ragiona
De la mia donna disiosamente,"

is the beginning of the ode sung by Dante's friend. The incident is
beautifully introduced; and Casella's being made to select a production
from the pen of the man who asks him to sing, very delicately implies a
graceful cordiality in the musician's character.

Milton alludes to the passage in his sonnet to Henry Lawes:

"Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,
That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story.
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." ]

[Footnote 7: Manfredi was the natural son of the Emperor Frederick the
Second. "He was lively and agreeable in his manners," observes Mr. Cary,
"and delighted in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious
and ambitious, void of religion, and in his philosophy an epicurean."
_Translation of Dante_, Smith's edition, p. 77. Thus King Manfredi ought
to have been in a red-hot tomb, roasting for ever with Epicurus himself,
and with the father of the poet's beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante: but
he was the son of an emperor, and a foe to the house of Anjou; so Dante
gives him a passport to heaven. There is no ground whatever for the
repentance assumed in the text.]

[Footnote 8: The unexpected bit of comedy here ensuing is very
remarkable and pleasant. Belacqua, according to an old commentator, was
a musician.]

[Footnote 9: Buonconte was the son of that Guido da Montefeltro, whose
soul we have seen carried off from St. Francis by a devil, for having
violated the conditions of penitence. It is curious that both father and
son should have been contested for in this manner.]

[Footnote 10: This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all brief
stories.

"Deh quando to sarai tornato al mondo,
E riposato de la lunga via,
Seguito 'l terzo spirito al secondo,

Ricorditi di me che son la Pia:
Siena mi fe; disfecemi Maremma;
Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria

Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma."

Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth
(Said then a female soul), remember me,--
Pia. Sienna was my place of birth,

The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he,
Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring.

"Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work entitled _De l'Amour,_
"obtained in marriage the hand of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the
Pt