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128. Villani, VI. Ch. 90, relates the story of Romeo (in Italian Roméo) as follows, though it will be observed that he uses the word romeo not as a proper, but as a common noun, in its sense of pilgrim: "There arrived at his court a pilgrim, who was returning from St. James; and hearing of the goodness of Count Raymond, he tarried in his court, and was so wise and worthy, and found such favour with the Count, that he made him master and director of all things. He was always clad in a decent and clerical habit, and in a short time, by his dexterity and wisdom, increased the income of his lord threefold, maintaining always a grand and honourable court.

effects which Mercury produces upon us in the world below, for which honour and blame are given to the planet; for as Albumasar says in the introduction to his seventh treatise, ninth division, where he treats of the nature of the planets and of their properties, Mercury signifies these twenty-two things among others, namely, desire of knowledge and of seeing secret things; interpretation of the Deity, of oracles and prophecies; foreknowledge of things future; knowledge and profundity of knowledge in profound books; study of wisdom; memory of stories and tales; eloquence with polish of language; subtilty of genius; desire of lordship; appetite of praise and fame; colour and subtilty of speech; subtilty of genius in everything to which man betakes himself; desire of perfection; cunning of hand in all arts; practice of trade; selling, buying, giving, receiving, stealing, cheating; concealing thoughts in the mind; change of habits; youthfulness, lust, abundance, murmurs, lies, false testimony, and many other things as being therein contained. And therefore our author feigns, that those who have been active in the world, and have lived with politi-land, in order to be brother-in-law of the cal and moral virtues, show themselves in the sphere of Mercury, because Mercury exercises such influence, according to the astrologers, as has been shown; but it is in man's free will to follow the good influence and avoid the bad, and hence springs the merit and demerit."

Milton, Lycidas, 70 :—

... Four daughters had the Count, and no son. By the wisdom and address of the good pilgrim, he first married the eldest to the good King Louis of France by means of money, saying to the Count, Let me manage this, and do not be troubled at the cost; for if thou marry the first well, on account of this relationship thou wilt marry all the others better, and at less cost.' And so it came to pass; for straightway the King of Eng

King of France, took the second for a small sum of money; then his brother, being elected King of the Romans, took the third; and the fourth still remaining to be married, the good pilgrim said,

With this one I want thee to have a brave son, who shall be thy heir;' and so he did. Finding Charles, Count of

"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise, Anjou, brother of King Louis of France, (That last infirmity of noble mind,) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorréd shears And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise,'

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling

ears:

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove:
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.""

he said, 'Give her to this man, for he
will be the best man in the world ;' pro-
phesying concerning him, and so it was
done. Then it came to pass through
envy, which spoils every good thing, that
the barons of Provence accused the good
pilgrim of having badly managed the
treasury of the Count, and had him
called to a reckoning. The noble pilgrim
said: "Count, I have served thee a long
time, and brought thee from low to high
estate, and for this, through false counsel
of thy folk, thou art little grateful. I
have lived modestly on thy bounty.
came to thy court a poor pilgrim, and
Have my mule and my staff and scrip

121. Piccarda, Canto III. 70, says:
Brother, our will is quieted by virtue
Of charity, that makes us wish alone
For what we have, nor gives us thirst for given back to me as when I came, and I

more."

ask no further wages.' The Count

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1. "Hosanna, holy God of Sabaoth, illuminating with thy brightness the happy fires of these realms.'

Dante is still in the planet Mercury, which receives from the sun six times more light and heat than the earth.

5. By Substance is here meant spirit, or angel; the word having the sense of Subsistence. See Canto XIII. Note 58.

7. The rapidity of the motion of the flying spirits is beautifully expressed in these lines.

10. Namely, the doubt in his mind. 14. Bice, or Beatrice.

might not appear outwardly, as Statius the poet relates of Theban (Edipus, when he says, that in eternal night he hid his shame accursed. She shows herself in the mouth, as colour behind glass. And what is laughter but a coruscation of the delight of the soul, that is, a light appearing outwardly, as it exists within? And therefore it behoveth man to show his soul in moderate joy, to laugh moderately with dignified severity, and with slight motion of the arms; so that the Lady who then shows herself, as has been said, may appear modest, and not dissolute. Hence the Book of the Four Cardinal Virtues com. mands us, 'Let thy laughter be without cachinnation, that is to say, without cackling like a hen.' Ah, wonderful laughter of my Lady, that never was perceived but by the eye!"

20. Referring back to Canto VI.

92:

"To do vengeance

Upon the vengeance of the ancient sin."
27. Milton, Par. Lost, I. 1, the
story

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.”

36. Sincere in the sense of pure.

65. Plato, Timæus, Davis's Tr., X. : "Let us declare then on what account the framing Artificer settled the formation of this universe. He was good; and in the good envy is never engendered about anything whatever. Hence, being free from this, he desired that all things should as much as possible resemble himself."

