Canto XXV

v.1.  The sinner ] So Trissino
        Poi facea con le man le fiche al cielo
        Dicendo:  Togli, Iddio; che puoi piu farmi? 
               L’ital.  Lib. c. xii

v. 12.  Thy seed] Thy ancestry.

v. 15.  Not him] Capanaeus.  Canto xiv.

v. 18.  On Marenna’s marsh.] An extensive tract near the sea-shore in Tuscany.

v. 24.  Cacus.] Virgil, Aen. l. viii. 193.

v. 31.  A hundred blows.] Less than ten blows, out of the hundred Hercules gave him, deprived him of feeling.

v. 39.  Cianfa] He is said to have been of the family of Donati at Florence.

v. 57.  Thus up the shrinking paper.]
        —­All my bowels crumble up to dust. 
        I am a scribbled form, drawn up with a pen
        Upon a parchment; and against this fire
        Do I shrink up. 
               Shakespeare, K. John, a. v. s. 7.

v. 61.  Agnello.] Agnello Brunelleschi

v. 77.  In that part.] The navel.

v. 81.  As if by sleep or fev’rous fit assail’d.]
               O Rome! thy head
        Is drown’d in sleep, and all thy body fev’ry. 
               Ben Jonson’s Catiline.

v. 85.  Lucan.] Phars. l. ix. 766 and 793.

v. 87.  Ovid.] Metam. l. iv. and v.

v. 121.  His sharpen’d visage.] Compare Milton, P. L. b. x. 511 &c.

v. 131.  Buoso.] He is said to have been of the Donati family.

v. 138.  Sciancato.] Puccio Sciancato, a noted robber, whose familly, Venturi says, he has not been able to discover.

v. 140.  Gaville.] Francesco Guercio Cavalcante was killed at Gaville, near Florence; and in revenge of his death several inhabitants of that district were put to death.

CANTO XXVI

v. 7.  But if our minds.]

        Namque sub Auroram, jam dormitante lucerna,
        Somnia quo cerni tempore vera solent. 
               Ovid, Epist. xix

The same poetical superstition is alluded to in the Purgatory, Cant.  IX. and xxvii.

v. 9.  Shall feel what Prato.] The poet prognosticates the calamities which were soon to befal his native city, and which he says, even her nearest neighbor, Prato, would wish her.  The calamities more particularly pointed at, are said to be the fall of a wooden bridge over the Arno, in May, 1304, where a large multitude were assembled to witness a representation of hell nnd the infernal torments, in consequence of which accident many lives were lost; and a conflagration that in the following month destroyed more than seventeen hundred houses, many ofthem sumptuous buildings.  See G. Villani, Hist. l. viii. c. 70 and 71.