e to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell." (Per
similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di
cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.)
The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the
contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional
notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of
their grandeur.]

[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,

"Qui vive la pieta quand' e ben morta."
Here pity lives when it is quite dead.

"Chi e piu 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 cosi 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!]

[Footnote 30:

"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 blasphem