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factious age to merit distinct encomium; it must have been delightful to Dante to turn a moment from the barbarous manners of his day, and con. template the philosophic and amiable dispositions of two of his fellow-countrymen, however private their stations; nor were they beneath the notice of a poet, who were commemorated by an historian.

L. 1 LXXXI.

Dante, who had known those for whom he inquires to be adepts in the arts of luxurious revelling, asks where they are? because he expected to find them in this circle, where the crime of intemperance is punished; or, it may be, because their greatness of mind inspired him with a tenderness that struggled against the sentence of reprobation to which we shall find him at length consign them; and that wishing to testify this, he inquires after their destiny with hesitation. In this circle lie none of them; and we learn that they are far worse off, being in 'deeper dens,' as having been betrayed by luxurious living into various flagitious disorders. Our poet is not even content with inquiring whether they be in this circle; but asks whether they be not perhaps in Paradise, as if he considered that possible. Many imagine this to be irony, when they reflect, that we shall be presented hereafter with those of whom he speaks in different horrid situations, for most monstrous malefactions: and such will

argue

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that the moral poet could not have intended to lead his readers into the mistake of thinking, that such examples of iniquity could have been suspected of any other destination than a Tartarean one. Yet one annotator supposes, that Dante, writing sometimes as a theologian, and sometimes as a Patriot, gives two different opinions in those two characters; so that as a Patriot he extols the personages he at present names, although he afterwards condemns them as a theologian (1). But it is to be considered whether it were possible for a patriot to extol them. That they had some grand features in their characters merits them a place in this poem; for if they had been as feeble as wicked, it would not have been worth while to notice them: but if their superior talents were converted to bad purposes, a patriot must more severely condemn, not extol them; and that in the actual instance they were so converted is certain, except we can pretend that sodomy, atheism, and murder are patriotic attainments. It is an injustice, among the many flagrant ones done to this great man, to make him profess opposite sentiments on the same ethical questions; and affirm one thing as a religionist and another as a citizen. Either the religion, or politics of such a person must be evil. But this

(1) Parla per lo più come Teologo, ma molte volte ancora come puro Cittadino:... perciò come Cittadini gli chiama degni, ma come uomini gli confina nell' Inferno per le loro teologicamente considerate colpe. Poggiali, Ed. Livor. Vol. 3. p. 85.

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idle accusation is without foundation; his writings present us with no incongruity between his religious and political creed. We shall find him displaying traitors to their country as suffering in the lowest region of the abyss; and the complete identity of public utility with the law of God seems to have been as favourite a thesis with him, as with Paley himself. Theology, taken as an absract science, is scarce to be noticed in his compositions; his usual word being Supreme Philosophy, (as I mentioned heretofore (1)) in which was included all knowledge and goodness, sacred and profane. 1 see him invariably treating his faith, as if it were a main portion of his philosophy; and he advances nothing to awake a reasonable suspicion of his ever having considered his ecclesiastical tenets as at variance with his civil duties. It were difficult not to concede, that when he so deeply damns public traitors, he does so both as a Divine and a Patriot. To prove the dangerous vices of the men that have been named, I shall mention their histories in a few lines; for we shall have occasion to say much more of them hereafter. Tegghiajo (which must be pronounced as a word of only two syllables, the iajo being a double dipthong (2)) was a Guelph captain who had made a famous figure in the battle of MonteAperti, which was fought about

(1) Hell, Comment, Canto II. p. 190.

(2) Mr. Cary is guilty of a false quantity, for he makes it a word of three syllables.

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five years before Dante was born. Tegghiajo was therefore a twofold scourge to his native land, by his sanguinary disposition, and his unnatural propensities; for we shall find him among the Sodomites. Jacob Rasticucci was deep tainted with the same crime against nature, and we shall find him in the same cavern. Arrigo said to be of the Fifanti, is now personally unknown; and it is prob able he died young, or that he amended his life, or that our poet forgot him; for he is the only one of them of whom we shall see no more through

out the poem, and of whose guilt we cannot therefore judge. The family of Fifanti itself however was one of the pests of Tuscany; and its ancestral honours were quite out-balanced by its factious nature it is included in Machiavelli's list of Ghibellines. Mosca we shall discover lacerated at the bottom of the infernal pit; and he was indeed not only a murderer himself, but the original cause of more murders than ever were deduced from any single source: for by a barbarous and premeditated assassination he was the first who gave a sanguinary birth to the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in Florence; factions destined to last longer and spill more blood than any others that ever existed. Farinata was the Ghibelline General opposed to Tegghiajo in that same great battle of Monte-Aperti between Guelphs and Ghibellines; and this pairing off together of the leaders of both the bloody parties may be received as the

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first of many instances which overturn vulgar prejudices, and make good my assertion that Dante was neither Guelph nor Ghibelline, but a steady patriot detesting their mutual enormities. This Farinata entered Florence after the battle, overset the Government, exiled the Guelphs, and reduced the city under a foreign yoke. He will appear hereafter among the materialists; for he was of 'Epicurus' sty,' not only in living, but in disbelieving. In what tone but in sarcasm, or indigna. tion, could Dante have named these? was the quesstion I first pronounced within myself. But when I read over again the passages where those characters are named in the future Cantos, and pondered on the deep emotion and reverence which accompany his severe reproof and reflected on the eminent, though disastrous, talents of those men, who were leaders of great, though terribly destructive, factions among the Florentine républicans during their least corrupted period and recog. nised for a truth, that the chiefs of the worst factions have in general (what their followers have not) some high qualities, if not virtues, to redeem their evil; all these considerations oblige me to leave the matter ( as to whether Dante meant this passage as ironical, or not) undecided. Or rather my opinion is, that he intended it should be indecisive; and was willing to couple a vindictive anathema against their vices with an affectionate recollection of their lofty powers; and penned his