then shadowed forth in the mysterious forms in which the imagination could apprehend them in the region of poetry and fancy. Hence he says, as the key-note to the understanding of his book, "Albeit the image of Beatrice, that was with me always, was an exultation of Love to subdue me, it was yet of so perfect a quality that it never allowed me to be overruled by Love without the faithful counsel of reason, whensoever such counsel was useful to be heard." And this "counsel of reason" so wrought upon his life that Love bred in him an overpowering sweetness; and when Beatrice vouchsafed him her salutation, "such warmth of charity," he says, "came upon me that most certainly in that moment I would have pardoned whosoever had done me an injury; and if one should then have questioned me concerning any matter, I could only have said unto him 'Love,' with a countenance clothed in humbleness." Such were his feelings, not fantastic, not unreal, not coming from onesidedness or weakness of nature, but only chastened, purified, solemnized by carnest thought, till all which was merely earthly had dropped from them, the dross was all burned up, and the fine gold, ten times purified in the fire, alone remained. is anxious to separate the deep truths of his individual self from all that was merely transient; he endeavours to show the inmost recesses of his soul's treasure-house after all that is worthless or unworthy has been cleared away. Hence Dante's Lyrics express the highest form which Love can ever reach Love, not in the form in which he appears to the ordinary man, or in the way in which he develops in the unreflecting mind, but in the highest and most abiding shape in which he can become the heart's possession, in the way in which he nestles in the mind where he is to find his eternal dwelling-place. So Dante's love for Beatrice followed her, after her death, into the everlasting regions, till his thought pressing after her was stopped by doubts and hesitations and mysteries hard to be understood, yet which the mind could dimly feel after, and realize in some way, though it could not express. "It was given unto me," he says, at the end of the Vita Nuova, to behold a very wonderful vision, wherein I saw things which determined me that I would say nothing further of this most blessed one, until such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to this end I labour all I can, as she well knoweth. Whereof if it be His pleasure through whom is the life of all things, that my life continues with me a few years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman. After the which, may it seem good unto Him who is the Master of Grace, that my spirit should go hence to behold the glory of its lady: to wit, of that blessed Beatrice who now gazeth continually on His countenance qui est per omnia sæcula benedictus. Laus Deo." The Vita Nuova is the record of his youthful passion; but it was written after Beatrice was dead, when the full light which deep sorrow alone can shed upon the past, had shown him what was real, what was abiding in his soul's experiences. The Vita Nuova is no ordinary love-story, breathing unrest and feverish desire; it is the careful record of one who has loved and knows what love unrequited, as men call requited, had left him as its lifelong legacy. A deep sense of the seriousness of his subject was present with Dante in every page. He mistrusts So with this aim before him, of finding even the imaginative form of his poems, a fitting expression for the thoughts and tries by explanations, always obscure which Beatrice had awakened, the reveand often pedantic, to show more intelli-lation which she had made to him of life gibly his purpose in writing them. Of and the world and their purpose, Dante the sonnets which he wrote to Beatrice turned with renewed interest to his only a selected few are inserted in the studies, determined in the pursuits of Vita Nuova, a few others survive amongst his miscellaneous poems, but many are doubtless lost. From those which he thought worthy of a place in this record of his new, his regenerate life, all which express repining and hopeless sorrow are carefully excluded. He Vita Nuova, Rossetti's translation. † Vita Nuova, Rossetti. practical life to find their full meaning. I have already shown how Dante's public life met with no success. His moderate counsels met with no hearing from those inflamed by passionate hate. Moreover, he himself felt, in the retrospect of later years, that during the time of busy activity his nobler self had grown dim. Still in the cares and anxieties of public life Dante's mind was active and inquir ing he was investigating the origin and wretched waste of human energy in efmeaning of politics, the end of a state, forts of self-assertion. "O miserable the method of its good government, the race of men, by how many storms and source of its obedience. His treatise shipwrecks, by how many destructions "De Monarchia," composed probably must you be overwhelmed, while like a before his exile, is the first work of many-headed monster you pull in differmodern times that treats of the problems ent ways. Behold how good and joyful of speculative politics. a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity." * In Dante's days political theory was busy with the dim abstractions of the Dante's next work, begun in the first Papacy and the Empire, and round these few years of his exile and never finished, shadowy forms political ideas gathered. was a treatise, "De Vulgari Eloquentia," At the present day we talk of the Italian about the Vulgar Tongue. Its aim is cities as Republics, and we are justified, thus set forth in the opening sentences: as we look back upon them, in classing" Seeing that no one before us