One of the two then addresses Dante thus :

'O gracious creature and benign! who go'st
Visiting, through this element obscure,
Us, who the world with bloody stain imbrued;
If, for a friend, the king of all we own'd,
Our pray'r to him should for thy peace arise,
Since thou hast pity on our evil plight.
Of whatsoe'er to hear or to discourse

It pleases thee, that will we hear, of that
Freely with thee discourse, while e'er the wind,
As now, is mute. The land that gave me birth
Is situate on the coast where Po descends
To rest in ocean with his sequent streams.
Love, that in gentle hearts is quickly learnt,
Entangled him by that fair form, from me
Ta'en in such cruel sort as grieves me still:
Love, that denial takes from none belov'd,
Caught me with pleasing him so passing well,
That, as thou see'st, he yet deserts me not.
Love brought us to one death: Caina waits
The soul who spilt our life.'

The spirit which thus spoke was that of the beautiful and frail Francesca, daughter of Guido da Polento, lord of Ravenna, who was given by her father in marriage to Lanciotto Malatesta, son of the lord of Rimini, who was deformed in his person. Paolo, Lanciotto's brother, engaged the affections of his sister-in-law, and, their guilt being discovered, they were both put to death by the husband. Dante, during his exile, was a guest of Guido da Polenta at Ravenna, when the recollection of the catastrophe was still recent. The poet represents himself as deeply affected by Francesca's narrative, and, after musing awhile, he thus addresses her :

Francesca, your sad fate

Even to tears my grief and pity moves.
But tell me, in the time of your sweet sighs,
By what, and how, Love granted that ye knew
Your yet uncertain wishes?' She replied-
'No greater grief than to remember days
Of joy, when mis'ry is at hand. That kens

Thy learn'd instructor. Yet so eagerly
If thou art bent to know the primal root
From whence our love gat being, I will do
As one who weeps and tells his tale.
For our delight we read of Lancelot,

One day

How him love thrall'd. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our alter'd cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wished smile, so rapturously kiss'd
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kiss'd. The book and writer both
Were Love's purveyors. In its leaves that day
We read no more.' While thus one spirit spake,
The other wail'd so sorely, that, heart-struck,
I, through compassion fainting, seem'd not far

From death, and like a corse fell to the ground.—Canto v.

In the next, or third circle, the poet sees the gluttons, who are punished by lying in the mire, under a continual storm of hail, snow, and muddy water; whilst Cerberus, the three-headed mastiff, barks over them and tears their limbs.

The fourth circle is occupied by the prodigal and the avaricious, and Plutus stands watching at the gate. The punishment of those who are confined in the fourth circle consists in rolling continually enormous stones one against the other, by pushing them with their breasts. The poet next proceeded to the fifth circle, in which he saw the wrathful and passionate, who lay plunged in the Stygian marsh, tearing each other to pieces with their nails and teeth. In the sixth circle is the

city of Dis, with walls and minarets of iron, lighted by a fire within, which burns for ever. The area of the city incloses a vast number of sepulchres, in which are buried heretics and infidels burning in the flames.

In the seventh circle Dante first meets with those who have committed violence against their neighbours, and who are immersed in a river of blood, from which, as they strive to escape, they are shot at with arrows by centaurs posted along the banks. This place of punishment is awarded to fierce conquerors, tyrants, and devastators of countries, among whom the poet enumerates Pyrrhus, Dionysius the

Elder, Attila, Eccelino da Romano, &c.; also murderers, pirates, and highway-robbers. He notices Guy de Montfort, son of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who killed Prince Henry, son of Richard of Cornwall, and nephew of Henry III. of England, in a church at Viterbo, in Italy, while Henry was kneeling before the altar, hearing mass. Guy committed this act to revenge his own father's death. (Holinshed's Chronicle,' A D. 1272.) In another compartment of the seventh circle are the self-murderers, and also those who squander away their property, or other blessings, which they have received from God; whoever

In reckless lavishment his talent wastes,

And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy.-Canto xi.

In the third compartment of the seventh circle are those who have done violence or openly revolted against God. They are all in a vast sandy plain, some stretched on their backs, others sitting, and others perpetually walking about, while flakes of fire are falling thick upon the sand.

