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her; and gave him as her dowry a large territory in Cassentino and the Alps, and made him Count thereof."

Ampère says in his Voyage Dantesque, page 242: "Near the battle-field of Campaldino stands the little town of Poppi, whose castle was built in 1230 by the father of the Arnolfo who built some years later the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. In this castle is still shown the bedroom of the beautiful and modest Gualdrada."

Francesco Sansovino, an Italian novelist of the sixteenth century, has made Gualdrada the heroine of one of his tales, but has strangely perverted the old tra dition. His story may be found in Roscoe's Italian Novelists, III. p. 107.

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41. Tegghiajo Aldobrandi was a distinguished citizen of Florence, and opposed what Malespini calls the ill counsel of the people," that war should be declared against the Sienese, which war resulted in the battle of Monte Aperto and the defeat of the Florentines.

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"The Emperor Otho IV., being by chance in Florence and having gone to the festival of St. John, to make it more gay with his presence, it pened that to the church with the oer city dames, as our custom is, came tre wife of Messer Berto, and brought with her a daughter of hers called Gualdıada, who was still unmarried. And as they 44. Jacopo Rusticucci was a rich sat there with the others, the maiden Florentine gentleman, whose chief misbeing beautiful in face and figure, ne irly fortune seems to have been an ill-asall present turned round to look at I er, sorted marriage. Whereupon the amiand among the rest the Emperor. And able Boccaccio in his usual Decameron having much commended her beauty style remarks: "Men ought not then to and manners, he asked Messer Berto, be over-hasty in getting married; on the who was near him, who she was. To contrary, they should come to it with which Messer Berto smilingly answered: much precaution." And then he in'She is the daughter of one who, I dare dulges in five octavo pages against say, would let you kiss her if you matrimony and woman in general. wished.' These words the young lady heard, being near the speaker; and somewhat troubled by the opinion her father seemed to have of her, that, if he wished it, she would suffer herself to be Kissed by any one in this free way, rising, and looking a moment at her father, and blushing with shame, said: 'Father, do not make such courteous promises at the expense of my modesty, for certainly, unless by violence, no one shall ever kiss me, except him whom you shall give me as my husband.' The Emperor, on hearing this, much commended the words and the young lady. . . . And calling forward a noble youth named Guido Beisangue, who was afterwards called Guido the Elder, who as yet had Do wife, he insisted upon his marrying

45. See Macchiavelli's story of Bdfagor, wherein Minos and Rhadamanthus, and the rest of the infernal judges, are greatly surprised to hear an infinite number of condemned souls "lament nothing so bitterly as their folly in having taken wives, attributing to them the whole of their misfortune.

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70. Boccaccio, in his Comento, speaks of Guglielmo Borsiere as a courteous gentleman of good breeding and excellent manners; and in the Decameron, Gior. I. Nov. 8, tells of a sharp rebuke administered by him to Messer Ermino de' Grimaldi, a miser of Genoa.

"It came to pass that, whilst by spending nothing he went on accumulating wealth, there came to Genoa a well-bred and witty gentleman cal'ed

Gulielmo Borsiere, one nothing like the courtiers of the present day; who, to the great reproach of the debauched dispositions of such as would now be reputed fine gentlemen, should more properly style themselves asses, brought up amidst the filthiness and sink of mankind, rather than in courts.

"This Gulielmo, whom I before menfione, was much visited and respected by the better sort of people at Genoa; wen having made some stay here, and hearing much talk of Ermino's sordidness, he became desirous of seeing him. Now Ermino had been informed of Gubelmo's worthy character, and having, Lowever covetous he was, some small sparks of gentility, he received him in a courteous manner, and, entering into discourse together, he took him, and Some Genoese who came along with him, to see a fine house which he had lately built; and when he had shown every part of it, he said: Pray, sir, can you, who have heard and seen so much, tell me of something that was never yet seen, to have painted in my hall?' To whom Gulielmo, hearing him speak so simply, replied: 'Sir, I can tell you of nothing which has never yet been seen, that I know of; unless it be sneezing, or something of that sort; but if you please, I can tell you of a thing which, I believe, you never saw.' Said Ermino (little expecting such an answer as he received), I beg you would let me know what that is.' Gulielmo immediately replied, 'Paint Liberality.' When Ermino heard this, such a sudden shame seized him, as quite changed his temper from what it had hitherto been; and he said: 'Sir, I will have her painted in such a manner that neither you, nor any one else, shall be able to say, hereafter, that I am unacquainted with her.' And from that time such effect had Gulielmo's words upon him, he became the most liberal and courteous gentleman, and was the most respected, both by strangers and his own citizens, of any in Genoa."

