have brought that noble province to so great desolation. The first of
which is, the avarice of the Pastors of the Church, who now sell one
tract of its land, and now another; while one favors one Tyrant, and
another another, so that the men in authority are often changed. The
second is, the wickedness of the Tyrants themselves, who are always
tearing and biting each other, and fleecing their subjects. The third
is, the fertility of the province itself, which by its very richness
allures barbarians and foreigners to prey upon it. The fourth is, that
spirit of jealousy which flourishes in the hearts of the inhabitants
themselves." It will be noticed that the translator changes the phrase,
"the avarice of the Pastors of the Church," into "the avarice of some
ecclesiastics," while throughout the passage, as indeed throughout every
page of the work, the vigor of Benvenuto's style and the point of
his animated sentences are quite lost in the flatness of a dull and
inaccurate paraphrase.

A passage in which the spirit of the poet has fully roused his manly
commentator is the noble burst of indignant reproach with which
he inveighs against and mourns over Italy in Canto VI. of the
"Purgatory":--

Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,
Non donna di provincie, ma bordello.

"Nota metaphoram pulcram: sicut enim in lupanari venditur caro humana
pretio sine pudore, ita meretrix magna, idest Curia Romana, et Curia
Imperialis, vendunt libertatem Italicam.... Ad Italiam concurrunt omnes
barbarae nationes cum aviditate ad ipsam conculcandam.... Et heic,
Lector, me excusabis, qui antequam ulterius procedam, cogor facere
invectivam contra Dantem. O utinam, Poeta mirifice, rivivisceres modo!
Ubi pax, ubi tranquillitas in Italia?... Nunc autem dicere possim de
tola Italia quod Vergilius tuus de una Urbe dixit:

----'Crudelis ubique
Lucutus, ubique pavor, et plurima mortis imago.'

.... Quanto ergo excusabilius, si fas esset, possem exclamare ad
Omnipotentem quam tu, qui in tempora felicia incidisti, quibus nos omnes
nunc viventes in misera Italia possumus invidere? Ipse ergo, qui potest,
mittat amodo Veltrum, quem tu vidisti in Somno, si tamen umquam venturus
est."

"Note the beauty of the metaphor: for, as in a brothel the human body is
sold for a price without shame, so the great harlot, the Court of Rome,
and the Imperial Court, sell the liberty of Italy.... All the barbarous
natio