of Malatestino, were by his order thrown to the sea and drowned, as here prophesied or narrated, near the village of Cattolica on the Adriatic. 85. Malatestino had lost one eye. S9. Focara is a headland near Cattolica, famous for dangerous winds, to be preserved from which mariners offered up vows and prayers. These men will not need to do it; they will not reach that cape. 102. Curio, the banished Tribune, who, fleeing to Caesar's camp on the Rubicon, urged him to advance upon Rome. Lucan, Pharsalia, I., Rowe's Tr.: "To Cæsar's camp the busy Curio fled; To Cæsar thus, while thousand cares infest, way; 'Haste, then, thy towering eagles on their When fair occasion calls, 'tis fatal to delay.'" 106. Mosca degl' Uberti, or dei Lamberti, who, by advising the murder of Buondelmonte, gave rise the partics of Guelf and Ghibelline, which so long divided Florence. See Canto X. Note 51. 134. Bertrand de Born, the turbulent Troubadour of the last half of the twelfth century, was alike skilful with his pen and his sword, and passed his life in alternately singing and fighting, and in stirring up dissension and strife among his neighbours. He is the author of that spirited war-song, well known to all readers of Troubadour verse, beginning "The beautiful spring delights me well, When flowers and leaves are growing; And it pleases my heart to hear the swell Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing In the echoing wood; And I love to see, all scattered around, Pavilions and tents on the martial ground; And my spirit finds it good, To see, on the level plains beyond, Gay knights and steeds caparison'd; "and ending with a challenge to Richard Coeur de Lion, telling his minstrel Papiol to go "And tell the Lord of 'Yes and No' That peace already too long has been." 64 "Bertrand de Born," says the old Provençal biography, published by Ray. nouard, Choix de Poésies Originales des Troubadours, V. 76, was a chatelain of the bishopric of Périgueux, Viscount of Hautefort, a castle with nearly a thousand retainers. He had a brother, and would have dispossessed him of his inheritance, had it not been for the King of England. He was always at war with all his neighbours, with the Count of Périgueux, and with the Viscount of Limoges, and with his brother Constantine, and with Richard, when he was Count of Poitou. He was a good cavalier, and a good warrior, and a good lover, and a good troubadour; and well informed and well spoken; and knew well how to bear good and evil fortune. Whenever he wished, he was master of King Henry of England and of his son; but always desired that father and son should be at war with each other, and one brother with the other. And he always wished that the King of France and the King of England should be at variance; and if there were either peace or truce, straightway he sought and endeavoured by his satires to undo the peace, and to show how each was dishonoured by it. And he had great advantages and great misfortunes by thus exciting feuds between them. many satires, but only two songs. The Giraud de Borneil the wives of Bertrand King of Aragon called the songs of de Born's satires. He wrote him bore the name of Papiol. And he And he who sang for was handsome and courteous; and called the Count of Britany, Rassa; and the King of England, Yes and No'; and his son, the young king, Marinier. And he set his whole heart on fomenting war, and embroiled the father and son of England, until the young king was killed by an arrow in a castle of Bertrand de Born. "And Bertrand used to boast that he had more wits than he needed. And when the King took him prisoner, he asked him, Have you all your wits, for you will need them now?' And he answered, 'I lost them all when the young king died.' Then the king wept, and pardoned him, and gave him robes, and lands, and honour And he lived long and became a Cistercian against him. They were, Henry, sura monk.' " Fauriel, Histoire de la Poésie Provençale, Adler's Tr., p. 483, quoting part of this passage, adds: named Curt-Mantle, and called by the Troubadours and novelists of his time "The Young King," because he was crowned during his father's life; Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Count of Guienne and Poitou; Geoffroy, Duke of Brittany; "In this notice the old biographer indicates the dominant trait of Bertrand's character very distinctly; it was an un-and John Lackland. Henry was the bridled passion for war. He loved it only one of these who bore the title of not only as the occasion for exhibiting king at the time in question. Bertrand proofs of valour, for acquiring power, de Born was on terms of intimacy with and for winning glory, but also, and even him, and speaks of him in his poems more, on account of its hazards, on ac- as lo Reys joves, sometimes lauding and count of the exaltation of courage and of sometimes reproving him. One of the life which it produced, nay, even for the best of these poems is his Complainte, sake of the tumult, the disorders, and on the death of Henry, which took place the evils which are accustomed to follow in 1183, from disease, say some accounts, in its train. Bertrand de Born is the from the bolt of a crossbow say others. ideal of the undisciplined and adventure- He complains that he has lost the best some warrior of the Middle Age, rather king that was ever born of mother ;" and than that of the chevalier in the proper goes on to say, King of the courteous, sense of the term." and emperor of the valiant, you would See also Millot, Hist. Litt. des Trou-have been Seigneur if you had lived badours, I. 210, and Hist. Litt. de la France par les Bénédictins de St. Maur, continuation, XVII. 425. 