ANTEUS.

Dante and Virgil, in the lowest gulf but one, find the ancient giants bound on rocks or wedged in caverns. From one of these they solicit help, namely,a lift downward into the last abyss, where Lucifer (three-faced, and eternally worrying at each of his mouths, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius) is embedded in adamantine ice. The negotiation is conducted with great finesse on the part of Virgil, who assails the monster on his weak side, the “laudum immensa cupido," unextinguished even there, where "hope never comes;" the poet himself, at the same time, betraying, though from the lips of his guide, that pride of conscious power to praise or give renown, which often and unexpectedly throws a passing glory over his human nature, even when the infirmity of the latter is most frankly confessed.

-WE journey'd on, and reach'd Anteus,

Who stood above the pit's mouth five good ells,
Besides his head.- -"O thou! who in the field
Of fortune, that made Scipio glory's heir,
When Hannibal with all his veterans fled,
Didst catch a hundred lions for thy prey;

And 'tis believed, that, in their war with heaven,

Hadst thou been with thy brethren they had triumph'd, -Land us below-(nay, scowl not thus askance)—

Where cold congeals Cocytus. Force us not

Aid to implore of Tithyus or of Typhon :
This man can give thee what ye covet here;

Bow then, nor grin upon us like a griffin ;*
He yet can make thee famous through the world,
For he still lives, and counts on length of days,
If grace remove him not before his time."

So spake my Master, and in haste the giant

Stretch'd forth the hand, whose gripe cramp'd Hercules, To take us up-when Virgil felt his grasp,

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'Hither," he cried,

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come hither, let me hold thee;"

He caught me, and we both became one burden.

Then, as the tower of Carisenda seems

"Torcer lo grifo," an Italian phrase for "to make an ugly face."

Itself in motion, to the eye beneath,
When a cloud sails above its leaning top;
So seem'd Anteus, when I watch'd him bend,
And wish'd myself elsewhere; but easily,
Down in the gulf that gorges Lucifer
And Judas, he deposited us twain:

Nor stooping stay'd he, but anon, erect,

Rose like a ship's mast from the rocking surge.

Dell' Inferno, canto xxxi.

CAIN.

If, in the scene with Anteus, the emphasis of silence, and the perspicuity of graphic delineation, are happily exemplified, in the following brief passage the force of mere sounds (where no image or personification is presented to the eye) is made to produce a surprising effect. On one of the sloping mazes of the spiral Hill of Purgatory, the travellers having parted with some agreeable company, which had long engaged them, it is said :

We knew those friendly spirits heard us going,
Their silence therefore show'd our path was right:
Now left alone, proceeding on our journey,
Like lightning when it rends the region, rush'd

A voice beside us, lamentably crying,

"Ah! every one that findeth me shall slay me!"* And then it fled, like thunder that explodes,

All in a moment, from the riven cloud :

-Scarce from that sound our ears had truce, when lo! Brake forth another, with astounding peal,

"I am Aglauros who was turn'd to stone."+ Closer behind the poet's back I cower'd, -Then was the air in every quarter still.

* Genesis iv. 14.

Del Purgatorio, canto xiv.

Ovid. Metam. lib. ii.

FARINATA.

In the tenth canto of the "Inferno," where heretics are described as being tormented in tombs of fire, the lids of which are suspended over them till the day of judgment, Dante finds Farinata D'Uberti, an illustrious commander of the Ghibellines, (the adherents of the emperor,) who, at the battle of Monte Aperto, in 1260, had so utterly defeated the Guelfs (the Pope's party) of Florence, that the city lay at the mercy of its enemies, by whom counsel was taken to rase it to the ground; but Farinata, because his bowels yearned towards the place of his nativity, stood up alone to oppose the barbarous design; and partly by monace-having drawn his sword in the midst of the assembly-and partly by persuasion, preserved it from destruction. Notwithstanding this patriotic interference, when the Guelfs afterwards regained the ascendency, he and his kindred were most inveterately proscribed there, and doomed to perpetual exile.

