was rude in appearance and a cripple, Messer Guido desired him
+for a son-in-law above any one of his brothers. Discerning, therefore,
+the reasonableness of what his friend counselled, he secretly disposed
+matters according to his device; and a day being appointed, Polo, a
+brother of Gianciotto, came to Ravenna with full authority to espouse
+Madonna Francesca. Polo was a handsome man, very pleasant, and of a
+courteous breeding; and passing with other gentlemen over the court-yard
+of the palace of Messer Guido, a damsel who knew him pointed him out to
+Madonna Francesca through an opening in the casement, saying, 'That is
+he that is to be your husband;' and so indeed the poor lady believed,
+and incontinently placed in him her whole affection; and the ceremony of
+the marriage having been thus brought about, and the lady conveyed to
+Rimini, she became not aware of the deceit till the morning ensuing
+the marriage, when she beheld Gianciotto rise from her side; the which
+discovery moved her to such disdain, that she became not a whit the less
+rooted in her love for Polo. Nevertheless, that it grew to be unlawful
+I never heard, except in what is written by this author (Dante), and
+possibly it might so have become; albeit I take what he says to have
+been an invention framed on the possibility, rather than any thing
+which he knew of his own knowledge. Be this as it may, Polo and Madonna
+Francesca living in the same house, and Gianciotto being gone into
+a certain neighbouring district as governor, they fell into great
+companionship with one another, suspecting nothing; but a servant of
+Gianciotto's noting it, went to his master and told him how matters
+looked; with the which Gianciotto being fiercely moved, secretly
+returned to Rimini; and seeing Polo enter the room of Madonna Francesca
+the while he himself was arriving, went straight to the door, and
+finding it locked inside, called to his lady to come out; for, Madonna
+Francesca and Polo having descried him, Polo thought to escape suddenly
+through an opening in the wall, by means of which there was a descent
+into another room; and therefore, thinking to conceal his fault either
+wholly or in part, he threw himself into the opening, telling the lady
+to go and open the door. But his hope did not turn out as he expected;
+for the hem of a mantle which he had on caught upon a nail, and the
+lady opening the door meantime, in the belief that all would be well by
+reason of Polo's not being there, Gianciotto caught sight of Polo as
+he was detained by the hem of the mantle, and straightway ran with his
+dagger in his hand to kill him; whereupon the lady, to prevent it, ran
+between them; but Gianciotto having lifted the dagger, and put the whole
+force of his arm into the blow, there came to pass what he had not
+desired--namely, that he struck the dagger into the bosom of the lady
+before it could reach Polo; by which accident, being as one who had
+loved the lady better than himself, he withdrew the dagger, and again
+struck at Polo, and slew him; and so leaving them both dead, he hastily
+went his way and betook him to his wonted affairs; and the next morning
+the two lovers, with many tears, were buried together in the same
+grave."
+
+The reader of this account will have observed, that while Dante assumes
+the guilt of all parties, and puts them into the infernal regions, the
+good-natured Boccaccio is for doubting it, and consequently for sending
+them all to heaven. He will ignore as much of the business as a
+gentleman can; boldly doubts any guilt in the case; says nothing of the
+circumstance of the book; and affirms that the husband loved his wife,
+and was miserable at having slain her. There is, however, one negative
+point in common between the two narrators; they both say nothing of
+certain particulars connected with the date of Francesca's marriage, and
+not a little qualifying the first romantic look of the story.
+
+Now, it is the absence of these particulars, combined with the tradition
+of the father's artifice (omitted perhaps by Dante out of personal
+favour), and with that of the husband's ferocity of character (the
+belief in which Boccaccio did not succeed in displacing), that has
+left the prevailing impression on the minds of posterity, which is
+this:--that Francesca was beguiled by her father into the marriage with
+the deformed and unamiable Giovanni, and that the unconscious medium of
+the artifice was the amiable and handsome Paulo; that one or both of
+the victims of the artifice fell in love with the other; that their
+intercourse, whatever it was, took place not long after the marriage;
+and that when Paulo and Francesca were slain in consequence, they were
+young lovers, with no other ties to the world.
