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dently from hearsay only,* till the time of Spenser, who, like Milton fifty years later, shows that he had read his works closely. Thenceforward for more than a century Dante became a mere name, used without meaning by literary sciolists. Lord Chesterfield echoes Voltaire, and Dr. Drake in his "Literary Hours" + could speak of Darwin's "Botanic Garden" as showing the "wild and terrible sublimity of Dante"! The first complete English translation was by Boyd, of the Inferno in 1785, There have been eight

of the whole poem in 1802. other complete translations, beginning with Cary's in 1814, six since 1850, beside several of the Inferno singly. Of these that of Longfellow is the best. It is only within the last twenty years, however, that the study of Dante, in any true sense, became at all general. Even Coleridge seems to have been familiar only with the Inferno. In America Professor Ticknor was the first to devote a special course of illustrative lectures to Dante; he was followed by Longfellow, whose lectures, illustrated by admirable translations, are remembered with grateful pleasure by many who were thus led to learn the full significance of the great Christian poet. A translation of the Inferno into quatrains by T. W. Parsons ranks with the best for spirit, faithfulness, and elegance. In Denmark and Russia translations of the Inferno have been published, beside separate volumes of comment and illustration. We have thus sketched the steady growth of Dante's fame and influence to a universality unparalleled except in the case of Shakespeare, perhaps more remarkable if we consider the abstruse and mystical nature of his poetry. It is to be noted as characteristic

* It is possible that Sackville may have read the Inferno, and it is certain that Sir John Harrington had. See the preface to his translation of the Orlando Furioso.

† Second edition, 1800.

that the veneration of Dantophilists for their master is that of disciples for their saint. Perhaps no other man could have called forth such an expression as that of Ruskin, that "the central man of all the world, as rep resenting in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante."

The first remark to be made upon the writings of Dante is that they are all (with the possible exception of the treatise De Vulgari Eloquio) autobiographic, and that all of them, including that, are parts of a mutually related system, of which the central point is the individuality and experience of the poet. In the Vita Nuova he recounts the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, showing how his grief for her loss turned his thoughts first inward upon his own consciousness, and, failing all help there, gradually upward through philosophy to religion, and so from a world of shadows to one of eternal substances. It traces with exquisite unconsciousness the gradual but certain steps by which memory and imag ination transubstantiated the woman of flesh and blood into a holy ideal, combining in one radiant symbol of sorrow and hope that faith which is the instinctive refuge of unavailing regret, that grace of God which higher natures learn to find in the trial which passeth all understanding, and that perfect womanhood, the dream of youth and the memory of maturity, which beckons toward the forever unattainable. As a contribution to the physiology of genius, no other book is to be compared with the Vita Nuova. It is more important to the understanding of Dante as a poet than any other of his works. It shows him (and that in the midst of affairs demanding practical ability and presence of mind) capable of a depth of contemplative abstraction, equalling that of a Soofi who has passed the fourth step of initiation. It enables us in some

sort to see how, from being the slave of his imaginative faculty, he rose by self-culture and force of will to that mastery of it which is art. We comprehend the Commedia better when we know that Dante could be an active, clear-headed politician and a mystic at the same time. Various dates have been assigned to the composition of the Vita Nuova. The earliest limit is fixed by the death of Beatrice in 1290 (though some of the poems are of even earlier date), and the book is commonly assumed to have been finished by 1295; Foscolo says 1294. But Professor Karl Witte, a high authority, extends the term as far as 1300.* The title of the book also, Vita Nuova, has been diversely interpreted. Mr. Garrow, who published an English version of it at Florence in 1846, entitles it the "Early Life of Dante." Balbo understands it in the same way. But we are strongly of the opinion that "New Life" is the interpretation sustained by the entire significance of the book itself.

His next work in order of date is the treatise De Monarchia. It has been generally taken for granted that Dante was a Guelph in politics up to the time of his banishment, and that out of resentment he then became a violent Ghibelline. Not to speak of the consideration that there is no author whose life and works present so remarkable a unity and logical sequence as those of Dante, Professor Witte has drawn attention to a fact which alone is enough to demonstrate that the De Monarchid was written before 1300. That and the Vita Nuova are the only works of Dante in which no allusion whatever is made to his exile. That bitter thought was continually present to him. In the Convito it betrays

* Dante Alighieri's lyrische Gedichte, Leipzig, 1842, Theil II. pp. 4-9.

† Vita, p. 97.

itself often, and with touching unexpectedness. Even in the treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, he takes as one of his examples of style: "I have most pity for those, whosoever they are, that languish in exile, and revisit their country only in dreams." We have seen that the one decisive act of Dante's priorate was to expel from Florence the chiefs of both parties as the sowers of strife, and he tells us (Paradiso, XVII.) that he had formed a party by himself. The king of Saxony has well defined his political theory as being "an ideal Ghibellinism "* and he has been accused of want of patriotism only by those short-sighted persons who cannot see beyond their own parish. Dante's want of faith in freedom was of the same kind with Milton's refusing (as Tacitus had done before) to confound license with liberty. The argument of the De Monarchid is briefly this: As the object of the individual man is the highest development of his faculties, so is it also with men united in societies. But the individual can only attain the highest development when all his powers are in absolute subjection to the intellect, and society only when it subjects its individual caprices to an intelligent head. This is the order of nature, as in families, and men have followed it in the organization of villages, towns, cities. Again, since God made man in his own image, men and societies most nearly resemble him in proportion as they approach unity. But as in all societies questions must arise, so there is need of a monarch for supreme arbiter. And only a universal monarch can be impartial enough for this, since kings of limited territories would always be liable to the temptation of private ends. With the internal policy of municipalities, commonwealths, and kingdoms, the monarch would have nothing to do, only interfering when there was danger of an infraction of the * Comment on Paradiso, VI.

general peace. This is the doctrine of the first book, enforced sometimes eloquently, always logically, and with great fertility of illustration. It is an enlargement of some of the obiter dicta of the Convito. The earnestness with which peace is insisted on as a necessary postulate of civic well-being shows what the experience had been out of which Dante had constructed his theory. It is to be looked on as a purely scholastic demonstration of a speculative thesis, in which the manifold exceptions and modifications essential in practical application are necessarily left aside. Dante almost forestalls the famous proposition of Calvin, "that it is possible to conceive a people without a prince, but not a prince without a people," when he says, Non enim gens propter regem, sed e converso rex propter gentem.* And in his letter to the princes and peoples of Italy on the coming of Henry VII., he bids them "obey their prince, but so as freemen preserving their own constitutional forms." He says also expressly: Animadvertendum sane, quod cum dicitur humanum genus potest regi per unum supremum principem, non sic intelligendum est ut ab illo uno prodire possint municipia et leges municipales. Habent namque nationes, regna, et civitates inter se proprietates quas legibus differentibus regulari oportet. Schlosser the historian compares Dante's system with that of the United States.t It in some respects resembled more the constitution of the Netherlands under the supreme stadtholder, but parallels between ideal and actual institutions are always unsatisfactory.t

*Jean de Meung had already said,

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† Dante, Studien, etc., 1855, p. 144.

Compare also Spinoza, Tractat. polit., Cap. VI.

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