The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 43

[bw] {248}_Star over star_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[288]

"Che sol per le belle opre Che sono in cielo, il sole e l'altre stelle, Dentro da lor _si crede il Paradiso:_ Cos se guardi fiso Pensar ben dei, che ogni terren piacere.

[Si trova in lei, ma tu nol puoi vedere."]

Canzone, in which Dante describes the person of Beatrice, Strophe third.

[Byron was mistaken in attributing these lines, which form part of a Canzone beginning "Io miro i crespi e gli biondi capegli," to Dante.

Neither external nor internal evidence supports such an ascription. The Canzone is attributed in the MSS. either to Fazio degli Uberti, or to Bindo Borrichi da Siena, but was not a.s.signed to Dante before 1518 (_Canzoni di Dante, etc._ [Colophon]. Impresso in Milano per Augustino da Vimercato ... MCCCCCXVIII ...). See, too, _Il Canzoniere di Dante_ ... Fraticelli, Firenze, 1873, pp. 236-240 (from information kindly supplied by the Rev. Philip H. Wicksteed).]

[289] ["Nine times already since my birth had the heaven of light returned to the selfsame point almost, as concerns its own revolution, when first the glorious Lady of my mind was made manifest to mine eyes; even she who was called Beatrice by many who knew not wherefore."--_La Vita Nuova,_ - 2 (Translation by D. G. Rossetti, _Dante and his Circle,_ 1892, p. 30).

"In reference to the meaning of the name, '_she who confers blessing_,'

we learn from Boccaccio that this first meeting took place at a May Feast, given in the year 1274, by Folco Portinari, father of Beatrice ... to which feast Dante accompanied his father, Alighiero Alighieri."--_Note_ by D. G. Rossetti, ibid., p. 30.]

[290] {249}

"L'Esilio che m' e dato onor mi tegno * * * * *

Cader tra' buoni e pur di lode degno."

_Sonnet of Dante_ [Canzone xx. lines 76-80, _Opere_ di Dante, 1897, p. 171]

in which he represents Right, Generosity, and Temperance as banished from among men, and seeking refuge from Love, who inhabits his bosom.

[291] [Compare--

"On the stone Called Dante's,--a plain flat stone scarce discerned From others in the pavement,--whereupon He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's Church, and pour alone The lava of his spirit when it burned: It is not cold to-day. O pa.s.sionate Poor Dante, who, a banished Florentine, Didst sit austere at banquets of the great And muse upon this far-off stone of thine, And think how oft some pa.s.ser used to wait A moment, in the golden day's decline, With 'Good night, dearest Dante!' Well, good night!"

_Casa Guidi Windows_, by E. B. Browning, _Poetical Works_, 1866, iii. 259.]

[292] {250} "Ut si quis predictorum ullo tempore in fortiam dicti communis pervenerit, _talis perveniens igne comburatur, sic quod moriatur_." Second sentence of Florence against Dante, and the fourteen accused with him. The Latin is worthy of the sentence. [The decree (March 11, 1302) that he and his a.s.sociates in exile should be burned, if they fell into the hands of their enemies, was first discovered in 1772 by the Conte Ludovico Savioli. Dante had been previously, January 27, fined eight thousand lire, and condemned to two years' banishment.]

[bx] _The ashes she would scatter_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[293] {251}[At the end of the Social War (B.C. 88), when Sulla marched to Rome at the head of his army, and Marius was compelled to take flight, he "stripped himself, plunged into the bog (_Paludes Minturnenses_, near the mouth of the Liris), amidst thick water and mud.... They hauled him out naked and covered with dirt, and carried him to Minturnae." Afterwards, when he sailed for Carthage, he had no sooner landed than he was ordered by the governor (s.e.xtilius) to quit Africa.

