Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

Sì come 'l sol che si cela egli stessi
Per troppa luce, quando 'l caldo ha rose
Le temperanze de' vapori spessi.--_Parad._ 5.

[Footnote 134:

As underneath the dog-star's scorching ray
The lizard, darting swift from fence to fence,
Appears like lightning, if he cross the way.--WRIGHT.]

But the sights and feelings of morning are what he touches on most frequently; and he does so with the precision of one who had watched them with often-repeated delight: the scented freshness of the breeze that stirs before daybreak:

E quale annunziatrice degli albori
Aura di maggio muovesi ed olezza
Tutta impregnata dall'erba e da' fiori;
Tal mi senti' un vento dar per mezza
La fronte;--_Purg._ 24.[135]

the chill of early morning (_Purg._ 19); the dawn stealing on, and the stars, one by one, fading "infino alla più bella" (_Parad._ 30); the brightness of the "trembling morning star"--

Par tremolando mattutina stella;--

the serenity of the dawn, the blue gradually gathering in the east, spreading over the brightening sky (_Parad._ 1); then succeeded by the orange tints--and Mars setting red, through the mist over the sea:

Ed ecco, qual sul presso del mattino
Per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia
Giù nel ponente, sopra 'l suol marino,
Cotal m'apparve, s'io ancor lo veggia,
Un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto
Che 'l muover suo nessun volar pareggia;--_Purg._ 2.[136]

the distant sea-beach quivering in the early light:

L'alba vinceva l'ora mattutina
Che fuggia innanzi, sì che di lontano
Conobbi _il tremolar della marina_;--_Purg._ 1.[137]

the contrast of east and west at the moment of sunrise, and the sun appearing, clothed in mist:

Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno
La parte oriental tutta rosata
E l'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno;
E la faccia del sol nascere ombrata
Sì che per temperanza di vapori
L'occhio lo sostenea lunga fiata;--_Purg._ 3.[138]

or breaking through it, and shooting his beams over the sky:

Di tutte parti saettava il giorno
Lo sol ch'avea con le saette conte
Di mezzo 'l ciel cacciato 'l Capricorno.--_Purg._ 2.[139]

[Footnote 135:

As when, announcing the approach of day,
Impregnated with herbs and flowers of Spring,
Breathes fresh and redolent the air of May--
Such was the breeze that gently fann'd my head;
And I perceived the waving of a wing
Which all around ambrosial odours shed.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 136:

When lo! like Mars, in aspect fiery red
Seen through the vapour, when the morn is nigh
Far in the west above the briny bed,
So (might I once more see it) o'er the sea
A light approach'd with such rapidity,
Flies not the bird that might its equal be.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 137:

Now 'gan the vanquish'd matin hour to flee;
And seen from far, as onward came the day,
I recognised the trembling of the sea.--IBID.]

[Footnote 138:

Erewhile the eastern regions have I seen
At daybreak glow with roseate colours, and
The expanse beside all beauteous and serene:
And the sun's face so shrouded at its rise,
And temper'd by the mists which overhung,
That I could gaze on it with stedfast eyes.--WRIGHT.]

[Footnote 139:

On every side the sun shot forth the day,
And had already with his arrows bright
From the mid-heaven chased Capricorn away.--IBID.]

But _light_ in general is his special and chosen source of poetic beauty. No poet that we know has shown such singular sensibility to its varied appearances--has shown that he felt it in itself the cause of a distinct and peculiar pleasure, delighting the eye apart from form, as music delights the ear apart from words, and capable, like music, of definite character, of endless variety, and infinite meanings. He must have studied and dwelt upon it like music. His mind is charged with its effects and combinations, and they are rendered with a force, a brevity, a precision, a heedlessness and unconsciousness of ornament, an indifference to circumstance and detail; they flash out with a spontaneous readiness, a suitableness and felicity, which show the familiarity and grasp given only by daily observation, daily thought, daily pleasure. Light everywhere--in the sky and earth and sea--in the star, the flame, the lamp, the gem--broken in the water, reflected from the mirror, transmitted pure through the glass, or coloured through the edge of the fractured emerald--dimmed in the mist, the halo, the deep water--streaming through the rent cloud, glowing in the coal, quivering in the lightning, flashing in the topaz and the ruby, veiled behind the pure alabaster, mellowed and clouding itself in the pearl--light contrasted with shadow--shading off and copying itself in the double rainbow, like voice and echo--light seen within light, as voice discerned within voice, "_quando una è ferma, e l'altra va e riede_"--the brighter "nestling" itself in the fainter--the purer set off on the less clear, "_come perla in bianca fronte_"--light in the human eye and face, displaying, figuring, and confounded with its expressions--light blended with joy in the eye:

