Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

A me pareva andando fare oltraggio
Vedendo altrui, non essendo veduto:--_Purg._ 13.

and of shame, at being tempted to listen to a quarrel between two lost spirits:

Ad ascoltarli er'io del tutto fisso,
Quando 'l Maestro mi disse: or pur mira,
Che per poco è, che teco non mi risso.
Quando io 'l senti' a me parlar con ira
Volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna,
Ch'ancor per la memoria mi si gira, &c.--_Inf._ 30.

and the burst,

O dignitosa coscienza e netta,
Come t'è picciol fallo amaro morso.--_Purg._ 3.]

[Footnote 69: _Parad._ 5.]

[Footnote 70: _Purg._ 24.]

[Footnote 71: _Parad._ 25.]

After that it was the pleasure of the citizens of that
fairest and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast
me forth from her most sweet bosom (wherein I had been
nourished up to the maturity of my life, and in which, with
all peace to her, I long with all my heart to rest my weary
soul, and finish the time which is given me), I have passed
through almost all the regions to which this language
reaches, a wanderer, almost a beggar, displaying, against my
will, the stroke of fortune, which is ofttimes unjustly wont
to be imputed to the person stricken. Truly, I have been a
ship without a sail or helm, carried to divers harbours, and
gulfs, and shores, by that parching wind which sad poverty
breathes; and I have seemed vile in the eyes of many, who
perchance, from some fame, had imagined of me in another
form; in the sight of whom not only did my presence become
nought, but every work of mine less prized, both what had
been and what was to be wrought.--_Convito_, Tr. i. c. 3.

Thus proved, and thus furnished--thus independent and confident, daring to trust his instinct and genius in what was entirely untried and unusual, he entered on his great poem, to shadow forth, under the figure of his own conversion and purification, not merely how a single soul rises to its perfection, but how this visible world, in all its phases of nature, life, and society, is one with the invisible, which borders on it, actuates, accomplishes, and explains it. It is this vast plan--to take into his scope, not the soul only in its struggles and triumph, but all that the soul finds itself engaged with in its course; the accidents of the hour, and of ages past; the real persons, great and small, apart from and without whom it cannot think or act; the material world, its theatre and home--it is this which gives so many various sides to the _Commedia_, which makes it so novel and strange. It is not a mere personal history, or a pouring forth of feeling, like the _Vita Nuova_, though he is himself the mysterious voyager, and he opens without reserve his actual life and his heart; he speaks, indeed, in the first person, yet he is but a character of the drama, and in great part of it with not more of distinct personality than in that paraphrase of the penitential Psalms, in which he has preluded so much of the _Commedia_. Yet the _Commedia_ is not a pure allegory; it admits, and makes use of the allegorical, but the laws of allegory are too narrow for it; the real in it is too impatient of the veil, and breaks through in all its hardness and detail, into what is most shadowy. History is indeed viewed not in its ephemeral look, but under the light of God's final judgments; in its completion, not in its provisional and fragmentary character; viewed therefore but in faith;--but its issues, which in this confused scene we ordinarily contemplate in the gross, the poet brings down to detail and individuals; he faces and grasps the tremendous thought that the very men and women whom we see and speak to, are now the real representatives of sin and goodness, the true actors in that scene which is so familiar to us as a picture--unflinching and terrible heart, he endures to face it in its most harrowing forms. But he wrote not for sport, nor to give poetic pleasure; he wrote to warn; the seed of the _Commedia_ was sown in tears, and reaped in misery: and the consolations which it offers are awful as they are real.

Thus, though he throws into symbol and image, what can only be expressed by symbol and image, we can as little forget in reading him this real world in which we live, as we can in one of Shakspere's plays. It is not merely that the poem is crowded with real personages, most of them having the single interest to us of being real. But all that is associated with man's history and existence is interwoven with the main course of thought--all that gives character to life, all that gives it form and feature, even to quaintness, all that occupies the mind, or employs the hand--speculation, science, arts, manufactures, monuments, scenes, customs, proverbs, ceremonies, games, punishments, attitudes of men, habits of living creatures. The wildest and most unearthly imaginations, the most abstruse thoughts take up into, and incorporate with themselves the forcible and familiar impressions of our mother earth, and do not refuse the company and aid even of the homeliest.

