class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">192

CANTO XXVII. The Eighth Circle—Eighth Bolgia continued—Guido of Montefeltro—the Cities of Romagna—Guido and Boniface VIII., 200 CANTO XXVIII. The Eighth Circle—Ninth Bolgia, where the Schismatics in Church and State are for ever being dismembered—Mahomet—Fra Dolcino—Pier da Medicina—Curio—Mosca—Bertrand de Born, 209 CANTO XXIX. The Eighth Circle—Ninth Bolgia continued—Geri del Bello—Tenth Bolgia, where Counterfeiters of various kinds, as Alchemists and Forgers, are tormented with loathsome diseases—Griffolino of Arezzo—Capocchio on the Sienese, 217 CANTO XXX. The Eighth Circle—Tenth Bolgia continued—Myrrha—Gianni Schicchi—Master Adam and his confession—Sinon, 225 CANTO XXXI. The Ninth Circle, outside of which they remain till the end of this Canto—this, the Central Pit of Inferno, is encircled and guarded by Giants—Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antæus—entrance to the Pit, 233 CANTO XXXII. The Ninth Circle—that of the Traitors, is divided into four concentric rings, in which the sinners are plunged more or less deep in the ice of the frozen Cocytus—the Outer Ring is Caïna, where are those who contrived the murder of their Kindred—Camicion de’ Pazzi—Antenora, the Second Ring, where are such as betrayed their Country—Bocca degli Abati—Buoso da Duera—Ugolino, 241 CANTO XXXIII. The Ninth Circle—Antenora continued—Ugolino and his tale—the Third Ring, or Ptolomæa, where are those treacherous to their Friends—Friar Alberigo—Branca d’Oria, 249 CANTO XXXIV. The Ninth Circle—the Fourth Ring or Judecca, the deepest point of the Inferno and the Centre of the Universe—it is the place of those treacherous to their Lords or Benefactors—Lucifer with Judas, Brutus, and Cassius hanging from his mouths—passage through the Centre of the Earth—ascent from the depths to the light of the stars in the Southern Hemisphere, 260 INDEX, 269

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FLORENCE AND DANTE.

Dante is himself the hero of the Divine Comedy, and ere many stages of the Inferno have been passed the reader feels that all his steps are being taken in a familiar companionship. When every allowance has been made for what the exigencies of art required him to heighten or suppress, it is still impossible not to be convinced that the author is revealing himself much as he really was—in some of his weakness as well as in all his strength. The poem itself, by many an unconscious touch, does for his moral portraiture what the pencil of Giotto has done for the features of his face. The one likeness answers marvellously to the other; and, together, they have helped the world to recognise in him the great example of a man of genius who, though at first sight he may seem to be austere, is soon found to attract our love by the depth of his feelings as much as he wins our admiration by the wealth of his fancy, and by the clearness of his judgment on everything concerned with the lives and destiny of men. His other writings in greater or less degree confirm the impression of Dante’s character to be obtained from the Comedy. Some of them are partly autobiographical; and, studying as a whole all that is left to us of him, we can gain a general notion of the nature of his career—when he was born and what was his condition in life; his early loves and friendships; his studies, military service, and political aims; his hopes and illusions, and the weary purgatory of his exile.

To the knowledge of Dante’s life and character which is thus to be acquired, the formal biographies of him have but little to add that is both trustworthy and of value. Something of course there is in the traditional story of his life that has come down from his time with the seal of genuineness; and something that has been ascertained by careful research among Florentine and other documents. But when all that old and modern Lives have to tell us has been sifted, the additional facts regarding him are found to be but few; such at least as are beyond dispute. Boccaccio, his earliest biographer, swells out his Life, as the earlier commentators on the Comedy do their notes, with what are plainly but legendary amplifications of hints supplied by Dante’s own words; while more recent and critical writers succeed with infinite pains in little beyond establishing, each to his own satisfaction, what was the order of publication of the poet’s works, where he may have travelled to, and when and for how long a time he may have had this or that great lord for a patron.

A very few pages would therefore be enough to tell the events of Dante’s life as far as they are certainly known. But, to be of use as an introduction to the study of his great poem, any biographical sketch must contain some account—more or less full—of Florentine affairs before and during his lifetime; for among the actors in these are to be found many of the persons of the Comedy. In reading the poem we are never suffered for long to forget his exile. From one point of view it is an appeal to future ages from Florentine injustice and ingratitude; from another, it is a long and passionate plea with his native town to shake her in her stubborn cruelty. In spite of the worst she can do against him he remains no less her son. In the early copies of it, the Comedy is well described as the work of Dante Alighieri, the