*

in its theoretical application the civilized world. His political system was one which his reason adopted, not for any temporary expediency, but because it conduced to justice, peace, and civilization, the three conditions on which alone freedom was possible in any sense which made it worth having. Dante was intensely Italian, nay, intensely Florentine, but on all great questions he was, by the logical structure of his mind and its philosophic impartiality, incapable of intellectual provincialism. If the circle of his affections, as with persistent natures commonly, was narrow, his thought swept a broad horizon from that tower of absolute self which he had reared for its speculation. Even upon the principles of poetry, mechanical and other,† he had reflected more profoundly than most of those who criticise his work, and it was not by chance that he discovered the secret of that magical word too few, which not only distinguishes his verse from all other, but so strikingly from his own prose. He never took the bit of art be

* Some Florentines have amusingly enough doubted the genuineness of the De vulgari Eloquio, because Dante therein denies the preeminence of the Tuscan dialect.

bee particularly the second book of the De vulgari Eloquio.

Purgatorio, XXXIII. 141. "That thing one calls beautiful whose parts answer to each other, because pleasure results from their harmony." (Convito, Tr. I. c. 5.) Carlyle says that "he knew too, partly, that his work was great, the greatest a man could do." He knew it fully. Telling us how Giotto's fame as a painter had eclipsed that of Cimabue, he takes an example from poetry also, and selecting two Italian poets,—one the most famous of his predecessors, the other of his contemporaries, calmly sets himself above them both (Purgatorio, XI. 97-99), and gives the reason for his supremacy (Purgatorio, XXIV. 49-62). It is to be remembered that Amore in the latter passage does not mean love in the ordinary sense, but in that transcendental one set forth in the Convito, that state of the soul which opens it for the descent of God's spirit, to make it over into his own image. "Therefore it is manifest that in this love the Divine virtue descends into men in the guise of an angel, .. and it is to be noted that the descending of the virtue of one thing into another is nothing else than reducing it to its own likeness." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 14.)

tween his teeth where only poetry, and not doctrine,

was concerned.

If Dante's philosophy, on the one hand, was practical, a guide for the conduct of life, it was, on the other, a much more transcendent thing, whose body was wisdom, her soul love, and her efficient cause truth. It is a practice of wisdom from the mere love of it, for so we must interpret his amoroso uso di sapienzia, when we remember how he has said before* that "the love of wisdom for its delight or profit is not true love of wisdom." And this love must embrace knowledge in all its branches, for Dante is content with nothing less than a pancratic training, and has a scorn of dilettanti, specialists, and quacks. "Wherefore none ought to be called a true philosopher who for any delight loves any part of knowledge, as there are many who delight in composing Canzoni, and delight to be studious in them, and who delight to be studious in rhetoric and in music, and flee and abandon the other sciences which are all members of wisdom." † Many love better to be held masters than to be so." With him wisdom is the generak ization from many several knowledges of small account by themselves; it results therefore from breadth of culture, and would be impossible without it. Philosophy is a noble lady (donna gentil ‡), partaking of the divine *Convito, Tr. III. c. 11. Ib. Tr. I. c. 11.

66

† Convito, Tr. III. c. 12-15.

Inferno, II. 94. The donna gentil is Lucia, the prevenient Grace, the light of God which shows the right path and guides the feet in it. With Dante God is always the sun, "which leadeth others right by every road." (Inferno, I. 18.) "The spiritual and unintelligible Sun, which is God." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 12.) His light "enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world," but his dwelling is in the heavens. He who wilfully deprives himself of this light is spiritually dead in sin. So when in Mars he beholds the glorified spirits of the martyrs he exclaims, "O Elios, who so arrayest them!" (Paradiso, XIV. 96.) Blanc (Vocabolario, sub voce) rejects this interpretation. But Dante, entering the abode of the Blessed, invokes the "good

as a mis

The eyes

essence by a kind of eternal marriage, while with other intelligences she is united in a less measure tress of whom no lover takes complete joy." of this lady are her demonstrations, and her smile is her persuasion. "The eyes of wisdom are her demonstrations by which truth is beheld most certainly; and her smile is her persuasions in which the interior light of wisdom is shown under a certain veil, and in these two is felt that highest pleasure of beatitude which is the greatest good in paradise."+ "It is to be known that the beholding this lady was so largely ordained for us, not merely to look upon the face which she shows us, but that we may desire to attain the things which she keeps concealed. And as through her much thereof is seen by reason, so by her we believe that every miracle may have its reason in a higher intellect, and consequently may be. Whence our good faith has its origin, whence comes the hope of those unseen things which we desire, and through that the operation of charity, by the which three virtues we rise to philosophize in that celestial Athens where the Stoics, Peripatetics, and Epicureans through the art of eternal truth accordingly concur in one will." +

Apollo," and shortly after calls him divina virtù. We shall have more to say of this hereafter.

