Volume 1

Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal / [Anon].

Date:
1835-1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    38/332 (page 24)
    . 24 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN. the miseries and mortifications which he should suffer from the ingratitude of his countrymen :— «¢ For thou must leave behind thee every thing Thine heart holds dearest. — This will be the first Shaft which the bow of exile shoots against thee: And thou must prove how salt the bread that’s eaten At others’ tables, and how hard the path To climb and to go down a stranger’s stairs: But what shall weigh the heaviest on thy shoulders, Will be the base and evil company With which thy lot hath cast thee in that valley ; For every thankless, lawless, reckless wretch Shall turn against thee : — yet confusion, soon, Of face shall cover them, not thee, with blushes ; Their brutishness will be so manifest, That to have stood alone will be thy glory.”* Del Paradiso, xvii To the personal humiliations of which he chewed the cud in bitter secrecy, through years of heart-breaking dependence on the precarious bounty of others, there is a striking but forced allusion at the close of the eleventh canto of the “‘ Purgatorio.” Dante enquires concerning a proud spirit bent double under a huge burden of stones, which he is condemned to carry for as many years as he had lived, till he shall be sufficiently humbled to pass muster through the flames into Paradise. This is Pro- venzano Salvani, who for his acts of outrageous tyranny would have been doomed to a much harder penance, but for one good deed.— A friend of his being kept prisoner * *° Ty lascerai ogni cosa diletta Pit caramente; e questo é quello strale, Che l’arco dell’ esilio pria saetta, Ti proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com’é duro calle Lo scendere, e ’] salir per l’altrui scale, E quel, che pit ti gravera le spalle, Sara la campagnia malvagia e scempia, Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle: Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia Si fara contra te: ma poco appresso Ella, non tu, n’avra rossa la tempia, Di sua bestialitate il suo processo Fara la pruova, si ch’ a te fia bella Averti fatta parte per te stesso.’*