94-124. The primal blessings1, or with measure due The inferior2, no delight, that flows from it, Partakes of ill. But let it warp to evil, Or with more ardour than behoves, or less, Pursue the good; the thing created then Works 'gainst its Maker. Hence thou must infer, That love is germin of each virtue in ye, And of each act no less, that merits pain. Now since it may not be, but love intend The welfare mainly of the thing it loves, All from self-hatred are secure; and since No being can be thought to exist apart, And independent of the first, a bar Of equal force restrains from hating that. "Grant the distinction just; and it remains The evil must be another's, which is loved. Three ways such love is gender'd in your clay. There is who hopes (his neighbour's worth deprest) Pre-eminence himself; and covets hence, For his own greatness, that another fall. There is who so much fears the loss of power, Fame, favour, glory, (should his fellow mount Above him) and so sickens at the thought, He loves their opposite: and there is he®, Whom wrong or insult seems to gall and shame, That he doth thirst for vengeance; and such needs Must doat on other's evil. Here beneath, This threefold love is mourn'd". Of the other sort Be now instructed; that which follows good, But with disorder'd and irregular course. "All indistinctly apprehend a bliss,

This Capitolo, which describes the punishment of those who give way to inordinate grief for the loss of their kindred, is marked by much power of imagination and a sublime morality.

1 The primal blessings.] Spiritual good.

2 The inferior.] Temporal good.

3 Now.] "It is impossible for any being, either to hate itself, or to hate the First Cause of all, by which it exists. We can therefore only rejoice in the evil which befals others." 4 There is.] The proud.

5 There is.] The envious. 6 There is he.] The resentful. 7 This threefold love is mourn'd.] distinction.

Frezzi alludes to this

Superbia puote essere in tre modi;
Si come si dimostra dalla Musa,
La qual hai letta, e che tu tanto lodi.

Il Quadrir. lib. iii. cap. 2.

On which the soul may rest; the hearts of all
Yearn after it; and to that wished bourn
All therefore strive to tend. If ye behold,
Or seek it, with a love remiss and lax;
This cornice, after just repenting, lays
Its penal torment on ye. Other good
There is, where man finds not his happiness:
It is not true fruition; not that blest
Essence, of every good the branch and root.
The love too lavishly bestow'd on this,
Along three circles1 over us, is mourn'd.
Account of that division tripartite
Expect not, fitter for thine own research."

CANTO XVIII.

ARGUMENT.

Virgil discourses further concerning the nature of love. Then a multitude of spirits rush by; two of whom in van of the rest, record instances of zeal and fervent affection, and another, who was abbot of San Zeno in Verona, declares himself to Virgil and Dante; and lastly follow other spirits, shouting forth memorable examples of the sin for which they suffer. The Poet, pursuing his meditations, falls into a dreamy slumber.

THE teacher ended2, and his high discourse
Concluding, earnest in my looks inquired
If I appear'd content; and I, whom still
Unsated thirst to hear him urged, was mute,
Mute outwardly, yet inwardly I said:
"Perchance my too much questioning offends."
But he, true father, mark'd the secret wish
By diffidence restrain'd; and, speaking, gave

1 Along three circles.] According to the allegorical commentators, as Venturi has observed, Reason is represented under the person of Virgil, and Sense under that of Dante. The former leaves to the latter to discover for itself the three carnal sins-avarice, gluttony, and libidinousness; having already declared the nature of the spiritual sins-pride, envy, anger, and indifference, or lukewarmness in piety, which the Italians call accidia, from the Greek word anndía, and which Chaucer vainly endeavoured to naturalize in our language. See the Persone's Tale. Lombardi refers to Thomas Aquinas, lib. i. Quest. 72. Art. 2. for the division here made by our Poet.

2 The teacher ended.] Compare Plato. Protagoras, v. iii p. 123. Bip. edit. Πρωταγόρας μὲν τοσαῦτα κ.τ.λ. Apoll. Rhod. 1. i. 513, and Milton, P. L. b. viii. 1.

The angel ended, and in Adam's ear

So charming left his voice, that he awhile

Thought him still speaking, still stood fix'd to hear.

Me boldness thus to speak: "Master! my sight
Gathers so lively virtue from thy beams,
That all, thy words convey, distinct is seen.
Wherefore I pray thee, father, whom this heart
Holds dearest, thou wouldst deign by proof t' unfold
That love, from which, as from their source, thou
bring'st
All good deeds and their opposite." He then :
"To what I now disclose be thy clear ken
Directed; and thou plainly shalt behold [selves
How much those blind have err'd, who make them-
The guides of men. The soul, created apt
To love, moves versatile which way soe'er
Aught pleasing prompts her, soon as she is waked
By pleasure into act. Of substance true
Your apprehension forms its counterfeit ;
And, in you the ideal shape presenting,
Attracts the soul's regard. If she, thus drawn,
Incline toward it; love is that inclining,
And a new nature knit by pleasure in ye.
Then, as the fire points up, and mounting seeks
His birth-place and his lasting seat, e'en thus
Enters the captive soul into desire,

Which is a spiritual motion, that ne'er rests
Before enjoyment of the thing it loves.
Enough to show thee, how the truth from those
Is hidden, who aver all love a thing
Praise-worthy in itself; although perhaps?

