So saw I fluctuate in successive change
The unsteady ballast of the seventh hold:
And here if aught my pen have swerved, events
So strange may be its warrant. O'er mine eyes
Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze.

Yet 'scaped they not so covertly, but well

I mark'd Sciancato: he alone it was

Of the three first that came, who changed not: tho'
The other's fate, Gaville! still dost rue.

CANTO XXVI

ARGUMENT.-Remounting by the steps, down which they have descended to the seventh gulf, they go forward to the arch that stretches over the eighth, and from thence behold numberless flames wherein are punished the evil counsellors, each flame containing a sinner, save one, in which were Diomede and Ulysses, the latter of whom relates the manner of his death.

F

LORENCE, exult! for thou so mightily

Hast thriven, that o'er land and sea thy wings
Thou beatest, and thy name spreads over Hell.
Among the plunderers, such the three I found
Thy citizens; whence shame to me thy son,
And no proud honor to thyself redounds.

But if our minds, when dreaming near the dawn,
Are of the truth presageful, thou ere long

Shalt feel what Prato1 (not to say the rest)

Would fain might come upon thee; and that chance
Were in good time, if it befell thee now.

Would so it were, since it must needs befall!
For as time wears me, I shall grieve the more.
We from the depth departed; and my guide
Remounting scaled the flinty steps, which late
We downward traced, and drew me up the steep.

1" Shalt feel what Prato." The Poet prognosticates the calamities which were soon to befall his native city, and which, he says, even her nearest neighbor, Prato, would wish her. The calamities more particularly pointed at are said to be the fall of a wooden bridge over the Arno, in May, 1304, where a large multitude were assembled to witness a rep

resentation of hell and the infernal torments, in consequence of which accident many lives were lost; and a conflagration, that in the following month de stroyed more than 1,700 houses, many of them sumptuous buildings. See G. Villani, "Hist." lib. viii. c. lxx. and lxxi.

Pursuing thus our solitary way

Among the crags and splinters of the rock,
Sped not our feet without the help of hands.

Then sorrow seized me, which e'en now revives,
As my thought turns again to what I saw,
And, more than I am wont, I rein and curb

The powers of nature in me, lest they run
Where Virtue guides not; that, if aught of good
My gentle star or something better gave me,
I envy not myself the precious boon.

As in that season, when the sun least veils
His face that lightens all, what time the fly
Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then,
Upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees
Fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale,
Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labor lies;
With flames so numberless throughout its space
Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth
Was to my view exposed. As he, whose wrongs
The bears avenged, as its departure saw

Elijah's chariot, when the steeds erect

Raised their steep flight for heaven; his eyes meanwhile,
Straining pursued them, till the flame alone,

Upsoaring like a misty speck, he kenn'd:
E'en thus along the gulf moves every flame,
A sinner so enfolded close in each,
That none exhibits token of the theft.

Upon the bridge I forward bent to look,
And grasp'd a flinty mass, or else had fallen,

Though push'd not from the height. The guide, who mark'd

How I did gaze attentive, thus began:

"Within these ardors are the spirits, each

Swathed in confining fire." "Master! thy word,"

I answer'd, "hath assured me; yet I deem'd

Already of the truth, already wish'd

To ask thee who is in yon fire, that comes
So parted at the summit, as it seem'd

Ascending from that funeral pile 2 where lay

2" Ascending from that funeral pile." The flame is said to have divided on the funeral pile which consumed the bodies

of Eteocles and Polynices, as
if con-
scious of the enmity that actuated them
while living.

The Theban brothers." He replied: "Within,
Ulysses there and Diomede endure

Their penal tortures, thus to vengeance now
Together hasting, as erewhile to wrath

These in the flame with ceaseless groans deplore
The ambush of the horse, that open'd wide
A portal for the goodly seed to pass,

Which sow'd imperial Rome; nor less the guile
Lament they, whence, of her Achilles 'reft,

Deïdamia yet in death complains.

And there is rued the stratagem that Troy
Of her Palladium spoil'd."-"If they have power
Of utterance from within these sparks," said I,
"O master! think my prayer a thousand-fold
In repetition urged, that thou vouchsafe
To pause till here the horned flame arrive.
See, how toward it with desires I bend."

He thus: "Thy prayer is worthy of much praise,
And I accept it therefore; but do thou

Thy tongue refrain: to question them be mine; and they perchance,

For I divine thy wish;

For they were Greeks,

might shun discourse with thee."

