more alluring subjects for poetic treatment; still, don't misunderstand the strange character I am depicting, or make light of my quaint ornamental touches: what looks like a fiend may turn out to be a saint. If you ponder the following story of early Christian times, it will warn you not to be rash in judging my portrait of Sordello.

990-1023.

for one of

John the Beloved, when decree of banishment from Antioch to Patmos was passed upon him, bade farewell As the Apostle John to his flock as a whole, but reserved the last evening was when he for a visit of comfort to the household of Xanthus and mistook his other near friends, whom he knew his absence would the Devil. most grieve. A touching spectacle it must have been to see them prepare to receive their reverend teacher at the door! Xanthus spouse was not there, for, a month earlier, the persecutors had flung her to the wild beasts; but there were Xanthus himself (it was his nephew who was shut between boards and sawn asunder), and Polycarp, and tender Charicle, who in the following year could not be forced by torture of the wheel to swear by the Emperor's fortune. Giving his blessing right and left as he passed through the company, and stopping only once-to pat one infant's curls, destined to be soon afterwards a prey to the hangman's shears he entered the house. What sudden twitch of pain destroys the smile about his mouth? On what are his eyes fixed that they open so wide? Why does he raise his arms and stand like a ghostly candlestick? He fell into a dead faint, wakened up anon, and, heart-broken, managed to gasp out: "Get thee behind me, Satan! Is this what all my toil has come to? Over the hearth of my son in the gospel, my own Xanthus-sooty garb and swarthy features-ah Xanthus, have I been lured beneath thy roof to see the Devil domiciled?" But Xanthus made reply amid his sobs: "It's your own portrait, Father, and we saved up hard to get it painted, that we might have it ready before you left; and that's not a twy-prong you're holding, but a pastoral cross."

The Beloved disciple's puckered brow grows smooth— and I'll go on with Sordello's story.

869. 'says such an one.' Either the interpretation from this point to 1. 912 is altogether out, or the passage is a 'skit, or scoff,' on the kind of subjects often considered fit for poetic treatment.

882. Plara.' Cp. Bk. II., l. 769.

900. Tempe's.' The name of the famous valley in Thessaly came to denote any beautiful valley.

915. 'bid you take on trust.' Sordello. You can think about him after you hear the story, but do not resent the story because you don't 'see' it.

917. 'not so unwisely.' Unless this be ironical, as it can scarcely be after the passage beginning at 1. 833, how-once more-are we to reconcile it with the kingship claimed for the poet by Sordello in Bk. v. ?

939. 'If Hercules.' Busiris, King of Egypt, was advised by a prophet Thrasios, of Cyprus (who became the first victim), to sacrifice a stranger every year to ward off bad harvests. Hercules, who was passing through the land in search of the apples of the Hesperides, allowed himself to be bound, broke loose, and slew the king with all his sons and followers.

950. 'my patron-friend.' There need be no doubt this is Eschylus. His style is described as in Bk. I., ll. 65-68. For some reason not made clear the dramatist went to Sicily, and he wrote a play entitled The Women of Etna.

957. 'in the blazing West.' ". . . and you can hardly conceive the strange sight when the battered hulk turned round, actually, and looked at us, and then reeled off. . . into the most gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world." (Letter to Miss Haworth-Mrs Sutherland Orr's Life and Letters, ch. vii.)

962. 'painted king.' Depicted in story? Polycrates, King of Samos, warned by his friend Amasis of Egypt that his unbroken prosperity would make the gods jealous, and advised to cast away what he regarded as most precious, had himself rowed out upon the sea and flung a highly treasured ring into its depths. On the seventh day thereafter a fisher presented him with a specially large fish, inside which the ring was found. Amasis broke off his friendship, and Polycrates was at last crucified in a way 'too horrible to relate.' (Herodotus, Bk. III.)

967. My English Eyebright.' "I called you 'Eyebright'— meaning a simple and sad sort of translation of 'Euphrasia.' . Shall I say Eyebright?" (Letter to Miss Haworth, as above.)

BOOK THE FOURTH.

Ll. 1-107.

Turning from Verona to Ferrara, the poem pictures the awful state to which the city has been reduced through the destruction of the Ghibellin quarter by the Guelfs and the dire vengeance taken by Taurello Salinguerra on his return. We see the Lombard League arriving in great style to treat for Count Richard's release, and hear its members conversing in the public square.

1-23.

