cited, as in another place the insalubrious valley of the Chiana, whose sluggish course found marshes so pestiferous that, in Dante's time, not only had branch hospitals to be established all over the district, but we are told that these became so overcrowded, between July and September, that the sick used to he laid along the sides of the roads. In Purg. XXII., 49, the word rimbeccare, a term in Italian Tennis (Pallone) for " to return the ball " (Fr. riposter), may suggest to Dante's readers that he was familiar with the ancient game of Pallone, from which Tennis was certainly derived. In Inf. XXVI, (opening lines) the fireflies (lucciole) on a summer night are described with such accuracy as well-nigh to make one believe oneself on a Tuscan hill-side.
"The Divine Comedy is Dante himself. If there exists a work from which it is impossible to separate for one instant the presence of its author, it is indeed this one. Dante is unceasingly present—he is indeed scarcely absent in a single line—he is at the same time the hero and the chief actor in its scenes. He compels us to feel the full force of his wonderments and of his terrors, of his emotions of pity, as well as his moments of indignation and wrath. It is with him that we undergo the glare of the flames of Hell, with him that we shiver in the icy blasts of Cocytus. Were once his presence removed, in an instant the illusive image, which had kept our hearts and minds in subjection, would vanish likewise. It is among the torments of Hell and the penances of Purgatory that we see Dante in all his humanity. We mark his flight from the wild beasts; his horror on first witnessing the torments of the damned, which caused him twice, during his single night in Hell, to swoon away; his outbursts of rage against some of the most vile and contemptible characters; the rousing of his family pride on hearing his ancestors disparaged; his tender, gentle compassion for the renowned Imperial Chancellor, Pier delle Vigne (like himself the victim of Envy and Calumny); his sympathetic treatment of his old Mentor in science, Brunetto Latini, as well as of
