DANTE.[1] (continued 2)

Thus, though he throws into symbol and image, what can only be expressed by symbol and image, we can as little forget in reading him this real world in which we live, as we can in one of Shakspere's plays. It is not merely that the poem is crowded with real personages, most of them having the single interest to us of being real. But all that is associated with man's history and existence is interwoven with the main course of thought—all that gives character to life, all that gives it form and feature, even to quaintness, all that occupies the mind, or employs the hand—speculation, science, arts, manufactures, monuments, scenes, customs, proverbs, ceremonies, games, punishments, attitudes of men, habits of living creatures. The wildest and most unearthly imaginations, the most abstruse thoughts take up into, and incorporate with themselves the forcible and familiar impressions of our mother earth, and do not refuse the company and aid even of the homeliest.

This is not mere poetic ornament, peculiarly, profusely, or extravagantly employed. It is one of the ways in which his dominant feeling expresses itself—spontaneous and instinctive in each several instance of it, but the kindling and effluence of deliberate thought, and attending on a clear purpose—the feeling of the real and intimate connexion between the objects of sight and faith. It is not that he sees in one the simple counterpart and reverse of the other, or sets himself to trace out universally their mutual correspondences; he has too strong a sense of the reality of this familiar life to reduce it merely to a shadow and type of the unseen. What he struggles to express in countless ways, with all the resources of his strange and gigantic power, is that this world and the next are both equally real, and both one—parts, however different, of one whole. The world to come we know but in "a glass darkly;" man can only think and imagine of it in images, which he knows to be but broken and faint reflections: but this world we know, not in outline, and featureless idea, but by name, and face, and shape, by place and person, by the colours and forms which crowd over its surface, the men who people its habitations, the events which mark its moments. Detail fills the sense here, and is the mark of reality. And thus he seeks to keep alive the feeling of what that world is which he connects with heaven and hell; not by abstractions, not much by elaborate and highly-finished pictures, but by names, persons, local features, definite images. Widely and keenly has he ranged over and searched into the world—with a largeness of mind which disdained not to mark and treasure up, along with much unheeded beauty, many a characteristic feature of nature, unnoticed because so common. All his pursuits and interests contribute to the impression, which, often instinctively it may be, he strives to produce, of the manifold variety of our life. As a man of society, his memory is full of its usages, formalities, graces, follies, fashions—of expressive motions, postures, gestures, looks—of music, of handicrafts, of the conversation of friends or associates—of all that passes, so transient, yet so keenly pleasant or distasteful, between man and man. As a traveller, he recalls continually the names and scenes of the world;—as a man of speculation, the secrets of nature—the phenomena of light, the theory of the planets' motions, the idea and laws of physiology. As a man of learning, he is filled with the thoughts and recollections of ancient fable and history; as a politician, with the thoughts, prognostications, and hopes, of the history of the day; as a moral philosopher he has watched himself, his external sensations and changes, his inward passions, his mental powers, his ideas, his conscience; he has far and wide noted character, discriminated motives, classed good and evil deeds. All that the man of society, of travel, of science, of learning, the politician, the moralist, could gather, is used at will in the great poetic structure; but all converges to the purpose, and is directed by the intense feeling of the theologian, who sees this wonderful and familiar scene melting into, and ending in another yet more wonderful, but which will one day be as familiar—who sees the difficult but sure progress of the manifold remedies of the Divine government to their predestined issue; and, over all, God and His saints.

So comprehensive in interest is the Commedia. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the key-note; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the Convito would show how he placed "the Divine Science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is God," in single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, as Solomon speaks, but queens, or concubines, or maidens; but she is the 'Dove,' and the 'perfect one'—'Dove,' because without stain of strife—'perfect,' because perfectly she makes us behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is at rest." But the same passage[72] shows likewise how he viewed all human knowledge and human interests, as holding their due place in the hierarchy of wisdom, and among the steps of man's perfection. No account of the Commedia will prove sufficient, which does not keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and deep spirit of faith with which it was written, and then the wide liberty of materials and means which the poet allowed himself in working out his design.

