CANTO XXIV. 1. The Seventh Bolgia, in which Thieves are punished. 2. The sun enters Aquarius during the last half of January, when the Equinox is near, and the hoar-frost in the morning looks like snow on the fields, but soon evaporates. If Dante had been a monk of Monte Casino, illuminating a manuscript, he could not have made a more clerkly and scholastic flourish with his pen than this, nor have painted a more beautiful picture than that which follows. The mediæval poets are full of lovely descriptions of Spring, which seems to blossom and sing through all their verses; but none is more beautiful or suggestive than this, though serving only as an illustration. 21. In Canto I. 43. See what Mr. Ruskin says of Dante as 66 a notably bad climber," Canto XII. Note 2. 55. The ascent of the Mount of Purgatory. 73. The next circular dike, dividing the fosses. 86. This list of serpents is from Lucan, Phars. IX. 711, Rowe's Tr.:"Slimy Chelyders the parched earth distain And trace a reeking furrow on the plain. . The Swimmer there the crystal stream pollutes, And swift thro' air the flying Javelin shoots. The Amphisbæna doubly armed appears "Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now With complicated monsters head and tail, Of the Phareas, Peter Comestor, Hist. Scholast., Gloss of Genesis iii. 1, says: "And this he (Lucifer) did by means of the serpent; for then it was erect like man; being afterwards made prostrate by the curse; and it is said the Phareas walks erect even to this day." Of the Amphisbæna, Brunetto Latini, Tresor I. v. 140, says: "The Amphimenie is a kind of serpent which has two heads; one in its right place, and the other in the tail; and with each she can bite; and she runs swiftly, and her eyes shine like candles." 93. Without a hiding-place, or the heliotrope, a precious stone of great virtue against poisons, and supposed to render the wearer invisible. Upon this latter vulgar error is founded Boccaccio's comical story of Calandrino and his friends Bruno and Buffulmacco, Decam., Gior. VIII., Nov. 3. 107. Brunetto Latini, Tresor I. v. 164, says of the Phoenix: "He goeth to a good tree, savory and of good odor, and maketh a pile thereof, to which he setteth fire, and entereth straightway into it toward the rising of the sun." away with two companions to the church of San Giacomo, and, finding its custodians absent, or asleep with feasting and drinking, he entered the And Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1697: sacristy and robbed it of all its pre "So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, That no second knows nor third, And lay erewhile a holocaust, And, though her body die, her fame sur- A secular bird ages of lives." 114. Any obstruction, "such as the epilepsy," says Benvenuto. "Gouts and dropsies, catarrhs and oppilations," says Jeremy Taylor. 125. Vanni Fucci, who calls himself a mule, was a bastard son of Fuccio de' Lazzari. All the commentators paint him in the darkest colors. Dante had known him as "a man of blood and wrath," and seems to wonder he is here, and not in the circle of the Violent, or of the Irascible. But his great crime was the robbery of a sacristy. Benvenuto da Imola relates the story in detail. He speaks of him as a man of depraved life, many of whose misdeeds went unpunished, because he was of noble family. Being banished from Pistoia for his crimes, he returned to the city one night of the Carnival, and was in company with eighteen other revellers, among whom was Vanni della Nona, a notary; when, not content with their insipid diversions, he stole cious jewels. These he secreted in the house of the notary, which was close at hand, thinking that on account of his honest repute no suspicion would fall upon him. A certain Rampino was arrested for the theft, and put to the torture; when Vanni Fucci, having escaped to Monte Carelli, beyond the Florentine jurisdiction, sent a messenger to Rampino's father, confessing all the circumstances of the crime. Hereupon the notary was seized "on the first Monday in Lent, as he was going to a sermon in the church of the Minorite Friars," and was hanged for the theft, and Rampino set at liberty. No one has a good word to say for Vanni Fucci, except the Canonico Crescimbeni, who, in the Comentarj to the Istoria della Volg. Poesia, II. ii., p. 99, counts him among the Italian Poets, and speaks of him as a man of great courage and gallantry, and a leader of the Neri party of Pistoia, He smooths over Dante's in 1300. invectives by remarking that Dante "makes not too honorable mention of him in the Comedy"; and quotes a sonnet of his, which is pathetic from its utter despair and self-reproach: "For I have lost the good I might have had Through little wit, and not of mine own will." It is like the wail of a lost soul, and the same in tone as the words which Dante here puts into his mouth. Dante may have heard him utter similar selfaccusations while living, and seen on his face the blush of shame, which covers it here. 143. The Neri were banished from Pistoia in 1301; the Bianchi, from Florence in 1302. 145. This vapor or lightning flash from Val di Magra is the Marquis Malaspini, and the "turbid clouds " are the banished Neri of Pistoia, whom he is to gather about him to defeat the Bianchi at Campo Piceno, the old battle-field of Catiline. As Dante was of the Bianchi party, this prophecy of impending disaster and overthrow could only give him pain. See Canto VI. Note 65. CANTO XXV. Villani, VI. 5, says: "On the Rock of Carmignano there was a tower seventy yards high, and upon it two marble arms, the hands of which were making the figs at Florence." Others say these hands were on a finger-post by the road-side. