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No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law, where none opprest:
The law of man was written in his breast:

No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard:
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
The mountain-trees in distant prospect please,
Ere yet the pine descended to the seas;
Ere sails were spread, new oceans to explore;
And happy mortals, unconcerned for more,
Confined their wishes to their native shore.
No walls were yet: nor fence, nor mote, nor
mound,

Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound:
Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and

crime,

The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow:
Content with food, which nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnished out a feast.
The flowers unsown in fields and meadows
reigned;
And western winds immortal spring maintained.
In following years, the bearded corn ensued
From earth unasked, nor was that earth re-

newed.

From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke,
And honey sweating through the pores of oak."

Also Boëthius, Book II. Met. 5, and the Ode in Tasso's Aminta, Leigh Hunt's Tr., beginning :

:

"O lovely age of gold!

Not that the rivers rolled

That idol of mistake, that worshipped cheat,
That Honour,-since so called

By vulgar minds appalled,

Played not the tyrant with our nature yet.
It had not come to fret
The sweet and happy fold
Of gentle human-kind;

Nor did its hard law bind

Souls nursed in freedom; but that law of gold,
That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
Which Nature's own hand wrote,-What
pleases, is permitted."

Also Don Quixote's address to the goatherds, Don Quix., Book II. Ch. 3, Jarvis's Tr. :

"After Don Quixote had satisfied his hunger, he took up an handful of acorns, and, looking on them attentively, gave utterance to expressions like these:

666

In

'Happy times, and happy ages! those to which the ancients gave the name of golden, not because gold (which, in this our iron age, is so much esteemed) was to be had, in that fortunate period, without toil and labour; but because they who then lived were ignorant of these two words Meum and Tuum. that age of innocence, all things were in common; no one needed to take any other pains for his ordinary sustenance, than to lift up his hand and take it from the sturdy oaks, which stood inviting him liberally to taste of their sweet and relishing fruit. The limpid fountains, and running streams, offered them, in magnificent abundance, their delicious and transparent waters. In the clefts of rocks, and in the hollow of trees, did the industrious and provident bees form their commonwealths, offering to every hand, without usury, the fertile produce of their most delicious toil. The stout cork trees, without any other inducement than that of their own courtesy, divested themselves of their light and expanded bark, with which men began

With milk, or that the woods wept honey- to cover their houses, supported by rough

dew;

Not that the ready ground

Produced without a wound,

Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew;
Not that a cloudless blue

For ever was in sight,

Or that the heaven which burns,

And now is cold by turns,

Looked out in glad and everlasting light;
No, nor that even the insolent ships from far
Brought war to no new lands, nor riches worse

than war:

But solely that that vain
And breath-invented pain

As yet

poles, only for a defence against the in-
clemency of the seasons. All then was
peace, all amity, all concord.
the heavy coulter of the crooked plough
had not dared to force open, and search
into, the tender bowels of our first
mother, who unconstrained offered, from
every part of her fertile and spacious
bcsom, whatever might feed, sustain,
and delight those her children, who then
had her in possession. Then did the

simple and beauteous young shepherdesses trip it from dale to dale, and from hill to hill, their tresses sometimes plaited, sometimes loosely flowing, with no more clothing than was necessary modestly to cover what modesty has always required to be concealed; nor were there ornaments like those now-a

days in fashion, to which the Tyrian purple and the so-many-ways martyred silk give a value; but composed of green dock-leaves and ivy interwoven; with which, perhaps, they went as splendidly and elegantly decked as our court-ladies do now, with all those rare and foreign inventions which idle curiosity hath taught them. Then were the amorous conceptions of the soul clothed in simple and sincere expressions, in the same way and manner they were conceived, without seeking artificial phrases to set them off. Nor as yet were fraud, deceit, and malice intermixed with truth and plain-dealing. Justice kept within her proper bounds; favour and interest, which now so much depreciate, confound, and persecute her, not daring then to disturb or offend her. As yet the judge did not make his own will the measure of justice; for then there was neither cause nor person to be judged.'

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"Under the shade of melancholy boughs Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time."

11. Psalms li. 15: "O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise."

26. Erisichthon the Thessalian, who in derision cut down an ancient oak in the sacred groves of Ceres. He was punished by perpetual hunger, till, other food failing him, at last he gnawed his own flesh. Ovid, Met. VIII., Vernon's Tr. :

"Straight he requires, impatient in demand, Provisions from the air, the seas, the land; But though the land, air, seas, provisions grant, Starves at full tables, and complains of want. What to a people might in dole be paid, Or victual cities for a long blockadė,

Could not one wolfish appetite assuage;
For glutting nourishment increased its rage.
As rivers poured from every distant shore
The sea insatiate drinks, and thirsts for more;
Or as the fire, which all materials burns,
Grows more voracious as the more it preys,
And wasted forests into ashes turns,
Recruits dilate the flame, and spread the blaze:
So impigus Erisichthon's hunger raves,
Receives refreshments, and refreshments craves.
Food raises a desire for food, and meat

Is but a new provocative to eat.

He grows more empty as the more supplied,
And endless cramming but extends the void."