has them as self-governing and democratic treated of the science of the Vulgar states. They were not, however, so re- Tongue, whereas we see that such tongue garded by those who lived under them. is necessary to us all, since not only men, Their independence was purely muni- but women and children, strive after it as cipal independence. They were distinct, far as nature allows, we wishing in some it is true, one from another, but all recog- way to illumine their discretion, since they nized themselves as parts of one great po- are now walking blindly through the litical system. None of the parties which streets, for the most part thinking what their politics developed, looked upon is last is first-will try in the help of the these Republics as self-organized, or as Word from above, to be of some service possessing inherent rights to absolute to the Vulgar Speech." self-government. Their aim rather was, Here, again, it is Dante's intention that to secure free scope for personal or party is of importance to us, not the actual intrigue by weakening the central au- value of the book at present. Dante had thority, by setting Pope against Em- none of the materials for a science of peror and Emperor against Pope. Their Philology, but he discusses the origin desire was to organize anarchy, in which and growth of language, the separation they could pursue the small local inter- of the Romance languages from the ests of the separate Towns to the sacri- Latin, the various Italian dialects and fice of any care for the common good of their literary capacities. Here again Italy. Against this view, which under-unity is his object to form a common lies all the politics of Mediæval Italy, Italian tongue from careful observation Dante directs his arguments. He wishes of the different dialects, avoiding their to set forth in its fulness the idea of a com- harshness and combining their beauties. prehensive and orderly political system. As in politics he would have his countryHe wishes to free the State from the the- men obey one law, and submit themselves ocratic idea, to assert for it its proper to one system, so in language he would place and its true dignity as the ruling have them overcome their purely local power of the life of man. The greatness usages and form one common and noble of the Imperial system, its eternal seat in vehicle of speech. His object was in no the city of Rome, its immediate authority small degree accomplished by his "Difrom God, its freedom from Papal con-vina Commedia." It was not the specu trol- these are the central points of lative precept but the positive example Dante's system. His method is not our which drew his country's speech to asmodern method; his end of peace on sume a common form through common earth, and concord amongst all, of a com- admiration of the noblest utterances that mon union for the common good, of or- any Italian tongue had framed. derly subordination to righteous law, must always be the end of all right polit-vito," is the progress of Dante's interests ical speculation and practice. He sighs with true patriotic anguish over the I regard Witte's argument, founded on the omission in the "De Monarchia of any reference to the struggle between Pope Boniface VIII. and Philip IV. of France, or the writings which it produced, as conclusive proof that the treatise was written before 1311, to which date it is currently assigned. Similarly, in his next work, the "Con expressed. It was undertaken in his student days, and is the record of his intellectual labours, which were broken off never to be resumed, by the news of the advance into Italy, so long forsaken, of the newly-elected Emperor, Henry of * De Monarchia, sub fin. Luxemburg. It is a strange book, meanings may be given it, and it may be strange both in its form and in its con- read in many different ways; but one tents. Its form is that of a commentary thing certainly it means the absolute upon some of his sonnets: fourteen were victory over all around it of the soul, originally selected for exposition, but whose source of strength is within itself. only four were completed. If the work The passionate love of the "Vita Nuova" had been finished it would have been a has led to an intellectual insight as deep mediæval encyclopædia without any or- as the first emotion was tender; Dante's der or arrangement. Taking the sonnet mind is as responsive to the stray indicaas his text, Dante follows out his own tions of the real truth of things, as his train of thought, and discusses, in the heart was to the salutation of Beatrice philosophic language of his time, such when she passed him in the way. questions as arise, the nature of love, The Divina Commedia was the work the planet-heavens, the different meth- of the last years of his life, after he had ods of verbal interpretation, immortality, enjoyed, and laboured, and suffered, and the nature of true nobility. On ques- thought. In it he unfolds in calm decitions such as these he brings to bear all siveness the mystery of the world's being, his learning, illustrates them with copious as it had slowly become manifest to his quotations from every side, and examines eyes. Those to whom Dante seems senthem in the recognized forms of medieval timental in the Vita Nuova will regard logic. We forget in glancing over the pages that the author was a poet. Such are the labours in which Dante was engaged as a preparation for the "Divina Commedia." As we turn over its pages it is impossible not to contrast the eternal value of the soul's insight with the transient worth of intellectual labour. Dante engaged with equal honesty of purpose, with equal depth of meaning, in his poems and in his treatises; but his poems, the record of his own heart, have been among the