Among My Books Volume Ii Part 1

Among My Books.

by James Russell Lowell.

Second Series.

DANTE.

On the banks of a little river so shrunken by the suns of summer that it seems fast pa.s.sing into a tradition, but swollen by the autumnal rains with an Italian suddenness of pa.s.sion till the ma.s.sy bridge shudders under the impatient heap of waters behind it, stands a city which, in its period of bloom not so large as Boston, may well rank next to Athens in the history which teaches _come l' uom s' eterna_.

Originally only a convenient spot in the valley where the fairs of the neighboring Etruscan city of Fiesole were held, it gradually grew from a huddle of booths to a town, and then to a city, which absorbed its ancestral neighbor and became a cradle for the arts, the letters, the science, and the commerce[2] of modern Europe. For her Cimabue wrought, who infused Byzantine formalism with a suggestion of nature and feeling; for her the Pisani, who divined at least, if they could not conjure with it, the secret of Greek supremacy in sculpture; for her the marvellous boy Ghiberti proved that unity of composition and grace of figure and drapery were never beyond the reach of genius;[3] for her Brunelleschi curved the dome which Michel Angelo hung in air on St. Peter's; for her Giotto reared the bell-tower graceful as an Horatian ode in marble; and the great triumvirate of Italian poetry, good sense, and culture called her mother. There is no modern city about which cl.u.s.ter so many elevating a.s.sociations, none in which the past is so contemporary with us in unchanged buildings and undisturbed monuments. The house of Dante is still shown; children still receive baptism at the font (_il mio bel San Giovanni_) where he was christened before the acorn dropped that was to grow into a keel for Columbus; and an inscribed stone marks the spot where he used to sit and watch the slow blocks swing up to complete the master-thought of Arnolfo. In the convent of St. Mark hard by lived and labored Beato Angelico, the saint of Christian art, and Fra Bartolommeo, who taught Raphael dignity. From the same walls Savonarola went forth to his triumphs, short-lived almost as the crackle of his martyrdom. The plain little chamber of Michel Angelo seems still to expect his return; his last sketches lie upon the table, his staff leans in the corner, and his slippers wait before the empty chair. On one of the vine-clad hills, just without the city walls, one's feet may press the same stairs that Milton climbed to visit Galileo. To an American there is something supremely impressive in this c.u.mulative influence of the past full of inspiration and rebuke, something saddening in this repeated proof that moral supremacy is the only one that leaves monuments and not ruins behind it. Time, who with us obliterates the labor and often the names of yesterday, seems here to have spared almost the prints of the _care piante_ that shunned the sordid paths of worldly honor.

Around the courtyard of the great Museum of Florence stand statues of her ill.u.s.trious dead, her poets, painters, sculptors, architects, inventors, and statesmen; and as the traveller feels the enn.o.bling lift of such society, and reads the names or recognizes the features familiar to him as his own threshold, he is startled to find Fame as commonplace here as Notoriety everywhere else, and that this fifth-rate city should have the privilege thus to commemorate so many famous men her sons, whose claim to pre-eminence the whole world would concede. Among them is one figure before which every scholar, every man who has been touched by the tragedy of life, lingers with reverential pity. The haggard cheeks, the lips clamped together in unfaltering resolve, the scars of lifelong battle, and the brow whose sharp outline seems the monument of final victory,-- this, at least, is a face that needs no name beneath it. This is he who among literary fames finds only two that for growth and immutability can parallel his own. The suffrages of highest authority would now place him second in that company where he with proud humility took the sixth place.[4]

Dante (Durante, by contraction Dante) degli Alighieri was born at Florence in 1265, probably during the month of May.[5] This is the date given by Boccaccio, who is generally followed, though he makes a blunder in saying, _sedendo Urbano quarto nella cattedra di San Pietro_, for Urban died in October, 1264. Some, misled by an error in a few of the early ma.n.u.script copies of the _Divina Commedia_, would have him born five years earlier, in 1260. According to Arrivabene,[6] Sansovino was the first to confirm Boccaccio's statement by the authority of the poet himself, basing his argument on the first verse of the _Inferno_,--

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita";

the average age of man having been declared by the Psalmist to be seventy years, and the period of the poet's supposed vision being unequivocally fixed at 1300.[7] Leonardo Aretino and Manetti add their testimony to that of Boccaccio, and 1265 is now universally a.s.sumed as the true date.

Voltaire,[8] nevertheless, places the poet's birth in 1260, and jauntily forgives Bayle (who, he says, _ecrivait a Rotterdam_ currente calamo _pour son libraire_) for having been right, declaring that he esteems him neither more nor less for having made a mistake of five years. Oddly enough, Voltaire adopts this alleged blunder of five years on the next page in saying that Dante died at the age of 56, though he still more oddly omits the undisputed date of his death (1321), which would have shown Bayle to be right. The poet's descent is said to have been derived from a younger son of the great Roman family of the Frangipani, cla.s.sed by the popular rhyme with the Orsini and Colonna:--

"Colonna, Orsini, e Frangipani, Prendono oggi e pagano domani."

That his ancestors had been long established in Florence is an inference from some expressions of the poet, and from their dwelling having been situated in the more ancient part of the city. The most important fact of the poet's genealogy is, that he was of mixed race, the Alighieri being of Teutonic origin. Dante was born, as he himself tells us,[9] when the sun was in the constellation Gemini, and it has been absurdly inferred, from a pa.s.sage in the _Inferno_,[10] that his horoscope was drawn and a great destiny predicted for him by his teacher, Brunetto Latini. The _Ottimo Comento_ tells us that the Twins are the house of Mercury, who induces in men the faculty of writing, science, and of acquiring knowledge. This is worth mentioning as characteristic of the age and of Dante himself, with whom the influence of the stars took the place of the old notion of destiny.[11] It is supposed, from a pa.s.sage in Boccaccio's life of Dante, that Alighiero the father was still living when the poet was nine years old. If so, he must have died soon after, for Leonardo Aretino, who wrote with original doc.u.ments before him, tells us that Dante lost his father while yet a child. This circ.u.mstance may have been not without influence in muscularizing his nature to that character of self-reliance which shows itself so constantly and sharply during his after-life. His tutor was Brunetto Latini, a very superior man (for that age), says Aretino parenthetically. Like Alexander Gill, he is now remembered only as the schoolmaster of a great poet, and that he did his duty well may be inferred from Dante's speaking of him gratefully as one who by times "taught him how man eternizes himself." This, and what Villani says of his refining the Tuscan idiom (for so we understand his _farli scorti in bene parlare_),[12] are to be noted as of probable influence on the career of his pupil. Of the order of Dante's studies nothing can be certainly affirmed. His biographers send him to Bologna, Padua, Paris, Naples, and even Oxford. All are doubtful, Paris and Oxford most of all, and the dates utterly undeterminable. Yet all are possible, nay, perhaps probable. Bologna and Padua we should be inclined to place before his exile; Paris and Oxford, if at all, after it. If no argument in favor of Paris is to be drawn from his _Pape Satan_[13] and the corresponding _paix, paix, Sathan,_ in the autobiography of Cellini, nor from the very definite allusion to Doctor Siger,[14] we may yet infer from some pa.s.sages in the _Commedia_ that his wanderings had extended even farther;[15] for it would not be hard to show that his comparisons and ill.u.s.trations from outward things are almost invariably drawn from actual eyesight. As to the nature of his studies, there can be no doubt that he went through the _trivium_ (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the _quadrivium_ (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) of the then ordinary university course. To these he afterward added painting (or at least drawing,--_designavo un angelo sopra certe tavolette_),[16]