This is not mere poetic ornament, peculiarly, profusely, or extravagantly employed. It is one of the ways in which his dominant feeling expresses itself--spontaneous and instinctive in each several instance of it, but the kindling and effluence of deliberate thought, and attending on a clear purpose--the feeling of the real and intimate connexion between the objects of sight and faith. It is not that he sees in one the simple counterpart and reverse of the other, or sets himself to trace out universally their mutual correspondences; he has too strong a sense of the reality of this familiar life to reduce it merely to a shadow and type of the unseen. What he struggles to express in countless ways, with all the resources of his strange and gigantic power, is that this world and the next are both equally real, and both one--parts, however different, of one whole. The world to come we know but in "a glass darkly;" man can only think and imagine of it in images, which he knows to be but broken and faint reflections: but this world we know, not in outline, and featureless idea, but by name, and face, and shape, by place and person, by the colours and forms which crowd over its surface, the men who people its habitations, the events which mark its moments. Detail fills the sense here, and is the mark of reality. And thus he seeks to keep alive the feeling of what that world is which he connects with heaven and hell; not by abstractions, not much by elaborate and highly-finished pictures, but by names, persons, local features, definite images. Widely and keenly has he ranged over and searched into the world--with a largeness of mind which disdained not to mark and treasure up, along with much unheeded beauty, many a characteristic feature of nature, unnoticed because so common. All his pursuits and interests contribute to the impression, which, often instinctively it may be, he strives to produce, of the manifold variety of our life. As a man of society, his memory is full of its usages, formalities, graces, follies, fashions--of expressive motions, postures, gestures, looks--of music, of handicrafts, of the conversation of friends or associates--of all that passes, so transient, yet so keenly pleasant or distasteful, between man and man. As a traveller, he recalls continually the names and scenes of the world;--as a man of speculation, the secrets of nature--the phenomena of light, the theory of the planets' motions, the idea and laws of physiology. As a man of learning, he is filled with the thoughts and recollections of ancient fable and history; as a politician, with the thoughts, prognostications, and hopes, of the history of the day; as a moral philosopher he has watched himself, his external sensations and changes, his inward passions, his mental powers, his ideas, his conscience; he has far and wide noted character, discriminated motives, classed good and evil deeds. All that the man of society, of travel, of science, of learning, the politician, the moralist, could gather, is used at will in the great poetic structure; but all converges to the purpose, and is directed by the intense feeling of the theologian, who sees this wonderful and familiar scene melting into, and ending in another yet more wonderful, but which will one day be as familiar--who sees the difficult but sure progress of the manifold remedies of the Divine government to their predestined issue; and, over all, God and His saints.

So comprehensive in interest is the _Commedia_. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the key-note; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the _Convito_ would show how he placed "the Divine Science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is God," in single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, as Solomon speaks, but queens, or concubines, or maidens; but she is the 'Dove,' and the 'perfect one'--'Dove,' because without stain of strife--'perfect,' because perfectly she makes us behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is at rest." But the same passage[72] shows likewise how he viewed all human knowledge and human interests, as holding their due place in the hierarchy of wisdom, and among the steps of man's perfection. No account of the _Commedia_ will prove sufficient, which does not keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and deep spirit of faith with which it was written, and then the wide liberty of materials and means which the poet allowed himself in working out his design.

[Footnote 72: _Convito_, Tr. 2, c. 14, 15.]

Doubtless, his writings have a political aspect. The "great Ghibelline poet" is one of Dante's received synonymes; of his strong political opinions, and the importance he attached to them, there can be no doubt. And he meant his poem to be the vehicle of them, and the record to all ages of the folly and selfishness with which he saw men governed. That he should take the deepest interest in the goings on of his time, is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the _Commedia_ in their own mother-tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it--maintained with great labour and pertinacious ingenuity--that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumph of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon, cant, and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works, by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's Historic Doubts. The fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor excuse for such perverse blindness.[73]

[Footnote 73: In the _Remains of Arthur Henry Hallam_ is a paper, in which he examines and disposes of this theory with a courteous and forbearing irony, which would have deepened probably into something more, on thinking over it a second time.]

Dante was not a Ghibelline, though he longed for the interposition of an Imperial power. Historically he did not belong to the Ghibelline party. It is true that he forsook the Guelfs, with whom he had been brought up, and that the White Guelfs, with whom he was expelled from Florence, were at length merged and lost in the Ghibelline party[74]; and he acted with them for a time.[75] But no words can be stronger than those in which he disjoins himself from that "evil and foolish company," and claims his independence--

A te fia bello
_Averti fatto parte per te stesso_.[76]

[Footnote 74: _Dino Comp._ pp. 89-91.]

[Footnote 75: His name appears among the White delegates in 1307. Pelli, p. 117.]

[Footnote 76: _Parad._ 17.]

And it is not easy to conceive a Ghibelline partisan putting into the mouth of Justinian, the type of law and empire, a general condemnation of his party as heavy as that of their antagonists;--the crime of having betrayed, as the Guelfs had resisted, the great symbol of public right--

Omai puoi giudicar di que' cotali
Ch'io accusai di sopra, e de' lor falli
Che son cagion di tutti i vostri mali.
L'uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli
Oppone, e _quel s'appropria l'altro a parte_,
Sì ch'è forte a veder qual più si falli.
_Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte
Sott'altro segno; chè mal segue quello
Sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte._[77]

[Footnote 77: _Ibid._ 6.]

And though, as the victim of the Guelfs of Florence, he found refuge among Ghibelline princes, he had friends among Guelfs also. His steps and his tongue were free to the end. And in character and feeling, in his austerity, his sturdiness and roughness, his intolerance of corruption and pride, his strongly-marked devotional temper, he was much less a Ghibelline than like one of those stern Guelfs who hailed Savonarola.

But he had a very decided and complete political theory, which certainly was not Guelf; and, as parties then were, it was not much more Ghibelline. Most assuredly no set of men would have more vigorously resisted the attempt to realise his theory, would have joined more heartily with all immediate opponents--Guelfs, Black, White, and Green, or even Boniface VIII.,--to keep out such an emperor as Dante imagined, than the Ghibelline nobles and potentates.

