My senses down, when the true path I left;

But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where closed
The valley that had pierced my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,1
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
Then was a little respite to the fear,
That in my heart's recesses2 deep had lain
All of that night, so pitifully pass'd:
And as a man, with difficult short breath,
Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore,
Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands
At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet fail'd,
Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits
That none hath pass'd and lived. My weary frame
After short pause recomforted, again

I journey'd on over that lonely steep,

The hinder foot still firmer. Scarce the ascent
Began, when lo! a panther, nimble, light,
And cover'd with a speckled skin, appear'd;
Nor, when it saw me, vanish'd; rather strove
To check my onward going; that oft-times,
With purpose to retrace my steps, I turn'd.

6

The hour was morning's prime, and on his way Aloft the sun ascended with those stars, That with him rose when Love divine first moved Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope All things conspired to fill

me,

the gay skin

1 That planet's beam.] The sun.

2 My heart's recesses.] Nel lago del cuor.

Lombardi cites an imitation of this by Redi in his Ditirambo:
I buon vini son quegli, che acquetano
Le procelle si fosche e rubelle,

Che nel lago del cuor l'anime inquietano.

3 Turns.] So in our Poet's second psalm: Come colui, che andando per lo bosco,

Da spino punto, a quel si volge e guarda

Even as one, in passing through a wood,

Pierced by a thorn, at which he turns and looks.

4 The hinder foot.] It is to be remembered, that in ascending a hill the weight of the body rests on the hinder foot.

5 A panther.] Pleasure or luxury.

6 With those stars.] The sun was in Aries, in which sign he supposes it to have begun its course at the creation.

The gay skin.] A late editor of the Divina Commedia, Signor Zotti, has spoken of the present translation as the

Of that swift animal, the matin dawn,

A she-wolf2

And the sweet season. Soon that joy was chased,
And by new dread succeeded, when in view
A lion' came, 'gainst me as it appear'd,
With his head held aloft and hunger-mad,
That e'en the air was fear-struck.
Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem'd
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear
O'erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appall'd,
That of the height all hope I lost.

As one,

Who, with his gain elated, sees the time
When all unwares is gone, he inwardly

only one that has rendered this passage rightly: but Mr. Hayley had shown me the way, in his very skilful version of the first three Cantos of the Inferno, inserted in the notes to his Essay on Epic Poetry:

I now was raised to hope sublime

By these bright omens of my fate benign,

The beauteous beast and the sweet hour of prime.

All the Commentators, whom I have seen, understand our Poet to say that the season of the year and the hour of the day induced him to hope for the gay skin of the panther; and there is something in the sixteenth Canto, verse 107, which countenances their interpretation, although that which I have followed still appears to me the more probable.

1 A lion.] Pride or ambition.

A she-wolf.] Avarice

It cannot be doubted that the image of these three beasts coming against him is taken by our author from the prophet Jeremiah, v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities." Rossetti, following Dionisi and other later Commentators, interprets Dante's leopard to denote Florence, his lion the king of France, and his wolf the Court of Rome. It is far from improbable that our author might have had a second allegory of this sort in his view; even as Spenser in the introductory letter to his poem, tells us that "in the Faery Queen he meant Glory in his general intention, but in his particular he conceived the most excellent and glorious person of his sovereign the Queen." "And yet," he adds, "in some places else I do otherwise shadow her." Such involution of allegorical meanings may well be supposed to have been frequently present to the mind of Dante throughout the composition of this poem. Whether his acute and eloquent interpreter, Rossetti, may not have been carried much too far in the pursuit of a favorite hypothesis, is another question; and I must avow my disbelief of the secret jargon imputed to our poet and the other writers of that time in the Comment on the Divina Commedia and in the Spirito Antipapale, the latter of which works is familiarized to the English reader in Miss Ward's faithful translation.

Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I,
Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace,
Who coming o'er against me, by degrees
Impell'd me where the sun in silence rests.1
While to the lower space with backward step
I fell, my ken discern'd the form of one

[speech. Whose voice seem'd faint through long disuse of When him in that great desert I espied, "Have mercy on me," cried I out aloud, "Spirit! or living man! whate'er thou be."

He answered: "Now not man, man once I was, And born of Lombard parents, Mantuans both By country, when the power of Julius2 yet Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was pass'd, Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time Of fabled deities and false. A bard Was I, and made Anchises' upright son The subject of my song, who came from Troy, When the flames prey'd on Ilium's haughty towers.3 But thou, say wherefore to such perils past Return'st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?" "And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring From which such copious floods of eloquence. Have issued?" I with front abash'd replied. "Glory and light of all the tuneful train! May it avail me, that I long with zeal Have sought thy volume, and with love immense

1 Where the sun in silence rests.]

The sun to me is dark,

And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

Milton, Sam. Agon.

