oid of that knowledge and yet translated is as he did; but what most may make us Is that his crowds of Orientalisms could have escaped attention. Whether he was ntroducing foreign tongues into his poem tever grammatical accuracy, and in wrin all in the same characters; are two quest may be discussed: but still I must pret the opinion of Dante (let that of his be what it may) was deliberately in the ve; for we shall find him delivering, withchanging his Roman letters, not merely nd phrases and whole verses, (like this one) but sometimes entire tiercets and ny tiercets together, not only in Hebrew ic, but in Latin, Greek, French, German, whatever may be thought as to the proclothing the verse before us in a strange here can be no demur as to the sublimity eas it conveys, nor as to the vexation to d at finding such sublime ideas not mereprehended, but converted by dogmatical rs into very loathsome mummery. One of peculiarities of Dante's poetry is its true, commonsense; and on few occasions is e observable than on the present. Conight indulge in Roman-written Hebrew, cannot be a controversy as to the preciwhich he fits it to his purpose; since COMMENT CANTO VIE.. 398 this evidently was to indicate the money-fiend's antiquity and foulness, by making him speak in what is usually believed to be the oldest discoverable language, and to be capable of the most discordant sounds. Thus, he intended to strike the illiterate by the horrible dissonance of the hell-wolf's scream, and the learned by its tremen dous signification. Of this latter here is the substance. Plutus rendered furious by the intrusive boldness of a mortal, bellows down the infernal gulf for the king of the abyss (Satan) to put forth his fiery head and annihilate the intruder by a single glimpse of it; and such it were likely might have been the effect, had Satan put it forth now; since we shall hereafter find Dante (although he had acquired full experience of how innoxious to him were monsters and atrocities of hell) smote with such horror and dismay at the first appearance of the damned Monarch, that it were hard to tell whether he was alive or dead; a state that he expresses by the hyperbole of declaring he was neither (1) Pa pe Satan! Pa pe Satan aleppe! Risplendeat facies Satani! Risplendeat facies Satani primarii! Or, as in Italian: Ti mostra, Satanasso! Ti mostra nella maestà dei tuoi splendori, principe (1) Io non mori', e non rimasi vivo. Inferno Canto xxxiv. v. a5. QANTO VI. Satanasso! (1). Look out, Satan! Look out in the majesty of thy splendors, princely Satan!' What venerable concision is that of the Original! Two long lines Forth, Satan, forth! Thine awful forehead shine! are scarcely a paraphrase. The first observation that occurs, on looking at the above, is the almost miraculous fidelity with which the verse has been handed down during five centuries, by a multitude of copyists and printers not one of whom knew what they were doing. It is in general printed thus: Pape Satan! pape Satan, aleppe! Here we see are only two deviations from correctness: one of which (that of changing aleph into aleppe) was clearly introduced by the Author himself; and the second (that of making a single word of pa and pe) was most natural, particularly among people so inimical to monosyllables as the Italians. Aleph (b) has no reference whatever to the interjection Ah: but it is the first Hebrew element, and therefore denotes unity and pre-eminence, and is synonimous with the latin primarius . Nor is the adjective chioccia (that comes immediately after) properly interpreted as meaning hoarse (rauca); for its precise signification is guttural (gutturale), and no doubt but it was expressly (1) Or exactly syllable by syllable: Splendi aspetto di Satano! Splendi aspetto di Satano primajo! 400 COMMENT CANTO TIL employed by Dante, as an exact linguist, to inform us of the true mode of pronouncing the words of Plutus who repeats so often that harsh guttural ain (), which is quite characteristic of the Hebrew (1). That such is the clear, indubitable solution of the verse under consideration, all Hebrew students will aver; and their astonishment at this disclosure not having been made long since, may be somewhat mitigated by the reflection of how strange in our eyes becomes even the tongue with which we are best acquainted (then much more a dead one) if written in letters not its own. For (1) I think it now superfluous to mention another attempt at interpreting this passage; wherein aleppe is derived from a provincialism of Val d'Arno. It seems the country people there have a word of nearly similar sound to signify flee ( fuggire ); so that Plutus would be bidding Dante flee. But even were this interpretation less forced, it could merit no attention after the direct proof of the other: - which is corroborated by so many Hebrew translations and derivations up and down in Dante, and by those from the tongue most nearly related to it, the Arabic; as well as by an entire Arabic verse, which we shall find in Canto xxx1 of this same Canticle; to none of which a provincial origin can be ascribed. The Hebrew scholar will observe that our Saviour himself uses Sathan for Lucifer; and that though pe means properly mouth, it may be taken in the larger sense of front, or the entire countenance facies; and must be so on the present occasion, for we shall find Lucifer has three mouths. Ed è bene a rammaricarci de' Retori, ch'an uso nelle moderne scuole citare il Pape di Dante come verso da prendersi a beffe; e Dio volesse che insegnassero a metter tanto concetto in un solo verso, quanto quel ne contiene: perciocchè non sarebbe si folta la turba de' verseggiatori, che dalla prima Alpe all' ultimo Appennino con ventose parole rimbombano. Dissertazione dell' Ab. M. A. Lanci sui versi di Nembrotte, ec. p. 44. In fact, I have lately read a little M. S. tract, in which those verseggiatori are estimated as being never less than three hundred thousand between Naples and Milan. Hing in a Greek poem Γλειδε ώσεαν εὖθει εξηνὶ βλυε ive their assent to the opinion of the naat the line was a jargon put together in antonness by the author; but should some er luckier, or more attentive than his pres, pronounce it English, and, as a proof, be it correctly Glide, Ocean, with thy wavy blue; that eve, for with thy, was so written monosyllables and not to repeat the hat in Ocean a sigma was substitued for being no c in the Greek alphabet, that s pthong most resembling our w, that the vy is changed into because such is its ciation, and that it is with the same atto pronunciation that they in thy is and that in wavy, i: I say that though here e much more unavoidable alteration than te's Hebrew, yet no Englisman coming e first discoverer but would affirm the id treat every argument. drawn from the bility of the Greek poet's possessing any ge of English as ridiculous, when balanced other positive evidence; for it were cersier to believe that a Greek knew English h there were no récords to inform as that or any of his countrymen at that time 1 to persuade ourselves that a verse nei |