1. The Eighth Bolgia, in which Fraudulent Counsellors are punished.

4. Of these five Florentine nobles, Cianfa Donati, Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, and Guercio Cavalcanti, nothing is known but what Dante tells us. Perhaps that is enough.

7. See Purg. IX. 13: "Just at the hour when her sad lay begins

The little swallow, near unto the morning, Perchance in memory of her former woes, And when the mind of man, a wanderer

More from the flesh, and less by thought imprisoned,

Almost prophetic in its visions is."

9. The disasters soon to befall Florence, and in which even the neighboring town of Prato would rejoice, to mention no others. These disasters were the fall of the wooden bridge of Carraia, with a crowd upon it, witnessing a Miracle Play on the Arno; the strife of the Bianchi and Neri; and the great fire of 1304. See Villani, VIII. 70, 71. Napier, Florentine History, I. 394, gives this account :

"Battles first began between the Cerchi and Giugni at their houses in the Via del Garbo; they fought day and night, and with the aid of the Cavalcanti and Antellesi the former subdued all that quarter: a thousand rural adherents strengthened their bands, and that day might have seen the Neri's destruction if an unforseen disaster had not turned the scale. A certain dissolute priest, called Neri Abati, prior

of San Piero Scheraggio, false to his family and in concert with the Black chiefs, consented to set fire to the dwellings of his own kinsmen in Orto-sanMichele; the flames, assisted by faction, spread rapidly over the richest and most crowded part of Florence: shops,warehouses, towers, private dwellings and palaces, from the old to the new market-place, from Vacchereccia to Porta Santa Maria and the Ponte Vecchio, all was one broad sheet of fire: more than nineteen hundred houses were consumed; plunder and devastation revelled unchecked amongst the flames, whole races were reduced in to beggary, and vast magazines of the richest merchandise. were destroyed. The Cavalcanti, one of the most opulent families in Florence, beheld their whole property consumed, and lost all courage; they made no attempt to save it, and, after almost gaining possession of the city, were finally overcome by the opposite fac

one moment

tion.'

10. Macbeth, I. 7 : —

"If it were done when 't is done, then 't were well

It were done quickly."

23. See Parad. XII. 112: "O glorious stars! O light impregnated With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge

All of my genius, whatsoe'er it be."

24. I may not balk or deprive myself of this good.

"And he went up from thence unto Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

35. 2 Kings ii. 11: —

"And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven."

54. These two sons of Edipus, Eteocles and Polynices, were so hostile to each other, that, when after death their bodies were burned on the same funeral pile, the flames swayed apart, and the ashes separated. Statius, Thebaid, XII. 430, Lewis's Tr.:

:

"Again behold the brothers! When the fire

Pervades their limbs in many a curling spire,

The vast hill trembles, and the intruder's

corse

Is driven from the pile with sudden force.
The flames, dividing at the point, ascend,
And at each other adverse rays extend.
Thus when the ruler of the infernal state,
Pale-visaged Dis, commits to stern debate
The sister-fiends, their brands, held forth to
fight,

Now clash, then part, and shed a transient

light."

56. The most cunning of the Greeks at the siege of Troy, now united in their punishment, as before in warlike wrath.

59. As Troy was overcome by the fraud of the wooden horse, it was in a poetic sense the gateway by which Æneas went forth to establish the Roman empire in Italy.

62. Deidamia was a daughter of Lycomedes of Scyros, at whose court Ulysses found Achilles, disguised in woman's attire, and enticed him away to the siege of Troy, telling him that, according to the oracle, the city could. not be taken without him, but not telling him that, according to the same oracle, he would lose his life there.

63. Ulysses and Diomed together stole the Palladium, or statue of Pallas, at Troy, the safeguard and protection of the city.

75. The Greeks scorned all other nations as "outside barbarians." Even Virgil, a Latian, has to plead with Ulysses the merit of having praised him in the Æneid.

108. The Pillars of Hercules at the straits of Gibraltar; Abyla on the African shore, and Gibraltar on the Spanish; in which the popular mind has lost its faith, except as symbolized in the columns on the Spanish dollar, with the legend, Plus ultra.

Brunetto Latini, Tesor. IX. 119:

Ercules il potente,

Per mostrare alla gente Che loco sia finata

La terra e terminata."

