Chapter II: Part 2

Dante's last and most magnanimous patron was Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, who was himself a poet, and a munificent benefactor of men of letters. This nobleman was the father of Francesca di Rimini, whose fatal love has given her a place on the most splendid page of the "Divina Commedia;" no other episode being told with equal beauty and pathos: yet so brief and simple is the narrative, that, even if the circumstances were as unexceptionably pure as they are insidiously delicate, translation ought hardly to be attempted; for the labour would be fruitless. Dante himself could not have given his masterpiece in precisely corresponding terms in another language; though, had any other been his own, it need not be doubted that in it he would have found words to tell his tale as well. It is not what a poet finds a language to be, but what he makes it, that constitutes the charm, not to be imitated, of his style. This is the despair of translators, though few seem to have suspected the existence of such a secret.

The mental sufferings of the poet during his nineteen years of banishment, ending in death, oftener find utterance, through his writings, in bitter invectives and prophetic denunciations against his enemies and traducers, than in strains of lamentation; yet would his wounds bleed afresh, and the anguish of his spirit be renewed with all the tenderness of wronged but passionate attachment, at every endeared recollection of the land of his nativity;--the city where he had been cradled and had grown up--where Beatrice was born, beloved, and buried--where he had himself attained the highest honours of the state, and, in his own esteem, deserved the lasting gratitude of his fellow-citizens, instead of experiencing their implacable hatred. Haughty yet humbled, vindictive yet forgiving, it is manifest, even in his darkest moods, that his heart yearned for reconciliation; that he pined in home-sickness wherever he went, and would gladly have renounced all his wrath, and submitted to any self-denial consistent with honour, to be received back into his country. For, much as he loved the latter,--nay, madly as he loved it in his paroxysms of exasperation,--he wrapt himself up tighter in the mantle of his integrity as the storm raged more vehemently; and, as the conflict went harder against him, grasped his honour, like his sword, never to be surrendered but with life: to preserve these, he submitted to lose all beside.

Boccaccio says, that, at a certain time, some friend obtained from the Florentine government leave for Dante to return, on condition that he should remain a while in prison, then do penance at the principal church during a festival solemnity, and afterwards be exempt from further punishment for his offences against the state. As might be expected, he spurned the ignominious terms. A letter, preserved in the Laurentian library[14], seems to refer to this circumstance, which, till the modern discovery of that document, required stronger testimony than the random verbiage of Boccaccio to confirm its credibility. It is addressed to a correspondent at Florence, whom the writer styles "father." The following are extracts; the original is in Latin. Having alluded to some overtures for pardon and return, nearly corresponding with those above mentioned, he proceeds:--

"Can such a recall to his country, after fifteen years' exile, be glorious to Dante Alighieri? Has innocence, which is manifest to every one,--have toil and fatigue in perpetuated studies, merited this? Away from the man trained up in philosophy, the dastard humiliation of an earth-born heart, that, like some petty pretender to knowledge, or other base wretch, he should endure to be delivered up in chains! Away from the man who demands justice, the thought that, after having suffered wrong, he should make terms by his money with those who have injured him, as though they had done righteously!--No, father! this is not the way of return to my country for me. Yet, if you, or any body else, can find another which shall not compromise the fame and the honour of Dante, I will not be slow to take it. But if by such an one he may not return to Florence,--to Florence he will never return. What then? May I not every where behold the sun and the stars? Can I not every where under heaven meditate on the most noble and delightful truths, without first rendering myself inglorious, aye infamous, before the people and city of Florence,--and this, for fear I should want bread!"

Far different return to Florence, and far other scene in his favourite church there, had he sometimes ventured to anticipate as possible. This we learn from the opening of the twenty-fifth canto of the "Paradiso," where, even in the presence of Beatrice and St. Peter, he thus unbosoms the long-cherished hope; conscious of high desert, as well as grievous injustice, which he would nevertheless most fervently forgive, could restoration to his country be obtained on terms "consistent with the fame and honour of Dante."

"If e'er the sacred song, which heaven arid earth Have lent a hand to frame,--which, many a year, Hath kept me lean with thought,--o'ercome the rage That bars re-entrance to the lovely fold, Where, like a lamb, I slept; the foe of wolves, Waging inveterate war against its life; With other voice, with other fleece, will I Return, a poet, and receive the laurel At that baptismal font, where I was brought Into the faith which makes souls dear to God."[15]

In the same church here alluded to (San Giovanni), at Florence, there remained till lately a stone-remembrancer of Dante, in his prosperous days, scarcely less likely than "storied urn or animated bust," to awaken that sweet and voluntary sadness by which we love to associate dead things with the memory of those who once have lived. This was no other than an ancient bench of masonry which ran along the wall,

"South of the church, east of the belfry-tower,"

on which, according to long-believed tradition, the future poet of the other world was wont to

"Sit conversing in the sultry time,"

with those,

"Who little thought that in his hand he held The balance, and assign'd, at his good pleasure, To each his place in the invisible world."

