Literally, scot-free.—"Scotto," scot;—"payment for dinner or supper in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor of the Parnaso Italiano, and a very summary gentleman); "here used figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that collection, vol. ii. p. 297.]
[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (pargoletta) or any other fleeting vanity,
"O altra vanità con sì breve use,"
is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?
Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape; and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of Signor Rubbi, is no better than snubbing;—to say nothing of the vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.
I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so many things, hates nothing. Besides, it is any thing but handsome or high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them.]
[Footnote 57:
"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."—Psalm li. 7.]
[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years.]