Note 447 — BOOK VII.
William Julius Mickle translation
O Italy! how fall'n, how low, how lost!—However these severe reflections on modern Italy may displease the admirers of Italian manners, the picture on the whole is too just to admit of confutation. Never did the history of any court afford such instances of villainy and all the baseness of intrigue as that of the pope's. That this view of the lower ranks in the pope's dominions is just, we have the indubitable testimony of Addison. Our poet is justifiable in his censures, for he only follows the severe reflections of the greatest of the Italian poets. It were easy to give fifty instances; two or three, however, shall suffice. Dante, in his sixth canto, del Purg.—
Ahi, serva Italia, di dolore ostello, Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta, Non donna di provincie, bordello.
"Ah, slavish Italy, the inn of dolour, a ship without a pilot in a horrid tempest:—not the mistress of provinces, but a brothel!"
Ariosto, canto 17:—
O d' ogni vitio fetida sentina Dormi Italia imbríaco.
"O inebriated Italy, thou sleepest the sink of every filthy vice!"
And Petrarch:—
Del'empia Babilonia, ond'è fuggita Ogni vergogna, ond'ogni bene è fuori, Albergo di dolor, madre d'errori Son fuggit'io per allungar la vita.
"From the impious Babylon (the Papal Court) from whence all shame and all good are fled, the inn of dolour, the mother of errors, have I hastened away to prolong my life."