2.
In the traits of human nature, which so easily assume
a particular cast and colour from individual character. Hence
this excellence and the pathos connected with it quickly pass
into humour, and form the ground of it. See particularly the
beautiful passage, so well known, of Uncle Toby's catching and
liberating the fly:
"Go," says he, one day at dinner, to an
overgrown one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him
cruelly all dinner-time, and which, after infinite attempts, he
had caught at last, as it flew by him; "I'll not hurt
thee," says my Uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going
across the room, with the fly in his hand, "I'll not hurt a
hair of thy head: Go," says he, lifting up the sash, and
opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape; "go, poor
devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? This world is
surely wide enough to hold both thee and me." (Vol. ii. ch.
12.)
Observe in this incident how individual character may be given by
the mere delicacy of presentation and elevation in degree of a
common good quality, humanity, which in itself would not be
characteristic at all.
3.
In Mr. Shandy's character, the essence of which
is a craving for sympathy in exact proportion to the oddity and
unsympathizability of what he proposes; this coupled with
an instinctive desire to be at least disputed with, or rather
both in one, to dispute and yet to agree and holding as
worst of all to acquiesce without either resistance or
sympathy. This is charmingly, indeed, profoundly conceived, and
is psychologically and ethically true of all Mr. Shandies. Note,
too, how the contrasts of character, which are always either
balanced or remedied, increase the love between the brothers.
4.
No writer is so happy as Sterne in the unexaggerated
and truly natural representation of that species of slander,
which consists in gossiping about our neighbours, as whetstones
of our moral discrimination; as if they were conscience-blocks
which we used in our apprenticeship, in order not to waste such
precious materials as our own consciences in the trimming and
shaping of ourselves by self-examination:
Alas o'day! had Mrs. Shandy (poor gentlewoman!)
had but her wish in going up to town just to lie in and come down
again; which, they say, she begged and prayed for upon her bare
knees, and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune which
Mr. Shandy got with her, was no such mighty matter to have
complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been
alive at this hour. (Vol. i. c. 18.)
5.
When you have secured a man's likings and prejudices
in your favour, you may then safely appeal to his impartial
judgment. In the following passage not only is acute sense
shrouded in wit, but a life and a character are added which exalt
the whole into the dramatic:
"I see plainly, Sir, by your looks" (or as the case
happened) my father would say "that you do not heartily
subscribe to this opinion of mine which, to those," he
would add, "who have not carefully sifted it to the bottom,
I own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it; and
yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am
morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to you,
not as a party in the dispute, but as a judge, and trusting my
appeal upon it to your good sense and candid disquisition in this
matter; you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of
education as most men; and, if I may presume to penetrate farther
into you, of a liberality of genius above bearing down an
opinion, merely because it wants friends. Your son, your
dear son, from whose sweet and open temper you have so much
to expect, your Billy, Sir! would you, for the world,
have called him JUDAS? Would you, my dear Sir," he would say,
laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,
and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice
which the nature of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely
requires, "Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather
had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse
along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of
him? O my God!" he would say, looking up, "if I know your temper
rightly, Sir, you are incapable of it; you would have
trampled upon the offer; you would have thrown the
temptation at the tempter's head with abhorrence. Your greatness
of mind in this action, which I admire, with that generous
contempt of money, which you show me in the whole transaction, is
really noble; and what renders it more so, is the principle
of it; the workings of a parent's love upon the truth and
conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, that were your son
called Judas, the sordid and treacherous idea, so
inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through
life like his shadow, and in the end made a miser and a rascal of
him, in spite, Sir, of your example." (Vol. i. c.
19.)
6.
There is great physiognomic tact in Sterne. See it
particularly displayed in his description of Dr. Slop,
accompanied with all that happiest use of drapery and attitude,
which at once give reality by individualizing and vividness by
unusual, yet probable, combinations:
Imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure
of a Doctor Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular
height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly,
which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horseguards.
... Imagine such a one; for such I say, were the outlines
of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling
through the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little
diminutive pony, of a pretty colour but of strength,
alack! scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a
fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition; they
were not. Imagine to yourself Obadiah mounted upon a strong
monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making
all practicable speed the adverse way. (Vol. ii. c.
9.)
7.
