Chapter 10

[32] See Carlyle's "Frederic," Vol. I. p. 147.

[33] A mistake, for Guido did not become lord of Ravenna till several years later. But Boccaccio also assigns 1313 as the date of Dante's withdrawal to that city, and his first protector may have been one of the other Polentani to whom Guido (surnamed Novello, or the Younger; his grandfather having borne the same name) succeeded.

[34] Under this date (1315) a 4th _condemnatio_ against Dante is mentioned _facta in anno 1315 de mense Octobris per D. Rainerium, D. Zachario de Urbeveteri, olim et tunc vicarium regium civitatis Florentia_, etc. It is found recited in the decree under which in 1342 Jacopo di Dante redeemed a portion of his father's property, to wit: _Una possessione cum vinea et cum domibus super ea, combustis et non combustis, posita in populo S. Miniatis de Pagnlao_. In the _domibus combustis_ we see the blackened traces of Dante's kinsman by marriage, Corso Donati, who plundered and burnt the houses of the exiled Bianchi, during the occupation of the city by Charles of Valois. (See "De Romanis," notes on Tiraboschi's Life of Dante, in the Florence ed. of 1830, Vol. V. p. 119.)

[35] Voltaire's blunder has been made part of a serious theory by Mons. E. Aroux, who gravely assures us that, during the Middle Ages, Tartar was only a cryptonym by which heretics knew each other, and adds: _Il n'y a donc pas trop à s'etonner des noms bizarres de Mastino et de Cane donnés à ces Della Scala_. (Dante, hérétique, révolutionnaire, et socialiste, Paris, 1854, pp. 118-120.)

[36] If no monument at all was built by Guido, as is asserted by Balbo (Vita, I. Lib. II. Cap. XVII.), whom De Vericour copies without question, we are at a loss to account for the preservation of the original epitaph replaced by Cardinal Bembo when he built the new tomb, in 1483. Bembo's own inscription implies an already existing monument, and, if in disparaging terms, yet epitaphial Latin verses are not to be taken too literally, considering the exigencies of that branch of literary ingenuity. The doggerel Latin has been thought by some unworthy of Dante, as Shakespeare's doggerel English epitaph has been thought unworthy of him. In both cases the rudeness of the verses seems to us a proof of authenticity. An enlightened posterity with unlimited superlatives at command, and in an age when stone-cutting was cheap, would have aimed at something more befitting the occasion. It is certain, at least in Dante's case, that Cardinal Bembo would never have inserted in the very first words an allusion to the De Monarchiâ, a book long before condemned as heretical.

[37] We have translated _lacusque_ by "the Pit," as being the nearest English correlative. Dante probably meant by it the several circles of his Hell, narrowing, one beneath the other, to the centre. As a curious specimen of English we subjoin Professor de Vericour's translation: "I have sang the rights of monarchy; I have sang, in exploring them, the abode of God, the Phlegethon and the impure lakes, as long as destinies have permitted. But as the part of myself, which was only passing, returns to better fields, and happier, returned to his Maker, I, Dante, exiled from the regions of fatherland, I am laid here, I, to whom Florence gave birth, a mother who experienced but a feeble love." (The Life and Times of Dante, London, 1858, p. 208.)

[38] Inferno, X. 85.

[39] Paradiso, XVII.

[40] He says after the return of Louis of Bavaria to Germany, which took place in that year. The De Monarchiâ was afterward condemned by the Council of Trent.

[41] Paradiso, XXVII.

[42] Inferno, XI.

[43] See the letter in Gaye, Carteggio inedito d' artisti, Vol. I. p. 123.

[44] St. René Taillandier, in Revue des Deux Mondes, December 1, 1856.

[45] Dante, Vol. IV. p. 116.

[46] Ste. Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, Tome XI. p. 169.

[47] Dict. Phil., art. _Dante_.

[48] Corresp. gén., Oeuvres, Tome LVII. pp. 80, 81.

[49] Essai sur les moeurs, Oeuvres, Tome XVII. pp. 371, 372.

[50] Génie du Christianisme, Cap. IV.

[51] Ed. Lond. 1684, p. 199.

