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 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE
 
 Z^f^ *4 
 
 GIOTTO S DANTE IN THE BARGELLO 
 AS RESTORED BY MARINI
 
 University of Virginia 
 Florence Lathrop Page-Barbour Foundation 
 
 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 STUDIES 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS NELSON PAGE, D.Lit., LL.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ITALY AND THE WORLD WAR," ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHAPIMAN AND HALL, Limited 
 
 1922
 
 Copyright, 1922, by Charles Scribner's Sons 
 for the United States of America 
 
 Printed by The Scribner Press 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
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 DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF 
 THE FOUNDRESS OF 
 
 THE FLORENCE LATHROP PAGE-BARBOUR 
 LECTURE FOUNDATION 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 
 
 VS^HO WAS EVER MOVED BY 
 
 L'AMOR CHE MOVE IL SOLE E L'ALTRE STELLE 
 
 4375S0
 
 PUBLISHER'S NOTE 
 
 THE PAGE-BARBOUR LECTURE 
 FOUNDATION 
 
 The University of Virginia is indebted for 
 the establishment of the Page-Barbour Foun- 
 dation to the wisdom and generosity of Mrs. 
 Thomas Nelson Page, of Washington, D. C. 
 In 1907, Mrs. Page donated to the University 
 the sum of ^22,cxxd, the annual income of 
 which is to be used in securing each session 
 the delivery before the University of a series 
 of not less than three lectures by some dis- 
 tinguished man of letters or of science. The 
 conditions of the Foundation require that the 
 Page-Barbour lectures for each session be not 
 less than three in number; that they be de- 
 Hvered by a specialist in some branch of liter- 
 ature, science, or art; that the lecturer present 
 
 vii
 
 viii PUBLISHER'S NOTE 
 
 in the series of lectures some fresh aspect or 
 aspects of the department of thought in which 
 he is a specialist; and that the entire series de- 
 livered each session, taken together, shall pos- 
 sess such unity that they may be published by 
 the Foundation in book form.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 VAGB 
 
 I. Dante and His Time i 
 
 II. Dante and Florence 50 
 
 III. Dante's Prose 89 
 
 IV. Dante and Boccaccio; Petrarch; 
 
 English Poets 117 
 
 V. The Divine Comedy 152 
 
 VI. Dante and His Teaching . . . 193 
 
 VII. Dante's and Italian Nationality . 223 
 
 VIII. Dante and Itali.^n Aspiration . . 232 
 
 IX. Dante the Master 237
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Giotto's Dante in the Bargello, as restored by 
 Marini Frontispiece 
 
 Dante from Orcagna's fresco of the Last Judgment 
 in the Strozzi Chapel, Sta. Maria Novella 
 
 Facing page 86 
 
 The illustrations are reproduced from The Portraits of Dante 
 through courtesy of the author, Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In presenting this study of Dante Alighieri, 
 Poet, Seer, Educator, I would not claim that 
 I can add anything new to the vast volume of 
 interpretation which devotion and scholarship 
 have, at least in Italy, piled during these six 
 hundred years — and more recently in other 
 countries — about his revered name. All that 
 is even pretended is to present in succinct 
 form a brief sketch of the Hfe of the Poet of 
 Poets and of the conditions amid which that 
 life was cast, together with certain considera- 
 tions which a study of Dante and his Time, 
 thrown on the screen of the recent past, has 
 led me to believe should be of interest to those 
 engaged in giving or receiving instruction. 
 
 In my humble judgment the educational 
 work of this Country is the most important 
 work going on in America to-day. On it de- 
 pends the future of the Country whether for 
 weal or woe. And in the education of this 
 Country the work of Dante is a power, that 
 
 if used must exert a vital influence upon its 
 ' xiii
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 future, and if neglected, must, whether recog- 
 nized or not, be an immeasurable loss to us. 
 It is, in fact, like the great water-power of the 
 Italian mountains which, if understood and 
 utilized, brings wealth and power alike to the 
 State and to the citizen, and if not used is a 
 loss which marks but the ignorance and the in- 
 efficiency of the people. 
 
 What is Education } It is not mere book- 
 learning — that is only an instrument for use 
 in Education. It is not even mere knowledge. 
 It is the knowledge how to use Knowledge. 
 It is understanding. "Get Knowledge," says 
 the educator whom we call the wisest of men, 
 "but withal get understanding." 
 '■' Dante Alighieri is the expression of under- 
 standing. He has been the educator, the ex- 
 pression of understanding in Italy these six 
 hundred years; his power and influence have 
 extended among other nations even where they 
 were not recognized as his. He is essentially 
 the educator who is needed to-day; for he is 
 the great Spiritual Educator. 
 
 In this brief study there is little space to 
 enter upon the metaphysical discussion which 
 has surrounded and at times befogged the 
 work of the Poet since that autumn day when.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 XV 
 
 having returned to the Court of Guldo da 
 Polenta, worn down and ill from his unsuccess- 
 ful mission of Peace to Venice and from his 
 long journey beside the pestilential marshes of 
 the low malarial region of the western shore 
 of the Gulf of Venice, he gave to the Lord of 
 Polenta the report of his last mission and, 
 leaving to posterity, in imperishable form, the 
 report of his Great Mission, ceased from his 
 long exile and rejoined Beatrice in Paradise. 
 
 Not a metaphor, hardly a line of his that 
 since that day has not been subjected to the 
 closest scrutiny and the most minute analysis, 
 in which he has sufTcred almost as much from 
 the ill-conceived adulation of Panegyrists as 
 from the hostility of enemies. But, although 
 the whole body of his writings and especially 
 the Divine Comedy are a great allegory of the 
 soul's regeneration and although Dante ever^ 
 painted throughout his work allegories and rec- 
 ondite symbols and packed trope and meta- 
 phor with mystical and hidden meaning; to 
 carry the analysis of his noble poem so far as 
 to destroy its incomparable poetry, seems like 
 measuring with a foot-rule the lance of Don 
 Quixote or surveying with a compass and 
 chain the forest of Arden.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 This study is addressed rather to discussion 
 of the place that Dante occupies amid the con- 
 stellations and of the light that has beamed 
 from him upon mankind, and the writer will 
 rest content to be in the position of a child 
 who taken out in the night points to the Heavens 
 and exclaims with awed wonder and delight: 
 **0h! see the stars I" 
 
 T. N. P.
 
 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Only by taking into consideration the con- 
 ditions relative to which any great work has 
 been produced can a just idea be had of the 
 proportions of the accomplishment. 
 
 It will not be amiss then to advert briefly 
 at the outset to the conditions which existed 
 when a little more than six hundred years ago 
 Dante Alighieri had the vision, which, deliber- 
 ately discarding the language of scholarship, 
 whose champion he had hitherto been, he now 
 — with a loftier aim and a broader scope than 
 the mere scholar's, gave to mankind in the 
 common tongue of Italy, under the name of 
 La Commedia (The Comedy), to which his 
 admiring people some two centuries and a half 
 later added the title: "Divine." 
 
 It is easy now to cross the sea; yet that 
 voyage of Columbus still surpasses all others.
 
 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 And when Dante Alighieri laid aside the lan- 
 guage of scholarship, whose champion, earnest, 
 haughty, and somewhat disdainful he had been, 
 as was his wont, and took the dialects of Italy 
 as the medium of his great message, he mounted 
 to a higher level and with all his learning ad- 
 dressed a wider audience than the scholarship 
 of Florence or Verona or Ravenna or even of 
 Italy and Provence; for he addressed the heart 
 of the World — the heart of Mankind in all suc- 
 ceeding ages and in all climes. From a gram- 
 marian he became a creator of a great lan- 
 guage, from a provincial partisan he became a 
 crusader in the mighty cause of the Kingdom 
 of God; from a Prior of Florence he became the 
 creator of the national consciousness of a 
 people, and a Prior of mankind; from a charm- 
 ing singer he became a great poet and seer; 
 from a mediaeval scholar he became the herald 
 of a new Dawn, hymning the Passion and 
 Progress of the Human soul, the struggle of 
 Mankind between Sin and Righteousness, and 
 the Might, Majesty, and Dominion of God, 
 whom to fear is the Beginning of Wisdom and 
 whom reverently to adore is Salvation. 
 
 Should it be asked what has a poet to do 
 with Education in this practical, modern world.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 let the questioner remember that Aristotle's 
 pupil, Alexander the Great, himself no mean 
 judge of the military science, kept the poems 
 of Homer in the jewel-casket of Darius and 
 slept with them under his pillow, declaring them 
 the best compendium of the art of war. 
 
 This, I assume to signify not that Homer 
 was a trained Strategist or Tactician in the 
 military science; but that Alexander, the pupil 
 of Aristotle, held that to be a great Captain 
 one must have the Imagination fully devel- 
 oped, and that the poems of Homer tended to 
 expand the Imagination. 
 
 The Poet has everything to do with Educa- 
 tion. In all ages the Poets have been the 
 Educators of the world. And as Educators in 
 their souls approach the Poet they become 
 better educators. As their imaginations are 
 elevated they approach the Ideal. And if we 
 are going to accept Milton's definition of Edu- 
 cation, of all Poets of modern times, Dante 
 Alighieri was, perhaps, the greatest educator. 
 He possibly had a greater influence on the 
 course of Civilization than any other one man 
 since his day. Dante's contribution to the 
 world was one of ideas that advanced the 
 cause of Righteousness.
 
 4 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 James Russell Lowell, among our greatest 
 students of Dante and best Dante-scholars, in 
 his address on the occasion of the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of 
 Harvard, proclaims eloquently the superiority 
 of intellectual to material wealth. "The real 
 value of a country," he declared, "must be 
 weighed in scales more delicate than the bal- 
 ance of trade. The garners of Sicily are 
 empty now; but the bees of all climes still 
 fetch honey from the tiny garden-plot of The- 
 ocritus. On a map of the world you may cover 
 Judea with your thumb; Athens with a finger- 
 tip, and neither of them figures in the Prices- 
 Current; but they still lord it in the thought 
 and action of every civilized man. Did not 
 Dante cover with his hood all that was Italy 
 six hundred years ago t And if we go back 
 a century where was Germany, outside of 
 Weimar.'' Material success is good; but only 
 as the necessary preliminary of better things. 
 The measure of a nation's true success is the 
 amount it has contributed to the thought, the 
 moral energy, the intellectual happiness, the 
 spiritual hope and consolation of mankind." 
 
 Many even of those who claim to love 
 poetry and to find refreshment in the crystal
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 founts declare themselves unable to find the 
 poetry in Dante, or to comprehend his long, 
 intricate, and labored astronomical plan through 
 which, as through a maze, Virgil guides his 
 patient follower. We may leave all this to those 
 interested, like Dante, in the Ptolemaic System. 
 Yet, when the key is held it is all simple. It 
 needs not that we enter into it further than to 
 say, that Lucifer thrown down from Heaven 
 fell to Earth and sank down into Hell, into the 
 bottomless pit at the centre of the Earth, whose 
 waters shrank from the foul contact to the 
 Southern hemisphere. On the opposite side 
 from an island in the Southern Seas rises the 
 mountain of Purgatory, its base encircled by 
 the atmosphere, its terraces crowned by the 
 earthly paradise, steeped in eternal light, about 
 which revolve the heavens of the planets and 
 fixed stars, and high above all is Heaven, the 
 seat of God, where he abides in ineffable light 
 eternal. 
 
 If they shrink from his comprehensive and 
 apparently intricate symboHsm, let them but 
 get hold of the thread at the start and the clew 
 will unwind itself as easily as that by follow- 
 ing which, Theseus escaped from the Cretan 
 Labyrinth.
 
 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 His system is less complicated than appears 
 at first view. He divides Hell into seven 
 circles ^some find three great divisions), for the 
 punishment of the seven deadly sins, non- 
 knowledge of Christ, Lust; Gluttony; Avarice 
 and Prodigality, Anger and Sullenness, Heresy; 
 Violence and Fraud. The Seventh deep is 
 itself di'Vided into two parts, the first of them 
 assigned to those who committed violence 
 against their neighbor, themselves and God. 
 The lov7est hell of all is for those guilty of 
 Fraud — the Betrayal of Women, Flattery; Sim- 
 ony; False Prophecy; Peculation; Hypocrisy; 
 Thefts; False Counsel; Schism and Imposture; 
 Treachery to those who trusted. To each 
 class of sinners is assigned the terrible punish- 
 ment adjudged suited to the sin. Through 
 these several circles — "deep within deep" — led 
 by Virgil typifying Learning, Poetry and 
 worldly wisdom who has been sent to him by 
 Beatrice, who typifies Divine Wisdom and 
 Grace, the Poet passes to Purgatory, where like- 
 wise there are seven circles or cornices wherein 
 Souls are purified from Pride, Envy; Wrath, 
 Indifference, Avarice; Gluttony and Lust, to 
 which are opposed the seven Virtues: Hu- 
 manity; Kindness or Charity; Patience; Zeal;
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 Poverty; Abstinence and Chastity. And above 
 Purgatory is the Earthly Paradise from which 
 the purified soul enters into the ineffable Light 
 of the presence of God. 
 
 What do we know of Dante — we Americans ? 
 We think of him mainly as an Italian Poet of 
 the Middle Ages — much talked of, especially 
 just now, by those who like or pretend to like 
 foreign writers — who wrote, in incomprehen- 
 sible verse, an imaginative and lurid account 
 of a dismal journey through a lurid Hell — a 
 long poem containing certain phr: -^s which 
 have caught the attention of the world, such 
 as, "All hope abandon, Ye, who entei here," 
 and relieved by a few touches of poetry, such 
 as that relating to Francesca da Rimini. 
 And we know that this was followed by two 
 other poems called Purgatory and Paradise; 
 but of no special merit or interest. We know 
 that he is said by the Brahmin-class of Intel- 
 lectuals or would-be Intellectuals, to be a great 
 poet and we accept their verdict as we accept 
 their theory of the Law of Gravitation and 
 would equally accept that of Relativity if gen- 
 erally held, without knowing or caring much 
 about it. Or, at most, do we not think of him 
 as a poet, great enough, indeed, to have secured
 
 8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 the admiration of the reading world because 
 of his vivid description of a journey through 
 Hell ? 
 
 And then our thoughts revert to Milton, the 
 great English Poet whom we claim as our own, 
 with a certain smug satisfaction, as who should 
 say: "Can anything equal to this come out of 
 Italy?" 
 
 It is discreditable to us that we should be 
 so ignorant of and so indifferent to a work 
 which did much to call Italy to a new birth; 
 and which opened the imposing procession of 
 Itahan poetry and afterward of English poetry 
 — a work which was the first budding of the 
 spring which produced so rich a harvest in 
 the summer and autumn that have followed; 
 which broke down the doors and brought 
 Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton 
 into the light and showed them the way to 
 spread their pinions and rise into the high 
 regions of a more spiritual art; which cracked 
 the shackles of Mediaevalism, and led the 
 way to the emancipation of man's thought; 
 which taught Luther to nail his theses on the 
 doors of the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg and 
 to burn the Bull of excommunication and 
 consign Leo to the Inferno as Dante had
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 
 
 consigned his predecessor, Boniface; which 
 gave John Calvin his heaviest ammunition 
 to wage the warfare of his grim theology. 
 No book in all the world, save the Bible, and 
 perhaps the works of Homer, have had such 
 an influence on the progress of Civilization as 
 we understand it in Christendom, as that 
 which we inconsiderately consign to the dusty 
 shelves of some public Institutional Library. 
 
 It is a discredit to us that we should be so 
 ignorant of the greatest contribution to the 
 thought of the world that was made in the 
 Middle Ages. It is a discredit to us that in 
 our application to the practical we so tend to 
 exalt the commercial and forget the ideal, that 
 we have become known to some of the other 
 Peoples as a commercial People and not an 
 idealistic People. Ideas, at last, control the 
 world and promote the progress of mankind 
 with a power far beyond any power of the 
 material. 
 
 Moses led the Children of Israel to freedom 
 and power, though he never trod the promised 
 land. Columbus opened the way to the New 
 World, though he touched only its island fringe 
 and Amerigo Vespucci gave it his name; 
 Langley discovered the principle of the air-
 
 lo DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 plane, though the Wrights invented the prac- 
 tical machine. 
 
 In presenting Dante, as I, a humble student 
 of his great work, would like to do, I find that 
 my pleasant task divides itself naturally into 
 three parts. 
 
 First: The situation of the world when 
 Dante came, and the conditions among which 
 he sprang to his stature together with some 
 description of what he appeared to his con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 Secondly: His earlier work and progress 
 toward his later complete accomplishment. 
 
 And thirdly: His great work and its influence 
 on the course of Civilization. 
 
 We all know the great contribution made to 
 the world by the Genoese, Christopher Colum- 
 bus, but how few know of the contribution 
 made by the Florentine, Dante Alighieri. 
 Yet, as Columbus, two hundred years later, 
 with his Italian imagination discovered and 
 opened up a new world for Nations of which 
 he had never heard or dreamed, no less than 
 for Spain under whose flag he sailed; so Dante, 
 saihng on a vaster Ocean, discovered a vaster 
 world and opened up wider regions for the 
 inspiration of mankind.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 11 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that Dante came 
 to America with Christopher Columbus, if not 
 in the locker of the Santa Maria, the Nina, 
 or the Pinta, at least in his memory; for every 
 Italian knew Dante as the Greek of old knew 
 iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides so as to 
 correct a false quantity by a recitationist. 
 Certainly Dante came over with his fellow 
 Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci. 
 
 Amerigo Vespucci held that Dante's refer- 
 ence in the first Canto of Purgatory to the 
 
 "Four stars ne'er seen before save by the ken 
 Of our first parents," 
 
 was a prophecy of the Discovery of America. 
 
 Who shall say what part Dante performed 
 in firing the imagination of Christopher Co- 
 lumbus ? What effect on his conclusion touch- 
 ing the sphericity of the Earth — Dante's con- 
 ception of the concentric circles of depth and 
 height and Dante's idea of the globe may have 
 had on Columbus's thoughtful mind .? 
 
 To obtain a proper idea of Dante and his 
 work requires a knowledge of his time and 
 surroundings as a sort of screen on which to 
 project the poet. Thus only can a just con-
 
 12 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 ception be had of his majestic proportions. 
 And when we shall have got the true measure 
 be very sure that his statue will stand as the 
 symbol of Italian genius to which America 
 owes so vast a debt. 
 
 Poetry is the spiritual expression of its age 
 and environment. Of no Poet is this truer 
 than of Dante. His work contains a reflec- 
 tion of the whole life about him, and stands 
 after six hundred years as the universal re- 
 vealer of the thought and temper of the Middle 
 Age at its close, with which close, indeed, he 
 had no little to do. For as WyclifFe later, fol- 
 lowing his example, headed the New Learn- 
 ing in England and with his translation of the 
 Bible into the Vulgar tongue, brought up the 
 English language and, so to speak, crystallized 
 it into an imperishable medium for the thought 
 and aspiration of the Saxon World, so Dante, 
 the leader of them all, had already placed on 
 the walls of his Age the imperishable picture 
 of his time and opening wide the door point- 
 ed the Italian people to the immortal princi- 
 ples of Justice and Truth and with the en- 
 chantment of his genius turned, however 
 slowly, their faces to a new dawn and a brighter 
 day.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 13 
 
 Dante places himself sixth in order of great 
 poets. You will recall the fine scene in the 
 IVth Canto of the Inferno, where he discovers 
 **a flame, that on the darkened hemisphere 
 prevailing, shined" — and how he asked his 
 guide: 
 
 "Quest! chi son che hanno cotanta orranza 
 Che dal modo degli altri li diparte ?" 
 
 "Who are these that boast 
 Such honor, separate from the rest?" 
 
 Virgil replies that their honored name gained 
 them favor even in Heaven. Meantime, he 
 hears a voice: 
 
 "Onorate I'altissimo poeta.** 
 
 And as the voice passes, he sees four mighty 
 shades advance and his master says: 
 
 "Mira colui con quella spada in mano 
 Che vien dinanzi a tre si come sire, 
 Quegli e Omero, poeta sovrano, 
 L'altro e Orazlo, satiro, che viene, 
 Ovidio e il terzo e I'ultimo e Lucano." 
 
 "Mark that one with the sword who doth precede 
 The three, as though he were their Lord. 
 The next who comes is Horace, the satirist, 
 Ovid is third and last comes Lucan."
 
 14 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 And the poet says: 
 
 "Cost vidi adunar la bella scuola 
 Di quel signer dell' altissimo canto, 
 Che sopra gli altri com'aquila vola." 
 
 "Thus saw I assemble the fine school 
 Of those Lords of loftiest song 
 Who like the eagle soar o'er the rest.** 
 
 But the Eagle knows its own kind and after 
 grave conference they turn to Dante and 
 salute him, whereat his Master smiles. They 
 did him yet more honor; for they admitted him 
 sixth of that high company — of those "who 
 know." 
 
 I think though, that Posterity, however 
 Dante may have been content with his place, 
 will recast the order and place him higher in 
 the shining rank. Not Horace, for all his wit 
 and grace, nor Lucan, with his gifts and power, 
 appears to us of quite the school of loftiest 
 song, and there are at least one or two more 
 to join in the Eagle Flight and soar over others. 
 
 Not many even of the great poets have had 
 the fortune of international fame or have sur- 
 vived to posterity, at least in name. Some 
 have come down to us; but their names have 
 been lost. When they have survived, be very
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 15 
 
 sure that they have struck the deep fountains 
 of human nature. 
 
 You can count them on the fingers — David 
 — or those whose immortal strains bear the 
 name of "the Sweet Psalmist of Israel;" Homer; 
 Virgil; Dante; Shakespeare. There may be 
 others — a few — Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, 
 English, as to whom there is diversity of views. 
 But as to these there is no question. All ad- 
 mit their work — their universality — even those 
 who have never read them, but only read of 
 them, bow to the universal verdict and accord 
 them the palm of Immortality. Each of them 
 has his place fixed in the firmament. It would 
 be, perhaps, a futile labor to compare them one 
 with another. In the shining galaxy the Shep- 
 herd King and Psalmist and the Blind Harper 
 of Greece, the Monarch of sublimest song who 
 like an eagle soars over the rest, stand possibly 
 pre-eminent in the estimation of the Ages. 
 But certainly for the modern scholar of every 
 race and tongue, Dante stands nearest to 
 Homer in the loftiness of his flight and the 
 immeasurable sweep of his pinions. Next to 
 Homer he gave forth a more echoing song and 
 inspired a more numerous and tuneful progeny. 
 Like Homer, under guise of earthly strife, he
 
 1 6 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 sang of the conflict of Human Passions and the 
 immortal struggle of the Human Soul. 
 
 Should a question arise as to Virgil's rank, 
 let it be sufficient answer that Dante chose 
 him among all the great to be his "Master and 
 Guide," through the vast rounds of that un- 
 trodden world whose wondrous griefs he has 
 unveiled to all the ages. 
 
 He addresses him in words which we now 
 may well address to Dante himself: 
 
 "Or se' tu quel Virgilio, e quella fonte 
 Che spande di parlar si largo fiume? 
 Risposi lui con vergognosa fronte; 
 
 O degli altri poeti onore e lume, 
 Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore, 
 Che m'han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. 
 
 Tu se'lo mio maestro e '1 mio autore, 
 
 Tu se' solo colui, da chi io tolsi 
 
 Lo bello stile che m'ha fatto onore." 
 
 "Art thou that Virgil, thou that mighty fount 
 That spreads abroad so vast a stream of song ? 
 O honor thou and light of other poets I 
 May it avail that I have studied long 
 And greatly loved thy work and conned it well. 
 Thou art my Master and my very source, 
 From whom alone I took the noble style 
 Which since hath brought me honor."
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIMB 17 
 
 It must, indeed, be a cause of great pride to 
 all Italians that of the world's greatest poets 
 who have enlightened Mankind, two sprang 
 from Italian soil, and of the others one owes 
 his regeneration for the Modern World to 
 Italian scholarship and the other owes Italy 
 the inspiration for some of his greatest work. 
 
 The oldest civilized people of Christendom 
 and, indeed, of the World, as we reckon civili- 
 zation, are the Italians. Greece had her civili- 
 zation before Italy and, in certain respects, as 
 of Art and Philosophy, had a higher Civiliza- 
 tion, as Egypt and Mesopotamia and the 
 Orient had their civilization before that of 
 Greece, but these were all civilizations of a 
 different kind, and when we speak of civiliza- 
 tion, it imports in the term not only the idea 
 of a general civic order; but such order plus the 
 inner spirit of Christianity. And of this West- 
 ern Civilization the Italian People are the oldest 
 exponent. It is the direct successor of the 
 Roman People who gave the Civil law; Civic 
 Order and Christianity to the people of West- 
 ern and Northwestern Europe. It is not un- 
 common for us to draw a great distinction be- 
 tween the Romans of old and the Itahans. Yet 
 the Itahan is among the least changeable of
 
 1 8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Races. Of all the occidental races the Italian 
 changes least. That some change occurred 
 under the Barbarian invasion appears certain, 
 and traces of the Lombards — the Longbeards 
 of the North — still continue, as still continue 
 traces of Greek and Norman in the South. 
 But the Italian race of to-day differs scarcely 
 more from the old race than the American of 
 to-day on the Atlantic slope differs from the 
 English Churchmen who settled Virginia, Mary- 
 land, and the Carolinas, or than the New Eng- 
 landers differ from the Puritans who settled 
 New England from whom they trace descent, 
 in manners and customs the Italian differs 
 from his remote predecessors hardly at all. 
 Many a little paese in Italy has distinctive 
 customs and costumes which have come down 
 through the centuries unchanged, jealously 
 guarded and resisting all the assaults of sur- 
 rounding innovations; and as they have pre- 
 served the outward costumes of their fathers, 
 so they have preserved their mental traits. 
 Italy is the land of conservatism. The songs 
 of Italy have sounded through her fields and 
 vineyards with plaintive melody through long 
 centuries; her religious chants — many of them 
 at least — for all their Christian words, were in
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 10 
 
 their structure originally taken from hymns to 
 the Bona Dea or some other pagan goddess. 
 The Gregorian chants were intended to sup- 
 plant them, as Pius the Tenth in his revival of 
 Gregorian Music desired to banish the profane 
 music of the modern opera. Italy is the land 
 of permanence, as America is the land of 
 change.* 
 
 With something of the Oriental and much of 
 the Greek Civilization, which it had taken over, 
 the Roman Civilization had imposed itself on 
 the Countries about it. The Roman Eagles 
 bore to and protected in other lands the ele- 
 ments of what we to-day know as Civilization. 
 And although in many instances they were 
 later expelled, they left behind them seed 
 enough to keep alive a spirit which should 
 under refreshment eventually produce the fruit 
 known as Modern Civilization, and in time 
 nations which they had thus brought forward 
 were able to impose something of the form 
 which they had brought forth on Rome 
 itself. 
 
 But even so, and even although the seat of 
 the Roman Empire was moved to Byzantium, 
 
 * There is nothing in Italy, native to it, so diverse from the 
 ancient dance as the Tango or the Turkey-Trot is from the 
 Minuet and the Sir Roger de Coverley.
 
 20 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 as nearer the centre of the Empire and safer 
 from Barbarian attack, the former capital, 
 Rome, still retained sufficient prestige and suffi- 
 cient vigor to become the centre of Christen- 
 dom and, supported by Italian intelligence, was 
 to give to Christendom modern Civilization. 
 
 Mediaeval European history is divided into 
 three periods: the Dark Ages as the first period 
 after the fall of Rome extending to the time 
 of Charlemagne; next, the Middle Ages cover- 
 ing the period from the time of Charlemagne 
 to about the year 1300; and lastly, the Renais- 
 sance, or rebirth of Civilization in Europe. 
 
 And as in the Roman Days from Rome flowed 
 in the train of the Eagles the Education and 
 Order that trained Teuton and Frank; Briton 
 and Celt; so in later time flowed from Italy the 
 Light that was to lighten the Gentiles. Roman 
 missionaries christianized Saxon and Frank 
 Kings and later carried classical learning into 
 the wilds of France and England. But during 
 the Dark Ages this learning was well-nigh lost 
 and during the Middle Ages, though it was re- 
 vived, it was almost confined to the Church 
 which, largely by virtue of the monopoly of its 
 possession and of the ignorance of the lay world, 
 was enabled to assert a power which per-
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 21 
 
 vaded Christendom; rivalled and at times domi- 
 nated the power of the successors of Augustus, 
 Constantine and Charlemagne. It was its 
 possession of not only the keys of St. Peter, 
 but of the Keys of Knowledge that enabled the 
 Church to dominate so the minds of men that 
 even monarchs trembled before the terrors of its 
 excommunication and barefoot and humble be- 
 sought with open shame pardon of the head 
 of this mighty power. So long as it was based 
 on a truly moral foundation it was supreme 
 and the Temporal Powers could be counted on 
 to support and advance it, using its spiritual 
 authority over men's minds to support its own 
 temporal authority. It was only when, swollen 
 with worldly pride, it asserted its claim to 
 Temporal Power that men, discovering that 
 such an assertion was merely political and that 
 Ecclesiastical rule in political affairs was worse 
 than Lay rule, revolted against it as an usurpa- 
 tion, and finding the need of education in tem- 
 poral knowledge to meet the evils to which the 
 Ecclesiastical Monopoly was leading, began to 
 pry open the doors which closed in the precious 
 treasure and, gaining access thereto, began 
 with it to enrich the world. 
 The wreck of the Roman Empire at the
 
 a DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 hands of the Barbarians — the Bearded folk, 
 whom it had brought forward through its 
 training, especially in the art of war, left the 
 great dominions which the Roman power had 
 controlled a prey largely to Anarchy, in which 
 the only power recognized was force and the 
 only amelioration was the spirit of the doctrine 
 which the single organization that remained 
 cohesive: the great Church, taught, even if it 
 did not always practise. 
 
 Gradually this condition of Anarchy took to 
 itself some form of ordered force and as the 
 fragments took shape, under the genius of 
 Charlemagne a new Empire containing the 
 semblance of the old Empire came into being 
 in the West and its able head, allying himself 
 with the head of the Spiritual Power, was 
 crowned Emperor at Rome at Christmas of the 
 year 800. Then began a new regime, which 
 like its predecessors, passed through one phase 
 after another following natural laws and af- 
 fected by natural conditions until Nations and 
 States began to take form, based upon or grow- 
 ing out of what came to be known as the 
 Feudal system because its foundation was a 
 title or fee held from some overlord who in 
 consideration of service rendered by the vassal,
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 23 
 
 should give him protection; and therefore, a 
 mutual duty was owed by the one to the other. 
 And still, the one power which extended across 
 boundaries was the power of the Church with 
 its centre at Rome and its ever-increasing 
 claims generally recognized even by the heads 
 of States. 
 