MEANWHILE Ferrara lay in a most pitiful plight. As two suitors might tug at the lady for whom they con- Some hard cursing at tend, and drive their elbows into her ribs, and twist Ferrara. her hair, to leave her a corpse for the successful rival to kiss; so Guelfs and Ghibellins had been so busy tearing the city from each other's clutches that little more than a heap of ruins remained. Both sides had suffered alike. "May Boniface be damned for this!" howled an old Ghibellin, turning up the head of his little child from the heap of wet rubbish where had stood his home. "Grant me this boon, sweet Christ -let Salinguerra seethe in hell for ever, and let me be there to laugh at him!" moaned a young Guelf when he came upon his father's hand, nailed to the charred lintel of the door within which he had last seen him stand as he bade him farewell. Rank weeds were growing in the streets.

The condition of the city being so wretched, it was

H

24-59.

The envoys of the League arrive there in style.

all the more strange that none of the people crept out
of doors to ask the meaning of a splendid cavalcade
that arrived one morning. Here were the envoys of
the Eastern Lombard League, one from every town,
come to treat for the ransom of Count Richard of
Verona, among the carrochs being that of Vicenza and
that of Padua, drawn by snow-white oxen, and dis-
playing its vermilion cross on a white field. Monte-
lungo, the Papal Legate, who accompanied them, looked
wistfully over the ditch to see whether the numerous
steeples of Azzo of Este's time had not long since
gone as stones to mend the ramparts. Taurello's people
were slow in bringing any message, though, as the
Guelfs reflected, they must know that the Pope was
as good as there since his Legate was; and this delay
made them pace the streets more soberly. At last a
pursuivant came. "Taurello," he announced, "greets the
League, returns courtesy for courtesy, and is doing
his best to send off as soon as possible Tito, the Im-
perial prætor, who has been sent from Trent with
Count Mainard on business of pressing importance.
soon as he leaves, the envoys of the League will be
received." Hearing the prætor's name, the delegates
looked significantly to one another, since his presence
proved that the Emperor was taking to do with the
case; then, going forward, they stole secret glances at
the foreign-looking engines, now lying idle; while gangs
of lean mercenaries ceased from their work to observe
the cavalcade, as though expecting that some definite
arrangement would grow out of its visit. "Taurello,"
said the envoys as they passed along, "might at least
have spared negotiating with the Emperor's messenger,
for he can scarcely dare to refuse terms from the League
for Count Richard's release. We must get our friend
away at once, with a lesson learned for the future;
he will serve as a warning to fools and make them
understand that, as long as there is breath in Salinguerra,
it's not safe to come within reach of his claws. Who

As

told Count Richard to wound the beak of the tiredlooking osprey, one of whose mere convulsive scratches tears an enemy to the bone?"

were

After the carrochs of the League were drawn up in the public square, and pennons of every colour flaunting over them, the Guelfs began to talk freely all the more freely that the white, gaunt, ostrich with the horse-shoe in its mouth-the of Romano-was not there.

60-107.

We hear

scraps of

more their various crested conversations in the public emblem square,

"Ecelin," you might have heard one say, was hardened up to his sin by his wife, and, now that she is gone, he sickens all alone, and the piece of devil's cruelty he calls his son is pining away in spite of all the horrible broths concocted for his cure-Hurrah!" "Hush!" rejoined his neighbour; "up at Oliero Ecelin will know every word that's spoken here. When we besieged Bassano under Azzo, who knew every stage of the business so well as Ecelin? Adelaide contrived that night by night a soldier-ghost stood at their bedfoot to report upon the progress of the siege: strong and fresh at the beginning, the vision became pale, though unwounded, and at last appeared with the filmed eyes of one in a faint, whereby they knew the place was taken."

"It is rather ominous for us," another was saying, "that the Ghibellins should get what cunning old Barbarossa tried in vain to wrest from our Azzo's father, Saint George having made the marshes round about it an impenetrable defence for his city."

"Young Ecelin," another was explaining, "is destined to be ruler of Padua rather than of Ferrara, as may be read from veins in his hand, which meet like the rivers Brenta and Bacchiglion."

"By the mass!" another was crying out, "don't 89-107. touch the planks over the fountains. Every tank is With the tragedy of full of putrid human flesh. That's what Cino has just Cino's discovered to his cost. Thinking that Taurello, when mother's driven out of the city, was a lost man, he would not

head.