The sun enters Aquarius during the last half of January, when the Equinox is near, and the hoarfrost in the morning looks like snow on the fields, but soon evaporates. If Dante had been a monk of Monte Casino, illuminating a manuscript, he could not have made a more clerkly and scholastic flourish with his pen than this, nor have painted a more beautiful picture than that which follows. The medieval poets are full of lovely descriptions of Spring, which seems to blossom and sing through all their verses; but none is more beautiful or suggestive than this, though serving only as an illustration. ↩

In Canto I . ↩

See what Mr. Ruskin says of Dante as “a notably bad climber,” note 160 . ↩