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, I. 3, Pistol says: "Convey, the wise it call; Steal! foh; a fico for the phrase!" And Martino, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Widow, V. 1: — "The fig of everlasting obloquy Go with him." 10. Pistoia is supposed to have been founded by the soldiers of Catiline. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I. i. 37, says: 66 They found Catiline at the foot of the mountains and he had his army and his people in that place where is now the city of Pestoire. There was Catiline conquered in battle, and he and his were slain; also a great part of the Romans were killed. And on account of the pestilence of that great slaughter the city was called Pestoire." The Italian proverb says, Pistoia la ferrigna, iron Pistoia, or Pistoia the pitiless. 15. Capaneus, Canto XIV. 44. 25. Cacus was the classic Giant Despair, who had his cave in Mount Aventine, and stole a part of the herd of Geryon, which Hercules had brought to Italy. Virgil, Æneid, VIII., Dryden's Tr.:. "See yon huge cavern, yawning wide around, Where still the shattered mountain spreads the ground: That spacious hold grim Cacus once possessed, Tremendous fiend! half human, half a beast : Deep, deep as hell, the dismal dungeon lay, Dark and impervious to the beams of day. With copious slaughter smoked the purple floor, Pale heads hung horrid on the lofty door, Dreadful to view! and dropped with crimson gore." 28. Dante makes a Centaur of Cacus, and separates him from the others because he was fraudulent as well as violent. Virgil calls him only a monster, a half-man, Semihominis Caci fa cies. 35. Agnello Brunelleschi, Buoso degli Abati, and Puccio Sciancato. 38. The story of Cacus, which Virgil was telling. 43. Cianfa Donati, a Florentine nobleman. He appears immediately, as a serpent with six feet, and fastens upon Agnello Brunelleschi. 65. Some commentators contend that in this line papiro does not mean paper, but a lamp-wick made of papyrus. This destroys the beauty and aptness of the image, and rather degrades "The leaf of the reed, Which has grown through the clefts in the ruins of ages." 73. These four lists, or hands, are the fore feet of the serpent and the arms of Agnello. 76. Shakespeare, in the "Additional Poems to Chester's Love's Martyrs," Knight's Shakespeare, VII. 193, speaks of "Two distincts, division none "; and continues: "Property was thus appalled That the self was not the same, Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was called. "Reason, in itself confounded, Simple were so well compounded." 83. This black serpent is Guercio Cavalcanti, who changes form with Buoso degli Abati. 95. Lucan, Phars., IX., Rowe's Tr.: "But soon a fate more sad with new surprise From the first object turns their wondering eyes. Wretched Sabellus by a Seps was stung: Fixed on his leg with deadly teeth it hung. Sudden the soldier shook it from the wound, Transfixed and nailed it to the barren ground. Of all the dire, destructive serpent race, None have so much of death, though none are less. For straight around the part the skin withdrew, The flesh and shrinking sinews backward flew, And left the naked bones exposed to view. The spreading poisons all the parts con found, And the whole body sinks within the wound. Small relics of the mouldering mass were left, At once of substance as of form bereft ; Dissolved, the whole in liquid poison ran, And to a nauseous puddle shrunk the man. So snows dissolved by southern breezes run, So melts the wax before the noonday sun. Nor ends the wonder here; though flames are known To waste the flesh, yet still they spare the bone : Here none were left, no least remains were seen, No marks to show that once the man had been. A fate of different kind Nasidius found, 97. Ovid, Metamorph., IV., Eus den's Tr.:. 'Come, my Harmonia, come, thy face recline Down to my face: still touch what still is mine. O let these hands, while hands, be gently pressed, While yet the serpent has not all possessed.' More he had spoke, but strove to speak in vain, The forky tongue refused to tell his pain, And learned in hissings only to complain. "Then shrieked Harmonia, Stay, my Cadmus, stay! Glide not in such a monstrous shape away! Destruction, like impetuous waves, rolls on. Where are thy feet, thy legs, thy shoulders, gone? Changed is thy visage, changed is all thy frame, Cadmus is only Cadmus now in name. And V., Maynwaring's Tr.:"The God so near, a chilly sweat possessed My fainting limbs, at every pore expressed; My strength distilled in drops, my hair in dew, My form was changed, and all my substance new: Each motion was a stream, and my whole frame Turned to a fount, which still preserves my name." See also Shelley's Arethusa : "Arethusa arose From her couch of snows Her steps paved with green In murmurs as soft as sleep. The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep." 144. Some editions read la penna, the pen, instead of la lingua, the tongue. 151. Gaville was a village in the Valdarno, where Guercio Cavalcanti was murdered. The family took vengeance upon the inhabitants in the old Italian style, thus causing Gaville to lament the murder. |