When there the flame had come, where time and place

Seem'd fitting to my guide, he thus began:

"O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire!

If, living, I of you did merit aught,

Whate'er the measure were of that desert,
When in the world my lofty strain I pour'd,
Move ye not on, till one of you unfold
In what clime death o'ertook him self-destroy'd."
Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn
Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire

That labors with the wind, then to and fro
Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds,
Threw out its voice, and spake: "When I escaped
From Circe, who beyond a circling year

Had held me near Caieta by her charms,

"The ambush of the horse." "The ambush of the wooden horse that caused Æneas to quit the city of Troy and seek his fortune in Italy, where his

descendants founded the Roman Empire."

4" For they were Greeks." By this it is perhaps implied that they were haughty and arrogant.

Ere thus Æneas yet had named the shore;
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
Of my old father, nor return of love,

That should have crown'd Penelope with joy,
Could overcome in me the zeal I had

To explore the world, and search the ways of life,
Man's evil and his virtue. Forth I sail'd

Into the deep illimitable main,

With but one bark, and the small faithful band
That yet cleaved to me. As Iberia far,
Far as Marocco, either shore I saw,

And the Sardinian and each isle beside

Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age
Were I and my companions, when we came
To the strait pass," where Hercules ordain'd
The boundaries not to be o'erstepp'd by man.
The walls of Seville to my right I left,
On the other hand already Ceuta past.
'O brothers!' I began, who to the west

Through perils without number now have reach'd;
To this the short remaining watch, that yet
Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof
Of the unpeopled world, following the track

Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang:
Ye were not form'd to live the life of brutes,
But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.'
With these few words I sharpen'd for the voyage
The mind of my associates, that I then
Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn
Our poop we turn'd, and for the witless flight
Made our oars wings, still gaining on the left.
Each star of the other pole night now beheld,
And ours so low, that from the ocean floor
It rose not. Five times reillumed, as oft
Vanish'd the light from underneath the moon,
Since the deep way we enter'd, when from far
Appear'd a mountain dim, loftiest methought

"The strait pass." The Strait of Gibraltar.

"A mountain dim." The mountain of Purgatory.-Among the various opin

ions of theologians respecting the situa tion of the terrestrial paradise, Pietro Lombardo relates that "it was separated by a long space, either of sea or land,

Of all I e'er beheld. Joy seized us straight;
But soon to mourning changed. From the new land
A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side
Did strike the vessel. Thrice it whirl'd her round
With all the waves; the fourth time lifted up
The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed:
And over us the booming billow closed."

CANTO XXVII

ARGUMENT.-The Poet, treating of the same punishment as in the last Canto, relates that he turned toward a flame in which was the Count Guido da Montefeltro, whose inquiries respecting the state of Romagna he answers; and Guido is thereby induced to declare who he is, and why condemned to that torment.

OW upward rose the flame, and still'd its light

To speak no more, and now pass'd on with leave
From the mild poet gain'd; when following came

Another, from whose top a sound confused,

Forth issuing, drew our eyes that way to look.
As the Sicilian bull,' that rightfully

His cries first echoed who had shaped its mould,

Did so rebellow, with the voice of him

Torment'd, that the brazen monster seem'd

Pierced through with pain; thus, while no way they found, Nor avenue immediate through the flame,

Into its language turn'd the dismal words:

But soon as they had won their passage forth,

Up from the point, which vibrating obey'd

Their motion at the tongue, these sounds were heard:
"O thou! to whom I now direct my voice,
That lately didst exclaim in Lombard phrase,

from the regions inhabited by men, and
placed in the ocean, reaching as far as
to the lunar circle, so that the waters of
the deluge did not reach it."-" Sent."
lib. ii. dist. 17. Thus Lombardi.

7" Closed.' Venturi refers to Pliny and Solinus for the opinion that Ulysses was the founder of Lisbon, from whence he thinks it was easy for the fancy of a poet to send him on yet further enterprises. Perhaps the story (which it is not unlikely that our author will be

found to have borrowed from some legend of the Middle Ages) may have taken its rise partly from the obscure oracle returned by the ghost of Tiresias to Ulysses (see the eleventh book of the "Odyssey "), and partly from the fate which there was reason to suppose had befallen some adventurous explor. ers of the Atlantic Ocean.

1" The Sicilian bull." The engine of torture invented by Perillus, for the tyrant Phalaris.