66 longer; for you bore the name of the Young King, and were the chief and peer of youth. Ay! hauberk and sword, and beautiful buckler, helmet and gonfalon, and purpoint and sark, and joy and love, there is none to maintain See Raynouard, Choix de Porsies, IV. 49. Bertrand de Born, if not the best of the Troubadours, is the most prominent and striking character among them. His life is a drama full of romanti interest; beginning with the old castle in Gascony, the dames, the cavaliers, the arms, the loves, the courtesy, the bold emprise ;" and ending in a Čister-is cian convent, among friars and fastings, and penitence and prayers. In the Bible Guiot de Provins, Barbazan, Fabliaux et Contes, II., 518, he spoken of as "li jones Rois, 66 66 Li proux, li saiges, li cortois." 135. A vast majority of manuscripts In the Cento Novelle Antiche, XVIII., and printed editions read in this line, XIX., XXXV., he is called il Re GioRe Giovanni, King John, instead of Revane; and in Roger de Wendover's Giovane, the Young King. Even Boc- Flowers of History, A.D. 1179-1183, caccio's copy, which he wrote out with 'Henry the Young King." his own hand for Petrarca, has Re Giovanni. Out of seventy-nine Codici examined by Barlow, he says, Study of the Divina Commedia, p. 153, "Only five were found with the correct reading -re giovane. The reading re giovane is not found in any of the early editions, nor is it noticed by any of the early commentators." See also Ginguené, Hist. Litt. de l'Italie, II. 586, where the subject is elaborately discussed, and the note of Biagioli, who takes the opposite side of the question. Henry II. of England had four sons, all of whom were more or less rebellious It was to him that Bertrand de Born gave the evil counsels," embroiling him with his father and his brothers. Therefore, when the commentators challenge us as Pistol does Shallow, which king, Bezonian? speak or die!" I think we must answer as Shallow does, "Under King Harry. "Under 137. See 2 Samuel xvii. 1, 2 : "Moreover, Ahithophel said unto Absalom, let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night. And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak-handed, and will make him afraid and all the people that are with him shall flee; and I will smite the King only." Dryden, in his poem of Absalom and Achitophel, gives this portrait of the latter : "Of these the false Achitophel was first; Then he puts into the mouth of Achitophel the following description of Absalom : : and falsifiers of all kinds. This Canto is devoted to the alchemists. 27. Geri del Bello was a disreputable member of the Alighieri family, and was murdered by one of the Sacchetti. His death was afterwards avenged by his brother, who in turn slew one of the Sacchetti at the door of his house. 29. Bertrand de Born. 35. Like the ghost of Ajax in the Odyssey, XI. "He answered me not at all. but went to Erebus amongst the other souls of the dead." 36. Dante seems to share the feeling of the Italian vendetta, which required retaliation from some member of the injured family. "Among the Italians of this age," says Napier, Florentine Hist., I. Ch. VII., "and for centuries after, private offence was never forgotten until revenged, and generally involved a suc cession of mutual injuries; vengeance was not only considered lawful and just, but a positive duty, dishonourable to omit; and, as may be learned from ancient private journals, it was sometimes allowed to sleep for five-andthirty years, and then suddenly struck a victim who perhaps had not yet seen the light when the original injury was inflicted." 46. The Val di Chiana, near Arezzo, was in Dante's time marshy and pestilential. Now, by the effect of drainage, it is one of the most beautiful and fruitful of the Tuscan valleys. The Maremma was and is notoriously unhealthy; see Canto XIII. Note 9, and Sardinia would seem to have shared its ill repute. The branches too alike commotion found, And shook th' industrious creatures on the 88. Latian, or Italian; any one of the Latin race. 109. The speaker is a certain Griffolino, an alchemist of Arezzo, who practised upon the credulity of Albert, a natural son of the Bishop of Siena. 66 For this he was burned; but was condemned to the last Bolgia of the ten for alchemy." 