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out in a vast watery abyss, or burned away in fire. We each endure his own manes, thence are we conveyed along the spacious Elysium, and we, the happy few, possess the fields of bliss; till length of time, after the fixed period is elapsed, hath done away the inherent stain, and hath left the pure celestial reason, and the fiery energy of the simple spirit."

121. "God of clemency supreme;" the church hymn, sung at matins on Saturday morning, and containing a prayer for purity.

128. Luke i. 34: "Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"

131. Helice, or Callisto, was a daughter of Lycaon king of Arcadia. She was one of the attendant nymphs of Diana, who discarded her on account of an amour with Jupiter, for which Juno turned her into a bear. Arcas was the offspring of this amour. Jupiter changed them to the constellations of the Great and Little Bear.

Ovid, Met. II., Addison's Tr. :—

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5. It is near sunset, and the western sky is white, as the sky always is in the neighbourhood of the sun.

12. A ghostly or spiritual body. 41. Pasiphae, wife of Minos, king of Crete, and mother of the Minotaur. Virgil, Eclogue VI. 45, Davidson's Tr. :

"And he soothes Pasiphae in he passion for the snow-white bull: happy woman if herds had never been! Ah, ill-fated maid, what madness seized thee? The daughters of Proetus with imaginary lowings filled the fields; yet none of them pursued such vile embraces of a beast, however they might dread the plough about their necks, and often feel for horns on their smooth foreheads. Ah, ill-fated maid, thou now art roaming on the mountains! He, resting his snowy side on the soft hyacinth, ruminates the blanched herbs under some gloomy oak, or courts some female in the numerous herd."

43. The Riphæan mountains are in the north of Russia. The sands are the sands of the deserts.

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78. In one of Cæsar's triumphs the Róman soldiery around his chariot called him "Queen;" thus reviling him for his youthful debaucheries with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia.

87. The cow made by Daedalus.

92. Guido Guinicelli, the best of the Italian poets before Dante, flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century. He was a native of Bologna, but of his life nothing is known. His most celebrated poem is a Canzone on the Nature of warmth and tenderness of Dante's Love, which goes far to justify the praise. Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, under the title of The Gentle Heart :p. 24, gives the following version of it, "Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,

As birds within the green shade of the

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say:

He is the mud, the sun is gentleness.
Let no man predicate

That aught the name of gentleness should have,

Even in a king's estate,
Except the heart there be a gentle man's.

The star-beam lights the wave,Heaven holds the star and the star's radiance. "God, in the understanding of high Heaven,

Burns more than in our sight the living sun: There to behold His Face unveiled is given; And Heaven, whose will is homage paid to One,

Fulfils the things which live

In God, from the beginning excellent.
So should my lady give

That truth which in her eyes is glorified,
On which her heart is bent,

To me whose service waiteth at her side.

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about to put her to death for neglecting the care of his child, who through her neglect had been stung by a serpent.

Statius, Thebaid, V. 949, says it was Tydeus who saved Hypsipyle :—

"

But interposing Tydeus rushed between, And with his shield protects the Lemnian " queen."

118. In the old Romance languages the name of prosa was applied generally to all narrative poems, and particularly to the monorhythmic romances. Thus the thirteenth century, begins a poem on Gonzalo de Berceo, a Spanish poet of the Vida del Glorioso Confessor Santo Domingo de Silos:—

"De un confessor Sancto quiero fer una prosa,
Quiero fer una prosa en roman paladino,
En qual suele el pueblo fablar á su vecino,
Ca non so tan letrado per fer otro Latino.'

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born of poor parents, but a man of 120. Gerault de Berneil of Limoges, talent and learning, was one of the most famous Troubadours of the thirteenth century. The old Provençal biographer, quoted by Raynouard, Choix de Poésies, V. 166, says: "He was a followed him, and was therefore called better poet than any who preceded or the Master of the Troubadours... He passed his winters in study, and his summers in wandering from court to court with two minstrels who sang his songs."

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The following specimen of his poems is from [Taylor's] Lays of the Minnesingers and Troubadours, p. 247. It is an Aubade, or song of the morning :

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'Companion dear! with carols sweet I call thee;

Sleep not again! I hear the birds' blithe song

Loud in the woodlands; evil may befall thee, And jealous eyes awaken, tarrying long, Now that the morn is near.

