holding private intercourse with the Tope, De Vinea had many secret conferences with Innocent, and was accused of betraying his master's interests. Yet here was no seeming diminution in the trust placed in De Vinca. Still, to the end the Emperor's letters concerning the disaster at Parma are by the same hand. Over the cause of his disgrace and death, even in his own day, there was deep doubt and obscurity. The popalar rumour ran that Frederick was ul; the physician of De Vincâ prescribed for him; the Emperor having received some warning, addressed De Vinea: My friend, in thee I have full trust; art thou sure that this is medicine, not poison?' De Vinea replied: How often has my physician ministered healthful medicines!-why are you now afraid?' Frederick took the cup, sternly commanded the physician to drink half of it. The physician threw himself at the King's feet, and, as he fell, overthrew the liquor. But what was left was administered to some criminals, who died in agony. The Emperor wrung his hands and wept bitterly: Whom can I now trust, betrayed by my own familiar friend? Never can I know security, never can I know joy more.' By one account Peter de Vinea was led ignominiously on an ass through Pisa, and thrown into prison, where he dashed his brains out against the wall. Dante's immortal verse has saved the fame of De Vineâ: according to the poet he was the victim of wicked and calumnious jealousy." See also Giuseppe de Blasiis, Vita et Opere di Pietro della Vigna. 112. Iliad, XII. 146: "Like two wild boars, which catch the coming tumult of men and dogs in the mountains, and, advancing obliquely to the attack, break down the wood about them, cutting it off at the roots." ys Chaucer, Legende of Goode Women :- Club, they also being all rich, together with them, not spending but squander. ing, in a short time he consumed all that he had and became very poor." Joining some Florentine troops sent out against the Aretines, he was in a skirmish at the parish of Toppo, which Dante calls a joust; "and notwithstanding he might have saved himself," continues Boccaccio, "remembering his wretched condition, and it seeming to him a grievous thing to bear poverty, as he had been very rich, he rushed into the thick of the enemy and was slain, as perhaps he desired to be." 125. Some commentators interpret these dogs as poverty and despair, still pursuing their victims. The Ottimo Comento calls them "poor men who, to follow pleasure and the kitchens of other people, abandoned their homes and families, and are therefore transformed into hunting dogs, and pursue and devour their masters. 133. Jacopo da St. Andrea was a Paduan of like character and life as Lano. "Among his other squanderings," says the Ottimo Comento, "it is said that, wishing to see a grand and beautiful fire, he had one of his own villas burned." 143. Florence was first under the protection of the god Mars; afterwards under that of St. John the Baptist. But in Dante's time the statue of Mars was still standing on a column at the head of the Ponte Vecchio. It was overthrown by an inundation of the Arno in 1333. See Canto XV. Note 62. 149. Florence was destroyed by Totila in 450, and never by Attila. In Dante's time the two seem to have been pretty generally confounded. The Ottimo Comento remarks upon this point, "Some say that Totila was one person and Attila another; and some say that he was one and the same man.' 150. Dante does not mention the name of this suicide; Boccaccio thinks, for one of two reasons; "either out of regard to his surviving relatives, who Lano," says Boccaccio, Co-peradventure are honourable men, and mento, "was a young gentleman of therefore he did not wish to stain them Siena, who had a large patrimony, and with the infamy of so dishonest a death, associating himself with a club of other or else (as in those times, as if by a young Sienese, called the Spendthrift | malediction sent by God upon our city, 120. many hanged themselves) that each one might apply it to either he pleased of these many. CANTO XIV. I. In this third round of the seventh circle are punished the Violent against God, "In heart denying and blaspheming him, A by disdaining Nature and her bounty." 15. When he retreated across the Libyan desert with the remnant of Pompey's army after the battle of Pharsalia. Lucan, Pharsalia, Book IX. :— "Foremost, behold, I lead you to the toil, My feet shall foremost print the dusty soil." 31. Boccaccio confesses that he does not know where Dante found this tradition of Alexander. Benvenuto da Imola says it is in a letter which Alexander wrote to Aristotle. He quotes the passage as follows: "In India ignited vapours fell from heaven like snow. I commanded my soldiers to trample them under foot." Dante perhaps took the incident from the old retrical Romance of Alexander, which in some form or other was current in his time. In the English version of it, published by the Roxburghe Club, we find the rain of fire, and a fall of snow; but it is the snow, and not the fire, that the soldiers trample down. So likewise in the French version. The English runs as follows, line 4164 : 63. Capaneus was one of the seven kings who besieged Thebes. Euripides, Phanissa, line 1188, thus describes his death : "While o'er the battlements sprang Capaneus, Jove struck him with his thunder, and the earth Resounded with the crack; meanwhile mankind Stood all aghast; from off the ladder's height His limbs were far asunder hurled, his hair Flew to'ards Olympus, to the ground his blood, His hands and feet whirled like Ixion's wheel, And to the earth his flaming body fell." Also Gower, Confes. Amant., I. :— God toke him selfe the bataile He sende and him to pouder smote." 