30. This tragic tale of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus is thus told in Josephus, Jewish War, Book VI. Ch. 3, Whiston's Tr. :

"There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan; her name was Mary; her father was Eleazar, of the village Bethezub, which signifies the house of Hyssop. She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had been already seized upon, such I mean as she had brought with her out of Perea, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house

for that purpose. This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent reproaches and imprecations she cast at these rapacious villains, she had provoked them to anger against her; but none of them, either out of the indignation she had raised against herself,

or out of commiseration of her case, would take away her life. And if she found any food, she perceived her labours were for others and not for herself; and it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow, when also her pas sion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself. Nor did she consult with anything but with her passion and the necessity she was in. She then attempted a most unnatural thing, and, snatching up her son who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, 'O thou miserable infant! For whom shall I preserve thee

word omo (homo, man) in the human face, so written as to place the two o's between the outer strokes of the m, the former represent the eyes, and the latter the nose and cheekbones:

m

Brother Berthold, a Franciscan monk of Regensburg, in the thirteenth century, makes the following allusion to it in one of his sermons. See Wackernagel, Deutsches Lesebuch, I. 678. The monk carries out the resemblance into still fur

in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on, be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a byword to the world; which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of the Jews.' As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and, smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threat-ther detail :ened her that they would cut her throat "Now behold, ye blessed children of immediately, if she did not show them God, the Almighty has created you soul what food she had gotten ready. She and body. And he has written it under replied, that she had saved a very fine your eyes and on your faces, that you portion of it for them; and withal un- are created in his likeness. He has covered what was left of her son. Here- written it upon your very faces with orupon they were seized with a horror and namented letters. With great diligence amazement of mind, and stood aston- are they embellished and ornamented. ished at the sight, when she said to This your learned men will understand, them: This is mine own son, and what but the unlearned may not understand it. hath been done was mine own doing. The two eyes are two o's. The his Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten properly no letter; it only helps the of it myself. Do not you pretend to be others; so that homo with an means either more tender than a woman, or Man. Likewise the brows arched above more compassionate than a mother. and the nose down between them are an But if you be so scrupulous, and do m, beautiful with three strokes. So is abominate this my sacrifice, as I have the ear a d, beautifully rounded and oreaten the one-half, let the rest be re-namented. So are the nostrils beautiserved for me also.' After which those men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at anything as they were at this, and with some difficulty they left the rest of that meat to the mother. Upon which the whole city was full of this horrid action immediately; and while everybody laid this miserable case before their own eyes, they trembled as if this unheard of action had been done by themselves. So those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy, because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries."

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fully formed like a Greek, beautifully rounded and ornamented. So is the mouth an i, beautifully adorned and ornamented. Now behold, ye good Christian people, how skilfully he has adorned you with these six letters, to show that ye are his own, and that he has created you! Now read me an o and an ” and another together; that spells home. Then read me a d and an e and an i toge ther; that spells dei. Homo dei, man of God, man of God!"

48. Forese Donati, the brother-in-law and intimate friend of Dante. "This Forese," says Buti, "was a citizen of Florence, and was brother of Messer Corso Donati, and was very gluttonous; and therefore the author feigns that he found him here, where the Gluttons are punished."

Certain vituperative sonnets, addressed

to Dante, have been attributed to Forese. If authentic, they prove that the friendship between the two poets was not uninterrupted. See Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, Appendix to Part II.

74. The same desire that sacrifice and atonement may be complete.

75. Matthew xxvii. 46: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

83. Outside the gate of Purgatory, where those who had postponed repentance till the last hour were forced to wait as many years and days as they had lived impenitent on earth, unless aided by the devout prayers of those on earth. See Canto IV.

87. Nella, contraction of Giovannella, widow of Forese. Nothing is known of this good woman but the name, and what Forese here says in her praise.

94. Covino, Descriz. Geograf. dell' Italia, p. 52, says: "In the district of Arborea, on the slopes of the Gennar gentu, the most vast and lofty mountain range of Sardinia, spreads an alpine country which in Dante's time, being almost barbarous, was called the Barbagia."

102. Sacchetti, the Italian novelist of the fourteenth century, severely criticises the fashions of the Florentines, and their sudden changes, which he says it would take a whole volume of his stories to enumerate. In Nov. 178, he speaks of their wearing their dresses "far below their arm-pits," and then "up to their ears;" and continues, in Napier's version, Flor. Hist., II. 539:

women go about in hoods and cloaks ; most of the young men without cloaks, in long, flowing hair, and if they throw off their breeches, which from their smallness may easily be done, all is off, for they literally stick their posteriors into a pair of socks and expend a yard of cloth on their wristbands, while more stuff is put into a glove than a cloakhood. However, I am comforted by one thing, and that is, that all now have begun to put their feet in chains, perhaps as a penance for the many vain things they are guilty of; for we are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it: God has made our feet free, and many with long pointed toes to their shoes can scarcely walk: he has supplied the legs with hinges, and many have so bound them up with close lacing that they can scarcely sit: the bust is tightly bandaged up; the arms trail their drapery along; the throat is rolled in a capuchin; the head so loaded and bound round with caps over the hair that it appears as though it were sawed off. And thus I might go on for ever discoursing of female absurdities, commencing with the immeasurable trains at their feet, and proceeding regularly upwards to the head, with which they may always be seen occupied in their chambers; some curling, some smoothing, and whitening it, so that they often kill themselves with colds caught in these vain occupations." 132. Statius.