I think there is more humour in the single remark,
which I have quoted before "Learned men, brother Toby,
don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing!" than in
the whole Slawkenburghian tale that follows, which is mere oddity
interspersed with drollery.
8.
Note Sterne's assertion of, and faith in, a moral good
in the characters of Trim, Toby, &c. as contrasted with the cold
scepticism of motives which is the stamp of the Jacobin spirit.
(Vol. v. c. 9.)
9.
You must bear in mind, in order to do justice to
Rabelais and Sterne, that by right of humoristic universality
each part is essentially a whole in itself. Hence the digressive
spirit is not mere wantonness, but in fact the very form and
vehicle of their genius. The connection, such as was needed, is
given by the continuity of the characters.
Instances of different forms of wit, taken largely:
1.
Why are you reading romances at your age?" "Why,
I used to be fond of history, but I have given it up, it
was so grossly improbable."
2.
"Pray, sir, do it! although you have promised
me."
3.
The Spartan mother's
"Return with, or on, thy shield."
"My sword is too short!" "Take a step
forwarder."
4.
The Gasconade:
"I believe you, Sir! but you will excuse my repeating
it on account of my provincial accent."
5.
Pasquil on Pope Urban, who had employed a committee to
rip up the old errors of his predecessors.
Some one placed a pair of spurs on the heels of the statue of St.
Peter, and a label from the opposite statue of St. Paul, on the
same bridge;
St. Paul. "Whither then are you bound?"
St. Peter. "I apprehend danger here;- they'll soon call
me in question for denying my Master."
St. Paul. "Nay, then, I had better be off too; for
they'll question me for having persecuted the Christians, before
my conversion."
6.
Speaking of the small German potentates, I dictated
the phrase,
officious for equivalents.
This my
amanuensis wrote,
fishing for elephants;
which, as I observed at the time, was a sort of Noah's angling,
that could hardly have occurred, except at the commencement of
the Deluge.
Contents
Contents, p.2
Donne 1
Born in London, 1573. Died, 1631 4th July, 1796.
I.
2
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
II
See lewdness and theology combin'd,
A cynic and a sycophantic mind;
A fancy shar'd party per pale between
Death's heads and skeletons and Aretine!
Not his peculiar defect or crime,
But the true current mintage of the time.
Such were the establish'd signs and tokens given
To mark a loyal churchman, sound and even,
Free from papistic and fanatic leaven.
The wit of Donne, the wit of Butler, the wit of Pope, the wit of
Congreve, the wit of Sheridan how many disparate things are
here expressed by one and the same word, Wit!
Wonder-exciting vigour, intenseness and peculiarity of thought,
using at will the almost boundless stores of a capacious memory,
and exercised on subjects, where we have no right to expect it
this is the wit of Donne! The four others I am just in the
mood to describe and inter-distinguish; what a pity that
the marginal space will not let me!
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two fitter hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Good-Morrow, v. 15, &c.
The sense is; Our mutual loves may in many respects be
fitly compared to corresponding hemispheres; but as no simile
squares (
nihil simile est idem
), so here the simile fails,
for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to the cold
north, or the declining west, which in two hemispheres must
necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of such length will
scarcely rescue the line from the charge of nonsense or a bull.
January,
1829.
Woman's constancy.
A misnomer. The title ought to be
Mutual Inconstancy.
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine, &c.
Sun Rising, v. 17.
And see at night thy western land of mine, &c.
Progress of the Soul, 1 Song, 2. st.
This use of the word
mine
specifically for mines of gold,
silver, or precious stones, is, I believe, peculiar to Donne.
Footnote 1
:
Nothing remains of what was said on Donne in this Lecture. Here,
therefore, as in previous like instances, the gap is filled up
with some notes written by Mr. Coleridge in a volume of
Chalmers's
Poets
, belonging to Mr. Gillman.
Ed.
Footnote
2
: The verses were added in pencil to the collection of
commendatory lines; No. I. is Mr. C.'s; the publication of No.
II. I trust the all-accomplished author will, under the
circumstances, pardon. Numerous and elaborate notes by Mr.
Coleridge on Donne's
Sermons
are in existence, and will be
published hereafter.
Ed.
Dante
Born at Florence, 1265. Died, 1321.
