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Tarned round his head where he had had his legs,
And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts,
So that to Hell I thought we were returning.
"Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,'
The Master said, panting as one fatigued,
"Must we perforce depart from so much evil."
Then through the opening of a rock he issued,
And down upon the margin seated me;
Then tow'rds me he outstretched his wary step.
I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see

Lucifer in the same way I had left him;
And I beheld him upward hold his legs.
And if I then became disquieted,

Let stolid people think who do not see
What the point is beyond which I had passed.
"Rise up," the Master said, "upon thy feet;
The way is long, and difficult the road,
And now the sun to middle-tierce returns."
It was not any palace corridor

There where we were, but dungeon natural,
With floor uneven and unease of light.
"Ere from the abyss I tear myself away,

My Master," said I when I had arisen,
"To draw me from an error speak a little;
Where is the ice?" and how is this one fixed

Thus upside down? and how in such short time
From eve to morn has the sun made his transit ?"

And he to me: "Thou still imaginest

Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped
The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world.
That side thou wast, so long as I descended;

When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point
To which things heavy draw from every side,

And now beneath the hemisphere art come

Opposite that which overhangs the vast
Dry-land, and 'neath whose cope was put to death
The Man who without sin was born and lived.
Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere
Which makes the other face of the Judecca
Here it is morn when it is evening there;

And he who with his hair a stairway made us
Still fixed remaineth as he was before.
Upon this side he fell down out of heaven;
And all the land, that whilom here emerged,
For fear of him made of the sea a veil,

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And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure
To flee from him, what on this side appears
Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled."
A place there is below, from Beelzebub

As far receding as the tomb extends,

Which not by sight is known, but by the sound

Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth

Through chasra within the stone, which it has gnawed
With course that winds about and slightly falis

The Guide and I into that hidden road

Now entered, to return to the bright world;
And without care of having any rest

We mounted up, he first and I the second,

Till I beheld through a round aperture

Some of the beauteous things that Heaven dɔth bear,

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars

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NOTES TO INFERNO.

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NOTES TO INFERNO.

THE DIVINE COMEDY.-The Vita | parts, and each part again subdivided Nuova of Dante closes with these words: in its structure into three. The whole "After this sonnet there appeared to me a wonderful vision, in which I beheld things that made me propose to say no more of this blessed one, until I shall be able to treat of her more worthily. And to attain thereunto, truly I strive with all my power, as she knoweth. So that if it shall be the pleasure of Him, through whom all things live, that my life continue somewhat longer, I hope to say of her what never yet was said of any And then may it please Him, who is the Sire of courtesy, that my soul may depart to look upon the glory of its Lady, that is to say, of the Blessed Beatrice, who in glory gazes into the face of Him, qui est per omnia sæcula benedictus."

number of cantos is one hundred, the perfect number ten multiplied into itself; but if we count the first canto of the Inferno as a Prelude, which it really is, each part will consist of thirty-three cantos, making ninety-nine in all; and so the favourite mystic numbers reappear.

woman.

In these lines we have the earliest glimpse of the Divine Comedy, as it rose in the author's mind.

66

Whoever has read the Vita Nuova will remember the stress which Dante lays upon the mystic numbers Nine and Three; his first meeting with Beatrice at the beginning of her ninth year, and the end of his; his nine days' illness, and the thought of her death which came to him on the ninth day; her death on the ninth day of the ninth month, computing by the Syrian method," and in that year of our Lord "when the perfect number ten was nine times completed in that century" which was the thirteenth. Moreover, he says the number nine was triendly to her, because the nine heavens were in conjunction at her birth; and that she was herself the number nine, "that is, a miracle whose root is the wonderful Trinity.'

Following out this idea, we find the Divine Comedy written in terza rima, threefold rhyme, divided into three

The three divisions of the Inferno are minutely described and explained by Dante in Canto XI. They are separated from each other by great spaces in the infernal abyss. The sins punished in them are,-I. Incontinence. Malice. III. Bestiality.

II.

I. INCONTINENCE: 1. The Wanton. 2. The Gluttonous. 3. The Avaricious and Prodigal. 4. The Irascible and the

Sullen.

II. MALICE: 1. The Violent against their neighbour, in person or property. 2. The Violent against themselves, in person or property. 3. The Violent against God, or against Nature, the daughter of God, or against Art, the daughter of Nature.

III. BESTIALITY: first subdivision: I. Seducers. 2. Flatterers. 3. Simoni acs. 4. Soothsayers. 5. Barrators. 6. Hypocrites. 7. Thieves. 8. Evil counsellors. 9. Schismatics. 10. Falsifiers.

Second subdivision: 1. Traitors to their kindred. 2. Traitors to their country. 3. Traitors to their friends. 4. Traitors to their lords and benefac tors.

The Divine Comedy is not strictly an allegorical poem in the sense in which the Faerie Queene is; and yet it is full of allegorical symbols and figurative meanings. In a letter to Can Grande della Scala, Dante writes: "It is to be remarked, that the sense of this work is not simple, but on the contrary one

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