auchery that unmans his soul and in inciting ers to crime. From the former, it is in vain to ▪ect charity, or honor in paying, or tenderness equiring payment; and with regard to the other, case is quite as hopeless: for though most sh in indulging his own caprice, he is often be found more shamelessly ungenerous towards orthy object, than the miser himself more acious of a trifle that would rescue a fellowature from misery, more dishonest as a debtor, re inhuman as a creditor. In the twentieth to of Purgatory we shall find those opposite ings again associated, and undergoing one stisement. With the utmost justice' (says Florentine Landino)' was the demon of riches med by our author, the mighty foe: for what e produceth such desolation upon earth? What seth such discord between the nearest relatives d friends and fellow-countrymen? Such vioions of equity? Such tumults, seditions, and civil d foreign wars? Such infesting of the seas with ates, and of the land with highway-men! Such ing of cities with robberies, homicides, and irders, by poison, false witnesses, and corrupt dgments? Such converting of fathers and husnds into domestic tyrants cruel to their wives d children and even to themselves? Such expo. ng to auction of the chastity of our virgins, and all the decorums of life, public and private? magistr mately little tha The op explained comment dom to all ject, and which seer scholars sl considered plain, but cended to sacrifice the own ignoran in an unme understand the grandest the world. H of his poem a (1) Comento, p. and agistrates? O money in different shapes these are y doings! Oh! What a perpetuity of peace rtue were amongst mankind, but for thee; who ttest none be content with what they legitiately possess, or with the acquisition of the tle that sufficeth nature!' Quid non mortalia pectora cogis Auri sacra fames! · (1) The opening of this Canto was long an enigma plained in various capricious ways by various mmentators: who all judged themselves at freeom to allow their fancies full rein on such a subet, and give what sense they pleased to a line nich seemed to them to have none of its own. That holars should have been so long duped, may be nsidered strange; yet it is much more so, that ain, but reasonable men should have condesaded to bear their pertness, allowing them to rifice their Author in order to conceal their n ignorance, and to accuse him of indulgence an unmeaning jargon, because they did not derstand his language; - a language, one of › grandest and probably the most ancient in world. How unworthy alike of the poet and poem and of his readers were childish gab his ) Comento, p. 40. 394 COMMENT CANTO VIL. ble! rendered still more ridiculous by his making the 'omniscient Gentile' (Virgil) understand it perfectly and reply to it at once. What a miserable compliment to represent him as comprehending and answering nonsense! Nonsense may intrude upon a writer, and be mistaken for something fine; but what is to be thought of him who knowingly introduces it into a serious composition for ornament? With this puerility has Dante continued to be taxed: and since it was not deemed an inconsistency "that such a king should play bo-peep," neither was he left unprovided of distinguished litterary characters, who blushed not to misemploy their ingenuity at different periods in labouring to unriddle sounds which they assur ed us had no real signification. One (1) tells us to receive it as a kind of bastard Gallicism, which Dante had learned in the French law courts, where the Crier endeavouring to maintain order and silence is continually calling out Paix, paix, Satan, allez, Satan, paix! That these words when written bear small resemblance to the text, or that it requires much faith to believe that Criers maintain throughout revolving centuries one uniform phrase in chiding the disorderly multitude, is unworthy of notice; every reader, I think, will concede this interpretation its proper praise of being burlesque. Others derive the line from a (1) Cellini, etc. 1 CANTO VII. most barbarous medley of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew barbarisms: for according to them, pape is an ejaculation of wonder and indeed nothing more than Taral or papæ; in which, add they, Dante followed the example of Christians, who name the Pope Papa, because he is the most wonderful thing upon earth (1).' As to the word aleppe, they say that the poet wishing to express the interjection. Ah! and finding it more convenient for the rhyme to use the first letter of the Hebrew, than the first of the Roman alphabet, assumed to himself the licence of substituting for A, aleph; and (again for rhyme sake) clipping the final h off both, and replacing it with pe, the Italian Ah became at last metamorphosed into aleppe: by how elegant a process, we may all judge. Hence they concluded, Plutus amazed at seeing the intruders, Virgil and his pupil, cries out Wonder, Satan! Wonder, Satan! Ah!'-One would think such a meaning might be as easily and efficaciously conveyed in some real tongue, as in an offensive jargon. But curious are the make-shifts to which a rhymester is supposed to be frequently reduced insanit, aut versus facit; nor do I apprehend, that the rythmical mania ever bred any thing more ricketty than this thrice distorted Aleppe!; aut Ah! - A! Aleph! although he on whom it is fathered is recorded to (1) Onde il sommo Pontefice, come cosa maravigliosissima tra Cristiani, è chiamato Papa. Landino, Comento, p. 40. 396 COMMENT CANTO VIL have declared, in a conversation a little before his death, that he had never once found himself constrained by an attention to rhyme to write a verse otherwise than he would have written it. The late learned Lombardi, though he assented in the main to the interpretation just given, proposed an amendment with regard to aleppe; for aleph, he observed, is never an interjection in Hebrew, but an adjective meaning great: so he contends that the whole is a soliloquy of Plutus who exclaims Wonder, Satan! Wonder, great Satan!' Herein he certainly does not accuse Dante of any more monstrous medley than had been attributed to him before; but rather the contrary, since he makes him give aleppe pretty nearly its legitimate signification: but by representing Plutus as soliloquising and calling himself Satan, he introduces an additional confusion; the one already pointed out in my last comment of the preceding Canto, that of indentifying the demon of riches with the king of hell. Truth is, that all such conjectures are now worse than nugatory; for the verse in question is no medley of any kind, but a simple, uncorrupted Hebrew one; as, upon seeing it in its natural characters, Oriental scholars will avow at once. How far more generally versed in the languages of the East were the Italians of the middle ages than these of the present day, is historically proved: so that Dante's knowledge of Hebrew presents nothing |