Now the shade of Virgil appears, and Dante appeals to him for rescue:

Tu se lo mio maestro e il mio autore:

Tu se solo colui, da cui io tolsi

Lo bello stile che m' ha fatto onore.
Vedi la bestia, per cui io mi volsi;
Aiutami da lei, famoso saggio,
Ch' ella mi fa tremar le vene e i polsi.
'A te convien tenere altro viaggio,'
Rispose, poi che lagrimar mi vide,

Se vuoi campar d' este loco selvaggio:
Chè questa bestia, per la qual tu gride,
Non lascia altrui passar per la sua via,
Ma tanto lo impedisce che l' uccide:1
Ed ha natura si malvaggia e ria,
Che mai non empie la bramosa voglia,
E dopo il pasto ha più fame che pria.
Molti son gli animali a cui s' ammoglia,3
E più saranno ancora, infin che il veltro
Verrà, che la farà morir con doglia.

1 Wisdom, ii, 24, 'Through envy of the devil came death into the world.' Cf. Inf. I, 111, Là onde invidia prima dipartilla.'

2 Cf. HORACE, Od. III, xvi, 17:

'Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam
Maiorumque fames.'

And OVID, Met. VIII, 823-825 (ed. Riese):

'Quodque urbibus esse

Quodque satis poterat populo, non sufficit uni;
Plusque cupit quo plura demittat in alvum.'

For the story here indicated see, e.g., BRUNETTO LATINI, Tresor, pp. 247-248. The bad faith of Siena, her trimming,' passed into this proverb, current throughout Tuscany, 'La lupa puttaneggia' (The bitch-wolf is wantoning). See DINO COMPAGNI, Cronaca Fior. II, ad fin. Cf. also Dante's statement in Epist. VIII, vii, 1–2: 'Quidni? Cupiditatem unusquisque sibi duxit in uxorem,' etc.

'Thou art my master, and my author thou,

Thou art alone the one from whom I took
The beautiful style that has done honour to me.
Behold the beast, for which I have turned back;
Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage,
For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.'
'Thee it behooves to take another road,'
Responded he, when he beheld me weeping,
'If from this savage place thou wouldst escape;
Because this beast, at which thou criest out,
Suffers not any one to pass her way,

But so doth harass him that she destroys him;
And has a nature so malign and ruthless,
That never doth she glut her greedy will,
And after food is hungrier than before.
Many the animals with whom she weds,
And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound
Comes, who shall make her perish in her pain.
He shall not feed on either earth or pelf,
But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue;
Twixt Feltro and Feltro shall his nation be;

Through every city shall he hunt her down,
Until he shall have driven her back to Hell,
There from whence envy did first let her loose.'

Thus Nature's palpable truth is distorted in a dozen ways by folklore and allegory. But how magnificently! For this wolf is of the kind that rove in nightmares, a ghostly creature looming on some dark road, in a forest haunted by other uncouth things, for life is weirdly caricatured in dreams. Dante's she-wolf is a demon. She has lived for untold ages-ever since sin came into the world, but symbolises envious greed. Avarice makes men stammering or dumb, and the wolf is the symbol of avarice. Now Dante's siren stammers, so Benvenuto explains,1 because she is covetous, -— and, according to folklore, if a wolf sees a man before the man sees it the man is made dumb. Yet a close connexion between the legend and Dante's words - la paura che uscia di sua vista (the fear that came from the sight of her) is hard to discern.

Though a real wolf, if alone, almost never attacks a man, and, if it attack him, flies upon him or runs him down, this she-wolf of his dream drives our poet back, little by little, to the forest, and makes his veins and pulses tremble. She is gluttonous, but never cloyed. Like the wolf of folklore she feeds on earth or land,2 but will at last be driven back to Hell by the magic hound that shall eat neither land nor pelf and as the she-wolf of folklore is said to be followed in her heat by many other wolves, so this dream-wolf of Dante is wedded to many animals; but when the great hound appears, the hound that feeds on wisdom and love and

1 On Purg. XIX, 7, 'Una femmina balba-hoc respicit avaritiam, quae non loquitur clare et aperte.

2 See note 2, page 95.

virtue,

he shall drive her back to Hell, whence Satan's envy long ago sent her out into the world. This shewolf, then, is only the embodiment of a sin, only another form of the devil.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. occurs in Conv. I, vi, 45.

An unimportant reference to the wolf

CHAPTER XI

THE DOG

DANTE, like our own Shakespeare, had small fondness. for dogs. The great intelligence they often possess, their loyalty even to a bad master, their obvious delight in kindness, their gratitude, their histrionic qualities, their wistful interest in human affairs, -not one of these good qualities appealed to Dante. He makes a saviour of Italy out of the veltro,1 the lordly hound, whose virtue is swiftness,2 and who shall drive back to Hell From a medieval Ms. the rapacious wolf; but this hound is unnatured by excessive allegory.

A VELTRO OR BOAR
HOUND

After Viollet-le-Duc

1 The allegory of the veltro scarcely concerns this essay, which is rather a study of nature. The veltro was a heavily built dog, probably between our great Danes and the greyhound. Without doubt the veltro and veautres are the same dog. They were strong enough to kill bears and wild boars. L'autre nature d'alanz veautres si sont taillez comme laide taille de levrier, mais ils ont grosses testes, grosses levres et granz oreilles, et de ceux s'aide l'en tres bien a chascier les ours et les porcz.'-GASTON FÉBus, Richel 616, f° 46°, cited by Godefroy. Cf. also LÉON GAUTIER, La Chevalerie, pp. 182– 183. Partenopeus de Blois (533) : —

'Muetes de chiens i fait mener

Et veautres por prendre sainglier.'

See also VIOLLET-LE-DUC, Dict. du mobilier français, vol. II, p. 426. See also DU CANGE, s.v. 'Canis.'

2 Conv. I, xii, 60–62, 65–67.

See chapter on 'The Wolf,' p. 112 ff.