 This Feudal system, however, fortified in 
 walled towns and stone castles, supported by 
 the sword, the torture and the dungeon, be- 
 came in great regions a new form of tyranny 
 and, indeed, of anarchy, wide-spread and so 
 destructive that eventually it defied alike both 
 the supreme temporal and spiritual power — 
 alike Emperor and Pope. The system resulted 
 in a state of well-nigh universal war, and even 
 of private warfare which the Church itself 
 was compelled to recognize and which it was 
 fain to ameliorate by securing what came to be 
 known as "the truce of God"; that is, a com- 
 mon agreement to abstain from warfare from 
 Wednesday night to Monday morning, and 
 not to make war on days consecrated to high 
 Church festivals. 
 
 And now a brief glance at the conditions 
 existing in the world in the latter part of the 
 thirteenth century when in the month of May,
 
 24 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 1265, in the small, but wealthy city and Re- 
 pubhc of Florence, Dante Ahghieri, son of 
 Ahghieri and Bella dei Donati came into the 
 world. 
 
 To begin with England as that with whose 
 conditions and Literature we are generally most 
 familiar: England, red with her romantically 
 named, but bloody wars of the Roses following 
 the hundred years' war with France, lay even 
 two hundred years later in a welter of brutahty 
 and ignorance; in which rival claimants of 
 the crown slew each other remorselessly and 
 waded through slaughter to a throne. Knowl- 
 edge of Letters was confined almost exclusively 
 to the Priesthood, who gave allegiance to a 
 foreign sovereign and a foreign tongue. The 
 English language, in fact, was not used in 
 Courts of Justice prior to Dante's Time. 
 
 Of Literature there was none. Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth wrote (1140) in Latin his history 
 of the Kings of Britain, composed largely of 
 Celtic legends, including those of King Arthur's 
 Court; and a metrical version, which was 
 termed Layamon's Brut, had been written by a 
 French Priest. There were certain Religious 
 Poems, composed of metrical stories from the 
 Bible, and a few others. And later on from
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 25 
 
 Italy and Provence the Trouveres brought the 
 tales of the Paladins of Romance. But Eng- 
 land was steeped in a feudal rudeness, little 
 less than Semi-Barbarism. 
 
 Next, as to France: France was more ad- 
 vanced, especially in the South which had 
 been in more immediate and closer contact 
 with Roman Rule and Civilization. Her native 
 Literature was, however, for the most part 
 composed of Monkish Legends, or Legends 
 of the deeds or loves of the Paladins ancient 
 or modern, that is, mediaeval, as we should 
 now call them. Among her literary products 
 of about this time — the last half of the thir- 
 teenth century — the Romaunt of the Rose was 
 possibly the most notable. But as Litera- 
 ture in France was like that in England, al- 
 most wholly in the hands of the Church, the 
 learning was largely classical, and the litera- 
 ture Religious. The main exceptions were 
 the Poems of the Proven^aux who sang of Love 
 and Gallantry — and Love needs no Learning 
 to sing her power. These songs the Trouba- 
 dours carried from Court to Court and Castle 
 to Castle. 
 
 Germany was, after the time of the Em- 
 peror, Otto First, nearer to Italy and to Rome
 
 26 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 than any other Power; but the relation was 
 never settled definitely, and was dependent 
 on the personality of Emperor and Pope. A 
 German Emperor had two hundred years be- 
 fore Dante's time stood at Canossa in the snow 
 awaiting a Pope's pleasure to be admitted to 
 kneel and do penance before the Pontiff who 
 had excommunicated him, and although able 
 Emperors had since readjusted the balance 
 and could command where they had once 
 obeyed, no Emperor came to Italy without an 
 Army at his back, and Italy was now amid 
 lesser divisions, too manifold to discuss, divided 
 into two great camps, the Guelfs and Ghibel- 
 lines, the former, who represented generally 
 speaking the more liberal party, the more ag- 
 gressive and Democratic party of the people, 
 which took the side of the Pope, and the Ghib- 
 ellines the more conservative and reactionary 
 party — the party of the Nobles which stood 
 for the Emperor. Not that the Hne of cleavage 
 was always stable — far from it. But these 
 were the general lines of division in a Society 
 in which the whole world was at war with some 
 one and often with many. 
 
 Germany like France was the field for the 
 exercise of the Feudal system; but its expres-
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 27 
 
 sion growing out of the necessity to have some 
 one central figurehead if not authority had 
 brought to the German states some form and 
 even some substance of ordered self-govern- 
 ment. The Emperor was elected by the princes 
 and was in theory supposed to represent his 
 electors as well as his other vassals impartially, 
 though in practice it was often otherwise. 
 
 The Feudal system, however, was never so 
 completely established in Italy as in Northern 
 and Northwestern Europe. In Italy, owing 
 in part to natural economic conditions and, 
 in part, to the character of the people, these, 
 having both a greater imagination and a 
 greater turn for artistic work than in other 
 lands, banded together to resist the tyranny 
 of Feudal lords and gathered in cities and a 
 change took the form of communal govern- 
 ment, the members of the several trades form- 
 ing themselves into guilds which exercised 
 political functions and which, being jealous of 
 their privileges, became in time political bodies 
 which contributed powerfully to the self-Gov- 
 ernment of the cities, the more important of 
 which became republics, independent of and 
 hostile to all others and owing only a fealty 
 now to the head of the Empire, now to the
 
 28 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 head of the Church. Thus, grew up a certain 
 national consciousness not readily reconcilable 
 with their attitude toward each other and yet 
 unmistakable even throughout the long and 
 bloody factionalism of the GhibelHne and 
 Guelf warfare. What were wanting were a 
 common head and a common tongue. Dante 
 strove to bring the first and gave the last. 
 
 Yet, as in all times men and women love, 
 marry, and are given in marriage, and as high 
 courage is ever mated with the nobler instinct 
 of the heart, Love made its appeal to the 
 heart of the Feudal Knight and warrior and 
 the soft blandishments of Woman relieved the 
 stern savagery of the age of strife. Thus, the 
 Age of Chivalry came into being and presently 
 the Loves and Deeds of the Paladins were the 
 themes of the Minstrel of the North and were 
 being sung in castle and bower by the Trouba- 
 dours of the Sunnier South. Nowhere in the 
 world was this more general or its effect greater 
 than among the Italian race of Italy and Pro- 
 vence. The emotion of Religion in which the 
 beatitudes of Heavenly bhss and the terrors of 
 Infernal perdition were preached with fervor, 
 sent men on crusades to recover the tomb of 
 Him who had made the Cross the symbol of
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 29 
 
 Divine Love, or into monasteries to practise 
 penance for sins which had crucified the Lord 
 of Love: the Son of God. In Italy was the 
 fountain source of Religious Power; and Re- 
 ligious training — in fact, of all intellectual train- 
 ing. In Italy, the artisan as he hammered his 
 iron sang of Tristan and Lancelot and their 
 immortal loves. 
 
 In this strange time which presents a medley 
 of diverse and changing forces came in the year 
 1265 into the world, Dante Alighieri, destined 
 to be the greatest poet and painter and teacher, 
 not only of his time and country, but among 
 the greatest of all time; the chief prophet and 
 seer and spiritual leader of Italy; the trumpet 
 of Liberty of the Italian people; the proclaimer 
 of a moral principle in Government; the pro- 
 tagonist of the idea of complete division be- 
 tween the Temporal and Spiritual Power. 
 
 But no attempt at reform, not backed by 
 sufficient force availed to ameliorate greatly 
 conditions which were founded on force and 
 which required force and violence to maintain 
 them. As population increased, they could 
 only be supplied by better and increased pro- 
 duction and distribution of the necessaries of 
 life. But this is precisely what the existing
 
 30 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 conditions prevented and when every field and 
 vineyard was subject to foray and every high- 
 way was a mark for plunder, there was little 
 incentive to industry or traffic. Neither could 
 be maintained save by force and except under 
 sufficient guard they were not maintained. 
 Thus, the population became divided into two 
 classes, the workers and the fighters; and the 
 system was based on an organization which re- 
 quired a headship with sufficient strength and 
 boldness to conduct it. The population could 
 find only the meagrest security by submission 
 to such leaders and they lived within call of 
 his trumpet or bell while he in turn lived 
 strongly guarded within his castle surrounded 
 by his guards or bravos, his power Hmited only 
 by the measure of violence which would accom- 
 plish his will without exciting a revolt strong 
 enough to overthrow him. 
 
 The only apparent exception was the Priest- 
 hood, but often this was apparent rather than 
 real and priests and prelates who had begun 
 as investigators with promises of amending the 
 intolerable violence and injustice that outraged 
 the elementary public opinion of the time, 
 ended by out-Heroding Herod and eclipsing 
 in injustice and oppression and sometimes in
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 31 
 
 vice those they had supplanted. Thus, so- 
 ciety moved in a vicious circle. The pictur- 
 esque f'^stles — "the cloud-capped towers; the 
 gorgeous palaces" about which poets sang were 
 prisons reeking with vice and vermin and foul 
 with every conceivable disease and horror. 
 The castles and terraced-hills which in the sun- 
 shine alike excite the traveller's wonder and 
 admiration were made by the corvee or forced- 
 labor under the lash and the gallows. The 
 gallows-tree and the dungeon were as con- 
 ventional parts of the Lord's or Seigneur's 
 castle as the chapel-cross and the hall, and were 
 as much used, and the guest of to-day might 
 readily enough occupy the dungeon to-morrow. 
 Life was set in the key of violence and its fit 
 expression was the invention of gunpowder — 
 a new and more effective means of destruction. 
 Science later turned to the finer art of poison; 
 but for the time being men preferred to glut 
 their appetites with blood and ocular horror. 
 Betrayal was met with a dagger-thrust or muti- 
 lation, as in Paolo Verruchio's case, and enmity 
 found its gratification in the starvation of its 
 objects, as in the case of Ugolino and his chil- 
 dren. Before leaving his mansion every gen- 
 tleman practised of a morning his sword-
 
 32 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 exercise to test his agility and keep him in 
 readiness to defend himself and no man of 
 importance stirred outside his courtyard with- 
 out his bodyguard of bravos. It required but 
 the biting of the thumb to bring about a feud 
 in which both houses might be completely de- 
 stroyed with consequences direful to the entire 
 community, which wished a plague on them 
 both. 
 
 It was presently found that courage and skill 
 in arms were means to distinguish men even 
 though they were without estates, provided 
 they could establish their position among the 
 Chivalrous class; and those who possessed ex- 
 ceptional qualities, though having no titles to 
 castles or lands, might secure titles of honor 
 such as Knighthood. And these became a 
 privileged class, generally retainers of the 
 great feudatories, sometimes becoming feuda- 
 tories themselves. From this evolved a sort 
 of system of rules which demanded more cour- 
 tesy, a sense of personal obligation — and before 
 long an order of Knighthood which has been 
 likened to the order of the Priesthood in the 
 Church. In fact, later on, certain special asso- 
 ciations or orders of Knighthood grew up which 
 were vowed to special aims and claimed special
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 33 
 
 privileges — such as the Knights of Malta, who 
 maintain their organization down to the pres- 
 ent day. These mainly obtained their pro- 
 motion from the representatives of militant 
 power, and they naturally were for the most 
 part aligned on the side of the Temporal rather 
 than the Spiritual Powers. And in the great 
 contest which divided and racked Italy from 
 one end to the other, between the heads of the 
 Temporal and Spiritual Powers of Christen- 
 dom, the militant lay-orders generally espoused 
 the side of the Emperor to which was given 
 the name Ghibelline and those in opposition to 
 them espoused the side, rather the cause, of the 
 Pope. And as the chief weapon of the latter 
 was, in certain phases of the struggle, the power 
 to strike men through their ignorance anc; 
 superstition and to terrify the superstitious 
 with the threat of Damnation those who were 
 less ignorant and less bound by superstition 
 naturally found themselves aligned against tht 
 great Organization which claimed the Com 
 minate Power. Thus, the intellectual class 
 outside of the ecclesiastical orders fell largely 
 into the ranks of the Ghibellines. 
 
 And now having taken a glance at the gen- 
 eral conditions prevailing in and about Italy
 
 34 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 when the intellectual and spiritual force that 
 was compacted in Dante Alighieri came into 
 the world, let us see what existed in Florence 
 at the time of his coming. 
 
 There is little or no mention of Florence on 
 the Arno in the early records. The mention 
 of that region is of Fiesole on the mountain 
 above the flowery valley through which the 
 Arno courses: Fiesole with its Roman remains: 
 Castle and Amphitheatre and baths, which 
 Dante couples in the speech of the older dames 
 of Florence with their tales of Troy and Rome. 
 
 But Fiesole had been overthrown and de- 
 stroyed in the war which the rising young 
 Florentine Republic had waged against it and 
 its feudal Tyrants one hundred and thirty- 
 five years before Dante's birth and we have a 
 picture of Florence's golden age of simplicity 
 and antique virtue drawn by the shade of 
 Dante's crusading ancestor, Cacciaguida, as a 
 screen on which to project Florence's decadence 
 in virtue as she revelled in opulence, luxury, 
 and splendor. 
 
 Fiesole had been an important link in the 
 chain of Feudal strongholds, largely held by 
 stranieri; successors of foreign invaders who, 
 scattered throughout the country, harried and
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 35 
 
 oppressed the industrious and thrifty Tuscans 
 as they did in other parts of the Peninsula. 
 But the people of Tuscany had other qualities 
 than industry and thrift; they possessed im- 
 agination and artistic gifts and courage and 
 pride like the Venetian and Genoese and the 
 inhabitants of sundry other provinces of Italy 
 who had resisted tyrants and assumed the 
 powers of self-government. They banded to- 
 gether and formed guilds which however jealous 
 of each other united in the common cause and 
 either overthrew or made terms with the Feudal 
 Signori; destroyed their castles and brought 
 them to recognize their rights, as in the case 
 of the great Countess Matilda, whom Dante 
 has signalized. 
 
 Certain of these nobles, their country castles 
 destroyed, had come to Florence with what 
 was left of their estates where, being trained 
 to arms and to command, they contributed to 
 her expansion and power, if not to her wealth. 
 But besides those endowments they brought 
 with them their pride and their enmities and 
 here they found a fruitful field for the exercise 
 of both. 
 
 As for a time after her victorious war with 
 Fiesole, Florence had peace, at least, with out-
 
 36 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 side rivals until near the time of Dante's birth; 
 her thrifty citizens applied themselves to their 
 arts with such good results that they rapidly 
 began to amass wealth and the city extended so 
 that the walls were enlarged three times. And 
 as her merchants extended their trade, a wealthy 
 class of Grandi sprang up which insensibly 
 grew into power and either rivalled or allied 
 themselves with the poorer nobles. And thus, 
 not only the old contest between Guelf and 
 Ghibelline continued with unabated fervor; but 
 new factions came into being; the rivalries and 
 enmities were multiplied and subdivided and 
 Florence became one of the most active storm- 
 centres of Italy. 
 
 The beginning of the new strife was when 
 a young del Monte noble broke his engage- 
 ment with a damsel of the Amidei family and 
 espoused, instead, a daughter of Qualdrada dei 
 Donati and on Easter Sunday, 1215, the out- 
 raged Amidei connection, after a family con- 
 ference, avenged the insult by murdering the 
 faithless bridegroom on the bank of the Arno. 
 Thenceforth all Florence took sides and added 
 to all other causes an implacable feud which 
 raged for a hundred years. 
 
 So much of the political condition. And now 
 what of the Rehgious ^ The corruption of the
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 37 
 
 Church had assumed a form and proportions 
 that shocked the conscience of earnest church- 
 men, and a reform was started of which the 
 Monastery of Cluny became the centre, St. 
 Dominic and St. Francis had taken up the 
 matter of Religion and Morahty at a time when 
 the connection had been severed and appeared 
 in danger of being completely lost. They had 
 a marked effect on the people at large. The 
 mendicant orders spread rapidly and their de- 
 votion constituted a great reform movement 
 which affected the Priesthood. 
 
 Great scholars like St. Thomas Aquinas and 
 Albertus Magnus joined the former order and 
 added to its lustre, and devout disciples 
 preached and bore the gospel of piety and self- 
 abnegation to remote quarters. But vows of 
 poverty and chastity were not likely to affect 
 the Hierarchy engaged in practices quite the 
 opposite and enHsted in a desperate struggle 
 to maintain and extend the power which their 
 organization had been able to secure during 
 the preceding age under able and ambitious 
 Supreme Pontiffs. They were now endeavor- 
 ing to withstand Frederi : II, the Emperor, and 
 among the stakes was Florence now grown 
 opulent and powerful. 
 
 In this long strife which kept Florence in 
 
 4375S0
 
 38 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 turmoil, however the different currents ran 
 there were always the two main currents of 
 conflict: the Imperial Party of the Ghibellines, 
 and the Papal Party of the Guelfs. For a 
 time the former appeared to have the ascen- 
 dancy. Frederic II, Dante's "good Frederic," 
 rose to power in Italy with the apparent good- 
 will even of the Church; then Ghibellines par- 
 ticipated in his triumph and the Guelfs were 
 driven forth. Laws were passed creating the 
 office of Podesta who would govern in a manner 
 to please the Ghibelline nobles. But the people 
 finally interposed and a new office was created 
 to overrule the Podesta and he was backed by 
 a militia created to sustain his power. But 
 the wind of popular approval changed; Fortune 
 and friends abandoned him and Frederic died 
 in 1250, reviled and excommunicated. The 
 GhibelHnes in turn were chased into exile and 
 the Guelfs returned to power to glut their re- 
 venge. 
 
 Then came Manfred (1258) from Sicily, 
 Frederic's natural son and, in the battle fought 
 on the plain of Montaperti, September 4, 1260, 
 defeated, with the aid of the Ghibelline exiles 
 under leadership of Farinata degli Uberti and 
 of some treachery on the part of certain Floren-
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 39 
 
 tines, the Guelfs of Florence and having de- 
 stroyed their army took possession of their 
 city, whose destruction Hkewise was proposed, 
 and probably would have been carried out had 
 not the GhibelHne leader, Farinata degli Uberti 
 interposed and brought himself immortality in 
 a verse of Dante's: 
 
 "Colui che la defesa col viso aperto." 
 
 Manfred might have brought peace to Italy 
 if not to Florence as he desired to reconcile 
 the warring sections; but Pope Urban IV was 
 French, a cobbler's son, and he stood for the 
 French King's pretensions and on his death in 
 1264 he was succeeded by Clement IV, a Pro- 
 vence lawyer, who also opposed Manfred, whom 
 he excommunicated, and Charles of Anjou, hav- 
 ing come with an army composed of all the 
 elements opposed to Manfred, the latter was 
 defeated and slain in the battle of Benevento, 
 February 26, 1266, where "fu hugiardo ciascun 
 pugliesCy^ and later his body was torn from the 
 sepulchre and thrown into the river, and Conrad, 
 his boyish heir was taken, and executed. 
 
 Thus closed on the scaffold in that Piazza 
 of Naples the Swabian Hne that Dante so sig- 
 nalized as "the three Swabian blasts," that
 
 40 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 had begun with its interest in the new Hfe and 
 its taste for Literature to lead Italy toward a 
 new Intellectual dawn. Loose claimants to 
 Imperial thrones were as inconvenient and as 
 dangerous then as now. 
 
 Of Poets before Dante Italy had according 
 to catalogue fewer than France where chiefly 
 in sunny Provence they were singing in mea- 
 sures that were extending both North and 
 South, and were awakening an emulation which 
 in time was to bring forth beyond the Alps 
 a choir whose melodious song should draw the 
 attention of the world. 
 
 Yet Italy had her Poets especially to the 
 Southward where in Frederic's Court had be- 
 gun to sound strains that recalled how once 
 Sicily had resounded with song. The Pro- 
 ven9al singers had come down and were awaken- 
 ing those of Italy.i 
 
 Italy, like France (to follow the thoughtful 
 study referred to), went through the cycle: 
 Latin chronicles, monastic in form; then the 
 sweep of monastic legend in the old tongue, 
 the Latin; then those of a more secular form; 
 
 * I cannot do better than point the reader to the work of the 
 latest of the Dante students, Professor Vittorio Turri, to whose 
 thoughtful study of Dante I am indebted for much in the follow- 
 ing resume.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 41 
 
 then later on, "Histories versified in the classi- 
 cal metre of the epic poem"; then historical 
 songs popularized in briefer and lighter form; 
 legends, religious and heroic, an echo of the 
 deeds of Prance: the first nucleus of the Italian 
 Romanesque poetry. Encyclopaedias, moraliz- 
 ings, diverse writings followed intended to 
 diffuse in the language of the Fathers — gram- 
 matical, literary and scientific precepts, and to 
 draw from physical and natural phenomena 
 teachings, symbols, allegories. And side by 
 side with the religious lyric, side by side with 
 the great Christian and Church odes, the hymn 
 of joy and, yet more in Italy than elsewhere, of 
 Pride; side by side with the visions the liturgic 
 mysteries in which are found the first slow 
 germ of the Drama and the Stage. 
 
 The Troubadours gathered in Courts — the 
 greater number from Provence after the cru- 
 sade of the Albigenses; the Trouveres, scat- 
 tered for the most part through upper Italy, 
 in the castles of the Friuli, in the glorious 
 Trivigian marches, spread among the Italians 
 the Art and Poetry of ^rnn'^e. 
 
 The former bore into Italy the gay science 
 which flourished in Southern France: the subtle 
 and shrewd doctrines woven around Love;
 
 42 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 those exquisite rhymes of sentiment, form, and 
 melody; that language of harmonious charm 
 which appeared born with and for them. They 
 thus promoted a numerous school of Italian 
 troubadours who to the native dialects pre- 
 ferred the Provencal tongue. 
 
 The Trouveres, on the other hand, brought 
 into Italy the kind of Poetry that flourished 
 in upper France: romances; songs of deeds, 
 seized on and re-elaborated in that series of 
 poems which often penetrated by the imagery 
 and sound of the dialect, scattered throughout 
 the Paduan territory the fecund seed of Italian 
 Romanesque Poetry. 
 
 Throughout a great part, then, of the period 
 of her beginnings Italy had a rich and varied 
 production in a tongue not her own, and as the 
 poetry was Latin or Proven9al or French, so 
 also the Prose contained Latin ideas or was 
 French in the doctrinal or narrative writings. 
 And, meantime, the new common speech of 
 Tuscany went on firmly elaborating itself amid 
 attempts of literary idealization on the part of 
 other dialects; exercising itself in translating, in 
 remodelling specimens of Rome and France; 
 in moral and rhetorical works, and it will be 
 found in short space sufficiently developed and 
 established to advance with certain step.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 43 
 
 Two schools of Art outline themselves and 
 take their stand from all this diverse produc- 
 tion with their own distinct marks. One, 
 Dante termed the Sicilian — not because all its 
 representatives were Suavi, but because they 
 drew their examples and impulse from the 
 Swabian Court of Sicily not with any other in- 
 tent than to reproduce in pallid and colorless 
 form the lyric of Provence. The other school, 
 divided in spirit and in attitude, in part courtly, 
 in part bourgeois, in part scholai:tic, and in part 
 common-speech, flourished in Central Italy 
 with Guittone, the Aretino, who manifesting 
 traces of the Sicilian rimatori, has the senti- 
 ment and the evident desire for fresh art di- 
 verse from the other and marked by the new 
 mystical doctrines touching Love and by new 
 philosophic and poHtical reiiections. 
 
 The Dante student already cited thinks little 
 of the former school, and Dante despised for his 
 poverty of inspiration and of style Guittone, 
 who nevertheless labored to lift Poetry from the 
 forms of troubadourism to a more serious classic 
 style and even initiated the lyrical political 
 conscience pervaded by a vague Sense of Italian 
 National Consciousness. And Guittone seems 
 to have been the master of Guido Guinezelli,
 
 44 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Styled by Dante, "the Father of Sweet and 
 Pleasing Rhymes." 
 
 These were the forerunners of him who was 
 to Hft ItaHan Poetry from the pedantic, the 
 commonplace, and the imitative and estabhsh 
 it at one sweep on the pinnacle of the noble 
 and the inspired. 
 
 Legends; prayers; chants; litanies; songs of 
 praise; ballads; antiphonals (centresti) these 
 are the poetical works of the first period: an 
 output varied in character and manner; re- 
 ligious and political, amorous and moral; where 
 prevail dialect forms; where in a mixed flock 
 of diverse elements it is easy to distinguish 
 literary idioms and attempts at and aspirations 
 for a worthier use; where the speech is more 
 frankly popular yet where on the other hand it 
 strives to become nobler and more cultured. 
 
 Thus, if in upper Italy flourished an output 
 richer with moral and didactic motive, in a 
 tongue more related to that used in the Veneto; 
 but penetrated with mixed elements: Latin, 
 Provencal, French, Lombard; in Umbria flour- 
 ished the sacred lyric and were difi^used lauda- 
 tions of the church and of the discipline of 
 Christ. These flourished in the greater part 
 of Italy, while in Emilia; in Lombardy; in
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 45 
 
 Venice; in Tuscany flowered a poetry in sub- 
 stance and in form more clearly and broadly 
 popular. 
 
 Happily, for the world, however unhappily 
 for him in his time, Dante's lot was cast in one 
 of the most turbulent; but also most advanced 
 cities of Christendom — a city full of violence; 
 but eager and advanced and on the threshold 
 of the great Renaissance, which was to make it 
 nearest to Athens in her prime of all the Cities 
 of Modern times. 
 
 If Guelfs and Ghibellines fought, till the 
 former overwhelmed the latter and banished 
 them from Florence to return again and turn 
 the tables on the former, and if the black Guelfs 
 and the People fought till both were exhausted, 
 Florence did not pause in her advance. Three 
 times her walls had been extended and she had 
 grown from a town of simple life to an em- 
 porium of commerce whose wealth and power 
 were increasing by leaps and bounds. She had 
 seized the primacy of Tuscany and was pre- 
 paring to extend her power. With the genius 
 that was the birthright of her people, no ad- 
 vance appeared beyond her reach. Her mer- 
 chants became leaders and enlarged trade 
 into commerce. They grew rich and they grew
 
 46 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 powerful enough to rival and withstand the 
 great nobles who had ruled supreme in the 
 past, and to set up a Government strong enough 
 to make them subject to the law and, when they 
 violated Law, to raze their palaces to the ground. 
 Amid the strife and clangor Italian Genius was 
 rising like an Eagle soaring above the storm 
 to face unblenchingly the sun. Learning and 
 Art awakened; the great Doctors had absorbed 
 it and endeavored to show that it might 
 be reconciled with the Christian doctrine. 
 Religion had been shown by men of saintly 
 lives, like Dominic and Francis, to be still 
 capable of reforming the world. " The Arts, 
 released from formalism, took on a new life 
 and Literature held its own, to develop later, 
 with Dante at the head, into a brilUancy un- 
 surpassed in any age. 
 
 Dante was in his prime when at the end of 
 the thirteenth Century the flowering of the 
 new aspiration began to show its rich fruitage 
 — when in 1294 the great Church of Santa 
 Croce, the Westminster of Tuscany, was be- 
 gun, and the foundations of the wonderful 
 Duomo were laid by Arnolfo, to be crowned 
 later by the masterpiece of Brunelleschi. 
 
 In 1298 Arnolfo began the imposing Palazzo 
 Vecchio. And soon Giotto, the Italian Shep-
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 47 
 
 herd-lad, Cimabue's disciple, turned into the 
 greatest Artist of his time, with a genius as 
 many-faced as Michael Angelo's, was rearing 
 his tower — "as graceful," to quote Lowell, "as 
 an Horatian ode" — which has stood since then, 
 unequalled in Majestic beauty by any similar 
 work even in the land where Beauty has its 
 home. 
 
 In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII held a Jubilee 
 for Christendom to mark a new era. 
 
 It was amid such conflicting elements and 
 such aspiring dreams that Dante grew to the 
 realization of his powers. He was accustomed 
 to the greatness of Art. Tradition tells how 
 he sat on a stone and watched Giotto's Cam- 
 panile rising in splendor to overtower the tall- 
 est dreams of Florentine ambition and for long 
 the stone was known as ''Dante's stone." 
 
 But those who planned and built these monu- 
 ments of Italian genius, little knew that among 
 them sat one who was to build with his art a 
 monument far greater and more enduring than 
 all the works of Giotto and Arnolfo and Bru- 
 nelleschi and all their followers. 
 
 In Florence, in the atmosphere in which 
 Dante was nurtured, it is, at least, to the 
 modern student, not easy to distinguish be- 
 tween the influence on Dante of the Re-
 
 48 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 ligious reform movement that was taking place 
 about him; of the classical students who were 
 beginning to circulate the Aristotelian philos- 
 ophy with an ardor as though it were a new 
 discovery; and of the modern poets who were 
 beginning to sing of love and chivalry in a new 
 key and with a new melody adapted to a new 
 conception of romance. That all had an in- 
 fluence on his mind we have the proof in his 
 work which not only reflected all the light 
 that came from every source, but caught and 
 by his genius transmuted it into a new eff^ul- 
 gence in whose light all origin save his own is 
 merged and lost. Genius, Art, Tradition he 
 summons to his aid to enable him to present 
 to the mind of man the full import of his 
 vision of light. 
 
 In the Xth and succeeding Cantos of the 
 Paradiso he girdles his progress with a shining 
 band of Doctors and Sages who having in- 
 spired him and others on earth now, vivi e 
 viventi, in ineff"able light, hymn the Glory of 
 God, among the Blessed with melody more 
 divine even than their radiance. And what a 
 starry band they are, who lovingly circled round 
 the beauteous woman who fitted him for 
 Heaven ! He signalizes St. Thomas Aquinas,
 
 DANTE AND HIS TIME 49 
 
 the Angelical Doctor, who "Christianized Aris- 
 totle": brought his system to the support of 
 Christianity; Albertus Magnus, the Doctor Uni- 
 versal, who taught and gave his disputations 
 in Cologne and Paris and was the Angehcal 
 Doctor's Brother and Master; St. Dominic, 
 who led the gracious flock in green pastures, 
 and among them St. Francis, who rivalled him, 
 if not in learning, at least, in piety and holy 
 works; Peter the Lombard; Boethius, whose 
 influence on the Poet is so marked as to be uni- 
 versall}^ admitted; Bonaventura, the Seraphic 
 Doctor, and many another teacher whose in- 
 fluence Dante seems thus to acknowledge in 
 his mighty work. 
 
 Of the Poets, as has been already stated, he 
 has spoken in another scene and he places 
 them according to their rank. First, of course, 
 for him Virgil, his Master and Guide; Homer 
 the Monarch of Song; Horace, Ovid, Lucan, 
 and, later on, Statius. He frankly intimates 
 his debt to all.
 