ROGER's _Italy._

Here also, according to his own record, in rescuing a child which had fallen into the water, he accidentally broke one of the baptismal fonts,--a circumstance which seems to have been maliciously misrepresented as an act of wilful sacrilege. His stern anxiety to clear himself is characteristically indicated by the brief but dignified attestation of the real fact, in the last line of the following singular parallel between objects not otherwise likely to be brought into comparison with each other. Describing the wells in which; head-downward, simoniacal offenders (among the rest pope Nicholas III.) were tormented with flames, that glanced from heel to toe along the up-turned soles of their feet, he says,--

"The sides and bottom of that livid rock Were scoop'd into round holes, of equal size, Which seem'd not less nor larger than the fonts For baptism, in my beautiful St. John's; And one of which, not many years ago, I broke to save a drowning child from death: --Be this my seal to undeceive the world."[16]

_Dell' Inferno_, canto XIX.

Dante resided several years at Ravenna, with the noble-minded Guido da Polenta, who, of his own accord, had invited him thither, and who, to the last moment of his life, made him feel no other burden in his service than gratitude for benefits bestowed with such a grace as though the giver, and not the receiver, were laid under obligation. By him being sent on an embassy to Venice, with the government of which Guido had an unhappy dispute, Dante not only failed to accomplish a reconciliation, but was even refused an audience, and compelled to return by land for fear of the enemy's fleet, which had already commenced hostilities along the coast. He arrived at Ravenna broken-hearted with the disappointment, and died soon afterwards,--according to his epitaph, on the 14th of September, 1321, though some authorities date his demise in July preceding.

The remains of the illustrious poet were buried with a splendour honourable to his name and worthy of his patron, who himself pronounced the funeral eulogium of his departed guest. His own countrymen, who had hardened their hearts against justice and humanity, in resistance of his return amongst them while living, soon after his death became sensible of their folly, and too late repented it. Embassy on embassy, during the two succeeding centuries, failed to recover the bones of their outcast fellow-citizen from his hospitable entertainers; and Florence has less to boast of in having given him birth, than Ravenna for having given him burial. One of those fruitless negotiations was conducted under the auspices of Leo X., and more illustriously sanctioned by Michael Angelo, an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, who offered to adorn the shrine, had the desired relics been obtained. The mighty sculptor,--himself the Dante of marble, simple, severe, sublime in style, and preternatural almost from the fulness of reality condensed in his ideal forms,--in many of his works, both of the chisel and the pencil, introduced figures suggested by images of the poet, or directly embodying such. Most conspicuous among these were the statues of Leah and Rachel, from the twenty-seventh canto of the "Purgatorio," on the monument of pope Julius II. His own copy of the "Divina Commedia" was embellished down the margin with sketches from the subjects of the text; and, had it been preserved, would surely have been classed with the most precious of those books for which collectors are eager to give ten times or more their weight in gold. The fate of this volume was not less singular than its good fortune; after having been made inestimable by the hand of Michael Angelo, it was lost at sea, and thus added to the treasures of darkness one of the richest spoils that ever went down from the light.

It was the purpose of Guido da Polenta to erect a gorgeous sepulchre over the ashes of the poet; but he neither reigned nor lived to accomplish this, being soon afterwards driven from his dominions, and dying himself a banished man at Bologna. More than a hundred and fifty years later, Bernardo Bembo, father of the famous cardinal, completed Polenta's design, though upon an inferior scale; and three centuries more had elapsed, when cardinal Gonzaga raised a second and far more sumptuous monument in the same place,--Ravenna; while in Florence, to this day, there is none worthy of itself or the poet, who had been in turn "its glory and its shame." The greatest honours conferred on his memory by his native city were, the restoration to his family of his confiscated property, after a lapse of forty years, the erection of a bust crowned with laurel, at the public expense, a present from the state of ten golden florins to his daughter by the hands of Boccaccio, and the appointment of a public lecturer to expound the mysteries of the "Divina Commedia." Boccaccio was the first professor who filled this chair of poetry, philosophy, and theology. He commenced his dissertations on a Sunday, in the church of St. Stephen, but died at the end of two years, having proceeded no further than the seventeenth Canto of the "Inferno." Similar institutions were adopted in Bologna, Pisa, Venice, and other Italian towns; so that the renown of the man who had lived by sufferance, died an outlaw, and been indebted to strangers for a grave, exceeded, within two centuries, that of all his countrymen who in polite literature had gone before him, and became the load-star of all who, in any age, should follow. At Rome only the memory of the Ghibelline bard was execrated, and his writings were proscribed. His book "De Monarchia" was publicly burnt there, by order of pope John XXII., who also sent a cardinal to the successor of Guido da Polenta, to demand his bones, that they might be dealt with as those of an heretic, and the ashes scattered on the wind. How impotent is the vengeance of the great after the death of the object of their displeasure! What a refuge, especially to fame, is the grave; a sanctuary which can never be violated; for all human passions die on its threshold!

Boccaccio, the earliest of his biographers, though not the most authentic, says, that in person Dante was of middle stature; that he stooped a little from the shoulders, and was remarkable for his firm and graceful gait. He always dressed in a manner peculiarly becoming his rank and years. His visage was long, with an aquiline nose, and eyes rather full than small; his cheek-bones large, and his upper lip projecting beyond the under; his complexion was dark; his hair and beard black, thick and curled; and his countenance exhibited a confirmed expression of melancholy and thoughtfulness. Hence one day, at Verona, as he passed a gateway, where several ladies were seated, one of them exclaimed, "There goes the man who can take a walk to hell, and back again, whenever he pleases, and bring us news of every thing that is doing there." On which another, with equal sagacity, added, "That must be true; for don't you see how his beard is frizzled, and his face browned, with the heat and the smoke below!" The words, whether spoken in sport or silliness, were overheard by the poet, who, as the fair slanderers meant no malice, was quite willing that they should please themselves with their own fancies. Towards the opening of the "Purgatorio" there is an allusion to the soil which his face had contracted on his journey with Virgil through the nether world:--

