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141. See Canto II. 59:

And I: 'What seems to us up here diverse,
Is caused, I think, by bodies rare and
dense.'"

142. The Sun.

144. Mercury, son of Maia, and Venus, daughter of Dione.

145. The temperate planet Jupiter, between Mars and Saturn. In Canto XVIII. 68, Dante calls it "the temperate star;" and in the Convito, II. 14, quoting the opinion of Ptolemy: "Jupiter is a star of a temperate complexion, midway between the coldness of Saturn and the heat of Mars.'

149. Bryant, Song of the Stars:-
"Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,
In the infinite azure, star after star,
How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly
pass !

How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass!
And the path of the gentle winds is seen,
Where the small waves dance, and the young
woods lean.

"And see, where the brighter day-beams pour, How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower; And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues,

Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their
dews;

And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone the night goes round!"

151. The threshing-floor, or little area of our earth. The word ajuola would also bear the rendering of garden-plot; but to Dante this world was rather a threshing-floor than a flowerbed. The word occurs again in Canto XXVII. 86, and in its Latin form in the Monarchia, III. : Ut scilicet in areola mortalium libere cum pace vivatur. Perhaps Dante uses it to signify in general any small enclosure.

from this fourth you deduct the space occupied by the seas and lakes, and the vast sandy regions which extreme heat and want of water render uninhabitable, there remains but a very small proportion of the terrestrial sphere for the habitation of men. Enclosed then and locked up as you are, in an unperceiv able point of a point, do you think of nothing but of blazing far and wide your name and reputation? What can there be great or pompous in a glory circum scribed in so narrow a circuit?

CANTO XXIII.

1. The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. The Triumph of Christ. 3. Milton, Par. Lost, III. 38:-

"As the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note."

12. Towards the meridian, where the sun seems to move slower than when nearer the horizon.

20. Didron, Christ. Iconog., Millington's Tr., I. 308: "The triumph of Christ is, of all subjects, that which has excited the most enthusiasm amongst artists; it is seen in numerous monuments, and is represented both in painting and sculpture, but always with such remarkable modifications as impart to it the character of a new work. The eastern portion of the crypt of the cathedral of Auxerre contains, in the vaulting of that part which corresponds with the sanctuary, a fresco painting, executed about the end of the twelfth century, and representing, in the most simple form imaginable, the triumph of Christ. The background of the picture is intersected by a cross, which, if the transverse branches were a little longer, would be a perfect Greek cross. This cross is adorned with imitations of precious stones, round, oval, and loz. enge-shaped, disposed in quincunxes. In the centre is a figure of Christ, on You a white horse with a saddle; he holds know likewise, from the proofs that the bridle in his left hand, and in the Ptolemy adduces, there is only one right, the hand of power and authority, fourth part of this earth, which is of a black staff, the rod of iron by which itself so small a portion of the universe, he governs the nations. He advances inhabited by creatures known to us. If thus, having his head adorned with an

Boethius, Cons. Phil., II. Prosa 7, Ridpath's Tr.: "You have learned from astronomy that this globe of earth is but as a point in respect to the vast extent of the heavens; that is, the immensity of the celestial sphere is such that ours, when compared with it, is as nothing, and vanishes.

azure or bluish nimbus, intersected by a cross gules; his face is turned towards the spectator. In the four compartments formed by the square in which the cross is enclosed are four angels who form the escort of Jesus; they are all on horseback, like their master, and with wings outspread; the right hand of each, which is free, is open and raised, in token of adoring admiration. And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written that no man knew but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen white and clean.' Such is the language of the Apocalypse, and this the fresco at Auxerre interprets, although with some slight alterations, which it will be well to observe."

See also Purg. XXIX. Note 154. 21. By the beneficent influences of the stars.

26. The Moon. Trivia is one of the surnames of Diana, given her because she presided over all the places where three roads met.

Purg. XXXI. 106:"We here are Nymphs, and in the Heaven are stars,"

"Those glimmerings of light, those scintillations, That by supernal influences draw

Their nutriment in splendours from the sun." 46. Beatrice speaks.

56. The Muse of harmony. Skelton, Elegy on the Earl of Northumberland, 155 :—

"If the hole quere of the musis nyne

In me all onely wer sett and comprisyde, Enbreathed with the blast of influence dyvyne, And perfightly as could be thought or de vysyde;

To me also allthouche it were promysyde
Of laureat Phebus holy the eloquence,
All were to littill for his magnyficence."

70. Beatrice speaks again.

73. The Virgin Mary, Rosa Mundi, Rosa Mystica.

74. The Apostles, by following whom the good way was found.

Shirley, Death's Final Conquest :—

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust,"

78. The struggle between his eyes and the light.

85. Christ, who had re-ascended, so that Dante's eyes, too feeble to bear the light of his presence, could now behold the splendour of this "meado▾ of flowers."