116. The inventor of the Cretan labyrinth. Ovid, Metamorph. VIII. :— "Great Daedalus of Athens was the man Who made the draught, and formed the won drous plan. Not being able to find his way out of the labyrinth, he made wings for himself and his son Icarus, and escaped by flight. 66 122. Speaking of the people of Siena, Forsyth, Italy, 532, says: Vain, flighty, fanciful, they want the judgment and penetration of their Florentine neighbours; who, nationally severe, call a nail without a head chiodo Sanese. The ac complished Signora Rinieri told me, that her father, while Governor of Siena, was once stopped in his carriage by a crowd at Florence, where the mob, recognizing him, called out: Lasciate passare il Governatore de' matti. A native of Siena is presently known at Florence; for his very walk, being formed to a hilly town, detects him on the plain." tlemen, who took it into their heads to do things that would make a great part of the world wonder." Accordingly each contributed eighteen thou sand golden florins to a common fund, amounting in all to two hundred and sixteen thousand florins. They built a palace, in which each member had a splendid chamber, and they gave sumptuous dinners and suppers; ending their dishes, table-ornaments, and knives of banquets sometimes by throwing all the gold and silver out of the window. "This silly institution," continues Benvenuto, "lasted only ten months, the treasury being exhausted, and the wretched members became the fable and laughing-stock of all the world." In honour of this club, Folgore da San Geminiano, a clever poet of the day (1260), wrote a series of twelve convivial sonnets, one for each month of the year, with Dedication and Conclusion. A translation of these sonnets may be found in D. G. Rossetti's Early Italian Poets. The Dedication runs as follows: "Unto the blithe and lordly Fellowship, (I know not where, but wheresoe'er, I know, Lordly and blithe,) be greeting; and thereto, Dogs, hawks, and a full purse wherein to dip. Quails struck i' the flight; nags mettled to the whip; Hart-hounds, hare-hounds, and blood-hounds even so; And o'er that realm, a crown for Niccolò, Who well might pass for children of King Courteous and valiant more than Lancelot,- man To hold high tournament in Camelot." 136. "This Capocchio," says the Ottimo, "was a very subtle alchemist; and because he was burned for practising alchemy in Siena, he exhibits his hatred to the Sienese, and gives us to understand that the author knew him." 125. The persons here mentioned gain a kind of immortality from Dante's verse. The Stricca, or Baldastricca, was a lawyer of Siena; and Niccolò dei Salimbeni, or Bonsignori, introduced the fashion of stuffing pheasants with cloves, or, as Benvenuto says, of roasting them at a fire of cloves. Though Dante mentions them apart, they seem, like the two others named afterwards, to have been members of the Brigata Spendereccia, or Prodigal Club, of Siena, whose extravagances are recorded by Benvenuto da Imola. This club con- 4. Athamas, king of Thebes and sisted of "twelve very rich young gen husband of Ino, daughter of Cadmus, CANTO XXX. I. In this Canto the same Bólgia is continued, with different kinds of Falsifiers. His madness is thus described by Ovid, Now Athamas cries out, his reason fled, smiled, A father now no more.--who now begun Extends her jaws, as she her voice would raise 31. Griffolino d'Arezzo, mentioned in Canto XXIX. 109. 42. The same "mad sprite," Gianni Schicchi, mentioned in line 32. "Buoso Donati of Florence," says Benvenuto, "although a nobleman and of an illustrious house, was nevertheless like other noblemen of his time, and by means of thefts had greatly increased his patrimony. When the hour of death drew near the sting of conscience caused him to make a will in which he gave fat legacies to many people; whereupon his son Simon, (the Ottimo says his nephew,) thinking himself enormously aggrieved, suborned Vanni Schicchi dei Cavalcanti, who got into Buoso's bed, and made a will in opposition to the other. Gianni much resembled Buoso." this will Gianni Schicchi did not forget himself while making Simon heir; for, according to the Ottimo, he put In this clause into it: "To Gianni Schicchi I bequeath my mare. This was the "lady of the herd," and Benvenuto adds, "none more beautiful was to be found in Tuscany; and it was valued at a thousand florins," "He that the gliding rivers erst had seen Adown their verdant channels gently rolled, Or falling streams, which to the valleys green, Distilled from tops of Alpine mountains cold, Those he desired in vain, new torments been Augmented thus with wish of comforts old; Those waters cool he drank in vain conceit, Which more increased his thirst, increased his heat." 65. The upper valley of the Arno is in the province of Cassentino. Quoting these three lines, Ampère, Voyage Dantesque, 246, says: "In these untransfreshness, which almost makes one shudlatable verses, there is a feeling of humid der. I owe it to truth to say, that the |