95. Monte Veso is among the Alps, between Piedmont and Savoy, where the Po takes its rise. From this point eastward to the Adriatic, all the rivers on the left or northern slope of the Apennines are tributaries to the Po,

until we come to the Montone, which above Forli is called Acquacheta. This is the first which flows directly into the Adriatic, and not into the Po. At least it was so in Dante's time. Now, by some change in its course, the Lamone, farther north, has opened itself a new outlet, and is the first to make its own way to the Adriatic. See Barlow, Contributions to the Study of the Divine Comedy, p. 131. This comparison shows the delight which Dante took in the study of physical geography. To reach the waterfall of Acquacheta he traverses in thought the entire valley of the Po, stretching across the whole of Northern Italy.

102. Boccaccio's interpretation of this line, which has been adopted by most of the commentators since his time, is as follows: "I was for a long time in doubt concerning the author's meaning in this line; but being by chance at this monastery of San Benedetto, in company with the abbot, he told me that there had once been a discussion among the Counts who owned the mountain, about building a village near the waterfall, as a convenient place for a settlement, and bringing into it their vassals scattered on neighbouring farms; but the leader of the project dying, it was not carried into effect; and that is what the author says, Ove dovea per mille, that is, for many, esser ricetto, that is, home and habitation."

Doubtless grammatically the words will bear this meaning. But evidently the idea in the author's mind, and which he wished to impress upon the reader's, was that of a waterfall plunging at a single leap down a high precipice. To this idea, the suggestion of buildings and inhabitants is wholly foreign, and adds neither force nor clearness. Whereas, to say that the river plunged at one bound over a precipice high enough for a thousand cascades, presents at once a vivid picture to the imagination, and I have interpreted the line accordingly, making the contrast between una scesa and mille. It should not be forgotten that, while some editions read dovca, others read dovria, and even potria.

106. This cord has puzzled the commentators exceedingly. Boccaccio

Volpi, and Venturi do not explain it. The anonymous author of the Ottimo, Benvenuto da Imola, Buti, Landino, Vellutello, and Daniello, all think it means fraud, which Dante had used in the pursuit of pleasure,-"the panther with the painted skin." Lombardi is of opi nion that, "by girding himself with the Franciscan cord, he had endeavoured to restrain his sensual appetites, indicated by the panther; and still wearing the cord as a Tertiary of the Order, he makes it serve here to deceive Geryon, and bring him up." Biagioli understands by it "the humility with which a man should approach Science, because it is she that humbles the proud." Fraticelli thinks it means vigilance; Tommaseo, "the good faith with which he hoped to win the Florentines, and now wishes to deal with their fraud, so that it may not harm him;" and Gabrielli Rossetti says, "Dante flattered himself, acting as a sincere Ghibelline, that he should meet with good faith from his Guelf countrymen, and met instead with horrible fraud."

Dante elsewhere speaks of the cord in a good sense. In Purgatorio, VII. 114, Peter of Aragon is "girt with the cord of every virtue." In Inferno, XXVII. 92, it is mortification, "the cord that used to make those girt with it more meagre ;" and in Paradiso, XI. 87, it is humility, "that family which had already girt the humble cord."

It will be remembered that St. Francis, the founder of the Cordeliers (the wearers of the cord), used to call his body asino, or ass, and to subdue it with the capestro, or halter. Thus the cord is made to symbolise the subjugation of the animal nature. This renders Lombardi's interpretation the most intelligible and satisfactory, though Virgil scems to have thrown the cord into the abyss simply because he had nothing else to throw, and not with the design of deceiving.

