From the right path."-"Ere our descent, behoves
We make delay, that somewhat first the sense,
To the dire breath accustom'd, afterward
Regard it not." My master thus; to whom
Answering I spake: "Some compensation find,
That the time pass not wholly lost." He then :
"Lo! how my thoughts e'en to thy wishes tend.
My son within these rocks," he thus began,
"Are three close circles in gradation placed,

As these which now thou leavest. Each one is full
Of spirits accurst; but that the sight alone
Hereafter may suffice thee, listen how

And for what cause in durance they abide.
"Of all malicious act abhorr'd in heaven,
The end is injury; and all such end
Either by force or fraud2 works other's woe.
But fraud, because of man peculiar evil,
To God is more displeasing; and beneath,
The fraudulent are therefore doom'd to endure
Severer pang.
The violent occupy

All the first circle; and because, to force,
Three persons are obnoxious, in three rounds,
Each within other separate, is it framed.
To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man
Force may be offer'd; to himself I say,
And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear
At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds
Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes,
By devastation, pillage, and the flames,

His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites
In malice, plunderers, and all robbers, hence
The torment undergo of the first round,

In different herds. Man can do violence

To himself and his own blessings: and for this,

faith, contend that our Poet has confounded him with Anastasius I. Emperor of the East. Fazio degli Uberti, like our author, makes him a pope:

Anastasio papa in quel tempo era,

Di Fotin vago a mal grado de sui. Dittamondo, 1. ii. cap. xiv. 1 My son.] The remainder of the present Canto may be considered as a syllabus of the whole of this part of the poem. 2 Either by force or fraud.] "Cum autem duobus modis, id est, aut vi, aut fraude, fiat injuria.. utrumque homini alienissimum; sed fraus olio digna majore." Cic. de Off. lib. i. c. xiii.

He, in the second round must aye deplore
With unavailing penitence his crime,
Whoe'er deprives himself of life and light,
In reckless lavishment his talent wastes,

And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy.
To God may force be offer'd, in the heart
Denying and blaspheming his high power,
And Nature with her kindly law contemning.
And thence the inmost round marks with its seal
Sodom, and Cahors2, and all such as speak
Contemptuously of the Godhead in their hearts.
"Fraud, that in every conscience leaves a sting,
May be by man employ'd on one, whose trust
He wins, or on another who withholds

Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way
Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes.
Whence in the second circle have their nest,
Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries,
Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce
To lust, or set their honesty at pawn,
With such vile scum as these.

The other way

Forgets both Nature's general love, and that
Which thereto added afterward gives birth
To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle,
Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis,
The traitor is eternally consumed."

I thus: "Instructor, clearly thy discourse
Proceeds, distinguishing the hideous chasm
And its inhabitants with skill exact.

But tell me this: they of the dull, fat pool,
Whom the rain beats, or whom the tempest drives,
Or who with tongues so fierce conflicting meet,
Wherefore within the city fire-illumed

Are not these punish'd, if God's wrath be on them?
And if it be not, wherefore in such guise

1 And sorrows.] This fine moral, that not to enjoy our being is to be ungrateful to the Author of it, is well expressed in Spenser, F. Q. b. iv. c viii. st. 15.

For he whose daies in wilful woe are worne,

The grace of his Creator doth despise,

That will not use his gifts for thankless nigardise.

2 Cahors.] A city of Guienne, much frequented by usurers.

Are they condemn’d?” He answer thus return'd:
"Wherefore in dotage wanders thus thy mind,
Not so accustom'd? or what other thoughts
Possess it? Dwell not in thy memory

The words, wherein thy ethic page1 describes
Three dispositions adverse to Heaven's will,
Incontinence, malice, and mad brutishness,
And how incontinence the least offends
God, and least guilt incurs? If well thou note
This judgment, and remember who they are,
Without these walls to vain repentance doom'd,
Thou shalt discern why they apart are placed
From these fell spirits, and less wreakful pours
Justice divine on them its vengeance down."

"O sun! who healest all imperfect sight,
Thou so content'st me, when thou solvest my doubt,
That ignorance not less than knowledge charms.
Yet somewhat turn thee back,” I in these words
Continued, "where thou said'st, that usury
Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot
Perplex'd unravel." He thus made reply:
'Philosophy, to an attentive ear,

Clearly points out, not in one part alone,
How imitative Nature takes her course
From the celestial mind, and from its art:
And where her laws 2 the Stagirite unfolds,
Not many leaves scann'd o'er, observing well
Thou shalt discover, that your art on her
Obsequious follows, as the learner treads
In his instructor's step; so that your art

1 Thy ethic page.] He refers to Aristotle's Ethics: " Mɛtà de tauta λɛKτέον, ἄλλην ποιησαμένους ἀρχὴν, ὅτι τῶν περὶ τὰ ἤθη φευκτῶν τρία ἐστὶνεΐδη, κακία, ἀκρασία, θηριότης. Ethic. Nicomach. lib. vii. c. 1. "In the next place, entering on another division of the subject, let it be defined, that respecting morals there are three sorts of things to be avoided, malice, incontinence, and brutishness." 2 Her laws.] Aristotle's Physics.-"'H τέχνη μιμεῖται τὴν φύσιν.” Arist. ΦΥΣ. ΑΚΡ. lib. ii. c. 2. "Art imitates nature." -See the Coltivazione of Alamanni, lib. i.

