Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop

Obeying, in humility so low,

As high, he, disobeying, thought to soar :
And, for this reason, he had vainly tried,
Out of his own sufficiency, to pay

The rigid satisfaction. Then behoved
That God should by his own ways lead him back
Unto the life, from whence he fell, restored:
By both his ways, I mean, or one alone1.
But since the deed is ever prized the more,
The more the doer's good intent appears;
Goodness celestial, whose broad signature
Is on the universe, of all its ways

To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none.
Nor aught so vast or so magnificent,

Either for him who gave or who received,
Between the last night and the primal day,
Was or can be. For God more bounty show'd,
Giving himself to make man capable
Of his return to life, than had the terms
Been mere and unconditional release.
And for his justice, every method else
Were all too scant, had not the Son of God
Humbled himself to put on mortal flesh.

Now, to content thee fully, I revert ;
And further in some part2 unfold my speech,
That thou mayst see it clearly as myself.

"I see, thou sayst, the air, the fire I see,
The earth and water, and all things of them
Compounded, to corruption turn, and soon
Dissolve. Yet these were also things create.
Because, if what were told me, had been true,
They from corruption had been therefore free.
"The angels, O my brother! and this clime
Wherein thou art, impassible and pure,

1 By both his ways, I mean, or one alone.] Either by mercy and justice united, or by mercy alone.

2 In some part.] She reverts to that part of her discourse where she had said that what proceeds immediately from God "no end of being knows." She then proceeds to tell him that the elements, which, though he knew them to be created, he yet saw dissolved, received their form not immediately from God, but from a virtue or power created by God; that the soul of brutes and plants is in like manner drawn forth by the stars with a combination of those elements meetly tempered, " di complession potenziata;" but that the angels and the heavens may be said to be created in that very manner in which they exist, without any intervention of agency.

I call created, even as they are

In their whole being. But the elements,
Which thou hast named, and what of them is made,
Are by created virtue inform'd: create,

Their substance; and create, the informing virtue
In these bright stars, that round them circling move.
The soul of every brute and of each plant,
The ray and motion of the sacred lights,
Draw from complexion with meet power endued.
But this our life, the eternal good inspires
Immediate, and enamours of itself;

So that our wishes rest for ever here.

"And hence thou mayst by inference conclude Our resurrection certain2, if thy mind Consider how the human flesh was framed, When both our parents at the first were made."

CANTO VIII.

ARGUMENT.

The Poet ascends with Beatrice to the third heaven, which is the planet Venus; and here finds the soul of Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who had been Dante's friend on earth, and who now, after speaking of the realms to which he was heir, unfolds the cause why children differ in disposition from their parents.

1 Draw.] I had before rendered this differently, and I now think erroneously:

With complex potency attract and turn.

2 Our resurrection certain.] Venturi appears to mistake the Poet's reasoning, when he observes: "Wretched for us, if we had not arguments more convincing, and of a higher kind, to assure us of the truth of our resurrection." It is, perhaps, here intended that the whole of God's dispensation should be taken into the account. The conclusion may be that as before sin man was immortal, and even in flesh proceeded immediately from God, so being restored to the favour of heaven by the expiation made for sin, he necessarily recovers his claim to immortality even in the body.

There is much in this poem to justify the encomium which the learned Salvini has passed on it, when, in an epistle to Redi, imitating what Horace had said of Homer, that the duties of life might be better learnt from the Grecian bard, than from the teachers of the porch or the academy, he saysAnd dost thou ask, what themes my mind engage? The lonely hours I give to Dante's page; And meet more sacred learning in his lines, Than I had gain'd from all the school divines.

Se volete saper la vita mia,

Studiando io sto lungi da tutti gli uomini;

Ed ho imparato più teologia

In questi giorni, che ho riletto Dante,

Che nelle scuole fatto io non avria.

THE world' was, in its day of peril dark,
Wont to believe the dotage of fond love,
From the fair Cyprian deity, who rolls
In her third epicycle2, shed on men

By stream of potent radiance: therefore they
Of elder time, in their old error blind,
Not her alone with sacrifice adored
And invocation, but like honours paid
To Cupid and Dione, deem'd of them

Her mother, and her son, him whom they feign'd
To sit in Dido's bosom3: and from her,
Whom I have sung preluding, borrow'd they
The appellation of that star, which views
Now obvious, and now averse, the sun.
I was not ware that I was wafted up
Into its orb; but the new loveliness,
That graced my lady, gave me ample proof
That we had enter'd there. And as in flame
A sparkle is distinct, or voice in voice
Discern'd, when one its even tenour keeps,
The other comes and goes; so in that light
I other luminaries saw, that coursed
In circling motion, rapid more or less,
As their eternal vision each impels.

The world.] The Poet, on his arrival at the third heaven, tells us that the world, in its days of heathen darkness, believed the influence of sensual love to proceed from the star, to which, under the name of Venus, they paid divine honours; as they worshiped the supposed mother and son of Venus, under the names of Dione and Cupid.