Dante's political views were a dream; though a dream based on what had been, and an anticipation of what was, in part at least, to come. It was a dream in the middle ages, in divided and republican Italy, the Italy of cities--of a real and national government, based on justice and law. It was the dream of a real _state_. He imagined that the Roman empire had been one great state; he persuaded himself that Christendom might be such. He was wrong in both instances; but in this case, as in so many others, he had already caught the spirit and ideas of a far-distant future; and the political organisation of modern times, so familiar to us that we cease to think of its exceeding wonder, is the practical confirmation, though in a form very different from what he imagined, of the depth and farsightedness of those expectations which are in outward form so chimerical--"_i miei non falsi errori_."

He had studied the "infinite disorders of the world" in one of their most unrestrained scenes, the streets of an Italian republic. Law was powerless, good men were powerless, good intentions came to naught; neither social habits nor public power could resist, when selfishness chose to have its way. The Church was indeed still the salt of the nations; but it had once dared and achieved more; it had once been the only power which ruled them. And this it could do no longer. If strength and energy had been enough to make the Church's influence felt on government, there was a Pope who could have done it--a man who was undoubtedly the most wondered at and admired of his age, whom friend or foe never characterised, without adding the invariable epithet of his greatness of soul--the "_magnanimus peccator_,"[78] whose Roman grandeur in meeting his unworthy fate fascinated into momentary sympathy even Dante.[79] But among the things which Boniface VIII. could not do, even if he cared about it, was the maintaining peace and law in Italian towns. And while this great political power was failing, its correlative and antagonist was paralysed also. "Since the death of Frederic II.," says Dante's contemporary, "the fame and recollections of the empire were well-nigh extinguished."[80] Italy was left without government--"come nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta"--to the mercies of her tyrants:

Che le terre d'Italia tutte piene
Son di tiranni, e un Marcel diventa
Ogni villan, che parteggiando viene.--_Purg._ 6.

[Footnote 78: Benvenuto da Imola.]

[Footnote 79:

Veggio in Alagna entrar lo fiordaliso,
E nel vicario suo Cristo esser catto;
Veggiolo un'altra volta esser deriso;
Veggio rinnovellar l'aceto e 'l fele,
E tra vivi ladroni essere anciso.--_Purg._ 20.

G. Villani, viii. 63. Come magnanimo e valente, disse, _Dacchè per tradimento, come Gesù Cristo, voglio esser preso e mi conviene morire, almeno voglio morire come Papa_; e di presente si fece parare dell'ammanto di S. Piero, e colla corona di Constantino in capo, e colle chiavi e croce in mano, e in su la sedia papale si pose a sedere, e giunto a lui Sciarra e gli altri suoi nimici; con villane parole lo scherniro.]

[Footnote 80: _Dino Compagni_, p. 135.]

In this scene of violence and disorder, with the Papacy gone astray, the empire debased and impotent, the religious orders corrupted, power meaning lawlessness, the well-disposed become weak and cowardly, religion neither guide nor check to society, but only the consolation of its victims--Dante was bold and hopeful enough to believe in the Divine appointment, and in the possibility, of law and government--of a state. In his philosophy, the institutions which provide for man's peace and liberty in this life are part of God's great order for raising men to perfection;--not indispensable, yet ordinary parts; having their important place, though but for the present time; and though imperfect, real instruments of His moral government. He could not believe it to be the intention of Providence, that on the introduction of higher hopes and the foundation of a higher society, civil society should collapse and be left to ruin, as henceforth useless or prejudicial in man's trial and training; that the significant intimations of nature, that law and its results, justice, peace, and stability, ought to be and might be realised among men, had lost their meaning and faded away before the announcement of a kingdom not of this world. And if the perfection of civil society had not been superseded by the Church, it had become clear, if events were to be read as signs, that she was not intended to supply its political offices and functions. She had taught, elevated, solaced, blessed, not only individual souls, but society; she had for a time even governed it: but though her other powers remained, she could govern it no longer. Failure had made it certain that, in his strong and quaint language, "_Virtus authorizandi regnum nostræ mortalitatis est contra naturam ecclesiæ; ergo non est de numero virtutum suarum_."[81] Another and distinct organisation was required for this, unless the temporal order was no longer worthy the attention of Christians.

[Footnote 81: _De Monarch._ lib. iii. p. 188, Ed. Fraticelli.]

This is the idea of the _De Monarchia_; and though it holds but a place in the great scheme of the _Commedia_, it is prominent there also--an idea seen but in a fantastic shape, encumbered and confused with most grotesque imagery, but the real idea of polity and law, which the experience of modern Europe has attained to.

He found in clear outline in the Greek philosophy, the theory of merely human society; and raising its end and purpose, "_finem totius humanæ civilitatis_," to a height and dignity which Heathens could not forecast, he adopted it in its more abstract and ideal form. He imagined a single authority, unselfish, inflexible, irresistible, which could make all smaller tyrannies to cease, and enable every man to live in peace and liberty, so that he lived in justice. It is simply what each separate state of Christendom has by this time more or less perfectly achieved. The theoriser of the middle ages could conceive of its accomplishment only in one form, as grand as it was impossible--a universal monarchy.

