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glory was to be begun in suffering, and all power in humility.'

115. Ruskin, Mod. Painters, III. 248: "There is only one more point to be noticed in the Dantesque landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet towards the sky. And the love of mountains is so closely connected with the love of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much on their association, that, having found Dante regardless of the Carrara mountains as seen from San Miniato, we may well expect to find him equally regardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind them. Accordingly, we find that his only pleasure in the sky depends on its white clearness,'-that turning into bianco aspetto di

95. A symbol of humility. Ruskin, Mod. Painters, III. 232, says: "There is a still deeper significance in the pas-celestro, which is so peculiarly charactersage quoted, a little while ago, from istic of fine days in Italy. His pieces of Homer, describing Ulysses casting him- pure pale light are always exquisite. In self down on the rushes and the corn- the dawn on the purgatorial mountain, giving land at the river shore, the first, in its pale white, he sees the tre rushes and corn being to him only good molar della marina,trembling of the for rest and sustenance,-when we com- sea; then it becomes vermilion; and at pare it with that in which Dante tells us last, near sunrise, orange. These are he was ordered to descend to the shore precisely the changes of a calm and perof the lake as he entered Purgatory, to fect dawn. The scenery of Paradise gather a rush, and gird himself with it, begins with day added to day,' the it being to him the emblem not only of light of the sun so flooding the heavens, rest, but of humility under chastisement, that never rain nor river made lake so the rush (or reed) being the only plant wide'; and throughout the Paradise all which can grow there ;- no plant the beauty depends on spheres of light, which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, or stars, never on clouds. But the pit can live on that shore, because it does of the Inferno is at first sight obscure, not yield to the chastisement of its deep, and so cloudy that at its bottom waves.' It cannot but strike the reader nothing could be seen. When Dante and singularly how deep and harmonious a Virgil reach the marsh in which the souls significance runs through all these words of those who have been angry and sad in of Dante,-how every syllable of them, their lives are forever plunged, they find the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed it covered with thick fog; and the conof farther thought! For follow up this demned souls say to them, image of the girding with the reed, under trial, and see to whose feet it will lead

us

As the grass of the earth. thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place where our Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by companies upon the green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought of as sustaining itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to the place where a stem of it was put into our Lord's hand for his sceptre; and in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting truth of the Christian ages,-that all

6

'We once were sad, In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun. Now in these murky settlings are we sad.' Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by this bitter marsh smoke, fummo acerbo, and conti nually sweeps it with his hand from before his face."

123. Some commentators interpret Ove adoreza, by "where the wind blows." But the blowing of the wind would produce an effect exactly opposite to that here described.

135. Eneid, VI.: "When the first is torn off, a second of gold succeeds; and a twig shoots forth leaves of the same metal."

CANTO II.

It was sunset at Jerusalem, night on the Ganges, and morning at the Mountain of Purgatory.

The sun being in Aries, the night Would " come forth with the scales," the sign of Libra, which is opposite Aries. These scales fall from the hand of night, cr are not above the horizon by night, when the night exceeds, or is longer than the day.

7. Boccaccio, Decamerone, Prologue to the Third Day, imitates this passage: "The Aurora, as the sun drew nigh, was already beginning to change from vermilion to orange.'

"Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he woo'd to sing
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."

A

98. The first three months of the year of Jubilee, 1300. Milman, Hist. Latin Christ., VI. 285, thus describes it: "All Europe was in a frenzy of religious zeal. Throughout the year the roads in the remotest parts of Germany, Hungary, Britain, were crowded with pilgrims of all ages, of both sexes. Savoyard above one hundred years old determined to see the tombs of the Apostles before he died. There were at times two hundred thousand strangers at Rome. During the year (no doubt the calcula tions were loose and vague) the city was visited by millions of pilgrims. At one time, so vast was the press both within and without the walls, that openings were broken for ingress and egress. Many people were trampled down, and perished by suffocation..... Lodgings were exorbitantly dear, forage scarce ; but the ordinary food of man, bread, meat, wine, and fish, was sold in great plenty and at moderate prices. The ob lations were beyond calculation. reported by an eyewitness that two priests stood with rakes in their hands sweeping the uncounted gold and silver from the altars. Nor was this tribute, like offerings or subsidies for Crusades, to be devoted to special uses, the accoutrements, provisions, freight of armies. It was entirely at the free and irrespon 80. Odyssey, XI., Buckley's Tr.:sible disposal of the Pope. Christendom "But I, meditating in my mind, wished of its own accord was heaping at the to lay hold of the soul of my departed Pope's feet this extraordinary custom; mother. Thrice indeed I essayed it, and receiving back the gift of pardon and my mind urged me to lay hold of it, and everlasting life." but thrice it flew from my hands, like unto a shadow, or even to a dream."