world's most precious possessions since his time-his learned works have long ceased to do more than attract the notice of the curious, or win a wondering attention from those who are drawn to them for their writer's sake. The same ideas prevail in both, the same deep power of thought has put its stamp upon all, but round the one the writer's vivid fancy has woven the spell of his soul's perpetual presence; the other is but a heap of dry bones from which all life and meaning have long since passed away. him as unduly stern or presumptuous in the Divina Commedia. The two sides of his genius hold closely together: only deep sensibilities could obtain such profound insight: only one who had loved and suffered much could see and know much only one to whom the small things of life were of momentous importance could understand the bearings of its mighty issues, and dare to follow them to their furthest point. The Divina Commedia has been called a vision, but Dante never calls it so himself; it is rather the literal transcript of his soul's progress and of his life's teaching, thrown into the most serious form which the artistic representations of his time brought before the ordinary mind. To the great sages of the ancient world, life's problem was confined within the limits of life itself, and their endeavour had been to introduce order into its confusion, and reduce its jarring elements into a system within which the individual might move with dignified and decorous freedom. The early Christians had The forms of fancy may live forever, looked on this life as the preparation for while the forms of thought perish with another, had found in it an awful seriousthe age that gave them being, and leave ness, and had laid down strict rules of at the best a mass of ruins, to be used by self-denial, by which the soul might ennew builders in the generations to come. franchise itself from its surroundings, It is true Dante gives us in his great and look forward with humble expectapoem all his thought, as well as all his tion for its full development elsewhere. fancy. The pages of the Divina Comme- Under this idea, dimly apprehended and dia are full of philosophy, theology, astron- fitfully acted upon, had grown up the omy, and natural science: but thought and moral life of Dante's time. The pleasfancy blend together, and their mixture ures, the excitements, the passions, and lends the book its deepest meaning, and the interests of which his active age was fitly represents Dante's own soul, and the full, were kept in check by stern remindinfluences in which it grew and waxed ers of what was soon to follow upon strong. There are many points of in- them all. Startling pictures were drawn terest in the "Divina Commedia ; many by the preaching friar of the torments or blessedness of the life to come. The employed in reminding them continually, sculptures round the arch of the doorway and in a definite form, of what they genuthrough which worshippers entered the inely believed, but were always tending house of God; the bold reliefs that met to forget. the eye of the careless each time they passed it on their daily way; the pictures or mosaics on which in prayer the weary heart gazed with fervent devotion-all these had for their favourite subject, the representation of the "Day of Doom," and the severance of mankind to happiness or misery. Nay, more than this, the subject, terrible and serious in itself, was chosen for dramatic performances, not only by the Church, but by any society or club that wished to give a spectacle to the people. Here is an account given by Giovanni Villani, of a Florentine Mayday Festival in 1304: : "The Companies of Comfort throughout the city, that were wont to make joy and festival, assembled and did the best they could, or knew how to do. Amongst the others, those of the Borgo S. Priano, wishing to make a newer and more diverse amusement, sent out a message, that whoever wished to hear news of the other world should come on May 1 to the Ponte alla Carraia. Then they arranged planks on boats and little ships in the Arno, and made there the resemblance and image of Hell, with fires and other pains and torments, with men representing devils, horrible to see; and there were others, that bore the appearance of naked souls, being thrust into divers torments, with great crying and groaning and clamour - a thing loathsome and terrible to hear and see. For the novelty of the amusement, many of the citizens came to see it." There came in fact such crowds, that the wooden bridge gave way, and many were drowned. So that," as Villani concludes his account, "the amusement turned to reality, and many went indeed to hear news of the other world, to the great grief of the city." Í have quoted this at length, to show the simple realism of an age, whose effort was to apprehend the forms that surrounded it and adapt its simple life to them. The Florentines shrank from nothing. They wished to see what life was, and they were prepared to live accordingly. They had no fear of irreverence, no desire to drop the veil and be content to go no further, lest they should be bewildered. They did not shrink from what was horrible, because it was horrible. They would know and understand it as fully as possible, and art should be This temper of mind, which alone can afford the conditions under which great works of imagination can be produced, must be clearly realized by the readers of Dante. Many are repelled from reading him by a shrinking sense of irreverence, of cruelty, of audacity, attaching to the very plan of the Divina Commedia. Yet Dante's subject was quite in accordance with the ideas of his own age. He was free from that modern form of reverence, which is founded on a desire not to see too