But he did not start from an abstraction. He believed that history attested the existence of such a monarchy. The prestige of the Roman empire was then strong. Europe still lingers on the idea, and cannot even yet bring itself to give up its part in that great monument of human power. But in the middle ages the Empire was still believed to exist. It was the last greatness which had been seen in the world, and the world would not believe that it was over. Above all, in Italy, a continuity of lineage, of language, of local names, and in part of civilisation and law, forbad the thought that the great Roman people had ceased to be. Florentines and Venetians boasted that they were Romans: the legends which the Florentine ladies told to their maidens at the loom were tales of their mother city, Rome. The Roman element, little understood, but profoundly reverenced and dearly cherished, was dominant; the conductor of civilisation, and enfolding the inheritance of all the wisdom, experience, feeling, art, of the past, it elevated, even while it overawed, oppressed, and enslaved. A deep belief in Providence added to the intrinsic grandeur of the empire a sacred character. The flight of the eagle has been often told and often sung; but neither in Livy or Virgil, Gibbon or Bossuet, with intenser sympathy or more kindred power, than in those rushing and unflagging verses in which the middle-age poet hears the imperial legislator relate the fated course of the "sacred sign," from the day when Pallas died for it, till it accomplished the vengeance of heaven in Judæa, and afterwards, under Charlemagne, smote down the enemies of the Church.[82]

[Footnote 82: _Parad._ c. 6.]

The following passage, from the _De Monarchia_, will show the poet's view of the Roman empire, and its office in the world:

To the reasons above alleged, a memorable experience brings
confirmation: I mean that state of mankind which the Son of
God, when He would for man's salvation take man upon Him,
either waited for, or ordered when so He willed. For if from
the fall of our first parents, which was the starting-point
of all our wanderings, we retrace the various dispositions
of men and their times, we shall not find at any time,
except under the divine monarch Augustus, when a perfect
monarchy existed, that the world was everywhere quiet. And
that then mankind was happy in the tranquillity of universal
peace, this all writers of history, this famous poets, this
even the Scribe of the meekness of Christ has deigned to
attest. And lastly, Paul has called that most blessed
condition, the fulness of time. Truly time, and the things
of time, were full, for no mystery of our felicity then
lacked its minister. But how the world has gone on from the
time when that seamless robe was first torn by the claws of
covetousness, we may read, and would that we might not also
see. O race of men, by how great storms and losses, by how
great shipwrecks hast thou of necessity been vexed since,
transformed into a beast of many heads, thou hast been
struggling different ways, sick in understanding, equally
sick in heart. The higher intellect, with its invincible
reasons, thou reckest not of; nor of the inferior, with its
eye of experience; nor of affection, with the sweetness of
divine suasion, when the trumpet of the Holy Ghost sounds to
thee--"Behold, how good is it, and how pleasant, brethren,
to dwell together in unity."--_De Monarch._ lib. i. p. 54.

Yet this great Roman empire existed still unimpaired in name--not unimposing even in what really remained of it. Dante, to supply a want, turned it into a theory--a theory easy to smile at now, but which contained and was a beginning of unknown or unheeded truth. What he yearns after is the predominance of the principle of justice in civil society. That, if it is still imperfect, is no longer a dream in our day; but experience had never realised it to him, and he takes refuge in tentative and groping theory. The divinations of the greatest men have been vague and strange, and none have been stranger than those of the author of the _De Monarchia_. The second book, in which he establishes the title of the Roman people to Universal Empire, is as startling a piece of mediæval argument as it would be easy to find.

As when we cannot attain to look upon a cause, we commonly
wonder at a new effect, so when we know the cause, we look
down with a certain derision on those who remain in wonder.
And I indeed wondered once how the Roman people had, without
any resistance, been set over the world; and looking at it
superficially, I thought that they had obtained this by no
right, but by mere force of arms. But when I fixed deeply
the eyes of my mind on it, and by most effectual signs knew
that Divine Providence had wrought this, wonder departed,
and a certain scornful contempt came in its stead, when I
perceived the nations raging against the pre-eminence of the
Roman people:--when I see the people imagining a vain thing,
as I once used to do; when, moreover, I grieve over kings
and princes agreeing in this only, to be against their Lord
and his anointed Roman Emperor. Wherefore in derision, not
without a certain grief, I can cry out, for that glorious
people and for Cæsar, with him who cried in behalf of the
Prince of Heaven, "Why did the nations rage, and the people
imagine vain things; the kings of the earth stood up, and
the rulers were joined in one against the Lord and his
anointed." But (because natural love suffers not derision to
be of long duration, but, like the summer sun, which,
scattering the morning mists, irradiates the east with
light, so prefers to pour forth the light of correction)
therefore to break the bonds of the ignorance of such kings
and rulers, to show that the human race is free from _their_
yoke, I will exhort myself, in company with the most holy
Prophet, taking up his following words, "Let us break their
bonds, and cast away from us their yoke."--_De Monarch._
lib. ii. p. 58.