Doubtless, his writings have a political aspect. The "great Ghibelline poet" is one of Dante's received synonymes; of his strong political opinions, and the importance he attached to them, there can be no doubt. And he meant his poem to be the vehicle of them, and the record to all ages of the folly and selfishness with which he saw men governed. That he should take the deepest interest in the goings on of his time, is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother-tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained with great labour and pertinacious ingenuity—that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumph of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon, cant, and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works, by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's Historic Doubts. The fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor excuse for such perverse blindness.[73]

Dante was not a Ghibelline, though he longed for the interposition of an Imperial power. Historically he did not belong to the Ghibelline party. It is true that he forsook the Guelfs, with whom he had been brought up, and that the White Guelfs, with whom he was expelled from Florence, were at length merged and lost in the Ghibelline party[74]; and he acted with them for a time.[75] But no words can be stronger than those in which he disjoins himself from that "evil and foolish company," and claims his independence—

A te fia bello Averti fatto parte per te stesso.[76]

And it is not easy to conceive a Ghibelline partisan putting into the mouth of Justinian, the type of law and empire, a general condemnation of his party as heavy as that of their antagonists;—the crime of having betrayed, as the Guelfs had resisted, the great symbol of public right—

Omai puoi giudicar di que' cotali Ch'io accusai di sopra, e de' lor falli Che son cagion di tutti i vostri mali. L'uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli Oppone, e quel s'appropria l'altro a parte, Sì ch'è forte a veder qual più si falli. Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte Sott'altro segno; chè mal segue quello Sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte.[77]

And though, as the victim of the Guelfs of Florence, he found refuge among Ghibelline princes, he had friends among Guelfs also. His steps and his tongue were free to the end. And in character and feeling, in his austerity, his sturdiness and roughness, his intolerance of corruption and pride, his strongly-marked devotional temper, he was much less a Ghibelline than like one of those stern Guelfs who hailed Savonarola.

But he had a very decided and complete political theory, which certainly was not Guelf; and, as parties then were, it was not much more Ghibelline. Most assuredly no set of men would have more vigorously resisted the attempt to realise his theory, would have joined more heartily with all immediate opponents—Guelfs, Black, White, and Green, or even Boniface VIII.,—to keep out such an emperor as Dante imagined, than the Ghibelline nobles and potentates.

Dante's political views were a dream; though a dream based on what had been, and an anticipation of what was, in part at least, to come. It was a dream in the middle ages, in divided and republican Italy, the Italy of cities—of a real and national government, based on justice and law. It was the dream of a real state. He imagined that the Roman empire had been one great state; he persuaded himself that Christendom might be such. He was wrong in both instances; but in this case, as in so many others, he had already caught the spirit and ideas of a far-distant future; and the political organisation of modern times, so familiar to us that we cease to think of its exceeding wonder, is the practical confirmation, though in a form very different from what he imagined, of the depth and farsightedness of those expectations which are in outward form so chimerical—"i miei non falsi errori."

He had studied the "infinite disorders of the world" in one of their most unrestrained scenes, the streets of an Italian republic. Law was powerless, good men were powerless, good intentions came to naught; neither social habits nor public power could resist, when selfishness chose to have its way. The Church was indeed still the salt of the nations; but it had once dared and achieved more; it had once been the only power which ruled them. And this it could do no longer. If strength and energy had been enough to make the Church's influence felt on government, there was a Pope who could have done it—a man who was undoubtedly the most wondered at and admired of his age, whom friend or foe never characterised, without adding the invariable epithet of his greatness of soul—the "magnanimus peccator,"[78] whose Roman grandeur in meeting his unworthy fate fascinated into momentary sympathy even Dante.[79] But among the things which Boniface VIII. could not do, even if he cared about it, was the maintaining peace and law in Italian towns. And while this great political power was failing, its correlative and antagonist was paralysed also. "Since the death of Frederic II.," says Dante's contemporary, "the fame and recollections of the empire were well-nigh extinguished."[80] Italy was left without government—"come nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta"—to the mercies of her tyrants:

Che le terre d'Italia tutte piene Son di tiranni, e un Marcel diventa Ogni villan, che parteggiando viene.—Purg. 6.

In this scene of violence and disorder, with the Papacy gone astray, the empire debased and impotent, the religious orders corrupted, power meaning lawlessness, the well-disposed become weak and cowardly, religion neither guide nor check to society, but only the consolation of its victims—Dante was bold and hopeful enough to believe in the Divine appointment, and in the possibility, of law and government—of a state. In his philosophy, the institutions which provide for man's peace and liberty in this life are part of God's great order for raising men to perfection;—not indispensable, yet ordinary parts; having their important place, though but for the present time; and though imperfect, real instruments of His moral government. He could not believe it to be the intention of Providence, that on the introduction of higher hopes and the foundation of a higher society, civil society should collapse and be left to ruin, as henceforth useless or prejudicial in man's trial and training; that the significant intimations of nature, that law and its results, justice, peace, and stability, ought to be and might be realised among men, had lost their meaning and faded away before the announcement of a kingdom not of this world. And if the perfection of civil society had not been superseded by the Church, it had become clear, if events were to be read as signs, that she was not intended to supply its political offices and functions. She had taught, elevated, solaced, blessed, not only individual souls, but society; she had for a time even governed it: but though her other powers remained, she could govern it no longer. Failure had made it certain that, in his strong and quaint language, "Virtus authorizandi regnum nostræ mortalitatis est contra naturam ecclesiæ; ergo non est de numero virtutum suarum."[81] Another and distinct organisation was required for this, unless the temporal order was no longer worthy the attention of Christians.

