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count of their blood-thirftinefs. Dante, 
too, feesin hell a river of blood, in which 
murderers are tormented.—Alberico tells 
us, that his Cicercne had conduésted him to 
the mouth of the river of hell, which re- 
fembled a deep dark well, aiid whence a 
dreadful cry of lamentation was  fent 
forth. Near this he likewife faw the 
Worm of Heil, of a monftrous fize, bound 
faft witha ftrong chain. Dante, too, finds in 
heli a dark well, and hears, when he 
comes near the gates of hell, the cries of 
the damned ; and more than once Cerberus 
and Lucifer are called the Great Worm— 
During Alberico’s journey through hell, 
St. Peter having left him for a moment, 
to open the gates of Paradife to a newly- 
arrived foul, one of the infernal fpirits, 
of a terrible briftly appearance, flew at 
him with a furious menacing mien, and 
was on the point of feizing upon him, 
when St. Peter haftened to his relief, and 
fnatched his affrighted -protegé from the 
grafp of the fiend. The fame accident 
happens, more than once, to Dante, name- 
ly, in the twenty-firft, and particularly in 
the twenty-third, canto of the Inferno, 
where Alberico’s Meque fubito arripiens 
is literally tranflated by Lz fubito me prefe. 
—Alberico fees a clafs of the damned, 
whofe necks are bent down with large 
mafles of iron. Dante fees in hell thofe 
who had been damned for their hypocrify, 
wandering about with ponderous caps and 
hoods, fo that they are not able to lift up 
their heads. —Alberico fees in hell a river 
of burning pitch, over which there is a 
bridge. When the finners come to the 
middle of this bridge, they tumble into 
the river, dive under, and rife and fink 
again feveral times, til] at laft they re- 
femble boiled fiehh. In the eleventh canto 
of Dante’s Inferno, there is likewilea lake 
of boiling pitch, a bridge from which a 
finner is precipitated ; fouls of the damned 
plunge and emerge in the pitch ; and even 
the comparifon with boiled flefh is not 
forgotten. — Alberico fees a_ horrible 
valley, filled with innumerable _hil- 
locks, compofed of large congealed frag- 
ments of ice, in which a: number ae 
finners are frozen up to the ankle, others 
up to the knee, others up to the middle, 
others up to the breaft, according to the 
degree of their guilt; and fomeeven com- 
pletely tcafed in atranfparent cryttalline 
fhell. The whole of this fcene is copied 
in the twelfth canto of the Inferno, with 
this difference only, that Dante places the 
fufferers in a lake of blood, inftead of a 
valley full of ice. This latter, however, 
18 ‘eit introduced in the thirty- 
Source of Dante's Commedia. $09 
fecond and thirty-third canto. A fimilar 
agreement exifts between the defcriptions 
which both of thefe extatical travellers 
give of their paflage from the region of 
the damned to that of the blefled. Albes 
rico fays, that St. Peter had told hima 
-sreat many things concerning perfons ftill 
living, and commanded him to communis 
cate to them what he had heard. Dante, 
too, had a fimilar converfation with St. 
Peter in Paradife, and receives from him 
the fame commiffion. Both vifionifts like- 
wife travel on the fame road through the 
heavens :—Alberico is carried up by his 
dove, and Dante by his eagle: in both 
journals the heaven of the moon is the firft 
ftation they halt at ; then chey afcend, by 
degrees, to the heavens of the higher plas 
nets, till they reach that of the planet Sa- 
turn, whence they at laft rife into the em- 
pyreum, to view the choirs of angels, the 
abode of the patriarchs, prophets, &c. 
which furround the throne of the Moft 
High. Both follow the Ptolemaic fyftem; 
Dante, however, with greater exaétnefs 
than Alberico, who does not ftriétly ad- 
here to the order of the planeis.——Alberico, 
having related how St. Peter had conduét- 
ed him through Paradife, and fhewn him 
the places where the bleffed rcfide, adds + 
—‘ St. Peter likewife fhewed me a re- 
fplendent and beautifully ornamented bed, 
on which a perfon was lying, whole name 
the Apoftle told me but, at the fame 
time forbade me to communicate it to 
others. The fame circumftance, with 
only alittle variation, is related in the 
thirtieth canto of Dante’s Paradi/o. 
Very little doubt, then, can remain, that — 
Dante derived the plan, and part of the 
materials, of his Divina Commedia from 
this fource. It can hardly be fuppofed, 
that the poet could be unacquainted with — 
fo remarkable a legend, which was fo ge- 
nerally known and credited, that painter 
took from it the fubjects of chau ay ; 
e{pecially as Dante, who had been fent as 
ambaffador from the Republic of Florence 
once to Rome, and twice to Naples, must 
have been in the neighbourhood of this 
part of Italy, and perhaps even vifited the 
Monaitery of Monte Cafino, where he 
would have had an opportuniiy of reading 
Alberico’s narrative: but he might eatily 
have become acquainted with it without 
having ever travelled to that place. In 
the minds of fome f{ceptical readers, how- 
ever, who cannot fo eafily perfuade them- 
felves as P. Coftanzi of the truth of fo fub- 
lime and learned a vifion, by a boy of nine 
years of age, a doubt will perhaps arife, 
whether little Alberico, from whom the 
great 