+
+It is not pleasant in general to dispel the illusions of romance, though
+Dante's will bear the operation with less hurt to a reader's feelings
+than most; and I suspect, that if nine out of ten of all the implied
+conclusions of other narratives in his poem could be compared with the
+facts, he would be found to be one of the greatest of romancers in a new
+and not very desirable sense, however excusable he may have been in his
+party-prejudice. But a romance may be displaced, only to substitute
+perhaps matters of fact more really touching, by reason of their greater
+probability. The following is the whole of what modern inquirers have
+ascertained respecting Paulo and Francesca. Future enlargers on the
+story may suppress what they please, as Dante did; but if any one of
+them, like the writer of the present remarks, is anxious to speak
+nothing but the truth, I advise him (especially if he is for troubling
+himself with making changes in his story) not to think that he has seen
+all the authorities on the subject, or even remembered all he has seen,
+until he has searched every corner of his library and his memory. All
+the poems hitherto written upon this popular subject are indeed only to
+be regarded as so many probable pieces of fancy, that of Dante himself
+included.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE ONLY PARTICULARS HITHERTO REALLY ASCERTAINED RESPECTING THE HISTORY
+OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA.
+
+Francesca was daughter of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna.
+
+She was married to Giovanni, surnamed the Lame, one of the sons of
+Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini.
+
+Giovanni the Lame had a brother named Paulo the Handsome, who was a
+widower, and left a son.
+
+Twelve years after Francesca's marriage, by which time she had become
+mother of a son who died, and of a daughter who survived her, she and
+her brother-in-law Paulo were slain together by the husband, and buried
+in one grave.
+
+Two hundred years afterwards, the grave was opened, and the bodies found
+lying together in silken garments, the silk itself being entire.
+
+Now, a far more touching history may have lurked under these facts than
+in the half-concealed and misleading circumstances of the received
+story--long patience, long duty, struggling conscience, exhausted hope.
+
+On the other hand, it may have been a mere heartless case of intrigue
+and folly.
+
+But tradition is to be allowed its reasonable weight; and the
+probability is, that the marriage was an affair of state, the lady
+unhappy, and the brothers too different from one another.
+
+The event took place in Dante's twenty-fourth year; so that he, who
+looks so much older to our imaginations than his heroine, was younger;
+and this renders more than probable what the latest biographers have
+asserted--namely, that the lord of Ravenna, at whose house he finished
+his days, was not her father, Guido da Polenta, the third of that name,
+but her nephew, Guido the Fifth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. IIII
+
+STORY OF UGOLINO.
+
+  Non eravam partiti gia da ello,
+  Ch' i' vidi duo ghiacciati in una buca
+  Si, che l'un capo a l'altro era capello:
+
+  E come 'l pan per fame si manduca,
+  Cosi 'l sovran li denti a l'altro pose
+  La've 'l cervel s'aggiunge con la nuca.
+
+  Non altrimenti Tideo si rose
+  Le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno,
+  Che quei faceva 'l teschio e l'altre cose.
+
+  O tu che mostri per si bestial segno
+  Odio sovra colui che tu ti mangi
+  Dimmi 'l perche, diss' io, per tal convegno,
+
+  Che se tu a ragion di lui ti piangi,
+  Sappiendo chi voi siete, e la sua pecca,
+  Nel mondo suso ancor io te ne cangi,
+
+  Se quella con ch' i' parlo non si secca.
+
+  La bocca sollevo dal fiero pasto
+  Quel peccator, forbendola a' capelli
+  Del capo ch' egli avea diretro guasto:
+
+  Poi comincio: tu vuoi ch' i' rinnovelli
+  Disperato dolor the 'l cuor mi preme
+  Gia pur pensando, pria ch' i' ne favelli.
+
+  Ma se le mie parole esser den seme,
+  Che frutti infamia al traditor ch' i' rodo,
+  Parlare e lagrimar vedrai insieme.
+
+  I' non so chi tu sei, ne per che modo
+  Venuto se' qua giu: ma Fiorentino
+  Mi sembri veramente, quand' i' t' odo.
+
+  Tu de' saper ch' i' fu 'l Conte Ugolino,
+  E questi l' Arcivescovo Ruggieri:
+  Or ti diro perch' i' son tal vicino.
+
+  Che per l' effetto de' suo' ma' pensieri,
+  Fidandomi di lui, io fossi preso,
+  E poscia morto, dir non e mestieri.