This is the idea of the De Monarchia; and though it holds but a place in the great scheme of the Commedia, it is prominent there also—an idea seen but in a fantastic shape, encumbered and confused with most grotesque imagery, but the real idea of polity and law, which the experience of modern Europe has attained to.

He found in clear outline in the Greek philosophy, the theory of merely human society; and raising its end and purpose, "finem totius humanæ civilitatis," to a height and dignity which Heathens could not forecast, he adopted it in its more abstract and ideal form. He imagined a single authority, unselfish, inflexible, irresistible, which could make all smaller tyrannies to cease, and enable every man to live in peace and liberty, so that he lived in justice. It is simply what each separate state of Christendom has by this time more or less perfectly achieved. The theoriser of the middle ages could conceive of its accomplishment only in one form, as grand as it was impossible—a universal monarchy.

But he did not start from an abstraction. He believed that history attested the existence of such a monarchy. The prestige of the Roman empire was then strong. Europe still lingers on the idea, and cannot even yet bring itself to give up its part in that great monument of human power. But in the middle ages the Empire was still believed to exist. It was the last greatness which had been seen in the world, and the world would not believe that it was over. Above all, in Italy, a continuity of lineage, of language, of local names, and in part of civilisation and law, forbad the thought that the great Roman people had ceased to be. Florentines and Venetians boasted that they were Romans: the legends which the Florentine ladies told to their maidens at the loom were tales of their mother city, Rome. The Roman element, little understood, but profoundly reverenced and dearly cherished, was dominant; the conductor of civilisation, and enfolding the inheritance of all the wisdom, experience, feeling, art, of the past, it elevated, even while it overawed, oppressed, and enslaved. A deep belief in Providence added to the intrinsic grandeur of the empire a sacred character. The flight of the eagle has been often told and often sung; but neither in Livy or Virgil, Gibbon or Bossuet, with intenser sympathy or more kindred power, than in those rushing and unflagging verses in which the middle-age poet hears the imperial legislator relate the fated course of the "sacred sign," from the day when Pallas died for it, till it accomplished the vengeance of heaven in Judæa, and afterwards, under Charlemagne, smote down the enemies of the Church.[82]

The following passage, from the De Monarchia, will show the poet's view of the Roman empire, and its office in the world:

To the reasons above alleged, a memorable experience brings confirmation: I mean that state of mankind which the Son of God, when He would for man's salvation take man upon Him, either waited for, or ordered when so He willed. For if from the fall of our first parents, which was the starting-point of all our wanderings, we retrace the various dispositions of men and their times, we shall not find at any time, except under the divine monarch Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, that the world was everywhere quiet. And that then mankind was happy in the tranquillity of universal peace, this all writers of history, this famous poets, this even the Scribe of the meekness of Christ has deigned to attest. And lastly, Paul has called that most blessed condition, the fulness of time. Truly time, and the things of time, were full, for no mystery of our felicity then lacked its minister. But how the world has gone on from the time when that seamless robe was first torn by the claws of covetousness, we may read, and would that we might not also see. O race of men, by how great storms and losses, by how great shipwrecks hast thou of necessity been vexed since, transformed into a beast of many heads, thou hast been struggling different ways, sick in understanding, equally sick in heart. The higher intellect, with its invincible reasons, thou reckest not of; nor of the inferior, with its eye of experience; nor of affection, with the sweetness of divine suasion, when the trumpet of the Holy Ghost sounds to thee—"Behold, how good is it, and how pleasant, brethren, to dwell together in unity."—De Monarch. lib. i. p. 54.

Yet this great Roman empire existed still unimpaired in name—not unimposing even in what really remained of it. Dante, to supply a want, turned it into a theory—a theory easy to smile at now, but which contained and was a beginning of unknown or unheeded truth. What he yearns after is the predominance of the principle of justice in civil society. That, if it is still imperfect, is no longer a dream in our day; but experience had never realised it to him, and he takes refuge in tentative and groping theory. The divinations of the greatest men have been vague and strange, and none have been stranger than those of the author of the De Monarchia. The second book, in which he establishes the title of the Roman people to Universal Empire, is as startling a piece of mediæval argument as it would be easy to find.

