Big with destruction, and my trembling frame, Rapt from the midst of gaping thousands, hurled

To night eternal in thy nether world."

40. The Theban soothsayer. Ovid, Met., III., Addison's Tr.:—

"It happen'd once, within a shady wood,

Two twisted snakes he in conjunction view'd,
When with his staff their slimy folds he broke,
And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke.
But, after seven revolving years, he view'd
The self-same serpents in the self-same wood:
'And if,' says he, 'such virtue in you lie,
That he who dares your slimy folds untie
Must change his kind, a second stroke I'll
try.'

Again he struck the snakes, and stood again
New-sex'd, and straight recovered into man.

When Juno fired, More than so trivial an affair required, Deprived him, in her fury, of his sight, And left him groping round in sudden night. But Jove (for so it is in heav'n decreed That no one god repeal another's deed)

"But in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence that Dante cared to look at them. From that hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so well, the eye commands, at the farther extremity of the Val d'Arno, the whole purple range of the mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that rule the scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante seems to have been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's mention of Aruns at Luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara hills in the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to them, he speaks of their white marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has evidently no regard for the hills themselves. There is not a single phrase or syllable throughout the poem.

which indicates such a regard. Ugolino, in his dream, seemed to himself to be in the mountains, by cause of which the Pisan cannot see Lucca'; and it is impossible to look up from Pisa to that hoary slope without remembering the awe that there is in the passage; nevertheless it was as a hunting-ground only that he remembered these hills. Adam of Brescia, tormented with eternal thirst, remembers the hills of Romena, but only for the sake of their sweet waters."

55. Manto, daughter of Tiresias, who fled from Thebes, the "City of Bacchus," when it became subject to the tyranny of Cleon.

63. Lake Benacus is now called the Lago di Garda. It is pleasantly alluded to by Claudian in his "Old Man of Verona," who has seen "the grove grow old coeval with himself."

"Verona seems
To him remoter than the swarthy Ind;
He deems the Lake Benacus as the shore
Of the Red Sea."

65. The Pennine Alps, or Alpes Pana, watered by the brooklets flowing into the Sarca, which is the principal tributary of Benaco.

. 69. The place where the three dioceses of Trent, Brescia, and Verona

meet.

70. At the outlet of the lake.
77. Eneid, X. :—

"Mincius crowned with sea-green reeds."
Milton, Lycidas:-

"Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal

reeds."

82. Manto. Benvenuto da Imola

says: "Virgin should here be rendered Virago."

93. Æneid, X.: "Ocnus, . . . . son of the prophetic Manto, and of the Tuscan river, who gave walls and the name of his mother to thee, O Mantua !"

95. Pinamonte dei Buonacossi, a bold, ambitious man, persuaded Alberto, Count of Casalodi and Lord of Mantua, to banish to their estates the chief nobles of the city, and then, stirring up a popular tumult, fell upon the rest, laying waste their houses, and sending them into exile or to prison, and thus greatly depopulating the city.

110. Iliad, I. 69: "And Calchas, the son of Thestor, arose, the best of augurs, a man who knew the present, the future, and the past, and who had guided the ships of the Achæans to Ilium, by that power of prophecy which Phoebus Apollo gave him."

112. Æneid, II. 114: "In suspense we send Eurypylus to consult the oracle of Apollo, and he brings back from the shrine these mournful words: O Greeks, ye appeased the winds with blood and a virgin slain, when first ye came to the Trojan shores; your return is to be sought by blood, and atonement made by a Grecian life.""

Dante calls Virgil's poem a Tragedy, to mark its sustained and lofty style, in contrast with that of his own Comedy, of which he has already spoken once, Canto XVI. 138, and speaks again, Canto XXI. 2; as if he wished the reader to bear in mind that he is wearing the sock, and not the buskin.

116. "Michael Scott, the Magi

....

cian," says Benvenuto da Imola, "practised divination at the court of Frederick II., and dedicated to him a book on natural history, which I have seen, and in which among other things he treats of Astrology, then deemed infallible. . . . . It is said, moreover, that he foresaw his own death, but could not escape it. He had prognosticated that he should be killed by the falling of a small stone upon his head, and always wore an iron skull-cap under his hood, to prevent this disaster. But entering a church on the festival of Corpus Domini, he lowered his hood. in sign of veneration, not of Christ, in whom he did not believe, but to deceive the common people, and a small stone fell from aloft on his bare head."

The reader will recall the midnight scene of the monk of St. Mary's and William of Deloraine in Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto II. : — "In these far climes it was my lot

To meet the wondrous Michael Scott;
A wizard of such dreaded fame
That when, in Salamanca's cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave,

The bells would ring in Notre Dame!
Some of his skill he taught to me;
And, warrior, I could say to thee

The words that cleft Eildon hills in three,
And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone;
But to speak them were a deadly sin;
And for having but thought them my heart
within,

A treble penance must be done."

And the opening of the tomb to recover the Magic Book :

---

"Before their eyes the wizard lay, As if he had not been dead a day.

His hoary beard in silver rolled,
He seemed some seventy winters old;
A palmer's amice wrapped him round,
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea;

His left hand held his book of might;
A silver cross was in his right;

The lamp was placed beside his knee:
High and majestic was his look,
At which the fellest fiends had shook,
And all unruffled was his face:-
They trusted his soul had gotten grace."