94. Hypsipyle was discovered and "Companion dear! forth from the window

rescued by her sons Eumenius and
Thoas, (whose father was the "bland
Jason,' as Statius calls him,) just as
King Lycurgus in his great grief was

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looking,

Attentive mark the signs of yonder heaven; Judge if aright I read what they betoken: Thine all the loss, if vain the warning given; The morn, the morn is near.

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"Companion dear! so happily sojourning,,
So blest am I, I care not forth to speed:
Here brightest beauty reigns, her smiles
adorning

Her dwelling place, then wherefore should
I heed

The morn or jealous eyes?"

According to Nostrodamus he died in 1278. Notwithstanding his great repute, Dante gives the palm of excellence to Arraud Daniel, his rival and contemporary. But this is not the general verdict of literary history.

124. Fra Guittone d'Arezzo. Canto XXIV. Note 56.

See

137. Venturi has the indiscretion to say: "This is a disgusting compliment after the manner of the French; in the Italian fashion we should say, 'You will do me a favour, if you will tell me your name. Whereupon Biagioli thunders at him in this wise: "Infamous dirty dog that you are, how can you call this a compliment after the manner of the French? How can you set off against it what any cobbler might say? Away! and a murrain on you!"

this Troubadour, it is difficult to conceive the cause of the great celebrity he enjoyed during his life."

Arnaud Daniel was the inventor of the Sestina, a song of six stanzas of six lines each, with the same rhymes repeated in all, though arranged in different and intricate order, which must be seen to be understood. He was also author of the metrical romance of Lancillotto, or Launcelot of the Lake, to which Dante doubtless refers in his expression prose di romanzi, or proses of romance. The following anecdote is from the old Provençal authority, quoted both by Millot and Raynouard, and is thus translated by Miss Costello, Early Poetry of France, P. 37:

The

"Arnaud visited the court of Richard Cœur de Lion in England, and encountered there a jongleur, who defied him to a trial of skill, and boasted of being able to make more difficult rhymes than Arnaud, a proficiency on which he chiefly prided himself. He accepted the challenge, and the two poets separated, and retired to their respective chambers to prepare for the contest. The Muse of Arnaud was not propitious, and he vainly endeavoured to string two rhymes toge. ther. His rival, on the other hand, quickly caught the inspiration. king had allowed ten days as the term of preparation, five for composition, and the remainder for learning it by heart to sing before the court. On the third day the jongleur declared that he had finishe his poem, and was ready to recite it, but Arnaud replied that he had not yet thought of his. It was the jongleur's custom to repeat his verses out loud every day, in order to learn them better, and Arnaud, who was in vain endeavouring to devise some means to save himself from the mockery of the court at being outdone in this contest, happened to overhear the jongleur singing. He went to his door and listened, and succeeded in retaining the words and the air. the day appointed they both appeared before the king. Arnaud desired to be allowed to sing first, and immediately gave the song which the jongleur had composed. The latter, stupified with Raynouard confirms this judgment, astonishment, could only exclaim: It and says that, "in reading the works of is my song, it is my song.' 'Impossible!'

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142. Arnaud Daniel, the Troubadour of the thirteenth century, whom Dante lauds so highly, and whom Petrarca calls "the Grand Master of Love, was born of a noble family at the castle of Ribeyrac in Périgord. Millot, Hist. des Troub., II. 479, says of him: "In all ages there have been false reputations, founded on some individual judgment, whose authority has prevailed without examination, until at last criticism discusses, the truth penetrates, and the phantom of prejudice vanishes. Such has been the reputation of Arnaud

Daniel."

On

cried the king; but the jongleur, persisting, requested Richard to interrogate Arnaud, who would not dare, he said, to deny it. Daniel confessed the fact, and related the manner in which the affair had been conducted, which amused Richard far more than the song itself. The stakes of the wager were restored to each, and the king loaded them both with presents."

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23. Knowing that he ought to con fide in Virgil and go forward.

37. The story of the Babylonian lovers, whose trysting-place was under the white mulberry-tree near the tomb of Ninus, and whose blood changed the fruit from white to purple, is too well known to need comment. Ovid, Met. IV., Eusden's Tr. :—

According to Nostrodamus, Arnaud died about 1189. There is no other reason for making him speak in Provençal than the evident delight which Dante took in the sound of the words," and the peculiar flavour they give to the close of the canto. Raynouard says that the writings of none of the Troubadours have been so disfigured by copyists as those of Arnaud. This would seem to be true of the very lines which Dante writes for him; as there are at least seven different readings of them.

