Of meteors Brunetto Latini, Tresor, I pt. 3, ch. 107, writes : "Likewise it often comes to pass that a dry vapour, when it has mounted so high that it takes fire from the heat which is above, falls, when thus kindled, towards the earth, until it is spent and extinguished, whence some people think it is a dragon or a star which falls."
Milton, Parad. Lost, IV. 556, describing the flight of Uriel, says:--
"Swift as a shooting star
In Autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired
Impress the air, and show the mariner
From what point of his compass to beware
Impetuous winds."
Ruskin, Mod. Painters, III. 252, remarks :
"Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast, pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. His body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under the influence of the evil demon, unlooses this cross, dashing the body supinely away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. And how desolate is it all! The lonely flight,-- the grisly wound, "pierced in the throat,"-the death, without help or pity, --only the name of Mary on the lips, --and the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage of the demon and the river, --the noteless grave,-- and, at last, even she who had been most trusted forgetting him,-- 'Giovanna nor none else have care for me."
There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of poetry ; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish ballad, 'The Twa Corbies.'"
We now crossed the beautiful dale of Prato Vecchio, rode round the modest arcades of the town, and arrived at the lower convent of Camaldoli, just at shutting of the gates. The sun was set and every object sinking into repose, except the stream which roared among the rocks, and the convent-bells which were then ringing the Angelus. "This monastery is secluded from the approach of woman in a deep, narrow, woody dell. Its circuit of dead walls, built on the conventual plan, gives it an aspect of confinement and defence ; yet this is considered as a privileged retreat, where the rule of the order relaxes its rigour, and no monks can reside but the sick or the superannuated, the and next morning rode up by the steep traverses to the Santo Eremo, where Saint Romualdo lived and established
de' tacenti cenobiti il coro,
L'arcane penitenze, ed i digiuni
Al Camaldoli suo.
"The Eremo is a city of hermits, walled round, and divided into streets of low, detached cells. Each cell consists of two or three naked rooms, built exactly on the plan of the Saint's own tenement, which remains just as Romualdo left it eight hundred years ago ; now too sacred and too damp for a mortal tenant.
The unfeeling Saint has here established a rule which anticipates the pains of Purgatory. No stranger can behold without emotion a number of noble, interesting young men bound to stand erect chanting at choir for eight hours a day ; their faces pale, their heads shaven, their beards shaggy, their backs raw, their legs swollen, and their feet bare. With this horrible institute the climate conspires in severity, and selects from society the best constitutions. The sickly novice is cut off in one or two winters, the rest are subject to dropsy, and few arrive at old age."
The Ephesians ii. 2, the evil spirit is called "the prince of the power of air."
Compare also Inf. XXIII. 16,
"If anger upon evil will be grafted";
and Inf. XXXI. 55,
"For where the argument of intellect
Is added unto evil will and power,
No rampart can the people make against it."
Dr. Barlow, Study of Dante, p.199, has this note on the passage:--
"When rain falls from the upper region of the air, we observe at a considerable altitude a thin light veil, or a hazy turbidness ; as this increases, the lower clouds become diffused in it, and form a uniform sheet. Such is the stratus cloud described by Dante (v.115) as covering the valley from Pratomagno to the ridge on the opposite side above Camaldoli. This cloud is a widely extended horizontal sheet of vapour, increasing from below, and lying on or near the earth's surface. It is properly the cloud of night, and first appears about sunset, usually in autumn ; it comprehends creeping mists and fogs which ascend from the bottom of valleys, and from the surface of lakes and rivers, in consequence of air colder than that of the surface descending and mingling with it, and from the air over the adjacent land cooling down more rapidly than that over the water, from which increased evaporation is taking place."
As Jupiter
On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds
That bring May-flowers."
"However this may be, one cannot prevent an involuntary shudder, when, showing you a pretty little brick palace [at Siena], they say, 'That is the house of the Pia.'"
Benvenuto da Imola gives a different version of the story, and says that by command of the husband she was thrown from the window of her palace into the street, and died of the fall.
Bandello, the Italian Novelist, Pt. I. Nov. 12, says that the narrative is true, and gives minutely the story of the lovers, with such embellishments as his imagination suggested.
Ugo Foscolo, Edinb. Review, XXIX. 458, speaks thus: --
"Shakespeare unfolds the character of his persons, and presents them under all the variety of forms which they can naturally assume. He surrounds them with all the splendour of his imagination, and bestows on them that full and minute reality which his creative genius could alone confer. Of all tragic poets, he most amply developes character. On the other hand, Dante, if compared not only to Virgil, the most sober of poets, but even to Tacitus, will be found never to employ more than a stroke or two of his pencil, which he aims at imprinting almost insensibly on the hearts of his readers. Virgil has related the story of Eurydice in two hundred verses ; Dante, in sixty verses, has finished his masterpiece,-- the tale of Francesca da Rimini. The history of Desdemona has a parallel in the following passage of Dante. Nello della Pietra had espoused a lady of noble family at Siena, named Madonna Pia. Her beauty was the admiration of Tuscany, and excited in the heart of her husband a jealousy, which, exasperated by false reports and groundless suspicions, at length drove him to the desperate resolution of Othello. It is difficult to decide ht her into the Maremma, which, then as now, was a district destructive to health. He never told his unfortunate wife the reason of her banishment to so dangerous a country. He did not deign to utter complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in cold silence, without answering her questions, or listening to her remonstrances. He patiently waited till the pestilential air should destroy the health of this young lady. In a few months she died. Some chroniclers, indeed, tell us, that Nello used the dagger to hasten her death. It is certain that he survived her, plunged in sadness and perpetual silence. Dante had, in this incident, all the materials of an ample and very poetical narrative. But he bestows on it only four verses.
For a description of the Maremma, Inf. XIII Note 9.
Also Rogers, Italy, near the end :--
"Where the path
Is lost in rank luxuriance, and to breathe
Is to inhale distemper, if not death;
Where the wild-boar retreats, when hunters chafe,
And, when the day-star flames, the buffalo herd
Afflicted plunge into the stagnant pool,
Nothing discerned amid the water-leaves,
Save here and there the likeness of a head,
Savage, uncouth ; where none in human shape
Come, save the herdsman, levelling his length
Of lance with many a cry, or Tartar-like
Urging his steed along the distant hill
As from a danger."