88. The Rose, or the Virgin Mary, to whom Beatrice alludes in line 73. Afterwards he hears the hosts of heaven repeat her name, as described in line

110:

"And all the other lights Were making to resound the name of Mary." 90. This greater fire is also the Virgin, greatest of the remaining splendours. Iliad, VIII. 550, Anon. Tr.: "As 92. Stella Maris, Stella Matutina, are when in heaven the beauteous stars ap- likewise titles of the Virgin, who surpear round the bright moon, when the passes in brightness all other souls in air is breathless, and all the hills and heaven, as she did here on earth. lofty summits and forests are visible, 94. The Angel Gabriel. and in the sky the boundless ether opens, 101. The mystic virtues of the sapand all the stars are seen, and the shep-phire are thus enumerated by Marbodus herd is delighted in his soul." in his Lapidarium, King's Antique Gems, P. 395:

29. Christ.

30. The old belief that the stars were fed by the light of the sun. Milton, Par. Lost, VII. 364: :

"Hither as to their fountain other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light."

And Calderon, El Principe Constante, sonnet in Jr. II. :—

"By nature with superior honours graced,
As gem of gems above all others placed :
Health to preserve and treachery to disarm,
And guard the wearer from intended harm.
No envy bends him, and no terror shakes;
The captive's chains its mighty virtue breaks;
The gates fly open, fetters fall away,
And send their prisoner to the light of day.
E'en Heaven is moved by its force divine
To list to vows presented at its shrine."

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112. The Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven, which infolds all the other volumes or rolling orbs of the universe like a mantle.

115. Cowley, Hymn to Light:

"Thou Scythian-like dost round thy lands above The sun's gilt tent for ever move; And still as thou in pomp dost go,

Milton, Lycidas, 108 :— "Last came, and last did go,

The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain)." And Fletcher, Purple Island, VII. 62:

"Not in his lips, but hands, two keys he bore, Heaven's doors and Hell's to shut and open wide."

CANTO XXIV.

1. The Heaven of the Fixed Stars continued. St. Peter examines Dante on Faith.

Revelation xix. 9: "And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which The shining pageants of the world attend thy are called unto the marriage-supper of

show."

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"Bright angels are around thee,

the Lamb."

16. The carol was a dance as well as a song; or, to speak more exactly, a dance accompanied by a song.

Gower, Confes. Amant., VI. :

"And if it nedes so betide,
That I in company abide,
Where as I must daunce and singe
The hove daunce and carolinge.'

It is from the old French karole.

They that have served thee from thy birth are See passage from the Roman de la Rose,

there;

Their hands with stars have crowned thee;

Thou, peerless Queen of air,

in Note 118 of this canto. See also Roquefort, Glossaire: " 'KAROLE, dance,

As sandals to thy feet the silver moon dost concert, divertissement; de chorea, cho

wear!

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Regina coeli, lætare! Alleluia.

Quia quem meruisti portare, Alleluia.
Resurrexit, sicut dixit. Alleluia."

This hymn, according to Collin de Plancy, Légendes des Commandements de l'Eglise, p. 14, Pope Gregory the Great Leard the angels singing, in the pestilence of Rome in 890, and on hearing it added another line:

"Ora pro nobis Deum! Alleluia."

135. Caring not for gold and silver in the Babylonian exile of this life, they laid up treasures in the other.

139. St. Peter, keeper of the keys, with the sainthe Old and New Testament

rus;" and "

se divertir.

KAROLER, sauter, danser,

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19. From the brightest of these carols the Lord, and has the impress of his or dances. King stamped upon him."

20. St. Peter.

22. Three times, in sign of the Trinity. 27. Tints too coarse and glaring to paint such delicate draperies of song.

28. St. Peter speaks to Beatrice. 41. Fixed upon God, in whom all things are reflected.

59. The captain of the first cohort of the Church Militant.

62. St. Paul. Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 159, says: "The early Christian Church was always considered under two great divisions: the church of the converted Jews, and the church of the Gentiles. The first was represented by St. Peter, the second by St. Paul. Standing together in this mutual relation, they represent the universal church of Christ; hence in works of art they are seldom separated, and are indispensable in all ecclesiastical decoration. Their proper place is on each side of the Saviour, or of the Virgin throned; or on each side of the altar; or on each side of the arch over the choir. In any case, where they stand together, not merely as Apostles, but Founders, their place is next after the Evangelists and the Prophets."

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66. In Scholastic language the essence of a thing, distinguishing it from all other things, is called its quiddity; in answer to the question, Quid est ?