72. Like Hawthorne's scarlet letter, at once an ornament and a punishment. 79. The Bulicame or Hot Springs of Viterbo. Villani, Cronica, Book I. Ch. 51, gives the following brief account of these springs, and of the origin of the name of Viterbo :— "The city of Viterbo was built by the Romans, and in old times was called Vigezia, and the citizens Vigentians. And the Romans sent the sick there on account of the baths which flow from the Bulicame, and therefore it was called Vita Erbo, that is, life of the sick, or city of life." 80. "The building thus appropriated," says Mr. Barlow, Contributions to the Study of the Divine Comedy, p. 129, "would appear to have been the large ruined edifice known as the Bagno di Ser Paolo Benigno, situated between the Bulicame and Viterbo. About half a mile beyond the Porta di Faule, which leads to Toscanella, we come to a way called Riello, after which we arrive at the said ruined edifice, which received the water from the Bulicame by conduits, and has popularly been regarded as the Bagno delle Meretrici alluded to by Dante; there is no other building here found, which car. dispute with the claim to this distinction. 102. The shouts and cymbais of the Corybantes, drowning the cries of the infant Jove, lest Saturn should find him and devour him. 103. The statue of Tme, turning its back upon the East and looking towards See also Don Quixote's discourse to the goatherds, inspired by the acorns they gave him, Book II. Chap. 3; and Tasso's Ode to the Golden Age, in the Aminta. 113. The Tears of Time, forming the infernal rivers that flow into Cocytus. Milton, Parad. Lost, II. 577 :- Far off from these a slow and silent stream, 5. These lines recall Goldsmith's de- 29. The reading la mia seems preferable to la mano, and is justified by line 45. 30. Brunetto Latini, Dante's friend and teacher. Villani thus speaks of him, Cronica, VIII. 10: "In this year Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. 1294 died in Florence a worthy citizen, whose name was Sir Brunetto Latini, who was a great philosopher and perfect master of rhetoric, both in speaking and in writing. He commented the Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks pain." "And for this reason does the smallest round Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors." 4. Guizzante is not Ghent, but Cadsand, an island opposite L'Ecluse, where the great canal of Bruges enters the sea. A canal thus flowing into the sea, the dikes on either margin uniting with the sea-dikes, gives a perfect image of this part of the Inferno. Lodovico Guicciardini in his Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (1581), p. 416, speaking of Cadsand, says: "This is the very place of which our great poet Dante makes mention in the fifteenth chapter of the Inferno, calling it incorrectly, perhaps by error of the press, Guizzante; where still at the present day great repairs are continually made upon the dikes, because here, and in the environs towards Bruges, the flood, or I should rather say the tide, on account of the situation and lowness of the land, has very great power, particularly during a north-west wind."" Rhetoric of Tully, and made the good and useful book called the Tesoro, and the Tesoretto, and the Keys of the Tesoro, and many other books of philosophy, and of vices and of virtues, and he was Secretary of our Commune. He was a worldly man, but we have made mention of him because he was the first master in refining the Florentines, and in teaching them how to speak correctly, and how to guide and govern our Republic on political principles." Boccaccio, Comento, speaks of him thus: "This Ser Brunetto Latini was a Florentine, and a very able man in some of the liberal arts, and in philosophy; but his principal calling was that of Notary; and he held himself and his calling in such great esteem, that, having made a mistake in a contract drawn up by him, and having been in consequence accused of fraud, he preferred to be condemned for it rather than to confess that he had made a mistake; and afterwards he quitted Florence in disdain, and leaving in memory of himself a book composed by him, called the Tesoretto, he went to Paris and lived there a long time, and composed a book there which is in French, and in which he treats of many matters regarding the liberal arts, and moral and natural philosophy, and metaphysics, which he called the Te G soro; and finally, I believe, he died in Paris.' "Mastro di storlomia He also wrote a short poem, called It has been supposed by some comthe Favoletto, and perhaps the Pataffio, mentators that Dante was indebted to a satirical poem in the Florentine dia- the Tesoretto for the first idea of the lect, a jargon," says Nardini, "which Commedia. "If any one is pleased to cannot be understood even with a com-imagine this," says the Abbate Zannoni mentary." But his fame rests upon the in the Preface to his edition of the Tesoretto and the Tesoro, and more than Tesoretto, (Florence, 1824,) "he must all upon the fact that he was Dante's confess that a slight and almost invisible teacher, and was put by him into a very spark served to kindle a vast conflagradisreputable place in the Inferno. He tion." died in Florence, not in Paris, as Boccaccio supposes, and was buried in Santa Maria Novella, where his tomb still exists. It is strange that Boccaccio should not have known this, as it was in this church that the "seven young gentlewomen " of his Decameron met on a Tuesday morning," and resolved to go together into the country, where they "might hear