On his once more gaining the ascendancy and re-entering Rome (B.C. 87), he justified the ma.s.sacre of Sulla's adherents in a blood-thirsty oration. Past ignominy and present triumph seem to have turned his head ("ut erat inter iram toleratae fortunae, et laet.i.tiam emendatae, parum compos animi").--Plut., "Marius," _apud_ Langhorne, 1838, p. 304; Livii _Epit_., lx.x.x. 28.]

[by] {252}----_their civic rage_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[294] {253} This lady, whose name was _Gemma_, sprung from one of the most powerful Guelph families, named Donati. Corso Donati was the princ.i.p.al adversary of the Ghibellines. She is--described as being "_Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus,_" according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalised with Boccace, in his life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. "Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le mogli esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate, il piu n.o.bile filosofo che mai fusse, ebbe moglie e figliuoli e ufici nella Repubblica nella sua Citta; e Aristotile che, etc., etc., ebbe due moglie in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze a.s.sai.--E Marco Tullio--e Catone--e Varrone--e Seneca--ebbero moglie," etc., etc. [_Le Vite di Dante, etc._, Firenze, 1677, pp. 22, 23]. It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for anything I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands'

happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophy--Cato gave away his wife--of Varro's we know nothing--and of Seneca's, only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered and lived several years afterwards. But says Leonardo, "L'uomo e _animale civile_, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi." And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the _animal's civism_ is "la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la Citta."

[There is nothing in the _Divina Commedia_, or elsewhere in his writings, to justify the common belief that Dante was unhappily married, unless silence may be taken to imply dislike and alienation. It has been supposed that he alludes to his wife, Gemma Donati, in the _Vita Nuova_, - 36, "as a young and very beautiful lady, who was gazing upon me from a window, with a gaze full of pity," "who remembered me many times of my own most n.o.ble lady," whom he consented to serve "more because of her gentle goodness than from any choice" of his own (_Convito_, ii. 2. 7), but there are difficulties in the way of accepting this theory. There is, however, not the slightest reason for believing that the words which he put into the mouth of Jacopo Rusticucci, "La fiera moglie piu ch'altro, mi nuoce" ["and truly, my savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me"] (_Inferno_, xvi. 45), were winged with any personal reminiscence or animosity. But with Byron (see his letter to Lady Byron, dated April 3, 1820, in which he quotes these lines "with intention"

[_Letters_, 1901, v. 2]), as with Boccaccio, "the wish was father to the thought," and both were glad to quote Dante as a victim to matrimony.

Seven children were born to Dante and Gemma. Of these "his son Pietro, who wrote a commentary on the _Divina Commedia_, settled as judge in Verona. His daughter Beatrice lived as a nun in Ravenna" (_Dante_, by Oscar Browning, 1891, p. 47).]

[295] {256}[In his defence of the "mother-tongue" as a fitting vehicle for a commentary on his poetry, Dante argues "that natural love moves the lover princ.i.p.ally to three things: the one is to exalt the loved object, the second is to be jealous thereof, the third is to defend it ... and these three things made me adopt it, that is, our mother-tongue, which naturally and accidentally I love and have loved." Again, having laid down the premiss that "the magnanimous man always praises himself in his heart; and so the pusillanimous man always deems himself less than he is," he concludes, "Wherefore many on account of this vileness of mind, depreciate their native tongue, and applaud that of others; and all such as these are the abominable wicked men of Italy, who hold this precious mother-tongue in vile contempt, which, if it be vile in any case, is so only inasmuch as it sounds in the evil mouth of these adulterers."--_Il Convito_, caps. x., xi., translated by Elizabeth Price Sayer, 1887, pp. 34-40.]

[bz] ----_when matched with thine_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[296] [With the whole of this apostrophe to Italy, compare _Purgatorio_, vi. 76-127.]

[ca] _From the world's harvest_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[cb] {257}

_Where earthly Glory first then Heavenly made._-- [MS. Alternative reading.]

_Where Glory first, and then Religion made_.--[MS. erased.]

