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CANTO IV.

consigned back to its pristine darkness. Had our poet hazarded any reply, it would surely have been the same burst of indignation which we shall find him, on another almost similar occasion, direct against the presumption of seeking to scrutinize matters that lie totally beyond human comprehen

sion:

And who is he who thus presumes to scan
A thousand miles beyond his stool
With sight no longer than a span? (1).

But as to the demand about Christ's descent, Virgil answers it at great length; marking the epoch at which it occurred by referring to that of his own death. This is supposed to have taken place about half a century before the Christian era (2). Whatever had been Dante's reason for putting his question in so covert a shape, (whether delicacy towards his master, or in order to avoid pronoun. cing in any part of hell the hallowed name of Jesus) his master replies with the frankness in which a noble mind delights, that the Gospel story is most correct, and runs over the roll of the Jewish Sages, as if to show they had become well known to him. Dante not content with inculcating this doctrine here by mouth of his duke, repeats it in his own person in his Creed' then the Saviour descended

(1) Parad. Canto XIX.

(2) This the second time the date of Virgil's career is refered to; yet exact Chronologists disagree about it. Hell, Comment, Canto p. 38.

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CANTO IV.

to liberate the ancient Fathers (1).' One of these —Moses had been already commemorated by Virgil under the name of Musaus; at least it has been pretended so (1).

Musæum ante omnes medium nam plurima turba
Hunc habet atque humeris extantem suscipit altis (3).

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At last we enter the second division; and the verses that introduce us are impressive, although not so sonorous as those of which they are a manifest imitation:

Largior hic campos æther et lumine vestit

Purpureo (4) . . .

Beautiful in itself it surely is, and great proof of the learning and correct taste of Dante, that he was able to produce so many points of similitude between two systems apparently so discordant as the Christian and the Pagan, and, uniting much of the imagery of both, make no attaint upon either by which happy selection an ancient poet and theologian (without any of that discrepancy which nothing less than prodigious erudition and genius could have avoided) is represented as conducting a modern one through that future world, which many imagine was depicted formerly in a

:

(1)... discese per cavar gli antichi Padri. Credo. p. 139.

(2) Nisi, ut arbitrantur aliqui, Museus et Moyses unum et idem sint. Genealogia Deor. Lib. xiv. Cap. vin.

(3) Aeneid. 1. vi. v. 607.

(4) Id. Id. Id. 637.

MANTO IV.

very different manner from what it is at present, and recording with admirable fidelity the dogmas of that modern's religion, without swerving from his own; so that he not only does not confuse our ideas of Antiquity, but rather throws new light on the subject. Let us moreover recollect that this monument of multifarious science was raised in the first years of the fourteenth Century, and then turn to our own history - yet without a blush, for the rest of Europe lay plunged in au equal barbarism.

This then is the Virgilian Elysium, whose description is too long to insert here entirely: but who, on re-perusing those melodious Latin strains, will regret, that the Italian copy has left out the specification of some of its details, such as the chariots, lances, and coursers? If the rest of the picture enraptures the fancy, are not those figures mispla ced that recall it back to daily misery by alluding to such mere earthly occupations? This is that Abraham's bosom where Lazarus was comforted. This is that tranquil Limbo called 'of-the-holyfathers' by Catholics

Hic genus antiquum. pulcherrima proles

....

Magnanimi heroes, nati melioribus annis (1). — and by many of their Divines described in glowing colours, as blest with celestial visitations and the inexhaustible study of philosophy and virtue. This

(1) Aeneid. Lib. v1. v: 648.

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SANTO IV.

is that blissful region of hell to which even the Divinity himself descended without repugnance, (according to the Angelical doctor) but not beyond it (1). This in fine is that al Arâf of the Mahometans, which contains "many Patriarchs, prophets, martyrs, and Angels in the form of men (1). " I know the eternal nature of the Virgilian Elysium has been doubted: and as for the al Arâf, it is certainly not eternal, although of indefinite duration. But such obscurity is only a new instance of their resemblance to this Catholic Hell-of-the-holy-fathers: for on the one hand, I find its eternity not declared in any positive statute; and on the other, it is made an article of faith that it was not eternal to all its occupants, viz: to those liberated Patriarchs. The Aeneid does not inform us absolutely whether Elysium was eternal or not. Tartarus, it tells us, was eternal (eternumque sedebit infelix ): but if that state of punishment was eternal, some one of reward must have been so too. Then, if Elysium was not eternal it dwindles into a mildest kind of Purgatory; and not only for a few deified personages, but for all virtuous men there must have been some higher bliss in reserve. That many Pagans held this latter opinion, and amongst them Cicero and Virgil himself, I have already said (3);

(1) Solum ad locum Inferni in quo justi detinebantur. D. T. Aquini, Sen. 1. dist. 22. quæst. 2. art. 1.

(2) Sale Sect. iv. p. 125. — Koran, Chap. vit.
(3) Hell, Comment, Canto 1. p. 59 — 11. p. 88.

CANTO I

but I doubt of its being a universal doctrine of Pagan theologians, because I do not find it asserted in the Aeneid. It would certainly be implied there, if any of its verses unequivocally limited the duration of Elysium to a thousand years for then there must have been some eternal Paradise to counter-poise that eternal Tartarus; some final home for the auraï simplicis ignem as soon as its earthly stains were purged away, whether by punishments in the world of shades, or by returning to this one, in order to redeem the errors of its former life by living better. But to punish it when become stainless by sending it back to where its stains had been contracted, and exile it then from that blissful Elysium into this wretched existence, would be unjust and contradictory. The Pagan belief therefore as to Paradise, would not be so remote from our own, if it could be positively ascertained that it was an article of the Pagan faith that Elysium was not eternal. But to me that is not clear; and even the following passage may be construed without any such admission:

Quisque suos patimur manes: exinde per amplum
Mittimur Elysium et pauci læta arva tenemus ;
Donec longa dies, perfecto temporis orbe,
Concretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit
Ethereum sensum atque auraï simplicis ignem,
Has omnes, ubi mille rotam volvêre per annos,
Lætheum ad flumen Deus evocat (2).

(1) Aeneid. Lib. VI. v. 743.

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