[Footnote 30: 

  “Intorno si mira
  Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
  Ch’egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira.”

This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised astonishment ever painted.]

[Footnote 31:  I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante’s own audacity, but a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the Divine character.  Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the South.  I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour, from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year.  Yet the words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was saying.  Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by attempting to frighten him.  A violent word would have only produced more violence.  Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it best to run!]

[Footnote 32:  Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe’s sort, and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati family, connexions of the poet by marriage.]

[Footnote 33:  This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.  They are the most appalling ever yet produced.]

[Footnote 34:  Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins; but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family, and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to “promise much, and perform nothing” (molto promettere, e nulla attendere).]

[Footnote 35:  Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods, including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming the church.  He appears to have made a considerable impression, having thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many others.  Landino says he was very eloquent, and that “both he and Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause.”  Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such times bold enough to write it.]

[Footnote 36:  Literally, “under the breastplate of knowing himself to be pure:” 

  “Sotto l’osbergo del sentirsi pura.”

The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have met with in the whole poem.  It might be argued, perhaps, against the perfection of the passage, that a good “conscience,” and a man’s “knowing himself to be pure,” are a tautology; for Dante himself has already used that word;