[52] It is worth notice, as a proof of Chaucer's critical judgment, that he calls Dante "the great poet of Itaille," while in the "Clerke's Tale" he speaks of Petrarch as a "worthy clerk," as "the laureat poete" (alluding to the somewhat sentimental ceremony at Rome), and says that his

"Rhetorike sweete Enlumined all Itaille of poetry."

[53] It is possible that Sackville may have read the Inferno, and it is certain that Sir John Harrington had. See the preface to his translation of the Orlando Furioso.

[54] Second edition, 1800.

[55] Dante Alighieri's lyrische Gedichte, Leipzig, 1842, Theil II. pp. 4-9.

[56] Vita, p. 97.

[57] Comment on Paradiso, VI.

[58] Jean de Meung had already said,--

"Ge n'en met hors rois ne prélas * * * * * "Qu'il sunt tui serf au menu pueple."

Roman de la Rose (ed. Méon), V. ii. pp. 78, 79.

[59] Dante, Studien, etc., 1855, p. 144.

[60] Compare also Spinoza, Tractat. polit., Cap. VI.

[61] It is instructive to compare Dante's political treatise with those of Aristotle and Spinoza. We thus see more clearly the limitations of the age in which he lived, and this may help us to a broader view of him as poet.

[62] A very good one may be found in the sixth volume of the Molini edition of Dante, pp. 391-433.

[63] See Field's "Theory of Colors."

[64] As by Dante himself in the Convito.

[65] Psalm cxiv. 1, 2.

[66] He commonly prefaced his letters with some such phrase as _exul immeritus_.

[67] In order to fix more precisely in the mind the place of Dante in relation to the history of thought, literature, and events, we subjoin a few dates: Dante born, 1265; end of Crusades, death of St. Louis, 1270; Aquinas died, 1274; Bonaventura died, 1274; Giotto born, 1276; Albertus Magnus died, 1280; Sicilian vespers, 1282; death of Ugolino and Francesca da Rimini, 1282; death of Beatrice, 1290; Roger Bacon died, 1292; death of Cimabue, 1302; Dante's banishment, 1302; Petrarch born, 1304; Fra Dolcino burned, 1307; Pope Clement V. at Avignon, 1309; Templars suppressed, 1312; Boccaccio born, 1313; Dante died, 1321; Wycliffe born, 1324; Chaucer born, 1328.

[68] Rivavol characterized only a single quality of Dante's style, who knew how to spend as well as spare. Even the Inferno, on which he based his remark, might have put him on his guard. Dante understood very well the use of ornament in its fitting place. _Est enim exornatio alicujus convenientis additio_, he tells us in his De Vulgari Eloquio (Lib. II. C. II.). His simile of the doves (Inferno, V. 82 et seq.), perhaps the most exquisite in all poetry, quite oversteps Rivarol's narrow limit of "substantive and verb."

[69] Discorso sul testo, ec., § XVIII.

[70] Convito, B. IV. C. XXII.

[71] It is remarkable that when Dante, in 1297, as a preliminary condition to active politics, enrolled himself in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, he is qualified only with the title _poeta_. The arms of the Alighieri (curiously suitable to him who _sovra gli altri come aquila vola_) were a wing of gold in a field of azure. His vivid sense of beauty even hovers sometimes like a _corposant_ over the somewhat stiff lines of his Latin prose. For example, in his letter to the kings and princes of Italy on the coming of Henry VII: "A new day brightens, revealing the dawn which already scatters the shades of long calamity; already the breezes of morning gather; _the lips of heaven are reddening!"_

[72] Purgatorio, XXXII. 100.

[73] Paradiso, I. 70.

[74] In a letter to Can Grande (XI. of the Epistolae).

[75] Witte, Wegele, and Ruth in German, and Ozanam in French, have rendered ignorance of Dante inexcusable among men of culture.

[76] Inferno, VII. 75. "Nay, his style," says Miss Rossetti, "is more than concise: it is elliptical, it is recondite. A first thought often lies coiled up and hidden under a second; the words which state the conclusion involve the premises and develop the subject." (p. 3.)

[77] A complete vocabulary of Italian billingsgate might be selected from Biagioli. Or see the concluding pages of Nannucci's excellent tract "Intorno alle voci usate da Dante," Corfu, 1840. Even Foscolo could not always refrain. Dante should have taught them to shun such vulgarities. See Inferno, XXX. 131-148.