 II 
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 
 
 Of the four World Poets who, for certain 
 supreme and far-reaching qualities and influ- 
 ences on the progress of the world, may be 
 classed together, we know with certainty that 
 in all that goes to make the poet supreme, 
 the sad Florentine whose six hundredth anni- 
 versary the world last year attempted rever- 
 ently to celebrate, is not less than the great- 
 est. 
 
 There was no field, material or intellectual, 
 which he did not explore, no region that the 
 human mind had conceived of whether of 
 Earth; of the Heavens above the Earth; of the 
 waters or fire beneath the Earth; no field of 
 human thought or speculation that he did not 
 penetrate with his inspired imagination and 
 on which he did not shed the light of his radiant 
 intellect. Every emotion of the human heart; 
 every passion of the human soul; every exer- 
 cise of the human intellect; every flight of the 
 
 so
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 51 
 
 human imagination he has pictured for Hu- 
 manity in terms and colors so supreme, so im- 
 perishable, as not only to be unexcelled, but 
 as to render it well-nigh inconceivable that 
 they can be excelled hereafter. 
 
 Although during much of these long years, 
 the cultured of all nations have been striving 
 to measure the scope and to do justice to 
 the hallowed memory of him whose sacred 
 ashes Ravenna proudly guards while Florence 
 mourns; none can truly know what Dante was 
 and is save the Italian. 
 
 What David was to ancient Israel; what 
 Homer was to ancient Greece — where as will 
 be recalled, "Seven Greek Cities fought for 
 Homer, dead"; what Shakespeare has been 
 and will continue to be to the English-speaking 
 peoples whose thought and language he has 
 crystallized in light — this and more, Dante has 
 been and must continue to be to the Italian 
 People. For he was, indeed, what that Statue 
 erected at Trent proclaims him to have been: 
 "The Father." 
 
 Certainly the Psalms of David were a well- 
 spring for the Hebrew people and were sung 
 and resung by their poets and taught to their 
 children for generation after generation; the
 
 52 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 songs that Homer chanted were known to 
 Greeks throughout Greece and her colonies 
 and eventually to the world; and the language 
 of Shakespeare is still spoken and his thought 
 is still current, at least among the native-born 
 of the older States along the Atlantic seaboard. 
 But the language of Dante is even more the 
 language of Italy. And that it is so, is due to 
 Dante himself. He created the Italian lan- 
 guage as it exists to-day. From fragments and 
 dialects he formed a tongue and with it created 
 so wonderful a work that all Italy accepted it 
 and after six hundred years still uses it as its 
 own. From the Italian bank of the Adige to 
 the most southern point of Sicily, the phrases 
 and turns of expression that Dante embalmed 
 in the amber of his verse may be found in the 
 mouth of the Italian. From the Minister in 
 his cabinet to the farmer or shepherd or vine- 
 dresser it may be found as a part of the ordi- 
 nary currency of common speech. From the 
 Premier to the Contadino a phrase from Dante 
 carries with it an authority such as, at least, 
 in time past, was among the pious the authority 
 of a phrase from Holy Word. But more than 
 this, he was the Moses of Italy who with the 
 great vision of Liberty for Italy laid down the
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE S3 
 
 Laws of Justice and Truth and led the Italians 
 into the land of the new birth.' 
 
 No poet of whom history tells, save possibly 
 Homer, had so marked and so universal an in- 
 fluence on the destiny of his country and of his 
 People. 
 
 It is not, however, only the speech of Dante 
 that one hears; it is the turn of phrase, his w^ay 
 of thinking also that has stamped itself on 
 Italy. As the peasant or the artisan through- 
 out Italy talks with Dante's wisdom as his argu- 
 
 ' In Italy, owing to certain conditions in the past which 
 need not be elaborated here, a part of the population by no 
 means inconsiderable in numbers and much less so in char- 
 acter, would be unable to meet even the indifferent test of forty 
 words of our anti-immigration laws. But among this part are a 
 large contadino or country element who are the very backbone 
 of Italian Industry and Thrift and who by their character; their 
 industry; their vigor; their experience; their ability mental and 
 physical, would prove a benefit to any country on which they 
 might bestow their affection. Yet ignorance and misapprehension 
 have excluded these from our shores while others in shoals have 
 been admitted, simply because they could read twoscore words 
 in some outlandish dialect, possibly learned for the express pur- 
 pose of passing them. The reason why the literate-test is in- 
 effective and — may I say? — absurd, is that in Italy as elsewhere 
 the malviventi can nearly all meet the test while the body of the 
 Analfabetti who are excluded would prove an asset of which any 
 country might be proud. Character is better than the knowl- 
 edge of forty words of print, or forty thousand words, and the 
 failure to understand this is a fundamental error. 
 
 The very men who are excluded by the test may be able to 
 cite reasons for any view they hold in pure Italian, jewelled with 
 phrases taken from the jewel-casket of Dante Alighieri.
 
 54 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 ment; so the philosopher and the statesman 
 cites him as the authority and often as the 
 final authority for his teaching. He has, in 
 fact, a unique position in this regard and one 
 may hear him quoted with the same respect 
 that in our Country is given to a decision of the 
 Supreme Court. From him as from His HoH- 
 ness, the Pope, where he has spoken, there is 
 no appeal; he is infallible. And what a range 
 he has. The Earth, Hell and Heaven are all 
 included in his boundless scope. Poeta dei 
 poeti, call him the Italians; Creator of Creators. 
 
 "Dante," says one of his most noted com- 
 mentators, "is a great part of Italy." It is 
 true. And he might with equal truth have 
 added, "Italy is a great part of the world." 
 
 Have you ever reflected what the world 
 would have been without Italy ? Think what 
 it would have been without the courage and 
 fortitude and persistence that defeated Car- 
 thage with its worship of Baal and its human 
 sacrifices; without the Literature that has en- 
 riched Mankind; without the Law and Order 
 that changed the Barbarian countries to the 
 Northward, the Eastward, and brought them 
 into subjection to some form of Civilization; 
 without the pious fervor and consecration that
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE ■ . 55 
 
 sent Roman Missionaries to Christianize France 
 and England and later the great Germanic 
 regions; without the spirit of informed adven- 
 ture that brought from the East the Mariner's 
 compass and taught its use to Europe, and yet 
 later gave Spain the great Genoese to sail into 
 the West beyond the pillars of Hercules, behind 
 the setting sun and verify the dream that at 
 some point the West and East would meet. 
 Think what we should have been without the 
 Religious orders that in the crisis of religion 
 came from Italy — from that Rome 
 
 "Whose sword was once our guardian and is still our 
 guide." 
 
 Think what the world would have been with- 
 out the Art and the Literature of the Renais- 
 sance. Think what it would have been had 
 Italy not freed herself from German-Austrian 
 Rule in the great struggle of the Risorgimento; 
 and had she not been able to hold the long 
 eastern flank of the Allies: the 500-mile front 
 from the Stelvio to the Carso, during this last 
 vast war and then think that "Dante is a 
 great part of Italy," and you may arrive at 
 something of his august measure. 
 
 Many Italian biographers of Dante place his 
 birth at such a distance from the battle of
 
 56 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Montaperti. This is sufficient for Italians; but 
 I have felt that the conditions amid which this 
 new force came into existence, greater than 
 Swabian Emperors or Roman Pontiffs, required 
 somewhat of explanation for Western hearers to 
 give a true idea of that force and its accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 Dante was born toward the end of May, 
 1265, in the section of Florence near the Church 
 of St. Martino di Vescovo. His family was 
 not among the higher nobility, but was of the 
 local gentry or lesser Florentine nobility and 
 was connected with the Elisei family who 
 prided themselves on being of ancient Roman 
 stock. The family although Guelf was among 
 those who were not included in the proscrip- 
 tion then recently decreed by the victorious 
 party of the Ghibellines. An uncle had fallen 
 while bravely defending the Carroccio in the 
 battle of Montaperti, and Dante's great-great- 
 grandfather, Cacciaguida, whose wife was an 
 Alighiera, from "the Green region of the pop- 
 ulous Po" (whence Dante's name, Alighieri) 
 had fallen in the Holy Land in 1147 — a piece of 
 family history in which Dante took great pride, 
 as shows the picture that he gives of the old 
 Crusader when he meets him in Paradise. Also
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 57 
 
 he does not hesitate to make Cacciaguida take 
 pride even in Paradise of his most gifted and 
 pious offspring who was enhsted to the death 
 in a crusade which, if possible, was to cast into 
 the shadow that in which Cacciaguida fell. 
 
 And the picture that Cacciaguida gives of 
 Florence in his time stands as a portrait of 
 antique virtue unsurpassed in Plutarch or 
 Homer: 
 
 "Fiorenza, dentro dalla cerchia antica, 
 Ond' ella toglie ancora e terza e nona, 
 Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica. 
 
 Non avea catenella, non corona, 
 
 Non donne contigiate, non cintura 
 
 Che fosse a veder piu che la persona," etc.* 
 
 The whole scene is well worth our time. 
 
 "Florence within her ancient ring of walls 
 from which she still receives her tierce and 
 nones stood, herself contained in peace, sober 
 and modest still. She had no bracelet then, 
 no coronet, no decked-out dames, no belts 
 which might have been seen more than the 
 person itself. Nor could a daughter's birth 
 bring to her father fear, because the age and 
 dowry would not yet outrun due measure. 
 
 ' Paradiso, Canto XV, 97, etc.
 
 S8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 She had no houses empty of the family: nor 
 yet had Sardanapalus come to show that which 
 could have been done within. Not yet had 
 Montemalo been surpassed by your Uccellatoio; 
 as it is surpassed in its rise, so it will be in its 
 fall. I saw Bellincion Berti go about girded 
 with leather and with bone, I saw his lady 
 come from her mirror her face unpainted. I 
 saw that one of Nerli and that del Vecchio re- 
 main contented with unlined pelt and their 
 ladies at the spindle and thread. O happy 
 women ! Each one was certain of her sepulchre 
 and none had yet through France a widowed 
 bed. One kept her vigil studying of her cradle; 
 consoling with baby-talk, which fathers and 
 mothers at first so delight in. Another draw- 
 ing the tress from the distaff, told stories to her 
 family of Troy, of Fiesole and Rome. In that 
 day a Cianghella or a Lapo Salterello would 
 have been held as much a marvel as would have 
 now Cincinnatus or Cornelia. To such a beau- 
 tiful Hfe of the citizen, to such safe citizenship, 
 to such a pleasant Inn (a cosi dolce ostello) 
 Mary, called upon aloud, gave me; and in 
 your ancient baptistery I became at once a 
 Christian and Cacciaguida." 
 
 His mother, Bella, died when Dante was a
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 59 
 
 child, and his father, who had married again, 
 did not long survive her, and Dante appears 
 to have spent a serious and pensive youth, 
 studious and impressionable. He studied per- 
 sistently and earnestly — arithmetic, geography, 
 history, rhetoric, philosophy, theology — the last 
 two were much interwoven in those days — and 
 with them the art of Rhyme. Thus, as he 
 boasts, he quickly made himself very learned. 
 
 At the age of nine years a spark touched his 
 genius. At some festa his eyes lighted on a 
 little girl, of about his own age, clad, as he tells 
 us, in a soft red robe. He fell in love with 
 Beatrice Portinari, a child of his own age, with 
 a passion so great that it not only endured and 
 effected an influence on his life, but endures 
 through the ages and has effected an influence 
 on the life of the world. 
 
 From this time, as he confesses — indeed, 
 boasts. Love ruled his heart, his mind, his spirit, 
 his life. Love became his Lord. " Jpparuit 
 jam heatitudo vestra^'" said Love to him and 
 he knelt in adoration. But it was such a love 
 as the world has rarely known — it was the pure 
 devotion of a heart made for love sublime 
 and immortal. It had not in it apparently 
 aught of the earthy — it was wholly romantic
 
 6o DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 and wholly spiritual. Her glance intoxicated 
 him; her greeting in the street lifted him to 
 Paradise; the withholding of her greeting 
 maddened him. Thinking upon her became 
 his highest joy. He asked no other. He forgave 
 his enemies. He felt that he wished no man ill, 
 but all men good. This, indeed, was love. To 
 her he wrote poems — always to her, even though 
 in his shy mysticism, he dedicated them osten- 
 sibly to others. Dante became the Cavaliere 
 Serviente spirituale of Beatrice Portinari. He 
 afterward — between 1292 and 1294 — married 
 Gemma dei Donati, probably "the gentle lady," 
 who rescued and solaced him; she bore him 
 children: four sons and two daughters. But 
 wedded by immortal bonds to her in whose 
 honor he wrote his Vita Nuova and his Divine 
 Comedy, he was lifted to Paradise and there, 
 illumined by celestial light, he sang in divine 
 strains, the glory and majesty and love of 
 God. 
 
 He was the illustration of what Love — such 
 Love — may accomplish when it informs the 
 human soul; and though the gentle Gemma, 
 whom he married, may later have repined that 
 not she, but Beatrice inspired his genius and 
 led him within the gates of Paradise, there is
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 6i 
 
 no sound reason to believe that she had not his 
 domestic love. At least, she did him and the 
 world a great service. 
 
 But to return to the first step when the great 
 light shined about him and he fell on his face 
 and worshipped. 
 
 He was shy, proud, introspective, mystical, 
 assuredly not lacking in self-esteem, yet lifted 
 by his genius high above mere egotism, and in 
 matters literary, even from the first, self- 
 confident in the extreme, as witness — for the 
 former, his account of his conduct before the 
 companions of Beatrice; and for the latter, his 
 addressing his first sonnet to all the poets who 
 had sung of and were faithful to Love: A 
 ciascun alma presa e gentil cuore. 
 
 He was at this time eighteen years of age, 
 and his venture launched him into the great 
 sea where he was to eclipse the deeds of all 
 who sailed it then or have sailed it since. 
 
 To this, replied among others, Guido Caval- 
 canti, a poet some ten years older than him- 
 self, whom Dante calls his first friend and has 
 immortalized. 
 
 He was happy in finding in Brunetto Latini: 
 philosopher and man of Letters, a master 
 whose learning and gifts, especially those of
 
 62 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 sympathy with so richly and strangely en- 
 dowed a pupil as young Alighieri, inspired his 
 ambition and gave him the knowledge and 
 understanding which led him, not only to the 
 heights of Learning, but to the depths of the 
 nature of things. 
 
 Also, doubtless, Brunetto Latini taught him 
 something of the manner in which an exile 
 should support his unhappy lot; for Brunetto, 
 after Montaperti, was driven out of Florence by 
 the victorious Ghibellines and like so many 
 other illustrious exiles, sought and found in 
 France the means of livelihood denied to him 
 at home. 
 
 At the proper age Dante attended the fa- 
 mous University of Bologna and this became 
 the most illustrious of Universities. We have 
 a trace of his stay there in a famous simile in 
 which he refers to Garisenda, one of the lean- 
 ing towers of Bologna, and to the optical de- 
 lusion caused by the clouds passing over it, 
 and nearly six hundred years later we have evi- 
 dence of Dante's hold on the Itahan mind, when 
 Giosue Carducci, latest of the great Italian 
 Poets, making the towers tell, in their antipho- 
 nal song, of the great sights they have witnessed 
 in their time, after other great historic sights
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 63 
 
 has Assinella sing how she had seen young 
 Dante: 
 
 "Dante vid'io levar la giovine fronte a guardarci, 
 E, come su noi passano le nuvole, 
 Vidi su lui passar fantasmi e fantasmi ed intorno 
 Premergli tutti i secoli d'ltalia." 
 
 Dante saw I uplift his young brow to regard us 
 And as o'er us are passing the clouds 
 Saw I over him pass phantasm and phantasm and 
 About him throng all the ages of Italy. 
 
 Returned to Florence, young Dante, who, we 
 are told, "participated in all martial exercises 
 of his fellows," soon had an opportunity to 
 prove his metal in other Hsts than those in 
 which Simone dei Bardi had carried off the 
 prize. 
 
 Florence was soon at war with her rival, 
 Arezzo, and young Dante bore himself with 
 honor on the victorious field of Campaldino, 
 where in 1289 (June 11) he fought, mounted 
 and in the front rank — an experience in which 
 he later took just pride. 
 
 It was a year after this, in June, 1290, that 
 Beatrice died and God transferred her resi- 
 dence from terrestrial to celestial light. Dante 
 wrote upon her death a Latin epistle — his first,
 
 64 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 and an Italian Canzone. The former begins 
 with Jeremiah's Lament: 
 
 ** How doth the City sit solitary she that was full of 
 
 people." 
 
 The canzone contains the lines: 
 
 "So Beatrice is passed into high Heaven — 
 Into the Realm where the Angels have peace." 
 
 Ere long his excess of grief either passed, or 
 tossed him on a tide where, skirting the danger- 
 ous coast of hapless love, in company with 
 Forese Donati, a wild companion, Corso Do- 
 nati's brother and, some say, Gemma's brother, 
 he seems to have heard the siren voices of 
 Pargoletta; Pietra; Violetta; Lizetta, and for 
 a time to have plunged into dissipations which 
 soon drew from his friend, Guido Cavalcanti, 
 a sonnet of serious reproof, and which Dante 
 himself later laments as a grievous memory. 
 
 Recalled from his lapse of loyalty to his 
 loftier aims he resumed his deeper studies, his 
 spiritual love resumed its sway, and his poetry 
 while still inspired by the same power and 
 pouring from the same source begins to run in 
 a deeper channel. He seems now to have
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 65 
 
 turned seriously to Theology and to have 
 given to its study all his intellectual force and 
 an intenser devotion to the divine source of 
 the Light of Justice and of Peace. Hence- 
 forth he becomes the champion of popular 
 Right, as he interpreted it within the thrice- 
 expanded walls of his beloved, if turbulent 
 town. Beatrice becomes a oeautiful symbol 
 of Divine Grace that has sent Virgil, the sym- 
 bol of learning and wisdom, to bring him safe 
 through Hell and Purgatory and awaits him 
 at the gate of Paradise to lead him into its 
 blessedness. But this is an anticipation. 
 
 His first notable work, La Vita Nuova, 
 written between 1292 and 1294, assembles his 
 poems indited or dedicated to his Love. It is 
 the work of a young man: a great poet, inspired 
 by a lofty motive; a great passion, even a 
 divine passion, to do honor to a great and noble 
 love — a Love mighty enough to lift him, like 
 St. Paul, whether in the spirit or in the body, 
 who could tell ^ — above all that he had imagined, 
 and open to him a vision loftier, vaster, more 
 entrancing than aught he had yet conceived, 
 to the accomplishment of which he would 
 henceforth consecrate all his powers. It was 
 written in Italian instead of in the classical
 
 66 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Latin that he had once employed, and for this 
 Guido Cavalcanti was responsible. He coun- 
 selled him and should have our gratitude, for 
 the Poet followed the same course later when 
 he settled down to his great epic. 
 
 As a collection of Love-poems it leads the 
 world in that all great love-poems since that 
 time have followed his shining path and contain 
 a reflection of his Hght. Petrarch was his fol- 
 lower; the Elizabethans chose his measure. 
 Every great poet since has given light reflected 
 from his orb. 
 
 His last poem of that period — of that stage 
 was a vision of a lady revealed to his Love in 
 dazzling splendor, receiving honor in the widest 
 sphere of Heaven. 
 
 "After this sonnet," he says in closing his 
 first work, "there appeared to me a marvellous 
 vision, in which I saw things that caused me 
 to resolve not to speak more of this blessed one 
 until such time as I should be able to indite 
 more worthily of her and to attain to this I 
 study to the utmost of my power, as she truly 
 knows. So that should it be the pleasure of 
 Him by whom all things live that my life con- 
 tinue for some years, I hope to say of her that 
 which never hath been said of any woman."
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 67 
 
 And we are happy to know that his Hfe con- 
 tinued not for some years alone; but into im- 
 mortality. The consummation of this vision 
 — the carrying out to its full fruition of this 
 high resolve is the Divina Commedia; the pic- 
 ture of the world thrown on the screen of the 
 Future; the progress of the Human soul guided 
 first by lofty philosophy through Hell and 
 Purgatory and then by exalted love through 
 the paradise of God; the destiny of man under 
 the Providence of God. 
 
 One singular, quaint thing about the Vita 
 Nuova is the Poet's exegetical comment on 
 the meaning and the form of each poem. Was 
 it that he mistrusted his reader's complete 
 comprehension of his meaning and desired to 
 enlighten him, or that, assured of complete 
 comprehension, he was happy to lay bare the 
 very innermost recesses of his heart ? It would 
 appear the latter. For Dante wrote then for 
 gentle hearts in which Love reigned as Lord 
 and for those that had intelligence of Love. 
 Love was to him then the Ruler of all hearts 
 worth considering and to these he addressed 
 himself in the assurance of full comprehension 
 and sympathy. He would have them know 
 not only that he loved supremely; but how he
 
 68 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 came to write of Love. It was manifestly the 
 manner and form of expression in which he 
 took pride — the " Bello Stile." It was the word 
 that he wrote of his love that was his chief joy. 
 And let it here be noted that he ever links 
 Love with the Spiritual. Even where he pic- 
 tures beauty of form it is the picture of angels 
 that he draws — the spiritual shines through 
 them. 
 
 After his Vita Nuova Dante took part in the 
 public affairs of his beloved city, and espoused, 
 as every poet, save a Court Poet must, the 
 cause of the People and of their Rights, join- 
 ing the Physicians' and Apothecaries' Guild, a 
 membership that was necessary for any man 
 who aspired to influence in the rising Republic. 
 
 In the Vita Nuova, in one of the most beau- 
 tiful passages of that quaint and interesting 
 study of himself as affected by Love, he dis- 
 closes quite incidentally the fact that he had 
 some knowledge of Art. 
 
 On the first anniversary of the day on which 
 the blessed Lady Beatrice was translated to 
 the Life Eternal, he was engaged, he tells us, 
 *'in drawing an angel upon certain tablets. 
 And while I was drawing it, I turned my eyes 
 and saw beside me, men to whom it was meet
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 69 
 
 to do honor. They were looking on what I 
 was doing and, as I was informed later, they had 
 been there some time already, before I was 
 aware of it. When I observed them I rose and 
 saluted them saying, 'Another was with me 
 just now and therefore I was thoughtful.'" 
 
 Also he had Knowledge of Music and loved 
 it, according to Boccaccio, who knew those who 
 had known him and treasured his memory. 
 Indeed, Music was among the most enlightened 
 peoples taught as an essential element of Edu- 
 cation and as related to mathematics until it 
 was banished therefrom by the prosaic and 
 utiHtarian Saxon, as a feminine accomphsh- 
 ment, unworthy of the "nobler sex." 
 
 Dante himself gives us to understand that 
 he had studied Music as, for example, where in 
 the Convito, or Banquet, he tells of his study 
 of the Third Heaven and its movers, and com- 
 ing to the discussion of the seventh Heaven, 
 explains that by Heaven, he means Knowledge 
 and he gives the list of the Seven Sciences of 
 the Trivium and the Quadrivium, as Grammar, 
 Dialectus, Rhetoric; Arithmetic, Music, Geom- 
 etry, and Astrology. All these he had pursued 
 with a lover's devotion. 
 
 A story is told of him that on a day as he was
 
 
 70 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 passing along a street in the district of San 
 Piero, he heard a smith as he worked in his 
 shop singing one of his songs so badly that he 
 fell into a rage and rushing in seized the tongs, 
 hammer, and ironwork and flung them out in 
 the roadway. 
 
 "What are you doing?" shouted the smith. 
 You are ruining my work." 
 
 Well, not so much as you are ruining mine," 
 retorted the poet. And, adds the chronicle, 
 the smith had to content himself with singing 
 of Lancelot and Tristan. 
 
 It would appear not an unjust inference from 
 this story, though, possibly not a necessary 
 one, that Dante had composed the music of 
 the song no less than the words which the mu- 
 sical smith mutilated. 
 
 Another story illustrates both the time and 
 the poet's standing. It relates how Dante 
 passing along on a day clad in corselet and 
 with "a gun-piece," as was the wont, came up 
 with an ass-driver, who like the blacksmith of 
 San Piero was singing one of Dante's songs 
 and at the end of every stanza he shouted 
 **arri," which was a call to speed-up his ass. 
 Dante having overtaken him, annoyed at this 
 gave the fellow a blow with his gun-piece and
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 71 
 
 when he turned around, said, *'I did not write 
 *arri,'" whereupon the ass-driver poured out 
 a torrent of insulting words and made an in- 
 sulting gesture; but Dante only replied: "I 
 would not give one of my words for a thousand 
 of thine." This return of the insult was taken 
 to show great moderation. 
 
 Inspired possibly by his new and deeper 
 studies and possibly somewhat owing to his 
 new position as the head of a family, he now 
 becomes engaged in the public life of Florence 
 and he plunges into the turbid stream with the 
 same burning ardor that characterized his life 
 in its every phase. 
 
 Since Campaldino, Florence had immeasur- 
 ably increased in wealth, especially among the 
 merchant class who had not the traditions of 
 the old nobles; but soon imitated their arro- 
 gance and other failings. The city was now in 
 a league with Genoa and Lucca renewable 
 every year. This added greatly to her power 
 and wealth and this wealth had resulted, as 
 sometimes happens in other lands than Tus- 
 cany, not only in certain good consequences, 
 but also certain evil consequences and, if we 
 are to believe Dante, the loss of the old stand- 
 ards and the setting up, instead, of new or of no
 
 72 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Standards at all; but only of show and display 
 with personal indulgence of every kind. Women 
 grew shamelessly immodest and went in public 
 half-clad to a degree that led to public rebukes 
 from the pulpit: men abandoned the old simple 
 ways, and lived in extravagance far beyond 
 their means and lost the virtues that had once 
 brought them the respect of all. 
 
 The old became sharp and unscrupulous and 
 the young became dissipated, flashy, and unreli- 
 able. The lower classes vied with those above 
 them and, banded together against them, used 
 iniquitously the upper hand which they had got 
 — used it remorselessly as the others in their 
 time had done; imprisoned or killed or drove 
 them into exile; sacked their houses and con- 
 fiscated their property; then fell to quarrelling 
 among themselves and became the tools of un- 
 scrupulous leaders and demagogues of all classes 
 until all lines of division were confused and 
 they in turn were overthrown. Then, thus 
 divided, they fell a prey to outside intrigue 
 and, seeking outside aid, they were enabled to 
 wreak their vengeance on their personal 
 enemies; but became the victims of their hatred 
 and found that they were but the prey of those 
 whom they had called in to their rescue. Thus,
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 73 
 
 the people became debased; thus, Florence, even 
 amid her growing splendor, fell the victim of 
 her immoderation and folly. 
 
 It was in this state of affairs that Dante first 
 appears in public life. He belonged to the 
 Guelfs; but all the significance of party names 
 was now nearly lost — even that of the Blacks 
 and Whites was confused. 
 
 There was a law, as we have seen, which had 
 been favored by the Pope of that time, which 
 prescribed that only those who belonged to 
 one of the Guilds should take part in public 
 afl^airs. Dante enrolled himself in the guild 
 "dei Medici e degli Speziali " and it is inter- 
 esting to note that this guild was concerned 
 with the dealing with books. He was en- 
 rolled in this guild simply as "Poeta." It 
 must have been this guild that brought into 
 power the later rulers of Florence who in her 
 most magnificent period took therefrom their 
 name, de' Medici. In this service the young 
 scholar and poet soon rose to sufficient note to 
 be chosen for a brief period a Prior, and to be 
 sent as a member of a mission to San Gimi- 
 gnano, of the towers, a mission in which he was 
 apparently successful, and he was later sent 
 on other missions — to Rome and, so 'tis said, to
 
 74 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Hungary. Tradition reckons his missions as 
 fourteen in all. But in all he was not successful, 
 as for example, in that to Rome and in his 
 last to Venice, to make Peace between that 
 fHDwerful Republic and his host, Guido da 
 Polenta, in which his unsuccess is said to have 
 caused his death. If this be so, it was a noble 
 death. 
 
 He was in December, 1295, among the Savi, 
 called in to arrange the rules for the next elec- 
 tion of Priori and was in the Council of the 
 One Hundred, where he spoke on the subject 
 of an alliance with Pistoia. 
 
 In May, 1300, he was intrusted by the Si- 
 gnoria with a mission to San Gimignano and, 
 perhaps, to other Communes as well, to request 
 their participation in the approaching Congress 
 called to renew the Guelf League. 
 
 Record of the Embassy to San Gimignano 
 has been preserved. It was in the Spring of 
 1300, and the object of the Embassy was to an- 
 nounce that the Assembly was to be held for 
 the purpose of electing a new head of the 
 Guelf League of Tuscany and to urge the citi- 
 zens of San Gimignano to send representatives. 
 The record tells how, "On May the eighth the 
 General Council of the Commonwealth and peo-
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 75 
 
 pie of San Gimignano having been invoked 
 and assembled in the palace of the said com- 
 monwealth at the sounding of a bell, and by 
 the voice of the crier according to custom, at 
 the summons of the noble and valiant knight, 
 Messer Mino de' Tolomei of Siena, the honor- 
 able Podesta of the Commonwealth and people 
 of said city of San Gimignano . . . the noble 
 Dante Alighieri, Ambassador of the Common- 
 wealth of Florence, explained to the assembled 
 Council on behalf of said Commonwealth, how 
 it was expedient at that time for all the citi- 
 zens of the Tuscan League to hold a parliament 
 and discussion in a certain place for the elec- 
 tion and confirmation of a new captain, and 
 how further it was expedient that the high 
 syndics and ambassadors of said city should 
 assemble themselves for the despatch of said 
 business." ^ 
 
 The Embassy proved successful, as the record 
 states that the proposition of the Florentine 
 Ambassador having been debated was approved 
 and ratified by the Council. 
 
 Dante was married to a Donati and as we 
 have seen, among his chosen companions in 
 
 ^ Translation of record cited by Paget Toynbee, Dante Alighieri, 
 P-73-
 
 76 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 that period — possibly brief — of his declension, 
 was the wild Forese Donati, himself a poet, the 
 brother of the handsome, gallant, and ambitious 
 Corso Donati, who led the Pistoian and Luc- 
 can reserves in the battle of Campaldino and 
 who by flanking the Aretini hastened the great 
 victory. Portraits of both of them are given 
 by Dante in his immortal gallery: of Forese 
 beseeching that his wife Nella will continue to 
 pray for him; and of Corso dragged to death 
 by his horse in the hour of his final defeat. 
 
