Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/253

Rh the word stone is not hard enough for them. Stone might crumble away after it was made, or something with life might grow upon it; no, it shall not be stone; they will make enamel of him; nothing can grow out of that; it is dead forever."

And yet just before, line 111, Dante speaks of this meadow as a "meadow of fresh verdure."

Compare Brunetto's Tesoretto, XIII.

128. In the Convito, IV. 28, Dante makes Marcia, Cato's wife, a symbol of the noble soul: "Per la quale Marzia s' intende la nobile anima."

129. The of the Crusades. See Gibbon, Chap. LIX. Dante also makes mention of him, as worthy of affectionate remembrance, in the Convito, IV. 2. Mr. Cary quotes the following passage from Knolles's History of the Turks, page 57:—

"About this time (1193) died the great Sultan Saladin, the greatest terror of the Christians, who, mindful of man's fragility and the vanity of worldly honors, commanded at the time of his death no solemnity to be used at his burial, but only his shirt, in manner of an ensign, made fast unto the point of a lance, to be carried before his dead body as an ensign, a plain priest going before, and crying aloud unto the