Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

But a long interval had passed since then. The _Commedia_ first disclosed to Christian and modern Europe that it was to have a literature of its own, great and admirable, though in its own language and embodying its own ideas. "It was as if, at some of the ancient games, a stranger had appeared upon the plain, and thrown his quoit among the marks of former casts, which tradition had ascribed to the demi-gods."[95] We are so accustomed to the excellent and varied literature of modern times, so original, so perfect in form and rich in thought, so expressive of all our sentiments, meeting so completely our wants, fulfilling our ideas, that we can scarcely imagine the time when this condition was new--when society was beholden to a foreign language for the exponents of its highest thoughts and feelings. But so it was when Dante wrote. The great poets, historians, philosophers of his day, the last great works of intellect, belonged to old Rome, and the Latin language. So wonderful and prolonged was the fascination of Rome. Men still lived under its influence; believed that the Latin language was the perfect and permanent instrument of thought in its highest forms, the only expression of refinement and civilisation; and had not conceived the hope that their own dialects could ever rise to such heights of dignity and power. Latin, which had enchased and preserved such precious remains of ancient wisdom, was now shackling the living mind in its efforts. Men imagined that they were still using it naturally on all high themes and solemn business; but though they used it with facility, it was no longer natural; it had lost the elasticity of life, and had become in their hands a stiffened and distorted, though still powerful, instrument. The very use of the word _latino_ in the writers of this period, to express what is clear and philosophical in language,[96] while it shows their deep reverence for it, shows how Latin civilisation was no longer their own, how it had insensibly become an external and foreign element. But they found it very hard to resign their claim to a share in its glories; with nothing of their own to match against it, they still delighted to speak of it as "our language," or its writers as "our poets," "our historians."[97]

[Footnote 95: Hallam's _Middle Ages_, c. ix. vol. iii. p. 563.]

[Footnote 96: _Parad._ 3, 12, 17. _Convit._ p. 108. "A più _Latinamente_ vedere la sentenza letterale."]

[Footnote 97: _Vid._ the _De Monarchia_.]

The spell was indeed beginning to break. Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's strange, stern, speculative friend, who is one of the fathers of the Italian language, is characterised in the _Commedia_[98] by his scornful dislike of Latin, even in the mouth of Virgil. Yet Dante himself, the great assertor, by argument and example, of the powers of the Vulgar tongue, once dared not to think that the Vulgar tongue could be other to the Latin, than as a subject to his sovereign. He was bolder when he wrote _De Vulgari Eloquio_: but in the earlier _Convito_, while pleading earnestly for the beauty of the Italian, he yields with reverence the first place to the Latin--for nobleness, because the Latin is permanent, and the Vulgar subject to fluctuation and corruption; for power, because the Latin can express conceptions to which the Vulgar is unequal; for beauty, because the structure of the Latin is a masterly arrangement of scientific art, and the beauty of the Vulgar depends on mere use.[99] The very title of his poem, the _Commedia_, contains in it a homage to the lofty claims of the Latin. It is called a Comedy, and not Tragedy, he says, after a marvellous account of the essence and etymology of the two, first, because it begins sadly, and ends joyfully; and next, because of its language, that humble speech of ordinary life, "in which even women converse."[100]

[Footnote 98: _Inf._ 10, and compare the _Vit. N._ p. 334, ed. Fraticelli.]

[Footnote 99: _Convito_, i. 5.]

[Footnote 100: Ep. ad Kan Grand. §9,--a curious specimen of the learning of the time: "Sciendum est, quod _Comoedia_ dicitur a [Greek: kômê], _villa_ et [Greek: ôdê], quod est _cantus_, unde _Comoedia_ quasi _villanus cantus_. Et est _Comoedia genus quoddam poeticæ narrationis_, ab omnibus aliis differens. Differt ergo a Tragoedia in materia per hoc, quod Tragoedia in principio est admirabilis et quieta, in fine foetida et horribilis; et dicitur propter hoc a [Greek: tragos], i.e. _hircus_, et [Greek: ôdê], quasi _cantus hircinus_, i.e. foetidus ad modum hirci, ut patet per Senecam in suis tragoediis. _Comoedia_ vero inchoat asperitatem alicujus rei, sed ejus materia prospere terminatur, ut patet per Terentium in suis _Comoediis_.... Similiter differunt in modo loquendi; elate et sublime Tragoedia, _Comoedia_ vero remisse et humiliter sicut vult Horat. in Poët.... Et per hoc patet, quod _Comoedia_ diciter præsens opus. Nam si ad materiam respiciamus, a principio horribilis et foetida est, quia _Infernus_: in fine prospera, desiderabilis et grata, quia _Paradisus_. Si ad modum loquendi, remissus est modus et humilis, quia locutio Vulgaris, in qua et mulierculæ communicant. Et sic patet quia _Comoedia_ dicitur." Cf. de Vulg. Eloq. 2, 4, _Parad._ 30. He calls the Æneid, "_l'alta Tragedia_," _Inf._ 20, 113. Compare also Boccaccio's explanation of his mother's dream of the _peacock_. Dante, he says, is like the Peacock, among other reasons, "because the peacock has coarse feet, and a quiet gait;" and "the vulgar language, on which the _Commedia_ supports itself, is coarse in comparison with the high and masterly literary style which every other poet uses, though it be more beautiful than others, being in conformity with modern minds. The quiet gait signifies the humility of the style, which is necessarily required in _Commedia_, as those know who understand what is meant by _Commedia_."]

