Like gentle soul, that maketh no excuse, But makes its own will of another's will As soon as by a sign it is disclosed, Even so, when she had taken hold of me, The beautiful lady moved, and unto Statius 130 Said, in her womanly manner, "Come with him.” 135 If, Reader, I possessed a longer space For writing it, I yet would sing in part Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me ; But inasmuch as full are all the leaves Made ready for this second canticle, The curb of art no farther lets me go. From the most holy water I returned Regenerate, in the manner of new trees That are renewed with a new foliage, Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. 140 145 BB NOTES TO PURGATORIO. CANTO I. 1. The Mountain of Purgatory is a vast conical mountain, rising steep and high from the waters of the Southern Ocean, at a point antipodal to Mount Sion in Jerusalem. In Canto III. 14, Dante speaks of it as "The hill That highest tow'rds the heaven uplifts itself"; and in Paradiso, XXVI. 139, as "The mount that rises highest o'er the wave." Around it run seven terraces, on which are punished severally the Seven Deadly Sins. Rough stairways, cut in the rock, lead up from terrace to terrace, and on the summit is the garden of the Terrestrial Paradise. The Seven Sins punished in the Seven Circles are,-1. Pride; 2. Envy; 3. Anger; 4. Sloth; 5. Avarice and Prodigality; 6. Gluttony; 7. Lust. The threefold division of the Purgatorio, marked only by more elaborate preludes, or by a natural pause in the action of the poem, is,—1. From Canto I. to Canto IX. ; 2. From Canto IX. to Canto XXVIII.; 3, From Canto XXVIII. to the end. The first of these divisions describes the region lying outside the gate of Purgatory; the second, the Seven Circles of the mountain; and the third, the Terrestrial Paradise on its summit. "Traces of belief in a Purgatory," says Mr. Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 410, "early appear among the Christians. Many of the gravest Fathers of the first five centuries naturally conceived and taught, -as is indeed intrinsically reasonable, that after death some souls will be punished for their sins until they are cleansed, and then will be released from pain. The Man - After ichæans imagined that all souls, before returning to their native heaven, must be borne first to the moon, where with good waters they would be washed pure from outward filth, and then to the sun, where they would be purged by good fires from every inward stain. these lunar and solar lustrations, they were fit for the eternal world of light. But the conception of Purgatory as it was held by the early Christians, whether orthodox Fathers or heretical sects, was merely the just and necessary result of applying to the subject of future punishment the two ethical ideas that punishment should partake of degrees proportioned to guilt, and that it should be restorative. 66 Pope Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, either borrowing some of the more objectionable features of the Purgatory-doctrine previously held by the heathen, or else devising the same things himself from a perception of the striking adaptedness of such notions to secure an enviable power to the Church,-constructed, established, and gave working efficiency to the dogmatic scheme of Purgatory ever since firmly defended by the Papal adherents as an integral part of the Roman Catholic system. The doctrine as matured and promulgated by Gregory, giving to the representatives of the Church an almost unlimited power over Purgatory, rapidly grew into favour with the clergy, and sank with general conviction into the hopes and fears of the laity." 9. The Muse "of the beautiful voice," who presided over eloquence and heroic verse. II. The nine daughters of Pierus, king of Macedonia, called the Pierides They challenged the Muses to a trial of skill in singing, and being vanquished |