[78] "My Italy, my sweetest Italy, for having loved thee too much I have lost thee, and, perhaps, ... ah, may God avert the omen! But more proud than sorrowful, for an evil endured for thee alone, I continue to consecrate my vigils to thee alone.... An exile full of anguish, perchance, availed to sublime the more in thy Alighieri that lofty soul which was a beautiful gift of thy smiling sky; and an exile equally wearisome and undeserved now avails, perhaps, to sharpen my small genius so that it may penetrate into what he left written for thy instruction and for his glory." (Rossetti, Disamina, ec., p. 405.) Bossetti is himself a proof that a noble mind need not be narrowed by misfortune. His "Comment" (unhappily incomplete) is one of the most valuable and suggestive.

[79] The great-minded man ever magnifies himself in his heart, and in like manner the pusillanimous holds himself less than he is. (Convito, Tr. I. c. 11.)

[80] Dante's notion of virtue was not that of an ascetic, nor has any one ever painted her in colors more soft and splendid than he in the Convito. She is "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes," and he dwells on the delights of her love with a rapture which kindles and purifies. So far from making her an inquisitor, he says expressly that she "should be gladsome and not sullen in all her works." (Convito, Tr. I. c. 8.) "Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose"!

[81] Inferno, XIX. 28, 29.

[82] Inferno, VIII. 70-75.

[83] Paradise, X. 138.

[84] Paradiso, IV. 40-45 (Longfellow's version).

[85] Marlowe's "Faustus." "Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell." (Paradise Lost, IV. 75.) In the same way, _ogni dove in cielo o Paradiso_. (Paradiso, III. 88, 89.)

[86] Purgatorio, XIX. 7-33.

[87] Convito, Tr. II. c. 16.

[88] _La natura universale, cioè Iddio._ (Convito, Tr. III. c. 4.)

[89] Inferno, III. 7, 8.

[90] Inferno, XX. 30. Mr. W.M. Rossetti strangely enough renders this verse "Who hath a passion for God's judgeship" _Compassion porta_, is the reading of the best texts, and Witte adopts it. Buti's comment is "_cioè porta pena e dolore di colui che giustamente è condannato da Dio che e sempre giusto_." There is an analogous passage in "The Revelation of the Apostle Paul," printed in the "Proceedings of the American Oriental Society" (Vol. VIII. pp. 213, 214): "And the angel answered and said, 'Wherefore dost thou weep? Why! art thou more merciful than God?' And I said, 'God forbid, O my lord; for God is good and long-suffering unto the sons of men, and he leaves every one of them to his own will, and he walks as he pleases'" This is precisely Dante's view.

[91] Inferno, VIII 40.

[92] "I following her (Moral Philosophy) in the work as well as the passion, so far as I could, abominated and disparaged the errors of men, not to the infamy and shame of the erring, but of the errors." (Convito, Tr IV. c. 1.) "Wherefore in my judgment as he who defames a worthy man ought to be avoided by people and not listened to, so a vile man descended of worthy ancestors ought to be hunted out by all." (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 29.)

[93] Paradise, XVII. 61-69.

[94] It is worth mentioning that the sufferers in his Inferno are in like manner pretty exactly divided between the two parties. This is answer enough to the charge of partiality. He even puts persons there for whom he felt affection (as Brunetto Latini) and respect (as Farinata degli Uberti and Frederick II.). Till the French looked up their MSS., it was taken for granted that the _beccajo di Parigi_ (Purgatorio, XX. 52) was a drop of Dante's gall. "Ce fu Huez Capez e' on apelle bouchier." Hugues Capet, p. 1.

[95] De Vulgari Eloquio, Lib. I, Cap. VI. Cf. Inferno, XV. 61-64.

[96] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 23. Ib. Tr. I. c. 2.

[97] Convito, Tr. III. c. 13.

[98] Opp. Min., ed. Fraticelli, Vol. II. pp. 281 and 283. Witte is inclined to put it even earlier than 1300, and we believe he is right.

[99] Paradiso, VI. 103-105.

[100] Some Florentines have amusingly enough doubted the genuineness of the De vulgari Eloquio, because Dante therein denies the pre-eminence of the Tuscan dialect.

[101] See particularly the second book of the De vulgari Eloquio.

