roasted alive; and those who were present looked on with horror, and wondered at the cruelty of the Prefect, who could condemn to such torments a youth of such fair person and courteous and gentle bearing, and all for the lust of gold."

84. Plutarch thus relates the story of Mutius Scævola, Dryden's Tr. :

"The story of Mutius is variously given; we, like others, must follow the commonly received statement. He was a man endowed with every virtue, but most eminent in war; and resolving to kill Porsenna, attired himself in the Tuscan habit, and using the Tuscan language, came to the camp, and approaching the seat where the king sat amongst his nobles, but not certainly knowing the king, and fearful to inquire, drew out his sword, and stabbed one who he thought had most the appearance of king. Mutius was taken in the act, and whilst he was under examination, a pan of fire was brought to the king, who intended to sacrifice ; Mutius thrust his right hand into the flame, and whilst it burnt stood looking at Porsenna with a steadfast and undaunted countenance; Porsenna at last in admiration dismissed him, and returned his sword, reaching it from his seat; Mutius received it in his left hand, which occasioned the name of Scævola, left-handed, and said, 'I have overcome the terrors of Porsenna, yet am vanquished by his generosity, and gratitude obliges me to disclose what no punishment could extort'; and assured him then, that three hundred Romans, all of the same resolution, lurked about his camp only waiting for an opportunity; he, by lot appointed to the enterprise, was not sorry that he had miscarried in it, because so brave and good a man deserved rather to be a friend to the Romans than an enemy."

103. Alemæon, who slew his mother Eriphyle to avenge his father Amphiaraus the soothsayer. See Purg. XIL Note 50.

The son shall bathe his hands in parent's blood

And in one act be both unjust and good.

118. Beatrice, beloved of God; "that blessed Beatrice,

who lives in heaven with the angels and on earth with my soul."

131. Lessing, Theol. Schrift., I. 108: "If God held all Truth shut up in his right hand, and in his left only the ever restless instinct for Truth, . . . and said to me, Choose! I should humbly fall down at his left, and say, Father, give! Pure Truth is for Thee alone! "

139. It must not be forgotten, that Beatrice is the symbol of Divine Wisdom. Dante says, Convito, III. 15: “In her countenance appear things which display some of the pleasures of Paradise"; and notes particularly “the eyes and smile." He then adds: "And here it should be known that the eyes of Wisdom are its demonstrations, by which the truth is most clearly seen; and its smile the persuasions, in which is displayed the interior light of Wisdom under a veil; and in these two things is felt the exceeding pleasure of beatitude, which is the chief good in Paradise. This pleasure cannot exist in anything here below, except in beholding these eyes and this smile."

CANTO V.

1. The Heaven of Mercury, where are seen the spirits of those who for the love of fame achieved great deeds. Of its symbolism Dante says, Convito, II. 14: "The Heaven of Mercury may be compared to Dialectics, on account of two properties; for Mercury is the smallest star of heaven, since the quantity of its diameter is not more than two thousand and thirty-two miles, according to the estimate of Alfergano, who declares it to be one twenty-eighth part of the diameter of the Earth, which is six thousand and fifty-two miles. The other property is, that it is more veiled by the rays of the Sun than any other star. And these two properties are in Dialectics; for Dialectics are less in body than any Science ; since in them is perfectly compiled and bounded as much doctrine as is found in ancient and modern Art; and it is more veiled than any Science, inasmuch as it proceeds by more sophistic and probable arguments than any other."

For the influences of Mercury, see Canto VI. Note 114.

10. Burns, The Vision:

I saw thy pulse's maddening play
Wild send thee pleasure's devious way,
Misled by fancy's meteor ray,

By passion driven;

And yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven.

24. Milton, Par. Lost, V. 235 : —

Happiness in his power left free to will,

Left to his own free will, his will though free,

Yet mutable.

33. In illustration of this line, Venturi quotes the follow ing epigram:

C'est un homme d'honneur, de piété profonde,

Et qui veut rendre à Dieu ce qu'il a pris au monde.