As when we cannot attain to look upon a cause, we commonly wonder at a new effect, so when we know the cause, we look down with a certain derision on those who remain in wonder. And I indeed wondered once how the Roman people had, without any resistance, been set over the world; and looking at it superficially, I thought that they had obtained this by no right, but by mere force of arms. But when I fixed deeply the eyes of my mind on it, and by most effectual signs knew that Divine Providence had wrought this, wonder departed, and a certain scornful contempt came in its stead, when I perceived the nations raging against the pre-eminence of the Roman people:—when I see the people imagining a vain thing, as I once used to do; when, moreover, I grieve over kings and princes agreeing in this only, to be against their Lord and his anointed Roman Emperor. Wherefore in derision, not without a certain grief, I can cry out, for that glorious people and for Cæsar, with him who cried in behalf of the Prince of Heaven, "Why did the nations rage, and the people imagine vain things; the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were joined in one against the Lord and his anointed." But (because natural love suffers not derision to be of long duration, but, like the summer sun, which, scattering the morning mists, irradiates the east with light, so prefers to pour forth the light of correction) therefore to break the bonds of the ignorance of such kings and rulers, to show that the human race is free from their yoke, I will exhort myself, in company with the most holy Prophet, taking up his following words, "Let us break their bonds, and cast away from us their yoke."—De Monarch. lib. ii. p. 58.

And to prove this pre-eminence of right in the Roman people, and their heirs, the Emperors of Christendom, he appeals not merely to the course of Providence, to their high and noble ancestry, to the blessings of their just and considerate laws, to their unselfish guardianship of the world—"Romanum imperium de fonte nascitur pietatis;"—not merely to their noble examples of private virtue, self-devotion, and public spirit—"those most sacred victims of the Decian house, who laid down their lives for the public weal, as Livy—not as they deserved, but as he was able—tells to their glory; and that unspeakable sacrifice of freedom's sternest guardians, the Catos;" not merely to the "judgment of God" in that great duel and wager of battle for empire, in which heaven declared against all other champions and "co-athletes"—Alexander, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and by all the formalities of judicial combat awarded the great prize to those who fought, not for love or hatred, but justice—"Quis igitur nunc adeo obtusæ mentis est, qui non videat, sub jure duelli gloriosum populum coronam totius orbis esse lucratum?"—not merely to arguments derived "from the principles of the Christian faith"—but to miracles. "The Roman empire," he says, "was, in order to its perfections, aided by the help of miracles; therefore it was willed by God; and, by consequence, both was, and is, of right." And these miracles, "proved by the testimony of illustrious authorities," are the prodigies of Livy—the ancile of Numa, the geese of the Capitol, the escape of Clelia, the hail-storm which checked Hannibal.[83]

The intellectual phenomenon is a strange one. It would be less strange if Dante were arguing in the schools, or pleading for a party. But even Henry of Luxemburg cared little for such a throne as the poet wanted him to fill, much less Can Grande and the Visconti. The idea, the theory, and the argument, are of the writer's own solitary meditation. We may wonder. But there are few things more strange than the history of argument. How often has a cause or an idea turned out, in the eyes of posterity, so much better than its arguments. How often have we seen argument getting as it were into a groove, and unable to extricate itself, so as to do itself justice. The everyday cases of private experience, of men defending right conclusions on wrong or conventional grounds, or in a confused form, entangled with conclusions of a like yet different nature;—of arguments, theories, solutions, which once satisfied, satisfying us no longer on a question about which we hold the same belief—of one party unable to comprehend the arguments of another—of one section of the same side smiling at the defence of their common cause by another—are all reproduced on a grander scale in the history of society. There too, one age cannot comprehend another; there too it takes time to disengage, subordinate, eliminate. Truth of this sort is not the elaboration of one keen or strong mind, but of the secret experience of many; "nihil sine ætate est, omnia tempus expectant." But a counterpart to the De Monarchia is not wanting in our own day; theory has not ceased to be mighty. In warmth and earnestness, in sense of historic grandeur, in its support of a great cause and a great idea, not less than in the thought of its motto, εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω, De Maistre's volume Du Pape, recalls the antagonist De Monarchia; but it recalls it not less in its bold dealing with facts, and its bold assumption of principles, though the knowledge and debates of five more busy centuries, and the experience of modern courts and revolutions, might have guarded the Piedmontese nobleman from the mistakes of the old Florentine.

