[Footnote 43:
"Parèn l'occhiaje anella senza gemme."
This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (homo, man), written in the face of the human being, might easily have seen the letter m in theirs."
"Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge o m o,
Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'emme."
The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin!]
[Footnote 44:
"Se le svergognate fosser certe
Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte."
This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness, and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays. But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." He was a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing.]
[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The words in the original are