112. As a man does naturally in the act of throwing.

131. That Geryon, seeing the cord, ascends, expecting to find some moine défroqué, and carry him down, as Lombardi suggests, is hardly admissible; for that was not his office. The spirits were

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The monster Geryon, here used as the symbol of Fraud, was born of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe, and is generally represented by the poets as having three bodies and three heads. He was in ancient times King of Hesperia or Spain, living on Erytheia, the Red Island of sunset, and was slain by Hercules, who drove away his beautiful oxen. The nimble fancy of Hawthorne thus depicts him in his Wonder-Book, p. 148:

"But was it really and truly an old man? Certainly at first sight it looked very like one; but, on closer inspection, it rather seemed to be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. For on his legs and arms there were scales, such as fishes have; he was web-footed and web-fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his long beard, being of a greenish tinge, had more the appearance of a tuft of sea-weed than of an ordinary beard. Have you never seen a stick c timber, that has been long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown with barnacles, and at last, drifting ashore, seems to have been thrown up. from the very deepest bottom of the sea? Well, the old man would have put you in mind of just such a wave-tost spar."

The three bodies and three heads, which old poetic fable has given to the monster Geryon, are interpreted by modern prose as meaning the three Balearic Islands, Majorca, Minorca, and Ivica, over which he reigned.

IO. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XIV. 87, Rose's Tr., thus depicts Fraud :—

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“With pleasing mien, grave walk, and decent

vest,

Frand rolled her eyeballs humbly in her head;
And such benign and modest speech possest,
She might a Gabriel seem who Ave said.
Foul was she and deformed in all the rest;
But with a mantle, long and widely spread,
Concealed her hideous parts; and evermore
Beneath the stole a poisoned dagger wore."

The Gabriel saying Ave is from Dante,
Purgatory, X. 40 :—

One would have sworn that he was saying
Ave."

17. Tartars nor Turks, "who are
most perfect masters therein," says Boc-
caccio,
as we can clearly see in Tar-
tarian cloths, which truly are so skil-
fully woven, that no painter with his
brush could equal, much less surpass
them. The Tartars are .....
And
with this unfinished sentence close the
Lectures upon Dante, begun by Giovanni
Boccaccio on Sunday, August 9, 1373,
in the church of San Stefano, in Flo-

rence.

That there were some critics among his audience is apparent from this sonnet, which he addressed "to one who had censured his public Exposition of Dante.' See D. G. Rosetti, Early

Italian Poets, p. 447 :

"If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be,
That such high fancies of a soul so proud
Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd,
As, touching my Discourse, I'm told by
thee,)

This were my grievous pain; and certainly
My proper blame should not be disavowed;
Though hereof somewhat, I declare aloud,
Were due to others, not alone to me.
False hopes, true poverty, and therewithal
The blinded judgment of a host of friends,
And their entreaties, made that I did thus.
But of all this there is no gain at all
Unto the thankless souls with whose base ends
Nothing agrees that's great or generous.

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One at the loom so excellently skilled
That to the Goddess she refused to yield."

57. Their love of gold still haunting them in the other world.

59. The arms of the Gianfigliacci of Florence.

63. The arms of the Ubbriachi of Florence.

64. The Scrovigni of Padua.

68. Vitaliano del Dente of Padua. 73. Giovanni Bujamonte, who seems to have had the ill repute of being the

greatest usurer of his day, called here in irony "the sovereign cavalier."

74. As the ass-driver did in the streets of Florence, when Dante beat him for singing his verses amiss. See Sacchetti, Nov. CXV.

78. Dante makes as short work with these usurers as if he had been a curious traveller walking through the Ghetto of Rome, or the Judengasse of Frankfort.

107. Ovid, Metamorph. II., Addison's Tr. :

"Half dead with sudden fear he dropt the
reins;

The horses felt 'em loose upon their manes,
And, flying out through all the plains above,
Ran uncontroiled where'er their fury drove :
Rushed on the stars, and through a pathless

way

Of unknown regions hurried on the day.
And now above, and now below they flew,
And near the earth the burning chariot drew
At once from life and from the chariot driv'n,
Th' ambitious boy fell thunder-struc!: from
heav'n.

The horses started with a sudden bound,
And flung the reins and chariot to the ground:
The studded harness from their necks they
broke,

Here fell a wheel, and here a silver spoke,
Here were the beam and axle torn away;
And, scatter'd o'er the earth, the shining frag-

ments lay.