He honoured the Latin, but his love was for the Italian. He was its champion, and indignant defender against the depreciation of ignorance and fashion. Confident of its power and jealous of its beauty, he pours forth his fierce scorn on the blind stupidity, the affectation, the vain glory, the envy, and above all, the cowardice of Italians who held lightly their mother tongue. "Many," he says, after enumerating the other offenders, "from this pusillanimity and cowardice disparage their own language, and exalt that of others; and of this sort are those hateful dastards of Italy--_abbominevoli cattivi d'Italia_--who think vilely of that precious language; which, if it is vile in anything, is vile only so far as it sounds in the prostituted mouth of these adulterers."[101] He noted and compared its various dialects; he asserted its capabilities not only in verse, but in expressive, flexible, and majestic prose. And to the deliberate admiration of the critic and the man, were added the homely but dear associations, which no language can share with that of early days. Italian had been the language of his parents--"_Questo mio Volgare fu il congiugnitore delli miei generanti, che con esso parlavano_"--and further, it was this modern language, "_questo mio Volgare_," which opened to him the way of knowledge, which had introduced him to Latin, and the sciences which it contained. It was his benefactor and guide--he personifies it--and his boyish friendship had grown stronger and more intimate by mutual good offices. "There has also been between us the goodwill of intercourse; for from the beginning of my life I have had with it kindness and conversation, and have used it, deliberating, interpreting, and questioning; so that, if friendship grows with use, it is evident how it must have grown in me."[102]

[Footnote 101: _Convito_, i. 11.]

[Footnote 102: _Convito_, i. 13.]

From this language he exacted a hard trial;--a work which should rank with the ancient works. None such had appeared; none had even advanced such a pretension. Not that it was a time dead to literature or literary ambition. Poets and historians had written, and were writing in Italian. The same year of jubilee which fixed itself so deeply in Dante's mind, and became the epoch of his vision--the same scene of Roman greatness in its decay, which afterwards suggested to Gibbon the _Decline and Fall_, prompted, in the father of Italian history, the desire to follow in the steps of Sallust and Livy, and prepare the way for Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Davila, and Fra Paolo.[103] Poetry had been cultivated in the Roman languages of the West--in Aquitaine and Provence, especially--for more than two centuries; and lately, with spirit and success, in Italian. Names had become popular, reputations had risen and waned, verses circulated and were criticised, and even descended from the high and refined circles to the workshop. A story is told of Dante's indignation, when he heard the canzoni which had charmed the Florentine ladies mangled by the rude enthusiasm of a blacksmith at his forge.[104] Literature was a growing fashion; but it was humble in its aspirations and efforts. Men wrote like children, surprised and pleased with their success; yet allowing themselves in mere amusement, because conscious of weakness which they could not cure.

[Footnote 103: G. Villani was at Rome in the year of jubilee 1300, and describes the great concourse and order of the pilgrims, whom he reckons at 200,000, in the course of the year. "And I," he proceeds, "finding myself in that blessed pilgrimage in the holy city of Rome, seeing the great and ancient things of the same, and reading the histories of the great deeds of the Romans, written by Virgil, and by Sallust, and Lucan, and Titus Livius, and Valerius, and Paulus Orosius, and other masters of histories, who wrote as well of the smaller matters as of the greater, concerning the exploits and deeds of the Romans; and further, of the strange things of the whole world, for memory and example's sake to those who should come after--I, too, took their style and fashion, albeit that, as their scholar, I be not worthy to execute such a work. But, considering that our city of Florence, the daughter and creation of Rome, was in its rising, and on the eve of achieving great things, as Rome was in its decline, it seemed to me convenient to bring into this volume and new chronicle all the deeds and beginnings of the city of Florence, so far as I have been able to gather and recover them; and for the future, to follow at large the doings of the Florentines, and the other notable things of the world briefly, as long as it may be God's pleasure; under which hope, rather by his grace than by my poor science, I entered on this enterprise: and so, in the year 1300, being returned from Rome, I began to compile this book, in reverence towards God and St. John, and commendation of our city of Florence."--_G. Vill._ viii. 36.]

[Footnote 104: _Sacchetti_, Nov. 114.]

Dante, by the _Divina Commedia_, was the restorer of seriousness in literature. He was so, by the magnitude and pretensions of his work, and by the earnestness of its spirit. He first broke through the prescription which had confined great works to the Latin, and the faithless prejudices which, in the language of society, could see powers fitted for no higher task than that of expressing, in curiously diversified forms, its most ordinary feelings. But he did much more. Literature was going astray in its tone, while growing in importance; the _Commedia_ checked it. The Provençal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high price, by intellectual distortion, and moral insensibility. But this was not all. The brilliant age of Frederick II., for such it was, was deeply mined by religious unbelief. However strange this charge first sounds against the thirteenth century, no one can look at all closely into its history, at least in Italy, without seeing that the idea of infidelity--not heresy, but infidelity--was quite a familiar one; and that side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin Schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the Italian _Commedia_ had not seized on all minds. It would have been an evil thing for Italian, perhaps for European literature, if the siren tales of the _Decameron_ had been the first to occupy the ear with the charms of a new language.

Dante has had hard measure, and from some who are most beholden to him. No one in his day served the Church more highly, than he whose faith and genius secured on her side the first great burst of imagination and feeling, the first perfect accents of modern speech. The first-fruits of the new literature were consecrated, and offered up. There was no necessity, or even probability in Italy in the fourteenth century that it should be so, as there might perhaps have been earlier. It was the poet's free act--free in one, for whom nature and heathen learning had strong temptations--that religion was the lesson and influence of the great popular work of the time. That which he held up before men's awakened and captivated minds, was the verity of God's moral government. To rouse them to a sense of the mystery of their state; to startle their commonplace notions of sin into an imagination of its variety, its magnitude, and its infinite shapes and degrees; to open their eyes to the beauty of the Christian temper, both as suffering and as consummated; to teach them at once the faithfulness and awful freeness of God's grace; to help the dull and lagging soul to conceive the possibility, in its own case, of rising step by step in joy without an end--of a felicity not unimaginable by man, though of another order from the highest perfection of earth;--this is the poet's end. Nor was it only vague religious feelings which he wished to excite. He brought within the circle of common thought, and translated into the language of the multitude, what the Schools had done to throw light on the deep questions of human existence, which all are fain to muse upon, though none can solve. He who had opened so much of men's hearts to themselves, opened to them also that secret sympathy which exists between them and the great mysteries of the Christian doctrine.[105] He did the work, in his day, of a great preacher. Yet he has been both claimed and condemned, as a disturber of the Church's faith.

