ét jucunditas arridebat.'* In the same book, there is another curious vision, which may be taken as a specimen of the legends of the time, of one Thurcillus Alari, who was conveyed in the year 1206, by St. Julian, to pay a similar visit to the three regions of the invisible world. He gives an account of a sort of theatric exhibition at which he attended there, with St. Peter St. Julian, and one or two more, and which takes place every Sunday for the amusement of the infernals. When they were all seated, a proud man was first made to come forward and to act the gait and every motion of a man who is proud even of his follies: his neck is stiffened, his face is turned upwards, he moves as if his arms were encumbered with ornaments, he talks big, and presently becomes inflamed with passion; but in the midst of his game he is seized, and grievously tormented. Other sinners are then successively brought forward to mimic their own follies and crimes, and then to be consigned to suffering. Before Thurcillus enters, however, he passes by a pit, the fumes of which make him cough. As these fumes arose from the burning of all the tithes which had not been duly paid to the priest, this betrays to St. Julian that his visitant had not been exact in his payments, and he is therefore made to promise ample restitution!

Our readers have probably had enough of these visions. Dante had evidently materials enough of this description to work upon, but these would not account for his choice of a subject, any more than they detract from his merit in the admirable genius with which he has treated it. Palmieri, in the fourth book of his De Vita Civile, written in the year 1430, gives an anecdote of our great poet, upon the authority of tradition, which, could it be substantiated, might seem better to account for the direction which his fancy took. After the battle of Campaldino, Dante returning from the pursuit of the enemy, went in search of the body of a friend who was among the slain; on discovering it, he was exceedingly startled by his friend's rising and telling him that he had been into the other world, adding some particulars of what he had seen there, which address was no sooner ended than he fell a corpse at the poet's feet. It is not impossible that some such circumstance might have occurred; that the wounded man might have lain on the field during the interval, under the influence of delirium, and that just before death, he might revive sufficiently to give Dante an account of his imaginary travels. Such an event, if it really occurred, would naturally take a strong hold of the poet's imagination; but we have given our reasons for the opinion that his poem was commenced eight years earlier than the event alluded to, and the anecdote is after all of very questionable authenticity. It will remind our readers of a similar incident Matt. Paris. Historia Major. folio. p. 188.

in "Old Mortality," which its Author has worked up with exquisite skill, the resurrection of Habbakuk Mucklewrath.

The origin of Dante's poem has been traced to other circumstances. There was, we are told, a shew made on the Arno, to which all were invited to come, who wished to have news of the other world. This shew consisted of a representation of the pains of the damned, but it ended in a real catastrophe: many, as a chronicler of the times remarks, found the proclamation a serious one to them, for the bridge, on which a large company was standing, giving way, a great number perished. This happened, however, in the year 1304; Dante, therefore, could not take a hint from this event, as he was then in exile, and his poem was already much advanced.

Once more, with regard to Dante's supposed plagiarisms. In an Italian translation of Guerino il Meschimo, a romance, the hero, having descended the well of St. Patrick, gives, upon his return, an account of having seen a demon in the middle of the ice, who had six black wings, which he kept playing as a bird while flying; they were greater than the sails of a ship, and were made, not of feathers, but of the same substance as those of the bat. His three faces were of three different colours, yellow, black, and those two colours mingled together; and in each mouth, he held a sinner, Judas, Brutus, and Darius the first. Dante's description of Lucifer is nearly word for word the same:

That emperor who sways

The realm of sorrow, at mid-breast from th' ice
Stood forth.

How passing strange it seem'd, when I did spy
Upon his head three faces, one in front
Of hue vermillion,

The right 'twixt wan and yellow seem'd; the left,
To look on, such as come from whence old Nile
Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth
Two mighty wings enormous as became
A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw
Outstretched on the wide sea: no plumes had they,
But were in texture like a bat, and these

'That upper spirit

Is Judas, he that hath his head within
And plies the feet without. Of th' other two
Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw
Who hangs, is Brutus; lo! how he doth writhe
And speaks not! Th' other Cassius, that appears
So large of limb.' Hell. Cant. xxxiv.

Besides this singular passage, there are other similarities; for instance, the ice contains the traitors in both, and the false à prophets are in both painted with their heads the wrong way. That the Author of the romance, however, has copied Dante, not Dante him, is betrayed by the circumstance, that his language is always good and beautifully turned in those passages where there is any similarity to Dante, while in other parts it is weak and dull. Some (among others Poccianti) have supposed this novel to have been originally written by one Andrea, a Florentine, in support of which opinion they adduce the circumstance of a diatribe against Florence, which is contained in it, and which could have been written only by a Florentine. On comparing, however, the style of this Romance with the prose of those authors who wrote before Dante, we are convinced that it will be allowed that the language is of a much later date, nor is it indeed probable that a man like Dante would condescend to copy almost literally from an obscure romance.

