v. 143. The virtue mingled.] Virg. Aen. 1. vi 724. Principio coelum,
&c.
CANTO III
v. 16. Delusion.] “An error the contrary to that of Narcissus, because
he mistook a shadow for a substance, I a substance for a shadow.”
v. 50. Piccarda.] The sister of Forese whom we have seen in the
Purgatory, Canto XXIII.
v. 90. The Lady.] St. Clare, the foundress of the order called after
her She was born of opulent and noble parents at Assisi, in 1193, and
died in 1253. See Biogr. Univ. t. 1. p. 598. 8vo. Paris, 1813.
v. 121. Constance.] Daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, who, being
taken by force out of a monastery where she had professed, was married
to the Emperor Henry Vl. and by him was mother to Frederick 11. She was
fifty years old or more at the time, and “because it was not credited
that she could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a
pavilion and it was given out, that any lady, who pleased, was at
liberty to see her. Many came, and saw her, and the suspicion ceased.”
Ricordano Malaspina in Muratori, Rer. It. Script. t. viii. p. 939; and
G. Villani, in the same words, Hist. I v. c. 16
The French translator above mentored speaks of her having poisoned her
husband. The death of Henry Vl. is recorded in the Chronicon Siciliae,
by an anonymous writer, (Muratori, t. x.) but not a word of his having
been poisoned by Constance, and Ricordano Malaspina even mentions her
decease as happening before that of her husband, Henry V., for so this
author, with some others, terms him. v. 122. The second.] Henry Vl. son
of Frederick I was the second emperor of the house of Saab; and his son
Frederick II “the third and last.”
CANTO IV
v. 6. Between two deer]
Tigris ut auditis, diversa valle duorum
Extimulata fame, mugitibus armentorum
Neseit utro potius ruat, et ruere ardet utroque.
Ovid, Metam. 1. v. 166
v. 13. Daniel.] See Daniel, c. ii.
v. 24. Plato.] [GREEK HERE] Plato Timaeus v. ix. p. 326. Edit. Bip.
“The Creator, when he had framed the universe, distributed to the stars
an equal number of souls, appointing to each soul its several star.”
v. 27. Of that.] Plato’s opinion.
v. 34. The first circle.] The empyrean.
v. 48. Him who made Tobias whole.]
Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deign’d
To travel with Tobias, and secur’d
His marriage with the sev’n times wedded maid,
Milton, P. L. b. v. 223.
v. 67. That to the eye of man.] “That the ways of divine justice are
often inscrutable to man, ought rather to be a motive to faith than an
inducement to heresy.” Such appears to me the most satisfactory
explanation of the passage.
v. 82. Laurence.] Who suffered martyrdom in the third century.
v. 82. Scaevola.] See Liv. Hist. D. 1. 1. ii. 12.
v. 100. Alcmaeon.] Ovid, Met. 1. ix. f. 10.
—Ultusque parente parentem
Natus, erit facto pius et sceleratus eodem.