[Footnote 105: _Vide_ Ozanam.]

He certainly did not spare the Church's rulers. He thought they were betraying the most sacred of all trusts; and if history is at all to be relied on, he had some grounds for thinking so. But it is confusing the feelings of the middle ages with our own, to convert every fierce attack on the Popes into an anticipation of Luther. Strong language of this sort was far too commonplace to be so significant. No age is blind to practical abuses, or silent on them; and when the middle ages complained, they did so with a full-voiced and clamorous rhetoric, which greedily seized on every topic of vilification within its reach. It was far less singular, and far less bold, to criticise ecclesiastical authorities, than is often supposed; but it by no means implied unsettled faith, or a revolutionary design. In Dante's case, if words have any meaning--not words of deliberate qualification, but his unpremeditated and incidental expressions--his faith in the Divine mission and spiritual powers of the Popes was as strong as his abhorrence of their degeneracy, and desire to see it corrected by a power which they would respect--that of the temporal sword. It would be to mistake altogether his character, to imagine of him, either as a fault or as an excellence, that he was a doubter. It might as well be supposed of Aquinas.

No one ever acknowledged with greater seriousness, as a fact in his position in the world, the agreement in faith among those with whom he was born. No one ever inclined with more simplicity and reverence before that long communion and consent in feeling and purpose, the "_publicus_ sensus" of the Christian Church. He did feel difficulties; but the excitement of lingering on them was not among his enjoyments. That was the lot of the heathen; Virgil, made wise by death, counsels him not to desire it:

"Matto è chi spera, che nostra ragione
Possa trascorrer la 'nfinita via
Che tiene una sustanzia in tre Persone.
State contenti, umana gente, al _quia_;
Chè se potuto aveste veder tutto,
Mestier non era partorir Maria:
E disiar vedeste senza frutto
Tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato,
Ch'eternamente è dato lor per lutto;
I' dico d'Aristotile e di Plato,
E di molti altri:"--e qui chinò la fronte,
E più non disse, e rimase turbato.--_Purg._ c. 3.[106]

[Footnote 106:

"Insensate he, who thinks with mortal ken
To pierce Infinitude, which doth enfold
Three Persons in one Substance. Seek not then,
O mortal race, for reasons--but believe,
And be contented; for had all been seen,
No need there was for Mary to conceive.
Men have ye known, who thus desired in vain;
And whose desires, that might at rest have been,
Now constitute a source of endless pain;
Plato, the Stagirite; and many more,
I here allude to;"--then his head he bent,
Was silent, and a troubled aspect wore.--WRIGHT.]

The Christian poet felt that it was greater to believe and to act. In the darkness of the world one bright light appeared, and he followed it. Providence had assigned him his portion of truth, his portion of daily bread; if to us it appears blended with human elements, it is perfectly clear that he was in no position to sift them. To choose was no trial of his. To examine and seek, where it was impossible to find, would have been folly. The authority from which he started had not yet been seriously questioned; there were no palpable signs of doubtfulness on the system which was to him the representative of God's will; and he sought for none. It came to him claiming his allegiance by custom, by universality, by its completeness as a whole, and satisfying his intellect and his sympathies in detail. And he gave his allegiance--reasonably, because there was nothing to hope for in doubting--wisely, because he gave it loyally and from his heart.

And he had his reward--the reward of him who throws himself with frankness and earnestness into a system; who is not afraid or suspicious of it; who is not unfaithful to it. He gained not merely power--he gained that freedom and largeness of mind which the suspicious or the unfaithful miss. His loyalty to the Church was no cramping or blinding service; it left to its full play that fresh and original mind, left it to range at will in all history and all nature for the traces of Eternal wisdom, left it to please itself with all beauty, and pay its homage to all excellence. For upon all wisdom, beauty, and excellence, the Church had taught him to see, in various and duly distinguished degrees, the seal of the one Creator. She imparts to the poem, to its form and progressive development, her own solemnity, her awe, her calm, her serenity and joy; it follows her sacred seasons and hours; repeats her appointed words of benediction and praise; moulds itself on her belief, her expectations, and forecastings.[107] Her intimations, more or less distinct, dogma or tradition or vague hint, guide the poet's imagination through the land where all eyes are open. The journey begins under the Easter moon of the year of jubilee, on the evening of Good Friday; the days of her mourning he spends in the regions of woe, where none dares to pronounce the name of the Redeemer, and he issues forth to "behold again the stars," to learn how to die to sin and rise to righteousness, very early in the morning, as it begins to dawn, on the day of the Resurrection. The whole arrangement of the _Purgatorio_ is drawn from Church usages. It is a picture of men suffering in calm and holy hope the sharp discipline of repentance, amid the prayers, the melodies, the consoling images and thoughts, the orderly ritual, the hours of devotion, the sacraments of the Church militant. When he ascends in his hardiest flight, and imagines the joys of the perfect and the vision of God, his abundant fancy confines itself strictly to the limits sanctioned by her famous teachers--ventures into no new sphere, hazards no anticipations in which they have not preceded it, and is content with adding to the poetry which it elicits from their ideas, a beauty which it is able to conceive apart altogether from bodily form--the beauty, infinite in its variety, of the expression of the human eye and smile--the beauty of light, of sound, of motion. And when his song mounts to its last strain of triumph, and the poet's thought, imagination, and feeling of beauty, tasked to the utmost, nor failing under the weight of glory which they have to express, breathe themselves forth in words, higher than which no poetry has ever risen, and represent, in images transcending sense, and baffling it, yet missing not one of those deep and transporting sympathies which they were to touch, the sight, eye to eye, of the Creator by the creature--he beholds the gathering together, in the presence of God, of "all that from our earth has to the skies returned," and of the countless orders of their thrones mirrored in His light--

Mira
Quanto è 'l convento delle bianche stole--

under a figure already taken into the ceremonial of the Church--the mystic Rose, whose expanding leaves image forth the joy of the heavenly Jerusalem, both triumphant and militant.[108]

[Footnote 107: See an article in the _Brit. Critic_, No. 65, p. 120.]

