CANTO X
v. 6. That Wound.] Venturi justly observes, that the Padre d’Aquino has misrepresented the sense of this passage in his translation.
—dabat ascensum tendentibus ultra Scissa tremensque silex, tenuique erratica motu.
The verb “muover” is used in the same signification in the
Inferno, Canto XVIII. 21.
Cosi da imo della roccia scogli
Moven.
—from the rock’s low base Thus flinty paths advanc’d.
In neither place is actual motion intended to be expressed.
v. 52. That from unbidden. office awes mankind.] Seo 2 Sam. G.
v 58. Preceding.] Ibid. 14, &c.
v. 68. Gregory.] St. Gregory’s prayers are said to have delivered Trajan from hell. See Paradise, Canto XX. 40.
v. 69. Trajan the Emperor. For this story, Landino refers to two writers, whom he calls “Heunando,” of France, by whom he means Elinand, a monk and chronicler, in the reign of Philip Augustus, and “Polycrato,” of England, by whom is meant John of Salisbury, author of the Polycraticus de Curialium Nugis, in the twelfth century. The passage in the text I find to be nearly a translation from that work, 1. v. c. 8. The original appears to be in Dio Cassius, where it is told of the Emperor Hadrian, lib. I xix. [GREEK HERE] When a woman appeared to him with a suit, as he was on a journey, at first he answered her, ‘I have no leisure,’ but she crying out to him, ‘then reign no longer’ he turned about, and heard her cause.”
v. 119. As to support.] Chillingworth, ch.vi. 54. speaks of “those crouching anticks, which seem in great buildings to labour under the weight they bear.” And Lord Shaftesbury has a similar illustration in his Essay on Wit and Humour, p. 4. s. 3.