Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay He, above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent, Stood like a tower: his form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared On half the nations, and with fear of change As when far off at sea a fleet descried Close sailing from Bengala or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed On the other side, Satan, alarmed, His stature reached the sky, and on his crest Sat horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp 38. The Ottimo and Benvenuto both interpret the three faces as symbolizing Ignorance, Hatred, and Impotence. Others interpret them as signifying the three quarters of the then known world, Europe, Asia, and Africa. 45. Æthiopia; the region about the Cataracts of the Nile. 48. Milton, Parad. Lost, II. 527 : At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke 55. Landor in his Pentameron, 527, makes Petrarca say : "This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labors of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things, and penetrating the deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and sadness.” 62. Gabrielle Rossetti, Spirito Antipapale, I. 75, Miss Ward's Tr., says: "The three spirits, who hang from the mouths of his Satan, are Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. The poet's reason for selecting those names has never yet been satisfactorily accounted for; but we have no hesitation in pronouncing it to have been this, he considered the Pope not only a betrayer and seller of Christ, Where gainful merchandise is made of Christ throughout the livelong day,' (Parad. XVII.,) and for that reason put Judas into his centre mouth; but a traitor and rebel to Cæsar, and therefore placed Brutus and Cassius in the other two mouths; for the Pope, who was originally no more than Cæsar's vicar, became his enemy, and usurped the capital of his empire, and the supreme authority. His treason to Christ was not discovered by the world in general; hence the face of Judas is hidden, He that hath his head within, and plies the feet without' (Inf. XXXIV.) ; his treason to Cæsar was open and manifest, therefore Brutus and Cassius show their faces." He adds in a note: "The situation of Judas is the same as that of the Popes who were guilty of simony." 68. The evening of Holy Saturday. 77. Iliad, V. 305: "With this he struck the hip of Æneas, where the thigh turns on the hip." 66 95. The canonical day, from sunrise to sunset, was divided into four equal parts, called in Italian Terza, Sesta, Nona, and Vespro, and varying in length with the change of season. “These hours,” says Dante, Convito, III. 6, are short or long. . . according as day and night increase or diminish." Terza was the first division after sunrise ; and at the equinox would be from six till nine. Consequently mezza terza, or middle tierce, would be half past seven. 114. Jerusalem. 125. The Mountain of Purgatory, rising out of the sea at a point directly opposite Jerusalem, upon the other side of the globe. It is an island in the South Pacific Ocean. 130. This brooklet is Lethe, whose source is on the summit of the Mountain of Purgatory, flowing down to mingle with Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon, and form Cocytus. See Cantó XIV. 136. 138. It will be observed that each of the three divisions of the Divine Comedy ends with the word "Stars," suggesting and symbolizing endless aspiration. At the end of the Inferno Dante "re-beholds the stars"; at the end of the Purgatorio he is "ready to ascend to the stars"; at the end of the Paradiso he feels the power of "that Love which moves the sun and other stars." He is now looking upon the morning stars of Easter Sunday. ILLUSTRATIONS L'OTTIMO COMENTO. Inferno, X. 85. I, THE writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say in his rhymes what they were not wont to express for other poets. VILLANI'S NOTICE OF DANTE. Cronica, Lib. IX. cap. 136. Tr. in Napier's Florentine History, Book I. ch. 16. In the month of July, 1321, died the Poet Dante Alighieri of Florence, in the city of Ravenna in Romagna, after his return from an embassy to Venice for the Lords of Polenta with whom he resided; and in Ravenna before the door of the principal church he was interred with high honor, in the habit of a poet and great philosopher. He died in banishment from the community of Florence, at the age of about fifty-six. This Dante was an honorable and ancient citizen of Porta San Piero at Florence, and our neighbor; and his exile from Florence was on the occasion of Charles of Valois, of the house of France, coming to Florence in 1301, and the expulsion of the White party, as has already in its place been mentioned. The said Dante was of the supreme governors of our city, and of that party although a Guelf; and therefore without any other crime was with the said White party expelled and banished from Florence; and he went to the University of Bologna, and into many parts of the world. This was a great and learned person in almost every science, although a layman; he was a consummate poet and philosopher and rhetorician; as perfect in prose and verse as he was in public speaking a most noble orator; in rhyming excellent, with the most polished and beautiful style that ever appeared in our language up to his time or since. He wrote in his youth the book of The Early Life of Love, and afterwards when in exile made twenty moral and amorous canzonets very excellent, and amongst other things three noble epistles one he sent to the Florentine government, complaining of his undeserved exile; another to the Emperor Henry when he was at the siege of Brescia, reprehending him for his delay, and almost prophesying; the third to the Italian cardinals during the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement, urging them to agree in electing an Italian Pope; all in Latin, with noble precepts and excellent sentences and authorities, which were much commended by the wise and learned. And he wrote the Commedia, where, in polished verse and with great and subtile arguments, moral, natural, astrological, philosophical, and theological, with new and beautiful figures, similes, and poetical graces, he composed and treated in a hundred chapters or cantos of the existence of hell, purgatory, and paradise; so loftily as may be said of it, that whoever is of subtile intellect may by his said treatise perceive and understand. He was well pleased in this poem to blame and cry out, in the manner of poets, in some places perhaps more than he ought to have done; but it may be that his exile made him do so. He also wrote the Monarchia, where he treats of the office of popes and emperors. And he began a comment on fourteen of the abovenamed moral canzonets in the vulgar tongue, which in consequence of his death is found imperfect except on three, which to judge from what is seen would have proved a lofty, beautiful, subtile, and most important work; because it is equally ornamented with noble opinions and fine philosophical and astrological reasoning. Besides these he composed a little book which he entitled De Vulgari Eloquentia, of which he promised to make four books, but only two are to be found, perhaps in consequence of his early death; where, |