[Footnote 108: See the form of benediction of the "Rosa d'oro." _Rituum Ecclesiæ Rom. Libri Tres._ fol. xxxv. Venet. 1516. Form of giving: "Accipe rosam de manibus nostris ... per quam designatus gaudium utriusque Hierusalem triumphantis scilicet et militantis ecclesiæ per quam omnibus Christi fidelibus manifestatur flos ipse pretiosissimus qui est gaudium et corona sanctorum omnium." He alludes to it in the _Convito_, iv. 29.

O isplendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi
L'alto trionfo del regno verace,
Dammi virtù a dir com'io lo vidi.
Lume è lassù, che visibile face
Lo creatore a quella creatura,
Che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace:
E si distende in circular figura
In tanto, che la sua circonferenza
Sarebbe al Sol troppo larga cintura.

* * * *

E come clivo in acqua di suo imo
Si specchia quasi per vedersi adorno,
Quanto è nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo;
Sì soprastando al lume intorno intorno
Vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie,
Quanto di noi lassù fatto ha ritorno.
E se l'infimo grado in sè raccoglie
Sì grande lume, quant'è la larghezza
Di questa rosa nell'estreme foglie?

* * * *

Nel giallo della rosa sempiterna,
Che si dilata, rigrada, e redole
Odor di lode al Sol, che sempre verna,
Qual'è colui, che tace e dicer vuole,
Mi trasse Beatrice, e disse; mira
Quanto è 'l convento delle bianche stole!
Vedi nostra Città quanto ella gira!
Vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni,
Che poca gente omai ci si disira.

* * * *

In forma dunque di candida rosa
Mi si mostrava la milizia santa,
Che nel suo sangue Cristo fece sposa.--_Parad._ 30, 31.]

But this universal reference to the religious ideas of the Church is so natural, so unaffected, that it leaves him at full liberty in other orders of thought. He can afford not to be conventional--he can afford to be comprehensive and genuine. It has been remarked how, in a poem where there would seem to be a fitting place for them, the ecclesiastical legends of the middle ages are almost entirely absent. The sainted spirits of the _Paradiso_ are not exclusively or chiefly the Saints of popular devotion. After the Saints of the Bible, the holy women, the three great Apostles, the Virgin mother, they are either names personally dear to the poet himself, friends whom he had loved, and teachers to whom he owed wisdom--or great men of masculine energy in thought or action, in their various lines "compensations and antagonists of the world's evils"--Justinian and Constantine, and Charlemagne--the founders of the Orders, Augustine, Benedict, and Bernard, Francis and Dominic--the great doctors of the Schools, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura, whom the Church had not yet canonized. And with them are joined--and that with a full consciousness of the line which theology draws between the dispensations of nature and grace--some rare types of virtue among the heathen. Cato is admitted to the outskirts of Purgatory; Trajan, and the righteous king of Virgil's poem, to the heaven of the just.[109]

[Footnote 109:

Chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante,
Che Rifèo Trojano[A] in questo tondo
Fosse la quinta delle luci sante?
Ora conosce assai di quel, che 'l mondo
Veder non può della divina grazia;
Benchè sua vista non discerna il fondo.--_Parad._ c. 20.]

[Footnote A:

Rhipeus justissimus unus
Qui fuit in Teucris, et servantissimus æqui.--_Æn._ ii.]

Without confusion or disturbance to the religious character of his train of thought, he is able freely to subordinate to it the lessons and the great recollections of the Gentile times. He contemplates them with the veil drawn off from them; as now known to form but one whole with the history of the Bible and the Church, in the design of Providence. He presents them in their own colours, as drawn by their own writers--he only adds what Christianity seems to show to be their event. Under the conviction, that the light of the Heathen was a real guide from above, calling for vengeance in proportion to unfaithfulness, or outrage done to it--"He that nurtureth the heathen, it is He that teacheth man knowledge--shall not He punish?"--the great criminals of profane history are mingled with sinners against God's revealed will--and that, with equal dramatic power, with equal feeling of the greatness of their loss. The story of the voyage of Ulysses is told with as much vivid power and pathetic interest as the tales of the day.[110] He honours unfeignedly the old heathen's brave disdain of ease; that spirit, even to old age, eager, fresh, adventurous, and inquisitive. His faith allowed him to admire all that was beautiful and excellent among the heathen, without forgetting that it fell short of what the new gift of the Gospel can alone impart. He saw in it proof that God had never left His will and law without their witness among men. Virtue was virtue still, though imperfect, and unconsecrated--generosity, largeness of soul, truth, condescension, justice, were never unworthy of the reverence of Christians. Hence he uses without fear or scruple the classic element. The examples which recall to the minds of the penitents, by sounds and sights, in the different terraces of Purgatory, their sin and the grace they have to attain to, come indiscriminately from poetry and Scripture. The sculptured pavement, to which the proud are obliged ever to bow down their eyes, shows at once the humility of S. Mary and of the Psalmist, and the condescension of Trajan; and elsewhere the pride of Nimrod and Sennacherib, of Niobe, and Cyrus. The envious hear the passing voices of courtesy from saints and heroes, and the bursting cry, like crashing thunder, of repentant jealousy from Cain and Aglaurus; the avaricious, to keep up the memory of their fault, celebrate by day the poverty of Fabricius and the liberality of S. Nicolas, and execrate by night the greediness of Pygmalion and Midas, of Achan, Heliodorus, and Crassus.