the birds sing, and see the verdure of the hills and plains, and the fields full of grain undulating like the sea." 66 The Tesoro, which is written in French, is a much more ponderous and pretentious volume. Hitherto it has been known only in manuscript, or in the Italian translation of Giamboni, but at length appears as one of the volumes of the Collection de Documents Inédits sur l'Histoire de France, under the title of Li Livres dou Tresor, edited by P. Chabaille, Paris, 1863; a stately quarto of some seven hundred pages, which it would assuage the fiery torment of Ser Brunetto to look upon, and justify him in saying "Commended unto thee be my Tesoro, it treats of the beginning of time, of the antiquity of old histories, of the creation of the world, and in fine of the nature of all things. The poem of the Tesoretto, written in a jingling metre, which reminds one of the Vision of Piers Ploughman, is itself a Vision, with the customary allegorical personages of the Virtues and The work is quaint and curious, but Vices. Ser Brunetto, returning from mainly interesting as being written by an embassy to King Alphonso of Spain, Dante's schoolmaster, and showing what meets on the plain of Roncesvalles a he knew and what he taught his pupil. student of Bologna, riding on a bay I cannot better describe it than in the mule, who informs him that the Guelfs author's own words, Book I. ch. 1 :have been banished from Florence. "The smallest part of this Treasure Whereupon Ser Brunetto, plunged in is like unto ready money, to be exmeditation and sorrow, loses the high-pended daily in things needful; that is, road and wanders in a wondrous forest. Here he discovers the august and gigantic figure of Nature, who relates to him the creation of the world, and gives him a banner to protect him on his pilgrimage through the forest, in which he meets with no adventures, but with the Virtues and Vices, Philosophy, Fortune, Ovid, and the God of Love, and sundry other characters, which are sung at large through eight or ten chapters. He then emerges from the forest, and confesses himself to the monks of Montpellier; after which he goes back into the forest again, and suddenly finds himself on the summit of Olympus; and the poem ab ruptly leaves him discoursing about the elements with Ptolemy, "The second part, which treats of the vices and virtues, is of precious stones, which give unto man delight and virtue; that is to say, what things a man should do, and what he should not, and shows the reason why.... "The third part of the Treasure is of fine gold; that is to say, it teaches a man to speak according to the rules of rhetoric, and how a ruler ought to govern those beneath him. ... "And I say not that this book is extracted from my own poor sense and my own naked knowledge, but, on the cor trary, it is like a honeycomb gathered from diverse flowers; for this book is wholly compiled from the wonderful sayings of the authors who before our time have treated of philosophy, each me according to his knowledge. "And if any one should ask why this book is written in Romance, actording to the language of the French, since we are Italian, I should say it is for two reasons; one, because we are France, and the other, because this speech is more delectable, and more common to all people." 62. "Afterwards,' says Brunetto Latini, Tresor, Book I. Pt. I. ch. 37, "the Romans besieged Fiesole, till at last they conquered it and brought it into subjection. Then they built upon the plain, which is at the foot of the high rocks on which that city stood, another city, that is now called Florence. And know that the spot of ground where Florence stands was formerly called the House of Mars, that is to say the House of War; for Mars, who is one of the seven planets, is called the God of War, and as such was worshipped of old. Therefore it is no wonder that the Florentines are always in war and in discord, for that planet reigns over them. Of this Master Brunez Latins ought to know the truth, for he was born there, and was in exile on account of war with the Florentines, when he composed this book.” See also Villani, I. 38, who assigns a different reason for the Florentine dissensions. "And observe, that if the Florentines are always in war and dissension among themselves it is not to be wondered at, they being descended from two nations so contrary and hostile and different in customs, as were the noble and virtuous Romans and the rude and warlike Fiesolans." Again, IV. 7, he attributes the Florentine dissensions to both the abovementioned causes. 67. Villani, IV. 31, tells the story of certain columns of porphyry given by the Pisans to the Florentines for guarding their city while the Pisan army had gone to the conquest of Majorca. The columns were cracked by fire, but being covered with crimson cloth, the Floren " With that wild wheel we go not up or down ; Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands; Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands; For man is man and master of his fate. Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd; Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud; Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.' 109. Priscian, the grammarian of Constantinople in the sixth century. 110. Francesco d'Accorso, a distinguished jurist and Professor at Bologna in the thirteenth century, celebrated for his Commentary upon the Code Justinian. 113. Andrea de' Mozzi, Bishop of Florence, transferred by the Pope, the "Servant of Servants," to Vicenza; the two cities being here designated by the rivers on which they are respectively situated. |