theology, and medicine. He is said to have been the pupil of Cimabue, and was certainly the friend of Giotto, the designs for some of whose frescos at a.s.sisi and elsewhere have been wrongly attributed to him, though we may safely believe in his helpful comment and suggestion. To prove his love of music, the episode of Casella were enough, even without Boccaccio's testimony. The range of Dante's study and acquirement would be encyclopedic in any age, but at that time it was literally possible to master the _omne scibile_, and he seems to have accomplished it. How lofty his theory of science was, is plain from this pa.s.sage in the _Convito_: "He is not to be called a true lover of wisdom (_filosofo_) who loves it for the sake of gain, as do lawyers, physicians, and almost all churchmen (_li religiosi_), who study, not in order to know, but to acquire riches or advancement, and who would not persevere in study should you give them what they desire to gain by it.... And it may be said that (as true friendship between men consists in each wholly loving the other) the true philosopher loves every part of wisdom, and wisdom every part of the philosopher, inasmuch as she draws all to herself, and allows no one of his thoughts to wander to other things."[17] The _Convito_ gives us a glance into Dante's library. We find Aristotle (whom he calls the philosopher, the master) cited seventy-six times; Cicero, eighteen; Albertus Magnus, seven; Boethius, six; Plato (at second-hand), four; Aquinas, Avicenna, Ptolemy, the Digest, Lucan, and Ovid, three each; Virgil, Juvenal, Statius, Seneca, and Horace, twice each; and Algazzali, Alfrogan, Augustine, Livy, Orosius, and Homer (at second-hand), once. Of Greek he seems to have understood little; of Hebrew and Arabic, a few words. But it was not only in the closet and from books that Dante received his education. He acquired, perhaps, the better part of it in the streets of Florence, and later, in those homeless wanderings which led him (as he says) wherever the Italian tongue was spoken. His were the only open eyes of that century, and, as nothing escaped them, so there is nothing that was not photographed upon his sensitive brain, to be afterward fixed forever in the _Commedia_.

What Florence was during his youth and manhood, with its Guelphs and Ghibellines, its n.o.bles and trades, its Bianchi and Neri, its kaleidoscopic revolutions, "all parties loving liberty and doing their best to destroy her," as Voltaire says, it would be beyond our province to tell even if we could. Foreshortened as events are when we look back on them across so many ages, only the upheavals of party conflict catching the eye, while the s.p.a.ces of peace between sink out of the view of history, a whole century seems like a mere wild chaos. Yet during a couple of such centuries the cathedrals of Florence, Pisa, and Siena got built; Cimabue, Giotto, Arnolfo, the Pisani, Brunelleschi, and Ghiberti gave the impulse to modern art, or brought it in some of its branches to its culminating point; modern literature took its rise; commerce became a science, and the middle cla.s.s came into being. It was a time of fierce pa.s.sions and sudden tragedies, of picturesque transitions and contrasts.

It found Dante, shaped him by every experience that life is capable of,--rank, ease, love, study, affairs, statecraft, hope, exile, hunger, dependence, despair,--until he became endowed with a sense of the nothingness of this world's goods possible only to the rich, and a knowledge of man possible only to the poor. The few well-ascertained facts of Dante's life may be briefly stated. In 1274 occurred what we may call his spiritual birth, the awakening in him of the imaginative faculty, and of that profounder and more intense consciousness which springs from the recognition of beauty through the ant.i.thesis of s.e.x. It was in that year that he first saw Beatrice Portinari. In 1289 he was present at the battle of Campaldino, fighting on the side of the Guelphs, who there utterly routed the Ghibellines, and where, he says characteristically enough, "I was present, not a boy in arms, and where I felt much fear, but in the end the greatest pleasure, from the various changes of the fight."[18] In the same year he a.s.sisted at the siege and capture of Cap.r.o.na.[19] In 1290 died Beatrice, married to Simone dei Bardi, precisely when is uncertain, but before 1287, as appears by a mention of her in her father's will, bearing date January 15 of that year. Dante's own marriage is a.s.signed to various years, ranging from 1291 to 1294; but the earlier date seems the more probable, as he was the father of seven children (the youngest, a daughter, named Beatrice) in 1301. His wife was Gemma dei Donati, and through her Dante, whose family, though n.o.ble, was of the lesser n.o.bility, became nearly connected with Corso Donati, the head of a powerful clan of the _grandi_, or greater n.o.bles. In 1293 occurred what is called the revolution of Gian Della Bella, in which the priors of the trades took the power into their own hands, and made n.o.bility a disqualification for office. A n.o.ble was defined to be any one who counted a knight among his ancestors, and thus the descendant of Cacciaguida was excluded.

Della Bella was exiled in 1295, but the n.o.bles did not regain their power. On the contrary, the citizens, having all their own way, proceeded to quarrel among themselves, and subdivided into the _popolani grossi_ and _popolani minuti_, or greater and lesser trades,--a distinction of gentility somewhat like that between wholesale and retail tradesmen. The _grandi_ continuing turbulent, many of the lesser n.o.bility, among them Dante, drew over to the side of the citizens, and between 1297 and 1300 there is found inscribed in the book of the physicians and apothecaries, _Dante d' Aldighiero, degli Aldighieri, poeta Fiorentino_[20] Professor de Vericour[21] thinks it necessary to apologize for this lapse on the part of the poet, and gravely bids us take courage, nor think that Dante was ever an apothecary. In 1300 we find him elected one of the priors of the city. In order to a perfect misunderstanding of everything connected with the Florentine politics of this period, one has only to study the various histories. The result is a spectrum on the mind's eye, which looks definite and brilliant, but really hinders all accurate vision, as if from too steady inspection of a Catharine-wheel in full whirl. A few words, however, are necessary, if only to make the confusion palpable.