 Corso's ambition had brought on him the 
 suspicion and hatred of opponents powerful 
 enough to drive him from Florence, and, re- 
 pairing to Rome, he applied to the Pope and, 
 it is related, urged him to bring Charles of 
 Valois to Italy to subdue Florence.^ 
 
 The Pope who had now succeeded to the 
 Chair of St. Peter was Boniface VIII, astute, 
 ambitious, able. He from the beginning cast 
 envious eyes on the fair and wealthy province 
 of Tuscany with its beautiful capital on the 
 Arno and he was but too ready to listen to any 
 suggestion that would bring Tuscany within 
 his estates; within the patrimony of St. Peter. 
 
 ' For this account as for much else I am indebted to the recent 
 Study of Dante by Doctor Vittorio Turri.
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 77 
 
 The situation in Germany where an interreg- 
 num existed favored him and he had strong 
 adherents: Black Guelfs in Florence as shown 
 by the judgment passed there on three bankers 
 who had plotted with him to bring him there; 
 and now the fresh quarrels between the Cerchi 
 and the Donati promised him the opportunity 
 of a House divided against itself. 
 
 The quarrels culminated toward the end of 
 June, when, during a procession on the vigil of 
 St. John the Baptist, the Consuls of the guilds 
 were assaulted, and to settle the quarrel the 
 leaders of both sides were banished. Among 
 them, on the one side, was Dante's friend, 
 Guido Cavalcanti of the Whites, on the other, 
 Corso Donati of the Blacks. Corso went to 
 Rome and applied to Boniface, and he sent 
 for Charles of Valois, who came with alacrity. 
 
 Dante Alighieri, Guelf as he had been and 
 Ghibelline as he became, withstood boldly the 
 encroachments actual and threatened on the 
 Liberties of Florence. We find him stoutly 
 withstanding the pretensions of the Successor of 
 St. Peter, and when Boniface demands that the 
 Republic aid him with her troops, we find him 
 rising in his place and firmly moving, "Quod 
 de Servitio faciendo Domino Pape nihil fecit."
 
 78 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 He was elected, doubtless, mainly because of 
 his firm espousal of the rights of the Citizens 
 of Florence, but possibly also because of his 
 reputation as a poet, as one of the Priors for 
 the term of two months from June 15 to 
 August 15, a promotion to which he, in a letter, 
 now lost, attributed all his succeeding woes. 
 
 In face of the imminent peril to their Liber- 
 ties, both Florence and Bologna sent embassies 
 to Rome to make submission to Boniface and 
 Dante was among the envoys from Florence. 
 The mission was a complete failure. Boniface 
 would never have such another chance. The 
 want of an Emperor on the throne left no rival 
 there to contest his pretensions. The Blacks of 
 Tuscany might never again be so ready to 
 espouse a foreign cause; to submit so unre- 
 servedly to his demands and to deal so com- 
 pletely with his opponents. 
 
 So Charles of Valois was sent for "to compose 
 the troubles"; was invested at Rome with the 
 Crown of Sicily, and on the ist of November, 
 1301, entered Florence with his cavalry amid 
 the acclaims of the fickle populace and the 
 triumphant shouts of the Black Guelfs. He 
 came, says Dante, Con la lancia con la qual 
 Giostro giuda.
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 79 
 
 The victors were not long in settling their 
 scores. Proscription and prosecution began 
 promptly and were pushed remorselessly. 
 
 We have from the pen of Dino Compagni, 
 who was himself one of the Savi during Dante's 
 Priorate, a vivid picture of the events of that 
 tragic time in Florence not unworthy of Dante 
 himself. 
 
 It was a veritable Reign of Terror. Among 
 the victims, Dante Alighieri, with four others: 
 Gherardino Diedate; Palmieri Altovi; Lippo 
 Becchi; Folanduccio Orlandi, after having been 
 summoned and cried by a trumpet through the 
 streets of the city and suburbs of Florence for 
 barratry, illicit gain, iniquitous extortion of 
 money and goods, were, on the 27th of Jan- 
 uary, 1302, sentenced in contumaceam quod 
 darent sive expenderent contra summum Pon- 
 tificem et Dominum Carolum pro resistensa 
 sui adventus, vel contra statum pacificum civi- 
 tatis Florentiae et partis Guelforum, and was 
 condemned to pay a fine of 5,000 florines; to 
 make restitution of all things illegally extorted, 
 and should they not pay within three days, their 
 goods were to be confiscated and their property 
 sacked. Naturally, they did not appear. They 
 knew better than to do that. Dante himself
 
 8o DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 is said to have been in Rome. It is hardly 
 Hkely. And so on the loth of March, some 
 forty days later, they were taken to have con- 
 fessed the crimes charged against them and a 
 second sentence was passed on them that 
 should any one of them be found at any time 
 within the jurisdiction of Florence, he should 
 be burned alive, sic quod moriatur. 
 
 It was a savage sentence that Boniface had 
 passed, to burn Dante and his friends to death, 
 should they be caught. But Dante changed 
 the hunter to the quarry. He has burned 
 Boniface in Hell throughout the Ages. Six 
 hundred years later, a successor of Boniface 
 has reversed the sentence of his predecessor. 
 I wonder, could Dante recast his sentence, 
 would he reverse it .^ He held that God's 
 wrath was sweetened to him by the foreknowl- 
 edge that his punishment was eternal. 
 
 Happily for us the stern exactions of Public 
 Life had not completely weaned the Poet from 
 his first and supreme Love. They only deep- 
 ened his channel and broadened his current. 
 And we know that when he left Florence and 
 started on that long exile which he was to 
 mourn for nearly twenty years and Florence 
 forever after, he left behind him already written
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 81 
 
 possibly seven Cantos of the poem which was 
 to make his name immortal. Happily for the 
 world, it was conceived and started in the 
 midst of scenes so vital, so replete with passion 
 that it could not but itself absorb and reflect 
 the vivid passion of the action amid which it 
 was cast. 
 
 Born with unequalled genius in a time when 
 all things — however vexing to his soul — worked 
 together to bring that genius to its supreme 
 climacteric, he passed through experiences 
 physical, intellectual, and spiritual which bore 
 him to the deepest Hell and hfted him to the 
 highest Heaven. 
 
 He studied as a student deeply; he fought as 
 a soldier bravely in the front ranks; he served 
 as a public man zealously; he went on embassies; 
 he contended as a free citizen earnestly; he 
 withstood all imposition or attempted imposi- 
 tion firmly — perhaps, furiously; he was defeated, 
 driven forth; hbelled, exiled, defamed, perse- 
 cuted; his enemies were powerful Kings and 
 Popes; his home was sacked, his property con- 
 fiscated, himself condemned to be burnt alive 
 should he be caught on his native soil; he Hved 
 and died an exile, poor, proud, eating the bit- 
 ter bread, cHmbing the steep stairs of others
 
 82 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 — till he died. And all the time he was bear- 
 ing in his soul the immortal vision that made 
 the women of Verona point to him and ex- 
 claim: "Ecco I'uomo che e stato nell' inferno." 
 ("Look, there's the man who has been in 
 Hell.") Ah! yes, the man had been in Hell; 
 but the poet had also been in Paradise. 
 
 If Dante, however, was shy he had too just 
 an appreciation of his gifts not to be proud. 
 His lofty self-confidence in his powers rings 
 throughout his work. 
 
 He tells in the Paradiso (Canto XXH) that 
 it was from the stars under which he was born 
 — the Gemini — that he derived his intellect — 
 his genius. He comes to them again in Para- 
 dise and invokes their aid: 
 
 "0 gloriose stelle, o lume pregno 
 di gran virtu, dal quale io riconosco 
 tutto, qual che si sia, lo mio ingegno. 
 
 A voi devotamente ora sospira 
 Tanima mia per acquistar virtute 
 al passo forte, che a se la tira." 
 
 But we have his portrait by Villani, a con- 
 temporary of Dante: "This man, although a 
 layman, was a great scholar in almost every 
 science; he was a most excellent poet, philos- 
 opher and rhetorician; perfect as well in com-
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 83 
 
 position and versifying as in speaking; a most 
 noble orator. . . . This Dante by reason of 
 his learning was a little haughty, shy and dis- 
 dainful and like a philosopher almost ungra- 
 cious; he knew but little how to deal with the 
 unlettered." 
 
 In this connection it is well to give Boccac- 
 cio's portrait of him: "Our Poet was of me- 
 dium height, his face was long, his nose aquiline, 
 his jaw large and his lower lip protruded some- 
 what beyond the upper, a little stoop in the 
 shoulders; his eyes rather large than small, 
 dark of complexion, his hair and beard thick, 
 crisp and black, and his countenance always sad 
 and thoughtful. His garments were always 
 dignified, the style such as suited ripeness of 
 years. His gait grave and gentleman-like and 
 his bearing, whether in public or private, won- 
 derfully composed and polite. In meat and 
 drink he was most temperate. He seldom 
 spake save when spoken to, though a most 
 eloquent person. In his youth he delighted in 
 music and singing and was inclined to solitude, 
 familiar with few and always assiduous in study 
 so far as he could find time for it. Dante also 
 had a marvellous capacity and most tenacious 
 memory."
 
 84 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 The anecdotes about him, except those sug- 
 gested in his own work which testify his hu- 
 mihty before God and his Love, portray him, 
 all save one, as a man of supreme intellect, 
 proud and self-contained, as is natural to one 
 who in his thoughts lived in fellowship with 
 that high school of song and the other Grandi 
 whose portraits he has hung over the altars 
 where the human spirit goes for absolution. 
 
 There is a story of him that can only be ap- 
 preciated if it be understood that the term 
 "animal" is as deadly an insult as can be ap- 
 plied in Italy to any one — which tells how on 
 an occasion when he was in the Duomo wrapped 
 in meditation and devotion he was interrupted 
 by an atheist, a pedantic and garrulous person 
 for whom he had little esteem. He turned to 
 him and asked, "What is the greatest animal ?" 
 "Why," said the other, "the elephant," and 
 began to quote Pliny as authority for the fact; 
 but Dante cut him short, saying, "Go away, 
 elephant." 
 
 Another story of him tells how being once 
 in Verona at the table of his protector and 
 patron. Can Grande, his host — or, some say 
 others of the guests — seeing him greatly ab- 
 stracted attempted to play a practical joke on
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 85 
 
 him and had a servant take the bones from 
 the plates of the other guests and place them 
 beside Dante, who was too abstracted to ob- 
 serve it until Can Grande himself called the 
 attention of the other guests to the evidences 
 of the Poet's vast appetite. Dante's retort to 
 his tormentors was: "It shows, at least, that I 
 am not as great a dog as some others or I should 
 have eaten the bones." 
 
 Yet another story illustrative of the Poet's 
 pride and of the times is given. His fame hav- 
 ing reached the Court of King Robert of 
 Naples, the poet was invited to visit him and 
 travelled down from Ancona to do so. On his 
 arrival he was shown to a place at the foot of 
 the royal table on account of the shabbiness of 
 his garments. His royal host having taken no 
 notice of him, when dinner was ended, Dante 
 immediately left the palace and started back 
 on his return to Ancona whence he had come. 
 The King after dinner having taken his rest 
 inquired about Dante, and having learned that 
 he had left and started back on his return to 
 Ancona, sent messengers after him who over- 
 taking him on the road brought him back to 
 King Robert's Court, where Dante having at- 
 tired himself in a richer robe, a seat was pro-
 
 86 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 vided for him at the head of the table near 
 that of his royal host. During the meal Dante 
 began to smear on his robe gravy and wine, 
 whereupon the King rebuked him, demanding 
 why he should act in so idiotic a manner. To 
 this Dante replied that he was the same per- 
 son who had been seated at the foot of the 
 table when he was in poorer raiment and that 
 as the seating in his present place was evi- 
 dently intended for his richer robe he thought 
 the occasion should be availed of and the robe 
 fed rather than himself. Upon this the King, 
 according to the story, feeling the justice of the 
 rebuke presented him with a rich robe and 
 treated him thereafter with high consideration. 
 We have his outward semblance painted, ac- 
 cording to tradition, by the greatest Master of 
 his time, his friend, Giotto, in a fresco on a wall 
 of the Bargello, a fitting setting for the Poet of 
 Poets. Ignorant hostility covered and lost it 
 once. It was actually painted over. Time 
 and the futile desire to better it have dimmed 
 it; but even so, it stands mellowed and, per- 
 haps, more representative of the pensive mys- 
 tic who through the ages passes by in calm 
 consciousness of his lofty detachment from all 
 that is common and unclean.
 
 DANTE, FROM ORCAGNA S FRESCO OF THE LAST JUDG- 
 MENT IN THE STROZZI CHAPEL, STA. MARIA NOVELLA
 
 DANTE AND FLORENCE 87 
 
 There are numerous other putative portraits; 
 as, for example, the full-length portrait by 
 MichelHno in Santa Maria del Fiore; the por- 
 trait by Amico di Sandro and other suppositi- 
 tious effigies; but this is the one that the world 
 has chosen by unanimous voice as the Poet. 
 This is that Dante, after he had shaven his 
 curled, dark beard, or possibly before he let it 
 grow, pictured by Boccaccio. 
 
 A century later, Leonardo Bruni tried his 
 hand at giving "the Hft and habit of the man." 
 "He was a man of great refinement; of medium 
 height and with a pleasant, but deeply serious 
 face. He spoke seldom; and then slowly; but 
 was very subtle in his replies. Courteous, spir- 
 ited and full of courage, he took part in every 
 youthful exercise. He omitted naught of polite 
 and social intercourse. It was remarkable 
 that though he studied incessantly none would 
 have supposed from his happy manner and 
 youthful way of speaking that he studied at 
 all." 
 
 But as there are other effigies of Dante than 
 Giotto's proud, calm figure on the Bargello 
 wall, so there is another description. Villani, 
 who knew him, says in his chronicle: "This 
 Dante from his knowledge was somewhat pre-
 
 88 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 sumptuous, harsh and disdainful, Hke an un- 
 gracious philosopher; he scarcely deigned to 
 converse with laymen. But for his other vir- 
 tues, science and worth as a citizen it seems but 
 reasonable to give perpetual remembrance in 
 this our chronicle." 
 
 Such appeared Dante to his contemporaries 
 and those who followed soon after his time. 
 To us he is known also and, mentally, even 
 better than to them, for the years that have 
 mellowed his portrait have fixed it forever in 
 the Gallery of the Immortals. 
 
 Of the other alleged portraits of Dante which 
 are very numerous, discussions may be found in 
 several learned works. The Pretended Death- 
 mask and the Naples Bust have been measured 
 and accepted or rejected from generation to 
 generation; and whatever the sages may de- 
 cide, the public has accepted at last the bust 
 as the effigy of the stern poet of the Inferno.^ 
 
 " Those portraits which date from Giotto to Raphael have been 
 fully discussed in a careful and laborious study by Richard Thayer 
 Holbrook, and later by Professor Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. Many 
 of the greatest of the Italian Masters tried their hands at repro- 
 ducing the semblance of the greatest painter of them all — Sig- 
 norelli, some twenty times, Raphael, not so often, but several 
 times, each endeavoring to do honor to the greatest of the poets, 
 who stands in their frescoes sternly pensive, crowned with his 
 immortal laurel and, like the eagle, grasping the symbol of his 
 immortal power.
 
 Ill 
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 
 
 Dante's relation to Literature, however, even 
 though posterity is mainly interested in and 
 concerned with his presentation of the passion 
 of the Human soul through his incomparable 
 poems, is by no means confined to such expres- 
 sion. He undertook to analyze and to lay 
 down the philosophy of the relation of the ex- 
 pression of thought and passion to language, 
 both in prose and verse; and both in Latin and 
 the Lingua Volgare. He began by maintain- 
 ing that the real power and beauty of a tongue 
 are tested rather in its prose than in its poetry. 
 In the beginning he had been the champion of 
 the Classical Latin against the Italian Vernac- 
 ular which he then held was but fit to serve 
 the former as a handmaid. But in practice he 
 was ere long the best exponent of the latter. 
 In its use he emancipated the handmaid and, 
 endowing it with the power of freedom, en- 
 riched it with the strength and the grace of 
 
 eloquence in prose and passion in poetry. He 
 
 89
 
 go DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 may be said to have made the Italian Language 
 and has been said by so great an Italian as 
 Mazzini to have made it. 
 
 In the Vita Nuova he gives his views — in 
 Italian — briefly on the subject of the relative 
 use and value of prose and verse. (Vita Nuova, 
 XXV.) 
 
 In the Convito he has a treatise on Literary 
 Criticism and defends with his customary power, 
 the use of the popular or vernacular tongue in 
 preference to the language of scholars, though 
 he declares the structure of the latter is more 
 beautiful. 
 
 In his treatise, De Volgari Eloquentia, he goes 
 deeper and proceeds to analyze more fully the 
 languages and their capacity for expression. 
 It is said to be the first work on Romance 
 philology. 
 
 The Vita Nuova is the work of a young man, 
 absolute in his surrender; arrogant in his as- 
 sumption of singularity of devotion, soaring 
 unconsciously into airy regions of sentiment, 
 revelling in abject submission to Love. It has 
 the marks of youth stamped on it and all 
 through it in its frank statement of entire sur- 
 render to its supreme commander: Love — its 
 passionate and egotistic grief, its ingenuous
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 91 
 
 demand of sympathy. Its unguarded and un- 
 trammelled and boundless protestations of love 
 are all the natural fruit of youth. But it is not 
 only not the less impressive for this, it is all the 
 more impressive in its sincere and unconscious 
 assertion of unparalleled love and sorrow. It has 
 all the freshness of youth — of immortal youth 
 and immortal love. It is as a love-story and 
 as an analysis of a love-stricken heart unparal- 
 leled in Occidental Hterature. And since that 
 time all the historic love-poems have been 
 moulded on its imperishable lines and have in 
 a measure reflected something of its immortal 
 spirit. 
 
 In the Convito, written years later when 
 Dante had grown older by perhaps ten years, 
 when measured by time, and much older than 
 that as measured by experience of well-nigh all 
 the ills that can assail a man, "Toil, envy, 
 want, the patron and the jail," or worse, for he 
 had lost home, family, and was under sentence 
 of death in its most shameful and cruel form 
 in his native city, he wrote a further chapter 
 in his spiritual experience and, as became its 
 new subject, in a different strain. 
 
 "If in the present work," he says, "which is 
 called 'The Banquet,' the discourse be more
 
 92 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 virile than that of the New Life, I do not there- 
 fore intend to discredit the latter in any re- 
 spect; but much more to confirm that work by 
 this, seeing how reasonably it behoves that that 
 should be fervid and impassioned, this tem- 
 perate and virile ... for in the former, I 
 spoke at the entrance of my youth, in the latter, 
 youth has gone." 
 
 He was now on his way to his great achieve- 
 ment and his soul, chastened by misfortune 
 and uplifted by aspiration to the Heavens, was 
 following the light of philosophy and was facing 
 toward the high goal, where having, through 
 whatever sorrows, through whatever toil, been 
 led, it was to find Divine Grace waiting to lead 
 him into the light to that which eye hath not 
 seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into 
 the heart of man. By the time his Love had 
 deepened, had broadened; had risen and soared 
 on the wings of a divinely inspired imagination 
 until, immeasurable by any dimension, it took 
 in, in mystical comprehension, the universe and 
 was become the servant at the feast of inspired 
 reason. 
 
 The Convito, or Banquet, was never com- 
 pleted. It was planned by Dante to contain, 
 in an introduction and fourteen other parts,
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 93 
 
 commentaries on his Canzoni, a form of poetry 
 affected by the Italian Poets and, as it were, 
 the parent of the EngHsh Ode. The fourteen 
 commentaries were also to cover the broad 
 field of Philosophy supported by all the 
 learning of the age. We have, however, only 
 four of the designed fourteen parts, the In- 
 troduction and three other parts. 
 
 In this work he selects the common Italian 
 tongue, and in the first part, he justifies its 
 employment as against the Latin; but his best 
 argument is his own use of it. Italians hold it 
 the first piece of true Italian prose and, in its 
 way, it stands to them somewhat as Milton's 
 prose stands to Englishmen of culture — in a 
 place to itself. In the three parts following the 
 introduction he discusses three of his own 
 Canzoni, Nos. VI, VII, and VIII. They are all 
 replete with learning and cover so large a field 
 of discussion and imagination that one wonders 
 what the other eleven would have contained. 
 
 Presently after the Convito came the in- 
 complete Educational treatise on the philos- 
 ophy of the Italian Language: De Volgari Elo- 
 quentia, of which only two of the four books 
 which he obviously intended to write have come 
 down to us. It probably followed the Convito
 
 94 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 and it was written in Latin, the language 
 of Scholars and manifestly for Scholars. In it 
 he gives his views on the language of Poetry 
 and Prose. It deals with the fourteen Italian 
 dialects, most of which he was destined to ban- 
 ish from Italy, all of which to modify, by in- 
 corporating the choicest parts of them in one 
 supreme work in which all Italians take equal 
 pride. He discusses with absorbing interest 
 the metre of the Canzone, a form of Poem in 
 which he had perfected himself — and of which 
 he makes Bonagiunta of Lucca, whom he meets 
 in Purgatory, declare him the inventor. (Pur- 
 gatory, Canto XXIV.) 
 
 The work came to a stop in the middle of the 
 XlVth Chapter of the Second Book in which 
 he was discussing the structure of the stanza; 
 but from what cause he abandoned it, is not 
 known. The most probable conjecture would 
 appear to be that he merely wearied of it, or 
 that he was called off by some exigency of his 
 uncertain life as a stranger in a foreign country 
 and that later more important or more interest- 
 ing subjects engrossed his thoughts. 
 
 In the Second Book he casts a light on his 
 conception of his own work. Referring to the 
 themes that others have dealt with in the vul-
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 95 
 
 gar tongue he declares that his own theme has 
 been Righteousness. 
 
 Among the writings of Dante known to us 
 are eleven letters, all probably written in Latin, 
 though a quotation from one of his Letters is 
 made in Italian by Villani, who says, "these are 
 Dante's very words." 
 
 Besides these there were a number of other 
 letters now lost, which are referred to by his 
 earlier biographers. Three of those among 
 others written during his exile, are characterized 
 as "Noble Letters," by Villani. These were ad- 
 dressed respectively to the Government of 
 Florence reproaching her for his exile; to the 
 Emperor Henry, then besieging Cremona, re- 
 proaching him for his delay, and to the Car- 
 dinals urging them to put an end to the inter- 
 regnum after Pope Clement V and elect an 
 Itahan Pope. This letter is lost. 
 
 These letters were not the simple expression 
 of mere social correspondence. They were for 
 the most part serious disquisitions on subjects 
 that engrossed his thoughts and bore on the 
 development of the thought of the Time. 
 
 They were, in a wa}^ like the epistles of St. 
 Paul, only more like pronunciamentoes, and 
 some were possibly suggested by them. At
 
 96 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 least, it is beyond question that Dante had St. 
 Paul's experience rooted deep in his mind and 
 must often have felt the influence of the great 
 Apostle to the Gentiles. 
 
 These epistles were mainly treatises or mani- 
 festos;^ but some were concerned with his own 
 affairs. But so were St. Paul's epistles. One, 
 that he wrote as a young man on the death of 
 Beatrice, mentioned in his Vita Nuova, has not 
 come down to us. It was addressed to the 
 principal personages of Florence. Others also 
 have been lost. In order, those that we have 
 are: Epis. I. To Cardinal Nicolo da Prato; 
 11. To a Pistoijean Exile; IV. To Marchese 
 Moroello Malaspina; V. To the Peoples and 
 Princes of Italy; VI. To the Florentines; VII. 
 To the Emperor Henry; VIII. To the Empress 
 Margaret; IX. To the Italian Cardinals; X. To 
 a Gentleman of Florence; XI. To Can Grande 
 della Scala. 
 
 Besides these, there is the other letter to 
 Guido da Polenta, giving an account of his 
 mission to Venice, the authority of which, how- 
 ever, is questioned, as it well may be, at least, 
 
 1 P. Toynbee, Letters of Dante AlighieH. Le Lettere di Dante; 
 Arnaldo Gonti, Milano.
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 97 
 
 by the Venetians, for it presents a picture of 
 them at that time as far as possible from the 
 popular idea of their culture and magnifi- 
 cence. 
 
 From the day that Dante left Florence in the 
 shadow of the imminent judgment of death and 
 attainder against him, we have no certain 
 knowledge of his movements during some time. 
 We have only fleeting and uncertain glimpses 
 of him, as he appears and disappears spectre- 
 like at this point or that, at this castle or that 
 court, though hardly a mountain or paese 
 existing in North Italy but points with pride 
 to the rock or parapet where Dante dreamed. 
 It may well be that he wandered far and wide. 
 We only know that Fortune had dictated judg- 
 ment against him. 
 
 The Italian scholars who have traced every 
 footstep and sifted every tradition of the great 
 Master, assert that he was at the Conference 
 of San Godenzo, a solitary church in the Mugel- 
 lan Alps, where the Bianchi and the Ghibelline 
 exiles assembled on June 8, 1302, to plan the 
 Mugellan war on Florence which ended in the 
 defeats of Pulicciano and Lastro; that he was, 
 at least, cognizant of the fierce attack made
 
 98 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 by the Neri in September, 1302, under Moroello 
 Malaspina on the Bianchi under Serravalle, 
 
 "Con tempesta impetuosa ed agra 
 Sopra Campo Piceno." 
 
 In that autumn he was in Fori? inciting Scar- 
 petta degli Ordalaffi to engage in the second 
 Mugellan war against Florence, and they say 
 that he later participated, at least, by counsel, 
 in the third and last war that bears that name. 
 But, alas for him, he was never to see again his 
 bel San Giovanni. 
 
 During his sad wanderings of several years 
 hither and yon from town to town and castle to 
 castle of nobles who received the exile already 
 illustrious; his vagrancy which, as he tells, 
 brought him the ''humiliation of appearing 
 *vile' in the eyes of some who had perhaps 
 imagined him *per alcuna fama in altra forma* 
 ('through a certain renown, in another guise')" 
 brought also, he relates, the greater humilia- 
 tion of making less prized all his work; both 
 that already done and that which remained 
 to do. 
 
 Between 1306 and 1308 he was the guest of 
 the Counts Guidi in the Casentino; then of the 
 Marchese Malaspina, both families of wealthy
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 99 
 
 nobles with sundry castles, renowned "per uso 
 e natura," ''per il pregio della borsa e della 
 spada." 
 
 Then he found securer refuge and hospi- 
 taHty with the Scahgeri of Verona. He re- 
 fers to it as his first refuge: 
 
 "Lo primo tuo refugio e il primo ostello 
 sara la cortesia del gran Lombardo 
 che in su la scala porta il santo uccello.** 
 
 It was while under the protection of the 
 great Lombard that, according to Boccaccio, 
 Villani and Benvenuto da Imola, the Exile 
 was able to extend his wanderings not only 
 throughout Lombardy but as far as Paris. 
 
 Also it is believed that during these years the 
 Exile visited Venice and, possibly, the regions 
 beyond washed by the gulf of Guarnaro which 
 he was later to establish, at least, in Italian 
 minds as the confine of Italy. 
 
 It was the 27th of November, 1308, that the 
 Seven Electors chose Henry of Luxemburg 
 Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The 
 Pope confirmed the Election and promised to 
 crown him in Rome. Henry marched into 
 Italy and by Epiphany of 131 1 was in Milan 
 and received the homage of Dante's friends: 
 the great Ghibelline nobles like the Scaligheri
 
 loo DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 and the Malaspini. Dante's hopes revived. 
 He had already addressed his famous epistle 
 to the Lords and peoples of Italy calling on 
 them to arise and avail themselves of the ac- 
 cepted time — of the day of Salvation. But 
 although those who, like Dante, favored the 
 Holy Roman Empire idea even with a Ger- 
 manic head were powerful, there were plenty 
 of others who espoused the other view, and 
 among them Dante's enemies who still ruled 
 Florence, and shut her gates against Henry, as 
 many other cities did. 
 
 In April (i8), 13 1 1, Dante addressed his 
 epistle to the Emperor invoking him to hasten 
 to subdue Florence, the fox that drank neither 
 of the Po nor the Tiber, the pest that was 
 breeding distemper in his flock. And a lit- 
 tle later Dante addressed his fiery epistle 
 to the Florentines themselves, calling down 
 on them all the judgments of offended 
 Heaven. 
 
 Florence, meantime, was strengthening her 
 walls and endeavoring also to strengthen her- 
 self within by instituting reforms. A partial 
 amnesty was declared (September 2) but those 
 not true Guelfs were excepted, and Dante was 
 excepted by name.
 
 DANTE'S PROSE loi 
 
 The consequences will be recalled by all in- 
 terested in that period. Henry repaired to 
 Rome where he was crowned June 12, 13 12, in 
 St. John Lateran, because the Leonine City 
 with St. Peter's was held by the Orsini and 
 Colonnas. Clement V, now removed to Avi- 
 gnon under the protection of the Angevins, or- 
 dered Henry to desist from his proposed expedi- 
 tion against the King of Naples and to leave the 
 estates of the Church. The Emperor replied 
 with spirit and the breach was completed. 
 Henry proceeded finally against Florence and 
 the other cities of the Guelf League which re- 
 sisted his enterprise, but died at Buonconvento 
 near Siena, August 24, 13 13, after a brief illness 
 caused, as many believed, by poison. So fell 
 Dante's last hopes. 
 
 Pope Clement V died the year following, 
 1 3 14, and, the year following that, Philip the 
 Fair of France passed to his final account — also 
 he passed to his final account in history written 
 by Dante's avenging pen, which terms him, il 
 mal di Francia, il nuovo Pilato, for having 
 abandoned to the hatred of his enemies at 
 Anagni, the Vicar of Christ and thrown against 
 the order of the Templars his veiled cupidity. 
 Later on, for a time the Ghibellines looked up
 
 102 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 once more and Dante with them, especially 
 
 when the young prince, Can Grande, showed 
 
 the 
 
 "favelle della sua virtute in non curar d'argento, ne d'af- 
 fanni," 
 
 and won victories over Padua worn down by the 
 long struggle with Vicenza, and when Ugoccione 
 della Faggiola, who had united the lordship of 
 Lucca to that of Pisa, inflicted on August 15, 
 13 15, at Monte Catine a tremendous defeat on 
 the Guelf party. 
 