2 Epicycle.]

the sphere

With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and epicycle. Milton, P. L. b. viii. 84. "In sul dosso di questo cerchio," &c. Convito di Dante. "Upon the back of this circle, in the heaven of Venus, whereof we are now treating, is a little sphere, which has in that heaven a revolution of its own; whose circle the astronomers term epicycle."

p. 48.

3 To sit in Dido's bosom.] Virgil, Æn. lib. i. 718.

4 Now obvious.] Being at one part of the year, a morning, and at another an evening star. So Frezzi:

Il raggio della stella

Che'l sol vagheggia or drieto or davanti.

whose ray,

Il Quadrir. lib. i. cap. i.

Being page and usher to the day,

Does mourn behind the sun, before him play.

John Hall.

5 As their.] As each, according to their several deserts,

partakes more or less of the beatific vision.

Never was blast from vapour charged with cold, Whether invisible to eye or no1,

Descended with such speed, it had not seem'd
To linger in dull tardiness, compared

To those celestial lights, that towards us came,
Leaving the circuit of their joyous ring,
Conducted by the lofty seraphim.

And after them, who in the van appear'd,
Such an Hosanna sounded, as hath left
Desire, ne'er since extinct in me, to hear
Renew'd the strain. Then, parting from the rest,
One near us drew, and sole began:

"We all

Are ready at thy pleasure, well disposed

To do thee gentle service. We are they,
To whom thou in the world erewhile didst sing;
'O ye! whose intellectual ministry 2

Moves the third heaven:' and in one orb we roll,
One motion, one impulse, with those who rule
Princedoms in heaven3; yet are of love so full,
That to please thee 't will be as sweet to rest."
After mine eyes had with meek reverence
Sought the celestial guide, and were by her
Assured, they turn'd again unto the light,
Who had so largely promised; and with voice
That bare the lively pressure of my zeal,
"Tell who ye are," I cried. Forthwith it grew
In size and splendour, through augmented joy;
And thus it answer'd: "A short date, below,
The world possess'd me. Had the time been more 4,
Much evil, that will come, had never chanced.
My gladness hides thee from me, which doth shine
1 Whether invisible to eye or no.] He calls the blast invisi-
ble, if unattended by gross vapour; otherwise, visible.
20 ye! whose intellectual ministry.]

Voi ch' intendendo il terzo ciel movete.

The first line in our Poet's first Canzone. See his Convito, p. 40.

3 Princedoms in heaven.] See Canto xxviii. 112. where the princedoms are, as here, made co-ordinate with this third sphere. In his Convito, p. 54. he has ranked them differently, making the thrones the moving intelligences of Venus.

4 Had the time been more.] The spirit now speaking is Charles Martel, crowned king of Hungary, and son of Charles II. king of Naples and Sicily, to which dominions, dying in his father's lifetime, he did not succeed. The evil, that would have been prevented by the longer life of Charles Martel, was that resistance which his brother Robert, king of Sicily, who succeeded him, made to the Emperor Henry VII. See G. Villani, lib. ix. cap. xxxviii.

Around, and shroud me, as an animal

In its own.silk enswath'd. Thou lovedst me well1,
And hadst good cause; for had my sojourning
Been longer on the earth, the love I bare thee
Had put forth more than blossoms. The left bank2,
That Rhone, when he hath mix'd with Sorga, laves,
In me its lord expected, and that horn

Of fair Ausonia3, with its boroughs old,
Bari, and Croton, and Gaeta piled,

From where the Trento disembogues his waves,
With Verde mingled, to the salt-sea flood.
Already on my temples beam'd the crown,
Which gave me sovereignty over the land 4
By Danube wash'd, whenas he strays beyond
The limits of his German shores. The realm,
Where, on the gulf by stormy Eurus lash'd,
Betwixt Pelorus and Pachynian heights,
The beautiful Trinacria 5 lies in gloom,
(Not through Typhoeus, but the vapoury cloud
Bituminous upsteam'd) that too did look
To have its sceptre wielded by a race

Of monarchs, sprung through me from Charles and
Rodolph 7;

1 Thou lovedst me well.] Charles Martel might have been known to our Poet at Florence, whither he came to meet his father in 1295, the year of his death. The retinue and the habiliments of the young monarch are minutely described by G. Villani, who adds, that "he remained more than twenty days in Florence, waiting for his father King Charles and his brothers; during which time great honour was done him by the Florentines, and he showed no less love towards them, and he was much in favour with all." Lib. viii. cap. xiii. His brother Robert, king of Naples, was the friend of Petrarch.

Of fair Ausonia.] The kingdom of Naples.

4 The land.] Hungary.

5 The beautiful Trinacria.] Sicily; so called from its three promontories, of which Pachynus and Pelorus, here mentioned, are two.

6 Typhoeus.] The giant, whom Jupiter is fabled to have overwhelmed under the mountain Etna, from whence he vomited forth smoke and flame.

7 Sprung through me from Charles and Rodolph.] "Sicily would be still ruled by a race of monarchs, descended through me from Charles I. and Rodolph I. the former my grandfather, king of Naples and Sicily; the latter, emperor of Germany, my father-in-law;" both celebrated in the Purgatory, canto vii.

F F