[102] Purgatorio, XXXIII. 141. "That thing one calls beautiful whose parts answer to each other, because pleasure results from their harmony." (Convito, Tr. I. c. 5.) Carlyle says that "he knew too, partly, that his work was great, the greatest a man could do." He knew it fully. Telling us how Giotto's fame as a painter had eclipsed that of Cimabue, he takes an example from poetry also, and selecting two Italian poets,--one the most famous of his predecessors, the other of his contemporaries,--calmly sets himself above them both (Purgatorio, XI. 97-99), and gives the reason for his supremacy (Purgatorio, XXIV. 49-62). It is to be remembered that _Amore_ in the latter passage does not mean love in the ordinary sense, but in that transcendental one set forth in the Convito,--that state of the soul which opens it for the descent of God's spirit, to make it over into his own image. "Therefore it is manifest that in this love the Divine virtue descends into men in the guise of an angel, ... and it is to be noted that the descending of the virtue of one thing into another is nothing else than reducing it to its own likeness." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 14.)

[103] Convito, Tr. III. c. 11. Ib. Tr. I. c. 11.

[104] Convito, Tr. III. c. 12-15.

[105] Inferno, II. 94. The _donna gentil_ is Lucia, the prevenient Grace, the _light_ of God which shows the right path and guides the feet in it. With Dante God is always the sun, "which leadeth others right by every road." (Inferno, I. 18.) "The spiritual and unintelligible Sun, which is God." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 12) His light "enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world," but his dwelling is in the heavens. He who wilfully deprives himself of this light is spiritually dead in sin. So when in Mars he beholds the glorified spirits of the martyrs he exclaims, "O Elios, who so arrayest them!" (Paradiso, XIV. 96.) Blanc (Vocabolario, _sub voce_) rejects this interpretation. But Dante, entering the abode of the Blessed, invokes the "good Apollo," and shortly after calls him _divina virtù._ We shall have more to say of this hereafter.

[106] Convito, Tr. III. c. 12.

[107] Convito, Tr. III. c. 15. Recalling how the eyes of Beatrice lift her servant through the heavenly spheres, and that smile of hers so often dwelt on with rapture, we see how Dante was in the habit of commenting and illustrating his own works. We must remember always that with him the allegorical exposition is the true one (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 1), the allegory being a truth which is hidden under a beautiful falsehood (Convito, Tr. II. c. 1), and that Dante thought his poems without this exposition "under some shade of obscurity, so that to many their beauty was more grateful than their goodness" (Convito, Tr. I. c. 1), "because the goodness is in the meaning, and the beauty in the ornament of the words" (Convito, Tr. II. c. 12).

[108] Convito, Tr. III. c. 14.

[109] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 22.

[110] Convito, Tr. III. c. 6.

[111] Convito, Tr. III. c. 2. By _potenzia_ and _potenza_ Dante means the faculty of receiving influences or impressions. (Paradiso, XIII. 61; XXIX. 34.) Reason is the "sovran potency" because it makes us capable of God.

[112] "O thou _well-born_, unto whom Grace concedes To see the thrones of the Eternal triumph, Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned."

Paradiso, V. 115-118.

[113] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 21.

[114] Convito, Tr. III. c. 7.

[115] Inferno, X. 55, 56; Paradiso, XXII. 112-117.

[116] Convito, Tr. I. c. 23 (cf. Inferno, I. IV).

[117] Convito, Tr. III. c. 3; Paradiso, XVIII. 108-130.

[118] See an excellent discussion and elucidation of this matter by Witte, who so highly deserves the gratitude of all students of Dante, in Dante Alighieri's Lyrische Gedichte, Theil II. pp. 48-57. It was kindly old Boccaccio, who, without thinking any harm, first set this nonsense agoing. His "Life of Dante" is mainly a rhetorical exercise. After making Dante's marriage an excuse for revamping all the old slanders against matrimony, he adds gravely, "Certainly I do not affirm these things to have happened to Dante, for I do not know it, though it be true that (whether things like these or others were the cause of it), once parted from her, he would never come where she was nor suffer her to come where he was, for all that she was the mother of several children by him." That he did not come to her is not wonderful, for he would have been burned alive if he had. Dante could not send for her because he was a homeless wanderer. She remained in Florence with her children because she had powerful relations and perhaps property there. It is plain, also, that what Boccaccio says of Dante's _lussuria_ had no better foundation. It gave him a chance to turn a period. He gives no particulars, and his general statement is simply incredible. Lionardo Bruni and Vellutello long ago pointed out the trifling and fictitious character of this "Life." Those familiar with Dante's allegorical diction will not lay much stress on the literal meaning of _pargoletta_ in Purgatono, XXXI. 59. Gentucca, of course, was a real person, one of those who had shown hospitality to the exile. Dante remembers them all somewhere, for gratitude (which is quite as rare as genius) was one of the virtues of his unforgetting nature Boccaccio's "Comment" is later and far more valuable than the "Life."

