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The reference is to the passage beginning at Inferno XII, 52 about the centaurs at the river of boiling blood and the recognition by Chiron, their chief, that Dante was still alive. The context in Dante does not seem relevant to the capital. It seems to be the specific visual image at Inferno XII, 76ff with which Ruskin is concerned:
Chiron prese uno strale, e con la coca
fece la barba in dietro alle mascelle.
Quando s’ebbe scoperta la gran bocca,
disse...
Ruskin refers directly at Works, 5.215 [n/a] to this passage from Dante as an example of ‘drawing from bodily life or the life of faith’:
For instance, Dante’s centaur Chiron, dividing his beard with his arrow before he can speak, is a thing no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had not actually seen the centaur do it. They might have composed handsome bodies of men and horses in all possible ways, through a life of pseudo-idealism, and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the real living centaur actually trotted across Dante’s brain, and he saw him do it.
There are five references to Dante in M, at Notebook M p.5, Notebook M p.76, Notebook M p.173, Notebook M p.181, and Notebook M p.199. See also Palace Book p.56L.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]