Among My Books Volume Ii Part 6

[56] Vita, p. 97.

[57] Comment on Paradiso, VI.

[58] Jean de Meung had already said,--

"Ge n'en met hors rois ne prelas * * * * *

"Qu'il sunt tui serf au menu pueple."

Roman de la Rose (ed. Meon), V. ii. pp. 78, 79.

[59] Dante, Studien, etc., 1855, p. 144.

[60] Compare also Spinoza, Tractat. polit., Cap. VI.

[61] It is instructive to compare Dante's political treatise with those of Aristotle and Spinoza. We thus see more clearly the limitations of the age in which he lived, and this may help us to a broader view of him as poet.

[62] A very good one may be found in the sixth volume of the Molini edition of Dante, pp. 391-433.

[63] See Field's "Theory of Colors."

[64] As by Dante himself in the Convito.

[65] Psalm cxiv. 1, 2.

[66] He commonly prefaced his letters with some such phrase as _exul immeritus_.

[67] In order to fix more precisely in the mind the place of Dante in relation to the history of thought, literature, and events, we subjoin a few dates: Dante born, 1265; end of Crusades, death of St.

Louis, 1270; Aquinas died, 1274; Bonaventura died, 1274; Giotto born, 1276; Albertus Magnus died, 1280; Sicilian vespers, 1282; death of Ugolino and Francesca da Rimini, 1282; death of Beatrice, 1290; Roger Bacon died, 1292; death of Cimabue, 1302; Dante's banishment, 1302; Petrarch born, 1304; Fra Dolcino burned, 1307; Pope Clement V. at Avignon, 1309; Templars suppressed, 1312; Boccaccio born, 1313; Dante died, 1321; Wycliffe born, 1324; Chaucer born, 1328.

[68] Rivavol characterized only a single quality of Dante's style, who knew how to spend as well as spare. Even the Inferno, on which he based his remark, might have put him on his guard. Dante understood very well the use of ornament in its fitting place. _Est enim exornatio alicujus convenientis additio_, he tells us in his De Vulgari Eloquio (Lib. II. C. II.). His simile of the doves (Inferno, V. 82 et seq.), perhaps the most exquisite in all poetry, quite oversteps Rivarol's narrow limit of "substantive and verb."

[69] Discorso sul testo, ec., -- XVIII.

[70] Convito, B. IV. C. XXII.

[71] It is remarkable that when Dante, in 1297, as a preliminary condition to active politics, enrolled himself in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, he is qualified only with the t.i.tle _poeta_. The arms of the Alighieri (curiously suitable to him who _sovra gli altri come aquila vola_) were a wing of gold in a field of azure. His vivid sense of beauty even hovers sometimes like a _corposant_ over the somewhat stiff lines of his Latin prose. For example, in his letter to the kings and princes of Italy on the coming of Henry VII: "A new day brightens, revealing the dawn which already scatters the shades of long calamity; already the breezes of morning gather; _the lips of heaven are reddening!"_

[72] Purgatorio, x.x.xII. 100.

[73] Paradiso, I. 70.

[74] In a letter to Can Grande (XI. of the Epistolae).

[75] Witte, Wegele, and Ruth in German, and Ozanam in French, have rendered ignorance of Dante inexcusable among men of culture.

[76] Inferno, VII. 75. "Nay, his style," says Miss Rossetti, "is more than concise: it is elliptical, it is recondite. A first thought often lies coiled up and hidden under a second; the words which state the conclusion involve the premises and develop the subject." (p. 3.)

[77] A complete vocabulary of Italian billingsgate might be selected from Biagioli. Or see the concluding pages of Nannucci's excellent tract "Intorno alle voci usate da Dante," Corfu, 1840. Even Foscolo could not always refrain. Dante should have taught them to shun such vulgarities. See Inferno, x.x.x. 131-148.

[78] "My Italy, my sweetest Italy, for having loved thee too much I have lost thee, and, perhaps, ... ah, may G.o.d avert the omen! But more proud than sorrowful, for an evil endured for thee alone, I continue to consecrate my vigils to thee alone.... An exile full of anguish, perchance, availed to sublime the more in thy Alighieri that lofty soul which was a beautiful gift of thy smiling sky; and an exile equally wearisome and undeserved now avails, perhaps, to sharpen my small genius so that it may penetrate into what he left written for thy instruction and for his glory." (Rossetti, Disamina, ec., p. 405.) Bossetti is himself a proof that a n.o.ble mind need not be narrowed by misfortune. His "Comment" (unhappily incomplete) is one of the most valuable and suggestive.

[79] The great-minded man ever magnifies himself in his heart, and in like manner the pusillanimous holds himself less than he is.

(Convito, Tr. I. c. 11.)

[80] Dante's notion of virtue was not that of an ascetic, nor has any one ever painted her in colors more soft and splendid than he in the Convito. She is "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes," and he dwells on the delights of her love with a rapture which kindles and purifies. So far from making her an inquisitor, he says expressly that she "should be gladsome and not sullen in all her works."

(Convito, Tr. I. c. 8.) "Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose"!

[81] Inferno, XIX. 28, 29.

[82] Inferno, VIII. 70-75.

[83] Paradise, X. 138.

[84] Paradiso, IV. 40-45 (Longfellow's version).

[85] Marlowe's "Faustus." "Which way I fly is h.e.l.l, myself am h.e.l.l."

(Paradise Lost, IV. 75.) In the same way, _ogni dove in cielo o Paradiso_. (Paradiso, III. 88, 89.)