"High morn had triumph'd o'er the glimmering dawn Which fled before her, so that I discern'd The _tremble_ of the ocean from afar: We walk'd along the solitary plain, Like men retracing their erratic steps, Who think all lost till they regain the path. Arriving where the dew-drops with the sun Contended, and lay thick beneath the shade, Both hands my master delicately spread Upon the grass:--aware of his intent, I turn'd to him my tearful countenance, And thence he wiped away the dusky hue, With which the infernal air had sullied it."[17]

In his studies, Dante was so eager, earnest, and indefatigable, that his wife and family often complained of his unsocial habits. Boccaccio mentions, that once, when he was at Siena, having unexpectedly found at a shop window a book which he had not seen, but had long coveted, he placed himself on a bench before the door, at nine o'clock in the morning, and never lifted up his eyes from the volume till vespers, when he had run through the whole contents with such intense application, as to have totally disregarded the festivities of processions and music which had been passing through the streets the greater part of the day; and when questioned about what had happened even in his presence, he denied having had knowledge of any thing but what he was reading. As might be expected from his other habits, he rarely spoke, except when personally addressed, or strongly moved, and then his words were few, well chosen, weighty, and expressed in tones of voice accommodated to the subject. Yet when it was required, his eloquence brake forth with spontaneous felicity, splendour, and exuberance of diction, imagery, and thought.

Dante delighted in music. The most natural and touching incident in his "Purgatorio" is the interview between himself and his friend Casella; an eminent singer in his day, who must, notwithstanding, have been forgotten within his century, but for the extraordinary good fortune which has befallen him, to be celebrated by two of the greatest poets of their respective countries, (Dante and Milton) from whose pages his name cannot soon perish.

Choosing to excel in all the elegancies of life, as well as in gentlemanly exercises and intellectual prowess, Dante attached himself to painting not less than to music, and practised it with the pencil (not, indeed, so triumphantly as with the pen, his picture-poetry being unrivalled,) with sufficient facility and grace to make it a favourite amusement in private; and none can believe that he could amuse himself with what was worthless. His four celebrated contemporaries, Cimabue, Odorigi, Franco Bolognese, and Giotto, are all honourably mentioned by him in the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio."

There is an interesting allusion to the employment which he loved in the "Vita Nuova:--On the day that completed the year after this lady (Beatrice) had been received among the denizens of eternal life, while I was sitting alone, and recalling her form to my remembrance, I drew an angel on a certain tablet," &c. It may be incidentally observed, that Dante's angels are often painted with unsurpassable beauty as well as inexhaustible variety of delineation throughout his poem, especially in canto IX. of the "Inferno," and cantos II. VIII. XII. XV. XVII. XXIV. of the "Purgatorio." Take six lines of one of these portraits; though the inimitable original must consume the unequal version.

"A noi venia la creatura bella, Bianco vestita, e nella faccia, quale Par, tremolando, mattutina stella: Le braccia aperse, e indi aperse l'ale; Disse; 'Venite; qui son presso i gradi, E agevolmente ornai si sale.'"

_Dell' Purgatorio_, canto XII.

"That being came, all beautiful, to meet us, Clad in white raiment, and the morning star Appear'd to tremble in his countenance; His arms he spread, and then he spread his wings And cried, 'Come on, the steps are near at hand. And here the ascent is easy.'"

Leonardo Aretino, who had seen Dante's handwriting, mentions, with no small commendation, that the letters were long; slender, and exceedingly distinct,--the characteristics of what is called in ornamental writing a fine Italian hand. The circumstance may seem small, but it is not insignificant as a finishing stroke in the portraiture of one who, though he was the first poet unquestionably, and not the last philosopher, was also one of the most accomplished gentlemen of his age.

Two of Dante's sons, Pietro and Jacopo, inherited a portion of their father's spirit, and were among the first commentators on his works,--an inestimable advantage to posterity, since the local and personal histories were familiar to them; for had these not been explained by contemporaries, many of the brief and more exquisite allusions must have been irrecoverably lost, and some of the most affecting passages remained as uninterpretable as though they had been carved on granite in hieroglyphics. For example, in the fifth canto of the "Purgatorio," the travellers meet three spirits together,--the first, Giacopo del Cassero of Fano, who had been assassinated by order of a prince of Ferrara, for having spoken ill of his highness;--the second, Buonconte, of Montefeltro, who had fallen fighting on the side of the Aretines, in the battle of Campaldino; and for whose soul a singular contention took place between a good angel and an evil one, in which the former happily prevailed;--the third shade was that of a female of rank, who, having quietly waited till the two gentlemen had told their tales, thus emphatically hinted hers:--

"Ah! when thou hast return'd to yonder world, And art reposing from thy long, long journey, Remember me, for I am Pia:-- * * * * * Siena gave me birth, Maremma death, And this _he_ knows, who, with his ring and jewel, But newly had espoused me."[18]

This unfortunate lady was the bride of Nello della Pietra, a grandee of Siena, who, becoming jealous of her, removed his predestined victim to the putrid marshes of Maremma, where she soon drooped and died, without suspicion on her part, or intimation on his, of the hideous purpose for which she had been hurried thither; her gloomy keeper, with a dreadful eye, watching her life go out like a lamp in a charnel-vault, and after her death abandoning himself to despair.--One of Dante's sons above mentioned (Pietro) was an eminent lawyer at Verona, and enjoyed the friendship of Petrarch, who dedicated some lines to him, at Trevizi, in 1361. Jacopo is said to have been a writer of Italian verse. Of three others, almost nothing is known, except that they died young. His daughter Beatrice, so named after his _first_ love, took the veil in the convent of St. Stefano del' Uliva, at Ravenna.