125. Odyssey, XI. 155: "Well-fitted oars, which are also wings to ships."

127. Humboldt, Personal Narrative, II. 19, Miss Williams's Tr., has this passage: "From the time we entered the torrid zone, we were never wearied with admiring, every night, the beauty of the Southern sky, which, as we advanced toward the south, opened new constellations to our view. We feel an indescribable sensation, when, on approaching the equator, and particularly on passing from one hemisphere to the other, we see those stars, which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveller a livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which he is separated from his country, than the aspect of an unknown firmament. The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scattered nebulæ, rivalling in splendor the milky way, and tracks of space remarkable for their extreme blackness, give a particular physiognomy to the Southern sky. This sight fills with admiration even those who, uninstructed in the branches of accurate science, feel the same emotion of delight in the contemplation of the heavenly vault, as in the view of a beautiful landscape, or a majestic site. A traveller has no need of being a botanist, to recognize the torrid zone on the mere aspect of its vegetation ;

and without having acquired any notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with the celestial charts of Flamstead and De la Caille, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the Ship, or the phosphorescent clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon."

142. Compare Tennyson's Ulysses:"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail :

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and
thought with me,—

That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads, you and I are
old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old
days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we

are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in

will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

1. The subject of the preceding Canto is continued in this.

7. The story of the Brazen Bull of Perillus is thus told in the Gesta Romanorum, Tale 48, Swan's Tr. : —

"Dionysius records, that when Perillus desired to become an artificer of Phalaris, a cruel and tyrannical king who depopulated the kingdom, and was guilty of many dreadful excesses, he presented to him, already too well skilled in cruelty, a brazen bull, which he had just constructed. In one of its sides there was a secret door, by which those who were sentenced should enter and be burnt to death. The idea was, that the sounds produced by the agony of the sufferer confined within should resemble the roaring of a bull; and thus, while nothing human struck the ear, the mind should be unimpressed by a feeling of mercy. The king highly applauded the invention, and said, Friend, the value of thy industry is yet untried: more cruel even than the people account me, thou thyself shalt be the first victim.""

Whan he his peine shall beginne
Through fire, which that men put under.
And all this did he for a wonder,
That whan a man for peine cride,
The bull of bras, which gapeth wide,
It shulde seme, as though it were
A bellewing in a mannes ere
And nought the crieng of a man.
But he, which alle sleightes can,
The devil, that lith in helle fast,
Him that it cast hath overcast,
That for a trespas, which he dede,
He was put in the same stede.
And was himself the first of alle,
Which was into that peine falle
That he for other men ordeigneth."

21. Virgil being a Lombard, Dante suggests that, in giving Ulysses and Diomed license to depart; he had used the Lombard dialect, saying, "Issa ten va." See Canto XXIII. Note 7.

28. The inhabitants of the province of Romagna, of which Ravenna is the capital.

29. It is the spirit of Guido da Montefeltro that speaks. The city of Montefeltro lies between Urbino and that part of the Apennines in which. the Tiber rises. Count Guido was a famous warrior, and one of the great Ghibelline leaders. He tells his own story sufficiently in detail in what follows.

40. Lord Byron, Don Juan, III. 105, gives this description of Ravenna, with an allusion to Boccaccio's Tale, versified by Dryden under the title of Theodore and Honoria : ·

And rich inhabitants, with generous hearts." It was at Ravenna that Dante passed the last years of his life, and there he died and was buried.

41. The arms of Guido da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna, Dante's friend, and father (or nephew) of Francesca da Rimini, were an eagle half white in a field of azure, and half red in a field of gold. Cervia is a small town some twelve miles from Ravenna.

43. The city of Forlì, where Guido da Montefeltro defeated and slaughtered

the French in 1282. See Canto XX. Note 118.

45. A Green Lion was the coat of arms of the Ordelaffi, then Lords of Forlì.

46. Malatesta, father and son, tyrants of Rimini, who murdered Montagna, a Ghibelline leader. Verrucchio was their castle, near the city. Of this family were the husband and lover of Francesca. Dante calls them mastiffs, because of their fierceness, making "wimbles of their teeth" in tearing and devouring.

49. The cities of Faenza on the Lamone, and Imola on the Santerno. They were ruled by Mainardo, surnamed "the Devil," whose coat of arms was a lion azure in a white field. 52. The city of Cesena.

67. Milton, Parad. Lost, III. 479:"Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,

Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised." 70. Boniface VIII., who in line 85 is called "the Prince of the new Pharisees."

81. Dante, Convito, IV. 28, quoting Cicero, says: "Natural death is as it were a haven and rest to us after long navigation. And the noble soul is like a good mariner; for he, when he draws near the port, lowers his sails, and enters it softly with feeble steerage."

86. This Papal war, which was waged against Christians, and not against pagan Saracens, nor unbelieving Jews, nor against the renegades who had helped them at the siege of Acre, or given them aid and comfort by traffic, is