luce
Come letizia in pupilla viva;

and in the smile:

Vincendo me col lume d'un sorriso;

joy lending its expression to light:

Quivi la donna mia vid'io sì lieta--
Che più lucente se ne fè il pianeta.
E se la _stella si cambiò, e rise_,
Qual mi fec'io;--_Parad._ 5.

light from every source, and in all its shapes, illuminates, irradiates, gives its glory to the _Commedia_. The remembrance of our "serene life" beneath the "fair stars" keeps up continually the gloom of the _Inferno_. Light, such as we see it and recognise it, the light of morning and evening growing and fading, takes off from the unearthliness of the _Purgatorio_; peopled, as it is, by the undying, who, though suffering for sin, can sin no more, it is thus made like our familiar world, made to touch our sympathies as an image of our own purification in the flesh. And when he rises beyond the regions of earthly day, light, simple, unalloyed, unshadowed, eternal, lifts the creations of his thought above all affinity to time and matter; light never fails him, as the expression of the gradations of bliss; never reappears the same, never refuses the new shapes of his invention, never becomes confused or dim, though it is seldom thrown into distinct figure, and still more seldom _coloured_. Only once, that we remember, is the thought of colour forced on us; when the bright joy of heaven suffers change and eclipse, and deepens into red at the sacrilege of men.[140]

[Footnote 140: _Parad._ 27.]

Yet his eye is everywhere, not confined to the beauty or character of the sky and its lights. His range of observation and largeness of interest prevent that line of imagery, which is his peculiar instrument and predilection, from becoming, in spite of its brightness and variety, dreamy and monotonous; prevent it from arming against itself sympathies which it does not touch. He has watched with equal attention, and draws with not less power, the occurrences and sights of Italian country life; the summer whirlwind sweeping over the plain--"_dinanzi polveroso va superbo_" (_Inf._ 9); the rain-storm of the Apennines (_Purg._ 5); the peasant's alternations of feeling in spring:

In quella parte del giovinetto anno
Che 'l sole i crin sotto l'Aquario tempra,
E già le notti al mezzo dì sen vanno;
Quando la brina in su la terra assempra
L'imagine di sua sorella bianca,
Ma poco dura alla sua penna tempra,
Lo villanello a cui la roba manca
Si leva e guarda, e vede la campagna
Biancheggiar tutta; ond'ei si batte l'anca;
Ritorna a casa, e qua e là si lagna
Come 'l tapin che non sa che si faccia:
Poi riede e la speranza ringavagna
Veggendo 'l mondo aver cangiata faccia
In poco d'ora, e prende il suo vincastro
E fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia:--_Inf._ 24.[141]

the manner in which sheep come out from the fold:

Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso
_A una a due a tre, e l'altre stanno,
Timidette atterrando l'occhio e' l muso;
E ciò che fa la prima, e l'altre fanno,
Addossandosi a lei s'ella s'arresta_
Semplici e quete, e lo 'mperchè non sanno:
Sì vid'io muover a venir la testa
Di quella mandria fortunata allotta,
Pudica in faccia e nell'andare onesta.
Come color dinanzi vider rotta
La luce....
Ristaro, e trasser sè indietro alquanto,
E tutti gli altri che veniano appresso,
Non sappiendo il perchè, fero altrettanto.--_Purg._ 3.

