Whatever kind of richly tinted wood is referred to in this passage, lucid and serene do not seem very descriptive epithets, applied to wood, and it is not much after the manner of Dante to qualify any object with two vague adjectives. As he is presenting an assemblage of the most beautiful and striking colors, and since we do not imagine (as Mr. Ruskin suggests) that by “Indico legno” he could have meant indigo, it seems most natural that he should have mentioned blue. We have therefore ventured to translate as if the verse were written, “Indico legno, lucido sereno.” In a preceding Canto (V.) the poet has used sereno in the same way, without the article—“fender sereno” also in Canto XXIX., v. 53:
“Più chiaro assai che Luna per sereno.”
—Trans.
[16] A name given in derision to the German nation.
[17] One of the martyrs omitted by Foxe.
[18] The Fuller Worthies’ Library. The Complete Poems of Robert Southwell, S.J., for the first time fully collected, and collated with the original and early editions and MSS., and enlarged with hitherto unprinted and inedited poems from MSS. at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. Edited, with Memorial Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. Alexander H. Grosart, St. George’s, Blackburn, Lancashire. London: Printed for private circulation (156 copies only). 1872.
[19] Turnbull, p. xvi.
[20] The Condition of Catholics under James I. Father Gerard’s narrative. London. 1872.
[21] So printed in Strype.
[22] Topcliffe here describes what he facetiously likens to a Tremshemarn trick with great delicacy. It was, in fact, a piece of horrible torture, by which the prisoner was hung up for whole days by the hands so that he could just touch the ground with the tips of his toes.