Dante and his mystagogue meet the monster Geryon. He has the face of a man with a mild and benign aspect, but his human form ends in a serpent with a voluminous tail of immense length, terminated by a sting, which he brandishes like a scorpion. His hands are rough with bristles and scales. His breast, back, and sides have all the rich colours displayed in the textures of Tartary and Turkey, or in the labours of Arachne. To speak in Spenser's language, he is, A dragon, horrible and bright. No monster of romance is more savage or superb. Lo dosso, e'l petto, ad amenduo le coste, Con più color sommesse e soppraposte Non fur ma' in drappo Tartari ne Turchi, The conformation of this heterogeneous beast, as a fabulous hell is the subject, perhaps immediately gave rise to one of the formidable shapes which sate on either side of the gates of hell in Milton. Although the fiction is founded in the classics. The one seem'd woman to the waste and fair, Virgil, seeming to acknowledge him as an old acquaintance, mounts the back of Geryon. At the same time Dante mounts, whom Virgil places before, "that you may not," says he, "be exposed to the monster's venomous sting." Virgil then commands Geryon not to move too rapidly, "for, consider, what a new burthen you carry!" FAIR. QU. i. ix. 52. f CANT. xvii. Dante says, that he lay on the banks of a river like a Beaver, the CASTOR. But this foolish comparison is affectedly introduced by our author for a display of his natural knowledge from Pliny, or rather from the TESORO of his master Brunetto. PAR. L. ii. 649. "Gerion muoviti omai, Le ruote large, e lo scender sia poco: In this manner they travel in the air through Tartarus: and from the back of the monster Geryon, Dante looks down on the burning lake of Phlegethon. This imagery is at once great and ridiculous. But much later Italian poets have fallen into the same strange mixture. In this horrid situation says Dante, I sentia già dalla man destra il gorgo Far sotto noi un orribile stroscio : Perche con gli occhi in giù la testa sporsi Oud' io tremando tutto mi rancosco.i This airy journey is copied from the flight of Icarus and Phaeton, and at length produced the Ippogrifo of Ariosto. Nor is it quite improbable, that Milton, although he has greatly improved and dignified the idea, might have caught from hence his fiction of Satan soaring over the infernal abyss. At length Geryon, having circuited the air like a faulcon towering without prey, deposits his burthen and vanishes*. While they are wandering along the banks of Phlegethon, as the twilight of evening approaches, Dante suddenly hears the sound of a horn more loud than thunder, or the horn of Orlando'. Ma io senti sonare alto corno: Non sono si terribilimente Orlando." Dante descries through the gloom, what he thinks to be many high and vast towers, molte alti torri. These are the giants who warred against heaven, standing in a row, half concealed within and half extant without an immense abyss or pit. Gli orribili giganti, cui minaccia Giove del cielo ancora quando tuona." But Virgil informs Dante that he is deceived by appearances, and that these are not towers but the giants. Sappi, che non son torri ma giganti One of them cries out to Dante with horrible voice. Another, Ephialtes, is cloathed in iron and bound with huge chains. Dante wishes to see Briareus: he is answered, that he lies in an interior cavern biting his chain. Immediately Ephialtes arose from another cavern, and shook himself like an earthquake. Non fu tremuoto già tanto rubesto, Come Fialte a scuotersi fu presto.P Dante views the horn which had sounded so vehemently hanging by a leathern thong from the neck of one of the giants. Antaeus, whose body stands ten ells high from the pit, is commanded by Virgil to advance. They both mount on his shoulders, and are thus carried about Cocytus. The giant, says the poet, moved off with us like the mast of a ship. One cannot help observing, what has been indeed already hinted, how judiciously Milton, in a similar argument, has retained the just beauties, and avoided the childish or ludicrous excesses of these bold inventions. At the same time we may remark, how Dante has sometimes heightened, and sometimes diminished by im n CANT. xxxi. • Ibid. P Ibid. 9 Dante says, if I understand the passage right, that the face of one of the giants resembled the Cupola, shaped like a pine-apple, of saint Peter's church at Rome. Ibid. CANT. xxxi. Come la pina di san Pietro a Roma. proper additions or misrepresentations, the legitimate descriptions of Virgil. One of the torments of the Damned in Dante's INFERNO, is the punishment of being eternally confined in lakes of ice. Eran l'ombre dolenti nell ghiaccia Mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna." The ice is described to be like that of the Danube or Tanais. This species of infernal torment, which is neither directly warranted by scripture, nor suggested in the systems of the Platonic fabulists, and which has been adopted both by Shakespeare and Milton, has its origin in the legendary hell of the monks. The hint seems to have been taken from an obscure text in the Book of JOB, dilated by Saint Jerom and the early commentators. The torments of hell, in which the punishment by cold is painted at large, had formed a visionary romance, under the name of Saint Patrick's Purgatory or Cave, long before Dante wrote. The venerable Bede, who lived in the seventh century, has framed a future mansion of existence for departed souls with this mode of torture. In the hands of Dante it has assumed many fantastic and grotesque circumstances, which make us laugh and shudder at the same time. In another department, Dante represents some of his criminals rolling themselves in human ordure. If his subject led him to such a description, he might at least have used decent expressions. But his diction is not here less sordid than his imagery. I am almost afraid to transcribe this gross passage, even in the disguise of the old Tuscan phraseology. Quindi giù nel fosso Vidi gente attuffata in uno sterco, Che non parea s'era laico, o cherco.▾ CANT. xxxii. 3 JOB, XXIV. 19. V See supr. vol. iii. p. 34, note. The humour of the last line does not make amends for the nastiness of the image. It is not to be supposed, that a man of strong sense and genius, whose understanding had been cultivated by a most exact education, and who had passed his life in the courts of sovereign princes, would have indulged himself in these disgusting fooleries, had he been at all apprehensive that his readers would have been disgusted. But rude and early poets describe every thing. They follow the public manners: and if they are either obscene or indelicate, it should be remembered that they wrote before obscenity or indelicacy became offensive. Some of the Guilty are made objects of contempt by a transformation into beastly or ridiculous shapes. This was from the fable of Circe. In others, the human figure is rendered ridiculous by distortion. There is one set of criminals whose faces are turned round towards their backs. E'l piante de gli occhi Le natiche bagnava per lo fesso." But Dante has displayed more true poetry in describing a real event than in the best of his fictions. This is in the story of Ugolino count of Pisa, the subject of a very capital picture by Reynolds. The poet, wandering through the depths of hell, sees two of the Damned gnawing the sculls of each other, which was their daily food. He inquires the meaning of this dreadful repast. La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto Quel peccator, forbendola a capelli Del capo ch'egli havea di retro guasto." Ugolino quitting his companion's half devoured scull, begins his tale to this effect. "We are Ugolin count of Pisa, and archbishop Ruggieri. Trusting in the perfidious counsels of Ruggieri, I was brought to a miserable death. I was committed with four of my children to the dungeon of hunger. The time " CANT. XX. "CANT. xxxiii. They are both in the lake of ice. |