The rival German families of Welfs and Weiblingens had given their names, softened into Guelfi and Ghibellini,--from which Gabriel Harvey[22]

ingeniously, but mistakenly, derives elves and goblins,--to two parties in Northern Italy, representing respectively the adherents of the pope and of the emperor, but serving very well as rallying-points in all manner of intercalary and subsidiary quarrels. The n.o.bles, especially the greater ones,--perhaps from instinct, perhaps in part from hereditary tradition, as being more or less Teutonic by descent,--were commonly Ghibellines, or Imperialists; the bourgeoisie were very commonly Guelphs, or supporters of the pope, partly from natural antipathy to the n.o.bles, and partly, perhaps, because they believed themselves to be espousing the more purely Italian side. Sometimes, however, the party relation of n.o.bles and burghers to each other was reversed, but the names of Guelph and Ghibelline always substantially represented the same things. The family of Dante had been Guelphic, and we have seen him already as a young man serving two campaigns against the other party. But no immediate question as between pope and emperor seems then to have been pending; and while there is no evidence that he was ever a mere partisan, the reverse would be the inference from his habits and character. Just before his a.s.sumption of the priorate, however, a new complication had arisen. A family feud, beginning at the neighboring city of Pistoja, between the Cancellieri Neri and Cancellieri Bianchi,[23] had extended to Florence, where the Guelphs took the part of the Neri and the Ghibellines of the Bianchi.[24] The city was instantly in a ferment of street brawls, as actors in one of which some of the Medici are incidentally named,--the first appearance of that family in history. Both parties appealed at different times to the pope, who sent two amba.s.sadors, first a bishop and then a cardinal. Both pacificators soon flung out again in a rage, after adding the new element of excommunication to the causes of confusion. It was in the midst of these things that Dante became one of the six priors (June, 1300),--an office which the Florentines had made bimestrial in its tenure, in order apparently to secure at least six const.i.tutional chances of revolution in the year. He advised that the leaders of both parties should be banished to the frontiers, which was forthwith done; the ostracism including his relative Corso Donati among the Neri, and his most intimate friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti among the Bianchi. They were all permitted to return before long (but after Dante's term of office was over), and came accordingly, bringing at least the Scriptural allowance of "seven other" motives of mischief with them. Affairs getting worse (1301), the Neri, with the connivance of the pope (Boniface VIII.), entered into an arrangement with Charles of Valois, who was preparing an expedition to Italy. Dante was meanwhile sent on an emba.s.sy to Rome (September, 1301, according to Arrivabene,[25] but probably earlier) by the Bianchi, who still retained all the offices at Florence. It is the tradition that he said in setting forth: "If I go, who remains? and if I stay, who goes?" Whether true or not, the story implies what was certainly true, that the council and influence of Dante were of great weight with the more moderate of both parties. On October 31, 1301, Charles took possession of Florence in the interest of the Neri. Dante being still at Rome (January 27, 1302), sentence of exile was p.r.o.nounced against him and others, with a heavy fine to be paid within two months; if not paid, the entire confiscation of goods, and, whether paid or no, exile; the charge against him being pecuniary malversation in office. The fine not paid (as it could not be without admitting the justice of the charges, which Dante scorned even to deny), in less than two months (March 10, 1302) a second sentence was registered, by which he with others was condemned to be burned alive if taken within the boundaries of the republic.[26] From this time the life of Dante becomes semi-mythical, and for nearly every date we are reduced to the "as they say" of Herodotus. He became now necessarily identified with his fellow-exiles (fragments of all parties united by common wrongs in a practical, if not theoretic, Ghibellinism), and shared in their attempts to reinstate themselves by force of arms. He was one of their council of twelve, but withdrew from it on account of the unwisdom of their measures. Whether he was present at their futile a.s.sault on Florence (July 22, 1304) is doubtful, but probably he was not. From the _Ottimo Comento_, written at least in part[27] by a contemporary as early as 1333, we learn that Dante soon separated himself from his companions in misfortune with mutual discontents and recriminations.[28] During the nineteen years of Dante's exile, it would be hard to say where he was not. In certain districts of Northern Italy there is scarce a village that has not its tradition of him, its _sedia, rocca, spelonca,_ or _torre di Dante_; and what between the patriotic complaisance of some biographers overwilling to gratify as many provincial vanities as possible, and the pettishness of others anxious only to snub them, the confusion becomes hopeless.[29] After his banishment we find some definite trace of him first at Arezzo with Uguccione della f.a.ggiuola; then at Siena; then at Verona with the Scaligeri. He himself says: "Through almost all parts where this language [Italian] is spoken, a wanderer, wellnigh a beggar, I have gone, showing against my will the wound of fortune. Truly I have been a vessel without sail or rudder, driven to diverse ports, estuaries, and sh.o.r.es by that hot blast, the breath of grievous poverty; and I have shown myself to the eyes of many who perhaps, through some fame of me, had imagined me in quite other guise, in whose view not only was my person debased, but every work of mine, whether done or yet to do, became of less account."[30] By the election of the emperor Henry VII. (of Luxemburg, November, 1308), and the news of his proposed expedition into Italy, the hopes of Dante were raised to the highest pitch. Henry entered Italy, October, 1310, and received the iron crown of Lombardy at Milan, on the day of Epiphany, 1311. His movements being slow, and his policy undecided, Dante addressed him that famous letter, urging him to crush first the "Hydra and Myrrha" Florence, as the root of all the evils of Italy (April 16, 1311). To this year we must probably a.s.sign the new decree by which the seigniory of Florence recalled a portion of the exiles, excepting Dante, however, among others, by name.[31] The undertaking of Henry, after an ill-directed dawdling of two years, at last ended in his death at Buonconvento (August 24, 1313; Carlyle says wrongly September); poisoned, it was said, in the sacramental bread, by a Dominican friar, bribed thereto by Florence.[32] The story is doubtful, the more as Dante nowhere alludes to it, as he certainly would have done had he heard of it. According to Balbo, Dante spent the time from August, 1313, to November, 1314, in Pisa and Lucca, and then took refuge at Verona, with Can Grande della Scala (whom Voltaire calls, drolly enough, _le grand can de Verone_, as if he had been a Tartar), where he remained till 1318. Foscolo with equal positiveness sends him, immediately after the death of Henry, to Guido da Polenta[33] at Ravenna, and makes him join Can Grande only after the latter became captain of the Ghibelline league in December, 1318. In 1316 the government of Florence set forth a new decree allowing the exiles to return on conditions of fine and penance. Dante rejected the offer (by accepting which his guilt would have been admitted), in a letter still hot, after these five centuries, with indignant scorn. "Is this then the glorious return of Dante Alighieri to his country after nearly three l.u.s.tres of suffering and exile? Did an innocence, patent to all, merit this?--this, the perpetual sweat and toil of study? Far from a man, the housemate of philosophy, be so rash and earthen hearted a humility as to allow himself to be offered up bound like a school-boy or a criminal! Far from a man, the preacher of justice, to pay those who have done him wrong as for a favor! This is not the way of retaining to my country; but if another can be found that shall not derogate from the fame and honor of Dante, that I will enter on with no lagging steps. For if by none such Florence may be entered, by me then never! Can I not everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars?