31. Argument used in the sense of means, or appliances, as in Inf. XXXI. 55

44 Cervantes says in Don Quixote, Pt. I. ch. 12, that the student Crisostomo "had a face like a benediction.' 57. Sackville, in his Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates, says:

"Whiles Scorpio dreading Sagittarius' dart Whose bow prest bent in fight the string had slipped,

Down slid into the ocean flood apart."

And Æneid, VI., Davidson's Tr.: "There thrice he attempted to throw his arms around his neck; thrice the phantom, grasped in vain, escaped his hold, like the fleet gales, or resembling most a fugitive dream."

See also Inf. XVIII., Note 29.

It is

100 The sea-shore of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, where the souls of those who were saved assembled, and were received by the Celestial Pilot, who transported them to the island of Purgatory. Minutius Felix, a Roman lawyer of the third century, makes it the 91. Casella was a Florentine musi-scene of his Octavius, and draws this cian and friend of Dante, who here speaks to him with so much tenderness and affection as to make us regret that nothing more is known of him. Milton alludes to him in his Sonnet to Mr. H. Lawes :

pleasant picture of the sands and the sea. Reeves's Tr., p. 37 :

"It was vacation-time, and that gave me aloose from my business at the bar; for it was the season after the summer's heat, when autumn promised fair, and

put on the face of temperate. We set out, therefore, in the morning early, and as we were walking upon the seashore, and a kindly breeze fanned and refreshed our limbs, and the yielding sand softly submitted to our feet and ade it delicious travelling, Cæcilius on a sudden espied the statue of Serapis, and, according to the vulgar mode of superstition, raised his hand to his mouth, and paid his adoration in kisses. Upon which Octavius, addressing hinself to me, said: 'It is not well done, my brother Marcus, thus to leave your mseparable companion in the depth of vulgar darkness, and to suffer him, in so clear a day, to stumble upon stones; stones, indeed, of figure, and anointed with oil, and crowned; but stones, however, still they are ;- for you cannot but be sensible that your permitting so foul an error in your friend redounds no less to your disgrace than his.' This discourse of his held us through half the city; and now we began to find ourselves upon the free and open shore. There the gently washing waves had spread the extremest sands into the order of an artificial walk; and as the sea always expresses some roughness in his looks, even when the winds are still, although he did not roll in foam and angry surges to the shore, yet were we much delighted, as we walked upon the edges of the water, to see the crisping, frizzly waves glide in snaky folds, one while playing against our feet, and then again retiring and lost in the devouring ocean. Softly, then, and calmly as the sea about us, we travelled on, and kept upon the brim of the gently declining shore, beguiling the way with our stories."

112. This is the first line of the second canzone of the Convito.

CANTO III.

15. So in Paradiso, XXVI. 139:"The mount that rises highest o'er the sea."

sical Tour, I. 499, "which, though not genuine, is yet ancient, was inscribed by order of the Duke of Pescolangiano then proprietor of the place, on a marble slab placed in the side of the rock opposite the entrance of the tomb, where it still remains."

