[Footnote 51:  Virum non cognosco.  “Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”—­Luke i. 34.

The placing of Mary’s interview with the angel, and Ovid’s story of Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.  A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of letters.]

[Footnote 52:  An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;—­not, I think, a happy one, though beautifully painted.  It presents, apart from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah’s express love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity.]

[Footnote 53: 

  “Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
  Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
  Quand’ Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie.”

  Even as from branch to branch
  Along the piny forests on the shore
  Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
  When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
  The dripping south.”—­Cary.

“This is the wood,” says Mr. Cary, “where the scene of Boccaccio’s sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to the Decameron, ediz.  Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid.  See Dec., G. 5, N. 8, and Dryden’s Theodore and Honoria.  Our poet perhaps wandered in it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta.”—­Translation of Dante, ut sup. p. 121.]

[Footnote 54:  Lethe, Forgetfulness; Eunoe, Well-mindedness.]

[Footnote 55: 

  “Senza alcuno scotto
  Di pentimento.”

Literally, scot-free.—­“Scotto,” scot;—­“payment for dinner or supper in a tavern” (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor of the Parnaso Italiano, and a very summary gentleman); “here used figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and grand occasions” (in cose gravi ed illustri).  See his “Dante” in that collection, vol. ii. p. 297.]

[Footnote 56:  The allusion to the childish girl (pargoletta) or any other fleeting vanity,

  “O altra vanita con si breve use,”

is not handsome.  It was not the fault of the childish girls that he liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they might have been.  What answer could they make to the great poet?

Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as a woman or an allegory.  If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape; and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of Signor Rubbi, is no better than snubbing;—­to say nothing of the vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.