speculate on sweetest truths under any sky without first giving myself up inglorious, nay, ignominious, to the populace and city of Florence? Nor shall I want for bread." Dionisi puts the date of this letter in 1315.[34] He is certainly wrong, for the decree is dated December 11, 1316. Foscolo places it in 1316, Troya early in 1317, and both may be right, as the year began March 25. Whatever the date of Dante's visit to Voltaire's great Khan[35] of Verona, or the length of his stay with him, may have been, it is certain that he was in Ravenna in 1320, and that, on his return thither from an emba.s.sy to Venice (concerning which a curious letter, forged probably by Doni, is extant), he died on September 14, 1321 (13th, according to others). He was buried at Ravenna under a monument built by his friend, Guido Novello.[36] Dante is said to have dictated the following inscription for it on his death-bed:--

JVRA MONARCHIAE SVPEROS PHLEGETHONTA LACVSQVE LVSTRANDO CECINI VOLVERVNT FATA QVOVSQVE SED QVIA PARS CESSIT MELIORIBVS HOSPITA CASTRIS AVCTOREMQVE SVVM PETIIT FELICIOR ASTRIS HIC CLAVDOR DANTES PATRIIS EXTORRIS AB ORIS QVEM GENVIT PARVI FLORENTIA MATER AMORIS.

Of which this rude paraphrase may serve as a translation:--

The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the Stream of Fire, the Pit, In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit; But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to n.o.bler wars, And, happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker 'mid the stars, Here am I Dante shut, exiled from the ancestral sh.o.r.e, Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother, bore.[37]

If these be not the words of Dante, what is internal evidence worth? The indomitably self-reliant man, loyal first of all to his most unpopular convictions (his very host, Guido, being a Guelph), puts his Ghibellinism (_jura monarchiae_) in the front. The man whose whole life, like that of selected souls always, had been a war fare, calls heaven another camp,--a better one, thank G.o.d! The wanderer of so many years speaks of his soul as a guest,--glad to be gone, doubtless. The exile, whose sharpest reproaches of Florence are always those of an outraged lover, finds it bitter that even his unconscious bones should lie in alien soil.

Giovanni Villani, the earliest authority, and a contemporary, thus sketches him: "This man was a great scholar in almost every science, though a layman; was a most excellent poet, philosopher, and rhetorician; perfect, as well in composing and versifying as in haranguing; a most n.o.ble speaker.... This Dante, on account of his learning, was a little haughty, and shy, and disdainful, and like a philosopher almost ungracious, knew not well how to deal with unlettered folk." Benvenuto da Imola tells us that he was very abstracted, as we may well believe of a man who carried the _Commedia_ in his brain. Boccaccio paints him in this wise: "Our poet was of middle height; his face was long, his nose aquiline, his jaw large, and the lower lip protruding somewhat beyond the upper; a little stooping in the shoulders; his eyes rather large than small; dark of complexion; his hair and beard thick, crisp, and black; and his countenance always sad and thoughtful. His garments were always dignified; the style such as suited ripeness of years; his gait was grave and gentlemanlike; and his bearing, whether public or private, wonderfully composed and polished. In meat and drink he was most temperate, nor was ever any more zealous in study or whatever other pursuit. Seldom spake he, save when spoken to, though a most eloquent person. In his youth he delighted especially in music and singing, and was intimate with almost all the singers and musicians of his day. He was much inclined to solitude, and familiar with few, and most a.s.siduous in study as far as he could find time for it. Dante was also of marvellous capacity and the most tenacious memory." Various anecdotes of him are related by Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and others, none of them verisimilar, and some of them at least fifteen centuries old when revamped. Most of them are neither _veri_ nor _ben trovati_. One clear glimpse we get of him from the _Ottimo Comento_, the author of which says:[38] "I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft (_molte e spesse volte_) he had made words say for him what they were not wont to express for other poets." That is the only sincere glimpse we get of the living, breathing, word-compelling Dante.

Looked at outwardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter and disastrous failure. What its inward satisfactions must have been, we, with the _Paradiso_ open before us, can form some faint conception. To him, longing with an intensity which only the word _Dantesque_ will express to realize an ideal upon earth, and continually baffled and misunderstood, the far greater part of his mature life must have been labor and sorrow. We can see how essential all that sad experience was to him, can understand why all the fairy stories hide the luck in the ugly black casket; but to him, then and there, how seemed it?

Thou shalt relinquish everything of thee, Beloved most dearly; this that arrow is Shot from the bow of exile first of all; And thou shalt prove how salt a savor hath The bread of others, and how hard a path To climb and to descend the stranger's stairs![39]

_Come sa di sale!_ Who never wet his bread with tears, says Goethe, knows ye not, ye heavenly powers! Our nineteenth century made an idol of the n.o.ble lord who broke his heart in verse once every six months, but the fourteenth was lucky enough to produce and not to make an idol of that rarest earthly phenomenon, a man of genius who could hold heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and would not let himself die till he had done his task. At the end of the _Vita Nuova_, his first work, Dante wrote down that remarkable aspiration that G.o.d would take him to himself after he had written of Beatrice such things as were never yet written of woman.

It was literally fulfilled when the _Commedia_ was finished twenty-five years later. Scarce was Dante at rest in his grave when Italy felt instinctively that this was her great man. Boccaccio tells us that in 1329[40] Cardinal Poggetto (du Poiet) caused Dante's treatise _De Monarchia_, to be publicly burned at Bologna, and proposed further to dig up and burn the bones of the poet at Ravenna, as having been a heretic; but so much opposition was roused that he thought better of it. Yet this was during the pontificate of the Frenchman, John XXII., the reproof of whose simony Dante puts in the mouth of St. Peter, who declares his seat vacant,[41] whose d.a.m.nation the poet himself seems to prophesy,[42] and against whose election he had endeavored to persuade the cardinals, in a vehement letter. In 1350 the republic of Florence voted the sum of ten golden florins to be paid by the hands of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio to Dante's daughter Beatrice, a nun in the convent of Santa Chiara at Ravenna. In 1396 Florence voted a monument, and begged in vain for the metaphorical ashes of the man of whom she had threatened to make literal cinders if she could catch him alive. In 1429[43] she begged again, but Ravenna, a dead city, was tenacious of the dead poet. In 1519 Michel Angelo would have built the monument, but Leo X. refused to allow the sacred dust to be removed. Finally, in 1829, five hundred and eight years after the death of Dante, Florence got a cenotaph fairly built in Santa Croce (by Ricci), ugly beyond even the usual lot of such, with three colossal figures on it, Dante in the middle, with Italy on one side and Poesy on the other. The tomb at Ravenna, built originally in 1483, by Cardinal Bembo, was restored by Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and finally rebuilt in its present form by Cardinal Gonzaga, in 1780, all three of whom commemorated themselves in Latin inscriptions. It is a little shrine covered with a dome, not unlike the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, and is now the chief magnet which draws foreigners and their gold to Ravenna.