[119] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 17; Purgatorio, XXVII. 100-108.

[120] Convito, Tr. II. c. 8.

[121] That is, _wholly_ fulfil, _rendono intera_.

[122] We should prefer here,

"Nor inspirations _won by prayer_ availed,"

as better expressing _Nè l'impetrare spirazion_. Mr. Longfellow's translation is so admirable for its exactness as well as its beauty that it may be thankful for the minutest criticism, such only being possible.

[123] Which he cites in the Paradiso, VIII. 37.

[124] Dante confesses his guiltiness of the sin of pride, which (as appears by the examples he gives of it) included ambition, in Purgatorio, XIII. 136, 137.

[125] Convito, Tr. II. c. 11.

[126] Purgatorio, XXVIII.

[127] Purgatorio, XXVIII. 40-44; Convito, Tr. III. c. 13.

[128] Purgatorio, XXVII. 94-105.

[129] Psalm li. 2. "And therefore I say that her [Philosophy's] beauty, that is, morality, rains flames of fire, that is, a righteous appetite which is generated in the love of moral doctrine, the which appetite removes us from the natural as well as other vices." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 15.)

[130] Purgatorio, XXXI. 103,104.

[131] Tr. IV. c. 22.

[133] Purgatorio, 100-102.

[133] Such is the _selva oscura_ (Inferno, I. 2), such, the _selva erronea di questa vita_ (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 24).

[134] Convito, Tr. I. c. 13.

[135] Convito, Tr. II. c. 2.

[136] _Mar di tutto il senno_, he calls Virgil (Inferno, VIII. 7). Those familiar with his own works will think the phrase singularly applicable to himself.

[137] Convito, Tr. III. c. 9.

[138] Convito, Tr. III. c. 3.

[139] Vita Nuova, XI.

[140] Vita Nuova, Tr. II. c. 6.

[141] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 24. The date of Dante's birth is uncertain, but the period he assigns for it (Paradiso, XXII. 112-117) extends from the middle of May to the middle of June. If we understand Buti's astrological comment, the day should fall in June rather than May.

[142] Vita Nuova, XXXIX. Compare for a different view, "The New Life of Dante, an Essay with Translations," by C. E. Norton, pp. 92. et seq.

[143] There is a passage in the Convito (Tr. III. c. 15) in which Dante seems clearly to make the distinction asserted above, "And therefore the desire of man is limited in this life to that _knowledge_ (_scienzia_) which may here be had, and passes not save by error that point which is beyond our natural understanding. And so is limited and measured in the angelic nature the amount of that _wisdom_ which the nature of each is capable of receiving." Man is, according to Dante, superior to the angels in this, that he is capable both of reason and contemplation, while they are confined to the latter. That Beatrice's reproaches refer to no human _pargoletta_, the context shows, where Dante asks,

"But wherefore so beyond my power of sight Soars your desirable discourse that aye The more I strive, so much the more I lose it? That thou mayst recognize, she said, the school Which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far Its doctrine follows after my discourse, And mayst behold your path from the divine Distant as far as separated is From earth the heaven that highest hastens on."

Purgatorio, XXXIII. 82-90.

The _pargoletta_ in its ordinary sense was necessary to the literal and human meaning, but it is shockingly discordant with that non-natural interpretation which, according to Dante's repeated statement, lays open the true and divine meaning.

[144] "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." Romans viii. 8, 9.

[145] Convito, Tr. II. c. 14, 15.

[146] Convito, Tr. II. c. 4. Compare Paradiso, I. 76, 77.

[147] "Vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called." 1 Tim. vi. 20.

[148] That is, no partial truth.

[149] Paradise, IV. 124-132.

[150] "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."--Judges xiv. 14.