CANTO XXIV.

some

1. Continuation of the punishment of Gluttony.

7. Continuing the words with which the preceding canto closes, and referring to Statius.

"The young Florentine girls, who used to dress so modestly, have now changed the fashion of their hoods to resemble courtesans, and thus attired they move about laced up to the throat, with all sorts of animals hanging as ornaments about their necks. Their sleeves, or rather their sacks, as they should be called, was there ever so 10. Picarda, sister of Forese and useless and pernicious a fashion! Can Corso Donati. She was a nun of Santa any of them reach a glass or take a Clara, and is placed by Dante in the - morsel from the table without dirtying first heaven of Paradise, which Fores herself or the cloth by the things she calls "high Olympus." See Par. III. knocks down? And thus do the young 48, where her story is told more in men, and worse; and such sleeves are detail. made even for sucking babes. The

19. Buonagiunta Urbisani of Lucca is

one of the early minor poets of Italy, a contemporary of Dante. Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, 77, gives some specimens of his sonnets and canzoni. All that is known of him is contained in Benvenuto's brief notice: 66 Buonagiunta of Urbisani, an honourable man of the city of Lucca, a brilliant orator in his mother tongue, a facile producer of rhymes, and still more facile consumer of wines; who knew our author in his lifetime, and sometimes corresponded with him."

Tiraboschi also mentions him, Storia della Lett., IV. 397: "He was seen by Dante in Purgatory punished among the Gluttons, from which vice, it is proper to say, poetry did not render him exempt." 22. Pope Martin the Fourth, whose fondness for the eels of Bolsena brought his life to a sudden close, and his soul to this circle of Purgatory, has been ridiculed in the well-known epigram,"Gaudent anguillæ, quod mortuus hic jacet ille Qui quasi morte reas excoriabat eas.' "Martin the Fourth," says Milman, Hist. Lat. Christ., VI. 143, "was born at Mont. Pencè in Brie; he had been Canon of Tours. He put on at first the show of maintaining the lofty character of the Churchman. He excommunicated the Viterbans for their sacrilegious maltreatment of the Cardinals; Rinaldo Annibaldeschi, the Lord of Viterbo, was compelled to ask pardon on his knees of the Cardinal Rosso, and forgiven only at the intervention of the Pope. Martin the Fourth retired to Orvieto.

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'But the Frenchman soon began to predominate over the Pontiff; he sunk into the vassal of Charles of Anjou. The great policy of his predecessor, to assuage the feuds of Guelph and Ghibelline, was an Italian policy; it was altogether abandoned. The Ghibellines in every city were menaced or smitten with excommunication; the Lambertazzi were driven from Bologna. Forlì was placed under interdict for harbouring the exiles; the goods of the citizens were confiscated for the benefit of the Pope. Bertoldo Orsini was deposed from the Countship of Romagna; the office was bestowed on John of Appia, with instructions everywhere to coerce or to chastise the refractory Ghibellines."

Villani, Book VI. Ch. 106, says:

"He was a good man, and very favour. able to Holy Church and to those of the house of France, because he was from Tours."

He is said to have died of a surfeit. The eels and sturgeon of Bolsena, and the wines of Orvieto and Montefiascone, in the neighbourhood of whose vineyards he lived, were too much for him. But he died in Perugia, not in Orvieto.

24. The Lake of Bolsena is in the Papal States, a few miles northwest of Viterbo, on the road from Rome to Siena. It is thus described in Murray's Handbook of Central Italy, p. 199:

"Its circular form, and being in the centre of a volcanic district, has led to its being regarded as an extinct crater; but that hypothesis can scarcely be admitted when the great extent of the lake is considered. The treacherous beauty of the lake conceals malaria in its most fatal forms; and its shores, although there are no traces of a marsh, are deserted, excepting where a few sickly hamlets are scattered on their western slopes. The ground is cultivated in many parts down to the water's edge, but the labourers dare not sleep for a single night during the summer or autumn on the plains where they work by day; and a large tract of beautiful and productive country is reduced to a perfect solitude by this invisible calamity. Nothing can be more striking than the appearance of the lake, without a single sail upon its waters, and with scarcely a human habitation within sight of Bolsena; and nothing perhaps can give the traveller who visits Italy for the first time a more impressive idea of the effects of malaria."

Of the Vernaccia or Vernage, in which Pope Martin cooked his eels, Henderson says, Hist. Anc. and Mod. Wines, p. 296: "The Vernage. was a red wine, of a bright colour, and a sweetish and somewhat rough flavour, which was grown in Tuscany and other parts of Italy, and derived its name from the thick-skinned grape, vernaccia (corre sponding with the vinaciola of the an cients), that was used in the preparation of it."

Chaucer mentions it in the Merchant's Tale :

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