The _valet de place_ says that Dante is not buried under it, but beneath the pavement of the street in front of it, where also, he says, he saw my Lord Byron kneel and weep. Like everything in Ravenna, it is dirty and neglected.

In 1373 (August 9) Florence inst.i.tuted a chair of the _Divina Commedia_, and Boccaccio was named first professor. He accordingly began his lectures on Sunday, October 3, following, but his comment was broken off abruptly at the 17th verse of the 17th canto of the _Inferno_ by the illness which ended in his death, December 21, 1375. Among his successors were Filippo Villani and Filelfo. Bologna was the first to follow the example of Florence, Benvenuto da Imola having begun his lectures, according to Tiraboschi, so early as 1375. Chairs were established also at Pisa, Venice, Piacenza, and Milan before the close of the century. The lectures were delivered in the churches and on feast-days, which shows their popular character. Balbo reckons (but this is guess-work) that the MS. copies of the _Divina Commedia_ made during the fourteenth century, and now existing in the libraries of Europe, are more numerous than those of all other works, ancient and modern, made during the same period.

Between the invention of printing and the year 1500 more than twenty editions were published in Italy, the earliest in 1472. During the sixteenth century there were forty editions; during the seventeenth,--a period, for Italy, of sceptical dilettanteism,--only three; during the eighteenth, thirty-four; and already, during the first half of the nineteenth, at least eighty. The first translation was into Spanish, in 1428.[44] M. St. Rene Taillandier says that the _Commedia_ was condemned by the inquisition in Spain; but this seems too general a statement, for, according to Foscolo,[45] it was the commentary of Landino and Vellutello, and a few verses in the _Inferno_ and _Paradiso_, which were condemned. The first French translation was that of Grangier, 1596, but the study of Dante struck no root there till the present century.

Rivarol, who translated the _Inferno_ in 1783, was the first Frenchman who divined the wonderful force and vitality of the _Commedia_.[46] The expressions of Voltaire represent very well the average opinion of cultivated persons in respect of Dante in the middle of the eighteenth century. He says: "The Italians call him divine; but it is a hidden divinity; few people understand his oracles. He has commentators, which, perhaps, is another reason for his not being understood. His reputation will go on increasing, because scarce anybody reads him."[47] To Father Bettinelli he writes: "I estimate highly the courage with which you have dared to say that Dante was a madman and his work a monster." But he adds, what shows that Dante had his admirers even in that flippant century: "There are found among us, and in the eighteenth century, people who strive to admire imaginations so stupidly extravagant and barbarous."[48] Elsewhere he says that the _Commedia_ was "an odd poem, but gleaming with natural beauties, a work in which the author rose in parts above the bad taste of his age and his subject, and full of pa.s.sages written as purely as if they had been of the time of Ariosto and Ta.s.so."[49] It is curious to see this antipathetic fascination which Dante exercised over a nature so opposite to his own.

At the beginning of this century Chateaubriand speaks of Dante with vague commendation, evidently from a very superficial acquaintance, and that only with the _Inferno_, probably from Rivarol's version.[50] Since then there have been four or five French versions in prose or verse, including one by Lamennais. But the austerity of Dante will not condescend to the conventional elegance which makes the charm of French, and the most virile of poets cannot be adequately rendered in the most feminine of languages. Yet in the works of Fauriel, Ozanam, Ampere, and Villemain, France has given a greater impulse to the study of Dante than any other country except Germany. Into Germany the _Commedia_ penetrated later. How utterly Dante was unknown there in the sixteenth century is plain from a pa.s.sage in the "Vanity of the Arts and Sciences" of Cornelius Agrippa, where he is spoken of among the authors of lascivious stories: "There have been many of these historical pandars, of which some of obscure fame, as Aeneas Sylvius, Dantes, and Petrarch, Boccace, Ponta.n.u.s,"

etc.[51] The first German translation was that of Kannegiesser (1809).

Versions by Streckfuss, Kopisch, and Prince John (late king) of Saxony followed. Goethe seems never to have given that attention to Dante which his ever-alert intelligence might have been expected to bestow on so imposing a moral and aesthetic phenomenon. Unless the conclusion of the second part of "Faust" be an inspiration of the _Paradiso_, we remember no adequate word from him on this theme. His remarks on one of the German translations are brief, dry, and without that breadth which comes only of thorough knowledge and sympathy. But German scholarship and constructive criticism, through Witte, Kopisch, Wegele, Ruth, and others, have been of pre-eminent service in deepening the understanding and facilitating the study of the poet. In England the first recognition of Dante is by Chaucer in the "Hugelin of Pisa" of the "Monkes Tale,"[52] and an imitation of the opening verses of the third canto of the _Inferno_ ("a.s.sembly of Foules"). In 1417 Giovanni da Serravalle, bishop of Fermo, completed a Latin prose translation of the _Commedia_, a copy of which, as he made it at the request of two English bishops whom he met at the council of Constance, was doubtless sent to England. Later we find Dante now and then mentioned, but evidently from hearsay only,[53] till the time of Spenser, who, like Milton fifty years later, shows that he had read his works closely. Thenceforward for more than a century Dante became a mere name, used without meaning by literary sciolists. Lord Chesterfield echoes Voltaire, and Dr. Drake in his "Literary Hours"[54]

could speak of Darwin's "Botanic Garden" as showing the "wild and terrible sublimity of Dante"! The first complete English translation was by Boyd,--of the _Inferno_ in 1785, of the whole poem in 1802. There have been eight other complete translations, beginning with Cary's in 1814, six since 1850, beside several of the _Inferno_ singly. Of these that of Longfellow is the best. It is only within the last twenty years, however, that the study of Dante, in any true sense, became at all general. Even Coleridge seems to have been familiar only with the _Inferno_. In America Professor Ticknor was the first to devote a special course of ill.u.s.trative lectures to Dante; he was followed by Longfellow, whose lectures, ill.u.s.trated by admirable translations, are remembered with grateful pleasure by many who were thus led to learn the full significance of the great Christian poet. A translation of the _Inferno_ into quatrains by T.W. Parsons ranks with the best for spirit, faithfulness, and elegance. In Denmark and Russia translations of the _Inferno_ have been published, beside separate volumes of comment and ill.u.s.tration. We have thus sketched the steady growth of Dante's fame and influence to a universality unparalleled except in the case of Shakespeare, perhaps more remarkable if we consider the abstruse and mystical nature of his poetry. It is to be noted as characteristic that the veneration of Dantophilists for their master is that of disciples for their saint. Perhaps no other man could have called forth such an expression as that of Ruskin, that "the central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante."