Dante was the author of two Latin treatises,--the one already noticed, "De Monarchia;" and another, "De Vulgari Eloquio," on the structure of language in general, and that of Italy in particular. But for his celebrity he is indebted solely to his productions in the latter tongue, consisting of "La Vita Nuova," a reverie of fact and fable, in prose and rhyme, referring to his youthful love;--"Canzoni[19] and Sonnets" of which his lady was the eternal theme;--"Il Convito," a critical and mystical commentary on three of his lyrics;--and the "Divina Commedia, or Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise," by the glory of which its forerunners have been at once eclipsed and kept in mid-day splendour, instead of glimmering through that doubtful twilight of obscure fame among the feeble productions of contemporaries, which must have been their lot but for such fortunate alliance.

The prose of the "Vita Nuova" and the "Convito" is deemed, at this day, not only nervous and racy, but in a high degree pure and elegant Italian; while much greater praise may be unhesitatingly bestowed upon his verse. Whether employed upon the arbitrary structure of Canzoni, the love-knot form of the sonnet, or the interminable chain of _terze rime_, (the triple intertwisted rhyme of the "Divina Commedia," which Dante is supposed to have invented,) his language is not more antiquated to his countrymen than the English of Shakspeare is to ours. The limits of the present essay preclude further notice of his lyrics than the general remark, that they have all the stately, brief, sententious character of his heroics, with occasional strokes of natural tenderness, and not unfrequently exhibit a delicacy of thought so pure, graceful, and unaffected, that Petrarch himself has seldom reached it in his more ornate and laboured compositions.

Dante did more than either his predecessors or contemporaries had done to improve, ennoble, and refine his native idiom; indeed he was wont to speak indignantly of those who would degrade it below the Provençal, the fashionable vehicle of verse in that age of transition, when the young languages of modern Europe, begotten between the stern tongues of the north and the classic ones of the south, were growing up together, on both sides of the Alps and the Pyrenees, like children in rivalry of each other, as the nations that spoke them respectively, so often intermingled in war or in peace. At the close of canto XXVI. of the "Purgatorio," Arnauld Daniel is introduced as the master-minstrel of the age gone by, singing some lines in a "Babylonish dialect," partly Provençal and partly Catalonian; pitting infamous French against the worst kind of Spanish (according to P. P. Venturi); and these certainly present a striking contrast of barbarous dissonance with the full-toned Tuscan of the context.

Like our Spenser, Dante took many freedoms with the extant Italian, which no later writer could have used. For the sake of euphony, emphasis, or rhyme, he occasionally modified words and terminations to serve a present purpose only, and which he himself rejected elsewhere. In this he was justified: he ran through the whole compass of his native vocabulary, he tried every note of the diapason, and all that were most pure, harmonious, or energetic, he sanctioned, by employing them in his song, which gave them a voice through after ages, so that few, comparatively very few, have been entirely rejected by his most fastidious successors. It was well for the poetry of his country that he wrote his immortal work in its language; for neither Petrarch nor Boccaccio could have gone so far as they did in perfecting it, if they had not had so great a model, not to equal only but to excel. They, indeed, affected to think little of their vernacular writings, and pretended merely to amuse themselves with such compositions as every body could read. Dante himself began his poem in Latin; and if he had gone forward, the finishing stroke of the last line would have been a _coup-de-grace_, which it could never have survived.[20]

Of the origin of the "Divina Commedia" it would be in vain to speculate here; the author himself, probably, could not have traced the first idea. Such conceptions neither come by inspiration nor by chance:--who can recollect the moment when he began to think, yet all his thoughts have been consecutively allied to that? Many visions and allegories had appeared before Dante's; and in several of these were gross representations of the spiritual world, especially of purgatory, the reality of which, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was urged upon credulity with extraordinary zeal and perseverance by a corrupt hierarchy. By all these rather than by one his mind might have been prepared for the work.

Seven cantos of the "Inferno" are understood to have been written before the author's banishment; it is manifest, however, that if this were the case they must have been considerably altered afterwards; indeed the whole character of the poem, however the original outline may have been followed, must have undergone a very remarkable, and (afflictive as the occasion may have been for himself) a very auspicious change, from his misfortunes. To the latter, his poem owes many of its most splendid passages, and almost all its personal interest; an interest wherein consists, if not its _principal_, its _prevailing_ and preserving charm. Had the whole been composed in prosperity, amidst honours, and affluence, and learned ease, in his native city, it would no doubt have been a mighty achievement of genius; but much that enhances and endears both its moral and its fable could never have been suggested, indeed would not have existed, under happier circumstances. That moral, indeed, is often as mistaken as that fable is monstrous; but the one and the other should be judged according to the times. The poet's romantic and unearthly love to Beatrice would have wanted that sombre and terrible relief which is now given to it by the gloom of his own character, the expression of his feelings under the sense of unmerited wrongs, invectives thundered out against his persecutors, and exposures of atrocities which were every-day deeds of every-day men, in those distracted countries, of which his poem has left such fearful records.

