The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (essential books to read TXT) 📕

We shall, however, find many of his actions severely reprobated in the twentieth Canto.

v. 113. That stripling.] Either (as the old commentators suppose) Alonzo III King of Arragon, the eldest son of Peter III who died in 1291, at the age of 27, or, according to Venturi, Peter the youngest son. The former was a young prince of virtue sufficient to have justified the eulogium and the hopes of Dante.

See Mariana, 1. xiv. c. 14.

v. 119. Rarely.]

Full well can the wise poet of Florence That hight Dante, speaken in this sentence Lo! in such manner rime is Dantes tale.

Full selde upriseth by his branches smale Prowesse of man for God of his goodnesse Woll that we claim of him our gentlenesse: For of our elders may we nothing claime But temporal thing, that men may hurt and maime.

Chaucer, Wife of Bathe’s Tale.

Compare Homer, Od. b. ii. v. 276; Pindar, Nem. xi. 48 and Euripides, Electra, 369.

v. 122. To Charles.] “Al Nasuto.” -“Charles II King of Naples, is no less inferior to his father Charles I. than James and Frederick to theirs, Peter III.”

v. 127. Costanza.] Widow of Peter III She has been already mentioned in the third Canto, v. 112. By Beatrice and Margaret are probably meant two of the daughters of Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence; the former married to St. Louis of France, the latter to his brother Charles of Anjou.

See Paradise, Canto Vl. 135. Dante therefore considers Peter as the most illustrious of the three monarchs.

v. 129. Harry of England.] Henry III.

v. 130. Better issue.] Edward l. of whose glory our Poet was perhaps a witness, in his visit to England.

v. 133. William, that brave Marquis.] William, Marquis of Monferrat, was treacherously seized by his own subjects, at Alessandria, in Lombardy, A.D. 1290, and ended his life in prison. See G. Villani, 1. vii. c. 135. A war ensued between the people of Alessandria and those of Monferrat and the Canavese.

CANTO VIII

v. 6. That seems to mourn for the expiring day.]

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. Gray’s Elegy.

v. 13. Te Lucis Ante.] The beginning of one of the evening hymns.

v. 36. As faculty.]

My earthly by his heav’nly overpower’d

As with an object, that excels the sense, Dazzled and spent.

Milton, P. L. b. viii. 457.

v. 53. Nino, thou courteous judge.] Nino di Gallura de’

Visconti nephew to Count Ugolino de’ Gherardeschi, and betrayed by him. See Notes to Hell Canto XXXIII.

v. 65. Conrad.] Currado Malaspina.

v. 71 My Giovanna.] The daughter of Nino, and wife of Riccardo da Cammino of Trevigi.

v. 73. Her mother.] Beatrice, marchioness of Este wife of Nino, and after his death married to Galeazzo de’ Visconti of Milan.

v. 74. The white and wimpled folds.] The weeds of widowhood.

v. 80. The viper.] The arms of Galeazzo and the ensign of the Milanese.

v. 81. Shrill Gallura’s bird.] The cock was the ensign of Gallura, Nino’s province in Sardinia. Hell, Canto XXII. 80. and Notes.

v. 115. Valdimagra.] See Hell, Canto XXIV. 144. and Notes.

v. 133. Sev’n times the tired sun.] “The sun shall not enter into the constellation of Aries seven times more, before thou shalt have still better cause for the good opinion thou expresses” of Valdimagra, in the kind reception thou shalt there meet with.” Dante was hospitably received by the Marchese Marcello Malaspina, during his banishment. A.D. 1307.

CANTO IX

v. 1. Now the fair consort of Tithonus old.]

La concubina di Titone antico.

So Tassoni, Secchia Rapita, c. viii. st. 15.

La puttanella del canuto amante.

v. 5. Of that chill animal.] The scorpion.

v. 14. Our minds.] Compare Hell, Canto XXVI. 7.

v. 18. A golden-feathered eagle. ] Chaucer, in the house of Fame at the conclusion of the first book and beginning of the second, represents himself carried up by the “grim pawes” of a golden eagle. Much of his description is closely imitated from Dante.

v. 50. Lucia.] The enIightening, grace of heaven Hell, Canto II. 97.

v. 85. The lowest stair.] By the white step is meant the distinctness with which the conscience of the penitent reflects his offences, by the burnt and cracked one, his contrition on, their account; and by that of porphyry, the fervour with which he resolves on the future pursuit of piety and virtue. Hence, no doubt, Milton describing “the gate of heaven,” P. L. b.

iii. 516.

Each stair mysteriously was meant.

v. 100. Seven times.] Seven P’s, to denote the seven sins (Peccata) of which he was to be cleansed in his passage through purgatory.

v. 115. One is more precious.] The golden key denotes the divine authority by which the priest absolves the sinners the silver expresses the learning and

judgment requisite for the due discharge of that office.

v. 127. Harsh was the grating.]

On a sudden open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring, sound Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder

Milton, P. L. b. ii 882

v. 128. The Turpeian.]

Protinus, abducto patuerunt temple Metello.

Tunc rupes Tarpeia sonat: magnoque reclusas Testatur stridore fores: tune conditus imo Eruitur tempo multis intactus ab annnis Romani census populi, &c.

Lucan. Ph. 1. iii. 157.

CANTO X

v. 6. That Wound.] Venturi justly observes, that the Padre d’Aquino has misrepresented the sense of this passage in his translation.

—dabat ascensum tendentibus ultra Scissa tremensque silex, tenuique erratica motu.

The verb “muover”’ is used in the same signification in the Inferno, Canto XVIII. 21.