See also Appendix to the Lay of the Last Minstrel.

118. Guido Bonatti, a tiler and astrologer of Forlì, who accompanied Guido di Montefeltro when he marched out of Forlì to attack the French "under the great oak." Villani, VII. 81, in a passage in which the he and him get a little entangled, says: "It is said that the Count of Montefeltro was guided by divination and the advice of Guido Bonatti (a tiler who had bean astrologer), or some other strategy, and he gave the orders; and in this enterprise he gave him the gonfalon and said, So long as a rag of it remains, wherever thou bearest it, thou shalt be victorious'; but I rather think his victories were owing to his own wits and his mastery in war."

come

rains; for infallibly there will be much rain to-day.' The Count, wondering at him, sent for Guido Bonatti, as a great astrologer, and said to him, 'Dost thou hear what this man says?' Guido answered, He does not know what he is saying; but wait a little.' Guido went to his study, and, having taken his astrolabe, observed the aspect of the heavens. And on returning he said that it was impossible it should rain that day. But the rustic obstinately affirming what he had said, Guido asked him, How dost thou know?' The rustic answered, Because to-day my ass, in coming out of the stable, shook his head and pricked up his ears, and whenever he does this, it is a certain sign that the weather will soon change.' Then Guido replied, Supposing this to be so, how dost thou know there will be much rain?' Because,' said he, my ass, with his ears pricked up, turned his head aside, and wheeled about more than usual.' Then, with the Count's leave, the rustic departed in haste, much fearing the rain, though the weather was very clear. And an hour afterwards, lo, it began to thunder, and there was a great down-pouring of waters, like a deluge. Then Guido began to cry out, with great indignation and derision, Who has de

luded me? Who has put me to shame?' And for a long time this was a great source of merriment among the people." Asdente, a cobbler of Parma. "I think he must have had acuteness of mind, although illiterate; some having the gift of prophecy by the inspiration of Heaven." Dante mentions him in the Convito, IV. 16, where he says that, if nobility consisted in being known and talked about, "Asdente the shoemaker of Parma would be more noble than any of his fellow-citizens."

126. The moon setting in the sea west of Seville. In the Italian popular tradition to which Dante again alludes, Par. II. 51, the Man in the Moon is Cain with his Thorns. This belief seems to have been current too in England, Midsummer Night's Dream, III. 1: "Or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of moon-shine." And again, V. 1: "The man should be put into the lanHow is it else the man i' the moon? . . . . . All that I have to say

tern.

.....

is to tell you, that the lantern is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog."

The time here indicated is an hour after sunrise on Saturday morning.

1. The Fifth Bolgia, and the punishment of Barrators, or "Judges who take bribes for giving judgment."

2. Having spoken in the preceding

Canto of Virgil's "lofty Tragedy," Dante here speaks of his own Comedy, as if to prepare the reader for the scenes which are to follow, and for

which he apologizes in Canto XXII. 14, by repeating the proverb,

"In the church With saints, and in the tavern with carousers." 7. Of the Arsenal of Venice Mr. Hillard thus speaks in his Six Months in Italy, I. 63:—

"No reader of Dante will fail to pay a visit to the Arsenal, from which, in order to illustrate the terrors of his 'Inferno,' the great poet drew one of these striking and picturesque images, characteristic alike of the boldness and the power of his genius, which never hesitated to look for its materials among the homely details and familiar incidents of life. In his hands, the boiling of pitch and the calking of seams ascend to the dignity of poetry. Besides, it is the most impressive and characteristic spot in Venice. The Ducal Palace and the Church of St. Mark's are symbols of pride and power, but the strength of Venice resided here. Her whole history, for six hundred years, was here epitomized, and as she rose and sunk, the hum of labor here swelled and subsided. Here was the indexhand which marked the culmination and decline of her greatness. Built upon several small islands, which are united by a wall of two miles in circuit, its extent and completeness, decayed as it is, show what the naval power of Venice once was, as the disused armor of a giant enables us to measure his stature and strength. Near the entrance are four marble lions, brought by Morosini from the Peloponnesus in 1685, two of which are strik

ing works of art. Of these two, one is by far the oldest thing in Venice, being not much younger than the battle of Marathon; and thus, from the height. of twenty-three centuries, entitled to look down upon St. Mark's as the growth. of yesterday. The other two are nondescript animals, of the class commonly called heraldic, and can be styled lions. only by courtesy. In the armory are some very interesting objects, and none more so than the great standard of the Turkish admiral, made of crimson silk, taken at the battle of Lepanto, and which Cervantes may have grasped with his unwounded hand. A few fragments of some of the very galleys that were engaged in that memorable fight are also preserved here."

37. Malebranche, Evil-claws, a general name for the devils.

38. Santa Zita, the Patron Saint of Lucca, where the magistrates were called Elders, or Aldermen. In Florence they bore the name of Priors.

41. A Barrator, in Dante's use of the word, is to the State what a Simoniac is to the Church; one who sells justice, office, or employment.

Benvenuto says that Dante includes Bontura with the rest, "because he is speaking ironically, as who should say, 'Bontura is the greatest barrator of all.' For Bontura was an arch-barrator, who sagaciously led and managed the whole commune, and gave offices to whom he wished. He likewise excluded whom he wished."

46. Bent down in the attitude of one in prayer; therefore the demons mock