+
+  Pero quel che non puoi avere inteso,
+  Cioe, come la morte mia fu cruda,
+  Udirai e saprai se m' ha offeso.
+
+  Breve pertugio dentro da la muda,
+  La qual per me ha 'l titol da la fame,
+  E 'n che conviene ancor ch' altrui si chiuda,
+
+  M' avea mostrato per lo suo forame
+  Piu lone gia, quand' i' feci 'l mal sonno,
+  Che del futuro mi squarcio 'l velame.
+
+  Questi pareva a me maestro e donno,
+  Cacciando 'l lupo e i lupicirui al monte,
+  Perche i Pisan veder Lucca non ponno.
+
+  Con cagne magre studiose e conte
+  Gualandi con Sismondi e con Lanfranchi
+  S' avea messi dinanzi da la fronte.
+
+  In picciol corso mi pareano stanchi
+  Lo padre e i figli, e con l' agute scane
+  Mi parea lor veder fender li fianchi.
+
+  Quando fui desto innanzi la dimane,
+  Pianger senti' fra 'l sonno miei figliuoli
+  Ch' eran con meco, e dimandar del pane.
+
+  Ben se' crudel, se uo gia non ti duoli
+  Pensando cio ch' al mio cuor s' annunziava
+  E se non piangi, di che pianger suoli?
+
+  Gia eram desti, e l'ora s'appressava
+  Che 'l cibo ne soleva essere addotto,
+  E per suo sogno ciascun dubitava,
+
+  Ed io senti' chiavar l'uscio di sotto
+  A l'orribile torre: ond' io guardai
+  Nel viso a miei figliuoi senza far motto:
+
+  I' non piangeva, si dentro impietrai:
+  Piangevan' elli; ed Anselmuccio mio
+  Disse, Tu guardi si, padre: che hai?
+
+  Pero non lagrimai ne rispos' io
+  Tutto quel giorno ne la notte appresso,
+  Infin che l'altro sol nel mondo uscio.
+
+  Com' un poco di raggio si fu messo
+  Nel doloroso carcere, ed io scorsi
+  Per quattro visi il mio aspetto stesso,
+
+  Ambo le mani per dolor mi morsi:
+  E quei pensando ch' i 'l fessi per voglia
+  Di manicar, di subito levorsi
+
+  E disser: Padre, assai ci sia men doglia,
+  Se tu mangi di noi: tu ne vestisti
+  Queste misere carni, e tu le spoglia.
+
+  Quetami allor per non fargli piu tristi:
+  Quel di e l'altro stemmo tutti muti:
+  Ahi dura terra, perche non t'apristi?
+
+  Posciache fummo al quarto di venuti,
+  Gaddo mi si gitto disteso a' piedi,
+  Dicendo: Padre mio, che non m' ajuti?
+
+  Quivi mori: e come tu mi vedi,
+  Vid' io cascar li tre ad uno ad uno
+  Tra 'l quinto di, e 'l sesto: ond' i' mi diedi
+
+  Gia cieco a brancolar sovra ciascuno,
+  E tre di gli chiamai poich' e 'fur morti:
+  Poscia, piu che 'l dolor, pote 'l digiuno.
+
+  Quand' ebbe detto cio, con gli occhj torti
+  Riprese 'l teschio misero co' denti,
+  Che furo a l'osso come d' un can forti.
+
+  Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti,
+  Del bel paese la dove 'l si suona;
+  Poiche i vicini a te punir son lenti,
+
+  Muovasi la Capraja e la Gorgona,
+  E faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce,
+  Si ch' egli annieghi in te ogni persona:
+
+  Che se 'l Conte Ugolino aveva voce
+  D'aver tradita te de le castella,
+  Non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce.
+
+  Innocenti facea 'l eta novella;
+  Novella Tebe, Uguccione, e 'l Brigata,
+  E gli altri duo che 'l canto suso appella.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  _Translation in the heroic couplet._
+
+  Quitting the traitor Bocca's barking soul,
+  We saw two more, so iced up in one hole,
+  That the one's visage capp'd the other's head;
+  And as a famish'd man devoureth bread,
+  So rent the top one's teeth the skull below
+  'Twixt nape and brain. Tydeus, as stories show,
+  Thus to the brain of Menalippus ate:--
+  "O thou!" I cried, "showing such bestial hate
+  To him thou tearest, read us whence it rose;
+  That, if thy cause be juster than thy foe's,
+  The world, when I return, knowing the truth,
+  May of thy story have the greater ruth."
