And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him-who now is but a name,
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus-to tame
My mind down from its own infinity--

To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,
A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,
Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain-
To feel me in the solitude of kings

Without the power that makes them bear a crown-
To envy every dove his nest and wings

Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be,

Within my all inexorable town,

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,8

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry-this to see

And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,
They made an Exile-not a slave of me.

NOTES TO CANTO THE FIRST.

1.-Page 79, line 1.

THE PROPHECY OF DANTE.

[DANTE ALIGHIERI was born in Florence in May, 1265, of an ancient and honourable family. In the early part of his life he gained some credit in a military character, and distinguished himself by his bravery in an action where the Florentines obtained a signal victory over the citizens of Arezzo. At the age of thirty-five he rose to be one of the chief magistrates of Florence, when that dignity was conferred by the suffrages of the people. From this exaltation the poet dated his principal misfortunes. Italy was distracted by the factions of the Ghibellines and Guelphs, and the internal dissensions among the latter, to whom Dante belonged, caused him to be banished in one of the proscriptions, when he became a Ghibelline, and died in exile in 1321.]

2.-Page 79, line 13.

'Midst whom my own bright Beatrice bless'd

The reader is requested to adopt the Italian pronunciation of Beatrice, sounding all the syllables.

3.-Page 79, line 29.

My paradise had still been incomplete.

"Che sol per le belle opre

Che fanno in Cielo il sole e l' altre stelle

Dentro di lui' si crede il Paradiso,

Cosi se guardi fiso

Pensar ben dèi ch' ogni terren' piacere."

Canzone, in which Dante describes the person of Beatrice, Strophe third.

4.-Page 80, line 3.

Loved-ere I knew the name of love, and bright

According to Boccaccio, Dante was a lover long before he was a soldier, and his passion for the Beatrice whom he has immortalised commenced while he was in his ninth and she in her eighth year.CARY.]

5.-Page 80, line 32.

I would have had my Florence great and free;

"L'Esilio che m' è dato onor mi tegno

in which he represents Right, Generosity, and Temperance as banished from among men, and seeking refuge from Love, who inhabits his bosom.

6.-Page 80, line 41.

And doom this body forfeit to the fire.

"Ut si quis predictorum ullo tempore in fortiam dicti communis pervenerit, talis perveniens igne comburatur, sic quod moriatur." Second sentence of Florence against Dante, and the fourteen accused with him. The Latin is worthy of the sentence.-[The decree that he and his associates in exile should be burned, if they fell into the hands of their enemies, was first discovered in 1772. Dante had been previously fined eight thousand lire, and condemned to two years' banishment.]

7.-Page 81, line 37.

At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,

[When Marius was defeated in the civil war between himself and Sylla, he escaped his pursuers by plunging chin deep into the marshes of Minturnum, between Rome and Naples. He then sailed for Carthage, and had no sooner landed than he was ordered by the governor to quit Africa. On his subsequently gaining the ascendancy, Marius justified the massacre of Sylla's adherents by the humiliation he had suffered himself at Minturnum and Carthage.]

8.-Page 83, line 19.

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,

This lady, whose name was Gemma, sprung from one of the most powerful Guelph families named Donati. Corso Donati was the principal adversary of the Ghibellines. She is described as being "Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus," according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalised with Boccace, in his life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. "Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le mogli esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate il più nobile filosofo che mai fosse, ebbe moglie e figliuoli e uffici della Repubblica nella sua Città; e Aristotele che, &c., &c., ebbe due mogli in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze assai.-E Marco Tullio-e Catone-e Varrone-e Seneca

ebbero moglie," &c. &c. It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples with the exception of Seneca, and, for any thing I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands' happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophy-Cato gave away his wife-of Varro's we know nothing-and of Seneca's, only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered and lived several years afterwards. But says Lionardo, "L'uomo è animale civile, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi." And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the animal's civism is "la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la Città."

CANTO THE SECOND.

THE Spirit of the fervent days of Old,

When words were things that came to pass, and thought
Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold
Their children's children's doom already brought
Forth from the abyss of time which is to be,
The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great Seers of Israel wore within,
That spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,
The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,
Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one country, and even yet

Thou'rt mine--my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set

With our old Roman sway in the wide West;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which express'd
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue

Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.