The breathless Phaeton, with flaming hair,
Shot from the chariot, like a falling star,
That in a summer's ev'ning from the top
Of heav'n drops down, or seems at least to

drop:

Till on the Po his blasted corpse was hurled,
Far from his country, in the Western World."

108. The Milky Way. In Spanish El camino de Santiago; in the Northern Mythology the pathway of the ghosts going to Valhalla.

109.
Ovid, Metamorph. VIII., Crox-
all's Tr. :-

"The soft'ning wax, that felt a nearer sua,
Dissolv'd apace, and soon began to run.
The youth in vain his melting pinions shakes,
His feathers gone, no longer air he takes.
O father, father, as he strove to cry,
Down to the sea he tumbled from on high,
And found his fate; yet still subsists by fame,
Among those waters that retain his name.
The father, now no more a father! cries,
Ho, Icarus! where are you? as he flies:
Where shall I seek my boy? he cries again,
And saw his feathers scattered on the main."

136. Lucan, Pharsal. I. :"To him the Balearic sling is slow, And the shaft loiters from the Parthian bow."

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CANTO XVIII.

1. Here begins the third division of the Inferno, embracing the Eighth and Ninth Circles, in which the Fraudulent are purished.

"But because fraud is man's peculiar vice More it displeases God; and so stand lowest The fraudulent, and greater dole assails them."

The Eighth Circle is called Malebolge, or Evil-budgets, and consists of ten concentric ditches, or Bolge, of stone, with dikes between, and rough bridges running across them to the centre like the spokes of a wheel.

In the First Bolgia are punished Seducers, and in the second Flatterers.

2. Mr. Ruskin, Modern Painters, III. p. 237, says :

"Our slates and granites are often of very lovely colours; but the Arennine limestone is so gray and toneless, that I know not any mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded. Now, as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his poein, nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. He had journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to Trent, and that along the Cornice, both of which are either upon those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any colour till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever seen rock scenery of the finely coloured kind, aided by the Alpine mosses: I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno, XVI. 99), but every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain size he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,-the one clearly chosen only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make a sound as of crackling ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the stanza,-and the other is an Apennine near Lucca.

"His idea, therefore, of rock colour, founded on these experiences, is that of a dull or ashen gray, more or less stained by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as

the Apennine limestones nearly always are; the gray being peculiarly coid and disagreeable. As we go down the very hill which stretches out from Pietra-pana towards Lucca, the stones laid by the road-side to mend it are of this ashen gray, with efflorescences of manganese and iron in the fissures. The whole of Malebolge is made of this rock, All wrought in stone of iron-coloured grain.'

29. The year of Jubilee 1300. Mr. Norton, in his Notes of Travel and Study in Italy, p. 255, thus describes it :

"The beginning of the new century brought many pilgrims to the Papal city, and the Pope, seeing to what account the treasury of indulgences possessed by the Church might now be turned, hit upon the plan of promising plenary indulgence to all who, during the year, should visit with fit dispositions the holy places of Rome. He, accordingly, in the most solemn manner, proclaimed a year of Jubilee, to date from the Christmas of 1299, and appointed a similar celebration for each hundredth year thereafter. The report of the mar vellous promise spread rapidly through Europe; and, as the year advanced, pilgrims poured into Italy from remote as well as from neighbouring lands. The roads leading to Rome were dusty wth bands of travellers pressing forward to gain the unwonted indulgence. The Crusades had made travel familiar to men, and a journey to Rome seemed easy to those who had dreamed of the Farther East, of Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Giovanni Villani, who was among the pilgrims from Florence, declares that there were never less than two hundred thousand strangers at Rome during the year; and Guglielmo Ventura, the chronicler of Asti, reports the total number of pilgrims at not less than two millions. The picture which he draws of Rome during the Jubilee is a curious one. Mirandum est quod pas sim ibant viri et mulieres, qui anno illo Romæ fuerunt quo ego ibi fui et per dies xv. steti. De pane, vino, carnibus, piscibus, et avena, bonum mercatum ibi erat; fænum carissimum ibi fuit; hospitia carissima; taliter quod lectus meus et equi mei super fæno et avena constabat miks tornesium unum grossum. Exiens d

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