NOTES TO CANTO VII.
The traveller, he, whom sea and mountain sunder
From his own country, sees things strange and new;
That the misjudging vulgar, which lies under
The mist of ignorance, esteems untrue.
Stanza i. lines 1, 2, 3, 4.
Tarda solet magnis rebus inesse fides.
Ovid.
A yet more marked resemblance to this obvious remark is to be found in the first book of the Golden Ass of Apuleius. ‘Nam et mihi et tibi et cunctis luminibus multa usu evenere vera, quæ tamen ignaro relata, fidem perdunt.’
The tawny jacinth.
Stanza iii. line 3.
In the original flavo (giacinto) which is always interpreted by dictionaries to mean light yellow; but such is not the tint of the jacinth, which may perhaps be considered as tawny.
No larger wolf, I ween, Apulia roams.
Stanza iv. line 1.
Probably suggested by Horace’s
Quale portentum neque militaris
Daunia in latis alit esculentis, &c.