52. That which is sacrificed, or of which an offering is made.

57. Without the permission of Holy Church, symbolized by the two keys; the silver key of Knowledge, and the golden key of Authority. See Purg. IX. 118:

One was of gold, and the other was of silver;

More precious one is, but the other needs

More art and intellect ere it unlock,

For it is that which doth the knot unloose.

60. The thing substituted must be greater than the thing relinquished.

66. Judges xi. 30: "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into my hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering. And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances; and she was his only child besides her he had neither son nor daughter."

69. Agamemnon.

70. Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, I. 1, Buckley's Tr. :"O thou who rulest over this Grecian expedition, Agamemnon, thou wilt not lead forth thy ships from the ports of this land, before Diana shall receive thy daughter Iphigenia as a victim; for thou didst vow to sacrifice to the light-bearing Goddess whatsoever the year should bring forth most beautiful. Now your wife Clytemnestra has brought forth a daughter in your house, referring to me the title of the most beautiful, whom thou must needs sacrifice. And so, by the arts of Ulysses, they drew me from my mother under pretence of being wedded to Achilles. But I wretched coming to Aulis, being seized and raised aloft above the pyre, would have been slain by the sword; but Diana, giving to the Greeks a stag in my stead, stole me away, and, sending me through the clear ether, she settled me in this land of the Tauri, where barbarian Thoas rules the land."

80. Dante, Convito, I. 11: "These should be called sheep, and not men; for if one sheep should throw itself down a precipice of a thousand feet, all the others would follow, and if one sheep, in passing along the road, leaps from any cause, all the others leap, though seeing no cause for it. And I once saw several leap into a well, on account of one that had leaped in, thinking perhaps it was leaping over a wall; notwithstanding that the shepherd, weeping and wailing, opposed them with arms and breast.”

82. Lucretius, Nature of Things, II. 324, Good's Tr. :

The fleecy flocks, o'er yonder hill that browse,
From glebe to glebe, where'er, impearled with dew,
The jocund clover call them, and the lambs

That round them gambol, saturate with milk,
Proving their frontlets in the mimic fray.

87. Towards the Sun, where the heaven is brightest.
95. The Heaven of Mercury.

97. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I., Ch. 3, says, the planet Mercury "is easily moved according to the goodness or malice of the planets to which it is joined." Dante here represents himself as being of a peculiarly mercurial temperament.

The natural thirst that ne'er is satisfied,
Excepting with the water for whose grace
The woman of Samaria besought.

But Venturi says that it means the "being borne onward by the motion of the Primum Mobile, and swept round so as to find himself directly beneath the moon."

23. As if looking back upon his journey through the air, Dante thus rapidly describes it in an inverse order, the arrival, the ascent, the departure; the striking of the shaft, the flight, the discharge from the bow-string. Here again we are reminded of the arrow of Pandarus, Iliad, IV. 120.

51. Cain with his bush of thorns. See Inf. XX. Note 126. 59. The spots in the Moon, which Dante thought were caused by rarity or density of the substance of the planet. Convito, II. 14: "The shadow in it, which is nothing but the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the sun cannot terminate and be reflected, as in the other parts."

Milton, Par. Lost, V. 419:

Whence in her visage round those spots unpurged,
Vapors not yet into her substance turned.

64. The Heaven of the Fixed Stars.

73. Either the diaphanous parts must run through the body of the Moon, or the rarity and density must be in layers one above the other.

90. As in a mirror, which Dante elsewhere, Inf. XXIII. 25, calls impiombato vetro, leaded glass.

107. The subject of the snow is what lies under it; “the mountain that remains naked," says Buti. Others give a scholastic interpretation to the word, defining it "the cause of accident," the cause of color and cold.

111. Shall tremble like a star. "When a man looks at the stars," says Buti, "he sees their effulgence tremble, and this is because their splendor scintillates as fire does, and moves to and fro like the flame of the fire." The brighter they burn, the more they tremble.

113. The Primum Mobile, revolving in the Empyrean, and giving motion to all the heavens beneath it.

115. The Heaven of the Fixed Stars. III. 62:

Greek Epigrams,