+
+  His mouth he lifted from his dreadful fare,
+  That sinner, wiping it with the grey hair
+  Whose roots he had laid waste; and thus he said:--
+  "A desperate thing thou askest; what I dread
+  Even to think of. Yet, to sow a seed
+  Of infamy to him on whom I feed,
+  Tell it I will:--ay, and thine eyes shall see
+  Mine own weep all the while for misery.
+  Who thou may'st be, I know not; nor can dream
+  How thou cam'st hither; but thy tongue doth seem
+  To skew thee, of a surety, Florentine.
+  Know then, that I was once Count Ugoline,
+  And this man was Ruggieri, the archpriest.
+  Still thou may'st wonder at my raging feast;
+  For though his snares be known, and how his key
+  He turn'd upon my trust, and murder'd me,
+  Yet what the murder was, of what strange sort
+  And cruel, few have had the true report.
+  Hear then, and judge.--In the tower, called since then
+  The Tower of Famine, I had lain and seen
+  Full many a moon fade through the narrow bars.
+  When, in a dream one night, mine evil stars
+  Shew'd me the future with its dreadful face.
+  Methought this man led a great lordly chase
+  Against a wolf and cubs, across the height
+  Which barreth Lucca from the Pisan's sight.
+  Lean were the hounds, high-bred, and sharp for blood;
+  And foremost in the press Gualandi rode,
+  Lanfranchi, and Sismondi. Soon were seen
+  The father and his sons, those wolves I mean,
+  Limping, and by the hounds all crush'd and torn
+  And as the cry awoke me in the morn,
+  I heard my boys, the while they dozed in bed
+  (For they were with me), wail, and ask for bread.
+  Full cruel, if it move thee not, thou art,
+  To think what thoughts then rush'd into my heart.
+  What wouldst thou weep at, weeping not at this?
+  All had now waked, and something seem'd amiss,
+  For 'twas the time they used to bring us bread,
+  And from our dreams had grown a horrid dread.
+  I listen'd; and a key, down stairs, I heard
+  Lock up the dreadful turret. Not a word
+  I spoke, but look'd my children in the face
+  No tear I shed, so firmly did I brace
+  My soul; but _they_ did; and my Anselm said,
+  'Father, you look so!--Won't they bring us bread?'
+  E'en then I wept not, nor did answer word
+  All day, nor the next night. And now was stirr'd,
+  Upon the world without, another day;
+  And of its light there came a little ray,
+  Which mingled with the gloom of our sad jail;
+  And looking to my children's bed, full pale,
+  In four small faces mine own face I saw.
+  Oh, then both hands for misery did I gnaw;
+  And they, thinking I did it, being mad
+  For food, said, 'Father, we should be less sad
+  If you would feed on us. Children, they say,
+  Are their own father's flesh. Starve not to-day.'
+  Thenceforth they saw me shake not, hand nor foot.
+  That day, and next, we all continued mute.
+  O thou hard Earth!--why opened'st thou not?
+  Next day (it was the fourth in our sad lot)
+  My Gaddo stretched him at my feet, and cried,
+  'Dear father, won't you help me?' and he died.
+  And surely as thou seest me here undone,
+  I saw my whole three children, one by one,
+  Between the fifth day and the sixth, all die.
+  I became blind; and in my misery
+  Went groping for them, as I knelt and crawl'd
+  About the room; and for three days I call'd
+  Upon their names, as though they could speak too,
+  Till famine did what grief had fail'd to do."
+
+  Having spoke thus, he seiz'd with fiery eyes
+  That wretch again, his feast and sacrifice,
+  And fasten'd on the skull, over a groan,
+  With teeth as strong as mastiff's on a bone.
+  Ah, Pisa! thou that shame and scandal be
+  To the sweet land that speaks the tongue of Si.[1]
+
+  Since Florence spareth thy vile neck the yoke,
+  Would that the very isles would rise, and choke
+  Thy river, and drown every soul within
+  Thy loathsome walls. What if this Ugolin
+  Did play the traitor, and give up (for so
+  The rumour runs) thy castles to the foe,
+  Thou hadst no right to put to rack like this
+  His children. Childhood innocency is.