17. Convito, III. 8: "And in these
two places I say these pleasures appear,
saying, In her eyes and in her sweet
smile; which two places by a beautiful
similitude may be called balconies of
the Lady who inhabits the edifice of
the body, that is, the Soul; since here,
although as if veiled, she often shows
herself. She shows herself in the eyes
so manifestly, that he who looks care-
fully can recognize her present passion. And again, VIII. 491 :—
Hence, inasmuch as six passions are
peculiar to the human soul, of which
the Philosopher makes mention in his
Rhetoric, that is, grace, zeal, mercy,
envy, love, and shame, with none of
these can the Soul be impassioned, with-
out its semblance coming to the window
of the eyes, unless it be kept within by
great effort. Hence one of old plucked
out his eyes, so that his inward shame

Also Milton, Par. Lost, I. 259:-
"The Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy.'

"Thou hast fulfilled

Thy words, Creator bounteous and benign,
Giver of all things fair! but fairest this
Of all thy gifts! nor enviest."

67. Dante here discriminates between the direct or immediate inspirations o God, and those influences that come indirectly through the stars. In the Convito, VII. 3, he says: "The good.

of God is received in one manner by disembodied substances, that is, by the Angels (who are without material grossness, and as it were diaphanous on account of the purity of their form), and

a

in another manner by the human soul, which, though in one part it is free from matter, in another is impeded by it; (as man who is wholly in the water, except his head, of whom it cannot be said he is wholly in the water nor wholly out of it;) and in another manner by the animals, whose soul is all absorbed in matter, but somewhat ennobled ; and in another manner by the metals, and in another by the earth; because it is the most material, and therefore the most remote from and the most inappropriate for the first most simple and noble virtue, which is solely intellectual, that is, God."

And in Canto XXIX, 136:

"The primal light, that all irradiates,

By modes as many is received therein,
As are the splendours wherewith it is mated.'

CANTO VIII.

1. The ascent to the Third Heaven, or that of Venus, where are seen the

spirits of Lovers. Of this Heaven Dante says, Convito, II. 14:—

"The Heaven of Venus may be compared to Rhetoric for two properties; the first is the brightness of its aspect, which is most sweet to look upon, more than any other star; the second is its appearance, now in the morning, now in the evening. And these two properties are in Rhetoric, the sweetest of all the sciences, for that is principally its intenthe rhetorician speaks before the face of It appears in the morning when his audience; it appears in the evening, that is, retrograde, when the letter in part remote speaks for the rhetorician." For the influences of Venus, see Canto IX. Note 33.

tion.

2. In the days of "the false and lying gods," when the world was in peril of damnation for misbelief. Cypria, or Cyprigna, was a title of Venus, from the

76. Convito, VII. 3: "Between the angelic nature, which is an intellec-place of her birth, Cyprus. tual thing, and the human soul there is no step, but they are both almost continuous in the order of gradation. Thus we are to suppose and firmly to believe, that a man may be so noble, and of such lofty condition, that he shall be almost an angel."

Venus, the third planet, was its sup 3. The third Epicycle, or that of posed motion from west to east, while the whole heavens were swept onward from east to west by the motion of the Primum Mobile.

In the Convito, II. 4, Dante says: "Upon the back of this circle (the 130. The Angels, and the Heavens, Equatorial) in the Heaven of Venus, and the human soul, being immediately of which we are now treating, is a little inspired by God, are immutable and in-sphere, which revolves of itself in this

destructible. But the elements and the

souls of brutes and plants are controlled by the stars, and are mutable and perish

able.

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heaven, and whose orbit the astrologers this heaven moves and revolves with its call Epicycle." And again, II. 7: “All Epicycle from east to west, once every natural day; but whether this movement be by any Intelligence, or by the sweep of the Primum Mobile, God knoweth ; in me it would be presumptuous to judge."

Milton, Par. Lost, VIII. 72:

"From man or angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scanned by them who oth
Rather admire; or, if they list to try
Conjecture, He his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes; perhaps to move
His laughter at their quamt opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model heaven
And calculate the stars; how they will wield

The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive,
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."

See also Nichol, Solar System, p. 7: "Nothing in later times ought to obscure the glory of Hipparchus, and, as some think, the still greater Ptolemy. Amid the bewilderment of these planetary motions, what could they say, except that the gods never act without design;' and thereon resolve to discern it? The motion of the Earth was concealed from them: nor was aught intelligible or explicable concerning the wanderings of the planets, except the grand revolution of the sky around the Earth. That Earth, small to us, they therefore, on the ground of phenomena, considered the centre of the Universe,thinking, perhaps, not more confinedly than persons in repute in modern days. Around that centre all motion seemed to pass in order the most regular; and if a few bodies appeared to interrupt the regularity of that order, why not conceive the existence of some arrangement by which they might be reconciled with it? It was a strange, but most ingenious idea. They could not tell how, by any simple system of circular and uniform

motion, the ascertained courses of the planets, as directly observed, were to be accounted for; but they made a most artificial scheme, that still saved the immobility of the Earth. Suppose a person passing around a room holding a lamp, and all the while turning on his heel. If he turned round uniformly, there would be no actual interruption of the uniform circular motion both of the carrier and the carried; but the light, as seen by an observer in the interior, would make strange gyrations. Unable to account otherwise for the irregularities of the planets, they mounted them in this manner, on small circles, whose centres only revolved regularly around the Earth, but which, during their revolutionary motion, also revolved around their own centres. Styling these cycles and epicycles, the ancient learned men framed that grand system of the Heavens concerning which Ptolemy composed his 'Syntax.'

7. Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, III. 1 :

"This wimpled, whining, purblind, way.
boy;

This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupl
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and gra
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents"

9. Cupid in the semblance of Asce
nius. Eneid, I. 718, Davidson's It.:
"She clings to him with her eyes, ha
whole soul, and sometimes fondles
in her lap, Dido not thinking wizi
powerful god is settling on her, haples
one. Meanwhile he, mindful of his Ac
dalian mother, begins insensibly to effat
the memory of Sichæus, and with i
living flame tries to prepossess her at
guid affections, and her heart, child
by long disuse."

10. Venus, with whose name this canto begins.

12. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I. Ch. ; says that Venus "always follows the sun, and is beautiful and gentle, and is called the Goddess of Love."

Dante says, it plays with or caresses the sun, " now behind and now □ front." When it follows, it is Hespe rus, the Evening Star; when it precedes, it is Phosphor, the Morning Star.

21. The rapidity of the motion of the spirits, as well as their brightness, is in proportion to their vision of God. Com pare Canto XIV. 40:

"Its brightness is proportioned to the ardour, The ardour to the vision; and the vision Equals what grace it has above its worth." 23. Made visible by mist and cloudrack.

27. Their motion originates in the Primum Mobile, whose Regents, or Intelligences, are the Seraphim.

34. The Regents, or Intelligences, of Venus are the Principalities.

37. This is the first line of the first canzone in the Convite, and in his commentary upon it, II. 5, Dante says: "In the first place, then, be it known, that the movers of this heaven are substances separate from matter, that is, Intelligences, which the common people call Angels." And farther on, ÎI. 6: "It is reasonable to believe that the motors of the Heaven of the Moon are of the order of the Angels; and those of Mercury are the Archangels; and those of Venus are the Thrones" It

will be observed, however, that in line the north by the Tronto emptying into 44 he alludes to the Principalities as the the Adriatic, and the Verde (or Garig Regents of Venus; and in Ĉanto IX. 61, | liano) emptying into the Mediterranean. speaks of the Thrones as reflecting the 65. The kingdom of Hungary. ustice of God :

:

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The tempering influence of the vapours dense,
By greater rapture thus concealed itself
In its own radiance the figure saintly."

67. Sicily, called of old Trinacria, from its three promontories Peloro, Pa chino, and Lilibeo.

68. Pachino is the south-eastern promontory of Sicily, and Peloro the north

eastern. Between them lies the Gulf of

Catania, receiving with open arms the east wind. Horace speaks of Eurus as "riding the Sicilian seas.

the giant Typhoeus, as struck by Jove's 70. Both Pindar and Ovid speak of thunderbolt, and lying buried under Ætna. Virgil says is Enceladus, a brother of Typhoeus. Charles Martel here gives the philosophical, not the poetical, cause of the murky atmosphere of the bay.

72. Through him from his grandfather Charles of Anjou, and his fatherin-law the Emperor Rudolph.

75. The Sicilian Vespers and revolt of Palermo, in 1282. Milman, Hist. 49. The spirit who speaks is Charles festival on Easter Tuesday that a multiLatin Christ., VI. 155: “It was at a Martel of Hungary, the friend and bene-tude of the inhabitants of Palermo and factor of Dante. He was the eldest son the neighbourhood had thronged to a of Charles the Lame (Charles II. of Naples) and of Mary of Hungary. He church, about half a mile out of the was born in 1272, and in 1291 married the "beautiful Clemence," daughter of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Emperor of GerHe died in 1295, at the age of twenty-three, to which he alludes in the

many.

words,

"The world possessed me

Short time below."

The religious service was over, the mertown, dedicated to the Holy Ghost. riment begun; tables were spread, the amusements of all sorts, games, dances under the trees, were going gaily on, when the harmony was suddenly interrupted and the joyousness chilled by the appearance of a body of French soldiery, under the pretext of keeping the peace. The French mingled familiarly with the people, paid court, not in the most respectful manner, to the women; the young men made sullen remonstrances, and told them to go their way. The Frenchmen began to draw together. 'These rebellious Paterins must have arms, or they would not venture on such insolence.' They began to search some of them for arms. The two parties were already glaring at each 61. The kingdom of Apulia in Au- other in angry hostility. At that mosonia, or Lower Italy, embracing Bari ment the beautiful daughter of Roger on the Adriatic, Gaeta in the Terra di Mastrangelo, a maiden of exquisite love Lavoro on the Mediterranean, and Cro-liness and modesty, with her bridegroom, tona in Calabria; a region bounded on approached the church. A Frenchman,

58. That part of Provence, embracing Avignon, Aix, Arles, and Marseilles, of which his father was lord, and which he would have inherited had he lived. This is "the great dowry of Provence," which the daughter of Raymond Berenger brought to Charles of Anjou in marriage, and which is mentioned in Purg. XX. 61, as taking the sense of shame out of the blood of the Capets.

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