"But was it really and truly an old man? Certainly at first sight it looked very like one; but on closer inspection, it rather seemed to be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. For on his legs and arms there were scales, such as fishes have; he was web-footed and web-fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his long beard, being of a greenish tinge, had more the appearance of a tuft of sea-weed than of an ordinary beard. Have you never seen a stick of timber, that has been long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown with barnacles, and at last, drifting ashore, seems to have been thrown up from the very deepest bottom of the sea? Well, the old man would have put you in mind of just such a wave-tost spar."
The three bodies and three heads, which old poetic fable has given to the monster Geryon, are interpreted by modern prose as meaning the three Balearic Islands, Majorca, Minorca, and Ivica, over which he reigned.
10. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XIV. 87, Rose's Tr., thus depicts Fraud:—
"With pleasing mien, grave walk, and decent vest,
Fraud rolled her eyeballs humbly in her head;
And such benign and modest speech possest,
She might a Gabriel seem who Ave said.
Foul was she and deformed in all the rest;
But with a mantle, long and widely spread,
Concealed her hideous parts; and evermore
Beneath the stole a poisoned dagger wore."
The Gabriel saying Ave is from Dante, [[../../Volume 2/Canto 10|Purgatory, X.]] 40:—
"One would have sworn that he was saying Ave."
17. Tartars nor Turks, "who are most perfect masters therein," says Boccaccio, "as we can clearly see in Tartarian cloths, which truly are so skilfully woven, that no painter with his brush could equal, much less surpass them. The Tartars are . . . ." And with this unfinished sentence close the Lectures upon Dante, begun by Giovanni Boccaccio on Sunday, August 9, 1373, in the church of San Stefano, in Florence. That there were some critics among his audience is apparent from this sonnet, which he addressed "to one who had censured his public Exposition of Dante." See D. G. Rosetti, Early Italian Poets, p. 447:—
"If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be,
That such high fancies of a soul so proud
Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd,
(As, touching my Discourse, I'm told by thee,)
This were my grievous pain; and certainly
My proper blame should not be disavowed;
Though hereof somewhat, I declare aloud,
Were due to others, not alone to me.
False hopes, true poverty, and therewithal
The blinded judgment of a host of friends,
And their enteaties, made that I did thus.
But of all this there is no gain at all
Unto the thankless souls with whose base ends
Nothing agrees that's great or generous."
18. Ovid, Metamorph. VI.:—
"One at the loom so excellently skilled
That to the Goddess she refused to yield."
57. Their love of gold still haunting them in the other world.
59. The arms of the Gianfigliacci of Florence.
63. The arms of the Ubbriachi of Florence.
