mean master of the Latin tongue, have made of his Paradise Lost, had that vehicle been employed instead of the language of the Thames and Severn! 1824. Jan. (Life of Wordsworth, by Knight, vol. iii. p. 92.) LETTER TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. [Dante' grotesque' and 'tedious'] It has become lately, owing a good deal, I believe, to the example of Schlegel, the fashion to extol Dante above measure. I have not read him for many years. His style I used to think admirable for conciseness and vigour without abruptness; but I own that his fictions often struck me as offensively grotesque and fantastic, and I felt the poem tedious from various causes. 1824. Jan. 21. Mount). (Works and Life of W. S. Landor, vol. i. p. 240.) LETTER TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (from Rydal [Copy of the Divina Commedia possessed by Wordsworth] You promise me a beautiful copy of Dante, but I ought to mention that I possess the Parma folio of 17951-much the grandest book on my shelves-presented to me by our common friend, Mr. Kenyon.2 (Life of Wordsworth, by Knight, vol. iii. p. 95.) 1827. REMINISCENCES. [Dante, Ariosto and Tasso] Ariosto and Tasso are very absurdly depressed in order to elevate Dante. 1827. SONNET ON THE SONNET. (Ibid. vol. ii. p. 324.) [Use of the sonnet by Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, and other great poets] [An edition of the Divina Commedia of 130 copies, edited by Dionisi, and printed by Bodoni.] *[John Kenyon (1784-1856), the friend of Mr. and Mrs. Browning.] A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew 1833. POEMS OF THE IMAGINATION COMPOSED DURING A TOUR IN THE SUMMER OF 1833. Greenock. Per me si va nella Città dolente. We have not passed into a doleful City, We who were led to-day down a grim dell, Whose merchants Princes were, whose decks were thrones; To serve thy need, in union with that Clyde Whose nurseling current brawls o'er mossy stones, Under the shadow of a stately Pile, The dome of Florence, pensive and alone, The laurell'd Dante's favourite seat. A throne, 1[Published in Poetical Works, 1827.] [Inf. iii. 1.] 3[First published, among Memorials of a Tour in Italy in 1837, in Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, 1842.] 4 [The so-called Sasso di Dante, which is built into the wall of a house close to the Duomo.] The mind, depressed by thought of greatness flown. I gazed with earnestness, and dared no more. Note by Wordsworth on the foregoing Sonnet : Upon what evidence the belief rests that this stone was a favourite seat of Dante, I do not know; but a man would little consult his own interest as a traveller, if he should busy himself with doubts as to the fact. The readiness with which traditions of this character are received, and the fidelity with which they are preserved from generation to generation, are an evidence of feelings honourable to our nature. I remember how, during one of my rambles in the course of a college vacation, I was pleased on being shown a seat near a kind of rocky cell at the source of the river, on which it was said that Congreve wrote his "Old Bachelor." One can scarcely hit on any performance less in harmony with the scene; but it was a local tribute paid to intellect by those who had not troubled themselves to estimate the moral worth of that author's comedies; and why should they? He was a man distinguished in his day; and the sequestered neighbourhood in which he often resided was perhaps as proud of him as Florence of her Dante: it is the same feeling, though proceeding from persons one cannot bring together in this way, without offering some apology to the Shade of the great Visionary. CHARLES SYMMONS (1749-1826) [Charles Symmons, born at Pembroke in 1749, was educated at Westminster School, Glasgow University, and Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.D. in 1786. He took his D.D. degree at Oxford in 1794. Symmons, who died at Bath in 1826, was Rector of Narbert in Pembrokeshire (1778), Prebendary of St. David's (1789), and Rector of Lampeter (1794). He was the author of sundry poems, of a Life of Milton (1806), which contains some appreciative remarks upon Dante, a Life of Shakespeare (1826), and of a metrical translation of the Aeneid (1817).] 1806. LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. L [The sonnets of Dante and Petrarch] IKE every short poem, the sonnet requires strict unity of subject; but it solicits ornament from variety of thought, on the indispensable condition of a perfect subordination. The sentence may overflow the verse, but must not transgress the stanza. This little poem is impressible with various characters; and, while with Petrarch it is tender and pathetic, with Dante, in equal consistency with its nature, it is elevated and forcible. [Paradise Lost ranked above the Divina Commedia] (p. 223.) With respect to grandeur of conception, the Paradise Lost must be regarded as the first, or to the general exhibition of intellectual power, as, unquestionably, the second among all the productions of human genius; while, in the subordinate excellencies of composition, it will be found to yield the precedency only to the wonderful Iliad, or to the august and polished Aeneid. When I make this assertion I am not ignorant of the great and daring imagination of Dante; of the sportive and affluent fancy of Ariosto; of the powerful yet regulated and classic genius of Tasso. (p. 470.) RICHARD DUPPA (1770-1831) [Richard Duppa, a native of Shropshire, was born in 1770. In his youth he studied art at Rome. In 1807, at the age of 37, he matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford. He entered at the Middle Temple in 1810, and graduated LL.B. at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1814. He died in Lincoln's Inn in 1831. Duppa, who was a skilful draughtsman, was the author of numerous works on artistic, botanical, and political subjects. His best known publications are his Life of Michael Angelo (1806), which reached a third edition in his lifetime, and his Life of Raffaelle (1816). Sundry references to Dante occur in the former, which contains translations by Southey of Michael Angelo's two sonnets on Dante. Duppa also published anonymously in 1825 Miscellaneous Observations and Opinions on the Continent, in which he gives an account of Dante's death at Ravenna, with a drawing of his tomb.] 1806. THE LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI. D [Michael Angelo and Dante] URING Michael Angelo's stay in Bologna, his evenings were spent in reading Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, to his friend M. Gianfrancesco Aldovrandi; to whom. those authors were particularly interesting. (Ed. 1816, p. 27.) [Michael Angelo's proposed monument to Dante] Leo X. not only kept Michael Angelo at the quarries of Pietra Santa, doing nothing which could be of any service to himself or the State, but refused him permission to make a monument to honour the poet Dantè, which he voluntarily offered to execute free of expense, to be placed in S. Maria Nuova, in Florence. (p. 96 note.) [Michael Angelo's sonnets on Dante-Dante's influence on him as an artist] Among the authors Michael Angelo studied and delighted in most, were Dantè and Petrarch; of these it is said he could nearly repeat by memory all their poems: but Dantè appears to have held the highest place in his esteem; and as a poet, and a man, these two sonnets bear sufficient testimony of his admiration of him. I He from the world into the blind abyss Then to the seat of everlasting bliss, And God's own throne, led by his thought sublime, Bringing a steady light, to us below Revealed the secrets of eternity. Ill did his thankless countrymen repay The fine desire; that which the good and great So often from the insensate many meet, That evil guerdon did our Dantè find. Forego the happiest fortunes of mankind. II How shall we speak of him, for our blind eyes Easier it is to blame his enemies Than for the tongue to tell his lightest praise. That thou hast fostered best thy Dante's fame; Southey,1 [In a paragraph at the end of the volume Duppa remarks-' to my friends Southey and Wordsworth I am indebted for the poetical translations which enrich my work' (P. 330).] |