+  But that same innocence, and that man's name,
+  Have damn'd thee, Pisa, to a Theban fame?[2]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REAL STORY OF UGOLINO,
+
+AND CHAUCER'S FEELING RESPECTING THE POEM.
+
+Chaucer has told the greater part of this story beautifully in his
+"Canterbury Tales;" but he had not the heart to finish it. He refers
+for the conclusion to his original, hight "Dant," the "grete poete
+of Itaille;" adding, that Dante will not fail his readers a single
+word--that is to say, not an atom of the cruelty.
+
+Our great gentle-hearted countryman, who tells Fortune that it was
+
+  "great cruelty
+  Such birdes for to put in such a cage,"
+
+adds a touch of pathos in the behaviour of one of the children, which
+Dante does not seem to have thought of:
+
+  "There day by day this child began to cry,
+  Till in his father's barme (lap) adown he lay;
+  And said, 'Farewell, father, I muste die,'
+  And _kiss'd his father_, and died the same day."
+
+It will be a relief, perhaps, instead of a disappointment, to the
+readers of this appalling story, to hear that Dante's particulars of it
+are as little to be relied on as those of the Paulo and Francesca. The
+only facts known of Ugolino are, that he was an ambitious traitor, who
+did actually deliver up the fortified places, as Dante acknowledges; and
+that his rivals, infamous as he, or more infamous, prevailed against
+him, and did shut him up and starve him and some of his family. But
+the "little" children are an invention of the poet's, or probably his
+belief, when he was a young man, and first heard the story; for some of
+Ugolino's fellow-prisoners may have been youths, but others were grown
+up--none so childish as he intimates; and they were not all his own
+sons; some were his nephews.
+
+And as to Archbishop Ruggieri, there is no proof whatever of his having
+had any share in the business--hardly a ground of suspicion; so that
+historians look upon him as an "ill-used gentleman." Dante, in all
+probability, must have learnt the real circumstances of the case, as he
+advanced in years; but if charity is bound to hope that he would have
+altered the passage accordingly, had he revised his poem, it is forced
+to admit that he left it unaltered, and that his "will and pleasure"
+might have found means of reconciling the retention to his conscience.
+Pride, unfortunately, includes the power to do things which it pretends
+to be very foreign to its nature; and in proportion as detraction is
+easy to it, retraction becomes insupportable.[3]
+
+Rabelais, to shew his contempt for the knights of chivalry, has made
+them galley-slaves in the next world, their business being to help
+Charon row his boat over the river Styx, and their payment a piece of
+mouldy bread and a fillip on the nose. Somebody should write a burlesque
+of the enormities in Dante's poem, and invent some Rabelaesque
+punishment for a great poet's pride and presumption. What should it be?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. IV.
+
+PICTURE OF FLORENCE IN THE TIME OF DANTE'S ANCESTORS.
+
+  Fiorenza dentro da la cerchia antica,
+  Ond' ella toglie ancora e Terza e Nona,
+  Si stava in pace sobria e pudica.
+
+  Non avea catenella, non corona,
+  Non donne contigiate, non cintura
+  Che fosse a veder piu che la persona.
+
+  Non faceva nascendo ancor paura
+  La figlia al padre, che 'l tempo e la dotte
+  Non fuggian quindi e quindi la misura.
+
+  Non avea case di famiglia vote
+  Non v'era giunto ancor Sardanapalo
+  A mostrar cio che 'n camera si puote.
+
+  Non era vinto ancora Montemalo
+  Dal vostro Uccellatojo, che com' e vinto
+  Nel montar su, cosi sara nel calo.
+
+  Bellincion Berti vid' io andar cinto
+  Di cuojo e d'osso, e venir da lo specchio
+  La donna sua sanza 'l viso dipinto:
+
+  E vidi quel de' Nerli e quel del Vecchio
+  Esser contenti a la pelle scoverta,
+  E le sue donne al fuso ed al pennecchio.
+
+  O fortunate! e ciascuna era certa
+  De la sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla
+  Era per Francia nel lotto deserta.
