[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for them, and his impatience to see them triumph." So said the Inquisition. The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed, or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions.]
"_Sàvia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapìa_ Fosse chiamata." The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name." It is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the punsters.--It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some zeal of faction]
[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a little envy, but far more pride:
"Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti, Ma picciol tempo; che poch' è l'offesa Fatta per esser con invidia volti. Troppa è più la paura ond' è sospesa L'anima mia del tormento di sotto Che già lo 'ncarco di là giù mi pesa."
The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second, affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to women.]
[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her sister Herse.
The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.