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

note in the green vales, tenanting the dark-hued ivy and the leafy grove of the god, untrodden [by mortal foot], teeming with fruits, impervious to the sun, and unshaken by the winds of every storm; where Bacchus ever roams in revelry companioning his divine nurses. And ever day by day the narcissus, with its beauteous clusters, burst into bloom by heaven’s dew, the ancient coronet of the mighty goddesses, and the saffron with golden ray; nor do the sleepless founts that feed the channels of Cephissus fail, but ever, each day, it rushes o’er the plains with its stainless wave, fertilizing the bosom of the earth; nor have the choirs of the Muses spurned this clime; nor Venus, too, of the golden rein. And there is a tree, such as I hear not to have ever sprung in the land of Asia, nor in the mighty Doric island of Pelops, a tree unplanted by hand, of spontaneous growth, terror of the hostile spear, which flourishes chiefly in this region, the leaf of the azure olive that nourishes our young. This shall neither any one in youth nor in old age, marking for destruction, and having laid it waste with his hand, set its divinity at naught; for the eye that never closes of Morian Jove regards it, and the blue-eyed Minerva.”

We have also Homer’s description of the Garden of Alcinoüs, Odyssey, VII, Buckley’s Tr.:⁠—

“But without the hall there is a large garden, near the gates, of four acres; but around it a hedge was extended on both sides. And there tall, flourishing trees grew, pears, and pomegranates, and apple-trees producing beautiful fruit, and sweet figs, and flourishing olives. Of these the fruit never perishes, nor does it fail in winter or summer, lasting throughout the whole year; but the west wind ever blowing makes some bud forth, and ripens others. Pear grows old after pear, apple after apple, grape also after grape, and fig after fig. There a fruitful vineyard was planted: one part of this ground, exposed to the sun in a wide place, is dried by the sun; and some [grapes] they are gathering, and others they are treading, and further on are unripe grapes, having thrown off the flower, and others are slightly changing color. And there are all kinds of beds laid out in order, to the furthest part of the ground, flourishing throughout the whole year: and in it are two fountains, one is spread through the whole garden, but the other on the other side goes under the threshold of the hall to the lofty house, from whence the citizens are wont to draw water.”

Dante’s description of the Terrestrial Paradise will hardly fail to recall that of Mount Acidale in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, VI x 6:⁠—

“It was an Hill plaste in an open plaine,
That round about was bordered with a wood
Of matchlesse hight, that seemed th’ earth to disdaine;
In which all trees of honour stately stood,
And did all winter as in sommer bud,
Spredding pavilions for the birds to bowre,
Which in their lower braunches sung aloud;
And in their tops the soring hauke did towre,
Sitting like king of fowlcs in maicsty and powre.

“And at the foote thereof a gentle flud
His silver waves did softly tumble downe,
Unmard with ragged mosse or filthy mud;
Ne mote wylde beastes, ne mote the ruder clowne,
Thereto approch; ne filth mote therein drowne:
But Nymphcs and Faeries by the bancks did sit
In the woods shade which did the waters crowne,
Keeping all noysome things away from it,
And to the waters fall tuning their accents fit.

“And on the top thereof a spacious plaine
Did spred itselfe, to serve to all delight,
Either to daunce, when they to daunce would faine,
Or else to course-about their bases light;
Ne ought there wanted, which for pleasure might
Desired be, or thence to banish bale:
So pleasauntly the Hill with equall hight
Did seeme to overlooke the lowly vale;
Therefore it rightly cleeped was Mount Acidale.”

See also Tasso’s Garden of Armida, in the Gerusalemme, XVI. ↩

Chiassi is on the seashore near Ravenna. “Here grows a spacious pine forest,” says Covino, Descr. Geog., p. 39, “which stretches along the sea between Ravenna and Cervia.” ↩

The river Lethe. ↩

This lady, who represents the Active life to Dante’s waking eyes, as Leah had done in his vision, and whom Dante afterwards. Canto XXXIII 119, calls Matilda, is generally supposed by the commentators to be the celebrated Countess Matilda, daughter of Boniface, Count of Tuscany, and wife of Guelf, of the house of Suabia. Of this marriage Villani, IV 21, gives a very strange account, which, if true, is a singular picture of the times. Napier, Florentine History, I Ch. 4 and 6, gives these glimpses of the Countess:⁠—

“This heroine died in 1115, after a reign of active exertion for herself and the Church against the Emperors, which generated the infant and as yet nameless factions of Guelf and Ghibelline. Matilda endured this contest with all the enthusiasm and constancy of a woman, combined with a manly courage that must ever render her name respectable, whether proceeding from the bigotry of the age, or to oppose imperial ambition in defence of her own defective title. According to the laws of that time, she could not as a female inherit her father’s states, for even male heirs required a royal confirmation. Matilda therefore, having no legal right, feared the Emperor and clung to the Popes, who already claimed, among other prerogatives, the supreme disposal of kingdoms.⁠ ⁠…

“The Church had ever come forward as the friend of her house, and from childhood she had breathed an atmosphere of blind and devoted submission to its authority; even when only fifteen she had appeared in arms against its enemies, and made two successful expeditions to assist Pope Alexander the Second