As I remarked in a former Lecture on a different subject (for
subjects the most diverse in literature have still their
tangents), the Gothic character, and its good and evil fruits,
appeared less in Italy than in any other part of European
Christendom. There was accordingly much less romance, as that
word is commonly understood; or, perhaps, more truly stated,
there was romance instead of chivalry. In Italy, an earlier
imitation of, and a more evident and intentional blending with,
the Latin literature took place than elsewhere. The operation of
the feudal system, too, was incalculably weaker, of that singular
chain of independent interdependents, the principle of which was
a confederacy for the preservation of individual, consistently
with general, freedom. In short, Italy, in the time of Dante, was
an afterbirth of eldest Greece, a renewal or a reflex of the old
Italy under its kings and first Roman consuls, a net-work of free
little republics, with the same domestic feuds, civil wars, and
party spirit, the same vices and virtues produced on a
similarly narrow theatre, the existing state of things
being, as in all small democracies, under the working and
direction of certain individuals, to whose will even the laws
were swayed; whilst at the same time the singular spectacle
was exhibited amidst all this confusion of the flourishing of
commerce, and the protection and encouragement of letters and
arts. Never was the commercial spirit so well reconciled to the
nobler principles of social polity as in Florence. It tended
there to union and permanence and elevation, not as the
overbalance of it in England is now doing, to dislocation, change
and moral degradation. The intensest patriotism reigned in these
communities, but confined and attached exclusively to the small
locality of the patriot's birth and residence; whereas in the
true Gothic feudalism, country was nothing but the preservation
of personal independence. But then, on the other hand, as a
counterbalance to these disuniting elements, there was in Dante's
Italy, as in Greece, a much greater uniformity of religion common
to all than amongst the northern nations.
Upon these hints the history of the republican aeras of ancient
Greece and modern Italy ought to be written. There are three
kinds or stages of historic narrative:
1.
that of the annalist or chronicler, who deals merely
in facts and events arranged in order of time, having no
principle of selection, no plan of arrangement, and whose work
properly constitutes a supplement to the poetical writings of
romance or heroic legends:
2.
that of the writer who takes his stand on some moral
point, and selects a series of events for the express purpose of
illustrating it, and in whose hands the narrative of the selected
events is modified by the principle of selection; as
Thucydides, whose object was to describe the evils of democratic
and aristocratic partizanships; or Polybius, whose design
was to show the social benefits resulting from the triumph and
grandeur of Rome, in public institutions and military discipline;
or Tacitus, whose secret aim was to exhibit the pressure
and corruptions of despotism; in all which writers and
others like them, the ground-object of the historian colours with
artificial lights the facts which he relates:
3.
and which in idea is the grandest-the most truly,
founded in philosophy there is the Herodotean history,
which is not composed with reference to any particular causes,
but attempts to describe human nature itself on a great scale as
a portion of the drama of providence, the free will of man
resisting the destiny of events, for the individuals often
succeeding against it, but for the race always yielding to it,
and in the resistance itself invariably affording means towards
the completion of the ultimate result. Mitford's history is a
good and useful work; but in his zeal against democratic
government, Mitford forgot, or never saw, that ancient Greece was
not, nor ought ever to be considered, a permanent thing, but that
it existed, in the disposition of providence, as a proclaimer of
ideal truths, and that everlasting proclamation being made, that
its functions were naturally at an end.
However, in the height of such a state of society in Italy, Dante
was born and flourished; and was himself eminently a picture of
the age in which he lived. But of more importance even than this,
to a right understanding of Dante, is the consideration that the
scholastic philosophy was then at its acme even in itself; but
more especially in Italy, where it never prevailed so exclusively
as northward of the Alps. It is impossible to understand the
genius of Dante, and difficult to understand his poem, without
some knowledge of the characters, studies, and writings of the
schoolmen of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.
For Dante was the living link between religion and philosophy; he
philosophized the religion and christianized the philosophy of
Italy; and, in this poetic union of religion and philosophy, he
became the ground of transition into the mixed Platonism and
Aristotelianism of the Schools, under which, by numerous minute
articles of faith and ceremony, Christianity became a craft of
hair-splitting, and was ultimately degraded into a complete
fetisch
worship, divorced from philosophy, and made up of
a faith without thought, and a credulity directed by passion.