[Footnote 110: _Inf._ c. 26.]

Dante's all-surveying, all-embracing mind, was worthy to open the grand procession of modern poets. He had chosen his subject in a region remote from popular thought--too awful for it, too abstruse. He had accepted frankly the dogmatic limits of the Church, and thrown himself with even enthusiastic faith into her reasonings, at once so bold and so undoubting--her spirit of certainty, and her deep contemplations on the unseen and infinite. And in literature, he had taken as guides and models, above all criticism and all appeal, the classical writers. Yet with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owning allegiance to Virgil, Ovid, and Statius--keen and subtle as a Schoolman--as much an idolator of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the _Renaissance_--his eye is as open to the delicacies of character, to the variety of external nature, to the wonders of the physical world--his interest in them as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imitation or by conventional words, his language as elastic, and as completely under his command, his choice of poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom, and such keen discriminative sense of what is real, in feeling and image;--as if he had never felt the attractions of a crabbed problem of scholastic logic, or bowed before the mellow grace of the Latins. It may be said, indeed, that the time was not yet come when the classics could be really understood and appreciated; and this is true, perhaps fortunate. But admiring them with a kind of devotion, and showing not seldom that he had caught their spirit, he never _attempts_ to copy them. His poetry in form and material is all his own. He asserted the poet's claim to borrow from all science, and from every phase of nature, the associations and images which he wants; and he showed that those images and associations did not lose their poetry by being expressed with the most literal reality.

But let no reader of fastidious taste disturb his temper by the study of Dante. Dante certainly opened that path of freedom and poetic conquest, in which the greatest efforts of modern poetry have followed him--opened it with a magnificence and power which have never been surpassed. But the greatest are but pioneers; they must be content to leave to a posterity, which knows more, if it cannot do as much, a keen and even growing sense of their defects. The _Commedia_ is open to all the attacks that can be made on grotesqueness and extravagance. This is partly owing, doubtless, to the time, in itself quaint, quainter to us, by being remote and ill-understood; but even then, weaker and less daring writers than Dante do not equally offend or astonish us. So that an image or an expression will render forcibly a thought, there is no strangeness which checks him. Barbarous words are introduced, to express the cries of the demon or the confusion of Babel--even to represent the incomprehensible song of the blessed;[111] inarticulate syllables, to convey the impression of some natural sound--the cry of sorrowful surprise:

Alto sospir, che duolo strinse in _hui_;--_Purg._ 16.

or the noise of the cracking ice:

Se Tabernicch
Vi fosse sù caduto, o Pietra-pana
Non avria pur da l'orlo fatto _cricch_;--_Inf._ 32.

even separate letters--to express an image, to spell a name, or as used in some popular proverb.[112] He employs without scruple, and often with marvellous force of description, any recollection that occurs to him, however homely, of everyday life;--the old tailor threading his needle with trouble (_Inf._ 15);--the cook's assistant watching over the boiling broth (_Inf._ 21);--the hurried or impatient horse-groom using his curry-comb (_Inf._ 29);--or the common sights of the street or the chamber--the wet wood sputtering on the hearth:

Come d'un stizzo verde che arso sia
Dall'un de' capi, che dall'altro geme
E cigola per vento che va via;--_Inf._ 13.[113]

the paper changing colour when about to catch fire:

Come procede innanzi dall'ardore
Per lo papiro suso un color bruno
Che non è nero ancora, e 'l bianco muore:--_Inf._ 25.[114]

the steaming of the hand when bathed, in winter:

Fuman come man bagnata il verno:--

or the ways and appearances of animals--ants meeting on their path:

Lì veggio d'ogni parte farsi presta
Ciascun'ombra, e baciarsi una con una
Senza restar, contente a breve festa:
Così per entro loro schiera bruna
_S'ammusa l'una con l'altra formica_,
Forse a spiar lor via e lor fortuna;--_Purg._ 26.[115]

the snail drawing in its horns (_Inf._ 25);--the hog shut out of its sty, and trying to gore with its tusks (_Inf._ 30);--the dogs' misery in summer (_Inf._ 17);--the frogs jumping on to the bank before the water-snake (_Inf._ 9);--or showing their heads above water:

Come al orlo dell'acqua d'un fosso
Stan gli ranocchi _pur col muso fuori_,
Sì che celano i piedi, e l'altro grosso.--_Inf._ 22.[116]

[Footnote 111: _Parad._ 7, 1-3.]

[Footnote 112: To describe the pinched face of famine;--

Parean l'occhiaje annella senza gemme.
Chi nel viso degli uomini legge OMO
Ben avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_ (M).--_Purg._ 23.

Again,

Quella reverenza che s'indonna
Di tutto me, pur per B e per ICE.--_Parad._ 7.

Nè O sì tosto mai, nè I si scrisse,
Com'ei s'accese ed arse.--_Inf._ 24.]

[Footnote 113:

Like to a sapling, lighted at one end,
Which at the other hisses with the wind,
And drops of sap doth from the outlet send:
So from the broken twig, both words and blood flow'd forth.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 114:

Like burning paper, when there glides before
The advancing flame a brown and dingy shade,
Which is not black, and yet is white no more.--IBID.]

[Footnote 115:

On either hand I saw them haste their meeting,
And kiss each one the other--pausing not--
Contented to enjoy so short a greeting.
Thus do the ants among their dingy band,
Face one another--each their neighbour's lot
Haply to scan, and how their fortunes stand.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 116:

As in a trench, frogs at the water side
Sit squatting, with their noses raised on high,
The while their feet, and all their bulk they hide--
Thus upon either hand the sinners stood.
But Barbariccia now approaching nigh,
Quick they withdrew beneath the boiling flood.
I saw--and still my heart is thrill'd with fear--
One spirit linger; as beside a ditch,
One frog remains, the others disappear.--IBID.]

