The Song of the Three Children The Twentieth Anniversary of the Thoughts of a Lover of Old English Passions Spiel at Ober Ammergau 259, 368 Traditions of Tirol 417 19 172, 286, 410, 498 323 295 301015 MONTHLY PACKET OF EVENING READINGS For Members of the English Church. JULY, 1870. THE DIVINA COMMEDIA OF DANTE. THE twenty-fifth Canto resumes the narration of the robbers' punishment in the seventh gulf. Vanni Fucci having ended his speech to Dante with a prophecy of no friendly import, still further displays his angry temper and shame at being recognized, in the action of blasphemous insult towards God, instantly punished by the ministers of the divine. vengeance, with which the Canto opens. Line 15 refers to the obstinate profanity of Capaneus beneath the shower of flames, which was described in the fourteenth Canto, and will be still in our readers' recollection. Dante himself accounts for the introduction of Cacus here: the other centaurs, having been given to deeds of violence upon earth, have already been met with at the river of blood; but Cacus, who had stolen the herds which Hercules was bringing from Spain as the spoils of his victory over Geryon, and had attempted in vain to conceal their track by dragging them by the tail backwards into his cave, was rightly placed on his disappearance from the upper world, in the circle of the fraudulent. The account that follows, from line 49 to 78, is one of the most difficult parts of the whole Inferno to understand. The course of events, according to the commentators' explanation, is as follows. The three spirits who interrupt Virgil's narrative in line 37 are Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso Donati, and Puccio Sciancato. To them appears their friend Cianfa, (whom they have just missed,) in the guise of a six-footed serpent, who throws himself upon Brunelleschi, and the two become one monster. After him comes Guercio de' Cavalcanti, transformed into a four-footed serpent, who bites Buoso Donati in the navel, and in so doing transfers to him his loathsome disguise, resuming himself the proper human form. So, at last, there remain only Puccio Sciancato and Guercio de' Cavalcanti. Now, of the latter transformation, described in lines 79-141, it is tolerably easy to understand the motive. We can conceive one robber passing on to another the serpent form, in his anxiety to relieve himself of the hateful burden; and doubtless, when Buoso went hissing off he would make for and wound the first spirit VOL. 10. 1 PART 55. |