[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his enemies in hell before their time.]
[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and others.]
[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,
"Quì vive la pietà quand' è ben morta." Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
"Chi è più scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui, Ch'al giudicio divin passion porta."
That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings against the judgments of God?" The answer is: He that attributes judgments to God which are to render humanity pitiless.]
[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi così poco_. Michael Scot had been in Florence; to which circumstance we are most probably indebted for this curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice, considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to swallow.]
[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a hearer of this passage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not one honest man in all Lucca!]
"Intorno si mira Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira."
This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised astonishment ever painted.]
[Footnote 31: I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour, from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it best to run!]