1 Your apprehension.] It is literally, "Your apprehensive faculty derives intension from a thing really existing, and displays that intension within you, so that it makes the soul turn to it." The commentators labour in explaining this; but whatever sense they have elicited, may, I think, be resolved into the words of the translation in the text.

2 Perhaps.] "Our author," Venturi observes, "uses the language of the Peripatetics, which denominates the kind of things, as determinable by many differences, matter. Love then, in kind perhaps, appears good; and it is said perhaps, because, strictly speaking, in kind there is neither good nor bad, neither praiseworthy nor blameable." To this Lombardi adds, that what immediately follows, namely, that every mark is not good although the wax be so," answers to this interpretation. For the wax is precisely as the determinable matter, and the mark or impression as the determining form; and even as the wax, which is either good or at least not bad, may, by being imprinted by a bad figure, acquire the name of bad; so may love be said generally to be good or at least not bad, and acquire the name of bad by being determined to an unfit object. "As the wax takes all shapes, and yet is wax still at the bottom; the rò xox

Its matter seem still good. Yet if the wax
Be good, it follows not the impression must."
"What love is," I return'd, "thy words, O guide!
And my own docile mind, reveal, Yet thence
New doubts have sprung. For, from without, if love
Be offer'd to us, and the spirit knows

No other footing; tend she right or wrong,
Is no desert of hers." He answering thus:
"What reason here discovers, I have power
To show thee: that which lies beyond, expect
From Beatrice, faith not reason's task.
Spirit', substantial form, with matter join'd,
Not in confusion mix'd, hath in itself
Specific virtue of that union born,

Which is not felt except it work, nor proved
But through effect, as vegetable life

By the green leaf. From whence his intellect
Deduced its primal notices of things,
Man therefore knows not, or his appetites
Their first affections; such in you, as zeal
In bees to gather honey; at the first,
Volition, meriting nor blame nor praise.
But o'er each lower faculty supreme,
That, as she list, are summon'd to her bar,
Ye have that virtue in you, whose just voice
Uttereth counsel, and whose word should keep
The threshold of assent. Here is the source,
Whence cause of merit in you is derived;
E'en as the affections, good or ill, she takes,
Or severs3, winnow'd as the chaff. Those men 4,

svo still is wax; so the soul transported in so many several passions of joy, fear, hope, sorrow, anger, and the like, has for its general groundwork of all this, Love." Henry More, Discourse xvi. This passage in the most philosophical of our theologians, may serve for an answer to the objection of those who blame Collins for not having brought in Love among the "Passions" in his exquisite ode.

1 Spirit.] The human soul, which differs from that of brutes, inasmuch as though united with the body it has a separate existence of its own.

2 That virtue.] Reason.

3 Or severs.] Lest the reader of the original should be misled, it is right to warn him that the word "vigliare" must not be confounded with "vagliare" to winnow, and strictly means "to separate from the straw what remains of the grain after the threshing." The process is distinctly described in the notes on the Decameron, p. 77. Ediz. Giunti. 1573, where this passage is referred to.

4 Those men.] The great moral philosophers among the

heathens.

Who, reasoning, went to depth profoundest, mark'd
That innate freedom; and were thence induced
To leave their moral teaching to the world.
Grant then, that from necessity arise

All love that glows within you; to dismiss
Or harbour it, the power is in yourselves.
Remember, Beatrice, in her style,
Denominates free choice by eminence
The noble virtue; if in talk with thee
She touch upon that theme." The moon, well nigh
To midnight hour belated, made the stars
Appear to wink and fade; and her broad disk
Seem'd like a crag1 on fire, as up the vault2
That course she journey'd, which the sun then warms,
When they of Rome behold him at his set
Betwixt Sardinia and the Corsic isle.

And now the weight, that hung upon my thought,
Was lighten'd by the aid of that clear spirit,
Who raiseth Andes3 above Mantua's name.
I therefore, when my questions had obtain'd
Solution plain and ample, stood as one
Musing in dreamy slumber; but not long
Slumber'd; for suddenly a multitude,
The steep already turning from behind,
Rush'd on. With fury and like random rout,
As echoing on their shores at midnight heard
Ismenus and Asopus 4, for his Thebes

If Bacchus' help were needed; so came these
Tumultuous, curving each his rapid step,

A crag.] I have preferred the reading of Landino, scheggion, "crag," conceiving it to be more poetical than secchion, "bucket," which is the common reading. The same cause, the vapours, which the commentators say might give the appearance of increased magnitude to the moon, might also make her seem broken at her rise. Lombardi explains it differently. The moon being, as he says, in the fifth night of her wane, has exactly the figure of a brazen bucket, round at the bottom and open at top; and, if we suppose it to be all on fire, we shall have, besides the form of the moon, her colour also. There is a simile in one of Fielding's novels very like this, but so ludicrous that I am unwilling to disturb the reader's gravity by inserting it.

2 Up the vault.] The moon passed with a motion opposite to that of the heavens, through the constellation of the Scorpion, in which the sun is, when to those who are in Rome he appears to set between the isles of Corsica and Sardinia.

3 Andes.] Andes, now Pietola, made more famous than Mantua, near which it is situated, by having been the birthplace of Virgil.

Ismenus and Asopus.] Rivers near Thebes.