"the smallest circle, at the point
Of all the Universe, where Dis is seated."
The first line, "The banners of the king of Hell come forth," is a parody of the first line of a Latin hymn of the sixth century, sung in the churches during Passion week, and written by Fortunatus, an Italian by birth, but who died Bishop of Poitiers in 600. The first stanza of this hymn is,--
"Vexilla regis prodeunt,
Fulget crucis mysterium,
Quo carne carnis conditor,
Suspensus est patibulo."
See Konigsfeld, Latenische Hymnen und Gesange aus dem Mittelalter, 64.
"Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareus, or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay
Chained on the burning lake."
"He, above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower: his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs: darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the Archangel."
"As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood
Through the wide @@AEthiopian to the Cape
Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed
Far off the flying fiend."
"On the other side, Satan, alarmed,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:
His stature reached the sky, and on his crest
Sat horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp
What seemed both spear and shield."
"At last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke
Uplifted spurns the ground."
"This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labors of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things, and penetrating the deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and sadness."
"The three spirits, who hang from the mouths of his Satan, are Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. The poet's reason for selecting those names has never yet been satisfactorily accounted for; but we have no hesitation in pronouncing it to have been this, -- he considered the Pope not only a betrayer and seller of Christ, -- `Where gainful merchandise is made of Christ throughout the livelong day,' (Parad. 17,) and for that reason put Judas into his centre mouth; but a traitor and rebel to Caesar, and therefore placed Brutus and Cassius in the other two mouths; for the Pope, who was originally no more than Caesar's vicar, became his enemy, and usurped the capital of his empire, and the supreme authority. His treason to Christ was not discovered by the world in general; hence the face of Judas is hidden, -- `He that hath his head within, and plies the feet without' (Inf. 34); his treason to Caesar was open and manifest, therefore Brutus and Cassius show their faces."
He adds in a note: "The situation of Judas is the same as that of the Popes who were guilty of simony."