CANTO. It.

"the wicked came upon me like a wide breaking in of waters; in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me ..... Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul, the proud waters had gone over our soul (1)." Death is put for guilt and folly; bearing again the same. identical sense which it does in the former Canto (as I have shown on the authority of Dante himself) and which is indeed one of the commonest Biblical metaphors (2).

M. Biagioli, in his late comment, calls the passage about the three ladies the most obscure and difficult of any throughout the whole Divine Comedy (3): and although I am not in this exactly of his opinion, yet it is certain that the various allegorical subtilties introduced by those who pretend to expound it, suffice to confuse any head. Taking the obvious literal meaning however (in conformity to the unpresuming spirit, of which these comments made candid profession, from the first) I trust, I have been able to divest it of all obscurity. I suppose there is no man at Dante's time of life without some dear deceased friends, who, it is soothing to think, are employed in watching over him from

(1) Job, xxx. 14.-Psalms, cxxiv. 4.

(2) Comment, Hell, Canto 1. p. 13.

(3) Ecco il più difficile, e sin ora il meno inteso luogo della Divina Commedia. Comento, Vol. 1. p. 40.

CANTO 11.

that lofty region of light and happiness whither their spirits are gone. We all, I hope, share such a pleasing though melancholy persuasion. Dante then, in expressing it, did nothing but what was natural; and, if there is any singularity in his doing so, it is only that he is singularly true to nature. It was an encomium on his own virtue as well as theirs, to represent the three females whom he had admired on earth as become three Saints in Paradise. One of them, he tells us, is there a personification of supreme Philosophy; and what virtues the other two personify (or whether any) he does not say. The first explanation was necessary for his literary purposes; the others were not. Gentucca and Lucia may be held to symbolize Charity and Grace, or any other divine attributes, at the reader's good pleasure. No confusion is produced by it. But what is manifest, is, that they, as well as Beatrice, were once earthly charmers and are now celestial Saints. This is highly poetic, because highly tender, natural and sublime. There is nothing in this hard to understand; and this, and no more than this, is in the text. If the comments on it are unintelligible, that is the fault of those who wrote them, and not of the poet. Were it true then, that this were 'the most difficult and least intelligible passage in the Divine Comedy,' no eminent poet were ever less liable to a charge of obscurity than Dante.

U.

CXXVII.

CANTO II.

In the last-cited comment are noted the verses which Alfieri had transcribed from this poem; and it is certainly not uninteresting to be thus informed of the opinion of so distinguished a personage as Alfieri: although that opinion is much qualified by his declaration, on a re-perusal of the Divine Comedy some years later, that if he were then to write down every line in it that struck him as worthy of remark, he would not omit 'a single iota of the whole composition; being persuaded more is to be learned from even its very errors, than from the beauties of others (1).' The triplet before us is one of the transcribed. Nothing in fact can be more finished aud elegant; and it exhibits a fair proof, that, if harmony and polish are not the characteristics of Dante, it is because he chose they should not be so; and threw them designedly into the back-ground, in order that his sublimity and learning might stand more prominent.

(1) ..... più s'impara negli errori di questo, che nelle bellezze degli altri. Biagioli. Comento. Pref. p. xxxiv.

I have already said the preceding Cantos are in

troductory so that here properly begins Hell, or the first of the three parts, or Canticles, into which the DIVINE COMEDY is divided. Within the infernal gate lies the vestibule, whose inner boundary is a stream named, with classical deference, Acheron; over which the souls are ferried by an old man, who, with the same ingenuous respect for antiquity, is called Charon. After some difficulty, this latter is persuaded to embark our travellers; and, when they appear to be about entering his bark, Dante falls down in a stupor. Such is the subject of this Canto: whose resemblance to the opening of the sixth book of the Aeneid is perceived at once. The vestibule in both is represented as a place of sorrow and frightful sights: Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia curæ etc. (1)

(1) Lib vr. v. 273.

CANTO HT.

although it in both be the road that leads to a sweet region of repose, as well as to the receptacles of pain and guilt, -to Elysium and Limbo, as well as to Tartarus and the bottomless pit. But it is time to say something of the form of Dante's hella previous acquaintance with which is an almost indispensable requisite. For he here really employed those nine circles, which (groundlessly perhaps) were attributed to the Aeneid by Servius; and I suppose he did so in consequence of having studied that commentator. This then is one of the radical differences between the two poems, (the Aeneid and the Divine Comedy) that an infernal topography is a necessary preliminary to the understanding of the one, and not of the other. Virgil possibly never imagined such divisions, and they may be the mere inventions of the critics; but Dante certainly did: to whom a clear order was, in this particular, of more moment; since he determined on dedicating two thirds of his work to the elucidation of a subject only cursorily introduced in the Aeneid, and therefore dispatched there in a portion of one sin gle book out of twelve.

Substracting all its expiatory punishments (that is the second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth of the commentator's circles, which, as I before said (1), make in reality one homogeneous

(1) Hell, Comment Canto 11. p 138.