Mr. Barlow's
suggestions are always to be received with respect, but we cannot but
think him wrong in proposing this change. The spirits in Hell are not
supposed to be aware of what is passing upon earth; they are
self-convicted, (_Purgatory_, xxvi. 85, 86,) and Francesca being doomed
to eternal woe, the world could not do her wrong by taxing her with
sin; while, further, the shudder at the method of her death, lasting
even in torment, seems to us a far more imaginative conception than the
one proposed in its stead. Our four texts read _elmodo_.
In the famous simile (_Inferno_, iii. 112-114) in which Dante compares
the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron to the dead leaves
fluttering from a bough in autumn, giving, as Mr. Ruskin says, "the
most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness,
passiveness, and scattering agony of despair," our common texts have
infin che il ramo
Rende alla terra tutte le sue spoglie,
"Until the branch gives to the earth all its spoils"; but the texts of
Jesi and Mantua, as well as those of the Bartolinian and the Aldus, and
many other early authorities, here put the word _Vede_ in place of
_Rende_, giving a variation which for its poetic worth well deserves to
be marked, if not to be introduced into the received text.
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