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COMMENT

CANTO 111.

strictly Christian, and the other a picture for a most celebrated Christian temple. I know not whether such authorities are decisive: but it will be pardonable to think so, until some poet, painter, philosopher, or preacher present us with a less imperfect emblem of a region of everlasting misery than any of which the world is yet possessed.

U. - CXII.

This metaphor is from the Aeneid —

Quam multa in sylvis autumni frigore primo

Lapsa cadunt foglia (1)....

but it has not so perfect an application there, as here for Virgil designates only the number of the ghosts by it, but Dante both their number and the gradual manner in which they drop down into the boat; for autumnal leaves do not fall together, ad una ad una but by little and little according as they acquire full maturity, until at last each branch has rendered up all its robes to mother earth: so that I think M. Biagioli has a right to call this passage superiore di

a quella del Poeta Latino (2).

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gran lunga

The original of this too belongs to Virgil, and forms the continuation of the verses cited in the last comment

(1) Lib. vi. v. 309.

(2) Comento. vol. 1. p. 66.

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Quam multæ glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus Trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis . The common way of understanding com' augel per suo richiamo (1) (and in my opinion certainly the true one) is 'as birds to their decoy.' For augel is here a noun collective, as avis is in Aquino's translation of the same passage

...inque arctos sociæ velut illice cantu

Se laqueos adstringit avis, mala gurgitis atri
Progenies sic complet aquas:

and richiamo means not only what hawkers call
technically a lure, but a bird-call, or anything
used to decoy birds (2). Here then Dante alluded
to a field sport, which was,
and is still common
in Italy and if his phraseology must be allowed
to be inharmonious and jejune in comparison
with his sweet original (3), yet the idea suggested
by him is more apposite as a metaphor, and as
poetical in itself. It was bold and good taste to

(1) Come gli uccelletti si gittano al paretajo, o al boschetto invitati dal canto degli augelli di gabbia, o per altro suono. Biagioli, Venturi, ec, ec.

(2) Qualunque allettamento al quale si gittano per natura gli uccelli. Vocabolario §. 1.

(3) It may not however be fastidious criticism to remark, that apricis in the Latin introduces a confusion of images. The sorrowful condition of the ghosts was the matter to be impressed, and therefore any thing suggesting a pleasing notion was at best superfluous. The Homeric application of the similitude is liable to no such objection. In leaving out apricis, did not Dante borrow from Virgil with more discrimination, than Virgil from Homer?

duol senza martiri; and the Hell-of-holyfathers be quite free from either pain or sorrow

nè trista, as we shall see a few tiercets farther on. Here we are still in the Hell-of-Children; so this line D'infanti e di femmine e di viri is only an expletive mode of saying innumerable crowds of infants of both sexes and in this persuasion I translate it 'babies males and maids (1).' To do otherwise would confuse the topography of which Dante is so curious an observer, and which the accompanying drawing gives.

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The Hell-of Children extends 'not far from the bank' or vestibule (dal sommo) which our travellers had descended: and, since they could have no interest to particularise any of those nameless innocents, it is evident they must be drawing very close to the second division, or at least in full sight of it, when they begin to think it worth while to scan the shades' Che spiriti son questi? To whom

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(1) Mr. Cary by translating men, women, and infants," and indeed by his whole version, confounds these two divisions which are easily traced in the text. The first is this; the second begins to be seen at vidi un fuoco ec. v. 68. He seems to have been totally unaware of the existence of any such divisions, and therefore mixed them together past distinguishing. But in truth they form two rings or circlets into which this first Circle is divided all round — per tutta la estensione (all the parts of Dante's Hell being thus circular, as Lombardi justly observes), and are separated regularly by a stream and seven walls.

V. 107.

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Bird's eye view of the first Circle of Hell.

A. Its first division, or Hell-of- Children.

B. Its second, or Hell-of-holy-Fathers, or Elysium.

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