The first remark to be made upon the writings of Dante is that they are all (with the possible exception of the treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_) autobiographic, and that all of them, including that, are parts of a mutually related system, of which the central point is the individuality and experience of the poet. In the _Vita Nuova_ he recounts the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, showing how his grief for her loss turned his thoughts first inward upon his own consciousness, and, failing all help there, gradually upward through philosophy to religion, and so from a world of shadows to one of eternal substances. It traces with exquisite unconsciousness the gradual but certain steps by which memory and imagination transubstantiated the woman of flesh and blood into a holy ideal, combining in one radiant symbol of sorrow and hope that faith which is the instinctive refuge of unavailing regret, that grace of G.o.d which higher natures learn to find in the trial which pa.s.seth all understanding, and that perfect womanhood, the dream of youth and the memory of maturity, which beckons toward the forever unattainable. As a contribution to the physiology of genius, no other book is to be compared with the _Vita Nuova_. It is more important to the understanding of Dante as a poet than any other of his works. It shows him (and that in the midst of affairs demanding practical ability and presence of mind) capable of a depth of contemplative abstraction, equalling that of a Soofi who has pa.s.sed the fourth step of initiation. It enables us in some sort to see how, from being the slave of his imaginative faculty, he rose by self-culture and force of will to that mastery of it which is art. We comprehend the _Commedia_ better when we know that Dante could be an active, clear-headed politician and a mystic at the same time. Various dates have been a.s.signed to the composition of the _Vita Nuova_. The earliest limit is fixed by the death of Beatrice in 1290 (though some of the poems are of even earlier date), and the book is commonly a.s.sumed to have been finished by 1295; Foscolo says 1294. But Professor Karl Witte, a high authority, extends the term as far as 1300.[55] The t.i.tle of the book also, _Vita Nuova_, has been diversely interpreted. Mr. Garrow, who published an English version of it at Florence in 1846, ent.i.tles it the "Early Life of Dante." Balbo understands it in the same way.[56] But we are strongly of the opinion that "New Life" is the interpretation sustained by the entire significance of the book itself.

His next work in order of date is the treatise _De Monarchia_. It has been generally taken for granted that Dante was a Guelph in politics up to the time of his banishment, and that out of resentment he then became a violent Ghibelline. Not to speak of the consideration that there is no author whose life and works present so remarkable a unity and logical sequence as those of Dante, Professor Witte has drawn attention to a fact which alone is enough to demonstrate that the _De Monarchia_ was written before 1300. That and the _Vita Nuova_ are the only works of Dante in which no allusion whatever is made to his exile. That bitter thought was continually present to him. In the _Convito_ it betrays itself often, and with touching unexpectedness. Even in the treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_, he takes as one of his examples of style: "I have most pity for those, whosoever they are, that languish in exile, and revisit their country only in dreams." We have seen that the one decisive act of Dante's priorate was to expel from Florence the chiefs of both parties as the sowers of strife, and he tells us (_Paradiso_, XVII.) that he had formed a party by himself. The king of Saxony has well defined his political theory as being "an ideal Ghibellinism"[57] and he has been accused of want of patriotism only by those short-sighted persons who cannot see beyond their own parish. Dante's want of faith in freedom was of the same kind with Milton's refusing (as Tacitus had done before) to confound license with liberty. The argument of the _De Monarchia_ is briefly this: As the object of the individual man is the highest development of his faculties, so is it also with men united in societies. But the individual can only attain the highest development when all his powers are in absolute subjection to the intellect, and society only when it subjects its individual caprices to an intelligent head. This is the order of nature, as in families, and men have followed it in the organization of villages, towns, cities. Again, since G.o.d made man in his own image, men and societies most nearly resemble him in proportion as they approach unity. But as in all societies questions must arise, so there is need of a monarch for supreme arbiter. And only a universal monarch can be impartial enough for this, since kings of limited territories would always be liable to the temptation of private ends. With the internal policy of munic.i.p.alities, commonwealths, and kingdoms, the monarch would have nothing to do, only interfering when there was danger of an infraction of the general peace. This is the doctrine of the first book, enforced sometimes eloquently, always logically, and with great fertility of ill.u.s.tration. It is an enlargement of some of the _obiter dicta_ of the _Convito_. The earnestness with which peace is insisted on as a necessary postulate of civic well-being shows what the experience had been out of which Dante had constructed his theory. It is to be looked on as a purely scholastic demonstration of a speculative thesis, in which the manifold exceptions and modifications essential in practical application are necessarily left aside. Dante almost forestalls the famous proposition of Calvin, "that it is possible to conceive a people without a prince, but not a prince without a people," when he says, _Non enim gens propter regem, sed e converso rex propter gentem_.[58] And in his letter to the princes and peoples of Italy on the coming of Henry VII., he bids them "obey their prince, but so as freemen preserving their own const.i.tutional forms." He says also expressly: _Animadvertendum sane, quod c.u.m dicitur humanum genus potest regi per unum supremum principem, non sic intelligendum est ut ab illo uno prodire possint municipia et leges munic.i.p.ales. Habent namque nationes, regna, et civitates inter se proprietates quas legibus differentibus regulari oportet_. Schlosser the historian compares Dante's system with that of the United States.[59] It in some respects resembled more the const.i.tution of the Netherlands under the supreme stadtholder, but parallels between ideal and actual inst.i.tutions are always unsatisfactory.[60]

The second book is very curious. In it Dante endeavors to demonstrate the divine right of the Roman Empire to universal sovereignty. One of his arguments is, that Christ consented to be born under the reign of Augustus; another, that he a.s.sented to the imperial jurisdiction in allowing himself to be crucified under a decree of one of its courts. The atonement could not have been accomplished unless Christ suffered under sentence of a court having jurisdiction, for otherwise his condemnation would have been an injustice and not a penalty. Moreover, since all mankind was typified in the person of Christ, the court must have been one having jurisdiction over all mankind; and since he was delivered to Pilate, an officer of Tiberius, it must follow that the jurisdiction of Tiberius was universal. He draws an argument also from the wager of battle to prove that the Roman Empire was divinely permitted, at least, if not inst.i.tuted. For since it is admitted that G.o.d gives the victory, and since the Romans always won it, therefore it was G.o.d's will that the Romans should attain universal empire. In the third book he endeavors to prove that the emperor holds by divine right, and not by permission of the pope. He a.s.signs supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor in temporals. This was a delicate subject, and though the king of Saxony (a Catholic) says that Dante did not overstep the limits of orthodoxy, it was on account of this part of the book that it was condemned as heretical.[61]

