Note 566 — Chapter II · DANTE.

This beast is of course not here referred to, as in the well-known passage at the beginning of the Inferno, as a type of vice, but, as in Inf., xvi. 106, as a desirable prey. The beauty of the panther’s skin, the sweet breath fabulously attributed to it, and so forth, sometimes gave it a wholly favourable place in mediæval fantasy, as in one of the prettiest fragments of Anglo-Saxon verse, the “Panther” of the Exeter Book, where it is a type of Christ.