Afterwards, indeed, philosophy revived under condition of
defending this very superstition; and, in so doing, it
necessarily led the way to its subversion, and that in exact
proportion to the influence of the philosophic schools. Hence it
did its work most completely in Germany, then in England, next in
France, then in Spain, least of all in Italy. We must, therefore,
take the poetry of Dante as christianized, but without the
further Gothic accession of proper chivalry. It was at a somewhat
later period, that the importations from the East, through the
Venetian commerce and the crusading armaments, exercised a
peculiarly strong influence on Italy.
In studying Dante, therefore, we must consider carefully the
differences produced, first, by allegory being substituted for
polytheism; and secondly and mainly, by the opposition of
Christianity to the spirit of pagan Greece, which receiving the
very names of its gods from Egypt, soon deprived them of all that
was universal. The Greeks changed the ideas into finites, and
these finites into
anthropomorphi,
or forms of men. Hence
their religion, their poetry, nay, their very pictures, became
statuesque. With them the form was the end. The reverse of this
was the natural effect of Christianity; in which finites, even
the human form, must, in order to satisfy the mind, be brought
into connexion with, and be in fact symbolical of, the infinite;
and must be considered in some enduring, however shadowy and
indistinct, point of view, as the vehicle or representative of
moral truth.
Hence resulted two great effects; a combination of poetry with
doctrine, and, by turning the mind inward on its own essence
instead of letting it act only on its outward circumstances and
communities, a combination of poetry with sentiment. And it is
this inwardness or subjectivity, which principally and most
fundamentally distinguishes all the classic from all the modern
poetry. Compare the passage in the
Iliad
(Z. vi. 119-236.)
in which Diomed and Glaucus change arms,
Greek (transliterated): Cheiras t'allilon labetin kai pistosanto
They took each other by the hand, and pledged friendship
with the scene in
Ariosto
(Orlando Furioso, c. i. st.
20-22.), where Rinaldo and Ferrauto fight and afterwards make it
up:
Al Pagan la proposta non dispiacque:
Così fu differita la tenzone;
E tal tregua tra lor subito nacque,
Sì l' odio e l' ira va in oblivïone,
Che 'l Pagano al partir dalle fresche acque
Non lasciò a piede il buon figliuol d' Amone:
Con preghi invita, e al fin lo toglie in groppa,
E per l' orme d' Angelica galoppa.
Here Homer would have left it. But the Christian poet has his
own feelings to express, and goes on:
Oh gran bontà de' cavalieri antiqui!
Eran rivali, eran di fè diversi,
E si sentían degli aspri colpi iniqui
Per tutta la persona anco dolersi;
E pur per selve oscure e calli obbliqui
Insieme van senza sospetto aversi!
And here you will observe, that the reaction of Ariosto's own
feelings on the image or act is more fore-grounded (to use a
painter's phrase) than the image or act itself.
The two different modes in which the imagination is acted on by
the ancient and modern poetry, may be illustrated by the parallel
effects caused by the contemplation of the Greek or Roman-Greek
architecture, compared with the Gothic. In the Pantheon, the
whole is perceived in a perceived harmony with the parts which
compose it; and generally you will remember that where the parts
preserve any distinct individuality, there simple beauty, or
beauty simply, arises; but where the parts melt undistinguished
into the whole, there majestic beauty, or majesty, is the result.
In York Minster, the parts, the grotesques, are in themselves
very sharply distinct and separate, and this distinction and
separation of the parts is counterbalanced only by the multitude
and variety of those parts, by which the attention is bewildered;
whilst the whole, or that there is a whole produced, is
altogether a feeling in which the several thousand distinct
impressions lose themselves as in a universal solvent. Hence in a
Gothic cathedral, as in a prospect from a mountain's top, there
is, indeed, a unity, an awful oneness; but it is, because
all distinction evades the eye. And just such is the distinction
between the
Antigone
of Sophocles and the
Hamlet
of
Shakespeare.
The
Divina Commedia
is a system of moral, political, and
theological truths, with arbitrary personal exemplifications,
which are not, in my opinion, allegorical. I do not even feel
convinced that the punishments in the Inferno are strictly
allegorical. I rather take them to have been in Dante's mind
quasi
-allegorical, or conceived in analogy to pure
allegory.
I have said, that a combination of poetry with doctrines, is one
of the characteristics of the Christian muse; but I think Dante
has not succeeded in effecting this combination nearly so well as
Milton.