 It was in this year that some mitigation 
 of Dante's sentence and that of his sons, 
 had been carried in Florence, and permission 
 to return had been granted the exiles on the 
 humiliating terms which Dante so firmly re- 
 jected, whereupon the new sentence was passed 
 November 6, 13 15, against the Ghibellines and 
 rebels condemning them to be drawn "ad locum 
 justitiae et ibi eisden caput a spatulis amputetus, 
 ita quod penitus moriantur." The victories of 
 the gallant Ghibelline chief, Ugoccione della 
 Faggiola, had not eventuated in the final suc- 
 cess which had been hoped for, and Dante, 
 wearied and seeking peace and quiet to complete 
 his great work, which was to win him more 
 far-reaching victories than either that of Can
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 103 
 
 Grande or of Ugoccione, peceived and accepted 
 the invitation of Guido Novello da Polenta, 
 Lord of Ravenna, and with him found a refuge 
 for the last three years of his Hfe. With him 
 in Ravenna in these last years were his sons, 
 Pietro and Jacopo, both, like him, under sen- 
 tence of death in Florence, and his daughter, 
 to whom he had given the beloved name of 
 Beatrice. These last years during which the 
 poet "gave himself with intense labor to com- 
 pleting his Poem; to avail himself of the counsels 
 and offices of the Polentano, who likewise in- 
 dulged in poetry and art; in arguing now seri- 
 ously, now keenly, of the style and develop- 
 ments with his devoted friends who like Pier 
 Giardini of Ravenna, Dino Pierini, a Floren- 
 tine, Feduccio de' Milotti, the physicist and 
 philosopher of Certaldi (Boccaccio's fellow 
 citizen), Bernardo Caiiaccio, the Archbishop 
 Rainaldo Concoreggio, who had frequented the 
 court of Pope Boniface, and perhaps Giotto, 
 called at that time from Ferrara to paint in the 
 Church of San Francesco — tempered the bitter- 
 ness in the great soul of the exile with hope of 
 a no distant return to his Patria." 
 
 In these years immersed in an atmosphere 
 breathing of the pines and the sea, and passing
 
 I04 - DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 daily among scenes which recalled to him the 
 works of three great Revannans: Romoaldo Pier, 
 Damiani and Pietro Peccatore and that of the 
 "Emperor, just and wise, who amid the splen- 
 dor of the mosaic, appeared to call him with 
 clear voice, Cesare fui e son Giustiniano," he, 
 as if to conclude better his work as poet in 
 the traces and in the idioms of that author 
 and master with whom he gloried to have 
 begun it, addressed two eclogues in Latin 
 to Giovanni del Virgilio, two eclogues whose 
 reposeful and idealic sweetness attested how 
 a stormy life was now sealing its close 
 with a placid and serene sunset. The Bologna 
 humanist, to whom were known the name and 
 the genius of Alighieri and the cantos of the 
 Commedia already circulated, had written him 
 toward the last of 1320, an epistle saluting him 
 as the master and urging him in a friendly 
 spirit to leave the humble vulgar speech and 
 the kingdom of the dead and to sing in the 
 language of the Fathers, the deeds of the liv- 
 ing. And he invited him to Bologna where he 
 himself would be proud to present him to the 
 schools and masters, his illustrious temples 
 bound with odorous Peneian garlands. 
 
 I would that I could give the entire corre-
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 105 
 
 spondence with Dante's reply in the Virgih'an 
 manner, but this must be left with much more 
 that I would give. It all, however, finds a cer- 
 tain echo in Dante's poem, or, perhaps, we 
 might say the aroma of it all is there, as, for 
 example, the stanzas which Turri quotes, as he 
 finds therein the impress and traces of the long 
 wanderings which were to come to an end in 
 Ravenna on that 14th day of September, six 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 No exile in all history appears to have suf- 
 fered so much from his banishment. No im- 
 prisoned eagle ever beat so fiercely against the 
 bars of his cage as Dante beat against the bars 
 that shut him out from Florence. He fought 
 against it so long as he had strength — he caught 
 at every chance to break down the wall that 
 caged him in the outer world and to the day of 
 his death he raged against the sentence. And 
 yet when the sentence after long years was re- 
 vised in 13 16 and he was granted leave to re- 
 turn on conditions that appeared to him, as 
 they were, in fact, ignoble, he rejected the 
 proffered pardon with righteous scorn. 
 
 In one of his letters — to a churchman of 
 Florence — he writes as a gentleman should. 
 He says:
 
 io6 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 "From your letter which I received with 
 due respect and affection I observe how much 
 you have at heart my restoration to my coun- 
 try. I am bound to you the more gratefully, 
 inasmuch as an exile, rarely finds a friend. . . . 
 Your nephew and mine has written to me, 
 what indeed had been mentioned by many 
 other friends: that by a decree concerning the 
 exiles, I am allowed to return to Florence, pro- 
 vided I pay a certain sum of money and submit 
 to the humiliation of asking and receiving abso- 
 lution; wherein my Father, I see two proposi- 
 tions that are ridiculous and impertinent. I 
 speak of the impertinences of those who men- 
 tioned such conditions to me, for in your letter 
 guided by judgment and discretion there is no 
 such thing. Is such an invitation then to re- 
 turn to his country glorious to Dante Alighieri 
 after suffering in exile almost fifteen years .? Is 
 it thus they would recompense innocence which 
 all the world knows and the labor and fatigue 
 of unremitting study .? Far from the man who 
 is familiar with philosophy be the senseless 
 baseness of a heart of earth that could act Uke 
 a certain Ciolus and imitate the infamy of some 
 others by offering himself up, as it were in 
 chains.
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 107 
 
 **My Father, this is not the way that shall 
 lead me back to my country. I will return 
 with hasty steps if you or any other can open 
 to me a way that is not derogatory to the fame 
 and honor of Dante. But if no such way can 
 be found then Florence I shall never enter. 
 Shall I not everywhere enjoy the light of the 
 sun and stars and may I not seek and con- 
 template in every corner of the earth under the 
 canopy of Heaven consolation and delightful 
 trust without first rendering myself inglorious, 
 nay, infamous, to the People and Republic of 
 Florence ^ Bread I hope will not fail me." 
 
 It was the sentence of 1302 that caused 
 Dante's worldly ruin; destroj'ed his happiness, 
 and endowed the world with its greatest epic and 
 him with perpetual fame. For three years he 
 vainly strove to overthrow the power that made 
 him an exile, living on the bitter bread of 
 others' charity and climbing the painful stairs 
 of others. At length, wearying of the violence 
 of those about him; the vile and worthless com- 
 pany with whom the exile must consort, he 
 settled down to hopeless exile and on that 
 bitter bread and by those painful stairs he 
 climbed to an eminence from which he might 
 laugh to scorn all who had embittered him.
 
 io8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Great visions sometimes come to exiles shut 
 off and isolated from the moral things of Life: 
 John on Patmos; Francis in his cell; Dante in 
 his Exile's Study; Grotius in his garret. And 
 now a great vision was coming to this exiled 
 Florentine and changing him into an Italian; 
 the Spirit of Justice was illuminating his soul 
 and from his own consciousness of Right, 
 he was evolving the fundamental laws not 
 alone for Italy, but for all Mankind. 
 
 In his De Monarchia he attempted the high 
 task of presenting the scheme of Government 
 of the world on fundamental lines of Justice 
 and Wisdom, as he conceived them. 
 
 He was now engaged in the endeavor not 
 only to bring about in the only way that ap- 
 peared feasible to him a Universal Peace 
 founded on the principles of Justice for all; 
 but to formulate a plan which should per- 
 petuate such a peace. If he accepted the estab- 
 lished forms of Government of his time and 
 started with postulates of a Divine Order of 
 Human Government manifested in an Imperial 
 form which later experience has finally dis- 
 carded, it does not affect the greatness of his 
 conception. His aim was the same with that 
 which we have seen attempted with such far
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 109 
 
 vision and lofty spirit in our own day.^ The 
 supreme Head was to be supreme only that he 
 might effect Justice. His power was to be un- 
 limited only that it might defeat Evil and 
 establish Right. Under this Head all States 
 should be equal and independent one of the 
 other, and thus all should be free. 
 
 Mark this. If trammelled, as we may think 
 now, with the old half-childish ignorances and 
 
 * If a personal allusion in this connection may be pardoned I 
 will relate an instance of what I refer to: When in the Winter of 
 1916-17 the President of the United States, having matured his 
 plan for our entering the war took, as will be recalled, a number of 
 steps to warn the warring Countries of his intentions and to ex- 
 plain to those who shall come after us the grounds of his actions, 
 he had a great vision which he believed might be realized should 
 all America, actuated by the high motives which actuated him 
 and which were almost universally professed, follow his lead. 
 It was no less than — first, the lifting of the contest to the plane 
 of Right by the announcement of the principles on which America 
 entered the war, and secondly, the Disarmament of the Nations 
 and the prevention of any such future world-wars by the united 
 action of the combination of nations and peoples of the world in 
 a League to be formed for that purpose. 
 
 Preliminary to such a step as was contemplated a number of 
 communications were addressed to the several Governments an- 
 nouncing the President's intentions. Among these one was sent 
 to the American Ambassador to Italy to deliver to the Royal 
 Italian Government. This was duly done, the notes being handed 
 to the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron Sidney Sonnino. 
 The note to which reference is now made having been read aloud 
 with absorbed interest by the Minister, he fell to pondering it in 
 silence and presently I asked: 
 
 "Well, what do you think of it?" 
 
 "It is very high," said he reflectively.
 
 no DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 superstitions of his time, he deals with phys- 
 ical and material elements in his vision, he yet 
 uses them but as symbols of the spiritual idea 
 he formulates. 
 
 If Dante's dream and scheme were, however, 
 different from that which under the menace of 
 well-nigh world-wide war recently drew for a 
 brief period the minds of men to a vision of 
 world-wide Peace, they were only different as 
 conditions were different. His scheme was for a 
 World at Peace under an Emperor, supreme and 
 
 "Do you think it Utopian?" 
 
 "No, not Utopian; but perhaps somewhat premature ... we 
 may not yet be ready for it . . . but perhaps some time." He 
 paused; reflected; and then said — and this is why I am relating 
 the incident: — 
 
 "Dante had some such idea. In his De Monarchia he pro- 
 mulgates his idea. In fact," he added, "some years ago I de- 
 livered a conference on the Vlth Canto of the Paradiso and dis- 
 cussed a little this matter. I shall be glad to see the way to work 
 out the plan practically; and the mind that conceived this must 
 have worked out something to put it into practical opera- 
 tion." 
 
 I have given the substance of what was said on this point by 
 the able ItaHan Minister for Foreign Affairs, than whom I saw 
 no abler Statesman in Europe during the war and few who ap- 
 proached him. Indeed, to my mind, although he had certain 
 individual failings, as being too reticent and aloof, he was the 
 ablest public man in Europe w no came under my observation 
 during the war. 
 
 I returned to the Chancery and telegraphed home a despatch 
 giving a report of Sonnino's reception of the Note, and I reported 
 what he said of Dante's views, and added this: "When Dante is 
 quoted here he is quoted as the highest authority."
 
 DANTE'S PROSE m 
 
 benevolent — so supreme that he could covet no 
 more power; for there would be none to covet; 
 so benevolent that he must use his supremacy 
 for the good of all. 
 
 It was not merely a dream; for in his de 
 Monarchia and Convito he labored his plan 
 with almost as much care as Moses worked out 
 his for the Guidance of Israel when on the 
 threshold of the Promised Land. He brought 
 to it all the learning of the time, all the au- 
 thority of the sages, and lent to it all the reason- 
 ing of his mighty intellect, all the power of his 
 vast imagination. Augustine had planned and 
 reasoned of a City of God — Dante would rele- 
 gate Ecclesiastical authority to its proper prov- 
 ince: the Spiritual in life and would create a 
 country of God under Civil Rule. The grey- 
 hound should drive back the wolf and the flock 
 should feed beside still waters. 
 
 Although he addressed himself to a Germanic 
 Emperor, that he had in mind the Italian Peo- 
 ple as the Chosen People and Italy as the seat 
 and centre of this perfect Imperial Government 
 cannot be doubted. It was the Holy Roman 
 Empire that was to bring Peace to a distracted 
 Earth and although we, with wider experience 
 and the light that those shed abroad who built
 
 112 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 this Nation as the home of a Truer Liberty than 
 Dante knew, have attained to a juster concep- 
 tion of Liberty, it should be remembered that 
 Dante founded his whole plan on an assumption 
 of universal Justice, and universal Peace. 
 
 The accepted principle then was that Kings 
 could do no wrong. Dante was more ad- 
 vanced; yet even so, Dante's view was that 
 though Kings could do wrong, Emperors — such 
 Emperors as he had in mind, would do none. 
 We may recall that the son of Marcus Aurelius 
 was Commodus and the successor of the William 
 II of 1900 was the William II of 1914, and that 
 his Royal and Apostolic Majesty, the Emperor 
 Francis Joseph, adored in Austria, was known 
 in Italy as "L'imperatore degli impiccati." 
 
 It must be recalled that as amid the strife 
 and clangor of a world given up to universal 
 warfare, bloodshed, and brutality with no se- 
 curity for hfe or quietude save behind walls of 
 guarded monastery or castle, and little there, 
 he studied the history of the past, in all that 
 long period the only government he found, 
 which had given peace to mankind, was the 
 Roman Empire under Augustus — and in that 
 period Christ was born. God had chosen to 
 come down on the earth. The age was meta- 
 physical, and Dante, steeped in the metaphysical
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 113 
 
 teachings of the great Doctors of Divinity, con- 
 ceived of all that took place under the Divine 
 order as a symbolism, expressive of that order. 
 Not Thomas Aquinas nor Bonaventura was 
 more penetrated with theology or with mysti- 
 cism. Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise were as 
 real to him as Earth. 
 
 In his conversion, as it has been termed, he 
 was turned wholly to things of the Spirit— not 
 to rehgious offices— that was for the Priest; but 
 to that which these offices and the ceremonies 
 symbolized — the promotion of justice and 
 equity. The flagrant violation of the basic 
 principles of the Church revolted him, the 
 formalism exasperated him. In his Bel San 
 Giovanni he breaks the marble coping about a 
 font, to rescue a child that had fallen in and 
 was in danger of its life — an act of impiety. 
 He saw no hope of restoring Religion to its 
 purity save by bringing back the Church to its 
 spiritual duty and establishing the Temporal 
 Power in the hands of the successor of Augustus, 
 Constantine, and Justinian. All looked back to 
 the reign of Augustus as the golden. He with- 
 stood the prelates — even the supreme Pontiff 
 and resisted Charles of Valois in favor of the 
 just rights of the people. 
 
 Yet although the experience of six hundred
 
 114 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 years more, with the final cataclysm into which 
 ImperiaHsm at its best and worst has brought 
 the world, has overthrown beyond redemption 
 Dante's carefully elaborated scheme, it has not 
 yet affected the loftiness of his conception nor 
 the wisdom of his aim. Indeed, the very com- 
 pleteness of the catastrophe in which vaulting 
 ambition overleaping itself has involved the 
 world has brought it apparently nearer to the 
 consummation he had in mind, though the 
 means are the reverse of those of which he 
 dreamed. 
 
 If he conceived of a great State with a head 
 wise, supreme, and satisfied, it was that Peace 
 and Happiness; Truth and Justice; Religion 
 and Piety might be established throughout the 
 world for all generations. 
 
 If that conception was hnked with an im- 
 measurable power vested in one person which 
 we now know to belong only to Deity, it must 
 be remembered that the Roman Empire still 
 existed; that it bore by common consent the 
 name of Holy; that the whole world of Culture 
 regarded it as the fixed order no less than de- 
 vout Catholics to-day regard as such the Holy 
 See; and that the question raised was not, as to 
 whether there should be an Empire with a head
 
 DANTE'S PROSE 115 
 
 possessing imperial powers: but whether this 
 or that man; this prince or that Bishop were 
 the true successor of the Divine Augustus and 
 should be the Head. There were numerous 
 Republics in Italy. Florence was a republic, 
 as were Genoa and Venice; but these republics 
 were the prey of faction and strife and they 
 were always at war with each other, and Life 
 even at its best was in the midst of Death by 
 violence and men were crying out, "How long, 
 O Lord, how long?" All looked back to the 
 reign of Augustus as the golden age when there 
 was universal peace — and God willed to come 
 to Earth to bring peace to men's souls. And all 
 Italians looked on Rome as the Divinely Ap- 
 pointed to carry out the great scheme. God 
 had appointed Augustus and Peter and Con- 
 stantine — in however different ways, and the 
 question was not whether the one or the other 
 was divinely appointed; but which appoint- 
 ment outranked the other. And so Dante, 
 without sacrificing aught of the Rights of the 
 separate States, or of individuals, as he under- 
 stood them, was for a great unquestioned. Cen- 
 tral Authority, as supreme and pacific as Au- 
 gustus; as devout as Constantine; as devoted 
 to Law and Order as Justinian. If the Em-
 
 ii6 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 peror were Henry of Luxemburg what mat- 
 tered it ? He was better than Charles of Valois 
 and the Black Guelfs of Florence. He would 
 reign as Roman Emperor and Florence would 
 govern herself undisturbed in her dream of 
 Beauty.^ 
 
 * Cf. Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, chap. XXII. 
 
 Baron Sonnino once said to me that Italians cared more for 
 the substance of Liberty than for the form of Government. In 
 his own part of the country, Tuscany, there had been, he said, 
 under the Grand Dukes an Autocratic form of Government, yet 
 the People had always felt themselves to be free and had so acted.
 
 IV 
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO; PETRARCH; 
 ENGLISH POETS 
 
 It is the foible of a considerable class of 
 critics, who have got from the masters a 
 faint conception — very faint, indeed, of the 
 art of what is sometimes termed the Higher 
 Criticism, to question everything that cannot 
 be proved by some form of evidence which 
 squares with their narrow interpretation of 
 certain hard and fast rules which they have 
 learned and often have mislearned. They 
 ignore all evidence that does not meet — not the 
 rules themselves, but their conception of those 
 rules. They question all authority unless they 
 can measure it with their very small measures 
 and weigh it in their very small scales. They 
 ignore all but the material. This, instead of 
 being the higher, is in fact rather the lower criti- 
 cism. It discards the whole body of tradition 
 although its sources may have sprung in the 
 very presence of him who struck the rock from 
 which gushed the fountain. The great prin- 
 
 117
 
 Ii8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 ciple of Credo is slain by Gnosco as Abel was 
 by Cain and yet the whole progress of life is 
 based on man's belief and when with his lim- 
 ited vision he begins to insist that he has ar- 
 rived at complete knowledge he is already on 
 the perilous road of sheer pragmatism beyond 
 which lies the dark abyss of blind egotism. 
 
 Although no one has been subjected to more 
 searching inspection than Boccaccio I feel that 
 he is in many respects the highest authority 
 on his great countryman. He was born in 
 Dante's lifetime and in Cernaldo, a place near 
 Florence whither his father moved very soon 
 after his birth, and thus, he was brought up in 
 an atmosphere where Dante's name must often 
 have reached him during his impressionable 
 years. He had a great — an unsurpassed liter- 
 ary gift, and felt the inspiring influence of the 
 Poet of poets, and he became early an ardent 
 disciple of the master and was among his en- 
 thusiastic admirers. When he had attained 
 place and fame, himself, he devoted his matured 
 powers to writing Dante's Life and comment- 
 ing on Dante's great work. He bore more 
 than a potent part in securing a foundation for 
 the study in Florence of Dante's work. Indeed 
 he brought this about by his eloquent and fer-
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 119 
 
 vent appeals. And he opened there the Dante 
 lectures which have since continued from that 
 time throughout Italy and of which a faint 
 echo, very faint indeed, may now be heard in a 
 secluded academic corner of the land which 
 owed its discovery to the genius of another 
 Itahan, who, himself, might have lectured on 
 a Dante Foundation. He had reached the 
 seventeenth Canto of the Inferno — the seven- 
 teenth line of it, say the Italians — when he was 
 stricken down by the illness which caused his 
 death; but he had laid the world under tribute 
 to his genius and he had brought to a new flame 
 the torch which his master had lighted before 
 the disciple was born. 
 
 Boccaccio's work contains in itself internal 
 evidence enough to satisfy all but the mere 
 journeyman critic, that he had devoted his 
 powers to collecting all of what is now termed 
 the data, in other words, all the information 
 that he could that would throw light on his 
 great subject. A part of what he relates — even 
 a considerable part of it is claimed by the 
 higher critics to be apocryphal. But who 
 knows ? He has been termed the Sentimental 
 Biographer. But a Biographer without senti- 
 ment is a stick, a notch-stick, as it were.
 
 I20 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Therefore, we may turn to Boccaccio as a very 
 high authority on Dante. 
 
 "Several years after the composition of the 
 Vita Nuova," says Boccaccio, "Dante, as he 
 looked down from the high places of the govern- 
 ment of the commonwealth of Florence wherein 
 he was stationed, and observed over a wide 
 prospect, such as is visible from such elevated 
 places, what was the life of men, and what the 
 errors of the common herd, and how few, and 
 how greatly worthy of honor, were those who 
 departed therefrom, and how greatly deserving 
 of confusion those who sided with it, he, con- 
 demning the pursuits of such as these and com- 
 mending his own far above theirs, conceived 
 in his mind a lofty thought, whereby at one 
 and the same time, that is, in one and the 
 same work, he purposed, while giving proof 
 of his own powers, to pursue with the heav- 
 iest penalties the wicked and vicious, and to 
 honor with the highest rewards the virtuous 
 and worthy, and to lay up eternal glory for 
 himself. And inasmuch as he had preferred 
 poetry to every other pursuit, he resolved to 
 compose a poetical work; and after long medi- 
 tation beforehand upon what he should write, 
 in his thirty-fifth year he began to devote him-
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 121 
 
 self to carrying into effect that upon which he 
 had been meditating, namely, to rebuke and to 
 glorify the lives of men according to their dif- 
 ferent deserts. And inasmuch as he perceived 
 that the lives of men were of three kinds — 
 namely, the vicious Hfe, the life abandoning 
 vices and making for virtue, and the virtuous 
 life — he divided his work in wonderful wise 
 into three books comprised in one volume, be- 
 ginning with the punishment of wickedness and 
 ending with the reward of virtue; and he gave 
 to it the title of Commedia." 
 
 I wonder if we are able to appreciate Dante's 
 marvellous gift of handling his instrument, the 
 Italian tongue ? In a fanciful picture in which 
 all the Rhymes come as maidens praying Dante 
 to do them the honor to take them into his ser- 
 vice, Benvenuto da Imola gives us to under- 
 stand that Dante did not omit a single rhyme 
 of which the Italian tongue is capable. 
 
 This boundless facility of use of the liquid 
 Italian tongue is one of the things that gives 
 Dante a charm to the Italian, which is, per- 
 haps, lost to all but the deHcate Italian ear so 
 attuned to melody. 
 
 Many, if not most of the stories of Dante, 
 that cast such light upon the poet, we owe to
 
 122 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Boccaccio and here is one which shows how 
 near we came to suffer with Dante and lose 
 the great fruit of his genius. 
 
 "It should be known that Dante had a sister, 
 who was married to one of our citizens, called 
 Leon Poggi, by whom she had several children. 
 Among these was one called Andrea, who won- 
 derfully resembled Dante in the outline of his 
 features, and in his height and figure; and he 
 also walked rather stooping, as Dante is said 
 to have done. He was a weak man, but with 
 naturally good feelings, and his language and 
 conduct were regular and praiseworthy. And 
 I having become intimate with him he often 
 spoke to me of Dante's habits and ways; but 
 among those things which I delight most in 
 recollecting, is what he told me relating to 
 that of which we are now speaking. He said 
 then, that Dante belonged to the party of 
 Messer Vieri de' Cerchi, and was one of its 
 great leaders; and when Messer Vieri and many 
 of his followers left Florence, Dante left that 
 city also and went to Verona. And on account 
 of this departure, through the solicitation of the 
 opposite party, Messer Vieri and all who had 
 left Florence, especially the principal persons, 
 were considered as rebels, and had their per-
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 123 
 
 sons condemned, and their property confiscated. 
 When the people heard this, they ran to the 
 houses of those proscribed, and plundered all 
 that was within them. It is true that Dante's 
 wife, Madonna Gemma, fearing this, by the 
 advice of some of his friends and relations, had 
 withdrawn from his house some chests contain- 
 ing certain precious things, and Dante's writings 
 along with them, and had put them in a place 
 of safety. And not satisfied with having plun- 
 dered the houses of the proscribed, the most 
 powerful partisans of the opposite faction occu- 
 pied their possessions, — some taking one and 
 some another, — and thus Dante's house was 
 occupied. 
 
 "But after five years or more had elapsed, 
 and the city was more rationally governed, it 
 is said, than it was when Dante was sentenced, 
 persons began to question their rights, on differ- 
 ent grounds, to what had been the property of 
 the exiles, and they were heard. Therefore 
 Madonna Gemma was advised to demand back 
 Dante's property, on the ground that it was 
 her dowry. She, to prepare this business, re- 
 quired certain writings and documents which 
 were in one of the chests, which, in the violent 
 plunder of effects, she had sent away, nor had
 
 124 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 she ever since removed them from the place 
 where she had deposited them. For this pur- 
 pose, this Andrea said, she had sent for him, 
 and, as Dante's nephew, had intrusted him 
 with the keys of these chests, and had sent him 
 with a lawyer to search for the required papers; 
 while the lawyer searched for these, he, An- 
 drea, among other of Dante's writings, found 
 many sonnets, canzoni, and such oimilar pieces. 
 But among them what pleased him the most 
 was a sheet in which, in Dante's handwriting, 
 the seven first cantos of the Commedia were 
 written; and therefore he took it and carried 
 it off with him, and read it over and over again; 
 and although he understood but little of it, 
 still it appeared to him a very fine thing; and 
 therefore he determined, in order to know what 
 it was, to carry it to an esteemed man of our 
 city, who in those times was a much celebrated 
 reciter of verses, whose name was Dino, the 
 son of Messer Lambertuccio Frescobaldi. 
 
 "It pleased Dino marvellously; and having 
 made copies of it for several of his friends, and 
 knowing that the composition was merely be- 
 gun, and not completed, he thought that it 
 would be best to send it to Dante, and at the 
 same time to beg him to follow up his design,
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 125 
 
 and to finish it. And having inquired, and 
 ascertained that Dante was at this time in the 
 Lunigiana, with a nobleman of the name of 
 Malaspina, called the Marquis Moroello, who 
 was a man of understanding, and who had a 
 singular friendship for him, he thought of send- 
 ing it, not to Dante himself, but to the Marquis, 
 in order that he should show it to him; and so 
 Dino did, begging him that, as far as it lay in 
 his power, he would exert his good offices to 
 induce Dante to continue and finish his work. 
 "The seven aforesaid cantos having reached 
 the Marquis's hands, and having marvellously 
 pleased him, he showed them to Dante; and 
 having heard from him that they were his com- 
 position, he entreated him to continue the work. 
 To this it is said that Dante answered: *I really 
 supposed that these, along with many of my 
 other writings and effects, were lost when my 
 house was plundered, and therefore I had given 
 up all thoughts of them. But since it has 
 pleased God that they should not be lost, and 
 He has thus restored them to me, I shall en- 
 deavor, as far as I am able, to proceed with 
 them according to my first design.' And re- 
 calling his old thoughts, and resuming his in- 
 terrupted w^ork, he speaks thus in the beginning
 
 126 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 of the eighth canto: 'My wondrous history I 
 here renew.'" 
 
 The question as to why Dante, a man of 
 great learning, chose to write the Commedia in 
 ItaHan, instead of in Latin, exercised the minds 
 of many wise men of his day, Boccaccio tells 
 us. His own opinion on the subject he gives 
 as follows: 
 
 "In reply to this question," he says, "two 
 chief reasons, amongst many others, come to 
 my mind. The first of which is, to be of more 
 general use to his fellow citizens and other 
 Italians; for he knew that if he had written 
 metrically in Latin as the other poets of past 
 times had done, he would only have done ser- 
 vice to men of letters, whereas, writing in the 
 vernacular, he did a deed ne'er done before, 
 and there was no bar in any incapacity of the 
 men of letters to understand him; and by show- 
 ing the beauty of our idiom and his own excel- 
 ling art therein, he gave delight and under- 
 standing of himself to the unlearned who had 
 hitherto been abandoned of every one. The 
 second reason which moved him thereto was 
 this. Seeing that liberal studies were utterly 
 abandoned, and especially by princes and other 
 great men, to whom poetic toils were wont to
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 127 
 
 be dedicated, wherefore the divine works of 
 Virgil and the other illustrious poets had not 
 only sunk into small esteem, but were well-nigh 
 despised by the most; having himself begun, 
 according as the loftiness of the matter de- 
 manded, after this guise — 
 
 'Ultima regna canam, fluido contermina mundo, 
 Spiritibus quae lata patent, quae praemia solvunt 
 Pro mentis cuicumque suis,' etc. 
 
 he left it there; for he conceived it was a vain 
 thing to put crusts of bread into the mouths 
 of such as were still sucking milk; wherefore 
 he began his work again in a style suited to 
 modern senses, and followed it up in the ver- 
 nacular." So far Boccaccio. 
 
 We have, however, on the interpretation of 
 the Commedia a higher authority than even 
 Boccaccio: Dante, himself. In his noted letter 
 to Can Grande della Scala to whom he dedi- 
 cated the Paradiso, Dante says: 
 
 "The subject of this work must be under- 
 stood as taken according to the letter, and then 
 as interpreted according to the anagogical 
 meaning. The subject, then, of the whole 
 work, taken according to the letter alone, is 
 simply a consideration of the state of souls after
 
 128 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 death; for from and around this the action of 
 the whole work turns. But if the work is con- 
 sidered according to its anagofjical meaning, 
 the subject is man, Hable to the reward or 
 punishment of justice, according as through 
 the freedom of the will he is deserving or un- 
 deserving. . . . The aim of the work is to 
 remove those living in this lite from a state of 
 misery and to guide them to a state of happi- 
 ness. . . ." He then proceeds to explain to 
 his semi-royal friend how he ^me to choose 
 the title: **The Comedy of Dai ^e Alighieri a 
 Florentine by birth, but not by character."* 
 "And for the comprehension oi this," he pro- 
 ceeds, "it must be understood that . . . com- 
 edy is a certain kind of poetical narrative which 
 differs from all others. It differs from tragedy 
 in its subject-matter, — in this way, that tragedy 
 in its beginning is admirable and quiet, in its 
 ending or catastrophe foul and horrible. . . . 
 Comedy, on the other hand, begins with ad- 
 verse circumstances, but its theme has a happy 
 termination. . . . Likewise tht_ differ in their 
 style of language, for tragedy is lofty and sub- 
 lime, comedy lowly and humble. . . . From 
 this it is evident why the present work is called 
 
 » Dante Alighieri, by Paget Toynbee, p. 196 n.
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 129 
 
 a comedy. For if we consider the theme, in 
 its beginning it is horrible and foul, because it 
 is Hell; in its ending fortunate, desirable, and 
 joyful, because it is Paradise; and if we con- 
 sider the style of language, the style is lowly 
 and humble, because it is the vulgar tongue, 
 in which even housewives hold converse." ^ 
 
 Dean Church in his remarkable study of 
 Dante, which brought him deserved recogni- 
 tion as one of the leading Dantists of his day, 
 says, that "the Commedia first disclosed to 
 Christian and modern Europe that it was to 
 have a literature of its own." And he justly 
 observes that we are now so accustomed to the 
 excellent and varied Literature of modern times 
 that we can scarcely imagine the time when 
 Society was beholden to a foreign language for 
 the expression of its highest thoughts and feel- 
 ings. It was Dante who broke the spell that 
 locked expression within this imperial prison. 
 In his philosophical works he paid to it his 
 homage, as the Language possessing nobleness, 
 power, and beauty, because, he says, the struc- 
 ture of the Latin is a masterly arrangement of 
 scientific art and the beauty of the vulgar de- 
 pends on mere use.^ 
 » Id. » II Convito, I, 5.
 