+
+  L'una vegghiava a studio de la culla,
+  E consolando usava l'idioma
+  Che pria li padri e le madri trastulla:
+
+  L'altra traendo a la rocca la chioma
+  Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia
+  Di Trojani e di Fiesole e di Roma.
+
+  Saria tenuta allor tal maraviglia
+  Una Cianghella, un Lapo Salterello,
+  Qual or saria Cincinnato e Corniglia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Translation in blank verse._
+
+  Florence, before she broke the good old bounds,
+  Whence yet are heard the chimes of eve and morn.
+  Abided well in modesty and peace.
+  No coronets had she--no chains of gold--
+  No gaudy sandals--no rich girdles rare
+  That caught the eye more than the person did.
+  Fathers then feared no daughter's birth, for dread
+  Of wantons courting wealth; nor were their homes
+  Emptied with exile. Chamberers had not shown
+  What they could dare, to prove their scorn of shame.
+  Your neighbouring uplands then beheld no towers
+  Prouder than Rome's, only to know worse fall.
+  I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
+  Girt with a thong of leather; and his wife
+  Come from the glass without a painted face.
+  Nerlis I saw, and Vecchios, and the like,
+  In doublets without cloaks; and their good dames
+  Contented while they spun. Blest women those
+  They know the place where they should lie when dead;
+  Nor were their beds deserted while they liv'd.
+  They nurs'd their babies; lull'd them with the songs
+  And household words of their own infancy;
+  And while they drew the distaff's hair away,
+  In the sweet bosoms of their families,
+  Told tales of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome.
+  It had been then as marvellous to see
+  A man of Lapo Salterello's sort,
+  Or woman like Cianghella, as to find
+  A Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. V.
+
+THE MONKS AND THE GIANTS.
+
+PULCI.
+
+  L'abate si chiamava Chiaramonte,
+  Era del sangue disceso d'Angrante:
+  Di sopra a la badia v'era un gran monte,
+  Dove abitava alcun fiero gigante,
+  De' quali uno avea nome Passamonte,
+  L'altro Alabastro, e 'l terzo era Morgante:
+  Con certe frombe gittavan da alto,
+  Ed ogni di facevan qualche assalto.
+
+  I monachetti non potieno uscire
+  Del monistero, o per legne, o per acque.
+  Orlando picchia, e non volieno aprire,
+  Fin che a l'abate a la fine pur piacque:
+  Entrato drento cominciava a dire,
+  Come colui che di Maria gia nacque,
+  Adora, ed era cristian battezzato,
+  E com' egli era a la badia arrivato.
+
+  Disse l' abate: Il ben venuto sia:
+  Di quel ch' io ho, volentier ti daremo,
+  Poi the tu credi al figliuol di Maria;
+  E la cagion, cavalier, ti diremo,
+  Accio che non l'imputi a villania,
+  Perche a l'entrar resistenza facemo,
+  E non ti volle aprir quel monachetto;
+  Cosi intervien chi vive con sospetto.
+
+  Quando ci venni al principio abitare
+  Queste montagne, benche sieno oscure
+  Come tu vedi, pur si potea stare
+  Sanza sospetto, ch' ell' eran sicure:
+  Sol da le fiere t'avevi a guardare:
+  Fernoci spesso di brutte paure;
+  Or ci bisogna, se vogliamo starci,
+  Da le bestie dimestiche guardarci.
+
+  Queste ci fan piutosto stare a segno:
+  Sonci appariti tre fiere giganti,
+  Non so di qual paese o di qual regno,
+  Ma molto son feroci tutti quanti:
+  La forza e 'l malvoler giunt' a lo 'ngegno
+  Sai che puo 'l tutto; e noi non siam bastanti:
+  Questi perturban si l'orazion nostra,
+  Che non so piu che far, s'altri nol mostra.
+
+  Gli antichi padri nostri nel deserto,
+  Se le lor opre sante erano e giuste,
+  Del ben servir da Dio n'avean buon merto:
+  Ne creder sol vivessin di locuste:
+  Piovea dal ciel la manna, guesto e certo;
+  Ma qui convien che spesso assaggi e gust
+  Sassi, che piovon di sopra quel monte,
+  Che gettano Alabastro e Passamonte.
+
+  E 'l terzo ch' e Morgante, assai piu fiero,
+  Isveglie e pini e faggi e cerri e gli oppi,
+  E gettagli infin qui; questo e pur vero:
+  Non posso far che d'ira non iscoppi.
