NOTES TO INFERNO. number of cantos is one hundred, the perfect number ten multiplied into itself; but if we count the first canto of the Inferno as a Prelude, which it really is. each part will consist of thirty-three cantos, making ninety-nine in all; and so the favourite mystic numbers reappear. THE DIVINE COMEDY.-The Vita | parts, and each part again subdivided Nuova of Dante closes with these words: in its structure into three. The whole "After this sonnet there appeared to me a wonderful vision, in which I beheld things that made me propose to say no more of this blessed one, until I shall be able to treat of her more worthily. And to attain thereunto, truly I strive with all my power, as she knoweth. So that if it shall be the pleasure of Him, through whom all things live, that my life continue somewhat longer, I hope to say of her what never yet was said of any woman. And then may it please Him, who is the Sire of courtesy, that my soul may depart to look upon the glory of its Lady, that is to say, of the Blessed Beatrice, who in glory gazes into the face of Him, qui est per omnia sæcula benedictus. In these lines we have the earliest glimpse of the Divine Comedy, as it rose in the author's mind. The three divisions of the Inferno are minutely described and explained by Dante in Canto XI. They are separated from each other by great spaces in the infernal abyss. The sins punished in them are, -I. Incontinence. Malice. III. Bestiality. II. I. INCONTINENCE: I. The Wanton. 2. The Gluttonous. 3. The Avaricious and Prodigal. 4. The Irascible and the Sullen. II. MALICE: 1. The Violent against their neighbour, in person or property. 2. The Violent against themselves, in person or property. 3. The Violent against God, or against Nature, the daughter of God, or against Art, the daughter of Nature. Whoever has read the Vita Nuova will remember the stress which Dante lays upon the mystic numbers Nine and Three; his first meeting with Beatrice at the beginning of her ninth year, and III. BESTIALITY: first subdivision: the end of his; his nine days' illness, 1. Seducers. 2. Flatterers. 3. Simoniand the thought of her death which came acs. 4. Soothsayers. 5. Barrators. 6. to him on the ninth day; her death on Hypocrites. 7. Thieves. 8. Evil counthe ninth day of the ninth month, "com-sellors. 9. Schismatics. 10. Falsifiers. puting by the Syrian method," and in that year of our Lord "when the perfect number ten was nine times completed in that century" which was the thirteenth. Moreover, he says the number nine was friendly to her, because the nine heavens were in conjunction at her birth; and that she was herself the number nine, "that is, a miracle whose root is the wonderful Trinity.' Following out this idea, we find the Divine Comedy written in terza rima, threefold rhyme, divided into three Second subdivision: 1. Traitors to their kindred. 2. Traitors to their country. 3. Traitors to their friends. 4. Traitors to their lords and benefactors. The Divine Comedy is not strictly an allegorical poem in the sense in which the Faerie Queene is; and yet it is full of allegorical symbols and figurative meanings. In a letter to Can Grande della Scala, Dante writes: "It is to be remarked, that the sense of this work is not simple, but on the contrary one any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from these things, God shall take away his part from the good things written in this book." It is not impossible that Dante may have taken a few hints also from the Tesoretto of his teacher, Ser Brunetto Latini. See Canto XV. Note 30. See upon this subject, Cancellieri, Osservazioni Sopra l' Originalità di Dante; may say manifold. For one sense is that which is derived from the letter, and another is that which is derived from the things signified by the letter. The first is called literal, the second allegorical or moral. The subject, then, of the whole work, taken literally, is the condition of souls after death, simply considered. For on this and around this the whole action of the work turns. But if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is man, how by actions of merit or demerit, through free-Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory, an dom of the will, he justly deserves reward Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, Hell, or punishment." and Paradise, current during the Middle It may not be amiss here to refer to Ages ;-Ozanam, Dante et la Philosophie what are sometimes called the sources of Catholique au Treizième Siècle;-Labitte, the Divine Comedy. Foremost among La Divine Comédie avant Dante, pubthem must be placed the Eleventh Book|lished as an Introduction to the translaof the Odyssey, and the Sixth of the Eneid; and to the latter Dante seems to point significantly in choosing Virgil for his Guide, his Master, his Author, from whom he took "the beautiful style that did him honour." Next to these may be mentioned Cicero's Vision of Scipio, of which Chaucer says: "Chapiters seven it haa, of Heaven, and Hell, And Earthe, and soules that therein do dwell" tion of Brizeux ;-and Delepierre, Le Livre des Visions, ou