[Footnote 141:

In the new year, when Sol his tresses gay
Dips in Aquarius, and the tardy night
Divides her empire with the lengthening day--
When o'er the earth the hoar-frost pure and bright
Assumes the image of her sister white,
Then quickly melts before the genial light--
The rustic, now exhausted his supply,
Rises betimes--looks out--and sees the land
All white around, whereat he strikes his thigh--
Turns back--and grieving--wanders here and there,
Like one disconsolate and at a stand;
Then issues forth, forgetting his despair,
For lo! the face of nature he beholds
Changed on a sudden--takes his crook again,
And drives his flock to pasture from the folds.--WRIGHT.]

So with the beautiful picture of the goats upon the mountain, chewing the cud in the noontide heat and stillness, and the goatherd, resting on his staff and watching them--a picture which no traveller among the mountains of Italy or Greece can have missed, or have forgotten:

Quali si fanno ruminando manse
Le capre, _state rapide e proterve
Sopra le cime_ avanti che sien pranse,
_Tacite al ombra mentre che 'l sol ferve,
Guardate dal pastor_ che 'n su la verga
Poggiato s'è, e lor poggiato serve.--_Purg._ 27.[142]

[Footnote 142:

Like goats that having over the crags pursued
Their wanton sports, now, quiet pass the time
In ruminating--sated with their food,
Beneath the shade, while glows the sun on high--
Watched by the goatherd with unceasing care,
As on his staff he leans, with watchful eye.--_Ibid._]

So again, with his recollections of cities: the crowd, running together to hear news (_Purg._ 2), or pressing after the winner of the game (_Purg._ 6); the blind men at the church doors, or following their guide through the throng (_Purg._ 13, 16); the friars walking along in silence, one behind another:

Taciti, soli, e senza compagnia
N'andavam, _l'un dinanzi, e l'altro dopo
Come i frati minor vanno per via_.--_Inf._ 23.

He turns to account in his poem, the pomp and clamour of the host taking the field (_Inf._ 22); the devices of heraldry; the answering chimes of morning bells over the city;[143] the inventions and appliances of art, the wheels within wheels of clocks (_Par._ 24), the many-coloured carpets of the East (_Inf._ 17); music and dancing--the organ and voice in church:

--Voce mista al dolce suono
Che or sì or no s'intendon le parole,--_Purg._ 9.

the lute and voice in the chamber (_Par._ 20); the dancers preparing to begin,[144] or waiting to catch a new strain.[145] Or, again, the images of domestic life, the mother's ways to her child, reserved and reproving--"che al figlio par superba"--or cheering him with her voice, or watching him compassionately in the wandering of fever:

Ond'ella, appresso d'un pio sospiro
Gli occhi drizzò ver me, con quel sembiante
Che madre fa sopra figliuol deliro.--_Parad._ 1.

[Footnote 143:

Indi come orologio che ne chiami
Nell'ora che la sposa di Dio surge
A mattinar lo sposo perchè l'ami,
Che l'una parte e l'altra tira ed urge
Tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota
Che 'l ben disposto spirto d'amor turge;
Così vid'io la gloriosa ruota
Muoversi e render voce a voce, in tempra
Ed in dolcezza ch'esser non può nota
Se non colà dove 'l gioir s'insempra.--_Parad._ 10.]

[Footnote 144:

E come surge, e va, ed entra in ballo
Vergine lieta, sol per farne onore
Alla novizia, e non per alcun fallo.--_Ibid._ 25.]

[Footnote 145:

Donne mi parver, non da ballo sciolte,
Ma che s'arrestin tacite ascoltando
Fin che le nuove note hanno ricolte.--_Ibid._ 10.]

Nor is he less observant of the more delicate phenomena of mind, in its inward workings, and its connexion with the body. The play of features, the involuntary gestures and attitudes of the passions, the power of eye over eye, of hand upon hand, the charm of voice and expression, of musical sounds even when not understood--feelings, sensations, and states of mind which have a name, and others, equally numerous and equally common, which have none--these, often so fugitive, so shifting, so baffling and intangible, are expressed with a directness, a simplicity, a sense of truth at once broad and refined, which seized at once on the congenial mind of his countrymen, and pointed out to them the road which they have followed in art, unapproached as yet by any competitors.[146]

[Footnote 146: For instance:--_thoughts upon thoughts, ending in sleep and dreams_:

Nuovo pensier dentro de me si mise,
Dal qual più altri nacquero e diversi:
_E tanto d'uno in altro vaneggiai
Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,
E 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai_.--_Purg._ 18.

