Chapter 16

Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted, attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld, concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the universe--all substance and accident and mode--all so compounded that they become one light. He thought he beheld at one and the same time the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies; because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.

But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as short of right speech as the sounds of an infant's tongue while it is murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light, the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with the succession of the astonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from both.[56]

O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.

The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted by its own colours with the likeness of a human face.[57]

But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the principle by which he is to square it.

He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the stars.[58]

[Footnote 1: A curious and happy image.

"Tornan de' nostri visi le postille Debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille: Tali vid' io più facce a parlar pronte." ]

[Footnote 2: "Rodolfo da Tossignano, _Hist. Seraph. Relig._ P. i. p. 138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda: 'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister, having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as to strike grief and horror into the beholders; and thus, in a few days, through the divine disposal, she passed with a palm of virginity to the Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has chosen to pass it over discreetly, by making Piccarda say, 'God knows how, after that, my life was framed.'"--_Cary_, ut sup. p. 137.]

[Footnote 3: A lovely simile indeed.

"Tanto lieta Ch' arder parea d'amor nel primo foco."

[Footnote 4: Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second. "She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting from Muratori and others); "and because it was not credited that she could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion; and it was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty to see her. Many came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased."--_Translation of Dante_, ut sup. p. 137.]

[Footnote 5: Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings.]

[Footnote 6:

"Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth Superillustrans claritate tuâ Felices ignes horum Malahoth." _Malahoth_; Hebrew, _kingdoms_.]

[Footnote 7: The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the nature of the inhabitants.]

[Footnote 8: Charles Martel, son of the king of Naples and Sicily, and crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become acquainted with Dante during the poet's youth, when the prince met his royal father in the city of Florence. He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father, and who was the friend of Petrarch.

"The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star," says Cary, "are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i. cap. 3, in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. viii. p. 173. She eloped from her first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello (see Purg. canto vi. and vii.); with whom she is supposed to have cohabited before her marriage: then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife was living at the same time in the same city; and, on his being murdered by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of Braganzo: lastly, when he also had fallen by the same hand, she, after her brother's death, was again wedded in Verona."--_Translation of Dante_, ut sup. p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in the _Discorso sul Testo_, p. 329.

Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab, is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being asked, during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the orthodox and heterodox were to be distinguished, he said, "Kill all: God will know his own."

For Rahab, see _Joshua_, chap. ii. and vi.; and _Hebrews_. xi. 31]

[Footnote 9: The reader need not be required to attend to the extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology or the poet might have desired.]

[Footnote 10: These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after them.

Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church, Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must be gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all these dances and tinklings.]

[Footnote 11:

"Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo."

Cruel indeed;--the founder of the Inquisition! The "loving minion" is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of "_amoroso drudo_." But what a minion, and how loving! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia. So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent semi-barbarism in the character of Spain, which it has never got rid of to this day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern patriots, it would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even Lope de Vega was an inquisitor; and Mendoza, the entertaining author of Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cervantes, however, is enough to sweeten a whole peninsula.]

[Footnote 12: What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility enough to apply it to himself!]

[Footnote 13:

"O sanguis meus, o superinfusa Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui Bis unquam coeli janua reclusa?"

The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet in "the obscurity of a learned language." And in truth it is a little strong.]

[Footnote 14:

"Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso."

That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)--_Variorum edition of Dante_, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373.]

[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the original passage, with another version, in the Appendix.]

[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman, of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so, Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved Cæsar;--that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks.]

[Footnote 17:

"Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi, Più è tacer che ragionare onesto."

Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts (see the opening of canto xvi., Paradise, in the original), that while he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto xv. 73, &c.), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic, may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a harbinger.

All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on the Cross!]

[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names, of which nothing else is recorded.]

[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.

With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii.]

[Footnote 20:

"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta Più caramente; e questo e quello strale Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.

Tu proverai sì come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.

E quel che più ti graverà le spalle, Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:

Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso Ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.

Di sua bestialitate il suo processo Farà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia bello Averti fatta parte per te stesso."

[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of Verona.]

[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who had received Dante at his court.]

[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paléo"]

[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne, or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin?) seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante) might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples.]

[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!

[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:

"Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia."

In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented.

"_Boccaccio._--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_ quite enough without _che la sazia?_The picture is before us, the sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.

"_Petrarch._--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as blemishes, and even more."--p. 92.

Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety.]

[Footnote 30:

"E come a buon cantor buon citarista Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda In che più di piacer lo canto acquista;

Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda, Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette, Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,

Con le parole muover le fiammette." ]

[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal, and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age." Petrarch also makes honourable mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem there.--_Lombardi in loc._ vol. III. p. 547.]

[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat.]

[Footnote 33: "Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle."]

[Footnote 34:

"Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi, E fero un grido di sì alto suono, Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;

Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono."

Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd, And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;

Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.

If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage into his treatise on the Sublime.]

[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name. Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the Camaldoli.]

[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage in Cowley

"Lo, I mount; and lo, How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew! Where shall I find the noble British land? Lo, I at last a northern speck espy, Which in the sea does lie, And seems a grain o' the sand. For this will any sin, or bleed? Of civil wars is this the meed? And is it this, alas, which we, Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie?"

And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--

"Where am I now? angels and God is here."

All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full of grandeur and loveliness.]

[Footnote 37:

"Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde, Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati La notte che le cose ci nasconde,

Che per veder gli aspetti desiati, E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca, In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,

Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca, E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;

Così la donna mia si stava eretta E attenta, involta in ver la plaga Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:

Sì the veggendola io sospesa e vaga, Fecimi quale è quei che disiando Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga." ]

[Footnote 38:

"Quale ne' plenilunii sereni Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne, Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni."

[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person.]

[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary.]

[Footnote 41:

"Mi rendei A la battaglia de' debili cigli."]

[Footnote 42:

"Ambo le luci mi dipinse."

[Footnote 43:

"Qualunque melodia più dolce suona Qua giù, e più a se l'anima tira, Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,

Comparata al sonar di quella lira Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro Del quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira." ]

[Footnote 44:

"Benedicendomi cantando Tre volte cinse me, sì com' io tacqui, L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando

Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui."

It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his _Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_, 12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist!]

[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:

"Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,

Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;

Con altra voce omai, con altro vello Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte Del mio battesmo prenderò 'l capello:

Perocchè ne la fede che fa conte L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte." ]

[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te." _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says, "And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee."]

[Footnote 47:

"Tal volta un animal coverto broglia Sì che l' affetto convien che si paia Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia."

A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles to one's imagination.]

[Footnote 48:

"Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne, Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne."

Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the tremendous passage that ensues!]

[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush, and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy invective awful.

A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic?--I am afraid, all things considered, we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine Church-hymns he would have written!]

[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence!) that for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings them into Heaven!]

[Footnote 51:

"Certo io credo Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda." ]

[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of restoration to his country were at an end.]

[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had prepared for him.]

[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical!]

[Footnote 55: David.]

[Footnote 56: The Trinity.]

[Footnote 57: The Incarnation.]

[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p. 845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention, however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations terminated.]

PULCI:

Critical Notice

of

PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.

Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most laughable sallies.