Forsyth, Italy, p. 378, says: "Vir gil's tomb is so called, I believe, on the single authority of Donatus. Donatus places it at the right distance from Naples, but on the wrong side of the city; and even there he omits the grotto of Posilipo, which not being so deep in his time as the two last excava tions have left it, must have opened precisely at his tomb. Donatus, too, gives, for Virgil's own composition, an epitaph on the cliff now rejected as a forgery. And who is this Donatus? -an obscure grammarian, or rather his counterfeit. The structure itself resembles a ruined pigeon-house, where the numerous columbaria would indicate a family-sepulchre but who should repose in the tomb of Virgil, but Virgil alone? Visitors of every nation, kings and princes, have scratched their names on the stucco of this apocryphal ruin, but the poet's awful name seems to have deterred them from versifying here."

37. Be satisfied with knowing that a thing is, without asking why it is. These were distinguished in scholastic language as the Demonstratio quia, and the Demonstratio propter quid.

49. Places on the mountainous seaside road from Genoa to Pisa, known as the Riviera di Levante. Of this, Mr. Ruskin, Mod. Painters, III. 243,

says:

"The similes by which he illus trates the steepness of that ascent are all taken from the Riviera of Genoa, now traversed by a good carriage road under the name of the Cornice; but as this road did not exist in Dante's time, an the steep precipices and promontories were then probably traversed by footpaths, which, as they necessarily passel in many places over crumbling and slippery limestone, were doubtless not a little dangerous, and as in the manner they commanded the bays of sca below, "The epitaph," says Eustace, Clas and lay exposed to the full blare of the

27. The tomb of Virgil is on the promontory of Pausilippo, overlooking the Bay of Naples. The inscription upon it

is :

Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces.

south-eastern sun, they corresponded stories of enchantment and romance precisely to the situation of the path by belong to a ruin that appears as if made which he ascends above the purgatorial for their dwelling-place. It is a scene sea, the image could not possibly have out of that Italy which is the home of been taken from a better source for the the imagination, and which becomes the fully conveying his idea to the reader: Italy of memory. nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, in this place, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he has taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably more than forty-five. Now a continuous mountain-slope of forty-five degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent, except by zigzag paths; and greater slope than this could not be climbed, straightforward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock, and great physical exertion besides."

"As the road winds down to the sea, it passes under a high isolated peak, on which stands Esa, built as a city of refuge against pirates and Moors. A little farther on,

Mr. Norton, Travel and Study, p. 1, thus describes the Riviera: "The Var forms the geographical boundary between France and Italy; but it is not till Nice is left behind, and the first height of the Riviera is surmounted, that the real Italy begins. Here the hills close round at the north, and suddenly, as the road turns at the top of a long ascent, the Mediterranean appears far below, washing the feet of the mountains that form the coast, and stretching away to the Southern hori

zon.

The line of the shore is of ex

'Its Roman strength Turbia showed
In ruins by the mountain road,'-

not only recalling the ancient times,
when it was the boundary city of Italy
and Gaul, and when Augustus erected
his triumphal arch within it, but as-
sociated also with Dante and the steep
of Purgatory. Beneath lies Monaco,
glowing like a gem' on its oval rock,
the sea sparkling around it, and the
long western rays of the sinking sun
lingering on its little palace, clinging
to its church belfry and its gray wall,
as if loath to leave them."

He

In the Casa Magni, on the sea-shore near Lerici, Shelley once lived. was returning thither from Leghorn, when he perished in a sudden storm at sea.

67. After they had gone a mile, they were still a stone's throw distant. 82. See Convito, I. 10.

fredi.

traordinary beauty. Here an abrupt cliff rises from the sea, here boid and 112. Manfredi, king of Apulia and broken masses of rock jut out mite it: Sicily, was a natural son of the Em here the hills, their gray sides terraced peror Frederick the Second. He was for vineyards, slope gently down to the slain at the battle of Benevento, in water's edge; here they stretch into little 1265; one of the great and decisive promontories covered with orange and battles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, olive-trees. the Guelph or Papal forces being com"One of the first of these promon-manded by Charles of Anjou, and the tories is that of Capo Sant'Ospizio. Ghibellines or Imperialists by Mair A close grove of olives half conceals the old castle on its extreme point. With the afternoon sun full upon it, the trees palely glimmering as their leaves move in the light air, the sea so blue and smooth as to be like a darker sky, and not even a ripple upon the beach, it seems as if this were the very home of summer and of repose. It is remote and secluded from the stir and noise of the world. No road is seen 'eading to it, and one looks down upon the solitary castle and wonders what