_sleep stealing off when broken by light_:

Come si frange il sonno, ove di butto
Nuova luce percuote 'l viso chiuso,
_Che fratto guizza pria che muoja tutto_.--_Ibid._ 17.

_the shock of sudden awakening_:

Come al lume acuto si disonna,

* * * *

_E lo svegliato ciò che vede abborre,_
Sì nescia è la subita vigilia,
Finchè la stimativa nol soccorre.--_Parad._ 26.

_uneasy feelings produced by sight or representation of something unnatural_:

Come per sostentar solajo o tetto
Per mensola talvolta una figura
Si vede giunger le ginocchia al petto,
_La qual fa del non ver vera rancura
Nascer a chi la vede_; così fatti
Vid'io color.--_Purg._ 10.

_blushing in innocent sympathy for others_:

E come donna onesta che permane
Di sè sicura, e _per l'altrui fallanza
Pure ascoltando timida si fane_:
Così Beatrice trasmutò sembianza.--_Par._ 27.

_asking and answering by looks only_:

Volsi gli occhi agli occhi al signor mio;
Ond'elli m'assentì con lieto cenno
Ciò che chiedea la vista del disio.--_Purg._ 19.

_watching the effect of words_:

Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento
L'alto dottore, ad attento guardava
Nella mia vista s'io parea contento.
Ed io, cui nuova sete ancor frugava,
Di fuor taceva e dentro dicea: forse
Lo troppo dimandar ch'io fo, li grava.
Ma quel padre verace, che s'accorse
Del timido voler che non s'apriva,
Parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse.--_Ibid._ 18.

_Dante betraying Virgil's presence to Statius, by his involuntary smile_:

Volser Virgilio a me queste parole
Con viso che tacendo dicea: "taci;"
Ma non può tutto la virtù che vuole;
Che riso e pianto son tanto seguaci
Alla passion da che ciascun si spicca,
_Che men segnon voler ne' più veraci.
Io pur sorrisi, come l'uom ch'ammicca:
Perchè l'ombra si tacque, e riguardommi
Negli occhi ove 'l sembiante più si ficca._
E se tanto lavoro in bene assommi,
Disse, perchè la faccia tua testeso
_Un lampeggiar a' un riso_ dimostrommi?--_Purg._ 21.

_smiles and words together_:

Per le _sorrise parolette brevi_.--_Parad._ 1.

_eye meeting eye_:

Gli occhi ritorsi avanti
Dritti nel lume della dolce guida
Che sorridendo ardea negli occhi santi.--_Ibid._ 3.

Come si vede qui alcuna volta
L'affetto nella vista, s'ello è tanto
Che da lui sia tutta l'anima tolta:
Così nel fiammeggiar del fulgor santo
A cui mi volsi, conobbi la voglia
In lui di ragionarmi ancora alquanto.--_Ibid._ 18.

_gentleness of voice_:

E cominciommi a dir soave e piana
Con angelica voce in sua favella.--_Inf._ 2.

E come agli occhi miei si fe' più bella,
Così con voce più dolce e soave,
Ma non con questa moderna favella,
Dissemi;--_Parad._ 16.

_chanting_:

_Te lucis ante_ sì divotamente
Le uscì di bocca e con sì dolce note,
Che fece me a me uscir di mente.
E l'altre poi dolcemente e divote
Seguitar lei per tutto l'inno intero,
Avendo gli occhi alle superne ruote.--_Purg._ 8.

_chanting blended with the sound of the organ_:

Io mi rivolsi attento al primo tuono,
E _Te Deum laudamus_ mi parea
Udire in voce mista al dolce suono.
Tale imagine appunto mi rendea
Ciò ch'io udiva, qual prender si suole
_Quando a cantar con organi si stea;
Ch'or sì, or no, s'intendon le parole_.--_Purg._ 9.

_voices in concert_:

E come in voce voce si discerne
_Quando una è ferma, e' l altra va e riede_.--_Parad._ 8.