 I30 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 When he entered the lists, he was a cham- 
 pion indeed. He scorns the affectation, vain- 
 glory, and cowardice of those who condemned 
 their mother-tongue: "that precious language" 
 which if vile is so only "in the prostituted 
 mouths of those adulterers." He was destined 
 to give to it all the elements of nobleness, 
 power, and beauty, and with it largely create 
 a new Italy and a new Literature for Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 There is no poet to whom we can liken him. 
 Where there is a resemblance it springs from 
 the natural cause of their reflection of himself 
 He preceded Shakespeare by three hundred 
 years and Milton by something more than 
 that. And he is Shakespeare and Milton and 
 Bunyan rolled into one dramatic, poetic, ear- 
 nest, philosophic, soaring soul. Doctor, philos- 
 opher, seer, poet, crusader, apostle in one hu- 
 man unit, he spans the whole range of human 
 experience, imagination, and inspiration. He 
 lays down the law of Divine Justice and Omni- 
 science with the fervor and the steadfastness 
 of a prophet of old. Does he denounce judg- 
 ment, it is with the power of him who cries: 
 "Thus saith the Lord." He has the confidence 
 of one who has passed the terrors and stands in
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 131 
 
 his integrity, facing dazzled, but unamazed the 
 presence of God. 
 
 But however great as scholar, philosopher, 
 and apostle of freedom; ethics and religion, 
 Dante may be, it is as poet, as "The Poet," 
 that his fame is pre-eminent and as "The 
 Poet" he must finally be judged. And as the 
 poet we who have studied and loved him and 
 become his followers are content that he should 
 be judged. Taking the old Greek definition: 
 who has been so great a creator as he .? Who 
 has sounded so profoundly the depths as he.? 
 But one — "Nature's child." Who has ranged 
 so far .? No one. Who has soared so high .? 
 No one. Who has had so vast an influence on 
 the elevation of mankind .? Homer ^ It is 
 only of the Monarch of song that the question 
 can be even asked. Shakespeare and Milton 
 followed him — and neither had a wider gamut 
 or sang in more dulcet or majestic measures. 
 Neither covered so broad a field, or starred the 
 body of his song with so countless a multitude 
 of shining gems. 
 
 Dante sang of Italy and Shakespeare sang 
 of England; and both sang for Humanity. And 
 Italy has paid her tribute in the recognition 
 of the supreme honor he conferred on her.
 
 132 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Hardly a river, valley, town, or hill throughout 
 the upper peninsula but revels in the tradition 
 that during his wanderings the Poet's presence 
 consecrated it, or at least, his eyes rested on it 
 and his soul drew inspiration from its beauty 
 or its majesty. But all Italy claims him 
 equally; for he was the first of the Italians who 
 wrote in the Italian tongue and spoke to the 
 ^ ItaHan heart. Men of great family are proud 
 to claim descent from those whom he dignified 
 by inscribing their names on his pictured page, 
 "though he sank them in Hell." The greatest 
 National Society in Italy to-day bears his 
 name: "The Dante Alighieri Society." The one 
 nationally political Society in Italy, it is more 
 National than political, and its National quality 
 is deeper than anything merely political could 
 be. It goes to the deepest fountains of Italian 
 life and, inspired by the spirit which has its 
 source in the great Apostle of Italian Liberty, 
 it carries forward his work in the spirit rep- 
 resented in its name. 
 
 I think that of all the later Commentators, 
 possibly, Giuseppe Mazzini had the truest ap- 
 preciation of Dante. In a way possibly his life 
 more than that of any other commentator re- 
 sembles the poet's.
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 133 
 
 Like Dante, ** haughty, disdainful, untam- 
 able," banished, proscribed, pursued by mis- 
 understanding, malignity, and hate, he had, like 
 Dante, deep rooted in his soul "the love of 
 right and hatred of wrong," that sustained him 
 through whatever tempests. Like Dante, pos- 
 sibly because of Dante, he bore ever in his heart 
 the Titanic dream of an Italy at the head of a 
 movement of Humanity. 
 
 Purified Hke Dante by the same fires, like 
 Dante, "through this purification of heart," he 
 passed from the hell of struggle to the heaven 
 of Victory — at the last. 
 
 A poet must be the voice of his conditions, 
 and these conditions take in his own soul and 
 the soul of his surroundings — and as his vision 
 is wide and clear, or Hmited, his horizon is 
 broad or contracted and his penetration is pro- 
 found; as his imagination is unbridled and free, 
 he courses through wide regions or soars to 
 empyrean heights; but ever his own soul and 
 the soul of the world about it go hand in hand, 
 whether through the lowest deeps or up the 
 loftiest heights. Only the greatest, however, 
 have the power to fuse the two and lift the 
 other to a higher order. This power Dante 
 possessed.
 
 134 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Job, David, Isaiah, Homer, Virgil, John, 
 Dante, Shakespeare, all chant the passion of 
 their own soul and the world-soul about them. 
 And as they struck the chords to which the 
 universal soul responded, so they have survived 
 and will survive through the Ages. 
 
 Emerson, a great poet himself, though he 
 had not the gift of music, has a notable essay 
 on Shakespeare in which he sets forth his re- 
 lation to his time and environment. He says 
 incidentally that he was the Father of German 
 Literature. He declares that Shakespeare's 
 best biography is that revealed in his own 
 work. And surely this may be said of Dante. 
 Even though Boc^'^cio's hand has drawn his 
 portrait with rare deftness, yet it is Dante 
 himself who has given the world the true por- 
 trait of himself, set it in the frame of the Mid- 
 dle Age as it drew to its close. Like some of 
 the work of the old Italian painters, portrait 
 and frame are both precious; for both are from 
 a master hand. 
 
 "Dante," says Mazzini, the great apostle of 
 Itahan Liberty and Italian Unity, "has done 
 more for Italy, for the glory and the future of 
 her people than ten generations of writers and 
 statesmen.
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 135 
 
 "Those outsiders the most eager to defame us 
 and call us impotent stop almost in terror be- 
 fore that name which neither the ages; nor the 
 vileness of servitude; nor the tyranny of for- 
 eigners, of our princes and of the Jesuits have 
 been able or shall be able ever to extirpate. 
 The Land which has brought forth a soul so 
 mighty is unique and contains in her womb a 
 life which is immortal. 
 
 "All the great ItaHans who have written with 
 power and have served to advance the idea of 
 Nationality, have drawn a large part of their 
 inspiration from Dante. 
 
 "Dante may be regarded as the Father of our 
 language. He found it poor, uncertain, puerile; 
 he left it full-grown; rich, free, poetic. He 
 culled the choicest flowers of all the kinds and 
 forms of speech from all the dialects and formed 
 of them one common tongue that shall some 
 day represent among us all. National Unity, 
 and he has represented it through all the cen- 
 turies of division before foreign nations. 
 
 "Oh, ItaHans," he said, "study Dante, not 
 in commentaries, not in glossaries, but in the 
 history of the age in which he lived, in his life. 
 But take care. There is more than the verse in 
 his poem and for this do not trust yourselves
 
 136 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 to the grammarians and the interpreters. They 
 are like those who dissect dead bodies — you 
 see the bones, the muscles, the veins which 
 compose the body; but where is the spark that 
 animates it ? Do you remember that Socrates 
 declared the best interpreter of Homer to be 
 the soul most inspired by the muses ? Have 
 you a soul of fire ? Have you ever felt the sub- 
 lime shiver that ancient memories cause ? 
 Have you ever embraced the tombs of the few 
 great who spent for their country life and in- 
 tellect ? Have you ever shed a tear for the 
 beautiful Land which hatreds, parties, divisions, 
 and foreign hectoring have reduced to nothing- 
 ness ? If you are such, study Dante. From 
 those pages of profound energy seek that mag- 
 nanimous scorn with which the illustrious exile 
 nourished his soul, because rage against vice 
 and corruption is virtue. Learn from him how 
 to serve one's native land, since to hope for it 
 is not yet forbidden; how to live in misfortune. 
 The nature of things has taken from us much; 
 but none can take from us our hearts, neither 
 envy nor the indifference of servitude has been 
 able to destroy the names and the monuments, 
 and to-day they stand like those monuments 
 which face the pilgrim in the silent solitudes of
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 137 
 
 Egypt and say to him that there once were 
 mighty cities. Let us wreathe their memory 
 with filial affection. Every chaplet is a pledge 
 of glory for us. Nor can you lay a sacrilegious 
 hand on that crown which does not make a 
 profound wound in the honor of the Land that 
 gave you birth. Oh, Italians, never forget that 
 the first step to make great men is to honor 
 those who have already gone." 
 
 How wonderful are the works of God ! 
 David the Shepherd lad guarding his flock on 
 the Judean hills, and learning how the Heavens 
 declare the Glory of God and the Firmament 
 showeth his handiwork, later driven forth by 
 Saul and hunted like a partridge on the moun- 
 tains; Homer driven by poverty to beg his 
 bread and pay therefor with strains as wonder- 
 ful as those to which "Ilion like a mist, rose 
 into towers"; Shakespeare forced from Strat- 
 ford to hold horses and call carriages at a 
 Theatre door and incidentally to find and pro- 
 duce the treasure that was to enrich the Stage 
 for all time. And Dante, love-stricken poet; 
 serious-minded burgher and Guelf partisan, 
 driven forth from Florence to find refuge in 
 the houses of others, to live from crust to crust, 
 to climb the stairs of others and eat in bitter-
 
 138 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 ness the salty bread of others and, meantime, 
 bearing ever in his heart the passion that has 
 made the world his debtor, was toiling on to 
 sound the depths of Hell and then to reascend 
 to Heaven itself and picture in a new Apoca- 
 lyptic vision the seat and setting of Divinity. 
 
 Many stories of Dante have been collected, 
 some by his earlier biographers: Boccaccio, and 
 others, and some by later investigators; all of 
 which throw a certain light upon the poet's 
 nature and manner of life, and all of which tend 
 to present the poet as a man independent in 
 thought and aloof in nature; conscious of his 
 great power and, yet, with a certain uncon- 
 sciousness of testifying it in his action which 
 places him high above any charge of simple, 
 ignoble egotism. One is of his stay at the 
 Court of Can Grande — The Great Dog — where 
 on an occasion his host observing his entire ab- 
 straction played on him a practical joke some- 
 what rude in its manner. 
 
 He — or some say, his courtiers — ordered a 
 servant to gather the bones from the table and 
 pile them beside the abstracted poet, and then 
 suddenly called the attention of the rest of the 
 company to what might appear the evidence 
 of the poet's excessive appetite. "At least,"
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 139 
 
 said Dante, "it shows that I am not a Great 
 Dog, or I should have eaten the bones." 
 
 It is not given to all poets to know that 
 their song has gone home to the heart of those 
 for whom they sang, and in this Dante was 
 fortunate. 
 
 Of Shakespeare, dead at Stratford-on-Avon 
 in comparative comfort, hardly a word was 
 said for a hundred years; a sonnet by Ben 
 Jonson, a few Hnes by a lesser poet; but his name 
 and fame were almost lost, for a century they 
 may be said to have been quite lost. Even now 
 men are writing books to take away his name 
 and give his fame to another: Shakespeare, of 
 whom Emerson says that he was the Father 
 of German Literature. 
 
 A stupid parson cut down the sycamore which 
 tradition — one of the few traditions attached to 
 Shakespeare, said he planted in his garden — 
 cut it down because people, then beginning to 
 recognize the Poet, came to see it and trampled 
 his ground — his birthplace was left neglected 
 till an American showman talked of purchasing 
 it to bring it bodily to America as a part of his 
 show. 
 
 In Italy within a hundred years chairs were 
 established in Universities for lectures on the
 
 140 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Study of Dante. In Italy a tree reputed to 
 have been planted by Tasso, though long dead 
 and held up by iron supports, is still honored 
 as Tasso's Oak — is known by name as a ren- 
 dezvous where on occasion people assemble 
 and orators make speeches. And of Dante — 
 all Italy claims him as its own even though he 
 
 "sleeps afar, 
 Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore." 
 
 Dante was the inspirer of the great body of 
 poetry of the last six hundred years through- 
 out the world. And, although we cannot say 
 that without Dante there would not have been 
 the current of poetry which has enriched the 
 modern world, we may say that without him 
 there might not have been Petrarch and Ari- 
 osto; Chaucer and Marlowe, and Shakespeare 
 and Milton and Keats; Villon and Ronsard; 
 Corneille and Hugo. And we can say with 
 assurance that because of Dante their current 
 was deeper and broader and has borne richer 
 argosies for man. 
 
 From Boccaccio and Petrarch to Carducci 
 through all the galaxy of stars great and small 
 that have begemmed the firmament of Italian 
 Literature, and thence have shed their benign
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 141 
 
 light upon the world there is not one since his 
 day who has not drawn light from Dante's 
 beams and given some reflection of his splendor. 
 
 Giovanni Boccaccio is said to have had the 
 passion for letters aroused in his breast by a 
 visit to Virgil's tomb at Posilipo. But, far 
 more, he received his inspiration from Dante 
 Alighieri. Indeed, his devotion to him whom 
 he took as his Master was as much his pride as 
 Dante's was in following Virgil, His letters to 
 Petrarch; his eager insistence that his beloved 
 friend and fellow artist should love Dante as 
 he loved him speak more eloquently than any 
 formal acknowledgment could do. Petrarch, 
 the laurel-crowned, possibly influenced by the 
 adulation of his admirers, aff'ected not to know 
 Dante's work, and had no copy of the Comedy 
 in his Library. Boccaccio took him to task for 
 this and sent him a copy, written out with his 
 own hand and, thereupon, Petrarch, possibly 
 to help his friend, who was involved in financial 
 troubles, off^ered to buy Boccaccio's whole 
 library and to take him in as well. 
 
 But whether or not Petrarch possessed a 
 copy of Dante's work he was none the less in- 
 debted to Dante for his inspiration. By this 
 time Dante's fame was an inheritance of all
 
 142 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Italy. The Inquisition had burnt some of his 
 work, and the people were taking up his verses 
 as a part of the vernacular. And Petrarch could 
 never have been so intimate with Boccaccio his 
 most ardent admirer without becoming satu- 
 rated with the spirit of the Master. 
 
 So every Italian Poet has found his genius 
 stirred to life by the voice of Dante sounding 
 from his tomb through the ages with com- 
 pelling inspiration. If this inspiration was 
 fired by the sight of Virgil's tomb and Pe- 
 trarch's laurel it was already prepared for the 
 torch by the outpouring of Dante's anointing 
 oil. 
 
 Books have been written to show the con- 
 tribution that Dante has made to the literature 
 of the World, by showing through quotation, 
 parallelism, and allusion what the renowned 
 poets of other nations have owed to the poet 
 of poets. Even this volume of quotation and 
 reference, however; of allusion and parallelism 
 and reflection falls far short of showing the 
 debt that mankind owes to the great leader 
 and master of Idealism. The Sun not only 
 gives light and heat to those who discourse of it, 
 or who consciously utilize its rays, but tempers 
 and vivifies the whole body of creation. The
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 143 
 
 power and the influence of Dante Alighieri 
 have extended far beyond any express recogni- 
 tion of him — even beyond any conscious knowl- 
 edge of his imaginative work: yet, we cannot 
 follow the current of the literature of any nation 
 without feeling that either consciously or un- 
 consciously the reflection of his influence is 
 found throughout its course. 
 
 Not only in Italy has Dante's influence been 
 all pervasive. This might be expected. But 
 in England, where we might not be so pre- 
 pared to find it, we shall find his influence not 
 less general. Chaucer, the Father of English 
 Poetry, is full of his reflection, some of it di- 
 rectly from Dante's poems; some given at 
 second-hand from Petrarch and Boccaccio. It 
 was not until he had visited Italy that he 
 struck the note that has brought him immor- 
 tality and his inspiration was drawn from 
 
 "quella fonte che spande di parlar si largo fiume." 
 
 Dante's influence on the whole current of 
 English poetry cannot be estimated save by 
 those who know Dante. It speaks through 
 Chaucer, whose impress on English Poetry may 
 be likened to Dante's on him, and who shows his 
 indebtedness to Dante throughout the entire
 
 144 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 body of his work, many of his poems containing 
 Dante's verses; ^ and it comes on down along the 
 whole course. It is seen not only in distinct 
 parallehsms of figure and form; but often in 
 the very substance of the works themselves. 
 
 Spenser adopted and adapted to his purpose 
 and time a great part of his moral from Dante, 
 and imitates him in many passages of the 
 Faerie Queene.^ 
 
 Shakespeare, like Moliere, took his own 
 wherever he found it and had the kingly right 
 of eminent domain; but many of those from 
 whom he took his own had already taken it 
 from the great Master of Italian poetry. Not 
 only the names among his greatest dramas tes- 
 tify their Italian origin; such for example as 
 Othello; The Merchant of Venice, Two Gentle- 
 men of Verona; Romeo and JuHet, etc.; but in 
 his poems the structure of the verse shows the 
 Italian influence — and this is but another mode 
 of saying Dante's influence, for Dante was the 
 
 * For example, in Troilus and Cressida; in The Parlement of 
 Foules; The House of Fame; The Legend of Good-Women; Legend 
 of Dido; Legend of Pernesytra; The Knight's Tale; The Man of 
 Law's Tale; The Prioress's Tale; The Monk's Tale; The Wife 
 of Bath's Tale; The Merchant's Tale; The Squire's Tale; The 
 Second Nun's Tale; and The Balade of Gentlesse. Cf. Britain's 
 Tribute to Dante in Literature and Art, by Paget Toynbee, Litt.D.; 
 Dante nel pensiere inglese : A. Galemberti. 
 
 •Cf. Dante in English Literature, P. Toynbee, I, 81-82.
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 145 
 
 Father of Italian Literature. He invented the 
 Terza Rima and he was the Master of the son- 
 net, before Petrarch or Sidney; or Shakes- 
 peare or Milton.^ 
 
 Three centuries and more had made a cer- 
 tain difference in the mental attitude toward 
 the great subject of Man's relation to his 
 Creator, and even more in the expression of 
 this relation; yet comparison of the two great 
 Christian Epics must compel the admission 
 that the great English poet who wrote to jus- 
 tify the ways of God to man, found both his 
 theme and his manner in the majestic concep- 
 tion of the great Italian who preceded him by 
 over three hundred years. He could not drop 
 Lucifer so far that he would not find that 
 Dante had sounded the depths; he could not 
 soar so high that he would not find that Dante 
 had already passed the shining height. Did 
 he attempt to justify the ways of God to man ? 
 This is the central theme of the Divine Com- 
 edy. 
 
 In the matter of verse also Milton, organ- 
 voice of England though he was, testifies his 
 debt to his predecessor. Even the "mighty- 
 mouthed inventor of harmonies" found none 
 
 •C/. Dante in English Literature, P. Toynbee, I, 81-82.
 
 146 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 nobler than those which rolled from the melodi- 
 ous organ of the supreme Florentine. 
 
 Time and space forbid to trace the long line 
 of resemblances and reflections of Dante in the 
 great body of English poetry. It is not too 
 much to say that his influence is wellnigh uni- 
 versal, and hardly too much to say that with- 
 out him there might never have been so rich 
 and broad a current of poetry in our tongue.^ 
 
 As illustrations of this marked influence may 
 be cited Milton's great picture of Satan in 
 "Paradise Lost" with Dante's earlier picture 
 in the XXXIVth Canto of the Inferno. Not 
 Cimabue had a greater influence on Giotto, nor 
 Giotto on his pupils, than Dante had on this 
 puritan-scholar-poet of England. Each poured 
 his own genius into his art and got therefrom 
 his colors and his form; but Milton got his 
 spirit from his forerunner and master. 
 
 Milton made no scruple of following Dante 
 and declares himself an eager reader of Dante 
 and Petrarch. 2 Milton was, says Toynbee, "an 
 
 ' Without undertaking to give the parallelisms, I will refer the 
 student to the notes in Gary's, in Norton's and in Longfellow's 
 translations of the Divine Comedy, and to A. Galemberti's Dante 
 nel fensiere inglese. 
 
 ' Letter to Benedetto Buonmattai from Florence, September 
 10, 1638, cited Dante in English Literature, vol. I, p. 124; P. 
 Toynbee.
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 147 
 
 accomplished Italian Scholar as is attested by 
 his Italian poems (five sonnets and a canzone, 
 written probably at Bologna in 1639) and he 
 was widely read in Italian literature. Dante's 
 works he had studied closely as is evident from 
 the many references to the Divina Commedia 
 as well as to the de Monarchia in his fprose- 
 works and Commonplace Book, while Dante's 
 influence is perceptible not only in every book 
 of Paradise Lost, but also in Lycidas and other 
 of his lyrical poems." ^ 
 
 Milton's Commonplace Book, indeed, has 
 numerous references to Dante. 
 
 St. Peter's apostrophe in Lycidas is certainly 
 reminiscent of that in Dante's Paradiso, Canto 
 XXVII, while the fine lines: 
 
 "The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, 
 But swoln with wind and the rank mist they drew 
 Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread." 
 
 are taken directly from the Paradiso: 
 
 "Le pecorelle che non sanno 
 Tornan da! pasco pasciuti di vento." 
 
 The line regarding the spread of contagion is 
 from Dante's Vllth Epistle. 
 
 *P. Toynbcc, DanU in English LiUraturt, vol. I, p. 120.
 
 148 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 The list of parallelisms and indeed adapta- 
 tions between Milton and him whom in view 
 of his constant reflection we may call his Master 
 is too extensive to be quoted, but it is hardly 
 too much to say that many of the finest lines 
 in the great English Epic are consciously remi- 
 niscent of lines in its great Italian predecessor.^ 
 
 Shakespeare's "sicklied o'er with the pale 
 cast of thought" is from Virgil's admonition to 
 Dante in Purgatory, Canto V, where he bids 
 him, 
 
 "Be as a tower that, firmly set, 
 Shakes not its top for any blast that blows; - 
 
 He in whose bosom thought on thought shoot out 
 Still of his aim is wide in that the one 
 Sicklies and wastes to naught the other's strength." 
 
 "^ Can one familiar with Dante read Milton's 
 magnificent picture of Lucifer and not feel the 
 influence of Dante's picture — not feel that he 
 has but redrawn the latter's mighty figure, with 
 his vast wings like sails .? Nor is this any dero- 
 gation from Milton's genius, as it is none from 
 Shakespeare's that he seized upon and turned 
 to his own use what Dante had left. Great 
 poets may take their own, like Moliere, wherever 
 
 ^ ' For list of parallel passages in Paradise Lost and the Divine 
 Comedy, cf. Dante in English Literature, vol. I, p. 127, and ib., 
 587; P. Toynbee.
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 149 
 
 they find it as by a sort of right of eminent 
 domain, and having taken the precious ore 
 they fashion it in their own way for the dehght 
 and benefit of the world. 
 
 If it should be asked how, even if Milton 
 knew Dante; Shakespeare could have known 
 him or of him, the answer would be: How could 
 he who knew "little Latin and less Greek" 
 knovz all the rest that, without question, he 
 did know ? How did he come to know what 
 he has set forth in Antony and Cleopatra, in 
 Julius Caesar, in Othello, in his historical plays, 
 EngHsh and Roman, which have thrown a light 
 on the dry annals of the times which they por- 
 tray that has guided succeeding generations 
 more than have the dim mile-posts of the an- 
 nalists. The Mermaid Tavern and those other 
 resorts better or worse in which the Warwick- 
 shire playwright passed his spare time with 
 Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson and the rest of 
 their company were exchanges in which the 
 wit and the poetry of that time passed current. 
 On those tavern-tables rang for its testing-out 
 all the metal that was offered in that great mart 
 opened for the intellectual enrichment of that 
 "spacious time." There the beakers were 
 poured full of the juice of life, and whatever
 
 ISO DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 was true metal Shakespeare seized upon, swept 
 it through the mint of his genius, stamped it 
 with his royal mark, and passed it on for the 
 intellectual commerce of the world. 
 
 Whether it was through Petrarch, or Boc- 
 caccio, or other heliograph reflection, it is un- 
 doubtedly a fact that as Shakespeare chose the 
 Montagues and Capulets from Dante's line as 
 symbols of opposing houses that plagued the 
 course of Love; so from Dante he got rays of 
 the pure light of a genius as noble as his own 
 and in its own way as dramatic in its form as 
 that which has become the star of first magni- 
 tude in all the Literature of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Race. 
 
 Though Shakespeare may appear to us, who 
 speak only English, to have a broader spread of 
 pinion — to lead his victorious thought with 
 more triumphant sweep beyond the utmost 
 bounds of Human speculation — though Milton 
 may, to English ears, appear to sing with a 
 nobler measure and in a more melodious strain, 
 pray remember, that Dante preceded them 
 by something like three hundred years and 
 that as his leaders, beside the great Greeks 
 and Latin Poets (whom they had likewise) he 
 had only Guittone Guinizelli and the Provencal
 
 DANTE AND BOCCACCIO 151 
 
 Rimatori, while Shakespeare and Milton had 
 Chaucer and Spenser and above all Dante 
 himself. He walked alone so far as inspiring 
 human fellowship was concerned. Those about 
 him were all critical and many held that he was 
 wasting his recognized genius writing in the 
 vulgar tongue and of the dead and gone in- 
 stead of in the scholarly and classic language, of 
 the living. Shakespeare, on the other hand, 
 had as shining a company of comrades of genius 
 as ever poured about a man the electric stimulus 
 of intellectual fellowship.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 
 
 The Poem begins: 
 
 "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 
 Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura 
 Che la diritta via era smarrita." 
 
 "Midway of Life's journey I again 
 Found myself in a dim forest; 
 For the right road was lost." 
 
 This the commentators have universally and 
 
 doubtless rightly interpreted to mean that it 
 
 was midway of the threescore years and ten of 
 
 man's allotted span of life that Dante had his 
 
 vision and began his great work. The selva 
 
 oscura, w^hose memory to the Poet was, he 
 
 avers, wellnigh as bitter as Death, they take to 
 
 signify the jungle of worldly pleasure in which he 
 
 had for a time lost himself. The lofty mountain 
 
 whose shoulders, touched by the beams of the 
 
 rising sun, which he tries to gain, is the Steep 
 
 of Virtue. And the three savage beasts: the 
 
 152
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 153 
 
 nimble Leopard of the mottled skin, that faces 
 him down and forces him back; the fierce Lion 
 and the meagre, belly-pinched wolf that for all 
 her ravine grew ever hungrier, they interpret 
 generally to be symboHcal of sensual Pleasure, 
 Violence, and Avarice. 
 
 Just as he gives himself up for lost, the Poet 
 descries a shape and addresses it for succor not 
 knowing if it were a shade or man. Virgil 
 declares himself; accepts his homage to him as 
 his master and very author and later explains 
 how Beatrice, whom he pictures with a touch: 
 
 Lucevan gli occhi suoi piu che la Stella: — 
 
 — how Beatrice, sent by Lucia, who in turn 
 had been sent by the Gentle Lady up in Heaven, 
 had come from Rachel's side to despatch him 
 to his aid. 
 
 The description of the evening hour that 
 looses animals from their daily toil. Gray re- 
 flects in the opening of his Elegy, as he follows 
 completely in his picture another and even 
 more beautiful passage, from the poet's refer- 
 ence farther on in his journey to the Vesper- 
 bell that sounds as though it mourned the ex- 
 piring day. 
 
 The lost poet, inspired with new courage by
 
 154 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 his master's rebuke of his cowardice and by his 
 story of the pity for him of the three Blessed 
 Ladies, though he had reminded his Leader 
 that he was neither iEneas nor Paul, now rears 
 his head Hke the Httle flowers chilled by the 
 night, at the warming touch of the sun, and 
 prepares to follow his guide through the alto 
 passo. 
 
 Dante following his guide now moves down 
 by "a wild and arduous way" to where he dis- 
 covers in the gloom above a door an inscrip- 
 tion which appalls him and which at his re- 
 quest his master explains to him though in only 
 a general way. It runs: 
 
 "Per me si va nella citta dolente; 
 Per me si va nell' eterno dolore; 
 Per me si va tra la perduta gente. 
 Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore, 
 Fecemi la divina potestate 
 La somma sapienza e il primo amore. 
 Dinanzi a me non fur cose create, 
 Se non eterne ed io eterno duro; 
 Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entratel" 
 
 "Through me leads into the dolorous city 
 Through me leads into eternal woe; 
 Through me one goes among the damned. 
 Justice moved my lofty creator, 
 Created me the Divine Power;
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 155 
 
 Supreme Wisdom and Primal Love. 
 Before me were no things created 
 Save the eternal and eternal I endure. 
 All hope abandon ye who enter." 
 
 This, explains Virgil briefly, is where fear 
 must be left behind and cowardice must die; 
 for here they have come to the place of which 
 he has told him where he shall see those woful 
 ones who have lost the good of Intellect. He 
 then leads him in and ''into the secret things." 
 Here in the starless murk the tumult of lamen- 
 tations and execrations; strange tongues and 
 sounds of woe and rage with noise of hands as 
 of sand driven by the whirlwind, wring tears 
 from Dante and bind his head with horror. He 
 asks who these may be and learns that, "these 
 are the wretched souls of those who lived with- 
 out infamy or praise and mingled with them 
 are those caitiff angels who, though not reb- 
 els, yet were not true to God, but stood only 
 for themselves. Hopeless of Death they envy 
 every other lot. The world lets no fame of 
 them survive; Pity and Justice despise them. 
 Let us not talk of them; but look and pass on." 
 
 Next came a whirling standard followed by 
 a rushing host, so innumerable that he never 
 should have thought Death had undone so
 
 IS6 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 many. And presently when he had recog- 
 nized some, he recognized the shade of him: 
 
 "Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto." 
 
