The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

with his own hand for Petrarca, has Re Giovanni. Out of seventy-nine Codici examined by Barlow, he says, Study of the Divina Commedia, p. 153, “Only five were found with the correct reading⁠—re giovane.⁠ ⁠… The reading re giovane is not found in any of the early editions, nor is it noticed by any of the early commentators.” See also Ginguené, Histoire littéraire de l’Italie, II 586, where the subject is elaborately discussed, and the note of Biagioli, who takes the opposite side of the question.

Henry II of England had four sons, all of whom were more or less rebellious against him. They were, Henry, surnamed Curt-Mantle, and called by the Troubadours and novelists of his time “The Young King,” because he was crowned during his father’s life; Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Count of Guienne and Poitou; Geoffroy, Duke of Brittany; and John Lackland. Henry was the only one of these who bore the title of king at the time in question. Bertrand de Born was on terms of intimacy with him, and speaks of him in his poems as lo Reys joves, sometimes lauding, and sometimes reproving him. One of the best of these poems is his Complainte, on the death of Henry, which took place in 1183, from disease, say some accounts, from the bolt of a crossbow say others. He complains that he has lost “the best king that was ever born of mother”; and goes on to say, “King of the courteous, and emperor of the valiant, you would have been Seigneur if you had lived longer; for you bore the name of the Young King, and were the chief and peer of youth. Ay! hauberk and sword, and beautiful buckler, helmet and gonfalon, and purpoint and sark, and joy and love, there is none to maintain them!” See Raynouard, Choix de Poésies, IV 49.

In the Bible Guiot de Provins, Barbazan, Fabliaux et Contes, II 518, he is spoken of as

“Il jones Rois,
Li proux, li saiges, li cortois.”

In the Cento Novelle Antiche, XVIII, XIX, XXXV, he is called Il Re Giovane; and in Roger de Wendover’s Flowers of History, AD 1179⁠–⁠1183, “Henry the Young King.”

It was to him that Bertrand de Born “gave the evil counsels,” embroiling him with his father and his brothers. Therefore, when the commentators challenge us as Pistol does Shallow, “Under which king, Bezonian? speak or die!” I think we must answer as Shallow does, “Under King Harry.” ↩

See 2 Samuel 17:1, 2:⁠—

“Moreover, Ahithophel said unto Absalom, let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night. And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak-handed, and will make him afraid; and all the people that are with him shall flee; and I will smite the king only.”

Dryden, in his poem of Absalom and Achitopbel, gives this portrait of the latter:⁠—

“Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst;
For close designs and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfix’d in principles and place;
In power unpleas’d, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o’er inform’d the tenement of clay.”

Then he puts into the mouth of Achitophel the following description of Absalom:⁠—

“Auspicious prince, at whose nativity
Some royal planet rul’d the southern sky;
Thy longing country’s darling and desire;
Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire;
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promised land;
Whose dawning day, in every distant age,
Has exercised the sacred prophet’s rage;
The people’s prayer, the glad diviner’s theme,
The young men’s vision, and the old men’s dream.”

↩

The Tenth and last “cloister of Malebolge,” where

“Justice infallible
Punishes forgers,”

and falsifiers of all kinds. This Canto is devoted to the alchemists. ↩

Geri del Bello was a disreputable member of the Alighieri family, and was murdered by one of the Sacchetti. His death was afterwards avenged by his brother, who in turn slew one of the Sacchetti at the door of his house. ↩

Bertrand de Born. ↩

Like the ghost of Ajax in the Odyssey, XI:⁠—

“He answered me not at all, but went to Erebus amongst the other souls of the dead.”

↩

Dante seems to share the feeling of the Italian vendetta, which required retaliation from some member of the injured family.

“Among the Italians of this age,” says Napier, Florentine History, I Ch. VII, “and for centuries after, private offence was never forgotten until revenged, and generally involved a succession of mutual injuries; vengeance was not only considered lawful and just, but a positive duty, dishonorable to omit; and, as may be learned from ancient private journals, it was sometimes allowed to sleep for five-and-thirty years, and then suddenly struck a victim who perhaps had not yet seen the light when the original injury was inflicted.” ↩

The Val di Chiana, near Arezzo, was in Dante’s time marshy and pestilential. Now, by the effect of drainage, it is one of the most beautiful and fruitful of the Tuscan valleys. The Maremma was and is notoriously unhealthy; see Note 181, and Sardinia would seem to have shared its ill repute. ↩

Forgers or falsifiers in a general sense. The “false semblaunt” of Gower, Confessio Amantis, II:⁠—

“Of fals semblaunt if I shall telle,
Above all other it is the welle
Out of the which deceipte floweth.”

They are registered here on earth to be punished hereafter. ↩

The plague of Aegina is described by Ovid, Metamorph. VII, Stonestreet’s Tr.:⁠—

“Their black dry tongues are swelled, and scarce can move,
And short thick sighs from panting