Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/243

Rh 63. The long neglect of classic studies in Italy before Dante's time.

70. Born under Julius Cæsar, but too late to grow up to manhood during his Imperial reign. He flourished later under Augustus.

79. In this passage Dante but expresses the universal veneration felt for Virgil during the Middle Ages, and especially in Italy. Petrarch's copy of Virgil is still preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan; and at the beginning of it he has recorded in a Latin note the time of his first meeting with Laura, and the date of her death, which, he says, "I write in this book, rather than elsewhere, because it comes often under my eye."

In the popular imagination Virgil became a mythical personage and a mighty magician. See the story of Virgilius in Thom's Early Prose Romances, 11. Dante selects him for his guide, as symbolizing human science or Philosophy. "I say and affirm," he remarks, Convito, V. 16, "that the lady with whom I became enamored after my first love was the most beautiful and modest daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name of Philosophy."

87. Dante seems to have been already conscious of the fame which his Vita Nuova and Canzoni had given him.

101. The greyhound is Can Grande della Scala, Lord of Verona, Imperial Vicar, Ghibelline, and friend of Dante. Verona is between Feltro in the Marca Trivigiana, and Montefeltro in Romagna. Boccaccio, Decameron, I. 7, speaks of him as "one of the most notable and magnificent lords that had been known in Italy, since the Emperor Frederick the Second." To him Dante dedicated the Paradiso. Some commentators think the Veltro is not Can Grande, but Ugguccione della Faggiola. See Troya, Del Veltro Allegorico di Dante.

106. The plains of Italy, in contradistinction to the mountains; the humilemque Italiam of Virgil, Æneid, III. 522: "And now the stars being chased away, blushing Aurora appeared, when far off we espy the hills obscure, and lowly Italy."

116. I give preference to the reading, Di quegli antichi spiriti dolenti.

122. Beatrice.

1. The evening of.

Dante, Convito, III. 2, says: "Man is called by philosophers the divine animal." Chaucer's Assemble of Foules:—

Mr. Ruskin, Modern Painters, III. 240, speaking of Dante's use of the word "bruno," says:—

"In describing a simple twilight—not a Hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening—(Inf. ii. 1), he says, the 'brown' air took the animals away