And to prove this pre-eminence of right in the Roman people, and their heirs, the Emperors of Christendom, he appeals not merely to the course of Providence, to their high and noble ancestry, to the blessings of their just and considerate laws, to their unselfish guardianship of the world--"_Romanum imperium de fonte nascitur pietatis_;"--not merely to their noble examples of private virtue, self-devotion, and public spirit--"those most sacred victims of the Decian house, who laid down their lives for the public weal, as Livy--not as _they_ deserved, but as _he_ was able--tells to their glory; and that unspeakable sacrifice of freedom's sternest guardians, the Catos;" not merely to the "judgment of God" in that great duel and wager of battle for empire, in which heaven declared against all other champions and "co-athletes"--Alexander, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and by all the formalities of judicial combat awarded the great prize to those who fought, not for love or hatred, but justice--"_Quis igitur nunc adeo obtusæ mentis est, qui non videat, sub jure duelli gloriosum populum coronam totius orbis esse lucratum?_"--not merely to arguments derived "from the principles of the Christian faith"--but to _miracles_. "The Roman empire," he says, "was, in order to its perfections, aided by the help of miracles; therefore it was willed by God; and, by consequence, both was, and is, of right." And these miracles, "proved by the testimony of illustrious authorities," are the prodigies of Livy--the ancile of Numa, the geese of the Capitol, the escape of Clelia, the hail-storm which checked Hannibal.[83]

[Footnote 83: _De Monarch._ lib. ii. pp. 62, 66, 78, 82, 84, 108-114, 116, 72-76.]

The intellectual phenomenon is a strange one. It would be less strange if Dante were arguing in the schools, or pleading for a party. But even Henry of Luxemburg cared little for such a throne as the poet wanted him to fill, much less Can Grande and the Visconti. The idea, the theory, and the argument, are of the writer's own solitary meditation. We may wonder. But there are few things more strange than the history of argument. How often has a cause or an idea turned out, in the eyes of posterity, so much better than its arguments. How often have we seen argument getting as it were into a groove, and unable to extricate itself, so as to do itself justice. The everyday cases of private experience, of men defending right conclusions on wrong or conventional grounds, or in a confused form, entangled with conclusions of a like yet different nature;--of arguments, theories, solutions, which once satisfied, satisfying us no longer on a question about which we hold the same belief--of one party unable to comprehend the arguments of another--of one section of the same side smiling at the defence of their common cause by another--are all reproduced on a grander scale in the history of society. There too, one age cannot comprehend another; there too it takes time to disengage, subordinate, eliminate. Truth of this sort is not the elaboration of one keen or strong mind, but of the secret experience of many; "_nihil sine ætate est, omnia tempus expectant_." But a counterpart to the _De Monarchia_ is not wanting in our own day; theory has not ceased to be mighty. In warmth and earnestness, in sense of historic grandeur, in its support of a great cause and a great idea, not less than in the thought of its motto, [Greek: heis koiranos estô], De Maistre's volume _Du Pape_, recalls the antagonist _De Monarchia_; but it recalls it not less in its bold dealing with facts, and its bold assumption of principles, though the knowledge and debates of five more busy centuries, and the experience of modern courts and revolutions, might have guarded the Piedmontese nobleman from the mistakes of the old Florentine.

But the idea of the _De Monarchia_ is no key to the _Commedia_. The direct and primary purpose of the _Commedia_ is surely its obvious one. It is to stamp a deep impression on the mind, of the issues of good and ill doing here--of the real worlds of pain and joy. To do this forcibly, it is done in detail--of course it can only be done in figure. Punishment, purification, or the fulness of consolation are, as he would think, at this very moment, the lot of all the numberless spirits who have ever lived here--spirits still living and sentient as himself: parallel with our life, they too are suffering or are at rest. Without pause or interval, in all its parts simultaneously, this awful scene is going on--the judgments of God are being fulfilled--could we but see it. It exists, it might be seen, at each instant of time, by a soul whose eyes were opened, which was carried through it. And this he imagines. It had been imagined before; it is the working out, which is peculiar to him. It is not a barren vision. His subject is, besides the eternal world, the soul which contemplates it; by sight, according to his figures--in reality, by faith. As he is led on from woe to deeper woe, then through the tempered chastisements and resignation of Purgatory to the beatific vision, he is tracing the course of the soul on earth, realising sin and weaning itself from it--of its purification and preparation for its high lot, by converse with the good and wise, by the remedies of grace, by efforts of will and love, perhaps by the dominant guidance of some single pure and holy influence, whether of person, or institution, or thought. Nor will we say but that beyond this earthly probation, he is not also striving to grasp and imagine to himself something of that awful process and training, by which, whether in or out of the flesh, the spirit is made fit to meet its Maker, its Judge, and its Chief Good.

Thus it seems that even in its main design, the poem has more than one aspect; it is a picture, a figure, partially a history, perhaps an anticipation. And this is confirmed, by what the poet has himself distinctly stated, of his ideas of poetic composition. His view is expressed generally in his philosophical treatise, the _Convito_; but it is applied directly to the _Commedia_, in a letter, which, if in its present form, of doubtful authenticity, without any question represents his sentiments, and the substance of which is incorporated in one of the earliest writings on the poem, Boccaccio's commentary. The following is his account of the subject of the poem:

For the evidence of what is to be said, it is to be noted,
that this work is not of one single meaning only, but may be
said to have many meanings ("_polysensuum_"). For the first
meaning is that of the letter--another is that of things
signified by the letter; the first of these is called the
literal sense, the second, the allegorical or moral. This
mode of treating a subject may for clearness' sake be
considered in those verses of the Psalm, "_In exitu
Israel_." "When Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of
Jacob from the strange people, Judah was his sanctuary, and
Israel his dominion." For if we look at the _letter_ only,
there is here signified, the going out of the children of
Israel in the time of Moses--if at the _allegory_ there is
signified our redemption through Christ--if at the _moral_
sense there is signified to us the conversion of the soul
from the mourning and misery of sin to the state of
grace--if at the _anagogic_ sense,[84] there is signified
the passing out of the holy soul from the bondage of this
corruption to the liberty of everlasting glory. And these
mystical meanings, though called by different names, may all
be called _allegorical_ as distinguished from the literal or
historical sense.... This being considered, it is plain that
there ought to be a twofold subject, concerning which the
two corresponding meanings may proceed. Therefore we must
consider first concerning the subject of this work as it is
to be understood literally, then as it is to be considered
allegorically. The subject then of the whole work, taken
literally only, is the state of souls after death considered
in itself. For about this, and on this, the whole work
turns. But if the work be taken allegorically, its subject
is man, as, by his freedom of choice deserving well or ill,
he is subject to the justice which rewards and punishes.[85]

[Footnote 84:

_Litera_ gesta refert, quid credas _allegoria_,
_Moralis_ quid agas, quid speres _anagogia_.

De Witte's note from _Buti_.]

[Footnote 85: Ep. ad _Kan Grand._ § 6, 7.]

The passage in the _Convito_ is to the same effect; but his remarks on the _moral_ and _anagogic_ meaning may be quoted:

The third sense is called _moral_; that it is which readers
ought to go on noting carefully in writings, for their own
profit and that of their disciples: as in the Gospel it may
be noted, when Christ went up to the mountain to be
transfigured, that of the twelve Apostles, he took with him
only three; in which morally we may understand, that in the
most secret things we ought to have but few companions. The
fourth sort of meaning is called _anagogic_, that is, above
our sense; and this is when we spiritually interpret a
passage, which even in its literal meaning, by means of the
things signified, expresses the heavenly things of
everlasting glory: as may be seen in that song of the
Prophet, which says, that in the coming out of the people of
Israel from Egypt, Judah was made holy and free; which
although it is manifestly true according to the letter, is
not less true as spiritually understood; that is, that when
the soul comes out of sin, it is made holy and free, in its
own power.[86]

[Footnote 86: _Convito_, Tr. 2, c. 1.]

With this passage before us there can be no doubt of the meaning, however veiled, of those beautiful lines, already referred to, in which Virgil, after having conducted the poet up the steeps of Purgatory, where his sins have been one by one cancelled by the ministering angels, finally takes leave of him, and bids him wait for Beatrice, on the skirts of the earthly Paradise:

Come la scala tutta sotto noi
Fu corsa e fummo in su 'l grado superno,
In me ficcò Virgilio gli occhi suoi,
E disse: "Il temporal fuoco, e l'eterno
Veduto hai, figlio, e se' venuto in parte
Ov'io per me più oltre non discerno.
Tratto t'ho qui con ingegno e con arte:
Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce;
Fuor se' dell'erte vie, fuor se' dell'arte.
Vedi il sole che 'n fronte ti riluce:
Vedi l'erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli
Che quella terra sol da sè produce.
Mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli
Che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno,
Seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli.
Non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno:
Libero, dritto, sano è tuo arbitrio,
E fallo fora non fare a suo senno:--
Perch'io te sopra te corono e mitrio."[87]

[Footnote 87:

When we had run
O'er all the ladder to its topmost round,
As there we stood, on me the Mantuan fix'd
His eyes, and thus he spake: "Both fires, my son,
The temporal and the eternal, thou hast seen:
And art arrived, where of itself my ken
No further reaches. I with skill and art,
Thus far have drawn thee. Now thy pleasure take
For guide. Thou hast o'ercome the steeper way,
O'ercome the straiter. Lo! the sun, that darts
His beam upon thy forehead: lo! the herb,
The arborets and flowers, which of itself
This land pours forth profuse. Till those bright eyes
With gladness come, which, weeping, made me haste
To succour thee, thou mayest or seat thee down,
Or wander where thou wilt. Expect no more
Sanction of warning voice or sign from me,
Free of thine own arbitrement to choose,
Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense
Were henceforth error. I invest thee then
With crown and mitre, sovereign o'er thyself."

_Purg._ c. 27--CARY.]

The general meaning of the _Commedia_ is clear enough. But it certainly does appear to refuse to be fitted into a connected formal scheme of interpretation. It is not a homogeneous, consistent allegory, like the _Pilgrim's Progress_ and the _Fairy Queen_. The allegory continually breaks off, shifts its ground, gives place to other elements, or mingles with them--like a stream which suddenly sinks into the earth, and after passing under plains and mountains, reappears in a distant point, and in different scenery. We can, indeed, imagine its strange author commenting on it, and finding or marking out its prosaic substratum, with the cold-blooded precision and scholastic distinctions of the _Convito_. However, he has not done so. And of the many enigmas which present themselves, either in its structure or separate parts, the key seems hopelessly lost. The early commentators are very ingenious, but very unsatisfactory; they see where we can see, but beyond that they are as full of uncertainty as ourselves. It is in character with that solitary and haughty spirit, while touching universal sympathies, appalling and charming all hearts, to have delighted in his own dark sayings, which had meaning only to himself. It is true that, whether in irony, or from that quaint studious care for the appearance of literal truth, which makes him apologise for the wonders which he relates, and confirm them by an oath, "on the words of his poem,"[88] he provokes and challenges us; bids us admire "doctrine hidden under strange verses;"[89] bids us strain our eyes, for the veil is thin:

Aguzza, qui, lettor, ben l'occhi al vero:
Chè il velo è ora ben tanto sottile,
Certo, che il trapassar dentro è leggiero.--_Purg._ c. 8.