Much unsatisfactory discussion has arisen upon the title "Divina Commedia," which Dante gave to his poem; it being presumed that he had never seen a regular drama either in letter or exhibition, as the Greek and Latin authors of that class were scarcely known in Italy till after his time. The religious spectacles, however, common in the darkest of the middle ages, consisting not of pantomime only, but of dialogue and song, may have suggested to him the designation as well as the subject of his strange adventure. Be this as it may, the character of the work is dramatic throughout, consisting of a series of scenes, which conduct to one catastrophe; for however miscellaneous or insulated they may seem in respect to _each other_,--in respect to _the author_ (who is his own hero, and for whose warning, instruction, and final recovery from an evil course of life, the whole are collocated,) they all bear directly upon _him_, and accomplish by just gradations the purpose for which they were intended. Dante is a changed man when he emerges, from the infernal regions in the centre of the globe, upon the shore of the island of Purgatory at the Antipodes; and is further so refined by his ascent up that perilous mount, that when he reaches the terrestrial paradise at the top, he is prepared for translation from thence through the nine spheres of the celestial universe. Many of the interviews between the visiters of the invisible worlds which they explore, and the inhabitants of these, are scenes which involve all the peculiarities of stage-exhibitions,--dialogue, action, passion,--secrecy, surprise, interruption. Examples may be named. The meeting and conversations with Sordello, in the sixth and seventh cantos of the "Purgatorio," in which there are two instances of unexpected discoveries which bring out the whole beauty and grandeur of that mysterious personage's character; as a patriot, when at the mere sound of the word "Mantua" he embraces Virgil with transport, not yet knowing, nor even enquiring, any thing further about him, except that he is his countryman; and afterwards as a poet, when, Virgil disclosing his name, Sordello is overpowered with delightful astonishment, like one who suddenly beholds something wonderful before him, and, scarcely believing his own eyes for joy, exclaims, in a breath, "It is! it is not!" (_Ell' è, non è._) The parties are thus introduced to each other. Dante and Virgil are considering which road they shall take, when the latter observes:--

"Yonder I see a spirit, fix'd in thought, Alone and gazing earnestly upon us, He will point out the readier way to take. Tow'rds him we went--Soul of a Longobardian! How didst thou stand aloof with haughty bearing, And lordly eyes, slow-moving as we moved! --He utter'd not a word, but let us pass, On-looking like a lion from his lair: But Virgil, drawing near, entreated him To show the easiest path for our ascent: Still to that meek request he answer'd not, But of our country and our way of life Enquired;--my courteous guide began then, 'Mantua'; Straight at the word, that spirit, erewhile so wrapt Within himself, sprang from his place, and cried, 'O Mantuan! I'm thy countryman, Sordello;' And one the other instantly embraced."[21]

The reserve of Sordello is generally attributed to stubbornness or pride; but is it not manifest that, on the first sight of the strangers, he had a misgiving hope (if the phrase be allowable) which he feared might deceive him, that they were countrymen of his, wherefore, absorbed in that sole idea, he disregards their question concerning the road, and directly comes to the point which he was anxious to ascertain; and this being resolved by the single word "Mantua," his soul flies forth at once to embrace the speaker?

In the tenth canto of the "Inferno," where heretics are described as being tormented in tombs of fire, the lids of which are suspended over them till the day of judgment, Dante finds Farinata d'Uberti, an illustrious commander of the Ghibellines, who, at the battle of Monte Aperto, in 1260, had so utterly defeated the Guelfs of Florence, that the city lay at the mercy of its enemies, by whom counsel was taken to raze it to the ground: but Farinata, because his bowels yearned towards his native city, stood up alone to oppose the barbarous design; and partly by menace--having drawn his sword in the midst of the assembly--and partly by persuasion, preserved the city from destruction. The interview is thus painted; but to prepare the reader for well understanding the nature of the by-play which intervenes, it is necessary to state that Cavalcante Cavalcanti, whose head appears out of an adjacent sepulchre, was the father of Guido Cavalcanti, a poet, the particular friend of Dante, and chief of the Bianchi party banished during his priorship.

