The Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri

Ixiv THE OBLIGATIONS OP DANTE TO VIRGIL. In the first place ^neas bears the weeping cries of infaoits. *' Quos dolcis vitse exortis et ab ubere raptos Abstnlit atra dies et f iinere mersit acerbo/' Lines 428, 429. Those Dante also places in his Limbo, and at the close of the ^' Paradise" rea&ms that for aU who die before baptism Limbo must be their bourn. Next to the infants come those who have suffered bj unjust doom of death on earth, who have the sentence revised. " Quffisitor Minos umam movet ; ille silentum Oonciliumque vocat vitasque et crimina discit.'" Lines i32, 433. Dante advances Minos to be the universal judge of the spirits doomed to Hell, and as such places him at the entrance of the second circle, " There stands Minos, horrible, and grins ; At the entrance he examines betimes, And folding each around does judge their sins. I say, that when those souls, born in ill times. Come before him, they straightway all things tell." "HeU," v., lines 4-8. In the vicinity of Virgil's Minos are the suicides — *' Quam vellent eothere in alto Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores !" Lines 436—7. Dante has of course a separate circle in Hell, the second division of the seventh, for the punishment of those whom he finds in the ghastly wood, on whose branches sit the Harpies " che cacciar delle Strofside i Trojani." — Canto XJH., line 11. The trees of the wood are themselves the spirits, as Dante learns by breaking off a twig, when the voice of the injured shade comes out with the oozing juice. The whole incident is Yirgilian, being taken from the story of ^neas plucking a wand at the tomb of Polydorus, when he is horrified by what follows : — " Eloquar, an sileam ? gemitus lacrimabilis imo Auditur tumulo, et vox i-eddita f ertur ad auris : Quid miserum, ^nea laceras P jam parce sepulto ; Farce pias sclerare manus." Lib. III., lines 39—42.

THE OBLIGATIONS OP DANTE TO VIRGIL. Ixt Beyond the suicides stretch out the lugentes campi, where the unfortunate in love wander concealed in the glens and myrtle groves, " curae non ipsfi, in morte relinquunt." Here ^neas meets again with the wretched Dido, and after accounting for his heartless abandonment of her by the fact that he did so under Divine constraint, adds that he did not think she would feel it so keenly. The hero succeeded in forcing up his own tears, but justly fails even to provoke an snswer from the injured queen. In the second circle of Hell Dante places those '' ch' amor di nostra vita dipartille," and the frigid sketch of the Eoman poet becomes the most perfectly finished portion of the modem poem, and the passionate Italian in the story of Francesca pours out the whole strength of his genius and his pity. In the fourth book of the " -ffineid" Yirgil has shown his own power to depict the master passion, but I know nothing in the whole range of ancient or modem are that can fairly be placed beside Dante's fifth Canto for pathetic tenderness and exquisite perfection of rhythm and style. .tineas, after leaving Dido, passes from the mourning fields to the last division of that boundary of the Inferno, broad spaces in which throng those who have died in battle. The shadows of the Trojan warriors press around, those of the Greeks shrink from the living hero, though some of the latter attempt to raise their war cry with their shrill spirit voice : — " Atque hie Priamiden laniatum corpore toto Deiphobum vidit, lacerum crudeliter ora, Ora manusque ambas, populataque tempera raptis Auribus, et truncas inhonesto volnere naris. Yix adeo adgnovit pavitantem et dira*tegentem Supplicia." Lines 494—99. No one can doubt that Dante had this terrible description in his mind when he concocted the rival horrors in his 28th Canto. There, in the ninth ward of the eighth circle, we find the inventors of schisms slashed by a fiend with the most fearful wbunds. One rivals Deiphobus : —

Ixvi THE OBLIGATIONS OF DANTE TO VIRGIL. " Another, unto whom the throat was pierced ; The nose sheared closely oft between the eyes. And in an ear who also was amerced." Canto XXVIII., Unes 64-6. And another : — " Then one, from whom both hands had been offsmote, Eaising his maimed arms in the dusky air, So that the dripping blood his face did blot." Lines 103—6. The picture of poor Deiphobus shrinking back and endeavouring to hide his disfigurements is more affecting than that of Dante's spirits exhibiting their wounds with a sort of ghastly pride ; but each is suitable, the one feeling to that of the wretched murdered prince in the shades, but not condemned, the other to doomed criminals in Hell. I cannot but trace in the striking picture of the shade preserving in after life the fearful wounds with which its body was mangled on earth the seed of Dante's conception of the punishments inflicted on the creators of schism, the description of which arouses his pity when pity had long been dead ; — " The various woimds and people crowded deep, As if with drunkenness my eyes did blear, That they were anxious but to rest and weep." Canto XXIX., lines 1 — 3. The colloquy between iEneas and Deiphobus is interrupted by the Sibyl, who warns the hero that the time allotted for his stay amongst the shades is short — (" And little of our granted time does bide." Canto XXIX., line 11.) that here the rj>ad divides, leading on one side, which they must follow, to the Elysian fields, on the other to Tartarus and the punishments of the accursed. Here, in fact, the neutral region ceases ; it is worked out by Virgil with great minuteness, and forms no inconsiderable portion of the whole region of the dead, while Dante passes it by with little description, placing it indeed within the gates of Hell, but on the hither side of Acheron. He has, howevpr, as we have seen, transferred all Virgil's descriptions to other portions of