“Quali colombe, dal disio chiamate,
  Con l’ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
  Volan per l’aer dal voler portate

  Cotali uscir de la schiera ov’e Dido,
  A noi venendo per l’aer maligno,
  Si forte fu l’affettuoso grido.”

  As doves, drawn home from where they circled still,
  Set firm their open wings, and through the air
  Come sweeping, wafted by their pure good-will

  So broke from Dido’s flock that gentle pair,
  Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign,
  Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer. ]

[Footnote 12:  Francesca is to be conceived telling her story in anxious intermitting sentences—­now all tenderness for her lover, now angry at their slayer; watching the poet’s face, to see what he thinks, and at times averting her own.  I take this excellent direction from Ugo Foscolo.]

[Footnote 13: 

  “Nessun maggior dolore,
  Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
  Ne la miseria.” ]

[Footnote 14: 

  “Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
  Quella lettura.” 
“To look at one another,” says Boccaccio; and his interpretation has been followed by Cary and Foscolo; but, with deference to such authorities, I beg leave to think that the poet meant no more than he says, namely, that their eyes were simply “suspended”—­hung, as it were, over the book, without being able to read on; which is what I intended to express (if I may allude to a production of which both those critics were pleased to speak well), when, in my youthful attempt to enlarge this story, I wrote “And o’er the book they hung, and nothing said, And every lingering page grew longer as they read.”

Story of Rimini.]

[Footnote 15: 

  “Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse,
  L’altro piangeva si, che di pietade
  I’ venni men cosi com’io morisse,
  E caddi come corpo morto cade.”

This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deadness of its expression.

  While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn’d
  With wail so woful, that at his remorse
  I felt as though I should have died.  I turn’d
  Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.

The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think) because he had sinned in the same way; and if Foscolo’s opinion could be established—­that the incident of the book is invention—­their conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough to have occurred to Dante.  But the same probability applies in the case of the lovers.  The reading of such books was equally the taste of their own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume’s having been found in the room where they perished.  The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther.