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most barbarous medley of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew barbarisms: for according to them, pape is an ejaculation of wonder and indeed nothing more than Taral or papa; in which, add they, Dante followed 'the example of Christians, who name the Pope Papa, because he is the most wonderful thing upon earth (1).' As to the word aleppe, they say that the poet wishing to express the interjection Ah! and finding it more convenient for the rhyme to use the first letter of the Hebrew, than the first of the Roman alphabet, assumed to himself the licence of substituting for A, aleph; and (again for rhyme sake) clipping the final h off both, and replacing it with pe, the Italian Ah became at last metamorphosed into aleppe: by how elegant a process, we may all judge. Hence they concluded, Plutus amazed at seeing the intruders, Virgil and his pupil, cries out Wonder, Satan! Wonder Satan! Ah!'-One would think such a meaning might be as easily and efficaciously conveyed in some real tongue, as in an offensive jargon. But curious are the make-shifts to which a rhymester is supposed to be frequently reduced

aut

insanit, aut versus facit; nor do I apprehend, that the rythmical mania ever bred any thing more ricketty than this thrice distorted

Ah! A! Aleph! Aleppe!;

although he on whom it is fathered is recorded to

(1) Onde il sommo Pontefice, come cosa maravigliosissima tra Crismiani, è chiamato Papa. Landino, Comento, p. 40.

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have declared, in a conversation a little before his death, that he had never once found himself constrained by an attention to rhyme to write a verse otherwise than he would have written it. The late learned Lombardi, though he assented in the main to the interpretation just given, proposed an amendment with regard to aleppe; for aleph, he observed, is never an interjection in Hebrew, but an adjective meaning great: so he contends that the whole is a soliloquy of Plutus who exclaims Wonder, Satan! Wonder, great Satan!' Herein he certainly does not accuse Dante of any more monstrous medley than had been attributed to him before; but rather the contrary, since he makes him give aleppe pretty nearly its legitimate signification: but by representing Plutus as soliloquising and calling himself Satan, he introduces an additional confusion; the one already pointed out in my last comment of the preceding Canto, that of indentifying the demon of riches with the king of hell.

Truth is, that all such conjectures are now worse than nugatory; for the verse in question is no medley of any kind, but a simple, uncorrupted Hebrew one; as, upon seeing it in its natural characters, Oriental scholars will avow at once. How far more generally versed in the languages of the East were the Italians of the middle ages than these of the present day, is historically proved: so that Dante's knowledge of Hebrew presents nothing

CANTO VII.

wondrous; rather the wonder would be, had he been devoid of that knowledge and yet translated the psalms as he did; but what most may make us wonder is that his crowds of Orientalisms could so long have escaped attention. Whether he was right in introducing foreign tongues into his poem with whatever grammatical accuracy, and in writing them all in the same characters; are two questions that may be discussed: but still I must premise that the opinion of Dante (let that of his readers be what it may) was deliberately in the affirmative; for we shall find him delivering, without once changing his Roman letters, not merely words and phrases and whole verses, (like this present one) but sometimes entire tiercets and even many tiercets together, not only in Hebrew and Arabic, but in Latin, Greek, French, German, etc. But whatever may be thought as to the propriety of clothing the verse before us in a strange dialect, there can be no demur as to the sublimity of the ideas it conveys, nor as to the vexation to be proved at finding such sublime ideas not merely not apprehended, but converted by dogmatical pretenders into very loathsome mummery. One of the best peculiarities of Dante's poetry is its true, tangible commonsense; and on few occasions is this more observable than on the present. Concede he might indulge in Roman-written Hebrew, and there cannot be a controversy as to the precision with which he fits it to his purpose; since

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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. 25.

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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!
O princely Satan, for one gleam of thine!

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 (5) 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!