Next follows the treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_. Though we have doubts whether we possess this book as Dante wrote it, inclining rather to think that it is a copy in some parts textually exact, in others an abstract, there can be no question either of its great glossological value or that it conveys the opinions of Dante. We put it next in order, though written later than the _Convito_, only because, like the _De Monarchia_, it is written in Latin. It is a proof of the national instinct of Dante, and of his confidence in his genius, that he should have chosen to write all his greatest works in what was deemed by scholars a _patois_, but which he more than any other man made a cla.s.sic language. Had he intended the _De Monarchia_ for a political pamphlet, he would certainly not have composed it in the dialect of the few. The _De Vulgari Eloquio_ was to have been in four books. Whether it was ever finished or not it is impossible to say; but only two books have come down to us. It treats of poetizing in the vulgar tongue, and of the different dialects of Italy. From the particularity with which it treats of the dialect of Bologna, it has been supposed to have been written in that city, or at least to furnish an argument in favor of Dante's having at some time studied there. In Lib.

II. Cap. II., is a remarkable pa.s.sage in which, defining the various subjects of song and what had been treated in the vulgar tongue by different poets, he says that his own theme had been righteousness.

The _Convito_ is also imperfect. It was to have consisted of fourteen treatises, but, as we have it, contains only four. In the first he justifies the use of the vulgar idiom in preference to the Latin. In the other three he comments on three of his own _Canzoni_. It will be impossible to give an adequate a.n.a.lysis of this work in the limits allowed us.[62] It is an epitome of the learning of that age, philosophical, theological, and scientific. As affording ill.u.s.tration of the _Commedia_, and of Dante's style of thought, it is invaluable. It is reckoned by his countrymen the first piece of Italian prose, and there are parts of it which still stand unmatched for eloquence and pathos. The Italians (even such a man as Cantu among the rest) find in it and a few pa.s.sages of the _Commedia_ the proof that Dante, as a natural philosopher was wholly in advance of his age,--that he had, among other things, antic.i.p.ated Newton in the theory of gravitation. But this is as idle as the claim that Shakespeare had discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey,[63] and one might as well attempt to dethrone Newton because Chaucer speaks of the love which draws the apple to the earth.

The truth is, that it was only as a poet that Dante was great and original (glory enough, surely, to have not more than two compet.i.tors), and in matters of science, as did all his contemporaries, sought the guiding hand of Aristotle like a child. Dante is a.s.sumed by many to have been a Platonist, but this is not true, in the strict sense of the word.

Like all men of great imagination, he was an idealist, and so far a Platonist, as Shakespeare might be proved to have been by his sonnets.

But Dante's direct acquaintance with Plato may be reckoned at zero, and we consider it as having strongly influenced his artistic development for the better, that transcendentalist as he was by nature, so much so as to be in danger of lapsing into an Oriental mysticism, his habits of thought should have been made precise and his genius disciplined by a mind so severely logical as that of Aristotle. This does not conflict with what we believe to be equally true, that the Platonizing commentaries on his poem, like that of Landino, are the most satisfactory. Beside the prose already mentioned, we have a small collection of Dante's letters, the recovery of the larger number of which we owe to Professor Witte. They are all interesting, some of them especially so, as ill.u.s.trating the prophetic character with which Dante invested himself. The longest is one addressed to Can Grande della Scalla, explaining the intention of the _Commedia_ and the method to be employed in its interpretation. The authenticity of this letter has been doubted, but is now generally admitted.

We shall barely allude to the minor poems, full of grace and depth of mystic sentiment, and which would have given Dante a high place in the history of Italian literature, even had he written nothing else. They are so abstract, however, that without the extrinsic interest of having been written by the author of the _Commedia_, they would probably find few readers. All that is certainly known in regard to the _Commedia_ is that it was composed during the nineteen years which intervened between Dante's banishment and death. Attempts have been made to fix precisely the dates of the different parts, but without success, and the differences of opinion are bewildering. Foscolo has constructed an ingenious and forcible argument to show that no part of the poem was published before the author's death. The question depends somewhat on the meaning we attach to the word "published." In an age of ma.n.u.script the wide dispersion of a poem so long even as a single one of the three divisions of the _Commedia_ would be accomplished very slowly. But it is difficult to account for the great fame which Dante enjoyed during the latter years of his life, unless we suppose that parts, at least, of his greatest work had been read or heard by a large number of persons. This need not, however, imply publication; and Witte, whose opinion is ent.i.tled to great consideration, supposes even the _Inferno_ not to have been finished before 1314 or 1315. In a matter where certainty would be impossible, it is of little consequence to reproduce conjectural dates.

In the letter to Can Grande, before alluded to, Dante himself has stated the theme of his song. He says that "the literal subject of the whole work is the state of the soul after death simply considered. But if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is man, as by merit or demerit, through freedom of the will, he renders himself liable to the reward or punishment of justice." He tells us that the work is to be interpreted in a literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical sense, a mode then commonly employed with the Scriptures,[64] and of which he gives the following example: "To make which mode of treatment more clear, it may be applied in the following verses: _In exitu Israel de Aegypto, domus Jacob de populo barbaro, facta est Judaea sanctificatio ejus, Israel potestas ejus_.[65] For if we look only at the literal sense, it signifies the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses; if at the allegorical, it signifies our redemption through Christ; if at the moral, it signifies the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to a state of grace; and if at the anagogical, it signifies the pa.s.sage of the blessed soul from the bondage of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory." A Latin couplet, cited by one of the old commentators, puts the matter compactly together for us:--

"_Litera_ gesta refert; quid credas _allegoria_; _Moralis_ quid agas; quid speres _anagogia_."