+  Mentre che parlan cosi in cimitero,
+  Un sasso par che Rondel quasi sgroppi;
+  Che da' giganti giu venne da altro
+  Tanto, ch' e' prese sotto il tetto un salto.
+
+  Tirati drento, cavalier, per Dio,
+  Disse l'abate, che la manna casca.
+  Rispose Orlando: Caro abate mio,
+  Costui non vuol che 'l mio caval piu pasca:
+  Veggo che lo guarebbe del restio:
+  Quel sasso par che di buon braccio nasca.
+  Rispose il santo padre: Io non t' inganno;
+  Credo che 'l monte un giorno gitteranno.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. VI.
+
+PASSAGES IN THE BATTLE OF RONCESVALLES.
+
+THE SAME.
+
+_Orlando and Bujaforte._
+
+  La battaglia veniva rinforzando,
+  E in ogni parte apparisce la morte:
+  E mentre in qua e in la, combatte Orlando,
+  Un tratto a caso trovo Bujaforte,
+  E in su la testa gli dette col brando:
+  E perche l'elmo e temperato e forte,
+  O forse incantato era, al colpo ha retto:
+  Ma de la testa gli balzo di netto.
+
+  Orlando prese costui per le chiome,
+  E disse: Dimmi, se non ch' io t'uccido.
+  Di questo tradimento appunto e come:
+  E se tu il di', de la morte ti fido,
+  E vo' che tu mi dica presto il nome.
+  Onde il pagan rispose con gran grido,
+  Aspetta: Bujaforte io te lo dico,
+  De la montagna del Veglio tuo amico.
+
+  Orlando, quando intese il giovinetto,
+  Subito al padre suo raffigurollo:
+  Lascio la chioma, e poi l'abbraccio stretto
+  Per tenerezza, e con l'elmo baciollo;
+  E disse: O Bujaforte, il vero hai detto
+  Il Veglio mio: e da canto tirollo:
+  Di questo tradimento dimmi appunto,
+  Poi the cosi la fortuna m' ha giunto.
+
+  Ma ben ti dico per la fede mia,
+  Che di combatter con mie genti hai torto;
+  E so che 'l padre tuo, dovunque e' sia,
+  Non ti perdona questo, cosi morto.
+  Bujaforte piangeva tuttavia;
+  Poi disse: Orlando mio, datti conforto;
+  Il mio signore a forza qua mi manda;
+  E obbedir convien quel che comanda.
+
+  Io son de la mia patria sbandeggiato:
+  Marsilio in corte sua m' ha ritenuto,
+  E promesso rimettermi in istato:
+  Io vo cercando consiglio ed ajuto,
+  Poi ch' io son da ognuno abbandonato:
+  E per questa cagion qua son venuto:
+  E bench' i mostri far grande schermaglia.
+  Non ho morto nessun ne la battaglia.
+
+  Io t' ho tanto per fama ricordare
+  Sentito a tutto il mondo, che nel core
+  Sempre poi t' ebbi: e mi puoi comandare:
+  E so del padre mio l'antico amore:
+  Del tradimento tu tel puoi pensare:
+  Sai che Gano e Marsilio e traditore:
+  E so per discrezion tu intendi bene,
+  Che tanta gente per tua morte viene.
+
+  E Baldovin di Marsilio ha la vesta;
+  Che cosi il vostro Gano ba ordinato:
+  Vedi che ignun non gli pon lancia in resta:
+  Che 'l signor nostro ce l'ha comandato.
+  Disse Orlando: Rimetti l'elmo in testa,
+  E torna a la battaglia al modo usato:
+  Vedrem che segnira: tanto ti dico,
+  Ch' io t'aro sempre come il Veglio amico.
+
+  Poi disse: Aspetta un poco, intendi saldo,
+  Che non ti punga qualche strana ortica:
+  Sappi ch' egli e ne la zuffa Rinaldo:
+  Guarda che il nome per nulla non dica:
+  Che non dicesse in quella furia caldo,
+  Dunque tu se' da la parte nimica:
+  Si che tu giuochi netto, destro e largo:
+  Che ti bisogua aver qui gli occhi d'Argo.
