A. D.

1316 Louis X. of France dies, and is succeeded by Philip V. John XXII. elected Pope. Par. xxvii. 53.

Joinville, the French historian, dies about this time. 1320 About this time John Gower is born, eight years before his friend Chaucer.

1321 July. Dante dies at Ravenna, of a complaint brought on by disappointment at his failure in a negociation which he had been conducting with the Venetians, for his patron Guido Novello da Polenta.

His obsequies are sumptuously performed at Ravenna by Guido, who himself died in the ensuing year.

THE VISION OF DANTE.

Hell.

CANTO I.

ARGUMENT.

The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman poet.

IN the midway1 of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell,
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember2 only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet, to discourse of what there good befėl,
All else will I relate discover'd there.

How first I enter'd it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dulness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left;

1 In the midway.] That the era of the Poem is intended by these words to be fixed to the thirty-fifth year of the poet's age, A. D. 1300, will appear more plainly in Canto xxi. where that date is explicitly marked. In his Convito, human life is compared to an arch or bow, the highest point of which is, in those well framed by nature, at their thirty-fifth year. Opere di Dante, ediz. Ven. 8vo, 1793. t. i. p. 195. 2 Which to remember.] "Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my flesh." Job xxi. 6.

B

But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where closed
The valley that had pierced my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,1
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
Then was a little respite to the fear,
That in my heart's recesses2 deep had lain
All of that night, so pitifully past:

And as a man, with difficult short breath,
Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore,
Turns3 to the perilous wide waste, and stands
At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet fail'd,
Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits
That none hath past and lived. My weary frame
After short pause recomforted, again

I journey'd on over that lonely steep,

The hinder foot still firmer 4. Scarce the ascent
Began, when, lo! a panther3, nimble, light,
And cover'd with a speckled skin, appear'd;
Nor, when it saw me, vanish'd; rather strove
To check my onward going; that oft-times,
With purpose to retrace my steps, I turn'd.

The hour was morning's prime, and on his way
Aloft the sun ascended with those stars,
That with him rose when Love divine first moved
Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope
All things conspired to fill me, the gay skin7

1 That planet's beam.] The sun. 2 My heart's recesses.] Nel lago del cuor. Lombardi cites an imitation of this by Redi in his Ditirambo : I buon vini son quegli, che acquetano

Le procelle sì fosche e rubelle,

Che nel lago del cuor l'anime inquietano.

3 Turns.] So in our Poet's second psalm:
Come colui, che andando per lo bosco,
Da spino punto, a quel si volge e guarda.
Even as one, in passing through a wood,

Pierced by a thorn, at which he turns and looks.

The hinder foot.] It is to be remembered, that in ascending a hill the weight of the body rests on the hinder foot. 5 A panther.] Pleasure or luxury. 6 With those stars.] The sun was in Aries, in which sign he supposes it to have begun its course at the creation. The gay skin.] A late editor of the Divina Commedia, Signor Zotti, has spoken of the present translation as the only one that has rendered this passage rightly: but Mr. Hayley had shown me the way, in his very skilful version of the first three Cantos of the Inferno, inserted in the notes to his Essay on Epic Poetry:

Of that swift animal, the matin dawn,

And the sweet season. Soon that joy was chased,
And by new dread succeeded, when in view

A lion1
came, 'gainst me as it appear'd,
With his head held aloft and hunger-mad,
That e'en the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf2
Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem'd
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear
O'erwhelm'd me, at the sight of her appall'd,
That of the height all hope I lost.
As one,

Who, with his gain elated, sees the time
When all unwares is gone, he inwardly

Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I,
Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace,
Who coming o'er against me, by degrees
Impell❜d me where the sun in silence rests3.

I now was raised to hope sublime

By these bright omens of my fate benign,

The beauteous beast and the sweet hour of prime.

All the commentators, whom I have seen, understand our Poet to say that the season of the year and the hour of the day induced him to hope for the gay skin of the panther; and there is something in the sixteenth Canto, verse 107, which countenances their interpretation, although that which I have followed still appears to me the more probable. A lion.] Pride or ambition. 2 A she-wolf.] Avarice. It cannot be doubted that the image of these three beasts coming against him is taken by our author from the prophet Jeremiah, v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities." Rossetti, following Dionisi and other later commentators, interprets Dante's leopard to denote Florence, his lion the king of France, and his wolf the Court of Rome. It is far from improbable that our author might have had a second allegory of this sort in his view; even as Spenser in the introductory letter to his poem, tells us that "in the Faery Queen he meant Glory in his general intention, but in his particular he conceived the most excellent and glorious person of his sovereign the Queen." "And yet " he adds, "in some places else I do otherwise shadow her." Such involution of allegorical meanings may well be supposed to have been frequently present to the mind of Dante throughout the composition of this poem. Whether his acute and eloquent interpreter, Rossetti, may not have been carried much too far in the pursuit of a favourite hypothesis, is another question; and I must avow my disbelief of the secret jargon imputed to our poet and the other writers of that time in the Comment on the Divina Com-media and in the Spirito Antipapale, the latter of which works is familiarized to the English reader in Miss Ward's faithful translation.

3 Where the sun in silence rests.]

The sun to me is dark,
And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Milton, Sam. Agon.

While to the lower space with backward step

I fell, my ken discern'd the form of one

Whose voice seem'd faint through long disuse of speech.
When him in that great desert I espied,

"Have mercy on me," cried I out aloud,

66

Spirit! or living man! whate'er thou be."

He answer'd: "Now not man, man once I was,
And born of Lombard parents, Mantuans both
By country, when the power of Julius1 yet
Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past,
Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time

Of fabled deities and false.

A bard

Was I, and made Anchises' upright son

The subject of my song, who came from Troy,
When the flames prey'd on Ilium's haughty towers 2.
But thou, say wherefore to such perils past
Return'st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount
Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?"
"And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,
From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued?" I with front abash'd replied.
Glory and light of all the tuneful train!

66

May it avail me, that I long with zeal

Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
Have conn'd it o'er. My master thou, and guide3!
Thou he from whom alone I have derived

That style, which for its beauty into fame
Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled.

The same metaphor will recur, Canto v. verse 29.

Into a place I came
Where light was silent all.

1 When the power of Julius.]

Nacqui sub Julio, ancorchè fosse tardi.

This is explained by the commentators: "Although it were rather late with respect to my birth, before Julius Cæsar assumed the supreme authority, and made himself perpetual dictator." Virgil indeed was born twenty-five years before that event. 2 Ilium's haughty towers.]

Ilium.

Ceciditque superbum

My master thou, and guide.]

Virgil, Æn. iii. 3.

Tu se' lo mio maestro, e' l mio autore,

Tu se' solo colui.

Thou art my father, thou my author, thou.

Milton, P. L. ii. 864.