Dante and Virgil then descend into the eighth circle, seated on the back of the monster Gorgon, who is the emblem of fraud :—

Lo the fell monster with the deadly sting,

Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls
And firm embattled spears, and with his filth

Taints all the world.-Canto xvii.

The eighth circle is divided into ten gulfs or compartments, each containing a particular class of sinners. The description of this circle occupies thirteen cantos (xviii. to xxx.), by which the poet intends to show the vast proportion of crimes committed through fraud, deceit, or treachery.

In the ninth gulf of the eighth circle are the sowers of scandal, schism, and heresy, with their limbs mangled and divided. Among them the poet saw Mahommed and Ali, besides several of his own contemporaries and countrymen. In the tenth gulf are the alchemists, forgers, and coiners, who are tormented by various loathsome diseases. One of them, Adamo da Brescia, who had counterfeited the coin of Florence at the instigation of the lord of Romena, a place in the fine valley of the Apennines, called Casentino, appears swollen with dropsy, and tormented by a parching thirst, which he has no means of allaying. He thus addresses Dante :

O ye! who in this world of misery,

Wherefore I know not, are exempt from pain,'

Thus he began, attentively regard
Adamo's woe. When living, full supply
Ne'er lack'd me of what most I coveted;
One drop of water now, alas! I crave.
The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes
Of Casentino, making fresh and soft

The banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,
Stand ever in my view, and not in vain ;

For more the pictur'd semblance dries me up,
Much more than the disease, which makes the flesh
Desert these shrivell'd cheeks. So from the place
Where I transgress'd, stern justice, urging me,
Takes means to quicken more my lab'ring sighs.'

Canto xxx.

Dante, following Virgil, proceeds to the ninth and lowest circle of hell, divided into four compartments, in which are confined various sorts of traitors. Their torment consists in being plunged into a frozen lake. Among the rest our poet beheld—

Two spirits by the ice

Pent in one hollow, that the head of one
Was cowl unto the other; and as bread
Is raven'd up through hunger, th' uppermost
Did so apply his fangs to the other's brain
Where the spine joins it.

Dante addresses the uppermost of the two to know the reason of his deadly hate against the other :

His jaws uplifting from their fell repast,

That sinner wiped them on the hairs o' the head

Which he behind had mangled, then began:

Thy will obeying, I call up afresh

Sorrows past cure; which but to think of wrings
My heart.'

'Know I was on earth

Count Ugolino, and the archbishop he

Ruggieri. Why I neighbour him so close,

Now list. That, through effect of his ill thoughts

In him my trust reposing, I was ta'en

And after murder'd, need is not I tell.

What therefore thou canst not have heard that is
How cruel was the murder-shalt thou hear,
And know if he have wrong'd me.
A small grate
Within that mew, which for my sake the name
Of famine bears, where others yet must pine,
Already through its opening sev'ral moons
Had shown me, when I slept the evil sleep
That from the future tore the curtain off.
'When I awoke

Before the dawn, amid their sleep I heard
My sons (for they were with me) weep and ask
For bread. Right cruel art thou if no pang
Thou feel at thinking what my heart foretold;
And if not now, why use thy tears to flow?
Now had they waken'd, and the hour drew near
When they were wont to bring us food; the mind
Of each misgave him through his dream, and I
Heard at its outlet underneath lock'd up
The horrible tower: whence, utt'ring not a word,
I look'd upon the visage of my sons.

I wept not: so all stone I felt within.

They wept and one, my little Anselm, cried,
Thou lookest so! Father, what ails thee? Yet
I shed no tears, nor answer'd all that day
Nor the next night, until another sun

Came out upon the world. When a faint beam
Had to our doleful prison made its way,
And in four countenances I descried
The image of my own, on either hand
Through agony I bit; and they, who thought
I did it through desire of feeding, rose

O' the sudden and cried, Father, we should grieve.
Far less if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gav'st
These weeds of miserable flesh we wear;

And do thou strip them off from us again.
Then, not to make them sadder, I kept down