78. Jeremy Taylor says: "Faith is a tertain image of eternity; all things are present to it; things past and things to come are all so before the eyes of faith, that he in whose eye that candle is enkindled beholds heaven as present, and sees how blessed a thing it is to die in God's favour, and to be chimed to our grave with the music of a good conscience. Faith converses with the angels, and antedates the hynins of glory; every man that hath this grace is as certain that there are glories for him, if he perseveres in duty, as if he had heard and sung the thanksgiving-song for the blessed sentence of doomsday.'

"

87. "The purified, righteous man," says Tertullian, "has become a coin of

93. The Old and New Testaments. 115. In the Middle Ages titles of nobility were given to the saints and to other renowned personages of sacred history. Thus Boccaccio, in his story of Fra Cipolla, Decamerone, Gior. VI. Nov. 10, speaks of the Baron Messer Santo Antonio; and in Juan Lorenzo's Poema de Alexandro, we have Don Job, Don Bacchus, and Don Satan.

118. The word donnea, which I have rendered "like a lover plays," is from the Provençal domnear. In its old French form, dosnoier, it occurs in some editions of the Roman de la Rose, line 1305:

"Les karoles jà remanoient;
Car tuit li plusors s'en aloient
O leurs amies umbroier

Sous ces arbres pour dosnoier."
Chaucer translates the passage thus:-

"The daunces then ended ywere;

For many of hem that daunced there Were, with hir loves, went away Under the trees to have hir play." The word expresses the gallantry of the knight towards his lady.

126. St. John was the first to reach the sepulchre, but St. Peter the first to enter it. John xx. 4: "So they ran both together; and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he, stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie."

132. Dante, Convito, II. 4, speaking of the motion of the Primum Mobile, or Crystalline Heaven, which moves all the others, says: "From the fervent longing which each part of that ninth heaven has to be conjoined with that Divinest Heaven, the Heaven of Rest, which is next to it, it revolves therein with so great desire, that its velocity is almost incomprehensible."

137. St. Peter and the other Apostles after Pentecost.

141. Both three and one, both plural and singular.

152. Again the sign of the Trinity.

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Which bars me from itself,

Devoid of love and naked of compassion."

7. In one of Dante's Eclogues, written

at Ravenna and addressed to Giovanni

del Virgilio of Bologna, who had invited him to that city to receive the poet's crown, he says: "Were it not. better, on the banks of my native Arno, if ever

I should return thither, to adorn and hide beneath the interwoven leaves my triumphal gray hairs, which once were golden?... When the bodies that wander round the earth, and the dwellers among the stars, shall be revealed in my song, as the infernal realm has been, then it will delight me to encircle my head with ivy and with laurel."

It would seem from this extract that Dante's hair had once been light, and not black, as Boccaccio describes it.

See also the Extract from the Convito, and Dante's Letter to a Friend, among the Illustrations in Vol. I.

landed safely in Galicia. There the body was buried; but in the course of time the place of its burial was for gotten, and not discovered again till the year Soo, when it was miraculously revealed to a friar.

Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 211, says: "Then they caused the body of the saint to be transported to Compostella; and in consequence of the surprising miracles which graced his shrine, he was honoured not merely in Galicia, but throughout all Spain. and Compostella, as a place of pilgrim. became the patron saint of the Spaniards, age, was renowned throughout Europe. From all countries bands of pilgrims resorted there, so that sometimes there

He

were no less than a hundred thousand in
one year.
Jago, enrolled by Don Alphonso for their
The military order of Saint
protection, became one of the greatest
and richest in Spain.

all the wonderful deeds enacted by San-
"Now, if I should proceed to recount
tiago in behalf of his chosen people, they
would fill a volume. The Spanish his-
torians number thirty-eight visible appa-
scended from heaven in person, and took
ritions, in which this glorious saint de-
the command of their armies against the
Moors."

26. Before me.

29. James i. 5 and 17: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

8. This allusion to the church of San Giovanni, where Dante was baptized, and which in Inf. XIX. 17 he calls "il Every good gift and every permio bel San Giovanni," is a fitting pre-fect gift is from above, and cometh down Inde to the canto in which St. John is from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

to appear.

12. As described in Canto XXIV. 152:

"So, giving me its benediction, singing,

Three times encircled me, when I was silent,
The apostolic light."

14. The band or carol in which St. Peter was. James i. 18: "That we should be a kind of first-fruits of his

creatures."

In this line, instead of largezza, some editions read allegrezza; but as James describes the bounties of heaven, and not its joys, the former reading is undoubtedly the correct one.

32. St. Peter personifies Faith; St. James, Hope; and St. John, Charity. These three were distinguished above 17. St. James, to whose tomb at Com-the other Apostles by clearer manifes postella, in Galicia, pilgrimages were tations of their Master's favour, as, for and are still made. The legend says example, their being present at the that the body of St. James was put on Transfiguration. board a ship and abandoned to the sea; but the ship, being guided by an angel,

34. These words are addressed by St. James to Dante.

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