The billows swell, and, lo! the beast! who pressed,
And nigh concealed, the sea beneath his breast.
Stanza xxxiv. lines 7 and 8.
He has not yet done with this thought, which we have again more amplified in the succeeding stanza.
So swims the beast, who so much occupies
Of sea, he may be said to keep it all.
Stanza xxxv. lines 5 and 6.
Così nuota la fiera, e del mar prende
Tanto, che si può dir, che tutto il tegna.
He borrows from Ovid,
Unda
Insonuit; veniensque immenso bellua ponto
Eminet et latum sub pectore possidet æquor—
and has indeed said something like this in another place, for he is fond of repeating his thoughts and images as well as words; and it would almost seem that he was proud of showing how many variations he could sound upon the same theme. Thus he twice describes a naked woman bound to a rock. In Canto VI. we have twice a simile drawn from a burning brand or fagot. In a very few stanzas afterwards we have again the same illustration, and his repetition of words even in the same stanza is endless.
Neptune bids yoke his dolphins, and that day
For distant Æthiopia posts away.
Stanza xliv. lines 7 and 8.
We read in Homer of Neptune’s visits to the blameless
