v. 48. Popes and cardinals.] Ariosto, having personified Avarice as a strange and hideous monster, says of her— Peggio facea nella Romana corte Che v’avea uccisi Cardinali e Papi. Orl. Fur. c. xxvi. st. 32. Worse did she in the court of Rome, for there She had slain Popes and Cardinals. v. 91. By necessity.] This sentiment called forth the reprehension of Cecco d’Ascoli, in his Acerba, l. 1. c. i. In cio peccasti, O Fiorentin poeta, &c. Herein, O bard of Florence, didst thou err Laying it down that fortune’s largesses Are fated to their goal. Fortune is none, That reason cannot conquer. Mark thou, Dante, If any argument may gainsay this. CANTO VIII v. 18. Phlegyas.] Phlegyas, who was so incensed against Apollo for having violated his daughter Coronis, that he set fire to the temple of that deity, by whose vengeance he was cast into Tartarus. See Virg. Aen. l. vi. 618. v. 59. Filippo Argenti.] Boccaccio tells us, “he was a man remarkable for the large proportions and extraordinary vigor of his bodily frame, and the extreme waywardness and irascibility of his temper.” Decam. g. ix. n. 8. v. 66. The city, that of Dis is nam’d.] So Ariosto. Orl. Fur. c. xl. st. 32 v. 94. Seven times.] The commentators, says Venturi, perplex themselves with the inquiry what seven perils these were from which Dante had been delivered by Virgil. Reckoning the beasts in the first Canto as one of them, and adding Charon, Minos, Cerberus, Plutus, Phlegyas and Filippo Argenti, as so many others, we shall have the number, and if this be not satisfactory, we may suppose a determinate to have been put for an indeterminate number. v. 109. At war ’twixt will and will not.] Che si, e no nel capo mi tenzona. So Boccaccio, Ninf. Fiesol. st. 233. Il si e il no nel capo gli contende. The words I have adopted as a translation, are Shakespeare’s, Measure for Measure. a. ii. s. 1. v. 122. This their insolence, not new.] Virgil assures our poet, that these evil spirits had formerly shown the same insolence when our Savior descended into hell. They attempted to prevent him from entering at the gate, over which Dante had read the fatal inscription. “That gate which,” says the Roman poet, “an angel has just passed, by whose aid we shall overcome this opposition, and gain admittance into the city.” CANTO IX v. 1. The hue.] Virgil, perceiving that Dante was pale with fear, restrained those outward tokens of displeasure which his own countenance had betrayed. v. 23. Erictho.] Erictho, a Thessalian sorceress, according to Lucan, Pharsal. l. vi. was employed by Sextus, son of Pompey the Great, to conjure up a spirit, who should inform him of the issue of the civil wars between his father and Caesar. v. 25. No long space my flesh Was naked of me.] Quae corpus complexa animae tam fortis inane.