Here Venturi has again the indiscretion to say that Arnaud answers Dante in "a kind of lingua-franca, part Provençal and part Catalan, joining together the perfidious French with the vile Spanish, perhaps to show that Arnaud was a clever speaker of the two." again Biagioli suppresses him with "that unbridled beast of a Venturi," and this "most potent argument of his presumptuous ignorance and impertinence."

CANTO XXVII.

And

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At Thisbe's name awaked, he opened wide
His dying eyes; with dying eyes he tried
On her to dwell, but closed them slow and
died."

48.

Statius had for a long while been between Virgil and Dante.

58.

Matthew xxv. 34: "Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." 70.

Dr. Furness's Hymn :

Slowly by God's hand unfurled,
Down around the weary world
Falls the darkness."

90. Evening of the Third Day of Purgatory. Milton, Parad. Lost, IV. 598 :

"Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad:
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their

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2. When the sun is rising at Jerusa- 93. The vision which Dante sees is a lem, it is setting on the Mountain of foreshadowing of Matilda and Beatrice Purgatory; it is midnight in Spain, within the Terrestrial Paradise. In the Old Libra in the meridian, and noon in Testament Leah is a symbol of the India.

"A great labyrinth of words and things," says Venturi, "meaning only that the sun was setting!" and this time the "dolce pedagogo" Biagioli lets him escape without the usual reprimand.

8. Matthew v. 8: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Active Life, and Rachel of the Contemplative; as Martha and Mary are in the New Testament, and Matilda and Beatrice in the Divine Comedy. "Happy is that house," says Saint Bernard, “and blessed is that congregation, where Mar tha still complaineth of Mary."

Dante says in the Convito, IV. 17:

"Truly it should be known that we can have in this life two felicities, by following two different and excellent roads, which lead thereto; namely, the Active life and the Contemplative.'

And Owen Feltham in his Resolves :"The mind can walk beyond the sight of the eye, and, though in a cloud, can lift us into heaven while we live. Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God as if he were nearer hand. I persuade no man to make it his whole life's business. We have bodies as well as souls. And even this world, while we are in it, ought somewhat to be cared for. As those states are likely to flourish, where execution follows sound advisements, so is man, when contemplation is seconded by action. Contemplation generates; action propagates. Without the first, the latter is defective. Without the last, the first is but abortive and embryous. Saint Bernard compares contemplation to Rachel, which was the more fair; but action to Leah, which was the more fruitful. I will neither always be busy and doing, nor ever shut up in nothing but thoughts. Yet that which some would call idleness, I will call the sweetest part of my life, and that is, my thinking.'

95. Venus, the morning star, rising with the constellation Pisces, two hours before the sun.

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CANTO XXVIII.

1. The Terrestrial Paradise. Compare Milton, Parad. Lost, IV. 214:

"In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained:
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to Life,
Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy

hill

Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown Upon the rapid current, which through veins That mountain as his garden mould, high raised Of porous earth with kindly thirst up drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Watered the garden; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome passage now appears; 100. Ruskin, Mod. Painters, III. 221: And now, divided into four main streams, "This vision of Rachel and Leah has Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm And country, whereof here needs no account; been always, and with unquestionable But rather to tell how, if art could tell, truth, received as a type of the Active How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, and Contemplative life, and as an intro- Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, duction to the two divisions of the Para-Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed With mazy error under pendent shades dise which Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied spirit of the Countess Matilda is understood to represent the Active life, which forms the felicity of Earth; and the spirit of Beatrice the Contemplative life, which forms the felicity of Heaven. This interpretation appears at first straightforward and certain; but it has missed count of exactly the most important fact in the two passages which we have to explain. Observe Leah gathers the flowers to decorate herself, and delights in her own Labour. Rachel sits silent, contemplating herself, and delights in

Flowers worthy of Paradise; which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain :
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was

this place

A happy rural seat of various view:
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and
balm;

Others, whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste.
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed.
Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Of some irriguous valley spread her store:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves

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