Remounting scaled the flinty steps1, which late Among the crags and splinters of the rock, As in that season, when the sun least veils 1 The finty steps.] Venturi, after Daniello and Volpi, explains the word in the original, "borni," to mean the stones that project from a wall, for other buildings to be joined to, which the workmen call "toothings." 2 More than I am wont.] "When I reflect on the punishment allotted to those who do not give sincere and upright advice to others, I am more anxious than ever not to abuse to so bad a purpose those talents, whatever they may be, which Nature, or rather Providence, has conferred on me." It is probable that this declaration was the result of real feeling in the mind of Dante, whose political character would have given great weight to any opinion or party he had espoused, and to whom indigence and exile might have offered strong temptations to deviate from that line of conduct, which a strict sense of duty prescribed. 3 As he whose wrongs.] Kings, b. ii. c. ii. "Within these ardours are the spirits, each Swath'd in confining fire."—" Master! thy word," I answer'd," hath assured me; yet I deem'd To ask thee who is in yon fire, that comes Their penal tortures, thus to vengeance now Which sow'd imperial Rome; nor less the guile And there is rued the stratagem that Troy 66 O, master! think my prayer a thousand fold In repetition urged, that thou vouchsafe To pause till here the horned flame arrive. He thus: "Thy prayer is worthy of much praise, When there the flame had come, where time and Seem'd fitting to my guide, he thus began: [place 1 Ascending from that funeral pile.] The flame is said to have divided on the funeral pile which consumed the bodies of Eteocles and Polynices, as if conscious of the enmity that actuated them while living. Ecce iterum fratris primos ut contigit artus Ignis edax, tremuere rogi, et novus advena busto Alternosque apices abruptâ luce coruscant. Compare Lucan, Pharsal. lib. i. 145. Statius, Theb. lib. xii. 2 The ambush of the horse.] "The ambush of the wooden horse, that caused Eneas to quit the city of Troy and seek his fortune in Italy, where his descendants founded the Roman empire." 3 For they were Greeks.] By this it is, perhaps, implied that they were haughty and arrogant. So, in our Poet's twentyfourth Sonnet, of which a translation is inserted in the Life prefixed, he says, Ed ella mi rispose, come un Greco. "O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire! In what clime death o'ertook him self-destroy'd." That labours with the wind, then to and fro To explore the world, and search the ways of life, Into the deep illimitable main, With but one bark, and the small faithful band And the Sardinian and each isle beside Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age 6 'O brothers!' I began, who to the west Through perils without number now have reach'd; To this the short remaining watch, that yet Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof 1 Caieta.] Virgil, Æneid, lib. vii. 1. 2 Nor fondness for my son.] Imitated by Tasso, G. L. c.viii. st. 7. Ne timor di fatica ò di periglio, Ne vaghezza del regno, ne pietade This imagined voyage of Ulysses into the Atlantic is alluded to by Pulci: E sopratutto commendava Ulisse, Che per veder nell' altro mondo gisse. And by Tasso, G. L. c. xv. 25. Morg. Magg. c. xxv. 3 The strait pass.] The straits of Gibraltar. 6 Of the unpeopled world, following the track 'Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang: Ye were not form'd to live the life of brutes, But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.' With these few words I sharpen'd for the voyage The mind of my associates, that I then Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn Our poop we turn'd, and for the witless flight Made our oars wings', still gaining on the left. Each star of the other pole night now beheld2, And ours so low, that from the ocean floor It rose not. Five times re-illumed, as oft Vanish'd the light from underneath the moon, Since the deep way we enter'd, when from far Appear'd a mountain dim3, loftiest methought Of all I e'er beheld. Joy seized us straight; But soon to mourning changed. From the new land A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side Did strike the vessel. Thrice it whirl'd her round With all the waves; the fourth time lifted up The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed: And over us the booming billow closed"." 1 Made our oars wings.] Οὐδ ̓ εὐήρε ̓ ἐρετμά, τά τε πτερὰ νηυσὶ πέλονται. So Chiabrera, Canz. Eroiche. xiii. Farò de' remi un volo. And Tasso, Ibid. 26. Hom. Od. xi. 124. 2 Night now beheld.] Petrarch is here cited by Lombardi :- Nor there above the circle of the moon Canz. xxxvii. 1. 3 A mountain dim.] The mountain of Purgatory.-Amongst the various opinions of theologians respecting the situation of the terrestrial paradise, Pietro Lombardo relates, that "it was separated by a long space, either of sea or land, from the regions inhabited by men, and placed in the ocean, reaching as far as to the lunar circle, so that the waters of the deluge did not reach it." Sent. lib. ii. dist. 17. Thus Lombardi. 4 Thrice.] Ast illum ter fluctus ibidem Torquet agens circum, et rapidus vorat æquore vortex. Virg. En. lib. i. 116. 5 Closed.] Venturi refers to Pliny and Solinus for the opinion that Ulysses was the founder of Lisbon, from whence he thinks it was easy for the fancy of a poet to send him on yet further enterprises. Perhaps the story (which it is not unlikely that our author will be found to have borrowed from some legend of the middle ages) may have taken its CANTO XXVII. ARGUMENT. The Poet, treating of the same punishment as in the last Canto, relates that he turned towards a flame in which was the Count Guido da Montefeltro, whose inquiries respecting the state of Romagna he answers; and Guido is thereby induced to declare who he is, and why condemned to that torment. Now upward rose the flame, and still'd its light His cries first echoed who had shaped its mould, Tormented, that the brazen monster seem'd Whence Tiber first unlocks his mighty flood." When, as he touch'd my side, the leader thus: 66 rise partly from the obscure oracle returned by the ghost of Tiresias to Ulysses (see the eleventh book of the Odyssey), and partly from the fate which there was reason to suppose had befallen some adventurous explorers of the Atlantic ocean. 1 The Sicilian bull.] The engine of torture invented by Perillus, for the tyrant Phalaris. 2 of the mountains there.] Montefeltro. |