 "Who made through cowardice the great refusal." 
 
 This great Refuser the Commentators have 
 been busy with ever since. The early Com- 
 mentators considered him to be Celestine V, "an 
 old man whom Boniface VIII deluded into re- 
 signing after a five-months' reign and then im- 
 prisoned till' his death." Some later Commen- 
 tators hold him to have been Pontius Pilate; 
 while yet others — among them Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti — hold him to have been that young 
 man who had kept all the Law from his youth 
 up, yet when told by Jesus that to inherit 
 Eternal Life he must sell what he had and give 
 to the poor and follow Him, turned away sorrow- 
 ful and was heard of no more. 
 
 From this point they pass on to where in 
 the dim light a crowd await on the sad shore 
 of Acheron Charon, "the demon with eyes of 
 glowing coal." 
 
 Such is the beginning of the most wonderful 
 poem of modern times. 
 
 But although Dante has laid the world under
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 157 
 
 tribute to his genius, it is Italy especially that 
 owes him and will owe him the greatest debt. 
 The change in political relations during the 
 Middle Ages was gradually bringing about a 
 National Consciousness among the peoples of 
 the several Countries which in the final arrange- 
 ment appeared under the names by which they 
 are known to-day. But Italy was so divided 
 internally that it was long before she came to 
 wear her own name as the symbol and proof of 
 Unity. And that she finally did so was due 
 considerably to Dante's influence through his 
 own work and that of his followers. 
 
 If we have praised the Vita Nuova, magical 
 and mystical in its spiritual suggestion with its 
 love-poems set like jewels to mark the succes- 
 sive phases of Dante's consecrated devotion; 
 and if we have attempted some comment on his 
 curious and learned philosophical and political 
 essays on the Government of the world tem- 
 poral and spiritual in his time, what shall we 
 say of the Commedia: the great climax of his 
 genius; that amazing disquisition, allegory, 
 poem, vision — what you will — which startled 
 his Age; aroused the wonder of those that 
 followed, and still after six hundred years 
 amazes, thrills and charms the lover of Poetry
 
 xs8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 and excites the amazement of the speculative 
 Man of Letters throughout the world ? About 
 all one can do is to apostrophize it and the 
 Genius that conceived and executed it in its 
 mighty scope and wonderful detail. Scholar- 
 ship has lavished on it all the erudition of over 
 five hundred years without wholly sounding 
 its depths; Piety loses itself in its labyrinthine 
 mazes of devotion; Philosophy wearies in un- 
 ravelling the infinite wealth of its symbolism. 
 
 If we attempt its praise in any detail of anal- 
 ysis we are like one who undertakes to point 
 out the beauty of some capital or other small 
 item in some vast Cathedral, itself a miracle 
 of architectural inspiration and genius in which 
 is taking place some great ceremony of devo- 
 tion with all the accompaniments of enthralling 
 music and devout ceremonial, while all about 
 are the enchantment of trees and flowers and 
 over all the arching sky. Apparelled in beauty 
 and packed with meaning, often too mystical 
 to meet the spirit even of devotees, it continues 
 and will continue shining through the ages, 
 with its supernal beauty and its inner meaning 
 as mysterious as the soul itself. 
 
 "The Divina Commedia," says Dean Church 
 in his memorable essay on Dante, "is one of
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 159 
 
 the landmarks of history. More than a magnif- 
 icent poem, more than the beginning of a lan- 
 guage and the opening of a national literature, 
 more than the inspirer of art, and the glory of 
 a great people, it is one of those rare and solemn 
 monuments of the mind's power, which mea- 
 sure and test what it can reach to, which rise up 
 ineffaceably and forever as time goes on, mark- 
 ing out its advance by grander divisions than its 
 centuries, and adopted as epochs by the con- 
 sent of all who come after. It stands with the 
 Iliad and Shakespeare Plays, with the writings of 
 Aristotle and Plato, with the Novum Organum 
 and the Principia, with Justinian's Code, with 
 the Parthenon and St. Peter's. It is the first 
 Christian poem; and it opens European Litera- 
 ture, as the IHad did that of Greece and Rome. 
 And like the Iliad, it has never become out of 
 date; it accompanies in undiminished freshness 
 the literature which it began." 
 
 It is the gift of the Poet that he knows his 
 mission; he senses the rare air which his pinions 
 cleave. This gift was Dante's in full measure. 
 
 As the old prophets delivered the oracles 
 with, "Thus saith the Lord," so he speaks as 
 the Prophet and Seer with the voice of authority 
 and power. His enemies and those of Truth
 
 i6o DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 are the same and he metes out Judgment to 
 them with the authority of a final judge. It is 
 not a personal revenge — not "a wild kind of 
 justice" that he measures out — but actual jus- 
 tice according to a divine Law that he as the 
 Judge knows, to which he bows and which he 
 executes with profound conviction of its right- 
 eousness. This conviction of the righteousness 
 of the Divine Order was not the least precious 
 part of the great message that he delivered to 
 the ItaHan People and through them to the 
 Ages. And where he speaks as a poet none in 
 Italy questions his authority. The successor 
 of Boniface shreds out the political from the 
 poetic and bows with the rest of Italy and 
 of the Literary World to honor the greatest 
 poet. 
 
 The Comedy, indeed, is the inexhaustible 
 quarry from which since that time other poets 
 in all lands have cut material — now for their 
 deepest foundations and now for their highest 
 embellishments. 
 
 We all recognize the great debt that we owe 
 to Italy's Art — to her painting and sculpture 
 and architecture of the time of her great mas- 
 ters when they were performing their miracles 
 of Grace and Beauty. But how little do we
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY i6i 
 
 reflect on the vast debt that we owe to Italian 
 thought, the greatest endowment of all ! 
 
 The fame of Dante spread so rapidly that 
 even in his hello 0fz7(f whence he was chased, the 
 Florentines were fain ere long to bow their pride 
 before the popular and final verdict. They 
 voted a pension to Dante's daughter, as a tardy 
 amend, and lectures on the great Florentine's 
 work were started by his awakened fellow 
 citizens — awakened too late to bring solace to 
 his heart. It was while delivering lectures on 
 him that Boccaccio was seized with the illness 
 from which he never recovered. 
 
 Carducci tells us that according to some of 
 the most authoritative Dantisti, the number of 
 Dante codici, that is, copies of his comedy, 
 exceed 700 — or to be completely accurate the 
 number of those known exceed 600. Yet, there 
 is not known to survive a single trace of Dante's 
 own hand in one. 
 
 Since the art of printing came into being 
 more than 400 editions have been published 
 and his work has been translated into thirty- 
 five languages. The ItaHans claim for it a 
 greater number of editions than for any other 
 book except the Bible. 
 
 It was not called the "Divine Comedy," un-
 
 1 62 DAXTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 til it was thus termed in the edition of Dolce di 
 \enezia, issued in 1555. Landino, however, 
 had in 14S1, called the poet ''the Divine." 
 
 Dante had no question as to the greatness 
 of his poem. In the Paradiso he calls it "the 
 consecrated poem"' and again "the sacred 
 poem."- 
 
 In the first twelve lines of the XXWh Canto 
 of the Paradiso he frankly gives his judgment 
 on his work: 
 
 "Se mai continga che il poema sacro, 
 al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, 
 si che m'ha fatto per piii anni macro, 
 
 Vinca la crudelta, che fuor mi serra 
 del bello o\-ile, dov'io dormi' agnello 
 nmuco ai lupi, che gli danno guerra; 
 
 Gan altra voce omai, con altro vello 
 
 ritomero poeta, ed in sul fonte 
 
 del mio battesmo prender6 il cappello; 
 
 Pero che nella fede, che fa conte 
 I'anime a Dio, quiv' entra'io, e poi 
 Pietro per lei si mi gire la fronte." 
 
 "If e'er the sacred poem, that hath made 
 Both Heaven and earth copartners in its toil, 
 And with lean abstinence, through mam' a year, 
 
 /Paradise, Canto XXIII, 62. » Paradiso, XXV, 13-19.
 
 TEE DIVINE COMEDY 163 
 
 Faded my brow, be destined to prevail 
 Over the cruelty, which bars me forth 
 Of the fair sheep-fold, where, a sleeping lamb, 
 The wolves set on and fain had worried me; 
 With other voice, and fleece of other grain, 
 I shall forthwith return; and, standing up 
 At my baptismal font, shall claim the wreath 
 Due to the poet's temples: for I there 
 First enter'd on the faith, which maketh souls 
 Acceptable to God: and, for its sake, 
 Peter had then circled my forehead thus." 
 
 — Cary. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great influence that 
 Dante and his followers exerted on English 
 Poets and English Literature, English scholar- 
 ship was influenced by him yet more in an in- 
 direct than a direct manner. But few editions 
 out of many scores published in Italy were 
 brought into England and it was not until 
 toward the middle or possibly the end of the 
 Eighteenth Centun,', nearly five hundred years 
 after Dante's death, that any one attempted 
 a translation of his immortal work into Eng- 
 lish. A number of copies of editions of Dante's 
 works — four or five — appear during successive 
 generations in the Oxford Catalogues, which 
 Institution might appear somewhat particu- 
 larly interested in Dante as Serravalle in a 
 commentary on him a hundred years after his
 
 1 64 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 death, states incidentally, that he had studied 
 at Oxford. On this point, however, there is 
 little evidence. 
 
 About the middle of the Eighteenth Century, 
 William Hudgin, a fellow of Magdalen, pub- 
 lished in the British Magazine a translation of 
 the paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer from the 
 XXth Canto of the Purgatorio, and at his death 
 in 1761, left a translation of the Divina Corn- 
 media with a fund to publish it. His executors, 
 however, failed to carry out his instructions 
 and forty years later the poem was published 
 in translation by Henr}^ Boyd of Dublin Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 VThat Dante should have been reflected by 
 so many poets is not to be wondered at. The 
 original thoughts of the Human Mind are much 
 more limited than is usually supposed — Human 
 Nature is the same everywhere; the passions of 
 the Human heart are the same; Nature with its 
 changing seasons is the same. Even its variant 
 moods are controlled by the seasons; and how- 
 ever irregular are recurrent. And Dante has 
 covered so vast a field of thought and with 
 such masterly power that it would be difficult 
 to sing of Nature or of Humanity without dis- > 
 closing traces of his far-reaching influence.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 165 
 
 Byron himself is always following in Dante's 
 steps and, like Shelley, takes pride in proclaim- 
 ing him the Master, and at times, even if but 
 inferentially, his Master. He has this in com- 
 mon with Dante that he was a master of 
 Verse and of Melody. He introduced the 
 Terza Rima in English Verse, and his rendering 
 of perhaps the most exquisite scene in the 
 Divine Comedy and possibly in all poetry, 
 though certainly far inferior to the original, 
 has not been surpassed by any translator. 
 
 Byron writes, "Shelley always says that 
 reading Dante is unfavorable to writing, from 
 its superiority to all possible compositions. 
 Whether he be the first poet or not, he is cer- 
 tainly the most untranslatable of all poets. 
 You may give the meaning; but the charm, 
 the simplicity, the classical simplicity is lost. 
 You might as well clothe a statue as attempt 
 to translate Dante. He is better, as an Italian 
 said: 'nudo che vestito.'" 
 
 Shelley translated or adapted a number of 
 Dante's poems and in A Defense of Poetry 
 gives an appreciation of Dante. He says: 
 "Dante's Vita Nuova is an inexhaustible foun- 
 tain of purity, of sentiment and language; His 
 apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise ... is the
 
 i66 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 most glorious imagination of modern Poetry." 
 He ranks the Purgatorio above the Inferno 
 and the Paradiso above the Purgatorio. He 
 excepts only the two famous Ugolino and Fran- 
 cesca scenes in the Inferno.^ 
 
 Shelley in The Triumph of Life refers to the 
 rhyme of: 
 
 "Him who from the lowest depths of Hell 
 Through every Paradise and through all Glory 
 Love led serene, and who returned to tell 
 The words of hate and awe; the wondrous story 
 How all things are transfigured except Love." 
 
 Coming down to the nineteenth century we 
 find Knowledge of Dante in England increas- 
 ing. In that year Charles Dunster, in his an- 
 notations on Milton's Paradise Lost, points out 
 the parallels between Dante and Milton. ^ 
 
 But the important happening in England 
 touching Dante in the early part of the nine- 
 teenth century was the publication of H. F. 
 Cary's translation of the Divine Comedy — be- 
 ginning with the Inferno published in 1805, 
 and ending with the publication of the complete 
 
 ' See On the Devil and Devils. 
 
 * See H. J. Todds' Edition of Milton's Poetical Works, 1801, 
 in which he gives a lengthy list of Parallels between Dante and 
 Milton. A little later he did the same service by pointing out 
 the parallels between Spenser and Dante. The Divina Corn- 
 media, translated by Henry Boyd, was printed in England in 1802.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 167 
 
 translation, at the translator's own expense, in 
 1 8 14. Still, it required a cordial review by 
 Coleridge to bring the work into note. 
 
 The Literati were now finding the rich pas- 
 turage on which the Poets had so long been 
 browsing. Wordsworth, who owed much to 
 Dante, including the fundamental theory of 
 presenting his pictures in simple speech as well 
 as that equally fundamental plan of setting 
 into his longer poems his exquisite illustrations 
 from nature, declared that "the poetry of 
 Dante and Michael Angelo proves that if there 
 be little majesty and strength in Italian verse, 
 the fault is in the authors and not in the 
 tongue." ^ But not only Byron, Shelley and 
 Wordsworth show the influence of Dante on 
 their work. Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Keats, 
 Tennyson, Browning — not to mention the 
 poets of lesser flight — all frankly own or show 
 their vast debt to the Poet of Poets. 
 
 Keats took Cary's translation of the Divine 
 Comedy as his only travelling companion in a 
 visit to Scotland in 1818. 
 
 The essayists likewise have acknowledged, 
 however inferentially, the vast influence of 
 Dante on Enghsh Literature. 
 
 1 Letter to G, Beaumont, October 17, 1805.
 
 i68 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Coleridge in a lecture on the Troubadours in 
 London, February 3, 1818, refers to the debt 
 that the English poets owe Dante and in a lec- 
 ture on Rabelais, February 24, he places him 
 with Shakespeare and Cervantes among the 
 creative minds of the world. Among his lec- 
 tures he dehvered one on Dante, February 27. 
 
 Coleridge says of the canzone: 
 
 "Tre donne intorno al cuor mi son venute," 
 
 that he was beginning to understand it after 
 an interval of fourteen years "during which no 
 year passed in which I did not reperuse, I 
 might say, construe, parse and spell it, twelve 
 times at least — such a fascination had it, in 
 spite of its obscurity. It affords a good in- 
 stance, by the by, of that soul of universal 
 significance in a true poet's composition in 
 addition to the specific meaning." 
 
 Of all the translations of Dante the first one: 
 that of Reverend Henry Francis Cary, appears 
 still to possess a quality which none of its suc- 
 cessors shows, as Chapman's Homer, made 
 immortal by Keats, possesses it in even a 
 greater degree. 
 
 Coleridge in writing to Cary says that, "in 
 the severity and learned simplicity of the dic- 
 tion, and in the peculiar character of the Blank
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 169 
 
 Verse, it has transcended what I should have 
 thought possible without the Terza Rima. In 
 itself, the metre is, compared with any English 
 poem of one-quarter the length, the most varied 
 and harmonious to my ear of any since Milton, 
 and yet the effect is so Dantesque that to those 
 who should compare it only with other English 
 poems it would, I doubt not, have the same 
 effect as the Terza Rima has compared with 
 other Itahan metres." 
 
 In another letter he says: **What I express 
 concerning your translation, I do not say lightly 
 or without examination ... I still affirm that, 
 to my ear and to my judgment, both your 
 metre and your rhythm have in far greater 
 degree than I know an instance of, the variety 
 of Milton without the mere Miltonisms, that 
 . . . the verse has variety without any loss 
 of contiguity, and that this is the excellence of 
 the work considered as a translation of Dante — 
 that it gives the reader a similar feeling of 
 wandering and wandering, onward and onward. 
 Of the diction, I can only say that it is Dan- 
 tesque, even in that in which the Florentine 
 must be preferred to our English giant — namely, 
 that it is not only pure language, but pure 
 English. 
 
 From now on the long-continued general in-
 
 I70 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 difference to Dante among the British disap- 
 peared and the best thought of England was 
 given to the study of his work in full apprecia- 
 tion of its richness, if not yet of its influence 
 on English Literature. 
 
 First among the writers of prose of acknowl- 
 edged rank came Coleridge and then, with 
 equal authority, after an interval, Macaulay, 
 Carlyle and Ruskin took up the theme. Each 
 treated it in his own way; each became an eager 
 student and in certain respects a disciple of 
 the Master; and of each it may be said that his 
 name and fame gained lustre from his associa- 
 tion with this august subject. It was Ma- 
 caulay 's essay on Milton that brought to the 
 British Public the recognition that a new star 
 had arisen on the literary horizon, and it was 
 his admirable comparative study of Milton and 
 Dante that gave to that remarkable essay of a 
 young man the laurel crown. 
 
 Macaulay substantially opened his career 
 with the study of Dante; he closed it when he 
 was among the most widely read and cele- 
 brated writers in the world with an apprecia- 
 tion of his work second not even to that of 
 Mazzini himself. He had loved and conned 
 it as Dante said he had loved and conned Vir-
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 171 
 
 gil's. He awards the great Tuscan the palm 
 over Milton and putting Shakespeare aside de- 
 clares that he "runs neck and neck with 
 Homer." He says, after allusion to the con- 
 ciseness and minuteness of Dante's descrip- 
 tions, "Where Milton would have left his 
 images to float undefined in a gorgeous haze 
 of language," and has given us his splendid 
 lines, "I will frankly confess, that the vague 
 sublimity of Milton affects me less than these 
 reviling details of Dante. . . . We read Mil- 
 ton and we know that we are reading a great 
 poet: When we read Dante the poet vanishes. 
 We are listening to the man who has returned 
 from the Valley of the dolorous Abyss !" This 
 whole study of Dante is earnest, appreciative, 
 acute. He places him where he belongs, at 
 the top. Since Coleridge and Shelley and he 
 have pointed to Dante standing beside Homer 
 the "Sire" with his royal symbol of supreme 
 rank, no English writer who took thought for 
 his own reputation has ventured to omit him 
 from that august company. 
 
 Some Italian authorities find it strange that 
 this close and acute student of their great Mas- 
 ter should have been indifferent to the powder 
 of his Allegory; and it would be curious for one
 
 172 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 who had mentioned Bunyan in association with 
 him to have assumed this view of what stands 
 forth throughout the entire Comedy; but per- 
 haps they have not quite comprehended the 
 Hmitation of this statement as employed. Ma- 
 caulay refers here solely to the use of allegory 
 as applied to "the fabulous deities"; and is ex- 
 plaining the secret of Dante's success, where 
 other great poets, both ancient and modern, 
 have failed in introducing "the ancient fictions 
 with effect." His criticism in the Essay on 
 Dryden of the tendency of the Italian writers 
 of the XlVth Century to relate every picture 
 to the suggestion of perpetual allegory is but a 
 protest against the overwhelming of the won- 
 derful poem of "the mighty imagination that 
 called a new world into existence and made all 
 its sights and sounds familiar to the eye and 
 ear of the mind." 
 
 Carlyle, who saw things in his own and, 
 sometimes, peculiar way, takes Dante and 
 Shakespeare among his heroes as mere poets 
 beatified — "a peculiar Two" he terms them. 
 "They dwell apart in a kind of royal solitude 
 — none equal — none second to them; in the 
 general feeling of the world, a certain transcen- 
 dentalism, a glory as of complete perfection in-
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 173 
 
 vests these two." Dante is the true "singer"; 
 the expression of the deepest thought clad in 
 the loftiest and noblest music, that is "song." 
 He is the spokesman of the Middle Ages, "the 
 voice of ten silent centuries," and his poem is 
 "a mystic unfathomable song."^ He places 
 naught so high as Dante's song; in it all the 
 preceding Centuries have sung. He suggests 
 indeed that Dante's Poem may be the most 
 "enduring thing that our Europe has yet made," 
 as Shakespeare is the greatest thing that we of 
 the English race have made. 
 
 But especially is Dante the voice of Italy, 
 "speaking forth melodiously what the heart of 
 it means"; of Italy that lay even in Carlyle's 
 day "dismembered, scattered asunder, not ap- 
 pearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at 
 all," yet the noble Italy was "actually one," 
 for, as he says prophetically "The Nation that 
 has a Dante is bound together" as even no 
 vast "dumb Russia can be." 
 
 What is the secret of it all — of its power; its 
 appeal; its august authority; its immortality } 
 Is it its subject; its range; its grasp; its depth; 
 its sublimity ^. Is it its sincerity; its intensity; 
 its absolute and unwavering pronouncement of 
 
 ^T. Carlyle: Citing Ticck: Heroes and Hero Worship. "The 
 Hero as a Poet."
 
 174 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 verity ? Or does the secret lie m all these ap- 
 plied as by infallible judgment to the universal 
 as to the individual Soul of Man; the eternal 
 riddle of the Sphinx: man's existence and rela- 
 tion to His Maker, presented immortally and 
 inexorably by one who by intellect, insight, 
 genius and power, by experience and the condi- 
 tions of his life was better fitted to give the 
 answer than any other member of the race 
 before or since ? 
 
 As Dante wandered up and down throughout 
 Italy, sometimes thridding winding paths down 
 through valleys filled with a thousand mingled 
 odors of flowers of every hue, sometimes climb- 
 ing wearily over mountains; sometimes in sun- 
 light, sometimes in fog through which the sun 
 now appeared as though shining like a mole's 
 eye through a white veil of skin, or now lost 
 altogether, and again shining forth with all 
 radiance as the fog blows off to open to the view 
 the far sunlit vista, he got imperishable im- 
 pressions of grandeur or beauty which he has 
 made as imperishable for us as they were for 
 himself. He has painted for us Italy. Can one 
 think that these, his pictures, are all imaginary .? 
 Far from it. Go to Italy and take Dante as 
 your guide. You shall find the very scenes.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 175 
 
 He painted them "out-of-doors" — so to speak. 
 He had seen them and knew them. Keep with 
 him and you shall see the Dawn advance with 
 white and vermeil-tinctured cheek and, like him, 
 shall feel: 
 
 "As when to harbinger the morn, springs up 
 On freshened wing the air of May and breathes 
 Of fragrance, all impregned with herb and flowers: 
 E'en such a wind I felt upon my front 
 Blow gently."^ 
 
 And with him you shall feel 
 
 "The hour that wakens fond desire 
 In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart 
 Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell, 
 And pilgrim newly on his road with love 
 Thrills, if he hears the vesper bell from afar, 
 That seems to mourn for the expiring day." 
 
 Ruskin appears to have discovered him after 
 he wrote the first volume of The Stones of Venice, 
 for Dante is not referred to in this volume, 
 while the second volume is full of Dante. 
 
 To come down to our own time we find 
 Browning, Tennyson, and others, like their 
 predecessors, drawing from Dante their loftiest 
 conceptions. For example: Tennyson not only 
 
 > Purgatory, XXIV, 138. — Gary's Translation.
 
 176 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 takes from the lament of Francesca da Rimini 
 his striking lines, 
 
 "That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier 
 things," 
 
 but his poem Ulysses, one of his finest poems, 
 is taken both in conception and general form 
 directly from Dante. ^ Not that Tennyson or his 
 predecessors had not the right to follow the Poet 
 of Poets and take from their Master's crowded 
 Armory that which they desired as they fol- 
 lowed his banner. All high imagining has in 
 it something of that which has gone before — 
 something of the universal experience or aspira- 
 tion. It is this royal pedigree which gives all 
 poetry a kinship and to all the right to claim 
 entry within the King's palace. The English- 
 speaking world owes them a debt for bringing to 
 them in forms that they could comprehend the 
 older poet's wonderful visions. 
 
 In France and Germany there was more 
 recognition of Dante than in England — yet not 
 too much. In America the case stood almost 
 as in England. But in Boston over a half-cen- 
 tury ago there grew up a Dante cult which 
 has brought deserved lustre to the scholars 
 
 » Inferno, XXVI.
 
 THB DIVINE COMEDY 177 
 
 who became the High Priests of the Cult, and 
 has borne rich fruit. 
 
 Longfellow became the translator of Dante 
 and being a charming poet, though hardly 
 among the greatest, and very scholarly, his 
 translation in blank verse is poetical, correct 
 and scholarly, though not among the greatest, as 
 may be well imagined, when we know that he 
 translated thirty-one cantos in thirty-one con- 
 secutive days. The notes, indeed, to which he 
 gave far more time and which are the mature 
 fruit of his scholarship are a veritable contri- 
 bution to the study of Dante. And his intro- 
 ductory sonnets are on an immeasurably higher 
 plane than his translation. They mark his 
 loftiest flight as a poet. Two of them, indeed, 
 contain the immortal essence that bears them 
 soaring into the realm of the highest inspiration. 
 
 Charles Eliot Norton, of the same group of 
 devoted Dante-students and lovers, has given 
 us a translation in prose, which, less aspiring 
 and more patiently careful, follows more closely 
 and with a greater ease the master's echoing 
 steps. 
 
 I feel that it would be an unwarranted te- 
 merity to undertake to give within the limits 
 of these lectures even an outline of the
 
 178 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 essence of a work so unlimited in its great- 
 ness as the Comedy: a work to which the 
 greatest of the great of his time devoted so 
 large a part of his hfe and powers. All that 
 one can do is to point to its majestic propor- 
 tions and say, Behold, where like the ever- 
 lasting hills it springs from the earth to 
 Heaven. 
 
 Lowell has said of it that "he who becomes a 
 student of Dante becomes a lover of Dante," 
 and this interpretation of the spirit of the 
 great drama is as true as though it possessed 
 an enchantment which draws within itself who- 
 ever has the temerity to so much as draw near 
 thereto. 
 
 The Commedia may be likened to a great 
 Stream that, rising in the dark recesses of some 
 savage mountain-forest, drives its way resist- 
 lessly through wild and awful regions, at times 
 in a bed too deep almost to be traced, yet whose 
 course is marked by the roar of cataracts and 
 the rush of rapids; then, coming out under the 
 stars, it enters upon a course through a region 
 less terrible yet still wilderness and with exten- 
 sive tracts of desert, abrupt and dread, inter- 
 spersed with open vales and flowery meadows: 
 pleasant spaces on which the sun shines and the
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 179 
 
 Stars at times look smiling down; and then, with 
 a swift turn, spreading out beneath the stars in 
 a fair and shining land of sunlight and joy to 
 glide onward with majestic current mirroring 
 in its bosom the verdant shores and the whole 
 light-filled arch of Heaven. No other poet has 
 done this — perhaps no other poet could do it. 
 
 Well did Italy give to his work the appella- 
 tion, "The Divine." 
 
 Studying with all his transcendent powers, 
 informed with immeasurable genius, inspired 
 by a divine conception of God, he assembles 
 his colors — all the learning — all the knowledge 
 of his time. Pedantry and prolixity creep in 
 and trail along in his course, but he soars on. 
 All the imagined wisdom of the future — all the 
 passion of the age are on his palette and, with 
 supreme genius he paints them on his mighty 
 fresco spread to take in the past, the present, 
 the future: the world, Hell, Purgatory, and 
 Paradise. 
 
 Nothing was too small and nothing too great 
 for his august genius to picture and fix forever 
 in imperishable form. Not Giotto nor Raphael 
 painted such devotion; not Michael Angelo 
 carved, whether singly or in groups, such Hfe- 
 like figures; not Petrarch nor Ariosto sang so
 
 i8o DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 lofty and celestial a love. Who ever found 
 and trod so boldly the path that spans the 
 vast abyss and leads from earth to Hell and 
 thence to Heaven ? Who ever bridged with 
 such audacity the gulf between the natural 
 and the supernatural ? Who ever soared so 
 boldly not only into the sun; but into the light 
 of Him who made the Sun and all the stars ? 
 
 It has been objected by some of his commen- 
 tators that Dante wrote only of the higher 
 class, ignoring the lower classes who represented 
 the great body of the poor. The charge is 
 superficial and unsound. He sang of men of 
 fame for a sound reason that he gives: that 
 others would listen only when he sang of such. 
 But if he sang of these, he sang for the lowly 
 and they knew the song. 
 
 In the first place, it was the Feudal Age — 
 the Age when the Gulf between Dives and 
 Lazarus was fixed and very great, and while he 
 indicts by name mainly those of renown; his 
 mention of them is usually to point his moral 
 with that infinite apprehension of the individual 
 sins and vices that typifies the passion of man- 
 kind. And the whole tenor of his w^ork is to 
 hymn Divine Justice and "justify the ways of 
 God to man."
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY i8i 
 
 The poor and humble had they not enough 
 to bear without his cataloguing their short- 
 comings for the detestation and horror of the 
 Ages ? And could he have championed their 
 cause more nobly than he has in his incompara- 
 ble assault on those who oppressed and trod 
 them down: the proud and truculent; the avari- 
 cious and unjust ? Prelates and Nobles — even 
 Popes he pillories with intrepid courage and 
 sublime art. The Class that he is said to have 
 ignored have, with a finer insight and a true 
 intuition, a juster appreciation of him whom 
 we celebrate than have those superficial critics. 
 Where Dante is concerned there is no more 
 question of class among ItaHans than where 
 Italy is. Else he would never have been what 
 he is to-day in Italy — he would never have be- 
 come the oracle of the little paesi that, as I have 
 stated, he is to-day. 
 
 The true secret of his extraordinary influence 
 and power among the Italian people to-day in 
 whatever part of the world they may be colo- 
 nized is that they feel him to have been the 
 great representative and spokesman of their 
 race. That is why but now throughout the world 
 they have been celebrating him reverently as 
 the inspired Apostle of a new Evangel of the
 
 i82 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 gospel of Justice and of Righteousness addressed 
 to Humanity, preached from a pulpit higher 
 than that of prelates, with an authority greater 
 than that of popes, in accents touched with 
 divine beauty which find an echo in every 
 Italian heart. 
 