It must be said, that most of these images, though by no means all, occur in the _Inferno_; and that the poet means to paint sin not merely in the greatness of its ruin and misery, but in characters which all understand, of strangeness, of vileness, of despicableness, blended with diversified and monstrous horror. Even he seems to despair of his power at times:

S'io avessi le rime e aspre, e chiocce,
Come si converrebbe al tristo buco,
Sovra 'l qual pontan tutte l'altre rocce;
Io premerrei di mio concetto il suco
Più pienamente; ma perch'io non l'abbo,
Non senza tema a dicer mi conduco:
Che non è 'mpresa da pigliare a gabbo
Descriver fondo a tutto l'universo,
Nè da lingua, che chiami mamma, o babbo.--_Inf._ 32.[117]

[Footnote 117:

Had I a rhyme so rugged, rough, and hoarse
As would become the sorrowful abyss,
O'er which the rocky circles wind their course,
Then with a more appropriate form I might
Endow my vast conceptions; wanting this,
Not without fear I bring myself to write.
For no light enterprise it is, I deem,
To represent the lowest depth of all;
Nor should a childish tongue attempt the theme.--WRIGHT.]

Feeling the difference between sins, in their elements and, as far as we see them, their baseness, he treats them variously. His ridicule is apportioned with a purpose. He passes on from the doom of the sins of incontinence--the storm, the frost and hail, the crushing weights--from the flaming minarets of the city of Dis, of the Furies and Proserpine, "Donna dell'eterno pianto," where the unbelievers lie, each in his burning tomb--from the river of boiling blood--the wood with the Harpies--the waste of barren sand with fiery snow, where the violent are punished--to the Malebolge, the manifold circles of Falsehood. And here scorn and ridicule in various degrees, according to the vileness of the fraud, begin to predominate, till they culminate in that grim comedy, with its _dramatis personæ_ and battle of devils, Draghignazzo, and Graffiacane, and Malacoda, where the peculators and sellers of justice are fished up by the demons from the boiling pitch, but even there overreach and cheat their tormentors, and make them turn their fangs on each other. The diversified forms of falsehood seem to tempt the poet's imagination to cope with its changefulness and inventions, as well as its audacity. The transformations of the wildest dream do not daunt him. His power over language is nowhere more forcibly displayed than in those cantos, which describe the punishments of theft--men passing gradually into serpents, and serpents into men:

Due e nessun l'imagine perversa
Parea.--_Inf._ 25.

And when the traitor, who murdered his own kinsman, was still alive, and seemed safe from the infamy which it was the poet's rule to bestow only on the dead, Dante found a way to inflict his vengeance without an anachronism:--Branca D'Oria's body, though on earth, is only animated by a fiend, and his spirit has long since fled to the icy prison.[118]

[Footnote 118:

Ed egli a me: Come 'l mio corpo stea
Nel mondo sù, nulla scienzia porto.
Cotal vantaggio ha questa Tolommea,
Che spesse volte l'anima ci cade
Innanzi, ch'Atropòs mossa le dea.
E perchè tu più volontier mi rade
Le 'nvetriate lagrime dal volto,
Sappi, che tosto che l'anima trade,
Come fec'io, il corpo suo l'è tolto
Da un Dimonio, che poscia il governa,
Mentre che 'l tempo suo tutto sia volto.
Ella ruina in sì fatta cisterna;
E forse pare ancor lo corpo suso
Dell'ombra, che di qua dietro mi verna.
Tu 'l dei saper, se tu vien pur mo giuso:
Egli è ser Branca d'Oria, e son più anni
Poscia passati, ch'ei fu sì racchiuso.
Io credo, diss'io lui, che tu m'inganni,
Che Branca d'Oria non morì unquanche,
E mangia, e bee, e dorme, e veste panni.
Nel fosso sù, diss'ei, di Malebranche,
Là dove bolle la tenace pece,
Non era giunto ancora Michel Zanche;
Che questi lasciò 'l diavolo in sua vece
Nel corpo suo, e d'un suo prossimano,
Che 'l tradimento insieme con lui fece.--_Inf._ 33.]

These are strange experiments in poetry; their strangeness is exaggerated as detached passages; but they are strange enough when they meet us in their place in the context, as parts of a scene, where the mind is strung and overawed by the sustained power, with which dreariness, horror, hideous absence of every form of good, is kept before the imagination and feelings, in the fearful picture of human sin. But they belong to the poet's system of direct and forcible representation. What his inward eye sees, what he feels, that he means us to see and feel as he does; to make us see and feel is his art. Afterwards we may reflect and meditate; but first we must see--must see what he saw. Evil and deformity are in the world, as well as good and beauty; the eye cannot escape them, they are about our path, in our heart and memory. He has faced them without shrinking or dissembling, and extorted from them a voice of warning. In all poetry that is written for mere delight, in all poetry which regards but a part or an aspect of nature, they have no place--they disturb and mar; but he had conceived a poetry of the whole, which would be weak or false without them. Yet they stand in his poem as they stand in nature--subordinate and relieved. If the grotesque is allowed to intrude itself--if the horrible and the foul, undisguised and unsoftened, make us shudder and shrink, they are kept in strong check and in due subjection by other poetical influences; and the same power which exhibits them in their naked strength, renders its full grace and glory to beauty; its full force and delicacy to the most evanescent feeling.

Dante's eye was free and open to external nature in a degree new among poets; certainly in a far greater degree than among the Latins, even including Lucretius, whom he probably had never read. We have already spoken of his minute notice of the appearance of living creatures; but his eye was caught by the beautiful as well as by the grotesque.

Take the following beautiful picture of the bird looking out for dawn:

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 li 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.--_Parad._ 23.[119]

[Footnote 119:

E'en as the bird that resting in the nest
Of her sweet brood, the shelt'ring boughs among
While all things are enwrapt in night's dark vest--
Now eager to behold the looks she loves,
And to find food for her impatient young
(Whence labour grateful to a mother proves),
Forestalls the time, high perch'd upon the spray,
And with impassion'd zeal the sun expecting,
Anxiously waiteth the first break of day.--WRIGHT.]

Nothing indeed can be more true and original than his images of birds; they are varied and very numerous. We have the water-birds rising in clamorous and changing flocks:

Come augelli surti di riviera
_Quasi congratulando a lor pasture_,
Fanno di sè or tonda or lunga schiera;--_Parad._ 18.[120]

the rooks, beginning to move about at daybreak:

E come per lo natural costume,
Le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno
Si muovono a scaldar le fredde piume,
Poi altre vanno via senza ritorno,
Altre rivolgon sè onde son mosse
Ed altre roteando fan soggiorno;--_Parad._ 21.[121]

the morning sounds of the swallow:

Nell'ora che comincia i tristi lai
La rondinella presso alla mattina,
Forse a memoria de' suoi primi guai;--_Purg._ 9.[122]

the joy and delight of the nightingale's song (_Purg._ 17); the lark, silent at last, filled with its own sweetness:

Qual lodoletta, che 'n aere si spazia,
Prima cantando, e _poi tace contenta
Dell'ultima dolcezza che la sazia_;--_Parad._ 20.[123]

the flight of the starlings and storks (_Inf._ 5, _Purg._ 24); the mournful cry and long line of the cranes (_Inf._ 5, _Purg._ 26); the young birds trying to escape from the nest (_Purg._ 25); the eagle hanging in the sky:

Con l'ale aperte, e a calare intesa;--

the dove, standing close to its mate, or wheeling round it:

Sì come quando 'l _colombo si pone
Presso al compagno_, l'uno e l'altro pande
_Girando e mormorando_ l'affezione;--_Parad._ 25.[124]

or the flock of pigeons, feeding:

Adunati alla pastura,
Queti, _senza mostrar l'usato orgoglio_.--_Purg._ 2.

[Footnote 120:

And as birds rising from a stream, whence they
Their pastures view, as though their joy confessing,
Now form a round, and now a long array.--IBID.]

[Footnote 121:

And as with one accord, at break of day,
The rooks bestir themselves, by nature taught
To chase the dew-drops from their wings away;
Some flying off, to reappear no more--
Others repairing to their nests again--
Some whirling round--then settling as before.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 122:

What time the swallow pours her plaintive strain,
Saluting the approach of morning gray,
Thus haply mindful of her former pain.--IBID.]

[Footnote 123:

E'en as the lark high soaring pours its throat
Awhile, then rests in silence, as though still
It dwelt enamour'd of its last sweet note.--IBID.]

[Footnote 124:

As when unto his partner's side, the dove
Approaches near--both fondly circling round,
And cooing, show the fervour of their love;
So these great heirs of immortality
Receive each other; while they joyful sound
The praises of the food they share on high.--WRIGHT.]

Hawking supplies its images: the falcon coming for its food:

Il falcon che prima a piè si mira,
Indi si volge al grido, e si protende,
Per lo disio del pasto, che là il tira;--_Purg._ 19.[125]

or just unhooded, pluming itself for its flight:

Quasi falcon, ch'esce del cappello,
Muove la testa, e con l'ale s'applaude,
_Voglia mostrando, e facendosi bello_;--_Parad._ 19.[126]

or returning without success, sullen and loath:

Come 'l falcon ch'è stato assai su l'ali,
Che senza veder logoro, o uccello,
Fa dire al falconiere: Oimè tu cali!
Discende lasso onde si muove snello
Per cento ruote, _e da lungi si pone_
Dal suo maestro, _disdegnoso e fello_.--_Inf._ 17.[127]

[Footnote 125:

And, as a falcon, which first scans its feet,
Then turns him to the call, and forward flies,
In eagerness to catch the tempting meat.--IBID.]

[Footnote 126:

Lo, as a falcon, from the hood released,
Uplifts his head, and joyous flaps his wings,
His beauty and his eagerness increased.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 127:

E'en as a falcon, long upheld in air,
Not seeing lure or bird upon the wing,
So that the falconer utters in despair
"Alas, thou stoop'st!" fatigued descends from high;
And whirling quickly round in many a ring,
Far from his master sits--disdainfully.--IBID.]

It is curious to observe him taking Virgil's similes, and altering them. When Virgil describes the throng of souls, he compares them to falling leaves, or gathering birds in autumn:

Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo
Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
Quam multæ glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
Trans pontum fugat, et terris immittit apricis--

Dante uses the same images, but without copying:

Come d'Autunno si levan le foglie,
L'una appresso dell'altra, infin che 'l ramo
Rende alla terra tutte le sue spoglie;
Similemente il mal seme d'Adamo:
Gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una
Per cenni, com'augel per suo richiamo.
Così sen vanno su per l'onda bruna,
Ed avanti che sien di là discese,
Anche di qua nuova schiera s'aduna.--_Inf._ 3.[128]

[Footnote 128:

As leaves in autumn, borne before the wind,
Drop one by one, until the branch laid bare,
Sees all its honours to the earth consign'd:
So cast them downward at his summons all
The guilty race of Adam from that strand--
Each as a falcon answering to the call.--WRIGHT.]

Again--compared with one of Virgil's most highly-finished and perfect pictures, the flight of the pigeon, disturbed at first, and then becoming swift and smooth:

Qualis spelunca subito commota columba,
Cui domus et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi,
Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis
Dat tecto ingentem, mox aere lapsa quieto
Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas--

the Italian's simplicity and strength may balance the "ornata parola" of Virgil:

Quali colombe dal disio chiamate,
Con _l'ali aperte e ferme_ al dolce nido
Volan per l'aer dal voler portate.--_Inf._ 5.[129]

[Footnote 129:

As doves, by strong affection urged, repair
With firm expanded wings to their sweet nest,
Borne by the impulse of their will through air.--IBID.