This comparative failure of Dante, as also some other
peculiarities of his mind, in
malam partem,
must be
immediately attributed to the state of North Italy in his time,
which is vividly represented in Dante's life; a state of intense
democratical partizanship, in which an exaggerated importance was
attached to individuals, and which whilst it afforded a vast
field for the intellect, opened also a boundless arena for the
passions, and in which envy, jealousy, hatred, and other
malignant feelings, could and did assume the form of patriotism,
even to the individual's own conscience.
All this common, and, as it were, natural
partizanship, was aggravated arid coloured by the Guelf and
Ghibelline factions; and, in part explanation of Dante's
adherence to the latter, you must particularly remark, that the
Pope had recently territorialized his authority to a great
extent, and that this increase of territorial power in the
church, was by no means the same beneficial movement for the
citizens of free republics, as the parallel advance in other
countries was for those who groaned as vassals under the
oppression of the circumjacent baronial castles.
By way of preparation to a satisfactory perusal of the
Divina
Commedia
, I will now proceed to state what I consider to be
Dante's chief excellences as a poet. And I begin with:
I.
Style the vividness, logical connexion,
strength and energy of which cannot be surpassed. In this I think
Dante superior to Milton; and his style is accordingly more
imitable than Milton's, and does to this day exercise a greater
influence on the literature of his country. You cannot read Dante
without feeling a gush of manliness of thought within you. Dante
was very sensible of his own excellence in this particular, and
speaks of poets as guardians of the vast armory of language,
which is the intermediate something between matter and
spirit:
Or se' tu quel Virgilio, e quella fonte,
Che spande di parlar sì largo fiume?
Risposi lui con vergognosa fronte.
O degli altri poeti onore e lume,
Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore,
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.
Tu se' lo mio maestro, e 'l mio autore:
Tu se' solo colui, da cu' io tolsi
Lo bello stile, che m' ha fatto onore.
(Inf. c. 1. v. 79.)
"And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,
From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued?" I, with front abash'd, replied:
"Glory and light of all the tuneful train!
May it avail me, that I long with zeal
Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
Have conn'd it o'er. My master, thou, and guide!
Thou he from whom I have alone deriv'd
That style, which for its beauty into fame
Exalts me."
(Cary. [his translation. html Ed.])
Indeed there was a passion and a miracle of words in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, after the long slumber of language in
barbarism, which gave an almost romantic character, a virtuous
quality and power, to what was read in a book, independently of
the thoughts or images contained in it. This feeling is very
often perceptible in Dante.
II.
The Images in Dante are not only taken from obvious
nature, and are all intelligible to all, but are ever conjoined
with the universal feeling received from nature, and therefore
affect the general feelings of all men. And in this respect,
Dante's excellence is very great, and may be contrasted with the
idiosyncracies of some meritorious modern poets, who attempt an
eruditeness, the result of particular feelings. Consider the
simplicity, I may say plainness, of the following simile, and how
differently we should in all probability deal with it at the
present day:
Quale i fioretti dal notturno
gelo
Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl' imbianca,
Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo,
Fal mi fec' io di mia virtute stanca;
(
Inf. c. 2. v. 127.)
As florets, by the frosty air of night
Bent down and clos'd, when day has blanch'd their leaves,
Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems,
So was my fainting vigour new restor'd.
(Cary.
2)
III.
Consider the wonderful profoundness of the whole
third canto of the
Inferno
; and especially of the
inscription over Hell gate:
Per me si va, &c.
which can only be explained by a meditation on the true nature of
religion; that is, reason
plus
the understanding. I
say profoundness rather than sublimity; for Dante does not so
much elevate your thoughts as send them down deeper. In this
canto all the images are distinct, and even vividly distinct; but
there is a total impression of infinity; the wholeness is not in
vision or conception, but in an inner feeling of totality, and
absolute being.
IV.
In picturesqueness, Dante is beyond all other poets,
modern or ancient, and more in the stern style of Pindar, than of
any other. Michel Angelo is said to have made a design for every
page of the
Divina Commedia
. As superexcellent in this
respect, I would note the conclusion of the third canto of the
Inferno
:
Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave
Un vecchio bianco per antico pelo
Gridando: guai a voi anime prave: &c. ...
(Ver. 82. &c.)
And lo! toward us in a bark
Comes on an old man, hoary white with eld,
Crying, "Woe to you wicked spirits!" ...
(Cary.)
Caron dimonio con occhi di bragia
Loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie:
Batte col remo qualunque s' adagia.