But after all, the disputes respecting Dante's originality, are not worth half the labour that has been bestowed upon determining a question little connected with the real interest and merit of the poem. Its chief interest consists in its imbodying the spirit and reflecting the intellectual character of the era in which it appeared: the astonishing genius which it displays, can be appreciated only by a reference to the circumstances under which Dante achieved his mighty enterprise. The incongruities, the barbarous taste, the occasional imbecillities of the poem, are chargeable less upon the Poet than upon the age: its severe grandeur, the boldness of its satire, the lofty spirit of freedom which it breathes, the bursts of tenderness and impassioned feeling with which it abounds, the learning which it displays, the richness of its historical allusions, and the beauty of its episodes, are so many distinguishing characteristics, which exalt it among the most extraordinary efforts of human intellect. Among the episodes, that of Francesca da Rimini, which Mr. Hunt has expanded into a beautiful Story' in four cantos, that of Ugolino, which has been familiarized through the medium of the canvass, and those of Farinata, of Guido Čavalcanti, of La Pia, and Manfredi, are strikingly beautiful. Guido Cavalcanti was one of Dante's earliest friends. Their intimacy originated in Guido's replying to Dante's first published sonnet to Beatrice. This custom, which prevailed among the early Italian poets, of answering each other's verses, was probably a remnant of the cours d'amour of the Troubadours. In passing through hell, Dante meets with Guido's father, whom he places there on account of his being a disciple of Epicurus. He is thus finely introduced:

Then, peering forth from the unclosed jaw,...

Rose from his side a shade, high as the chin,
Leaning methought upon its knees uprais'd.
It look'd around, as eager to explore

If there were other with me; but perceiving
That fond imagination quench'd, with tears

Thus spake: "If thou through this blind prison go'st,
Led by thy lofty genius and profound,

Where is my son? and wherefore not with thee?"
I straight replied: "Not of myself I come,
By him who there expects me, thro' this clime
Conducted, whom perchance Guido thy son
Had in contempt." Already had his words
And mode of punishment read me his name,
Whence I so fully answered. He at once
Exclaimed, up-starting: "How! saidst thou, he had?
No longer lives hé? Strikes not on his eye
The blessed day-light?" Then of some delay

I made ere my reply, aware, down fell
Supine, nor after forth appear'd be more.'

Hell. Canto x.

Nothing can be more beautiful than some of Dante's descriptions of morning and evening. We subjoin two passages, as further specimens of Mr. Carey's versification.

Now was the hour that wakens fond desire

In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart,
Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell;
And pilgrim newly on his road with love
Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.'

Purgatory. Canto viii.

'E'en as the bird, who midst the leafy bower,
Has in her nest sat darkling through the night,
With her sweet brood, impatient to descry
Their wished looks, and to bring home their food,
In the fond quest unconscious of her toil;
She, of the time prevenient, on the spray

That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze
Expects the sun, nor ever till the dawn,'

Removeth from the east her eager ken.

So stood the dame erect (Beatrice), and bent her glance
Wistfully on that region, where the sun

Abateth most his speed!' Paradise, Cant. xxiii.

Dante's hatred of the Popes, which every now and then breaks out in his poem, is probably attributable quite as much to the spirit of the partisan, as to the enlightened views of the philosopher. Milton in his tract Of Reformation concerning Church Discipline in England,' cites Dante, together with Petrarch and Ariosto, as authority for his allegations against episcopacy, and be presents in English blank verse,' the fol

lowing translation of a passage from the nineteenth canto of the Inferno.

Ah Constantine! of how much ill was cause 'Not thy conversion, but those rich domains That the first wealthy pope received of thee!'

Milton refers to a similar passage in the twenty ninth canto of Paradise, which is thus rendered by Mr. Carey.

'The aim of all

Is how to shine e'en they, whose office is
To preach the Gospel, let the Gospel sleep,
And pass their own inventions off instead.

Such fables Florence in her pulpit hears
Bandied about more frequent, than the names
Of Bindi and of Lapi in her streets.

The sheep, meanwhile, poor witless ones, return
From pasture, fed with wind! and what avails
For their excuse, they do not see their harm?
Christ said not to his first conventicle,
Go forth and preach imposture to the world,
But gave them truth to build on; and the sound
Was mighty on their lips; nor needed they,
Beside the Gospel, other spear or shield,
To aid them in their warfare for the faith.
The preacher now provides himself with store
Of jests and gibes; and, so there be no lack
Of laughter, while he vents them, his big cowl
Distends, and he has won the meed he sought:
Could but the vulgar catch a glimpse the while
Of that dark bird which nestles in his hood,
They scarce would wait to hear his blessing said,
Which now the dotards hold in such esteem,
That every counterfeit, who spreads abroad
The hands of holy promise, finds a throng.
Of credulous fools beneath. Saint Anthony
Fattens with this his swine, and others worse
Than swine, who diet at his lazy board,
Paying with unstamped metal for their fare.'

Paradise. Canto. xxix.

Dante takes every opportunity of severely satirizing his native city, and he attacked it with the sword as well as with the pen; but the vices which are exposed by the poet, as disgracing his fellow citizens, are the same as the historian paints in colours equally strong, and notwithstanding his keen sense of injury, the partisan was still in heart the patriot. When Henry of Luxembourg was expected to besiege Florence, Dante persisted in refusing to join the army, although it was by its success that