“Si che la pioggia non par che ’l maturi.”

This is one of the grandest passages in Dante.  It was probably (as English commentators have observed) in Milton’s recollection when he conceived the character of Satan.]

[Footnote 23:  The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as Ariosto’s discovery of Discord in a monastery.

The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (Golden-sword), and the Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (Fair-flowing), was rich in the possession of sheep.  His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this instrument of satire.  The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be.]

[Footnote 24:  “Malebolge,” literally Evil-Budget. Bolgia is an old form of the modern baule, the common term for a valise or portmanteau.  “Bolgia” (says the Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato, Ven. 1792), “a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek].  In reference 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!]