_attitudes and gestures: e.g. Beatrice addressing him_,

Con atto e voce di spedito duce.--_Ibid._ 30.

_Sordello eyeing the travellers_:

Venimmo a lei: o anima Lombarda,
Come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa,
E nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda.
Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa,
Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando,
A guisa di leon quando si posa.--_Purg._ 6.

_the angel moving "dry-shod" over the Stygian pool_:

_Dal volto rimovea quell'aer grasso
Menando la sinistra innanzi spesso_,
E sol di quell'angoscia parea lasso.
Ben m'accorsi ch'egli era del ciel messo,
E volsimi al maestro; e quei fe' segno
Ch'io stessi cheto ed inchinassi ed esso.
Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno.

* * * *

Poi si rivolse per la strada lorda,
E non fe' motto a noi, ma fe' sembiante
D'uomo cui altra cura stringa e morda
Che quella di colui che gli è davante.--_Inf._ 9.]

And he has anticipated the latest schools of modern poetry, by making not merely nature, but science tributary to a poetry with whose general aim and spirit it has little in common--tributary in its exact forms, even in its technicalities. He speaks of the Mediterranean Sea, not merely as a historian, or an observer of its storms or its smiles, but as a geologist;[147] of light, not merely in its beautiful appearances, but in its natural laws.[148] There is a charm, an imaginative charm to him, not merely in the sensible magnificence of the heavens, "in their silence, and light, and watchfulness," but in the system of Ptolemy and the theories of astrology; and he delights to interweave the poetry of feeling and of the outward sense with the grandeur--so far as he knew it--of order, proportion, measured magnitudes, the relations of abstract forces, displayed on such a scene as the material universe, as if he wished to show that imagination in its boldest flight was not afraid of the company of the clear and subtle intellect.

[Footnote 147: _La maggior valle_, in che l'acqua si spandi.--_Parad._ 9.]

[Footnote 148: _E.g._ _Purg._ 15.]

Indeed the real never daunts him. It is his leading principle of poetic composition, to draw out of things the poetry which is latent in them, either essentially, or as they are portions, images, or reflexes of something greater--not to invest them with a poetical semblance, by means of words which bring with them poetical associations, and have received a general poetical stamp. Dante has few of those indirect charms which flow from the subtle structure and refined graces of language--none of that exquisitely-fitted and self-sustained mechanism of choice words of the Greeks--none of that tempered and majestic amplitude of diction, which clothes, like the folds of a royal robe, the thoughts of the Latins--none of that abundant play of fancy and sentiment, soft or grand, in which the later Italian poets delighted. Words with him are used sparingly, never in play--never because they carry with them poetical recollections--never for their own sake; but because they are instruments which will give the deepest, clearest, sharpest stamp of that image which the poet's mind, piercing to the very heart of his subject, or seizing the characteristic feature which to other men's eyes is confused and lost among others accidental and common, draws forth in severe and living truth. Words will not always bend themselves to his demands on them; they make him often uncouth, abrupt, obscure. But he is too much in earnest to heed uncouthness; and his power over language is too great to allow uncertainty as to what he means, to be other than occasional. Nor is he a stranger to the utmost sweetness and melody of language. But it appears, unsought for and unlaboured, the spontaneous and inevitable obedience of the tongue and pen to the impressions of the mind; as grace and beauty, of themselves, "command and guide the eye" of the painter, who thinks not of his hand but of them. All is in character with the absorbed and serious earnestness which pervades the poem; there is no toying, no ornament, that a man in earnest might not throw into his words;--whether in single images, or in pictures, like that of the Meadow of the Heroes (_Inf._ 4), or the angel appearing in hell to guide the poet through the burning city (_Inf._ 9)--or in histories, like those of Count Ugolino, or the life of S. Francis (_Parad._ 11)--or in the dramatic scenes like the meeting of the poets Sordello and Virgil (_Purgat._ 6), or that one, unequalled in beauty, where Dante himself, after years of forgetfulness and sin, sees Beatrice in glory, and hears his name, never but once pronounced during the vision, from her lips.[149]

[Footnote 149:

Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno
La parte oriental tutta rosata,
E l'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno,
E la faccia del sol nascere ombrata,
Sì che per temperanza di vapori
L'occhio lo sostenea lunga fiata;
Così dentro una nuvola di fiori,
Che dalle mani angeliche saliva,
E ricadeva giù dentro e di fuori,
Sovra candido vel cinta d'oliva
Donna m'apparve sotto verde manto
Vestita di color di fiamma viva.
E lo spirito mio, che già cotanto
Tempo era stato che alla sua presenza
Non era di stupor, tremando, affranto.
Senza degli occhi aver più conoscenza,
Per occulta virtù, che da lei mosse,
D'antico amor senti' la gran potenza.

* * * *

Volsimi alla sinistra col rispitto,
Col quale il fantolin corre alla mamma,
Quando ha paura, o quando egli è afflitto,
Per dicere a Virgilio: Men che dramma
Di sangue m'è rimasa, che non tremi:
Conosco i segni dell'antica fiamma.
Ma Virgilio n'avea lasciati scemi
Di sè, Virgilio dolcissimo padre,
Virgilio, a cui per mia salute diemi:

* * * *

Dante, perchè Virgilio se ne vada,
Non piangere anche, non piangere ancora
Chè pianger ti convien per altra spada.

* * * *

Regalmente nell'atto ancor proterva
Continuò, come colui che dice,
E il più caldo parlar dietro reserva,
Guardami ben: ben son, ben son Beatrice:
Come degnasti d'accedere al monte?
Non sapei tu, che qui è l'uom felice?--_Purg._ 30.

But extracts can give but an imperfect notion of this grand and touching canto.]

But this, or any other array of scenes and images, might be matched from poets of a far lower order than Dante: and to specimens which might be brought together of his audacity and extravagance, no parallel could be found except among the lowest. We cannot, honestly, plead the barbarism of the time as his excuse. That, doubtless, contributed largely to them; but they were the faults of the man. In another age, their form might have been different; yet we cannot believe so much of time, that it would have tamed Dante. Nor can we wish it. It might have made him less great: and his greatness can well bear its own blemishes, and will not less meet its due honour among men, because they can detect its kindred to themselves.

The greatness of his work is not in its details--to be made or marred by them. It is the greatness of a comprehensive and vast conception, sustaining without failure the trial of its long and hazardous execution, and fulfilling at its close the hope and promise of its beginning; like the greatness--which we watch in its course with anxious suspense, and look back upon when it is secured by death, with deep admiration--of a perfect life. Many a surprise, many a difficulty, many a disappointment, many a strange reverse and alternation of feelings, attend the progress of the most patient and admiring reader of the _Commedia_; as many as attend on one who follows the unfolding of a strong character in life. We are often shocked when we were prepared to admire--repelled, when we came with sympathy; the accustomed key fails at a critical moment--depths are revealed which we cannot sound, mysteries which baffle and confound us. But the check is for a time--the gap and chasm does not dissever. Haste is even an evidence of life--the brief word, the obscure hint, the unexplained, the unfinished, or even the unachieved, are the marks of human feebleness, but are also among those of human truth. The unity of the whole is unimpaired. The strength which is working it out, though it may have at times disappointed us, shows no hollowness or exhaustion. The surprise of disappointment is balanced--there is the surprise of unimagined excellence. Powers do more than they promised; and that spontaneous and living energy, without which neither man nor poet can be trusted, and which showed its strength even in its failures, shows it more abundantly in the novelties of success--by touching sympathies which have never been touched before, by the unconstrained freshness with which it meets the proverbial and familiar, by the freedom with which it adjusts itself to a new position or an altered task--by the completeness, unstudied and instinctive, with which it holds together dissimilar and uncongenial materials, and forces the most intractable, the most unaccustomed to submission, to receive the colour of the whole--by its orderly and unmistakable onward march, and its progress, as in height, so in what corresponds to height. It was one and the same man, who rose from the despair, the agony, the vivid and vulgar horrors of the _Inferno_, to the sense and imagination of certainty, sinlessness, and joy ineffable--the same man whose power and whose sympathies failed him not, whether discriminating and enumerating, as if he had gone through them all, the various forms of human suffering, from the dull, gnawing sense of the loss of happiness, to the infinite woes of the wrecked and ruined spirit, and the coarser pangs of the material flesh; or dwelling on the changeful lights and shades of earnest repentance, in its hard, but not unaided or ungladdened struggle, and on that restoration to liberty and peace, which can change even this life into paradise, and reverse the doom which made sorrow our condition, and laughter and joy unnatural and dangerous--the penalty of that first fault, which