"'O Tuscan! Thou, who, through this realm of fire, Alive dost walk, thus courteously conversing Pause, if it please thee, here. Thy dialect Proclaims thy lineage from that noble land, Which I, perhaps, too much have wrong'd.' "Such sounds Suddenly issued forth from one of those Sepulchral caverns.--Tremblingly I crept A little nearer to my guide, but he Cried, 'Turn again! What would'st thou do? Behold, 'Tis Farinata that hath raised himself: There may'st thou see him, upward from the loins.' Already had I fix'd mine eyes on his, Who stood, with bust and visage so erect, As though he look'd on hell itself with scorn. My master then, with prompt and resolute hands, Thrust me among the charnel-vaults towards him, Saying,--'Thy words be plain.' When I had reach'd His tombstone-foot, he look'd at me a while As in disdain, then loftily demanded-- 'Who were thine ancestors?' ----"Eager to tell, Nought I conceal'd, but utter'd all the truth. Arching his brow a little, he return'd;-- 'Bitter antagonists of mine, of me, And of my party, were thy sires; but twice I scatter'd them.' "'If scatter'd twice,' said I, 'Once and again they came from all sides back,-- A lesson which _thy_ friends have not well learn'd.' "Just then a second figure, at his side, Emerged to view; unveil'd above the chin, And kneeling, as methought.--It look'd around So wistfully, as though it hoped to find Some other with me; but, that hope dispell'd, Weeping it spake:--'If through this dungeon-gloom, Grandeur of genius guide thy venturous way, My son!--where is he?--and why not with _thee?_' Then I to him:--"Not of myself I came; He who awaits me yonder brought me hither,-- One whom perhaps thy Guido held in scorn.[22] His speech and form of penance had already Taught me his name; my words were therefore pointed. Upstarting he exclaim'd:--"How?--said'st thou _held?_ Lives he not then? and doth not heaven's sweet light Fall on his eyes?'--When I w as slow to answer, Backward he sunk, and re-appear'd no more. "Meanw'hile that other most majestic form, Near which I stood, neither changed countenance, Nor turn'd his neck, nor lean'd to either side: 'And if,' quoth he, our first debate resuming, 'They have not well that lesson learn'd, the thought Torments me more than this infernal bed: And yet, not fifty times her changing face, Who here reigns sovereign, shall be re-illumined, Ere _thou_ shalt know how hard that lesson is.[23] --But tell me,--so may'st thou return in peace To the dear world above!--why are thy people In all their acts so mad against my race?' --'The slaughter and discomfiture,' said I, 'That turn'd the river red at Mont-Aperto, Have caused such dire proscriptions in our temples.' "He shook his head, deep-sighing, then rejoin'd,-- 'I was not _there_ alone; nor without cause Engaged with others; but I _was_ alone, And stood in her defence with open brow, When all our council, with one voice, decreed That Florence should be razed from her foundation.' "'So may thy kindred find repose, as thou Shalt loose a knot which hath entangled me!' Thus I adjured him:--'ye foresee what time (If rightly I have heard) will bring to pass, But to the present, otherwise, are blind.' "'We see, like him who hath an evil eye, Far distant things,' said he; 'so highest God Enlightens us: but yet, when they approach, Or when they are, our intellect falls short; Nor can we know, save by report from others, Aught of the state of man beneath the sun. Hence may'st thou comprehend how all our knowledge Shall cease for ever from the point that shuts The portal of the future.'[24] "At that moment Compunction smote me for my recent fault, And I cried out--'Oh! tell that fallen one, His son is yet among the living.--Say, That if I falter'd to reply at first With that assurance, 'twas because my thoughts Were harass'd by the doubt which thou hast solved.'"[25]

The reader of these lines (however inferior the translation may be), cannot have failed to perceive by what natural action and speech the paternal anxiety of Cavalcante respecting his son is indicated. On his bed of torture he hears a voice which he knows to be that of his son's friend; he starts up, looks eagerly about, as expecting to see that son; but observing the friend only, he at once interrupts the dialogue with Farinata, and in broken exclamations enquires concerning him. Dante happening to employ the past tense of a verb in reference to what his "Guido" might have done, the miserable parent instantly lays hold of that minute circumstance as an intimation of his death, and asks questions of which he dreads the answers, precisely in the manner of Macduff when he learns that his wife and children had been murdered by Macbeth. The poet hesitating to reply. Cavalcante takes the worst for granted, falls back in despair, and appears not again. Thus,

"Even from _his_ tomb the voice of Nature cries."

Dante, however, at the close of the scene, unexpectedly recurs to his own fault with the tenderness of compunction and delicacy of respect due to an unfortunate being, whom he had unintentionally agonised with his silence, and sends a message to the old man that his son yet lives.[26] Contrasted with this trembling sensibility of a father's affection, stronger than death, and out-feeling the pains of hell, is the stern, calm, patient dignity of Farinata, who, though wounded to the quick by the retort of Dante at the moment when their discourse was broken upon, stands unmoved in mind, in look, in posture, till the interlude is ended; and then, without the slightest allusion to it, he takes up the suspended argument at the last words of his opponent, as though his thoughts had all the while been ruminating on the disgrace of his friends, the afflictions of his family, and the inextinguishable enmity of his countrymen against himself. His noble rejoinder, on Dante's reference to the carnage at Monte Aperto as the cause of his people's implacability, is above all praise. Indeed, it would be difficult to point out, in ancient or modern tragedy, a passage of more sublimity or pathos, in which so few words express so much, yet leave so much more to be imagined by any one who has "a human heart," as the whole of this scene in the original exhibits.

