Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 1

Orlando and his captains withdrew for a moment to consultation. He fairly groaned for sorrow, and at first had not a word to say; so wretched he felt at having brought his peopl...

Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte was, who, seeing him alone, measured him with his eyes, and asked him if he would stay with him for a page, promising to m...

The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front, clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close...

Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the ground on which they were treading. It was pavement, wrought all over with figures, like sculptured tombstones...

It was afternoon when the horn sounded, and half an hour after it when the emperor set out; and meantime Orlando had returned to the fight that he might do his duty, however hop...

But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity. It told him that Trajan had been d...

In discoursing of fortune, they descend by the side of a torrent, black as ink, into the fifth circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the Sullen, and the Proud. Here they fi...

The poet turned to look at the north where he had been accustomed to see stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who struck his beholder with a vener...

In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of them came encircling him and his gu...

Gan was known well to every body but his confiding sovereign. The Paladins knew him well; and in their moments of indignant disgust often told him so, though they spared him the...

[Footnote 35: Every body sees this who is not wilfully blind. "Passionate," says the editor of the _Opere Minori_, "for the ancient Italian glories, and the greatness of the Rom...

Now, a far more touching history may have lurked under these facts than in the half-concealed and misleading circumstances of the received story--long patience, long duty, strug...

Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He w...

The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he learned who some of them were. One wa...

Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey to his fellow-creatures one smallest gl...

The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external nature, in the _Morgante_, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of heart is constantly manifest, and he desc...

[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead); the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem; and the poet, who is to "chase...

It is unpleasant to reduce any portion of a romance to the events of ordinary life; but with the exception of those who merely copy from one another, there has been such a consp...

The lord of the dolorous empire, each of his arms as big as a giant, stood in the ice half-way up his breast. He had one head, but three faces; the middle, vermilion; the one ov...

The reader's time need not be wasted with the allegorical and other mystical significations given to the poem; still less on the question whether Beatrice is theology, or a youn...

To continue the account of his manners and inclinations: He dressed with a becoming gravity; was temperate in his diet; a great student; seldom spoke, unless spoken to, but alwa...

Enough of this crueller part of his genius has been exhibited; but it is seldom you can have the genius without sadness. In the circle of hell, soothsayers walk along weeping, w...

As I know no man who surpasses yourself either in combining a love of the most romantic fiction with the coolest good sense, or in passing from the driest metaphysical questions...

[Footnote 3: The controversial character of Dante's genius, and the discordant estimate formed of it in so many respects by different writers, have already carried the author of...