Dante tells us that he calls his poem a comedy because it has a fortunate ending, and gives its t.i.tle thus: "Here begins the comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by birth, but not in morals."[66] The poem consists of three parts, h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each part is divided into thirty-three cantos, in allusion to the years of the Saviour's life; for though the h.e.l.l contains thirty-four, the first canto is merely introductory. In the form of the verse (triple rhyme) we may find an emblem of the Trinity, and in the three divisions, of the threefold state of man, sin, grace, and beat.i.tude. Symbolic meanings reveal themselves, or make themselves suspected, everywhere, as in the architecture of the Middle Ages. An a.n.a.lysis of the poem would be out of place here, but we must say a few words of Dante's position as respects modern literature. If we except Wolfram von Eschenbach, he is the first Christian poet, the first (indeed, we might say the only) one whose whole system of thought is colored in every finest fibre by a purely Christian theology. Lapse through sin, mediation, and redemption, these are the subjects of the three parts of the poem: or, otherwise stated, intellectual conviction of the result of sin, typified in Virgil (symbol also of that imperialism whose origin he sang); moral conversion after repentance, by divine grace, typified in Beatrice; reconciliation with G.o.d, and actual blinding vision of him,--"The pure in heart shall see G.o.d." Here are general truths which any Christian may accept and find comfort in. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is the real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul; it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow, and that the ladder of that faith by which man climbs to the actual fruition of things not seen _ex quovis ligno non fit_, but only of the cross manfully borne. The poem is also, in a very intimate sense, an apotheosis of woman Indeed, as Marvell's drop of dew mirrored the whole firmament, so we find in the _Commedia_ the image of the Middle Ages, and the sentimental gyniolatry of chivalry, which was at best but skin-deep, is lifted in Beatrice to an ideal and universal plane. It is the same with Catholicism, with imperialism, with the scholastic philosophy, and nothing is more wonderful than the power of absorption and a.s.similation in this man, who could take up into himself the world that then was, and reproduce it with such, cosmopolitan truth to human nature and to his own individuality, as to reduce all contemporary history to a mere comment on his vision. We protest, therefore, against the parochial criticism which would degrade Dante to a mere partisan, which sees in him a Luther before his time, and would clap the _bonnet rouge_ upon his heavenly muse.

Like all great artistic minds, Dante was essentially conservative, and, arriving precisely in that period of transition when Church and Empire were entering upon the modern epoch of thought, he strove to preserve both by presenting the theory of both in a pristine and ideal perfection.

The whole nature of Dante was one of intense belief. There is proof upon proof that he believed himself invested with a divine mission Like the Hebrew prophets, with whose writings his whole soul was imbued, it was back to the old worship and the G.o.d of the fathers that he called his people, and not Isaiah himself was more dest.i.tute of that humor, that sense of ludicrous contrast, which is an essential in the composition of a sceptic. In Dante's time, learning had something of a sacred character, the line was hardly yet drawn between the clerk and the possessor of supernatural powers, it was with the next generation, with the elegant Petrarch, even more truly than with the kindly Boccaccio, that the purely literary life, and that dilettanteism, which is the twin sister of scepticism, began. As a merely literary figure, the position of Dante is remarkable. Not only as respects thought, but as respects aesthetics also, his great poem stands as a monument on the boundary line between the ancient and modern. He not only marks, but is in himself, the transition. _Arma virumque cano_, that is the motto of cla.s.sic song; the things of this world and great men. Dante says, _subjectum est h.o.m.o_, not _vir_; my theme is man, not a man. The scene of the old epic and drama was in this world, and its catastrophe here; Dante lays his scene in the human soul, and his fifth act in the other world. He makes himself the protagonist of his own drama. In the _Commedia_ for the first time Christianity wholly revolutionizes Art, and becomes its seminal principle. But aesthetically also, as well as morally, Dante stands between the old and the new, and reconciles them. The theme of his poem is purely subjective, modern, what is called romantic; but its treatment is objective (almost to realism, here and there), and it is limited by a form of cla.s.sic severity. In the same way he sums up in himself the two schools of modern poetry which had preceded him, and, while essentially lyrical in his subject, is epic in the handling of it. So also he combines the deeper and more abstract religious sentiment of the Teutonic races with the scientific precision and absolute systematism of the Romanic. In one respect Dante stands alone. While we can in some sort account for such representative men as Voltaire and Goethe (nay, even Shakespeare) by the intellectual and moral fermentation of the age in which they lived, Dante seems morally isolated and to have drawn his inspiration almost wholly from his own internal reserves. Of his mastery in style we need say little here. Of his mere language, nothing could be better than the expression of Rivarol "His verse holds itself erect by the mere force of the substantive and verb, without the help of a single epithet." We will only add a word on what seems to us an extraordinary misapprehension of Coleridge, who disparages Dante by comparing his Lucifer with Milton's Satan. He seems to have forgotten that the precise measurements of Dante were not prosaic, but absolutely demanded by the nature of his poem. He is describing an actual journey, and his exactness makes a part of the verisimilitude. We read the "Paradise Lost" as a poem, the _Commedia_ as a record of fact; and no one can read Dante without believing his story, for it is plain that he believed it himself.

It is false aesthetics to confound the grandiose with the imaginative.

Milton's angels are not to be compared with Dante's, at once real and supernatural; and the Deity of Milton is a Calvinistic Zeus, while nothing in all poetry approaches the imaginative grandeur of Dante's vision of G.o.d at the conclusion of the _Paradiso_. In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such h.o.m.ogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential; and there is no moral more touching than that the contemporary recognition of such a nature, so endowed and so faithful to its endowment, should be summed up in the sentence of Florence: _Igne comburatur sic quod moriatur_.[67]

The range of Dante's influence is not less remarkable than its intensity.

Minds, the antipodes of each other in temper and endowment, alike feel the force of his attraction, the pervasive comfort of his light and warmth. Boccaccio and Lamennais are touched with the same reverential enthusiasm. The imaginative Ruskin is rapt by him, as we have seen, perhaps beyond the limit where critical appreciation merges in enthusiasm; and the matter-of-fact Schlosser tells us that "he, who was wont to contemplate earthly life wholly in an earthly light, has made use of Dante, Landino, and Vellutello in his solitude to bring a heavenly light into his inward life." Almost all other poets have their seasons, but Dante penetrates to the moral core of those who once fairly come within his sphere, and possesses them wholly. His readers turn students, his students zealots, and what was a taste becomes a religion. The homeless exile finds a home in thousands of grateful hearts. _E venne da esilio in questa pace!_

Every kind of objection, aesthetic and other, may be, and has been, made to the _Divina Commedia_, especially by critics who have but a superficial acquaintance with it, or rather with the _Inferno_, which is as far as most English critics go. Coleridge himself, who had a way of divining what was in books, may be justly suspected of not going further, though with Carey to help him. Mr. Carlyle, who has said admirable things of Dante the man, was very imperfectly read in Dante the author, or he would never have put Sordello in h.e.l.l and the meeting with Beatrice in paradise. In France it was not much better (though Rivarol has said the best thing hitherto of Dante's parsimony of epithet)[68] before Ozanam, who, if with decided ultramontane leanings, has written excellently well of our poet, and after careful study. Voltaire, though not without relentings toward a poet who had put popes heels upward in h.e.l.l, regards him on the whole as a stupid monster and barbarian. It was no better in Italy, if we may trust Foscolo, who affirms that "neither Pelli nor others deservedly more celebrated than he ever read attentively the poem of Dante, perhaps never ran through it from the first verse to the last."[69] Accordingly we have heard that the _Commedia_ was a sermon, a political pamphlet, the revengeful satire of a disappointed Ghibelline, nay, worse, of a turncoat Guelph. It is narrow, it is bigoted, it is savage, it is theological, it is mediaeval, it is heretical, it is scholastic, it is obscure, it