• A lady of Lucca with whom Dante is supposed to have been enamored. “Let us pass over in silence,” says Balbo, Life and Times of Dante , II 177, “the consolations and errors of the poor exile.” But Buti says:⁠— “He formed an attachment to a gentle lady, called Madonna Gentucca, of the family of Rossimpelo, on account of her great virtue and modesty, and not with any other love.” Benvenuto and the Ottimo interpret the passage differently, making gentucca a common noun⁠— gente bassa , low people. But the passage which immediately follows, in which a maiden is mentioned who should make Lucca pleasant to him, seems to confirm the former interpretation. ↩
• In the throat of the speaker, where he felt the hunger and thirst of his punishment. ↩
• Chaucer, Complaint of the Blacke Knight , 194:⁠— “But even like as doth a skrivenere, That can no more tell what that he shal write, But as his maister beside dothe indite.” ↩
• A canzone of the Vita Nuova , beginning, in Rossetti’s version, Early Italian Poets , p. 255:⁠— “Ladies that have intelligence in love, Of mine own lady I would speak with you; Not that I hope to count her praises through, But, telling what I may, to ease my mind.” ↩