The same metaphor will recur, Canto v. verse 29.

Into a place I came

Where light was silent all.

2 When the power of Julius.]

Nacqui sub Julio, ancorché fosse tardi.

This is explained by the Commentators: "Although it were rather late with respect to my birth, before Julius Cæsar assumed the supreme authority, and made himself perpetual dictator." Virgil, indeed, was born twenty-five years before that event.

3 Ilium's haughty towers.]

Ilium.

Ceciditque superbum

Virgil, Æn. iii. 3.

Have conn'd it o'er. My master thou, and guide!'
Thou he from whom alone I have derived
That style, which for its beauty into fame
Exalts me.
See the beast, from whom I fled.
O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!
For every vein and pulse throughout my frame
She hath made tremble." He, soon as he saw

That I was weeping, answer'd,

66 Thou must needs

Another way pursue, if thou wouldst 'scape
From out that savage wilderness. This beast,
At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none
To pass, and no less hind'rance makes than death:
So bad and so accursed in her kind,

That never sated is her ravenous will,
Still after food2 more craving than before.
To many an animal in wedlock vile

She fastens, and shall yet to many more,
Until that greyhound3 come, who shall destroy
Her with sharp pain. He will not life support
By earth nor its base metals, but by love,
Wisdom, and virtue; and his land shall be
The land 'twixt either Feltro. In his might

1 My master thou, and guide.]

Tu se' lo mio maestro, e'l mio autore,
Tu se' solo colui.

Thou art my father, thou my author, thou.

2 Still after food.] So Frezzi:

Milton, P. L., ii. 864.

La voglia sempre ha fame, e mai non s'empie.
Ed al più pasto più riman digiuna.

Il Quadriregio, lib. ii. cap. xi. Venturi observes that the verse in the original is borrowed by Berni.

3 That greyhound.] This passage has been commonly understood as a eulogium on the liberal spirit of his Veronese patron, Can Grande della Scala.

4 'Twixt either Feltro.] Verona, the country of Can della Scala, is situated between Feltro, a city in the Marca Trivigiana, and Monte Feltro, a city in the territory of Urbino.

But Dante perhaps does not merely point out the place of Can Grande's nativity, for he may allude further to a prophecy, ascribed to Michael Scot, which imported that the Dog of Verona would be lord of Padua and of all the Marca Trivigiana." It was fulfilled in the year 1329, a little before Can Grande's death. See G. Villani Hist. 1. x. cap. cv. and cxli. and some lively criticism by Gasparo Gozzi, entitled Giudizio degli Antichi Poeti, &c., printed at the end of the Zatta edition of Dante, t. iv. part ii. p. 15. The prophecy, it is likely, was a forgery; for Michael died before 1300, when

Shall safety to Italia's plains' arise,
For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure,
Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell.

He, with incessant chase, through every town
Shall worry, until he to hell at length
Restore her, thence by envy first let loose.
I, for thy profit pondering, now devise

That thou mayst follow me; and I, thy guide,
Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,
Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see
Spirits of old tormented, who invoke

A second death;2 and those next view, who dwell
Content in fire, for that they hope to come,
Whene'er the time may be, among the blest,
Into whose regions if thou then desire

To ascend, a spirit worthier than I

Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart,
Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King,
Who reigns above, a rebel to his law
Adjudges me; and therefore hath decreed

That, to his city, none through me should come.
He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds
His citadel and throne. O happy those,
Whom there he chooses!" I to him in few:
"Bard! by that God, whom thou didst not adore,

Can Grande was only nine years old. See Hell, xx. 115, and Par. xvii. 75. Troya has given a new interpretation to Dante's prediction, which he applies to Uguccione della Faggiola, whose country also was situated between two Feltros. See the Veltro Allegorico di Dante, p. 110. But after all the pains he has taken, this very able writer fails to make it clear that Uguccione, though he acted a prominent part as a Ghibeline leader, is intended here or in Purgatory, c. xxxiii. 38. The main proofs rest on an ambiguous report mentioned by Boccaccio of the Inferno being dedicated to him, and on a suspicious letter attributed to a certain friar Ilario, in which the friar describes Dante addressing him as a stranger, and desiring him to convey that portion of the poem to Uguccione. There is no direct allusion to him throughout the Divina Commedia, as there is to the other chief public protectors of our poet during his exile.

1 Italia's plains.] "Umile Italia," from Virgil, Æn., lib. iii. 522.

Italiam.

Humilemque videmus

2 A second death.] "And in these days men shall seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." Rev. ix. 6.

3 Content in fire.] The spirits in Purgatory.

4 A spirit worthier.] Beatrice, who conducts the poet through Paradise.