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CANTO VII.

therein and at last, on approaching a tower,

:

Canto closes.

the

This fourth circle is, like the two preceding ones, without any division; and, like them, presents a circular way 17 miles wide, with a walk 14 miles high on its exterior edge, and on its interior the brink of the Tartarean pit. There is a spot near this interior edge, which is rendered remarkable by a cleft wherein is a rush of waters; which, having kept an invisible conduit throughout the three first circles, now reveal it for an instant, and then continue their course.

I have premised, that both avarice and prodigality are punished here together: and, if there be a golden mean which is virtue, there is perhaps no more exemplary mode of inculcating it, than by thus subjecting its various violators to one and the same punishment. This indeed is true with regard to vices in general; they are extremes that not only deviate from the point of reason, but that in proportion to that deviation decrease, instead of increasing, their mutual distance; so the more they are removed from their common centre, the more they approach each other; and at last draw so near that it is difficult to distinguish which is which, the affinity twixt their most noxious qualities uniting them; and the consequent effects being very similar, or quite identical: thus luxurious delicacy and gross indelicacy are equally culpable, since when pushed to their

CANTO VII.

full, they both lead to the self-same ruin, that of brutalizing the mind and enfeebling the body. But though luxury have its opposite, and voluptuousness likewise (for man is bound to preserve his frame by a cheerful partaking of the gifts of God and nature and increase and multiply is not less a command to most human creatures, because its fulfilment is recompensed in this exis. tence by one of the purest of enjoyments, lawful love), yet the transgressions that really occur in this way are so few, and indicate such insanity, as not to merit notice in a didactic poem. And this is the reason why they were not inserted in the preceding circles of Tartarus: for as to those who so transgressed (or pretended to do) with still more vicious inclinations, hypocrisy, revenge, or contempt of Providence, their dens are below any thing yet come to. But that both deviations from the centre of virtue are wicked, can be predicated with regard to nothing more strikingly than to avarice and prodigality: these at a certain temperature become completely amalgamated, and circumstances occur in which their infamous produce is exactly the same hard-heartedness and villainy. The miser will do any bad or dirty action to get money, and so will the spendthrift; and it is very dubious which of the two is more guilty towards himself and the public

he whose hoarding deprives industry of its capital and corrupts his own mind by that sordid

CANTO VII

occupation, or he who squanders his treasures in debauchery that unmans his soul and in inciting others to crime. From the former, it is in vain to expect charity, or honor in paying, or tenderness in requiring payment; and with regard to the other, the case is quite as hopeless: for though most lavish in indulging his own caprice, he is often to be found more shamelessly ungenerous towards a worthy object, than the miser himself

more

tenacious of a trifle that would rescue a fellowcreature from misery, more dishonest as a debtor, more inhuman as a creditor. In the twentieth Canto of Purgatory we shall find those opposite failings again associated, and undergoing one chastisement. With the utmost justice' (says the Florentine Landino)' was the demon of riches termed by our author, the mighty foe: for what else produceth such desolation upon earth? What causeth such discord between the nearest relatives and friends and fellow-countrymen? Such violations of equity? Such tumults, seditions, and civil and foreign wars? Such infesting of the seas with pirates, and of the land with highway-men! Such filling of cities with robberies, homicides, and murders, by poison, false witnesses, and corrupt judgments? Such converting of fathers and husbands into domestic tyrants cruel to their wives and children and even to themselves? Such exposing to auction of the chastity of our virgins, and of all the decorums of life, public and private?

CANTO VIT.

And such putting to sale of the very laws and magistrates? O money in different shapes these are thy doings! Oh! What a perpetuity of peace and virtue were amongst mankind, but for thee; who lettest none be content with what they legitimately possess, or with the acquisition of the little that sufficeth nature!'

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis

Auri sacra fames!

B. - II.

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(1)

The opening of this Canto was long an enigma explained in various capricious ways by various commentators: who all judged themselves at freedom to allow their fancies full rein on such a subject, and give what sense they pleased to a line which seemed to them to have none of its own. That scholars should have been so long duped, may be considered strange; yet it is much more so, that plain, but reasonable men should have condescended to bear their pertness, allowing them to sacrifice their Author in order to conceal their own ignorance, and to accuse him of indulgence in an unmeaning jargon, because they did not understand his language; - a language, one of the grandest and probably the most ancient in the world. How unworthy alike of the poet and of his poem and of his readers were childish gab

(1) Comento, p. 40.

CANTO VII.

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 uuriddle sounds which they assured 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.

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