l'Enfer et le Ciel décrits par ceux qui les ont vus. See also the Illustrations at the end of this volume. CANTO I. I. The action of the poem begins on Good Friday of the year 1300, at which time Dante, who was born in 1265, had reached the middle of the Scriptural threescore years and ten. It ends on the first Sunday after Easter, making in all ten days. Then follow the popular legends which were current in Dante's age; an age when the end of all things was thought 2. The dark forest of human life, to be near at hand, and the wonders of with its passions, vices, and perplexities the invisible world had laid fast hold on of all kinds; politically the state of the imaginations of men. Prominent Florence with its factions Guelph and among these is the "Vision of Frate Al-Ghibelline. Dante, Convito, IV. 25, berico," who calls himself "the humblest says:--"Thus the adolescent, who enters servant of the servants of the Lord;" into the erroneous forest of this life, and who would not know how to keep the right way if he were not guided by his elders." Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, II. 75: Saw in dreame at point-devyse Heaven, Earthe, Hell, and Paradyse." This vision was written in Latin in the latter half of the twelfth century, and contains a description of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, with its Seven Heavens. It is for the most part a tedious tale, and bears evident marks of having been written by a friar of some monastery, when the afternoon sun was shining into his sleepy eyes. He seems, however, to have looked upon his own work with a not unfavourable opinion; for he concludes the Epistle Introductory with the words of St. John: "If name of the going up the side of the hill is called Difficulty. They went then till they came to the Delectable Mountains, which mountains belong to the Lord of that hill of which we have spoken before." 14. Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress:"But now in this valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it ; for he had gone but a little way before he spied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back or stand his ground. . . . Now at the end of this valley was another, called the valley of the Shadow of Death; and Christian must needs go through it, because the way to the Celestial City lay through the midst of it." 17. The sun, with all its symbolical meanings. This is the morning of Good Friday. In the Ptolemaic system the sun was one of the planets. 20. The deep mountain tarn of his heart, dark with its own depth, and the shadows hanging over it. 27. Jeremiah ii. 6: "That led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt." In his note upon this passage Mr. Wright quotes Spenser's lines, Faerie Queene, I. v. 31,— "there creature never passed That back returned without heavenly grace." 30. Climbing the hillside slowly, so that he rests longest on the foot that is lowest. 31. Jeremiah v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces.' 32. Worldly Pleasure; and politically Florence, with its factions of Bianchi and Neri. 36. Più volte volto. Dante delights in a play upon words as much as Shake sophers and fathers think the world was created in Spring. 45. Ambition; and politically the royal house of France. 48. Some editions read temesse, others tremesse. 49. Avarice; and politically the Court of Rome, or temporal power of the Popes. 60. Dante as a Ghibelline and Imperialist is in opposition to the Guelphs, Pope Boniface VIII., and the King of France, Philip the Fair, and is banished from Florence, out of the sunshine, and into "the dry wind that blows from dolorous poverty.' Cato speaks of the "silent moon" in De Re Rustica, XXIX., Evchito luna silenti; and XL., Vites inseri luna silenti. Also Pliny, XVI. 39, has Silens luna; and Milton, in Samson Agonistes, "Silent as the moon." 63. The long neglect of classic studies in Italy before Dante's time. 70. Born under Julius Cæsar, but too late to grow up to manhood during his Imperial reign. He flourished later under Augustus. 79. In this passage Dante but expresses the universal veneration felt for Virgil during the Middle Ages, and especially in Italy. Petrarch's copy of Virgil is still preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan; and at the beginning of it he has recorded in a Latin note the time of his first meeting with Laura, and the date of her death, which, he says, "I write in this book, rather than elsewhere, because it comes often under my eye. In the popular imagination Virgil became a mythical personage and a mighty magician. See the story of Virgilius in Thom's Early Prose Romances, II. Dante selects him for his guide, as symbolizing human science or Philosophy. "I say and affirm," he remarks, Convito, V. 16, "that the lady with whom I became enamoured after my first love was the most beautiful and modest daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name of Philosophy.' 87. Dante seems to have been alspeare. ready conscious of the fame which his 38. The stars of Aries. Some philo- | Vita Nuova and Canzoni had given him., |