But eyes are still strained in conjecture and doubt.

[Footnote 88:

Sempre a quel ver, ch'ha faccia di menzogna,
De' l'uom chiuder le labbra, quanto puote,
Però che senza colpa fa vergogna.
Ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note
Di questa _Commedia_, lettor, ti giuro
S'elle non sien di lunga grazia vote, &c.--_Inf._ 16.]

[Footnote 89: _Inf._ 9.]

Yet the most certain and detailed commentary, one which assigned the exact reason for every image or allegory, and its place and connexion in a general scheme, would add but little to the charm or to the use of the poem. It is not so obscure but that every man's experience who has thought over and felt the mystery of our present life, may supply the commentary--the more ample, the wider and more various has been his experience, the deeper and keener his feeling. Details and links of connexion may be matter of controversy. Whether the three beasts of the forest mean definitely the vices of the time, or of Florence specially, or of the poet himself--"the wickedness of his heels, compassing him round about"--may still exercise critics and antiquaries; but that they carry with them distinct and special impressions of evil, and that they are the hindrances of man's salvation, is not doubtful. And our knowledge of the key of the allegory, where we possess it, contributes but little to the effect. We may infer from the _Convito_[90] that the eyes of Beatrice stand definitely for the _demonstrations_, and her smiles for the _persuasions_ of wisdom; but the poetry of the Paradiso is not about demonstrations and persuasions, but about looks and smiles; and the ineffable and holy calm--"_serenitatis et æternitatis afflatus_"--which pervades it, comes from the sacred truths, and holy persons, and that deep spirit of high-raised yet composed devotion, which it requires no interpreter to show us.

[Footnote 90: _Convito_, Tr. 3, c. 15.]

Figure and symbol, then, are doubtless the law of composition in the _Commedia_; but this law discloses itself very variously, and with different degrees of strictness. In its primary and most general form, it is palpable, consistent, pervading. There can be no doubt that the poem is meant to be understood figuratively--no doubt of what in general it is meant to shadow forth--no doubt as to the general meaning of its parts, their connexion with each other. But in its secondary and subordinate applications, the law works--to our eye at least--irregularly, unequally, and fitfully. There can be no question that Virgil, the poet's guide, represents the purely human element in the training of the soul and of society, as Beatrice does the divine. But neither represent the whole; he does not sum up all appliances of wisdom in Virgil, nor all teachings and influences of grace in Beatrice; these have their separate figures. And both represent successively several distinct forms of their general antitypes. They have various degrees of abstractness, and narrow down, according to that order of things to which they refer and correspond, into the special and the personal. In the general economy of the poem, Virgil stands for human wisdom in its widest sense; but he also stands for it in its various shapes, in the different parts. He is the type of human philosophy and science.[91] He is, again, more definitely, that spirit of imagination and poetry, which opens men's eyes to the glory of the visible, and the truth of the invisible; and to Italians, he is a definite embodiment of it, their own great poet, "_vates, poeta noster_."[92] In the Christian order, he is human wisdom, dimly mindful of its heavenly origin--presaging dimly its return to God--sheltering in heathen times that "vague and unconnected family of religious truths, originally from God, but sojourning without the sanction of miracle or visible home, as pilgrims up and down the world."[93] In the political order, he is the guide of law-givers, wisdom fashioning the impulses and instincts of men into the harmony of society, contriving stability and peace, guarding justice; fit part for the poet to fill, who had sung the origin of Rome, and the justice and peace of Augustus. In the order of individual life, and the progress of the individual soul, he is the human conscience witnessing to duty, its discipline and its hopes, and with yet more certain and fearful presage, to its vindication; the human conscience seeing and acknowledging the law, but unable to confer power to fulfil it--wakened by grace from among the dead, leading the living man up to it, and waiting for its light and strength. But he is more than a figure. To the poet himself, who blends with his high argument his whole life, Virgil had been the utmost that mind can be to mind--teacher, quickener and revealer of power, source of thought, exemplar and model, never disappointing, never attained to, observed with "long study and great love:"

Tu duca, tu signor, e tu maestro.--_Inf._ 2.

[Footnote 91: "O tu ch'onori ogni scienza ed arte."--_Inf._ 4. "Quel savio gentil che tutto seppe."--_Inf._ 7. "Il mar di tutto 'l senno."--_Inf._ 8.]

[Footnote 92: _De Monarchia._]

[Footnote 93: Newman's _Arians_.]

