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CANTO XXXIII.

1. Chaucer, Second Nonnes Tale:

Thou maide and mother, doughter of thy son,
Thou well of mercy, sinful soules cure,
In whom that God of bountee chees to won;
Thou humble and high over every creature,
Thou nobledest so fer forth our nature,
That no desdaine the maker had of kinde
His son in blood and flesh to clothe and winde.

Within the cloystre blisful of thy sides,
Toke mannes shape the eternal love and pees,
That of the trine compas Lord and gide is,
Whom erthe, and see, and heven out of relees
Ay herien; and thou, virgine wemmeles,
Bare of thy body (and dweltest maiden pure)
The creatour of every creature.

Assembled is in thee magnificence

With mercy, goodnesse, and with swiche pitee,
That thou, that art the sonne of excellence,
Not only helpest hem that praien thee,

But oftentime of thy benignitee

Ful freely, or that men thin helpe beseche,

Thou goest beforne, and art hir lives leche.

See also his Ballade of Our Ladie, and La Priere de Nostre Dame.

36. As St. Macarius said to his soul: "Having taken up thine abode in heaven, where thou hast God and his holy angels to converse with, see that thou descend not thence; regard not earthly things."

48. Finished the ardor of desire in its accomplishment.

66. Eneid, III. 442, Davidson's Tr.: "When, wafted thither, you reach the city Cumæ, the hallowed lakes, and Avernus resounding through the woods, you will see the raving prophetess, who, beneath a deep rock, reveals the fates, and commits to the leaves of trees her characters and words. Whatever verses the virgin has inscribed on the leaves, she ranges in harmonious order, and leaves in the cave enclosed by themselves: uncovered they remain in their position, nor recede from their order. But when, upon turning the hinge, a small breath of wind has blown

upon them, and the door [by opening] hath discomposed the tender leaves, she never afterward cares to catch the verses as they are fluttering in the hollow cave, nor to recover their situation, or join them together."

78. Luke ix. 62: "No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

86. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., I. Quæst. IV. 2: "If therefore God be the first efficient cause of things, the perfections of all things must pre-exist pre-eminently in God." And Buti : "In God are all things that are made, as in the First Cause, that foresees everything."

90. Of all the commentaries which I have consulted, that of Buti alone sustains this rendering of the line. The rest interpret it, "What I say is but a simple or feeble glimmer of what I saw."

94. There are almost as many interpretations of this passage as there are commentators. The most intelligible is, that Dante forgot in a single moment more of the glory he had seen, than the world had forgotten in five and twenty centuries of the Argonautic expedition, when Neptune wondered at the shadow of the first ship that ever crossed the

sea.

"Since every

103. Aristotle, Ethics, I. 1, Gillies's Tr.: art and every kind of knowledge, as well as all the actions and all the deliberations of men, constantly aim at something which they call good, good in general may be justly defined, that which all desire."

114. In the same manner the reflection of the Griffin in Beatrice's eyes, Purg. XXXI. 124, is described as changing, while the object itself remained unchanged : —

Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled,
When I beheld the thing itself stand still,

And in its image it transformed itself.

115. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., I. Quæst. XXIX. 2: "What exists by itself, and not in another, is called subsistence."

116. The three persons of the Trinity.

128. The second circle, or second Person of the Trinity. 131. The human nature of Christ; the incarnation of the Word.

141. In this new light of God's grace, the mystery of the union of the Divine and human nature in Christ is revealed to Dante.

144. Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence: —

As a cloud...

That heareth not the loud winds when they call,

And moveth all together, if it move at all.

145. 1 John iv. 16: "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."

ILLUSTRATIONS

LE DANTE.

Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique.

Vous voulez connaître le Dante. Des Italiens l'appellent divin; mais c'est une divinité cachée; peu de gens entendent ses oracles; il a des commentateurs : c'est peut-être encore une raison de plus pour n'être pas compris. Sa réputation s'affermira toujours, parce qu'on ne le lit guère. Il y a de lui une vingtaine de traits qu'on sait par cœur: cela suffit pour s'épargner la peine d'examiner le reste.

Ce divin Dante fut, dit-on, un homme assez malheureux. Ne croyez pas qu'il fut divin de son temps, ni qu'il fut prophète chez lui. Il est vrai qu'il fut prieur, non pas prieur de moines, mais prieur de Florence, c'est-à-dire l'un des sénateurs.

Il était né en 1260, à ce que disent ses compatriotes. Bayle, qui écrivait à Rotterdam, currente calamo, pour son libraire, environ quatre siècles entiers après le Dante, le fit naître en 1265,1 et je n'en estime Bayle ni plus ni moins pour s'être trompé de cinq ans : la grande affaire est de ne se tromper ni en fait de goût ni en fait de raisonnemens.

Les arts commençaient alors à naître dans la patrie du Dante. Florence était comme Athènes, pleine d'esprit, de grandeur, de légèreté, d'inconstance et de factions. La faction blanche avait un grand crédit : elle se nommait ainsi du nom de la signora Bianca. Le parti opposé s'intitulait le parti des noirs, pour mieux se distinguer des blancs. Ces deux partis ne suffisaient pas aux Florentins. Ils avaient

1 Dante naquit en effet à Florence, en 1265, au mois de mai.

"Bernard had his wish. He made Clairvaux the cynosure of all contemplative eyes. For any one who could exist at all as a monk, with any satisfaction to himself, that was the place above all others. Brother Godfrey, sent out to be first Abbot of Fontenay, -as soon as he has set all things in order there, returns, only too gladly, from that rich and lovely region, to re-enter his old cell, to walk around, delightedly revisiting the well-remembered spots among the trees or by the water-side, marking how the fields and gardens have come on, and relating to the eager brethren (for even Bernard's monks have curiosity) all that befell him in his work. He would sooner be third Prior at Clairvaux, than Abbot of Fontenay. So, too, with Brother Humbert, commissioned in like manner to regulate Igny Abbey (fourth daughter of Clairvaux). He soon comes back, weary of the labor and sick for home, to look on the Aube once more, to hear the old mills go drumming and droning, with that monotony of muffled sound the associate of his pious reveries — often heard in his dreams when far away; to set his feet on the very same flagstone in the choir where he used to stand, and to be happy. But Bernard, though away in Italy, toiling in the matter of the schism, gets to hear of his return, and finds time to send him across the Alps a letter of rebuke for this criminal self-pleasing, whose terrible sharpness must have darkened the poor man's meditations for many a day.

"Bernard had further the satisfaction of improving and extending monasticism to the utmost; of sewing together, with tolerable success, the rended vesture of the Papacy; of suppressing a more popular and more Scriptural Christianity, for the benefit of his despotic order; of quenching for a time, by the extinction of Abelard, the spirit of free inquiry; and of seeing his ascetic and superhuman ideal of religion everywhere accepted as the genuine type of Christian virtue."

104. The Veronica is the portrait of our Saviour impressed upon a veil or kerchief, preserved with great care in the church of the Santi Apostoli at Rome. Collin de Plancy, Légendes des Saintes Images, p. 11, gives the follow ing account of it:

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