*Convito, Tr. III. c. 12. † Convito, Tr. III. c. 15. Recalling how the eyes of Beatrice lift her servant through the heavenly spheres, and that smile of hers so often dwelt on with rapture, we see how Dante was in the habit of commenting and illustrating his own works. We must remember always that with him the allegorical exposition is the true one (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 1), the allegory being a truth which is hidden under a beautiful falsehood (Convito, Tr. II. c. 1), and that Dante thought his poems without this exposition "under some shade of obscurity, so that to many their beauty was more grateful than their goodness (Convito, Tr. I. c. 1), "because the goodness is in the meaning, and the beauty in the ornament of the words" (Convito, Tr. II. c. 12).

Convito, Tr. III. c. 14.

As to the double scope of Dante's philosophy we will cite a passage from the Convito, all the more to our purpose as it will illustrate his own method of allegorizing. "Verily the use of our mind is double, that is, practical. and speculative, the one and the other most delightful, although that of contemplation be the more so. That of the practical is for us to act virtuously, that is, honorably, with prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. [These are the four stars seen by Dante, Purgatorio, I. 22-27.] That of the speculative is not to act for ourselves, but to consider the works of God and nature. Verily of these uses one is more full of beatitude than the other, as it is the speculative, which without any admixture is the use of our noblest part. And this part in this life cannot have its use perfectly, which is to see God, except inasmuch as the intellect considers him and beholds him through his effects. And that we should seek this beatitude as the highest, and not the other, the Gospel of Mark teaches us if we will look well. Mark says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Mary Salome went to find the Saviour at the tomb and found him not, but found a youth clad in white who said to them, 'Ye seek the Saviour, and I say unto you that he is not here; and yet fear ye not, but go and say unto his disciples and Peter that he will go before them into Galilee, and there ye shall see him even as he told you.' By these three women may be understood the three sects of the active life, that is, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, who go to the tomb, that is, to the present life, which is a receptacle of things corruptible, and seek the Saviour, that is, beatitude, and find him not, but they find a youth in white raiment, who, according to the testimony of Matthew and the rest, was an angel of God. This angel is that nobleness of ours which comes

from God, as hath been said, which speaks in our reason and says to each of these sects, that is, to whoever goes seeking beatitude in this life, that it is not here, but go and say to the disciples and to Peter, that is, to those who go seeking it and those who are gone astray (like Peter who had denied), that it will go before them into Galilee, that is, into speculation. Galilee is as much as to say Whiteness. Whiteness is a body full of corporeal light more than any other, and so contemplation is fuller of spiritual light than anything else here below. And he says, 'it will go before,' and does not say, 'it will be with you,' to give us to understand that God always goes before our contemplation, nor can we ever overtake here Him who is our supreme beatitude. And it is said, 'There ye shall see him as he told you,' that is, here ye shall have of his sweetness, that is, felicity, as is promised you here, that is, as it is ordained that ye can have. And thus it appears that we find our beatitude, this felicity of which we are speaking, first imperfect in the active life, that is, in the operations of the moral virtues, and afterwards wellnigh perfect in the operation of the intellectual ones, the which two operations are speedy and most direct ways to lead to the supreme beatitude, the which cannot be had here, as appears by what has been said.”*

At first sight there may seem to be some want of agreement in what Dante says here of the soul's incapacity of the vision of God in this life with the triumphant conclusion of his own poem. But here as elsewhere Dante must be completed and explained by himself. "We must know that everything most greatly desires its own perfection, and in that its every desire is appeased, and by that everything is desired. [That is, the one is drawn

* Convito, Tr. IV. c. 22.