Come d' autunno si levan le foglie
L' una appresso dell altra, infin che 'l ramo
Rende alia terra tutte le sue spoglie;
Similemente il mal seme d' Adamo,
Gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una
Per cenni, com' augel per suo richiamo.
(Ver. 100, &c.)
Charon, demoniac form,
With eyes of burning coal, collects them all,
Beck'ning, and each that lingers, with his oar
Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves,
One still another following, till the bough
Strews all its honours on the earth beneath;
E'en in like manner Adam's evil brood
Cast themselves one by one down from the shore
Each at a beck, as falcon at his call.
(Cary.)
And this passage, which I think admirably picturesque:
Ma poco valse, che l' ale al sospetto
Non potero avanzar: quegli andò sotto,
E quei drizzò, volando, suso il petto.
Non altrimenti l' anitra di botto,
Quando 'l falcon s' appressa, giù s' attuffa,
Ed ei ritorna su crucciato e rotto.
Irato Calcabrina della buffa,
Volando dietro gli tenne, invaghito,
Che quei campasse, per aver la zuffa:
E come 'l barattier fu disparito,
Cosi volse gli artigli al suo compagno,
E fu con lui sovra 'l fosso ghermito.
Ma l' altro fu bene sparvier grifagno
Ad artigliar ben lui, e amedue
Cadder nel mezzo del bollente stagno.
Lo caldo sghermidor subito fue:
Ma però di levarsi era niente,
Si aveano inviscate l' ale sue.
(Infer. c. xxii. ver. 127, &c.)
But little it avail'd: terror outstripp'd
His following flight: the other plung'd beneath,
And he with upward pinion rais'd his breast:
E'en thus the water-fowl, when she perceives
The falcon near, dives instant down, while he
Enrag'd and spent retires. That mockery
In Calcabrina fury stirr'd, who flew
After him, with desire of strife inflam'd;
And, for the barterer had 'scap'd, so turn'd
His talons on his comrade. O'er the dyke
In grapple close they join'd; but th' other prov'd
A goshawk, able to rend well his foe;
And in the boiling lake both fell. The heat
Was umpire soon between them, but in vain
To lift themselves they strove, so fast were glued
Their pennons.
(Cary.)
V.
Very closely connected with this picturesqueness, is
the topographic reality of Dante's journey through Hell. You
should note and dwell on this as one of his great charms, and
which gives a striking peculiarity to his poetic power. He thus
takes the thousand delusive forms of a nature worse than chaos,
having no reality but from the passions which they excite, and
compels them into the service of the permanent. Observe the
exceeding truth of these lines:
Noi ricidemmo 'l cerchio all' altra riva,
Sovr' una fonte che bolle, e riversa,
Per un fossato che da lei diriva.
L' acqua era buja molto più che persa:
E noi in compagnia dell' onde bige
Entrammo giù per una via diversa.
Una palude fa, ch' ha nome Stige,
Questo tristo ruscel, quando è disceso
Al piè delle maligne piagge grige.
Ed io che di mirar mi stava inteso,
Vidi genti fangose in quel pantano
Ignude tutte, e con sembiante offeso.
Questi si percotean non pur con mano,
Ma con la testa, e col petto, e co' piedi,
Troncandosi co' denti a brano a brano. ...
Così girammo della lorda pozza
Grand' arco tra la ripa secca e 'l mezzo,
Con gli occhi volti a chi del fango ingozza:
Venimmo appiù d' una torre al dassezzo.
(C. vii. ver. 100 and 127.)
We the circle cross'd
To the next steep, arriving at a well,
That boiling pours itself down to a foss
Sluic'd from its source. Far murkier was the wave
Than sablest grain: and we in company
Of th' inky waters, journeying by their side,
Enter'd, though by a different track, beneath.
Into a lake, the Stygian nam'd, expands
The dismal stream, when it hath reach'd the foot
Of the grey wither'd cliffs. Intent I stood
To gaze, and in the marish sunk, descried
A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks
Betok'ning rage. They with their hands alone
Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,
Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs. ...
Our route
Thus compass'd, we a segment widely stretch'd
Between the dry embankment and the cove
Of the loath'd pool, turning meanwhile our eyes
Downward on those who gulp'd its muddy lees;
Nor stopp'd, till to a tower's low base we came.
(Cary.)