In pianto ed in affanno
Cambiò onesto riso e dolce giuoco:

or rising finally above mortal experience, to imagine the freedom of the saints and the peace of eternity. In this consists the greatness of his power. It is not necessary to read through the _Commedia_ to see it--open it where we please, we see that he is on his way, and whither he is going; episode and digression share in the solemnity of the general order.

And his greatness was more than that of power. That reach and play of sympathy ministered to a noble wisdom, which used it thoughtfully and consciously for a purpose to which great poetry had never yet been applied, except in the mouth of prophets. Dante was a stern man, and more than stern, among his fellows. But he has left to those who never saw his face an inheritance the most precious; he has left them that which, reflecting and interpreting their minds, does so, not to amuse, not to bewilder, not to warp, not to turn them in upon themselves in distress or gloom or selfishness; not merely to hold up a mirror to nature; but to make them true and make them hopeful. Dark as are his words of individuals, his thoughts are not dark or one-sided about mankind; his is no cherished and perverse severity--his faith is too large, too real, for such a fault. He did not write only the _Inferno_. And the _Purgatorio_ and the _Paradiso_ are not an afterthought, a feebler appendix and compensation, conceived when too late, to a finished whole, which has taken up into itself the poet's real mind. Nowhere else in poetry of equal power is there the same balanced view of what man is, and may be; nowhere so wide a grasp shown of his various capacities, so strong a desire to find a due place and function for all his various dispositions. Where he stands contrasted in his idea of human life with other poets, who have been more powerful exponents of its separate sides, is in his large and truthful comprehensiveness. Fresh from the thought of man's condition as a whole, fresh from the thought of his goodness, his greatness, his power, as well as of his evil, his mind is equally in tune when rejoicing over his restoration, as when contemplating the ruins of his fall. He never lets go the recollection that human life, if it grovels at one end in corruption and sin, and has to pass through the sweat and dust and disfigurement of earthly toil, has throughout, compensations, remedies, functions, spheres innumerable of profitable activity, sources inexhaustible of delight and consolation--and at the other end a perfection which cannot be named. No one ever measured the greatness of man in all its forms with so true and yet with so admiring an eye, and with such glowing hope, as he who has also portrayed so awfully man's littleness and vileness. And he went farther--no one who could understand and do homage to greatness in man, ever drew the line so strongly between greatness and goodness, and so unhesitatingly placed the hero of this world only--placed him in all his magnificence, honoured with no timid or dissembling reverence--at the distance of worlds, below the place of the lowest saint.

Those who know the _Divina Commedia_ best, will best know how hard it is to be the interpreter of such a mind; but they will sympathise with the wish to call attention to it. They know, and would wish others also to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of that wonderful poem. They know its austere, yet subduing beauty; they know what force there is, in its free and earnest and solemn verse, to strengthen, to tranquillise, to console. It is a small thing that it has the secret of Nature and Man; that a few keen words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them recognise, in distinct image or thought, fugitive feelings, or their unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or motion; that it has enriched the public and collective memory of society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feeling and fortune; has charmed ear and mind by the music of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its plan. But, besides this, they know how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faintheartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truths. They know how often they have found, in times of trouble, if not light, at least that deep sense of reality, permanent, though unseen, which is more than light can always give--in the view which it has suggested to them of the judgments and the love of God.[150]

[Footnote 150: It is necessary to state, that these remarks were written before we had seen the chapter on Dante in "Italy, past and present, by L. Mariotti." Had we become acquainted with it earlier, we should have had to refer to it often, in the way of acknowledgment, and as often in the way of strong protest.]

DE MONARCHIA.