CANTO XXIV.
1. The Seventh Bolgia, in which Thieves are punished.
2. The sun enters Aquarius during the last half of January, when the Equinox is near, and the hoar-frost in the morning looks like snow on the fields, but soon evaporates. If Dante had been a monk of Monte Casino, illuminating a manuscript, he could not have made a more clerkly and scholastic flourish with his pen than this, nor have painted a more beautiful picture than that which follows. The mediæval poets are full of lovely descriptions of Spring, which seems to blossom and sing through all their verses; but none is more beautiful or suggestive than this, though serving only as an illustration.
21. In Canto I.
43. See what Mr. Ruskin says of Dante as "a notably bad climber," Canto XII. Note 2.
55. The ascent of the Mount of Purgatory.
73. The next circular dike, dividing the fosses.
86. This list of serpents is from Lucan, Phars. IX. 711, Rowe's Tr.:—
"Slimy Chelyders the parched earth distain
And trace a reeking furrow on the plain.
The spotted Cenchris, rich in various dyes,
Shoots in a line, and forth directly flies.
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The Swimmer there the crystal stream pollutes,
And swift thro' air the flying Javelin shoots.
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The Amphisbæna doubly armed appears
At either end a threatening head she rears;
Raised on his active tail Pareas stands,
And as he passes, furrows up the sands."
Milton, Parad. Lost, X. 521:—
"Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
With complicated monsters head and tail,
Scorpion, and asp, and amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes horned, hydrus, and elops drear,
And dipsas."
Of the Phareas, Peter Comestor, Hist. Scholast., Gloss of Genesis iii. 1, says: "And this he (Lucifer) did by means of the serpent; for then it was erect like man; being afterwards made prostrate by the curse; and it is said the Phareas walks erect even to this day."
Of the Amphisbæna, Brunetto Latini, Tresor I. v. 140, says: "The Amphimenie is a kind of serpent which has two heads; one in its right place, and the other in the tail; and with each she can bite; and she runs swiftly, and her eyes shine like candles."
93. Without a hiding-place, or the heliotrope, a precious stone of great virtue against poisons, and supposed to render the wearer invisible. Upon this latter vulgar error is founded Boccaccio's comical story of Calandrino and his friends Bruno and Buffulmacco, Decam., Gior. VIII., Nov. 3.
107. Brunetto Latini, Tresor I. v. 164, says of the Phœnix: "He goeth to a good tree, savory and of good