It is impossible not to be reminded at every step, in spite of the knowledge and taste which Mr. Cary and Mr. Wright have brought to their most difficult task, of the truth which Dante has expressed with his ordinary positiveness.

He is saying that he does not wish his Canzoni to be explained in Latin to those who could not read them in Italian: "Che sarebbe sposta la loro sentenzia colà dove elle _non la potessono colla loro bellezza portare_. E però sappia ciascuno che nulla cosa per legame musaico (_i.e._ poetico) armonizzata, si può della sua loquela in altra trasmutare senza rompere tutta la sua dolcezza e armonia. E questa è la ragione per che Omero non si mutò mai di Greco in Latino, come l'altre scritture che avemo da loro."--_Convito_, i. c. 8, p. 49.

Dr. Carlyle has given up the idea of attempting to represent Dante's verse by English verse, and has confined himself to assisting Englishmen to read him in his own language. His prose translation is accurate and forcible. And he has added sensible and useful notes.]

Take, again, the _times of the day_, with what is characteristic of them--appearances, lights, feelings--seldom dwelt on at length, but carried at once to the mind, and stamped upon it sometimes by a single word. The sense of _morning_, its inspiring and cheering strength, softens the opening of the _Inferno_; breathes its refreshing calm, in the interval of repose after the last horrors of hell, in the first canto of the _Purgatorio_; and prepares for the entrance into the earthly Paradise at its close. In the waning light of _evening_, and its chilling sense of loneliness, he prepared himself for his dread pilgrimage:

Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aer bruno
Toglieva gli animai che sono 'n terra
Dalle fatiche loro; ed io sol uno
M'apparechiava a sostener la guerra
Sì del cammino, e sì della pietate.--_Inf._ 2.

Indeed there is scarcely an hour of day or night, which has not left its own recollection with him;--of which we cannot find some memorial in his poem. Evening and night have many. Evening, with its softness and melancholy--its exhaustion and languor, after the work, perhaps unfulfilled, of day--its regrets and yearnings--its sounds and doubtful lights--the distant bell, the closing chants of Compline, the _Salve Regina_, the _Te lucis ante terminum_--with its insecurity, and its sense of protection from above--broods over the poet's first resting-place on his heavenly road--that still, solemn, dreamy scene--the Valley of Flowers in the mountain side, where those who have been negligent about their salvation, but not altogether faithless and fruitless, the assembled shades of great kings and of poets, wait, looking upwards, "pale and humble," for the hour when they may begin in earnest their penance. (_Purg._ 7 and 8.) The level, blinding evening beams (_Purg._ 15); the contrast of gathering darkness in the valley or on the shore with the lingering lights on the mountain (_Purg._ 17); the rapid sinking of the sun, and approach of night in the south (_Purg._ 27); the flaming sunset clouds of August; the sheet-lightning of summer (_Purg._ 5); have left pictures in his mind, which an incidental touch reawakens, and a few strong words are sufficient to express. Other appearances he describes with more fulness. The stars coming out one by one, baffling at first the eye:

Ed ecco intorno di chiarezza pari
Nascer un lustro sopra quel che v'era,
A guisa d'orizzonte, che rischiari.
_E sì come al salir di prima sera
Comincian per lo Ciel nuove parvenze,
Sì che la cosa pare e non par vera_;--_Parad._ 14.[130]

or else, bursting out suddenly over the heavens:

Quando colui che tutto il mondo alluma,
De l'emisperio nostro si discende,
E 'l giorno d'ogni parte si consuma;
Lo ciel che sol di lui prima s'accende,
Subitamente si rifà parvente
Per molte luci in che una risplende;--_Parad._ 20.[131]

or the effect of shooting-stars:

Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri
Discorre ad ora ad or subito fuoco
Movendo gli occhi che stavan sicuri,
E pare stella che tramuti loco,
Se non che dalla parte onde s'accende
Nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco;--_Parad._ 15.[132]

or, again, that characteristic sight of the Italian summer night--the fire-flies:

Quante il villan che al poggio si riposa,
Nel tempo che colui che 'l mondo schiara
La faccia sua a noi tien men ascosa,
Come la mosca cede alla zenzara,
Vede lucciole giù per la vallea
Forse colà dove vendemmia ed ara.--_Inf._ 26.[133]

[Footnote 130:

And lo, on high, and lurid as the one
Now there, encircling it, a light arose,
Like heaven when re-illumined by the sun:
And as at the first lighting up of eve
The sky doth new appearances disclose,
That now seem real, now the sight deceive.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 131:

When he, who with his universal ray
The world illumines, quits our hemisphere,
And, from each quarter, daylight wears away;
The heaven, erst kindled by his beam alone,
Sudden its lost effulgence doth repair
By many lights illumined but by one.--IBID.]

[Footnote 132:

As oft along the pure and tranquil sky
A sudden fire by night is seen to dart,
Attracting forcibly the heedless eye;
And seems to be a star that changes place,
Save that no star is lost from out the part
It quits, and that it lasts a moment's space.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 133:

As in that season when the sun least veils
His face that lightens all, what time the fly
Gives place to the shrill gnat, the peasant then,
Upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees
Fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale,
Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies.--CARY.]

Noon, too, does not want its characteristic touches--the lightning-like glancing of the lizard's rapid motion:

Come il ramarro sotto la gran fersa
Ne' dì canicular cangiando siepe
Folgore par, se la via attraversa;--_Inf._ 25.[134]

the motes in the sunbeam at noontide (_Par._ 14); its clear, diffused, insupportable brightness, filling all things:

E tutti eran già pieni
Dell'alto dì i giron del sacro monte.--_Purg._ 19.

and veiling the sun in his own light:

Io veggio ben sì come _tu t'annidi
Nel proprio lume_.

* * * *