clearly; he was stern because he was just; he was bold because he had no doubts. Thus it was that Dante took the largest and most comprehensive form that could be found, in which to express his own soul's pilgrimage in characters large enough for every age to read. He took himself, and not another - himself even such as he was, and not an idealized self; and brought himself face to face with the awful realities of the future. His individual thoughts and experiences should be applied to the highest, the deepest of human interests, should be set in the clearest atmosphere, and viewed in the purest and whitest light that could be reflected upon them.. "Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by birth, not by manners," would set forth to whoever would listen the lessons which life had taught him. His object, as he says himself, was “to remove the living in this life from a state of misery, and lead them to a state of happiness." * This he would do, not in the abstract form of philosophy, but in the most solemn shape in which Art appealed to the feelings and imagination of the ordinary man. Himself, his own life, his own character, his own friends, the great men of his age, the great questions of his day, all these are set forth and represented against the awful background of eternal destiny, where passion and triviality become impossible, where seriousness is at once ensured without repeated demands, where things lose at once the sordour of common life, and nothing is insignificant, where everything assumes the most gigantic proportions of which it is capable. This is the chief significance of the Divina Commedia, the feature which distinguishes it from all other works. It Epistle to Cangrande. takes a real individual character, sur-, sins. The souls of the blessed are the rounded by all the actual facts of his stars that people these heavens; and as life; it takes a piece of the world's history with all its actors, with all its efforts and all its ideas, political, religious, and social; it detaches them from their place in the world of fact, and erects them into a monument of surpassing grandeur, by representing them with reference to their eternal meaning, when all the world's trappings have been stripped from them, and they are laid bare, as they are in themselves. Hence comes the air of stern reality that the whole book wears. It was not Dante's purpose to produce merely a vague and general impression. Vices and virtues were alike made manifest in the forms of real men whose fate had a deep interest for his reader. His ancestor Cacciaguida tells him, in his course through Paradise, to smite only the lofty, that the force of the example may be greater.* Dante mounts among them, they circle But now was turning my desire and will, stars.* In this mysterious pilgrimage Dante I have said that Dante nowhere calls is never carried away by his subject to his poem a vision, nor does he treat it forget himself. He is fatigued in climbas such. The same desire for reality ing the rocky defiles of the Inferno. He that made him weave his poem around is terrified, and clings to Virgil like a himself, and his own life and times, has child to its mother, at the sight of the made him aim at vigorous reality in every grotesque fiends who rule over some of point of imaginative detail. His narra- its abysses. He toils up the mount of tive is given with perfect minuteness in Purgatory, himself a penitent and slowly every point. We have a circumstantial ridding himself of the burden of his sins. account of his actual pilgrimage through In Paradise he is led upwards by Beatrice, the realms of the Inferno, of Purgatory his early love, and the earthly grossness and Paradise. The Inferno is a funnel- of his faculties often provokes her reshaped pit, going down to the centre of bukes. We never lose sight of Dante's the earth where Lucifer is frozen up for- personal presence. Many of those whom ever. The circles of the pit grow smaller he meets have been his friends in the and smaller, in proportion as their pun- other world. In the Inferno, one of his ishments are more severe and their in-dead relatives hides behind an archway habitants are greater sinners. The island to avoid his gaze, and makes mocking of Purgatory rises out of the side of the gestures at him as he passes, to show earth opposite to Jerusalem, and is a contempt towards the family which has sloping rock with terraces going round, allowed his untimely death to be so long corresponding to the circles of the In- unavenged. In Paradise Dante rejoices ferno. On the top of this rock, corre- to be hailed by the soul of his great ansponding to Lucifer at the bottom of his cestor, Cacciaguida, who died on the pit, is situated the earthly Paradise, the Emperor Conrad's crusade - nay, such original garden from which our first par- delight does he show at meeting so disents fell. Then, leaving the earthly Para- tinguished an ancestor, that he gives way dise, Dante rapidly traverses the sphere to the paltry feelings of pride of birth, till of air, and passes into the planet- Beatrice, by her laughter, admonishes heavens, where are the souls of the him of his unseemly folly. blessed in the form of stars. The seven Nor is Dante's personality shown only heavens contain each of them saints celebrated for some particular virtue, just as the circles of the Inferno had been assigned to particular vices, and the ledges of the mountain of Purgatory peopled by penitents for different classes of thus. Much of his actual life is told him prophetically. There are many denunciations of Florentine cruelty, many assertions of his own innocence and worth, many clear indications of his own appreciation of the value of the poem on which * Par. xxxiii. 141. |