Deserves the name of second in descent1
From God. These two, if thou recal to mind
Creation's holy book2, from the beginning
Were the right source of life and excellence
To human kind. But in another path
The usurer walks; and Nature in herself
And in her follower thus he sets at nought,
Placing elsewhere his hope3. But follow now
My steps on forward journey bent; for now
The Pisces play with undulating glance
Along the horizon, and the Wain lies all
O'er the north-west; and onward there a space
Is our steep passage down the rocky height."

CANTO XII.

ARGUMENT.

Descending by a very rugged way into the seventh circle, where the violent are punished, Dante and his leader find it guarded by the Minotaur; whose fury being pacified by Virgil, they step downwards from crag to crag; till, drawing near the bottom, they descry a river of blood, wherein are tormented such as have committed violence against their neighbour. At these, when they strive to emerge from the blood, a troop of Centaurs, running along the side of the river, aim their arrows; and three of their band opposing our travellers at the foot of the steep, Virgil prevails so far, that one consents to carry them both across the stream; and on their passage, Dante is informed by him of the course of the river, and of those that are punished therein.

THE place, where to descend the precipice

We came, was rough as Alp; and on its verge
Such object lay, as every eye would shun.

As is that ruin, which Adice's stream 5

1 Second in descent.] Si che vostr' arte a Dio quasi nipote. So Frezzi:-Giustizia fu da cielo, e di Dio è figlia,

E ogni bona legge a Dio è nipote. Il Quadrir. lib. iv. cap. 2. 2 Creation's holy book.] Genesis, c. ii. v. 15: "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it." And, Genesis, c. iii. v. 19: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 3 Placing elsewhere his hope.] The usurer, trusting in the produce of his wealth lent out on usury, despises nature directly, because he does not avail himself of her means for maintaining or enriching himself; and indirectly, because he does not avail himself of the means which art, the follower and imitator of nature, would afford him for the same purposes.

The Wain.] The constellation Boötes, or Charles's Wain.

Adice's stream.] After a great deal having been said on the subject, it

On this side Trento struck, shouldering the wave,
Or loosed by earthquake or for lack of prop;
For from the mountain's summit, whence it moved
To the low level, so the headlong rock

Is shiver'd, that some passage1 it might give
To him who from above would pass; e'en such
Into the chasm was that descent: and there
At point of the disparted ridge lay stretch'd
The infamy of Crete2, detested brood
Of the feign'd heifer3: and at sight of us
It gnaw'd itself, as one with rage distract.

To him my guide exclaim'd: "Perchance thou deem'st
The King of Athens here, who, in the world

Above, thy death contrived. Monster! avaunt!
He comes not tutor❜d by thy sister's art 5,
But to behold your torments is he come."
Like to a bull, that with impetuous spring
Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow
Hath struck him, but unable to proceed

still appears very uncertain at what part of the river this fall of the mountain happened. Some passage.] Lombardi erroneously, I think, understands by "alcuna via ""no passage," in which sense "alcuno" is certainly sometimes used by some old writers. Monti, as usual, agrees with Lombardi. See note to c. iii. v. 40. 2 The infamy of Crete.] The Minotaur.

3 The feign'd heifer.] Pasiphae. * The king of Athens.] Theseus, who was enabled by the instruction of Ariadne, the sister of the Minotaur, to destroy that monster. "Duca d'Atene." So Chaucer calls Theseus:

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,

There was a duk, that highte Theseus. The Knighte's Tale. And Shakspeare: Happy be Theseus, our renowned Duke.

Midsummer Night's Dream, a. i. s. 1. "This is in reality," observes Mr. Douce, "no misapplication of a modern title, as Mr. Stevens conceived, but a legitimate use of the word in its primitive Latin sense of leader, and so it is often used in the Bible. Shakspeare might have found Duke Theseus in the Book of Troy, or in Turberville's Ovid's Epistles. See the argument to that of Phædra and Hippolytus." Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare. 8vo. 1807. vol. i. p. 179.

5 Thy sister's art.] Ariadne.

• Like to a bull.]

Ως δ ̓ ὅταν ὀξὺν ἔχων πέλεκυν αἰζήιος ἀνὴρ,
Κόψας ἐξόπιθεν κεράων βοὸς ἀγραύλοιο,
Ινα τάμη διὰ πᾶσαν, ὁ δὲ προθορὼν ἐρίπησιν.

Homer. Il. 1. xvii. 522.

As when some vigorous youth with sharpen'd axe
A pastured bullock smites behind the horns,
And hews the muscle through; he at the stroke
Springs forth and falls.
Cowper's Translation.