GANTO II.

N.

LXXVIII.

It appears to have been the author's fixed intent to include in these two prefatory Canti some reference to each department of the sciences that are to be more familiarly introduced on various occasions. Thus he here prepares his reader by an indication of his astronomical system, which was the one then received by all learned men, who by no treatises of theirs could have rendered its knowledge half so popular, as this widely diffused poem did; wherein there are scattered so many references to that branch of erudition, that the audience (if they had taken the pains to become masters of the two first Canticles) must have attained an entire acquaintance with it, even long previous to their arrival at its recapitulated and more detailed exemplification in the third Canticle or Paradise. A few words are enough at present: the nine heavens of Ptolemy are followed with the addition of a tenth, a moveless infinite one beyond the others, and inwrapping them and all things, according to the Christian belief. They therefore are in this order: that moveless Empyrean, within which rolls the prime mover, within it the orbit of the fixed stars, then, one within the other, the seven planets, of which the Moon is the inmost and consequently describes the narrowest circle. These are celestial: but within or, in other words, beneath the moon lie all terrene

CANTO 11.

-

things, the atmospheres of fire and air, and, like the nucleus of the universe, this our orb of earth itself; within whose bowels, (that is near whose centre, which is the centre of creation) are placed (in conformity with the classics) the infernal regions. The entire creation may thus be considered as divided into earthly and unearthly: the former being spurned by man's soul if guided by true wisdom; and the latter having for its lowest, or, in the terms of the text, its narrowest orbit or sky that of the moon; below which there is therefore nothing, but what our immortal part should learn to view with a feeling of its own superiority: for, in the words of Cicero, infra lunam nihil est nisi mortale et caducum, præter animos generi hominum munere Deorum datos (1). Indeed it is highly probable that this sentence of the Roman orator was present to Dante's recollection when he composed the passage we are considering. He was certainly familiar with a vast number of books, as all his writings show: but those which he turn. ed over night and day were Virgil, Cicero, and Boetius. These were so constantly his companions, that whenever any one of his phrases resemble one of theirs, we may affirm, without difficulty, it was suggested by it; nor do I consider that as detracting from his merit, not even from his chief merit as a poet, invention. How Virgilian is this poem,

(1) Somnum Scip. p. 6.

CANTO II.

we shall have continual occasions for observing; and in his Convito he tells us, that the Philosophical Consolation of Boetius and Cicero's treatise on friendship were for ever in his hands, and much imitated by him while composing the greater part of that volume from which I extracted so amply in the preceding article L, that dream of his love, the Vita Nuova quasi sognando come nella Vita

I have said (2) that this Limbo is that called by Catholics, 'of-the-holy-fathers'; that it resembles the Virgilian Elysium, and that it forms part of Hell. But let us here establish the meaning of the word Hell, or Inferno, Infernus. It is vulgarly employed as denoting exclusively a region of torment: but such is not the acceptation given it in the modern Romish Church; nor was it in the ancient one. The Platonic Virgil divided his hell into four distinct parts distinct from their very nature; not artificially, like the little better than imaginary ones pointed out by his expositors Servius and Ascensius (3). The first division contains the souls of children — the second, those undergoing expiation in a variety of ways the third, those who merit enjoyment- -and the fourth,

(1) Convito. p. 95.

(2) p. 87.

(3) Com. ap. Aeneid. 1. 6. v. 424.

CANTO II.

such as, like Salmoneus or Ixion, are doomed to horrible tortures during eternity. This remains still the doctrine of Rome: on which head no testimony can be clearly than that of S. Thomas Aquinas, surnamed the Angelical doctor, whose opinion is received as undeniably orthodox by the Catholics of this day, as well as it was by those of Dante's age -Infernus est quadruplex, scilicet damnatorum, puerorum, purgandorum, et sanctorum patrum (1). 'Hell is fourfold; of the damned, of children, of souls under expiation, and of the holy fathers. In the first' (he continues) 'is never ending woe'-that is Tartarus: 'in the second is no actual pain, although it suffer privation of glory and grace'. —a condition preferable to that allotted to children (infantum animæ flentes in limine primo) in the Aeneid: 'in the third sinners expiate their offences' as they do in many parts of Virgil's hell: 'and in the fourth, there not only is no sensible punishment, but there are all the delights of grace and glory that can be attainable out of Paradise itself'—which conveys a perfect pic ture of the Campi Elysii of antiquity. Dante was a warm admirer of S. Thomas Aquinas, and indeed looked up to him as his master in theology: hence it was quite natural for him to adopt those four distinctions of Hell; and the more so, because they were, not only highly poetic in themselves,

(1) D. Tom. Aquini. Sen. 1. dist. XII. quæs, etc.

CANTO II.

but satisfied a still dearer propensity by permitting him to unite a rigid conformity to the tenets of his own church, with a respectful deference to that of his predecessors in elegant literature. It is then S. Thomas's hell (of which what is vulgarly called hell only makes a part) that is followed in this poem. According to this plan, this present Canticle, Hell, contains three hells, as we shall

see

the hell-of-the-damned, the hell-of-children, and the hell-of-the-holy-fathers; which correspond to the first, sixth and ninth circles of Virgil's hell: and there is dedicated the entire of the second Canticle, or Purgatory, to a description of the hell-of-expiation, (infernus purgandorum) a region which resembles, in essentials, the other six circles which Virgil's hell is lent by scholiasts. The fire seen by Beatrice is then that of the ueighbouring hell of the-damned, and not of Limbo.

Whether this lady be intended as a personification of divine Charity, as is said, I cannot exactly aver, nor is it much to our purpose to inquire: that the explications of the commentators are deduced rather from their own fancies than from any thing in the text is apparent from their disagreeing with each other. Many contend for Clemency; Jacob Alighieri for the profound mind of the Deity—la profonda mente della Deità (1); his brother (1) Bib. Laurenziana. Plut. XL. Cod. 10.