“Conscienzia m’assicura;
  La buona compagnia che l’uom francheggia
  Sotto l’osbergo,” &c.

But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could have kept it.]

[Foonote 37:  This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of physical horror with the truest pathos.]

[Footnote 38:  The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic instance of the ferocity of the time.]

[Footnote 39:  This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it.  Perhaps it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into the unworthiness.]

[Footnote 40:  By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite a topic with the poets.  The circumstance of the horn is taken from the Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv.]

[Footnote 41:  The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel a, is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker.  It is like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world.]

[Footnote 42: 

  “Ne si chinato li fece dimora,
  E come albero in nave si levo.”

A magnificent image!  I have retained the idiomatic expression of the original, raised himself, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to me to give the more grand and deliberate image.]

[Footnote 43:  Of “mamma” and “babbo,” says the primitive poet.  We have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not identical.  The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the “artful” Italians.]

[Footnote 44:  Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto, lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany.  After their father’s death they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a mortal quarrel.  The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting surprise to meet with it.]

[Footnote 45: 

  “Se voler fu, o destino o fortuna,
  Non so.”

What does the Christian reader think of that?]

[Footnote 46:  Latrando.]

[Footnote 47:  Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog, occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by treacherously cutting off the hand of the standard-bearer.]

[Footnote 48:  This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in the Tower of Famine.]

[Footnote 49:  I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too hasty in giving credit to parts of it, particularly the ages of some of his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop.  See the Appendix to this volume.]