But the idea of the De Monarchia is no key to the Commedia. The direct and primary purpose of the Commedia is surely its obvious one. It is to stamp a deep impression on the mind, of the issues of good and ill doing here—of the real worlds of pain and joy. To do this forcibly, it is done in detail—of course it can only be done in figure. Punishment, purification, or the fulness of consolation are, as he would think, at this very moment, the lot of all the numberless spirits who have ever lived here—spirits still living and sentient as himself: parallel with our life, they too are suffering or are at rest. Without pause or interval, in all its parts simultaneously, this awful scene is going on—the judgments of God are being fulfilled—could we but see it. It exists, it might be seen, at each instant of time, by a soul whose eyes were opened, which was carried through it. And this he imagines. It had been imagined before; it is the working out, which is peculiar to him. It is not a barren vision. His subject is, besides the eternal world, the soul which contemplates it; by sight, according to his figures—in reality, by faith. As he is led on from woe to deeper woe, then through the tempered chastisements and resignation of Purgatory to the beatific vision, he is tracing the course of the soul on earth, realising sin and weaning itself from it—of its purification and preparation for its high lot, by converse with the good and wise, by the remedies of grace, by efforts of will and love, perhaps by the dominant guidance of some single pure and holy influence, whether of person, or institution, or thought. Nor will we say but that beyond this earthly probation, he is not also striving to grasp and imagine to himself something of that awful process and training, by which, whether in or out of the flesh, the spirit is made fit to meet its Maker, its Judge, and its Chief Good.

Thus it seems that even in its main design, the poem has more than one aspect; it is a picture, a figure, partially a history, perhaps an anticipation. And this is confirmed, by what the poet has himself distinctly stated, of his ideas of poetic composition. His view is expressed generally in his philosophical treatise, the Convito; but it is applied directly to the Commedia, in a letter, which, if in its present form, of doubtful authenticity, without any question represents his sentiments, and the substance of which is incorporated in one of the earliest writings on the poem, Boccaccio's commentary. The following is his account of the subject of the poem:

For the evidence of what is to be said, it is to be noted, that this work is not of one single meaning only, but may be said to have many meanings ("polysensuum"). For the first meaning is that of the letter—another is that of things signified by the letter; the first of these is called the literal sense, the second, the allegorical or moral. This mode of treating a subject may for clearness' sake be considered in those verses of the Psalm, "In exitu Israel." "When Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from the strange people, Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion." For if we look at the letter only, there is here signified, the going out of the children of Israel in the time of Moses—if at the allegory there is signified our redemption through Christ—if at the moral sense there is signified to us the conversion of the soul from the mourning and misery of sin to the state of grace—if at the anagogic sense,[84] there is signified the passing out of the holy soul from the bondage of this corruption to the liberty of everlasting glory. And these mystical meanings, though called by different names, may all be called allegorical as distinguished from the literal or historical sense.... This being considered, it is plain that there ought to be a twofold subject, concerning which the two corresponding meanings may proceed. Therefore we must consider first concerning the subject of this work as it is to be understood literally, then as it is to be considered allegorically. The subject then of the whole work, taken literally only, is the state of souls after death considered in itself. For about this, and on this, the whole work turns. But if the work be taken allegorically, its subject is man, as, by his freedom of choice deserving well or ill, he is subject to the justice which rewards and punishes.[85]

The passage in the Convito is to the same effect; but his remarks on the moral and anagogic meaning may be quoted:

The third sense is called moral; that it is which readers ought to go on noting carefully in writings, for their own profit and that of their disciples: as in the Gospel it may be noted, when Christ went up to the mountain to be transfigured, that of the twelve Apostles, he took with him only three; in which morally we may understand, that in the most secret things we ought to have but few companions. The fourth sort of meaning is called anagogic, that is, above our sense; and this is when we spiritually interpret a passage, which even in its literal meaning, by means of the things signified, expresses the heavenly things of everlasting glory: as may be seen in that song of the Prophet, which says, that in the coming out of the people of Israel from Egypt, Judah was made holy and free; which although it is manifestly true according to the letter, is not less true as spiritually understood; that is, that when the soul comes out of sin, it is made holy and free, in its own power.[86]

With this passage before us there can be no doubt of the meaning, however veiled, of those beautiful lines, already referred to, in which Virgil, after having conducted the poet up the steeps of Purgatory, where his sins have been one by one cancelled by the ministering angels, finally takes leave of him, and bids him wait for Beatrice, on the skirts of the earthly Paradise:

Come la scala tutta sotto noi Fu corsa e fummo in su 'l grado superno, In me ficcò Virgilio gli occhi suoi, E disse: "Il temporal fuoco, e l'eterno Veduto hai, figlio, e se' venuto in parte Ov'io per me più oltre non discerno. Tratto t'ho qui con ingegno e con arte: Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; Fuor se' dell'erte vie, fuor se' dell'arte. Vedi il sole che 'n fronte ti riluce: Vedi l'erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli Che quella terra sol da sè produce. Mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli Che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno, Seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. Non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno: Libero, dritto, sano è tuo arbitrio, E fallo fora non fare a suo senno:— Perch'io te sopra te corono e mitrio."[87]

