of stupidity, or impassionate hurt; they are sleepy, saith Savanarola, dull, slow, cold, blockish, ass-like, asininam melancholiam Melancthon calls it, they are much given to weeping, and delight in waters, ponds, pools, rivers, fishing, fowling, &c. They are pale of color. slothful, apt to sleep, heavy, much troubled with the head-ache, continual meditation and muttering to themselves, they dream of waters, that they are in danger of drowning, and fear such things."
See also [[../../Volume 2/Canto 17|Purg. XVII.]] 85.
CANTO VIII.
1. Boccaccio and some other commentators think the words "I say, continuing," are a confirmation of the theory that the first seven cantos of the Inferno were written before Dante's banishment from Florence. Others maintain that the words suggest only the continuation of the subject of the last canto in this.
4. These two signal fires announce the arrival of two persons to be ferried over the wash, and the other in the distance is on the watch-tower of the City of Dis, answering these.
19. Phlegyas was the father of Ixion and Coronis. He was king of the Lapithæ, and burned the temple of Apollo at Delphi to avenge the wrong done by the god to Coronis. His punishment in the infernal regions was to stand beneath a huge impending rock, always about to fall upon him. Virgil, Æneid, VI., says of him: "Phlegyas, most wretched, is a monitor to all and with loud voice proclaims through the shades, 'Being warned, learn righteousness, and not to contemn the gods.'"
27. Virgil, Æneid, VI.: "The boat of sewn hide groaned under the weight, and, being leaky, took in much water from the lake."
49. Mr. Wright here quotes Spenser, Ruins of Time:—
"How many great ones may remembered be,
Who in their days most famously did flourish,
Of whom no word we have, nor sign now see,
But as things wiped out with a sponge do perish."
51. Chaucer's "sclandre of his diffame."
61. Of Philippo Argenti little is known, and nothing to his credit. Dante seems to have an especial personal hatred of him, as if in memory of some disagreeable passage between them in the streets of Florence. Boccaccio says of him in his Comento: "This Philippo Argenti, as Coppo di Borghese Domenichi de' Cavicciuli was wont to say, was a very rich gentleman, so rich that he had the horse he used to ride shod with silver, and from this he had his surname; he was in person large, swarthy, muscular, of marvellous strength, and at the slightest