And putting

Malispini, Storia, ch. 187, thus describes his death and burial: "Manfredi, being left with few followers, behaved like a valiant gentleman who preferred to die in battle rather than to escape with shame. on his helmet, which had on it a silver eagle for a crest, this eagle fell on the saddle-bow before him; and seeing this he was greatly disturbed, and said in Latin to the barons who were near him, 'Hoc est signum Dei; for this cres.

threw a stone upon his grave, so that a great pile was made. But afterwards, it is said, by command of the Pope, the Bishop of Cosenza took him from thấ grave, and sent him out of the king, dom, because it was Church land. And he was buried by the river Verde, at the confines of the kingdom and the Campagna. This battle was on a Fri day, the last day of February, in the year one thousand two hundred and sixty-five."

66

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King Manfredi had for his mother a beautiful lady of the family of the Marquises of Lancia in Lombardy, with whom the Emperor had an trigue, and was beautiful in person, and like his father and more than his father was given to dissipation of all kinds. He was a musician and singer, delighted in the company of buffoons and courtiers and beautiful concubines, and was always clad in green; he was generous and courteous, and of good

I fastened on with my own hands in such a way that it could not fall.' But he was not discouraged, and took heart, and went into battle like any other baron, without the royal insignia, in order not to be recognized. But short while it lasted, for his forces were already in flight; and they were routed and Manfredi slain in the middle of the enemy; and they were driven into the town by the soldiers of King Charles, for it was now night, and they lost the city of Benevento. And many of Villani, who in his account of the Manfredi's barons were made priso- battle copies Malispini almost literally, ners, among whom were the Count gives in another chapter, VI. 46, the Giordano, Messer Piero Asino degli following portrait of Manfredi; but it Uberti, and many others, whom King must be remembered that Villani was Charles sent captive into Provence, and a Guelph, and Manfredi a Ghibelthere had them put to death in prison; line. and he imprisoned many other Germans in different parts of the kingdom. And a few days afterwards the wife of Manfredi and his children and his sister, who were in Nocera de' Sardini in Apulia, were taken prisoners by Charles; these died in prison. And for more than three days they made search after Manfredi; for he could not be found, nor was it known if he were dead, or a prisoner, or had escaped; because he had not worn his royal robes in the battle. And after-demeanour, so that he was much be wards he was recognized by one of his own camp-followers, from certain marks upon his person, in the middle of the battle-field; and he threw him across an ass, and came shouting, Who will buy Manfredi?' for which a baron of the king beat him with a cane. And the body of Manfredi being brought to King Charles, he assembled all the barons who were prisoners, and asked each one if that was Manfredi; and timidly they answered yes. Count Giordano smote himself in the face with his hands, weeping and crying, 'O my lord!' whereupon he was much commended by the French, and certain Bretons besought that he might have honourable burial. Answered the king and said, 'I would do it willingly, if he were not excommunicated'; and

on that account he would not have him laid in consecrated ground, but he was buried at the foot of the bridge of Benevento, and each one of the army

loved and gracious, but his life was wholly epicurean, hardly caring for God or the saints, but for the delights of the body. He was an enemy of holy Church, and of priests and monks, confiscating churches as his father had done; and a wealthy gentleman was he, both from the treasure which he inberited from the Emperor, and from King Conrad, his brother, and from his own kingdom, which was ample and fruitful, and which, so long as he lived, notwithstanding all the wars he had with the Church, he kept in good condition, so that it rose greatly in wealth and power, both by sea and by land."

This battle of Benevento is the same as that mentioned Inf. XXVIII. 10.

"At Ceperano, where a renegade Was each Apulian."

113. Constance, wife of the Emperor Henry the Sixth.

115. His daughter Constance, who

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