The general meaning of the Commedia is clear enough. But it certainly does appear to refuse to be fitted into a connected formal scheme of interpretation. It is not a homogeneous, consistent allegory, like the Pilgrim's Progress and the Fairy Queen. The allegory continually breaks off, shifts its ground, gives place to other elements, or mingles with them—like a stream which suddenly sinks into the earth, and after passing under plains and mountains, reappears in a distant point, and in different scenery. We can, indeed, imagine its strange author commenting on it, and finding or marking out its prosaic substratum, with the cold-blooded precision and scholastic distinctions of the Convito. However, he has not done so. And of the many enigmas which present themselves, either in its structure or separate parts, the key seems hopelessly lost. The early commentators are very ingenious, but very unsatisfactory; they see where we can see, but beyond that they are as full of uncertainty as ourselves. It is in character with that solitary and haughty spirit, while touching universal sympathies, appalling and charming all hearts, to have delighted in his own dark sayings, which had meaning only to himself. It is true that, whether in irony, or from that quaint studious care for the appearance of literal truth, which makes him apologise for the wonders which he relates, and confirm them by an oath, "on the words of his poem,"[88] he provokes and challenges us; bids us admire "doctrine hidden under strange verses;"[89] bids us strain our eyes, for the veil is thin:

Aguzza, qui, lettor, ben l'occhi al vero: Chè il velo è ora ben tanto sottile, Certo, che il trapassar dentro è leggiero.—Purg. c. 8.

But eyes are still strained in conjecture and doubt.

Yet the most certain and detailed commentary, one which assigned the exact reason for every image or allegory, and its place and connexion in a general scheme, would add but little to the charm or to the use of the poem. It is not so obscure but that every man's experience who has thought over and felt the mystery of our present life, may supply the commentary—the more ample, the wider and more various has been his experience, the deeper and keener his feeling. Details and links of connexion may be matter of controversy. Whether the three beasts of the forest mean definitely the vices of the time, or of Florence specially, or of the poet himself—"the wickedness of his heels, compassing him round about"—may still exercise critics and antiquaries; but that they carry with them distinct and special impressions of evil, and that they are the hindrances of man's salvation, is not doubtful. And our knowledge of the key of the allegory, where we possess it, contributes but little to the effect. We may infer from the Convito[90] that the eyes of Beatrice stand definitely for the demonstrations, and her smiles for the persuasions of wisdom; but the poetry of the Paradiso is not about demonstrations and persuasions, but about looks and smiles; and the ineffable and holy calm—"serenitatis et æternitatis afflatus"—which pervades it, comes from the sacred truths, and holy persons, and that deep spirit of high-raised yet composed devotion, which it requires no interpreter to show us.

Figure and symbol, then, are doubtless the law of composition in the Commedia; but this law discloses itself very variously, and with different degrees of strictness. In its primary and most general form, it is palpable, consistent, pervading. There can be no doubt that the poem is meant to be understood figuratively—no doubt of what in general it is meant to shadow forth—no doubt as to the general meaning of its parts, their connexion with each other. But in its secondary and subordinate applications, the law works—to our eye at least—irregularly, unequally, and fitfully. There can be no question that Virgil, the poet's guide, represents the purely human element in the training of the soul and of society, as Beatrice does the divine. But neither represent the whole; he does not sum up all appliances of wisdom in Virgil, nor all teachings and influences of grace in Beatrice; these have their separate figures. And both represent successively several distinct forms of their general antitypes. They have various degrees of abstractness, and narrow down, according to that order of things to which they refer and correspond, into the special and the personal. In the general economy of the poem, Virgil stands for human wisdom in its widest sense; but he also stands for it in its various shapes, in the different parts. He is the type of human philosophy and science.[91] He is, again, more definitely, that spirit of imagination and poetry, which opens men's eyes to the glory of the visible, and the truth of the invisible; and to Italians, he is a definite embodiment of it, their own great poet, "vates, poeta noster."[92] In the Christian order, he is human wisdom, dimly mindful of its heavenly origin—presaging dimly its return to God—sheltering in heathen times that "vague and unconnected family of religious truths, originally from God, but sojourning without the sanction of miracle or visible home, as pilgrims up and down the world."[93] In the political order, he is the guide of law-givers, wisdom fashioning the impulses and instincts of men into the harmony of society, contriving stability and peace, guarding justice; fit part for the poet to fill, who had sung the origin of Rome, and the justice and peace of Augustus. In the order of individual life, and the progress of the individual soul, he is the human conscience witnessing to duty, its discipline and its hopes, and with yet more certain and fearful presage, to its vindication; the human conscience seeing and acknowledging the law, but unable to confer power to fulfil it—wakened by grace from among the dead, leading the living man up to it, and waiting for its light and strength. But he is more than a figure. To the poet himself, who blends with his high argument his whole life, Virgil had been the utmost that mind can be to mind—teacher, quickener and revealer of power, source of thought, exemplar and model, never disappointing, never attained to, observed with "long study and great love:"