Dante's poem is certainly neither the greatest nor the best in the world; but it is, perhaps, the most extraordinary one which resolute intellect ever planned, or persevering talents successfully executed. It stands alone; and must be read and judged according to rules and immunities adapted to its peculiar structure, plot, and purpose, formed upon principles affording scope to the exercise of the highest powers, with little regard to precedent. If these principles, then, have intrinsic excellence, and the work be found uniformly consistent with them, fulfilling to the utmost the aims of the author, the "Divina Commedia" must be allowed to stand among the proudest trophies of original genius, challenging, encountering, and overcoming unparalleled difficulties. Though the fields of action, or rather of vision, are nominally Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise,--the Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell of Dante, with all their terrors, and splendours, and preternatural fictions, are but representations of scenes transacted on earth, and characters that lived antecedently or contemporaneously with himself. Though altogether _out_ of the world, the whole is of the world. Men and women seem fixed in eternal torments, passing through purifying flames, or exalted to celestial beatitude; yet in all these situations they are what they were; and It is their former history, more than their present happiness, hope, or despair, which constitutes, through a hundred cantos, the interest, awakened and kept up by the successive exhibition of more than a thousand individual actors and sufferers. Of every one of these something terrible or touching is intimated or told, briefly at the utmost, but frequently by mere hints of narrative or gleams of allusion, which excite curiosity in the breast of the reader; who is surprised at the poet's forbearance, when, in the notes of commentators, he finds complex, strange, and fearful circumstances, on which a modern versifier or novelist would expend pages, treated here as ordinary events, on which it would be impertinent to dwell. These, in the author's own age, were generally understood; the bulk of the materials being gathered up during a period of restlessness and confusion among the republican states of Italy.

Hence, though the first appearance of the "Divina Commedia," in any intelligible edition, is repulsive from the multitude of notes, and the text is not seldom difficult and dark with the oracular compression of strong ideas in few and pregnant words, yet will the toil and patience of any reader he well repaid, who perseveringly proceeds but a little way, quietly referring, as occasion may require, from the obscurity of the original to the illustrations below; for when he returns from the latter to the former (as though his own eye had been refreshed with new light, the darkness having been in it, and not in the verse), what was colourless as a cloud is radiant with beauty, and what before was undefined in form becomes exquisitely precise and symmetrical, from comprehending in so small a compass so vast a variety of thought, feeling, or fact. Dante, in this respect, must be studied as an author in a dead language by a learner, or rather as one who employs a living language on forgotten themes; then will his style grow easier and clearer as the reader grows more and more acquainted with his subject, his manner, and his materials. For whatever be the corruptions of the text (which perhaps has never been sufficiently collated), the remoteness of the allusions, and our countrymen's want of that previous knowledge of almost every thing treated upon, which best prepares the mind for the perception and highest enjoyment of poetical beauty and poetical pleasure, Dante will be found, in reality, one of the most clear, minute, and accurate writers in sentiment, as he is one of the most perfectly natural and graphic painters to the life of persons, characters, and actions. His draughts have the freedom of etchings, and the sharpness of proof impressions. His poem is well worth all the pains which the most indolent reader may take to master it.

Ordinary poetry is often striking and captivating at first view, but all its merit is at once elicited; and frequently that which charmed so much at first becomes less and less affecting, less and less defined, the more it is examined, till light turns to mist, and mist to shadow in the end; whereas the highest order of poetry--that which is _intellectual_--the longer it is dwelt upon, the lovelier, the nobler, the more delightful it appears, and when fully understood remains imperishable in its graces and effects; repetition a thousand times does not impair it; its creations, like those of nature,--familiar, indeed, as the sun and the stars,--are never less glorious and beautiful, though daily before us. Dante's poetry (extravagant and imaginative as he often may be) is thoroughly intellectual; there is no enthusiasm of feeling, but there is much of philosophical and theological subtlety, and of course much absurdity in some of his reveries; yet his passion is always pure and unaffected, his descriptions are daylight realities, and his heroes men of flesh and blood. Probably no other work of human genius so far exceeds in its development the expectation of prejudiced or unprepared readers, as the "Divina Commedia;" or performs, in fact, so much more than it seems to promise.

Dante has created a hell, purgatory, and paradise of his own; and, being satisfied with the present world as a nursery for his personages, he has peopled his ultramundane regions with these, assigning to all their abodes "sulphureous or ambrosial," or refining those who were yet corrigible after death, according to his own pleasure, his theological views, and his moral feelings. It must be confessed that, whatever were his passions, prejudices, or failings, his attachments or antipathies, as an arbiter of fate he appears honestly to have distributed justice, to the best of his knowledge, to all whom he has cited before his tribunal, leaving in the case of every one (perhaps) a judgment unimpeachable and unappealable; so forcibly does he impress the mind with the truth and reality of the evidence of their merit or turpitude, which he produces to warrant his sentences. As a man, he is, indeed, fierce, splenetic, and indignant at times, especially in execrating his countrymen for their profligacy and injustice towards himself; yet (though there may have been primary motives less noble than the apparent ones, at the bottom of his heart, unsuspected even by himself,) his anger and his vengeance seem always directed against those who deserved to be swept from the face of the earth, as venal, treacherous, parricidal wretches. With the wonders which he beheld in his invisible world, in his complicated travels through its triple round of labyrinths;--as, in hell, wheel within wheel, diminishing downward to the centre; in purgatory, circle above circle, terminating in the garden of Eden; and, in his paradise, orb beyond orb, through the solar system to the heaven of heavens, where he "presumed, an earthly guest, and drew empyreal air;"--with these he has constructed a poem of a thousand pages, exhibiting the greatest diversity of characters, scenes, circumstances, and events, that were ever embraced in an equal compass; while all are made perfectly to harmonise and conduce to one process, carried on at every step of his pilgrimage, namely, the gradual purification of the poet himself, by the examples which he sees and the lessons which he hears; as well as by the toils he undergoes, the pains he endures, and the bliss he partakes, in his long and dreary path down into the nether regions, where there is no hope; up the steep hill, where, though there is suffering, there is no fear of ultimate release; and on his flight through the "nine-enfolded spheres," where all are as happy as they can be in their present station, yet, as they pass from stage to stage, rise in capacity and means of enjoyment to fulness of felicity in the beatific vision.

