CANTO VI11.

ed fiends are described by Dante as keeping hold in Dis; -a city, I repeat, that makes a kind of great division in Tartarus; for the circles within its wall, although they continue deepening in horrors as they descend to the central pit, are all of them incalculably more horrific than any thing that lies outside. Virgil then says, that the fiends' reckless audacity is not new; for that they displayed it once against Messiah himself at the gate of the Vestibule which still lies broken down the gate over which was seen the deadly scroll. The introduction of Phlegyas, followed closely by this allusion to the Messiah's adorable victory, is among the abundant instances that prove the co-existence of the Christian and the Pagan symbols of belief in Dante's mind, whenever he composed poetry. This union of the imagery of Christianity and Polytheism, forms the one primary hue in which he dipt the whole woof of his creations, whatever other bright colours he intended to disperse here and there over it. His commentator may there. fore merit pardon, if, in anxiety to impress this truth, he should fall into repetitions. It is the fine thread which guides through all the varied mazes, and into the most secret recesses, and up to the fountain-head of Dante's poetry; it is the only light in which his pictures can be distinguished completely, exhibiting their multifarious groups in perfect harmony; it is the cup, of which he who has not quaffed will find little in the Divine

CANTO VIII.

in

Comedy but confusion and extravagance congruous metaphors to deck still more incongruous opinions, and a perpetual medley of pedantry and superstition.

This approach of the Angel who is to force the entrance of Dis (for such we shall find him) brings to recollection that of Raphael:

Eastward among those trees, what glorious shape
Comes this way moving (1)!

Yet the passage in Dante may be interpreted in
two ways:
either the Angel is for an instant visi-
ble on the skirt of one of the upper circles, as
he is descending, and is lost to sight in the obscu-
rity of the lower ones; or Virgil predicts what he
is only conscious of, without seeing it. This latter
is the common interpretation; but the former is
the more picturesque, and, in my mind, the
always recollecting that the celestial
messenger' after that momentary apparition, be-
comes again invisible. In his viewless approaching
we have the Aeneid:

true one

At Venus obscuro gradientes aëre sæpsit,
Et multo nebulæ circùm Dea fudit amictu,
Cernere ne quis eos... (2).

(1) Paradise Lost, Book v.

(2) Lib. 1. v. 411.

END OF VOL. I.

PAGE

ERRATA

in a few copies :

31 for lupinar read lupanar.

50 for independance read independence. 483 for witheld read withheld.

484 for vere read verè.

486 for comparison read companion,
487 for intemperence read intemperance.

T