Cosi da imo della roccia scogli

Moven.

—from the rock’s low base

Thus flinty paths advanc’d.

In neither place is actual motion intended to be expressed.

v. 52. That from unbidden. office awes mankind.] Seo 2 Sam. G.

v 58. Preceding.] Ibid. 14, &c.

v. 68. Gregory.] St. Gregory’s prayers are said to have delivered Trajan from hell. See Paradise, Canto XX. 40.

v. 69. Trajan the Emperor. For this story, Landino refers to two writers, whom he calls “Heunando,” of France, by whom he means Elinand, a monk and chronicler, in the reign of Philip Augustus, and “Polycrato,” of England, by whom is meant John of Salisbury, author of the Polycraticus de Curialium Nugis, in the twelfth century. The passage in the text I find to be nearly a translation from that work, 1. v. c. 8. The original appears to be in Dio Cassius, where it is told of the Emperor Hadrian, lib. I xix. [GREEK HERE]

When a woman appeared to him with a suit, as he was on a journey, at first he answered her, ‘I have no leisure,’ but she crying out to him, ‘then reign no longer’ he turned about, and heard her cause.”

v. 119. As to support.] Chillingworth, ch.vi. 54. speaks of “those crouching anticks, which seem in great buildings to labour under the weight they bear.” And Lord Shaftesbury has a similar illustration in his Essay on Wit and Humour, p. 4. s. 3.

CANTO XI

v. 1. 0 thou Mighty Father.] The first four lines are borrowed by Pulci, Morg. Magg. c. vi.

Dante, in his ‘Credo,’ has again versified the Lord’s prayer.

v. 58. I was of Latinum.] Omberto, the son of Guglielino Aldobrandeseo, Count of Santafiore, in the territory of Sienna His arrogance provoked his countrymen to such a pitch of fury against him, that he was murdered by them at Campagnatico.

v. 79. Oderigi.] The illuminator, or miniature painter, a friend of Giotto and Dante

v. 83. Bolognian Franco.] Franco of Bologna, who is said to have been a pupil of Oderigi’s.

v. 93. Cimabue.] Giovanni Cimabue, the restorer of painting, was born at Florence, of a noble family, in 1240, and died in 1300. The passage in the text is an illusion to his epitaph: Credidit ut Cimabos picturae castra tenere, Sic tenuit vivens: nunc tenet astra poli.

v. 95. The cry is Giotto’s.] In Giotto we have a proof at how early a period the fine arts were encouraged in Italy. His talents were discovered by Cimabue, while he was tending sheep for his father in the neighbourhood of Florence, and he was afterwards patronized by Pope Benedict XI and Robert King of Naples, and enjoyed the society and friendship of Dante, whose likeness he has transmitted to posterity. He died in 1336, at the age of 60.

v. 96. One Guido from the other.] Guido Cavalcanti, the friend of our Poet, (see Hell, Canto X. 59.) had eclipsed the literary fame of Guido Guinicelli, of a noble family in Bologna, whom we shall meet with in the twenty-sixth Canto and of whom frequent mention is made by our Poet in his Treatise de Vulg. Eloq.

Guinicelli died in 1276. Many of Cavalcanti’s writings, hitherto in MS. are now publishing at Florence” Esprit des Journaux, Jan.

1813.

v. 97. He perhaps is born.] Some imagine, with much probability, that Dante here augurs the greatness of his own poetical reputation. Others have fancied that he prophesies the glory of Petrarch. But Petrarch was not yet born.

v. 136. suitor.] Provenzano salvani humbled himself so far for the sake of one of his friends, who was detained in captivity by Charles I of Sicily, as personally to supplicate the people of Sienna to contribute the sum required by the king for his ransom: and this act of self-abasement atoned for his general ambition and pride.

v. 140. Thy neighbours soon.] “Thou wilt know in the time of thy banishment, which is near at hand, what it is to solicit favours of others and ‘tremble through every vein,’ lest they should be refused thee.”

CANTO XII

v. 26. The Thymbraen god.] Apollo Si modo, quem perhibes, pater est Thymbraeus Apollo. Virg. Georg.

iv. 323.

v. 37. Mars.]

With such a grace,

The giants that attempted to scale heaven When they lay dead on the Phlegren plain Mars did appear to Jove.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Prophetess, a. 2. s. 3.

v. 42. O Rehoboam.] 1 Kings, c. xii. 18.

v. 46. A1cmaeon.] Virg. Aen. l. vi. 445, and Homer, Od. xi. 325.

v. 48. Sennacherib.] 2 Kings, c. xix. 37.

v. 58. What master of the pencil or the style.]

—inimitable on earth

By model, or by shading pencil drawn.

Milton, P. L. b. iii. 509.

v. 94. The chapel stands.] The church of San Miniato in Florence situated on a height that overlooks the Arno, where it is crossed by the bridge Rubaconte, so called from Messer Rubaconte da Mandelia, of Milan chief magistrate of Florence, by whom the bridge was founded in 1237. See G. Villani, 1. vi. c.

27.

v. 96. The well-guided city] This is said ironically of Florence.

v. 99. The registry.] In allusion to certain instances of fraud committed with respect to the public accounts and measures See Paradise Canto XVI. 103.

CANTO XIII

v. 26. They have no wine.] John, ii. 3. These words of the Virgin are referred to as an instance of charity.

v. 29. Orestes] Alluding to his friendship with Pylades v. 32. Love ye those have wrong’d you.] Matt. c. v. 44.

v. 33. The scourge.] “The chastisement of envy consists in hearing examples of