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

drew nigh, was already beginning to change from vermilion to orange.”

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Argument used in the sense of means, or appliances, as in Inferno XXXI 55. ↩

Cervantes says in Don Quixote, Pt. I ch. 12, that the student Crisostomo “had a face like a benediction.” ↩

Sackville, in his “Induction” to the Mirror for Magistrates, says:⁠—

“Whiles Scorpio dreading Sagittarius’ dart
Whose bow prest bent in fight the string had slipped,
Down slid into the ocean flood apart.”

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Odyssey, XI, Buckley’s Tr.:⁠—

“But I, meditating in my mind, wished to lay hold of the soul of my departed mother. Thrice indeed I essayed it, and my mind urged me to lay hold of it, but thrice it flew from my hands, like unto a shadow, or even to a dream.”

And Aeneid, VI, Davidson’s Tr.:⁠—

“There thrice he attempted to throw his arms around his neck; thrice the phantom, grasped in vain, escaped his hold, like the fleet gales, or resembling most a fugitive dream.”

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Casella was a Florentine musician and friend of Dante, who here speaks to him with so much tenderness and affection as to make us regret that nothing more is known of him. Milton alludes to him in his Sonnet to Mr. H. Lawes:⁠—

“Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he woo’d to sing
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.”

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The first three months of the year of Jubilee, 1300. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, VI 285, thus describes it:⁠—

“All Europe was in a frenzy of religious zeal. Throughout the year the roads in the remotest parts of Germany, Hungary, Britain, were crowded with pilgrims of all ages, of both sexes. A Savoyard above one hundred years old determined to see the tombs of the Apostles before he died. There were at times two hundred thousand strangers at Rome. During the year (no doubt the calculations were loose and vague) the city was visited by millions of pilgrims. At one time, so vast was the press both within and without the walls, that openings were broken for ingress and egress. Many people were trampled down, and perished by suffocation.⁠ ⁠… Lodgings were exorbitantly dear, forage scarce; but the ordinary food of man, bread, meat, wine, and fish, was sold in great plenty and at moderate prices. The oblations were beyond calculation. It is reported by an eyewitness that two priests stood with rakes in their hands sweeping the uncounted gold and silver from the altars. Nor was this tribute, like offerings or subsidies for Crusades, to be devoted to special uses, the accoutrements, provisions, freight of armies. It was entirely at the free and irresponsible disposal of the Pope. Christendom of its own accord was heaping at the Pope’s feet this extraordinary custom; and receiving back the gift of pardon and everlasting life.”

See also Note 253. ↩

The seashore of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, where the souls of those who were saved assembled, and were received by the Celestial Pilot, who transported them to the island of Purgatory. Minutius Felix, a Roman lawyer of the third century, makes it the scene of his Octavius, and draws this pleasant picture of the sands and the sea. Reeves’s Tr., p. 37:⁠—

“It was vacation-time, and that gave me aloose from my business at the bar; for it was the season after the summer’s heat, when autumn promised fair, and put on the face of temperate. We set out, therefore, in the morning early, and as we were walking upon the seashore, and a kindly breeze fanned and refreshed our limbs, and the yielding sand softly submitted to our feet and made it delicious travelling, Cascilius on a sudden espied the statue of Serapis, and, according to the vulgar mode of superstition, raised his hand to his mouth, and paid his adoration in kisses. Upon which Octavius, addressing himself to me, said: ‘It is not well done, my brother Marcus, thus to leave your inseparable companion in the depth of Vulgar darkness, and to suffer him, in so clear a day, to stumble upon stones; stones, indeed, of figure, and anointed with oil, and crowned; but stones, however, still they are;⁠—for you cannot but be sensible that your permitting so foul an error in your friend redounds no less to your disgrace than his.’ This discourse of his held us through half the city; and now we began to find ourselves upon the free and open shore. There the gently washing waves had spread the extremest sands into the order of an artificial walk; and as the sea always expresses some roughness in his looks, even when the winds are still, although he did not roll in foam and angry surges to the shore, yet were we much delighted, as we walked upon the edges of the water, to see the crisping, frizzly waves glide in snaky folds, one while playing against our feet, and then again retiring and lost in the devouring ocean. Softly, then, and calmly as the sea about us, we travelled on, and kept upon the brim of the gently declining shore, beguiling the way with our stories.”

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This is the first line of the second canzone of the Convito. ↩

So in Paradiso, XXVI 139:⁠—

“The mount that rises highest o’er the sea.”

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The tomb of Virgil is on the promontory of Pausilippo, overlooking the Bay of Naples. The inscription upon it is:⁠—

Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc
Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces.

“The epitaph,” says Eustace, Classical Tour, I 499, “which, though not genuine, is yet ancient, was inscribed by order of the Duke of Pescolangiano, then proprietor of the place, on a marble slab placed in the side of the