+
+  Rispose Bujaforte: Bene hai detto:
+  Se la battaglia passera a tuo modo,
+  Ti mostrero che amico son perfetto,
+  Come fu il padre mio, ch' ancor ne godo.
+
+The poor youth takes his way through the fight, and unfortunately meets
+with Rinaldo.
+
+  Rinaldo ritrovo quel Bujaforte,
+  Al mio parer, che sarebbe scoppiato,
+  Se non avesse trovato la morte:
+  E come egli ebbe a parlar cominciato
+  Del re Marsilio, e di stare in suo corte.
+  Rinaldo gli rispose infuriato:
+  Chi non e ineco, avverso me sia detto;
+  E cominciogli a trassinar l'elmetto.
+  E trasse un mandiretto e due e tre
+  Con tanta furia, e quattro e cinque e sei,
+  Che non ebbe agio a domandar merze,
+  E morto cadde sanza dire omei.
+
+  _Orlando and Baldwin._
+
+  Orlando, poi che lascio Bujaforte,
+  Pargli mill'anni trovar Baldovino,
+  Che cerca pure e non truova la morte:
+  E ricognobbe il caval Vegliantino
+  Per la battaglia, e va correndo forte
+  Dov' era Orlando, e diceva il meschino:
+  Sappi ch' io ho fatto oggi il mio dovuto;
+  E contra me nessun mai e venuto.
+
+  Molti pagani ho pur fatti morire;
+  Pero quel che cio sia pensar non posso,
+  Se non ch' io veggo la gente fuggire.
+  Rispose Orlando: Tu ti fai ben grosso;
+  Di questo fatto stu ti vuoi chiarire,
+  La soppravvesta ti cava di dosso:
+  Vedrai che Gan, come tu te la cavi,
+  Ci ha venduti a Marsilio per ischiavi.
+
+  Rispose Baldwin: Se il padre mio
+  Ci ha qui condotti come traditore,
+  S' i' posso oggi campar, pel nostro Iddio
+  Con questa spada passerogli il core:
+  Ma traditore, Orlando, non so io,
+  Ch' io t' ho seguito con perfetto amore:
+  Non mi potresti dir maggiore ingiuria.--
+  Poi si straccio la vesta con gran furia,
+
+  E disse: Io tornero ne la battaglia,
+  Poi che tu m' hai per traditore scorto:
+  Io non son traditor, se Dio mi vaglia:
+  Non mi vedrai piu oggi se non morto.
+  E in verso l'oste de' pagan si scaglia
+  Dicendo sempre: Tu m' hai fatto torto.
+  Orlando si pentea d'aver cio detto,
+  Che disperato vide il giovinetto.
+
+  Per la battaglia cornea Baldovino,
+  E riscontro quel crudel Mazzarigi,
+  E disse: Tu se' qui, can Saracino,
+  Per distrugger la gente di Parigi?
+  O marran rinnegato paterino,
+  Tu sarai presto giu ne' bassi Stigi:
+  E trasse con la spada in modo a questo,
+  Che lo mando dov' egli disse presto.
+
+Orlando meets again with Baldwin, who has kept his word.
+
+  Orlando corse a le grida e 'l romore,
+  E trovo Baldovino il poveretto
+  Ch' era gia presso a l'ultime sue ore,
+  E da due lance avea passato il petto;
+  E disse. Or non son io piu traditore--
+  E cadde in terra morto cosi detto:
+  De la qual cosa duolsi Orlando forte,
+  E pianse esser cagion de la sua morte.
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Si, the Italian _yes_. A similar territorial designation is
+familiar to the reader in the word "Languedoc," meaning _langue d'oc_,
+or tongue of Oc, which was the pronunciation of the _oui_ or _yes_ of
+the French in that quarter.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Alluding to the cruel stories in the mythology of Boeotia.]
+
+[Footnote 3: The controversial character of Dante's genius, and the
+discordant estimate formed of it in so many respects by different
+writers, have already carried the author of this book so far beyond his
+intended limits, that he is obliged to refer for evidence in the cases
+of Ugolino and Francesca to Balbo, _Vita di Dante_ (Napoli, 1840), p.
+33; and to Troya, _Del Vettro Allegorico di Dante_ (Firenze, _1826), pp.
+28, 32, and 176.]
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
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