Dante was the very poet, and the "Divina Commedia" the very poem, to be expected from the influence of all existing circumstances in church and state at the time when he flourished. The poet and his age were homogeneous, and his song was as truly in season as that of the nightingale in spring; the winter of barbarism had broken up, the summer heat of refinement had not yet come on: a century earlier there would have been too much ignorance, a century later too much intelligence, to form such a theme and such a minstrel; for though Dante, in any age, must have been one of its greatest bards, yet the bard that he was he could not have been in any other than that in which he lived.

Dante, as hath already been intimated, is the hero of his own poem; and the "Divina Commedia" is the only example of an attempt triumphantly achieved, and placed beyond the reach of scorn or neglect, wherein, from beginning to end, the author discourses concerning himself individually. Had this been done in any other way than the consummately simple, delicate, and unobtrusive one which he has adopted, the whole would have been insufferable egotism, disgusting coxcombry, or oppressive dulness,--whereas this personal identity is the charm, the strength, the soul of the book: he lives, he breathes, he moves through it; his pulse beats or stands still, his eye kindles or fades, his cheek grows pale with horror, colours with shame, or burns with indignation; we hear his voice, his step, in every page; we see his shape by the flames of hell, his shadow in the land where there is no _other_ shadow ("Purgatorio"), and his countenance gaining angelic elevation from "colloquy sublime" with glorified intelligences in the paradise above. Nor does he ever go out of his actual character;--he is, indeed, the lover from infancy of Beatrice, the aristocratic magistrate of a fierce democracy, the valiant soldier in the field of Campaldino, the fervent patriot in the feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines, the eloquent and subtle disputant in the schools of theology; the melancholy exile, wandering from court to court, depending for bread and shelter on petty princes who knew not his worth, except as a splendid captive in their train; and, above all (though not obtrusively so), he is the poet anticipating his own assured renown, and dispensing at his will honour or infamy to others, whom he need but to name, and the sound must be heard to the end of time, and echoed from all regions of the globe. Dante, in his vision, is Dante as he lived, as he died, and as he expected to live in both worlds beyond death,--an immortal spirit in the one, an unforgotten poet in the other. Pride of birth, consciousness of genius, religious feeling almost to fanaticism, and the sense of wrongs, under which he is alternately inflamed with rage, withered with disappointment, or saddened with despair,--these are continually reminding the reader of the man as he was; stimulating his jaded hope with the bitter sweet of revenge, which he could wreak at will upon his enemies; and solacing a wounded spirit with the thought of fame in possession, which his fellow-citizens could not confiscate, and fame in _reversion_, of which contemporaries could not cut off the entail.

Yet while he is thus in every point an individual, he is at the same time an exemplar of the whole species; and he may emphatically say to the reader who can follow him in his journeys, receive his inspirations, and share in his troubles, anxieties, joys, and disappointments:--"Am I not a man and a brother?" Dante, though in this sense the hero of his own poem, is any thing but a hero, either in the vulgar or the chivalrous sense of the term. He is a human being, with all the faults, frailties, and imperfections of our common nature, as they really existed in himself, and as they more or less exist in every other person; nor can a less sophisticated character be found in all the volumes of prose and rhyme that have appeared since this auto-biographical poem. He assumes nothing; he conceals nothing; his fears, his ignorance, his loves, and his enmities, are all undisguisedly set forth, as though he were all the while communing with his own heart, without the cowardly apprehension of blame, or the secret desire of applause from a fellow-creature. He is always, indeed, noble, manly, and candid, but travelling continually in company of some superior intelligence,--Virgil in hell and purgatory, and Beatrice in purgatory and heaven,--he always defers to the one or the other in difficulty, doubt, or danger, and clings for protection, as well as looks up for instruction, with childlike simplicity and docility; returning with the most reverent and affectionate gratitude every token of kindness received from either.

Marvellous and incredible, it must be confessed, are many of the stories which he tells; but he tells them with the plainness and straight-forwardness of a man who is speaking the truth, and nothing else, of his own knowledge.

In the last cantos of the "Purgatorio," and throughout the "Paradiso," there is a prodigious putting forth of power to describe ineffable and eternal things; with inexhaustible prodigality of illustration, and transmutation of the same symbols, to constitute different gradations of blessedness and glory. Of these, however, there are scarcely any types except light, colour, sound, and motion, variously combined to represent spiritual beings, their forms, their occupations, and manner of discoursing; but even amongst such inexpressible, nay, unimaginable scenes and passages, the human nature which cleaves to the poet, and shows itself, under every transmigration, allied to flesh and blood, gives an interest which allegorical pictures of invisible realities can never keep up beyond the first brilliant impression. Yet the vitality and strength of the poem reside chiefly in the first and second parts; diminishing just in proportion as the author rises above the regions which exhibit the sins and sufferings of creatures like ourselves, punished with everlasting destruction in hell, or "burnt and purged away," through the penal inflictions of purgatory. It may, however, be said, with regard to the whole, that no ideal beings, ideal scenes, or ideal occurrences, in any poem or romance, have ever more perfectly _personified_ truth and nature than those in this composition, which, though the theatre is figuratively beyond the limits of human action, is nevertheless full of such action in its most common as well as its most extraordinary forms.