[297] [Compare--

"The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and Fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hilled City's pride."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lx.x.x. lines 1, 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 390, note 2.]

[298] {258}See "Sacco di Roma," generally attributed to Guicciardini [Francesco (1482-1540)]. There is another written by a Jacopo _Buonaparte_.

[The original MS. of the latter work is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris. It is ent.i.tled, "Ragguaglio Storico di tutto I'occorso, giorno per giorno, nel Sacco di Roma dell' anno mdxxvii., scritto da Jacopo Buonaparte, Gentiluomo Samminiatese, che vi si trovo' presente." An edition of it was printed at Cologne, in 1756, to which is prefixed a genealogy of the Buonaparte family.

The "traitor Prince" was Charles IV., Connetable de Bourbon, Comte de Montpensier, born 1490, who was killed at the capture of Rome, May 6, 1527. "His death, far from restraining the ardour of the a.s.sailants [the Imperial troops, consisting of Germans and Spanish foot], increased it; and with the loss of about 1000 men, they entered and sacked the city.... The disorders committed by the soldiers were dreadful, and the booty they made incredible. They added insults to cruelty, and scoffs to rapaciousness. Upon the news of Bourbon's death, His Holiness, imagining that his troops, no longer animated by his implacable spirit, might listen to an accommodation, demanded a parley; but ... neglected all means for defence.... Cardinals and bishops were ignominiously exposed upon a.s.ses with their legs and hands bound; and wealthy citizens ...

suspected of having secreted their effects ... were tortured ... to oblige them to make discoveries, ... the booty ... is said to have amounted to about two millions and a half of ducats."--_Mod. Univ.

History_, x.x.xvi. 512.]

[299] {259}[Cambyses, the second King of Persia, who reigned B.C.

529-532, sent an army against the Ammonians, which perished in the sands.]

[cc] ----_and his phalanx--why_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[300] [The _Prophecy of Dante_ was begun and finished before Byron took up the cause of Italian independence, or definitely threw in his lot with the Carbonari, but his intimacy with the Gambas, which dates from his migration to Ravenna in 1819, must from the first have brought him within the area of political upheaval and disturbance. A year after (April 16, 1820) he writes to Murray, "I have, besides, another reason for desiring you to be speedy, which is, that there is that brewing in Italy which will speedily cut off all security of communication.... I shall, if permitted by the natives, remain to see what will come of it, ... for I shall think it by far the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence, to see the Italians send the Barbarians of all nations back to their own dens. I have lived long enough among them to feel more for them as a nation than for any other people in existence: but they want Union [see line 145], and they want principle; and I doubt their success."--_Letters_, 1901, v. 8, note 1.]

[cd] {261} ----_of long-enduring ill._--[MS. erased.]

[ce]

----_the martyred country's gore_ _Will not in vain arise to whom belongs._--[MS. erased.]

[301] {262}Alexander of Parma, Spinola, Pescara, Eugene of Savoy, Montecuccoli.

[Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma (1546-1592), recovered the Southern Netherlands for Spain, 1578-79, made Henry IV. raise the siege of Paris, 1590, etc.

Ambrogio, Marchese di Spinola (1569-1630), a Maltese by birth, entered the Spanish service 1602, took Ostend 1604, invested Bergen-op-Zoom, etc.

Ferdinando Francesco dagli Avalos, Marquis of Pescara (1496-1525), took Milan November 19, 1521, fought at Lodi, etc., was wounded at the battle of Padua, February 24, 1525. He was the husband of Vittoria Colonna, and when he was in captivity at Ravenna wrote some verses in her honour.

Francois Eugene (1663-1736), Prince of Savoy-Carignan, defeated the French at Turin, 1706, and (with Marlborough) at Malplaquet, 1709; the Turks at Peterwardein, 1716, etc.

Raimondo Montecuccoli, a Modenese (1608-1680), defeated the Turks at St.