And towards this great master, the poet's whole soul is poured forth in reverence and affection. To Dante he is no figure, but a person--with feelings and weaknesses--overcome by the vexation, kindling into the wrath, carried away by the tenderness, of the moment. He reads his scholar's heart, takes him by the hand in danger, carries him in his arms and in his bosom, "like a son more than a companion," rebukes his unworthy curiosity, kisses him when he shows a noble spirit, asks pardon for his own mistakes. Never were the kind, yet severe ways of a master, or the disciple's diffidence and open-heartedness, drawn with greater force, or less effort; and he seems to have been reflecting on his own affection to Virgil, when he makes Statius forget that they were both but shades:

Or puoi la quantitate
Comprender dell'amor ch'a te mi scalda,
Quando _dismento la nostra vanitate
Trattando l'ombre come cosa salda_.--_Purg._ 21.

And so with the poet's second guide. The great idea which Beatrice figures, though always present, is seldom rendered artificially prominent, and is often entirely hidden beneath the rush of real recollections, and the creations of dramatic power. Abstractions venture and trust themselves among realities, and for the time are forgotten. A name, a real person, a historic passage, a lament or denunciation, a tragedy of actual life, a legend of classic times, the fortunes of friends--the story of Francesca or Ugolino, the fate of Buonconte's corpse, the apology of Pier delle Vigne, the epitaph of Madonna Pia, Ulysses' western voyage, the march of Roman history--appear and absorb for themselves all interest: or else it is a philosophical speculation, or a theory of morality, or a case of conscience--not indeed alien from the main subject, yet independent of the allegory, and not translateable into any new meaning--standing on their own ground, worked out each according to its own law; but they do not disturb the main course of the poet's thought, who grasps and paints each detail of human life in its own peculiarity, while he sees in each a significance and interest beyond itself. He does not stop in each case to tell us so, but he makes it felt. The tale ends, the individual disappears, and the great allegory resumes its course. It is like one of those great musical compositions which alone seem capable of adequately expressing, in a limited time, a course of unfolding and change, in an idea, a career, a life, a society--where one great thought predominates, recurs, gives colour and meaning, and forms the unity of the whole, yet passes through many shades and transitions; is at one time definite, at another suggestive and mysterious; incorporating and giving free place and play to airs and melodies even of an alien cast; striking off abruptly from its expected road, but without ever losing itself, without breaking its true continuity, or failing of its completeness.

This then seems to us the end and purpose of the _Commedia_;--to produce on the mind a sense of the judgments of God, analogous to that produced by Scripture itself. They are presented to us in the Bible in shapes which address themselves primarily to the heart and conscience, and seek not carefully to explain themselves. They are likened to the "great deep," to the "strong mountains"--vast and awful, but abrupt and incomplete, as the huge, broken, rugged piles and chains of mountains. And we see them through cloud and mist, in shapes only approximating to the true ones. Still they impress us deeply and truly, often the more deeply because unconsciously. A character, an event, a word, isolated and unexplained, stamps its meaning ineffaceably, though ever a matter of question and wonder; it may be dark to the intellect, yet the conscience understands it, often but too well. In such suggestive ways is the Divine government for the most part put before us in the Bible--ways which do not satisfy the understanding, but which fill us with a sense of reality. And it seems to have been by meditating on them, which he certainly did, much and thoughtfully--and on the infinite variety of similar ways in which the strongest impressions are conveyed to us in ordinary life, by means short of clear and distinct explanation--by looks, by images, by sounds, by motions, by remote allusion and broken words, that Dante was led to choose so new and remarkable a mode of conveying to his countrymen his thoughts and feelings and presentiments about the mystery of God's counsel. The Bible teaches us by means of real history, traced so far as is necessary along its real course. The poet expresses his view of the world also in real history, but carried on into figure.

The poetry with which the Christian Church had been instinct from the beginning, converges and is gathered up in the _Commedia_. The faith had early shown its poetical aspect. It is superfluous to dwell on this, for it is the charge against ancient teaching that it was too large and imaginative. It soon began to try rude essays in sculpture and mosaic: expressed its feeling of nature in verse and prose, rudely also, but often with originality and force; and opened a new vein of poetry in the thoughts, hopes, and aspirations of regenerate man. Modern poetry must go back, for many of its deepest and most powerful sources, to the writings of the Fathers, and their followers of the School. The Church further had a poetry of its own, besides the poetry of literature; it had the poetry of devotion--the Psalter chanted daily, in a new language and a new meaning; and that wonderful body of hymns, to which age after age had contributed its offering, from the Ambrosian hymns to the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_ of a king of France, the _Pange lingua_ of Thomas Aquinas, the _Dies iræ_, and _Stabat Mater_, of the two Franciscan brethren, Thomas of Celano, and Jacopone.[94] The elements and fragments of poetry were everywhere in the Church--in her ideas of life, in her rules and institutions for passing through it, in her preparation for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, commercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings and ends she had given them, the religious seriousness with which the forms of each were dignified--in her doctrine, and her dogmatic system--her dependence on the unseen world--her Bible. From each and all of these, and from that public feeling, which, if it expressed itself but abruptly and incoherently, was quite alive to the poetry which surrounded it, the poet received due impressions of greatness and beauty, of joy and dread. Then the poetry of Christian religion and Christian temper, hitherto dispersed, or manifested in act only, found its full and distinct utterance, not unworthy to rank in grandeur, in music, in sustained strength, with the last noble voices from expiring Heathenism.

[Footnote 94: Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, 1849.]