Tu duca, tu signor, e tu maestro.—Inf. 2.

And towards this great master, the poet's whole soul is poured forth in reverence and affection. To Dante he is no figure, but a person—with feelings and weaknesses—overcome by the vexation, kindling into the wrath, carried away by the tenderness, of the moment. He reads his scholar's heart, takes him by the hand in danger, carries him in his arms and in his bosom, "like a son more than a companion," rebukes his unworthy curiosity, kisses him when he shows a noble spirit, asks pardon for his own mistakes. Never were the kind, yet severe ways of a master, or the disciple's diffidence and open-heartedness, drawn with greater force, or less effort; and he seems to have been reflecting on his own affection to Virgil, when he makes Statius forget that they were both but shades:

Or puoi la quantitate Comprender dell'amor ch'a te mi scalda, Quando dismento la nostra vanitate Trattando l'ombre come cosa salda.—Purg. 21.

And so with the poet's second guide. The great idea which Beatrice figures, though always present, is seldom rendered artificially prominent, and is often entirely hidden beneath the rush of real recollections, and the creations of dramatic power. Abstractions venture and trust themselves among realities, and for the time are forgotten. A name, a real person, a historic passage, a lament or denunciation, a tragedy of actual life, a legend of classic times, the fortunes of friends—the story of Francesca or Ugolino, the fate of Buonconte's corpse, the apology of Pier delle Vigne, the epitaph of Madonna Pia, Ulysses' western voyage, the march of Roman history—appear and absorb for themselves all interest: or else it is a philosophical speculation, or a theory of morality, or a case of conscience—not indeed alien from the main subject, yet independent of the allegory, and not translateable into any new meaning—standing on their own ground, worked out each according to its own law; but they do not disturb the main course of the poet's thought, who grasps and paints each detail of human life in its own peculiarity, while he sees in each a significance and interest beyond itself. He does not stop in each case to tell us so, but he makes it felt. The tale ends, the individual disappears, and the great allegory resumes its course. It is like one of those great musical compositions which alone seem capable of adequately expressing, in a limited time, a course of unfolding and change, in an idea, a career, a life, a society—where one great thought predominates, recurs, gives colour and meaning, and forms the unity of the whole, yet passes through many shades and transitions; is at one time definite, at another suggestive and mysterious; incorporating and giving free place and play to airs and melodies even of an alien cast; striking off abruptly from its expected road, but without ever losing itself, without breaking its true continuity, or failing of its completeness.

This then seems to us the end and purpose of the Commedia;—to produce on the mind a sense of the judgments of God, analogous to that produced by Scripture itself. They are presented to us in the Bible in shapes which address themselves primarily to the heart and conscience, and seek not carefully to explain themselves. They are likened to the "great deep," to the "strong mountains"—vast and awful, but abrupt and incomplete, as the huge, broken, rugged piles and chains of mountains. And we see them through cloud and mist, in shapes only approximating to the true ones. Still they impress us deeply and truly, often the more deeply because unconsciously. A character, an event, a word, isolated and unexplained, stamps its meaning ineffaceably, though ever a matter of question and wonder; it may be dark to the intellect, yet the conscience understands it, often but too well. In such suggestive ways is the Divine government for the most part put before us in the Bible—ways which do not satisfy the understanding, but which fill us with a sense of reality. And it seems to have been by meditating on them, which he certainly did, much and thoughtfully—and on the infinite variety of similar ways in which the strongest impressions are conveyed to us in ordinary life, by means short of clear and distinct explanation—by looks, by images, by sounds, by motions, by remote allusion and broken words, that Dante was led to choose so new and remarkable a mode of conveying to his countrymen his thoughts and feelings and presentiments about the mystery of God's counsel. The Bible teaches us by means of real history, traced so far as is necessary along its real course. The poet expresses his view of the world also in real history, but carried on into figure.