The interview between Dante and this magnanimous foe, in those

"Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell; hope never comes,

That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed,"

(Paradise Lost, book i.)

is painted with transcendent power of colouring, and stern, undecorated energy of style. To prepare the reader for well understanding the episode, which abruptly breaks through the order of this high dramatic scene, it is necessary to state that Cavalcante Cavalcanti, whose head appears out of an adjacent sepulchre, was the father of Guido Cavalcanti, a poet, the particular friend of Dante, and chief of the Bianchi party, who were banished during his priorship.

"O TUSCAN! Thou, who, through this realm of fire,
Alive dost walk, thus courteously conversing,
Pause, if it please thee here. Thy dialect
Proclaims thy lineage from that noble land,
Which I perhaps too much have wrong'd."

Such sounds

Suddenly issued forth from one of those
Sepulchral caverns.-Tremblingly I crept
A little nearer to my guide; but he

Cried, "Turn again! what wouldst thou do? Behold
'Tis Farinata, that hath raised himself:

There mayst thou see him, upward from the loins."
-Already had I fix'd mine eyes on his,

Who stood, with bust and visage so erect,

As though he look'd on hell itself with scorn.

My Master then, with prompt and resolute hands,
Thrust me among the charnel-vaults towards him,
Saying "Thy words be plain!" When I had reach'd
His tombstone-foot, he look'd at me awhile

As in disdain; then loftily demanded,—
"Who were thine ancestors?"

-Eager to tell,

Naught I conceal'd, but utter'd all the truth.
Arching his brow a little, he return'd,

"Bitter antagonists of mine, of me,

And of my party, were thy sires; but twice
I scatter'd them."

"If scatter'd twice," said I,

"Once and again they came from all sides back,

A lesson, which thy friends have not well learn'd."
Just then, a second figure, at his side,

Emerged to view; unveil'd above the chin,

And kneeling, as methought.-It look'd around
So wistfully, as though it hoped to find

Some other with me; but, that hope dispell'd,

Weeping it spake :-"If through this dungeon-gloom
Grandeur of genius guide thy venturous way,
My son !-Where is he?-and why not with thee?"
Then I to him:-"Not of myself I came ;
He who awaits me yonder brought me hither,
-One whom perhaps thy Guido held in scorn."4
His speech and form of penance had already

Taught me his name; my words were therefore pointed.
Upstarting he exclaim'd,-" How?-saidst thou held?
Lives he not then? and doth not heaven's sweet light
Fall on his eyes?"-when I was slow to answer,
Backward he sunk and reappear'd no more.

Meanwhile that other most majestic form,
Near which I stood, neither changed countenance,
Nor turn'd his neck, nor lean'd to either side:
"And if," quoth he, our first debate resuming,

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They have not well that lesson learn'd, the thought Torments me more than this infernal bed:

And yet, not fifty times her changing face,

Who here reigns sovereign, shall be re-illumined,
Ere thou shalt know how hard that lesson is.*
-But tell me so mayst thou return in peace
To the dear world above !-why are thy people
In all their acts so mad against my race?"

"The slaughter and discomfiture," said I,
"That turn'd the river red at Mont' Aperto,
Have caused such dire proscription in our temples."
He shook his head, deep-sighing, and rejoin'd:
"I was not there alone, nor without cause
Engaged with others; but I was alone,
And stood in her defence with open brow,
When all our council, with one voice, decreed,
That Florence should be rased from her foundation."
"So may thy kindred find repose, as thou
Shalt loose a knot which hath entangled me!"
Thus I adjured him :-"Ye foresee what time.
(If rightly I have learn'd) will bring to pass,
But to the present, otherwise, are blind."

"We see, like him that hath an evil eye,
Far distant things," said he, "so highest God
Enlightens us, but yet when they approach,
Or when they are, our intellect falls short;
Nor can we know, save by report from others,
Aught of the state of man below the sun;"

Hence mayst thou comprehend, how all our knowledge
Shall cease for ever from that point, which shuts
The portal of the future."

At that moment,

Compunction smote me for my recent fault,

And I cried out :-"O tell that fallen one,
His son is yet among the living :—say,

*He foretells Dante's own expulsion from his country, within fifty lunar months.