If the preceding Canto be a general introduction

to the whole poem, this one is a prologue to its first Canticle, Hell; and prologue is the title it bears in some editions (1), which, in this particular, I follow, as perhaps more methodical. Virgil, after having, in the first Canto, extricated Dante from the allegorical forest and proposed to him an unearthly journey, now finds him shrinking from the emprize as too sublime. Upon this he tells him his journey is sanctioned by Providence; and that it was his own adored and sainted mistress, Beatrice, who descended from heaven to Elysium and said so. On which the pupil, replete with confidence and courage, calls on his master to lead on and the Canto ends. As to the time, it is clear that a day has been consumed in the first Canto: so that it is now night-fall, April the eighth 1300(2).

(1) Buonanni. Fiorenza. 1522.
(2) Comment, Hell, Canto 1. p. 24.

CANTO 11.

The opening verses are said (1) to be worthy of Virgil; it may be added they are manifestly borrowed from him,

Nox erat et terras animalia fessa per omnes

Alituum pecudumque genus sopor altus habebat,

moral difficulty, is much employed by Dante and by his countrymen after him: so Petrarch in his hymn to the Virgin

Mente che non erra is the original; which non erra shows that mente does not here signify generally the mind or intellect, but only that faculty of it which does not err, the memory: which is defined by Locke to be « the power to revive in our minds those ideas which were there before. » Hence it is clear that it cannot err; because when those old ideas are exclusively retraced, there is so far no error; and when we mingle them with new õues, it is some other intellectual power that we exert, although perhaps unconsciously, and not memory. And if we mistake in our estimate of

(1) Hist. Litt. d'Italie vol. 2. p. 32.

(2) Aeneid. 1. vIII. v. 26.

(3) v. 4.

SANTO II.

those ideas, the fault is in our judgment; and not in our memory. One may err from want of memory; but to speak of the fault of one's memory is quite illogical. It is then a very exact definition of memory, to call it that mental power which is faultless. Dante, having once given this precise notion of what he means by mente, mind, continues to use it, without further scruple, as synonimous with memory; as for example, only two lines lower

And thou, inditing mind!

O mente che scrivesti!

He found it probably a more convenient word than memoria: In the same peculiar sense, we ourselves also employ mind; as, time out of mind, or, we call to mind his covenant.

Nobility

nobilitate

is thus defined in the Monarchia 'By virtue are men ennobled;

their own, or by that of their ancestors. According to the Philosopher, nobility is virtue and ancient heritage: and, Juvenal wrote nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus. Nobility then is twofold, personal and ancestral (1).' Dante aspired to them both for, if he now claims the former for his intellectual endowments, we shall, hereafter, hear him challenging the latter, with the pride of

(1) p. 31.

CANTO II.

elevated birth and the minuteness of a profound genealogist.

In the Original, parente is put for father, with a licence similar to one already noticed (1). It is a grand conception to represent the adventures of Aeneas, the glories of the latin worthies and imperial Rome herself, as the pre-ordained forerunners of Christianity: and no doubt but it is an improvement on the Virgilian exordium ———

Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem.

To appreciate much of what follows, it is necessary to consider this passage a little, not as detached from the context, but as strictly explanatory of it; and as purposely set down here, to be the head and front of an entire system: those therefore who pass it by cursorily are very likely to be puzzled hereafter, on coming to invectives poured out against the same See, which is at present mentioned with extreme veneration. Such praise and such blame may appear inconsistent to an inattentive reader; whereas they, on the contrary, afford the most luminous proof of our Author's unshakeable consistency. He was a devout believer in Catholicism; and a steady friend of liberty: how narrow

(1) Hell, Comment. Canto 1. p. 38.

CANTO II.

the course he had to steer, and what conflicting factions were to assail him, he must have foreseen; and he consequently employed every means that prudence could suggest to prepare for them,-but not successfully. It is the fate of most men, who write reasonably on a party question, to offend both sides; and they ought never to flatter themselves that they can attain any other recompense, than that of their own consciences and the assent of posterity. Present passions are against them; and the unimpassioned are too few and too quiet to be heard. But, above all mankind, this remark applies to Dante; who, in the most distempered age, undertook to discuss impartially the two most momentous and inflammatory of subjects, religion and politics: so that it is no wonder his character should be misunderstood abroad, when it was exposed to worse reproach at home; where his countrymen (however they may have extolled his speculative theology and his verses) only now slowly begin to do him some little justice as a political moralist; although he is certainly still more admirable in this latter character, than in that of poet. But, in order to curtail the argument, I beg of the reader (whatever may have been his habits of thinking) to concede for a while that our Author's objects were to panegyrize Christianity (or indeed rather the form of Christianity professed by Catholics (1) ) and to advocate freedom; and,

(1) Fu il nostro Dante nasconditore di eosì cara gioja come è la