The poetry with which the Christian Church had been instinct from the beginning, converges and is gathered up in the Commedia. The faith had early shown its poetical aspect. It is superfluous to dwell on this, for it is the charge against ancient teaching that it was too large and imaginative. It soon began to try rude essays in sculpture and mosaic: expressed its feeling of nature in verse and prose, rudely also, but often with originality and force; and opened a new vein of poetry in the thoughts, hopes, and aspirations of regenerate man. Modern poetry must go back, for many of its deepest and most powerful sources, to the writings of the Fathers, and their followers of the School. The Church further had a poetry of its own, besides the poetry of literature; it had the poetry of devotion—the Psalter chanted daily, in a new language and a new meaning; and that wonderful body of hymns, to which age after age had contributed its offering, from the Ambrosian hymns to the Veni, Sancte Spiritus of a king of France, the Pange lingua of Thomas Aquinas, the Dies iræ, and Stabat Mater, of the two Franciscan brethren, Thomas of Celano, and Jacopone.[94] The elements and fragments of poetry were everywhere in the Church—in her ideas of life, in her rules and institutions for passing through it, in her preparation for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, commercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings and ends she had given them, the religious seriousness with which the forms of each were dignified—in her doctrine, and her dogmatic system—her dependence on the unseen world—her Bible. From each and all of these, and from that public feeling, which, if it expressed itself but abruptly and incoherently, was quite alive to the poetry which surrounded it, the poet received due impressions of greatness and beauty, of joy and dread. Then the poetry of Christian religion and Christian temper, hitherto dispersed, or manifested in act only, found its full and distinct utterance, not unworthy to rank in grandeur, in music, in sustained strength, with the last noble voices from expiring Heathenism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mira Quanto è 'l convento delle bianche stole—

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

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

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

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

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

Alto sospir, che duolo strinse in hui;—Purg. 16.

or the noise of the cracking ice:

Se Tabernicch Vi fosse sù caduto, o Pietra-pana Non avria pur da l'orlo fatto cricch;—Inf. 32.

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

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

the paper changing colour when about to catch fire:

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

the steaming of the hand when bathed, in winter:

Fuman come man bagnata il verno:—

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

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

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

Come al orlo dell'acqua d'un fosso Stan gli ranocchi pur col muso fuori, Sì che celano i piedi, e l'altro grosso.—Inf. 22.[116]

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

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

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

Due e nessun l'imagine perversa Parea.—Inf. 25.

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

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

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

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

Come l'augello intra l'amate fronde, Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati, La notte, che le cose ci nasconde, Che per veder gli aspetti desiati, E per trovar lo cibo, onde li pasca, In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati, Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca, E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, Fiso guardando, pur che l'alba nasca.—Parad. 23.[119]

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

Come augelli surti di riviera Quasi congratulando a lor pasture, Fanno di sè or tonda or lunga schiera;—Parad. 18.[120]

the rooks, beginning to move about at daybreak:

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

the morning sounds of the swallow:

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

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

Qual lodoletta, che 'n aere si spazia, Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta Dell'ultima dolcezza che la sazia;—Parad. 20.[123]

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

Con l'ale aperte, e a calare intesa;—

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

Sì come quando 'l colombo si pone Presso al compagno, l'uno e l'altro pande Girando e mormorando l'affezione;—Parad. 25.[124]

or the flock of pigeons, feeding:

Adunati alla pastura, Queti, senza mostrar l'usato orgoglio.—Purg. 2.

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

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

or just unhooded, pluming itself for its flight:

Quasi falcon, ch'esce del cappello, Muove la testa, e con l'ale s'applaude, Voglia mostrando, e facendosi bello;—Parad. 19.[126]

or returning without success, sullen and loath:

Come 'l falcon ch'è stato assai su l'ali, Che senza veder logoro, o uccello, Fa dire al falconiere: Oimè tu cali! Discende lasso onde si muove snello Per cento ruote, e da lungi si pone Dal suo maestro, disdegnoso e fello.—Inf. 17.[127]

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

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

Dante uses the same images, but without copying:

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

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

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

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

Quali colombe dal disio chiamate, Con l'ali aperte e ferme al dolce nido Volan per l'aer dal voler portate.—Inf. 5.[129]

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

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

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

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

or else, bursting out suddenly over the heavens:

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

or the effect of shooting-stars:

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

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

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

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

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

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

E tutti eran già pieni Dell'alto dì i giron del sacro monte.—Purg. 19.

and veiling the sun in his own light:

Io veggio ben sì come tu t'annidi Nel proprio lume. **** Sì come 'l sol che si cela egli stessi Per troppa luce, quando 'l caldo ha rose Le temperanze de' vapori spessi.—Parad. 5.

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. 30.[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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.