Barring the vivid phrase con l'arco della schiena, there is nothing in Dante's description (but its beauty) that is not also in Brunetto Latini. Here, as so often elsewhere, Dante has known how to give to a mere literary reminiscence an energy that few writers can impart from the observation of actual life. This vitalising of monsters, or of other creatures he had probably never seen,1 is a psychic phenomenon to be reckoned with by those who study Dante.

1 Even as a sculptural adornment of churches, dolphins are exceedingly rare. A pair of them may be seen on a column of the church of Agliate in Lombardy. Cf. M. F. DE DARTEIN, L' Architecture lombarde, etc., for illustration. It is barely possible that Dante had seen dolphins or porpoises frolicking, as he stood on some high shore or headland. To my knowledge they rarely come so close to land that one could make out the arco della schiena. An article on Dante's dolphins in the Atti del Real Istituto Veneto, 1895-1896, serie 7, disp. 10, shows that the author had not understood the subjunctive s' argomentin, and is otherwise of dubious value.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE FROG

To conceive of the damned as frogs' was not new with Dante; for the writer of the Apocalypse, whose nightmare seems to have been fraught with a great many uncouth or loathsome beasts, saw 'three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.' 2 So, in the Book of Exodus (viii), demoniacal frogs plague Pharaoh. Rabanus Maurus affirms that the frogs are heretics, who, dwelling in the filth of the basest senses, never cease to croak with a vain garrulity.3

It is in the marsh of heretics that Dante sees more than a thousand destroyed souls flee before the rescuing angel,

Come le rane innanzi alla nimica

Biscia per l'acqua si dileguan tutte
Fin che alla terra ciascuna s'abbica.*

Just as the frogs before the hostile serpent
Scatter through the water, every one,
Till each is huddled on the ground.

1 Dante uses, without differentiation, rana and ranocchio (which comes from *ranuculus, as the French grenouille comes from *ranucula). 8 De Univ. lib. VIII, cap. 2.

4

2 Rev. xvi, 13.

↑ Inf. IX, 76–78. Virgil thus alludes to the nimica biscia :

'Hic piscibus atram

Improbus ingluviem, ranisque loquacibus explet.'

:

The word dileguan renders by its very sound the liquidity of their flight. Could the poet ever have observed such an unusual sight in Maremma or elsewhere? Perhaps not, but there is not a jot of exaggeration in the imagery.

Again, precisely as the poet has described the beaver 'there amongst the guzzling Teutons' with its nose. above the bank, so he describes the frogs, or rather the sinners, in the ice hell of the traitors. Only these frogs are croaking, whereas the beaver is still.

E come a gracidar si sta la rana1

Col muso fuor dell' acqua, quando sogna
Di spigolar sovente la villana:
Livide insin là dove appar vergogna,
Eran l'ombre dolenti nella ghiaccia?

And as to croak the frog doth place himself
With muzzle out of water, when is dreaming
Of gleaning oftentimes the peasant-girl,
Livid, as far down as where shame appears,

Were the disconsolate shades within the ice.

- LONGFELLOW.

1 That this piping of the frogs occurs in breeding time is admirably shown by the words:

Rabanus Maurus says: 'Ranæ a garrulitate vocatæ eo quod circa genitales strepunt paludes et sonum vocis importunis clamoribus reddunt. Ranæ dæmones. In Apocalypsi: Vidi de ore dragonis spiritus tres immundos in modum ranarum; sunt autem spiritus dæmoniorum. Ranæ hæretici, qui in cœno vilissimorum sensuum commorantes, vana garrulitate latrare non desinunt, ut in Exodo legitur.' Cf. note 3. Cf. also VIRGIL, Georg. I, 378, 'Et veterem in limo ranæ cecinere querelam.'

2 Inf. XXXII, 31-35.

Again the poet is reminded of frogs by the sinners in the boiling pitch. Just as the frogs plunge under at the approach of a man, so the sinners rest with their faces out, and sink at the approach of Barbariccia, a demon.

The swimming jobbers are likened, first, to plunging dolphins, then, more artfully, to frogs.

E come all'orlo dell' acqua d'un fosso
Stanno i ranocchi pur col muso fuori,
Si che celano i piedi e l' altro grosso ;
Si stavan d' ogni parte i peccatori:
Ma come s' appressava Barbariccia,
Così si ritraean sotto i bolori.

Io vidi, ed anco il cor me n' accapriccia,
Uno aspettar così, com' egli incontra
Che una rana rimane, ed altra spiccia.
E Graffiacan, che gli era più d'incontra,
Gli arronciglio le impegolate chiome,
E trassel su, che mi parve una lontra.2

And just as frogs that stand, with noses out
On a pool's margin, but beneath it hide
Their feet and all their bodies but the snout,
So stood the sinners there on every side.
But soon as Barbariccia drew more near,
Under the bubbles ducked they down full swift,
I witnessed then what thrills me yet with fear;
One, lingering longer with his head uplift,

As one frog stays, while darts the next away,

1 Cf. 'Stanno i ranocchi pur col muso fuori,' with Inf. XXXII,

31-32:

'Si sta la rana

Col muso fuor dell' acqua,' etc.

2 Inf. XXII, 25-36.

Whom Graffiacan, being nearest, hooked
Forth by the tarry locks, a writhing prey,
Like a speared otter to my sight he looked.

- PARSONS.

Whatever may be said against Dante's fashion of comparing his sinners to dolphins, frogs, and a speared otter, so swiftly that the mind, full of one image, almost refuses to see another, or finally sees them pell-mell and rather dim, each image is in itself a gem. And in the frogs our poet has observed what most fitted his purpose their amphibious attitude, their croaking, their abject fear and panic flight. No ransacking of the classics-and surely no search in Dante's contemporaries or in his immediate forerunners-is likely to bring forth so vivid a series of images from everyday nature. Each of these images serves to create an illusion, and gives reality to what would otherwise be mere words. Once only, but for a more didactic purpose, Dante borrows from literature rather than from life.1

1 Inf. XXIII, 4-9. See chapter on 'The Mouse,' pp. 138-140.