 Should there be those who might esteem my 
 statement to be extravagant and who might 
 assert, as has been asserted, that the lower class 
 — the peasant — has not the comprehension of 
 Beauty nor the love of the beautiful that the 
 cultivated and cultured have; let me say to 
 them that such may be the general case among 
 more occidental and duller peoples; but it is not 
 true of the Italian — nor is it always true even 
 among the duller or more commonplace Anglo- 
 Saxon — as witness Ben Jonson and Burns and 
 Keats, bricklayer and ploughman and horse- 
 jobber's son. In Italy the love of the beau- 
 tiful is not the heritage of the rich and cultured 
 only, it is a trait of the Italian mind, as even 
 the wayfarer cannot but recognize as he passes 
 through Italy. It speaks in eloquent terms 
 from scores of towns and hundreds of little 
 paesi throughout Italy. In the poorest quar- 
 ters he will find touching evidence of it in the 
 flowers growing in often the meanest and com-
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 183 
 
 monest vessels, hung at poor little windows to 
 speak of the hunger for something to satisfy- 
 some smothered aesthetic taste. In the most 
 remote villages he will find the woman clad in 
 colors so harmonious as to baffle any question of 
 origin. It is taste — an aesthetic feeling — what 
 you will; but it is innate. It has spoken for 
 six hundred years from Giotto's tower. It has 
 spoken a longer or a shorter time from many 
 another campanile and picture and palace 
 throughout Italy. Wealth and patronage are 
 often needed to give scope to this innate taste, 
 though by no means, always; but the taste and 
 genius are endowments of those who mainly 
 have not the other. There have been royal 
 poets; but who can doubt that the anointing oil 
 came from some divinely commissioned prophet ? 
 ' All this Dante knew, and when he chose his 
 village-song name and his language of the peo- 
 ple for his vehicle he chose them because he 
 knew that the safety of his carroccio depended 
 on the devotion of Italy and of the Italian 
 People. To them as his world he made his 
 appeal, and he made it in terms "understanded 
 of the People." 
 
 His work is full of pastoral allusions, such as 
 those who used the vulgar tongue would appre-
 
 l84 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 ciate more than the proud nobles and wealthy 
 burghers of Florence.^ A few examples will 
 illustrate: 
 
 In the XXIVth Canto of the Inferno is a 
 winter scene which every viltanello — every poor 
 Italian farmer — might feel to be his personal ex- 
 perience — when his first look out in the morn- 
 ing shows him the ground white with frost and 
 he re-enters the house to bemoan his fodderless 
 lot and then within an hour finds the snow gone 
 and seizing his staff, hastens to drive his lambs 
 out to pasture. 
 
 The country scenes with which Dante softens 
 his Purgatorio are as pastoral as David's. 
 
 In the Third Canto of the Purgatorio where 
 his journey has brought him with his Master 
 to the foot of the Mountain where they en- 
 counter the souls of those who died in con- 
 tumacy against the Church, he describes how 
 they came when he asks the easiest way up the 
 steep ascent; 
 
 "Come le pecorelle escon dal chiuso 
 '' ad una, a due, a tre, e I'altre stanno, 
 
 Timidette atterrando I'occhio e il muso; 
 
 *I well recall my friend, Professor Barrett Wendell's joy at 
 receiving from a small farmer near Taormina whom he had con- 
 gratulated on his gravid sow, a reply couched in a line of Dante's.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 185 
 
 E cio che fa la prima, e I'altre fanno 
 addossandosi a lei s'ella arresta, 
 semplici quete e lo'mperche non sanno." 
 
 "As little sheep go out from the fold 
 by ones, by twos, by threes and the others stand 
 timid and holding eye and muzzle to the 
 ground, and what the first doth that the 
 others do, huddling up to her should she stop, 
 simple and quiet, and what the reason is 
 know not." _^^^^^ ^^^^^^ jjj^ ^^g^_ 
 
 When at the beginning of Canto XVII of 
 the Inferno he describes the Monster Ger^'on, 
 he describes him as an old skifF that lies at 
 times half in the water and half out, and pres- 
 ently when he finds the Usurers who have done 
 violence to Nature and now sit with eye fixed 
 forever on their purses he tells of one who is a 
 Paduan, 
 
 "Qui distorse la bocca e di fuor trasse 
 la lingua, come hue che il naso lecchi," 
 
 "Who writhed the mouth and lolled his tongue out like 
 an ox that licks his nostrils." 
 
 Surely these apt and homely similes are for 
 the country folk. 
 
 In the XXVIIth Canto of the Purgatorio, 
 he paints a scene with the goats, wild and
 
 1 86 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 wanton enough on the hills when unfed, now 
 well fed and quiet in the heat of the day lying 
 down in the shade chewing the cud while the 
 shepherd leaning on his staff minds the flock: 
 
 "Quali si fanno ruminando manse 
 le capre state rapide e proterve 
 sopra le cime, avanti che sien pranse 
 Tacite all'ombra, mentre che il sol ferve, 
 guardate dal pastor, che in su la verga 
 poggiato s'e, e lor poggiato serve." 
 
 "Like goats that having over crags pursued 
 Their wanton sports now quiet pass the time 
 In ruminating — sated with their food, 
 Beneath the shade, while glows the sun on high 
 Watched by the shepherd with unceasing care! 
 As on his staff he leans, with watchful eye." 
 
 —Wright. 
 
 When descending to the abode of Minos, the 
 dread judge, in the second circle of Perdition, 
 he sees the carnal sinners swept along by "La 
 bufera infernale," the infernal hurricane, he, 
 after a picture of the bellowing sea, likens them 
 to the starlings swept along in great ranks by 
 the winter wind, and then to cranes passing 
 in a long line sounding their cry. He often 
 sings of birds — usually to express happiness and 
 joy; but here he is picturing the reverse of 
 these — infinite woe — the tempest and the bel-
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 187 
 
 lowing sea and he employs the storm-driven 
 starHngs and the cranes to give at once the 
 sense of motion and violence to the sweep of 
 the storm and vividness to the lament of the 
 lost souls swept on by its power. No other 
 such picture of a storm has ever been given. 
 Beginning with a tempest at sea it is lifted by 
 a touch to the storm of the wrath of God. 
 And at the end human pity sinks overwhelmed 
 into merciful oblivion. No translation has 
 ever approached the faintest reproduction of 
 the sublimity of this Canto. 
 
 "E come gli stornei ne portan Tali, 
 nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena; 
 cosi quel fiato gli spirit! mali; 
 
 Di qua, di la, di giu, di su gli mena, 
 nulla speranza gli conforta mai 
 non che di posa, ma di minor pena. 
 
 E come i gru van cantando lor lai» 
 facendo in aer di se lunga riga, 
 cosi vid'io venir traendo guai, 
 ombre portate della detta briga." 
 
 — V Inferno, V, 40 et seq. 
 
 And a little later, in the immortal scene where 
 at his call, "Light upon the air," come together 
 the spirits of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo 
 da Verrucchio, he resembles them to doves
 
 1 88 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 that at the call of love come floating down on 
 quiet wings to meet their mates, at their sweet 
 nests. 
 
 His famous picture of Francesca da Rimini 
 and her Lover is softened hardly more by her 
 tender lament, than by this beautiful simile of 
 doves. Observant of Nature in every mood 
 and feeling, its poetry in every strain, he was 
 especially given to drawing his similes from 
 birds — uccelli is the musical Italian name, or 
 sometimes augelli — especially from doves, which 
 are perhaps of all created life those that have 
 closest affinity to the impalpable ethereal ele- 
 ment, denoting love, gentleness, and peace. 
 
 "Quale colombe dal desio chiamate 
 Con I'ali alzate e ferme a! dolce nido 
 Vengon per I'aer dal voler portate." > 
 
 In the Purgatorio the hurried flight, at Cato's 
 call, of the souls who had been listening with 
 him and Virgil in deep content, to Casella's 
 singing of his song, he likens to the flight of 
 doves suddenly frightened while quietly pick- 
 ing up the grain of their repast. ^ 
 
 Thus also when he sees the holy champions 
 of the Faith pass in seraphic chorus before the 
 
 » V Inferno, V, 82-5. 
 • Purgatorio, Canto II.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY 189 
 
 arms of the Cross, he likens them to flocks of 
 birds above the shore risen content from their 
 feeding-ground and wheeling, now in circles 
 and now in other ranks: 
 
 *'E come augelli surti di riviera 
 quasi congratulando a lore pasture 
 fanno di se or tonda or altra schiera. 
 
 Si dentro ai lumi sante creature 
 volitando cantavano" 
 
 — Paradiso, Canto XVIII, 73, 75. 
 
 Again in the next Canto he uses the stork to 
 illustrate the love that guards and the love 
 that is dependent: 
 
 "Quale sovr' esso il nido si rigira 
 poi che ha pasciuto la cigogna i figli, 
 e come quei ch'e pasto la rimira;" 
 
 "As o'er her nest the stork goes circling round 
 When she with food has satisfied her young 
 And as the brood, well-fed, look still to her." 
 
 He opens Canto XXIII of the Paradiso with 
 a picture of birds and of Beatrice: 
 
 "Come Taugello, intra I'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 ondegli pasca, 
 in che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
 
 190 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Previene il tempo in su I'aperta frasca 
 e con ardente afFetto il sole aspetta, 
 fiso guardando, pur che I'alba nasca; 
 
 Cosi la donna mia si stave eretta 
 ed attenta, rivolta in ver la plaga, 
 sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta." 
 
 "Even as the bird amid the leaves beloved 
 Reposes on the nest of her sweet brood, 
 By night which hideth all things from our sight, 
 
 Then, so she may behold their well-loved forms 
 And find the food with which to nourish them, 
 In which her heavy labors are a joy, 
 
 Prevents the morn upon an outer spray, 
 And with an ardent love awaits the sun, 
 Fixedly watching for the birth of dawn. 
 
 So stood my Lady, erect and all intent 
 
 Turned toward the region 'neath the which the sun 
 
 Doth show less haste." 
 
 Another illustration of birds comes when in 
 the Seventh Heaven describing the holy joy of 
 contemplation, he pictures Jacob's ladder: 
 
 "Vidi anco per li gradi scender giuso 
 tanti splendor, ch'io pensai ch'ogni lume 
 che par nel ciel, quindi fosse difFuso. 
 
 E come, per lor natural costume, 
 
 le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno, 
 
 si muovono a scaldar le fredde piume;
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY igi 
 
 Poi altre vanno via senza ritorno; 
 altre rivolgon se onde son mosse, 
 ed altre roteando fan soggiorno, 
 
 Tal modo parve a me che quivi fosse 
 in quelle sfavillar che insieme venne 
 si come in certo grado si percosse." 
 
 — Paradiso, Canto XXI, 31-43. 
 
 "I saw, moreover, coming down its steps 
 so many glowing splendors, that I thought 
 that every star seen shining in the sky 
 had been poured out of it. And even as rooks 
 as is their natural wont, when day begins, 
 together move to warm their chilly plumes; 
 and then, without returning, some fly off, 
 and some go back to whence they started first, 
 while others, whirling in a circle, stay; 
 such was, it seemed to me the fashion here 
 within the sparkling throng which came together." 
 
 In the Paradiso he uses doves for his simile 
 in the Eighth Heaven.^ 
 
 In the preceding Canto he has seen St. Peter 
 and has been questioned by him as to his Faiih 
 and the reasons therefor and has given his 
 creed: Behef in The Trinity: One God: 
 
 "Solo ed Eterno che tutto il ciel move 
 Non moto, con amore e con desio," 
 
 and three persons, Eternal and of one esserce. 
 Now comes St. James, who typifies }\c pe, 
 
 ' Paradiso, Canto XXV, 19-24.
 
 193 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 and Dante describes his Hope that "the Sacred 
 Poem to which both Heaven and Earth have 
 so set hand that it had made him lean for 
 many years," might overcome the fierceness of 
 the hostile wolves, who had driven him from 
 his charming fold. . . . "That sheep-fold of 
 St. John," — of which he had asked his ances- 
 tor, Cacciaguida (Canto XVI), — where he had 
 slept like a lamb and to which he hoped still 
 to return and as a Poet take at his own bap- 
 tismal font the laurel crown. 
 
 He thus pictures the coming of the Spirit of 
 Hope, "the Baron," as he terms St. James: 
 
 "Si come quando il Colombo si pone 
 presso al compagno, e I'uno all' altro pande, 
 girando e mormorando, I'afFezione; 
 
 Cosi vid'io Tun dall' altro grande 
 Principe glorioso essere accolto, 
 laudando il cibo che lassii li prande." 
 
 "As, when a dove alighteth near its mate, 
 each, by its circling and its cooing, shows 
 the other its affection; thus I saw 
 one great and glorious Prince the other greet 
 and praise the food 
 which sateth them up there." 
 
 — C. Langdon,
 
 VI 
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 
 
 Dante was not the first to conceive of a 
 journey to the Infernal regions. Homer and 
 Virgil had both pictured in immortal verse 
 such an experience and other poets had done 
 the same. He was not even the first to give 
 the experience of a human being making the 
 complete journey. Fra Alberico and others had 
 essayed it. But he was the first to make such 
 a journey the central thread on which to hang 
 in epic form the whole drama of Human Life 
 together with the conditions that brought it 
 into being, surround it in its mortal stage, and 
 absorb it at the end, chastened and redeemed 
 in the infinite. 
 
 It has been often charged that he is grotesque 
 and his verse at times harsh. Both charges 
 are measurably true. The time was grotesque 
 to us; whether it was so to itself is a different 
 question. Burning men for their opinions is 
 grotesque. Dante had seen it done. He tells 
 us so. Bowing them beneath immeasurable 
 
 193
 
 194 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 weights that bend them to the ground is gro- 
 tesque however poets have pictured them thus 
 burdened down, and architects have perpetuated 
 the idea in stone. Do we not to-day in strain- 
 ing and distorted caryatides follow the gro- 
 tesque ? 
 
 Dante was master of his song — and knew 
 how to adapt it to his aim. 
 
 All the preaching of the time was of a 
 material or physical Inferno and Purgatory. 
 None doubted the existence, or even within 
 limits the location of such places of punishment. 
 Many Ages have passed since then without 
 substantial change of this fundamental idea, 
 and up to a generation or two ago, it may be 
 said to have been generally accepted, and even 
 now it is distinctly taught by a great portion 
 of the body of the Church. 
 
 The Crusades were to purge men of their 
 sins, not indeed, of the spirit of sin, but of the 
 consequences of sin in the form of violence and 
 to save them from perpetual physical punish- 
 ment which they feared. 
 
 To criticize Dante for having accepted the 
 belief of the time is to criticize him for not 
 having revolutionized the belief of the whole 
 world and the preaching of the entire Church.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 195 
 
 He addresses a world in which his figures were 
 as plausible and as real as the scenes enacted 
 before the eye. He made them so real that 
 they have lasted in the conception of the minds 
 of men almost down to the present time. Gro- 
 tesque, painful, brutal some of the scenes may 
 appear; but withal his work in scope, in sweep, 
 and in manner is august. And with such a 
 scope and manner the grotesque but sets off 
 and emphasizes the harmonious beauty of the 
 majestic whole, a poem of which it may be 
 said that it might appear the answer to that 
 prayer: 
 
 "O issplendor di Dlo, per cu'io vidi 
 I'alto trionfo del regno verace 
 dammi virtu a dir com'io lo vidi." 
 
 "0 splendor of God through which I saw 
 the exalted triumph of the Realm of Truth 
 Give me but power to tell how I beheld it." 
 
 But we must remember that there is what 
 Ruskin terms the Noble Grotesque. In his 
 chapter on the Renaissance Grotesque in the 
 third volume of The Stones of Venice he goes 
 into a long and acute discussion of the nature 
 of the difference between the Noble Grotesque 
 and the debased Renaissance Grotesque.
 
 196 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 He is writing of the Architecture of Venice; 
 but in deahng with the subject which he terms 
 "Noble Architecture," he cites Dante, of whom, 
 he says, that "he beHeves that all such men as 
 Dante are sent into the world when they can 
 do their work best." And he adds, "therefore 
 though there are passages in the Inferno which 
 it would be impossible for any poet now to 
 write, I look upon it as all the more perfect for 
 them." "The whole of the Inferno," he goep 
 on, "is full of this Grotesque, as well as 'The 
 Faerie Queen.'" 
 
 Finally, after an analysis of the two forms of 
 the Grotesque and of the difference between 
 them, he says: "I think that the central man 
 of all the world as representing in perfect bal- 
 ance, the imaginative, moral and intellectual 
 faculties, all at their height, is Dante. And 
 in him the Grotesque reaches at once the most 
 distinct and the most noble development to 
 which it was ever brought in the human mind." 
 
 He then cites to sustain his view of the Noble 
 Grotesque, the theory of which he so fully de- 
 velops, Shakespeare's Grotesqueness and that 
 of iEschylus and of Sophocles. 
 
 In fact, I think we may conclude with Rus- 
 kin, that while something must be attributed
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 197 
 
 to the time, Dante deliberately built into his 
 fabric the grotesque with a full sense of its 
 effect in heightening the relief of its lofty and 
 august beauty. 
 
 If he was at times apparently even harsh, it 
 was, we may feel sure, his deliberate election to 
 express in the very sound of his verse the idea 
 that he proposed to convey unsmoothed and 
 virile. 
 
 The author of the Ottimo Commento says: 
 "I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a 
 rhyme had brought him to say other than he 
 would; but that many a time and oft he had 
 made words say for him what they* would not 
 say for other." 
 
 It was a proud boast which Posterity has 
 justified. 
 
 Yet, however harsh he was, and apparently 
 wilfully so when it suited his idea, who could 
 be so melodious as he when he wished and who 
 so simply and tenderly beautiful ! Not Pe- 
 trarch, nor Ariosto, nor the greatest of their 
 followers; for however great they were, they 
 were all followers of him. However boldly 
 they ventured forth, their prow ever followed 
 in the shining wake of what Dante terms his 
 navicello. There was a time when under some
 
 1 98 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 curious literary malaise even the literary quid- 
 nuncs, carried away by the spreading sails of 
 those voyageurs, forgot the leader and inspirer 
 and under some delusion thought the followers 
 led the leader. 
 
 But who — at least, any other than Petrarch 
 himself — imagines that Petrarch would have 
 sung his charming love-strains to Laura and 
 would have swept the lyre with so entrancing 
 an art had it not been for his Master, Dante : 
 Who believes that Ariosto, Tasso or Alfieri 
 would have soared to such lofty heights but 
 for the imperial leader who had shown the way ? 
 They all — even Petrarch however he might 
 assert rivalry — laid their chaplets at their Mas- 
 ter's feet, they and their followers alike, and 
 the dry and formal and non-understanding 
 critics who judged by contemporary and tem- 
 porary popular applause have proved as futile 
 in their attempt to subordinate the great Master 
 of Italian song as they have been non-under- 
 standing of that for which he has stood in 
 Italy through the Ages. There is no artist, 
 no poet whom Italy would deem worthy to 
 endow with the name who has not tried to pay 
 his tribute of honor and gratitude to the Poet 
 of Poets. From the reply of Guido Cavalcanti
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 199 
 
 and Cino da Pistoia to Dante's first sonnet on 
 down to the latest Italian Poet, every one who 
 aspired to national recognition has paid his 
 meed of honor to the Master. 
 
 When Cecco Angiolieri commends himself to 
 Dante he speaks for the long retinue that has 
 followed : 
 
 "Dante Alighier da Cecco '1 tuo serv e amico 
 si raccomanda a te com'a signore." 
 
 Boccaccio, Antonio Pucci, Michael Angelo, 
 John Battista Mirini, Agosto Paradisi, Alfieri, 
 John Battista Niccolini, Silvio Pellico, Leopardi, 
 Agostino Cagnoli, Guiseppe Giusti, Marchetti, 
 Mameli, Carducci, Giacomo Zanella, Giuseppe 
 Manno all have written Poems to Dante as 
 their Master and Guide. 
 
 Among the benefits which Dante conferred 
 on Italy and, indeed, on the world in his master- 
 piece was first, his dedication of his great powers 
 to the teaching of the moral purpose of Man's 
 existence; and secondly, their application in 
 the forms of beauty and majesty in which he 
 clothed his great ideas; and thirdly, the me- 
 dium and the manner in which he presented 
 them. Among these, intertwined with rare 
 art are all the other beauties and benefits of
 
 200 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 his work, which amaze and enthrall the scholar 
 and the student. 
 
 Hitherto, poetry had been the language of 
 the Drawing-Room and the Bower, Dante lifted 
 it and made it that of the Sanctuary and the 
 Open Sky. With bowed heart and uplifted 
 eyes he, as Italy's greatest teacher, sounded all 
 the depths of human experience and soared to 
 heights of ineffable light, hymning the Might 
 and Majesty of God and expounding the Wis- 
 dom, Justice, and Love of the Divine. If his 
 thought is often so profound as to baffle scholars, 
 his illustrations are addressed to the simplest 
 heart and are clad in the mild manner in qua 
 et mulierculcB communicant. And it must be 
 remembered that Wisdom is sometimes hidden 
 from the wise and prudent and revealed unto 
 babes. 
 
 But Dante did far more for Ital}^ than merely 
 write for them a great poem or poems. In 
 this he did for Italy only what he did for the 
 whole world had the world but the wit to 
 know it as the ItaHans know it. His especial 
 endowment for Italy was something beyond 
 this. What he did for the ItaHans was to 
 give them a National Consciousness and furnish 
 them the means to attain it completely. As
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 201 
 
 Virgil aroused him and guided him, so he 
 aroused the ItaHan soul and pointed it to 
 the heights where the sun shines, and then led 
 it forward. 
 
 In a time when superstition was usurping 
 the high seat of pure religion and when scholar- 
 ship bereft of faith was tending more and more 
 to point to pagan virtues as the aim of culture 
 rather than to Christian Faith, Dante arrayed 
 on the side of Religion, a scholarship second 
 to none in Italy and with a genius, unapproach- 
 able by any, sounded the call back to the wor- 
 ship of God and of His Divine Son. Against 
 all the teaching of the Sceptics and Agnostics 
 he placed the authority of Divine revelation; 
 the authority of the sainted Fathers and, in a 
 world which was the epitome of his time, held 
 up for the amazement and conversion to the 
 Truth of the Italian people a drama which first 
 compelled attention and then brought them 
 trembling and amazed to a new realization of 
 the infinite Power and Dominion of the Lord 
 of Lords and King of Kings. He taught in a 
 form that went home to every heart and mind 
 how even Popes and Emperors are subject to 
 His dominion and must stand at last at the 
 Judgment bar of Divine Justice to receive sen-
 
 202 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 tence according to their deeds. If he sang 
 mainly of the great and powerful, as has been 
 charged, the voice was one that represented 
 the people — the oppressed and mute, and they 
 recognized it as such. They might not under- 
 stand the esoteric analysis of motive and ac- 
 tion or the sublime flights of his imperial 
 imagination; but when a great Noble or Prince 
 of a powerful House was put by name to the 
 torture in Hell, they could understand the 
 courage and the motive that chained him there. 
 The wealth of classical allusion might be lost 
 on them; but the simple morality was under- 
 stood and his illustrations taken from the ordi- 
 nary scenes of life as common to the peasant 
 as the prince went home to them. 
 
 Among his traits shines his desire for Fame. 
 Petrarch declares that he sacrificed his wife 
 and family seeking glory. We need not ac- 
 cept this harsh estimate; for Petrarch certainly 
 was envious of Dante's reputation, and one of 
 Dante's daughters, and two of his sons, were 
 with him in Ravenna. Dante was free from 
 envy. His deadly sin, he tells us himself, was 
 Pride. But undoubtedly he was avid of fame 
 and did not spare himself in its pursuit. 
 
 When in the seventh gulf of Hell he sinks
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 203 
 
 down breathless and exhausted after his climb 
 out of the sixth gulf, his Master spurs him on 
 with the mention of fame: 
 
 "Omai convien che tu cosi ti spoltre 
 Disse '1 maestro; ch^ seggendo in piuma, 
 In fama non si vien, ne sotto coltre, 
 
 Senza la qual chi sua vita consuma, 
 
 cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia, 
 
 qual fummo in acre ed in acqua ia schiuma."* 
 
 "'Now needs thy best of man.' So spake my guide. 
 For not on downy plumes nor under shade 
 Of canopy reposing fame is won, 
 
 Without which whosoe'er consumes his days 
 Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth 
 As smoke in air, or foam upon the wave." 
 
 But more than in search of fame his Odyssey 
 was inspired by his heart-hunger for Peace. 
 This he discloses throughout all his records 
 whether in prose or verse. This we find in his 
 great Comedy even amid the actual strife por- 
 trayed in its most terrible scenes. As it speaks 
 even through the cries and laments of those 
 who have lost it, so it speaks in the traces of 
 the age-long conflict stamped on his face turned 
 toward the Heavens in unspeakable adoration 
 
 * Inferno, XXIV, 45-50, Cary.
 
 204 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 as in the portrait which represents him in his 
 age, laurel-crowned with all that fame gives, 
 and yet turned with unspeakable longing for 
 that Peace which passeth man's understanding. 
 We find it disclosed when on the way to the 
 Seventh Cornice he hears the voice of the shin- 
 ing Angel who calls: 
 
 "This way he goes 
 Who goes in search of Peace/* 
 
 There is a story told of Dante contained in 
 what is known as The letter of Frate Ilario: how 
 one day at his monastery of Santa Croce above 
 the blue bay of Spezia the narrator with some 
 of his brother-monks saw a lone man approach- 
 ing — a stranger to all — and they questioned him 
 of his wishings and seekings there. And he 
 moved not, but stood silently contemplating 
 the columns and arches of the cloister. And 
 they asked him again: "What he wished and 
 whom he sought V Then, "slowly turning his 
 head and looking at the friars and at me, he 
 answered: 'Peace."* And presently they knew 
 him, for his fame had already spread through- 
 out all that part of Italy; so that, as the story 
 goes, the women in Verona whispered as he 
 passed: "There goes the man who has been in
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 205 
 
 Hell." And, says the narrator, "When he saw 
 that I hung upon his countenance and Hstened 
 to him with strange affection, he drew from his 
 bosom a book, did gently open it and offered 
 it to me, saying: 'Sir Friar, here is a portion of 
 my work which peradventure thou hast not 
 seen. This remembrance I leave with thee. 
 Forget me not.'" 
 
 I have felt that possibly Shakespeare had in 
 mind this story of the wanderer coming to the 
 monastery gate, when he brought Wolsey to 
 such a door to say: 
 
 "An old man, broken with the cares of State, 
 Has come to lay his weary bones among you. 
 Give him a little earth for charity." 
 
 The teaching of Dante's great work was, as 
 he himself declares. Righteousness. The argu- 
 ment is, as he writes Can Grande della Scala, 
 the State of Souls after Death. The aim is "to 
 remove the Hving from the state of misery by 
 directing them to the state of felicity." But 
 if he was writing a great appeal to the Human 
 Soul to seek after God; he was also writing a 
 great poem. And to this he gave no less of his 
 inspired genius than to the other. It is after 
 all, not the Matter; but the Form in which the
 
 2o6 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 poet has pictured this that has caught and held 
 the heart of the world. He has shown that he 
 knew as well as any devotee that "Beauty is 
 its own excuse for being." 
 
 The Inferno has taken strongest hold on the 
 popular imagination throughout the genera- 
 tions, because of its terrible pictures; its ettrrno 
 dolore; its inexorable, hopeless infinity of woe. 
 But this is only the first stage of the wonder- 
 ful journey — a dreadful and soul-wringing ex- 
 perience, it is true, for few can go the full 
 length with the Poet, who held that the knowl- 
 edge of the justice of the punishment would 
 make pity a sin. If, however, one but keep 
 with him and his guide he shall with them come 
 out from that dreadful gloom and see again the 
 stars. He shall bathe in the "dolce color d'ori- 
 ental zaffiro" and he shall see that conquest of 
 the Dawn and recognize from afar the shimmer- 
 ing of the Sea.* He shall meet the Heavenly 
 Pilot and hear the Hundred-throated chorus in 
 the shining bark of God's angel chant: In exitu 
 Israel de Mgypio. He shall hear Casella begin 
 to sing, as Milton heard, when Dante "woo'd 
 him to music," one of Dante's canzoni: 
 "Amor che nella mentc mi ragiona." 
 ' Purgatorio, Cunto I, II5.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 207 
 
 Sordello shall guide him even if by a winding 
 path to where, amid countless flowers that give 
 the air the odor of a thousand fragrances, em- 
 bosomed in a dell a gentle army of the Great 
 shall sing, "Salve Regina." Twilight shall 
 have for him new meaning when he shall have 
 heard the hymn: 
 
 "Ere Daylight fadeth" 
 
 and angels from Mary's bosom in trailing robes 
 as green as little green leaves may float within 
 his view. And on and on he may go rising 
 ever to higher flights; companying with the 
 souls who are journeying toward the gates of 
 Paradise through pictures as wonderful as ever 
 came from human imagination and catch strains 
 of music as divine as ever sounded in mortal 
 ears. 
 
 "Every line of the Paradiso," says Ruskin, 
 "is full of the most exquisite and spiritual ex- 
 pressions of Christian truth; and that poem is 
 only less read than the 'Inferno'; because it 
 requires far greater attention and, perhaps, 
 for its full enjoyment a holier heart." ^ 
 
 The Paradiso, indeed, is the highest concep- 
 tion that the poet's imagination has ever at- 
 • Stones of Venice, II, 324.
 
 2o8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 tained. Its central idea is Light — The Light 
 of the Splendor of God. Light within light fills 
 it. The Light of Love that moves the sun and 
 all the stars. 
 It begins with: 
 
 "The Glory of Him who moveth all 
 penetrates all the Universe, and shines 
 more brightly in one part, and elsewhere less." 
 
 It proceeds ever from Light to Light — from 
 radiance to radiance — from effulgence to efful- 
 gence — and throughout the whole course it is 
 "as though all the stars of Heaven were being 
 poured out of it." 
 
 Dante's great effort for the restoration of the 
 Empire under ideal conditions as he imagined 
 them was, however, but a part — a moiety of 
 his work for the regeneration of the world. 
 The other moiety was the regeneration of the 
 Church. He would render to Caesar the things 
 that were Caesar's and to God the things that 
 were God's. And if he devoted to the former 
 his curiously reasoned De Monarchia and, now 
 and again, a part of a Canto, he devoted his 
 greatest work to the preaching of the Word, 
 and to the regeneration of the Church as its 
 elect on earth.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 209 
 
 In Religion he was the most orthodox of 
 Churchmen; but when it came to the tempo- 
 rahties he was the sternest of Puritans. He de- 
 nounced the enemies of Boniface VIII for cru- 
 cifying the Lord afresh in the imprisonment and 
 insults to the Pope; yet when Boniface at- 
 tempted to get possession of the Capital of 
 Tuscany he withstood him as his bitterest foe. 
 He declared that his royal ally and agent had 
 entered Florence with "the spear of Judas," 
 and later he drew against Boniface's ambition 
 and avarice the bitterest indictment ever drawn 
 against a temporal ruler. 
 
 He left in Italy his high authority for the 
 supreme power of the Pope in matters spiritual 
 — he left him sole master of Peter's Keys; but 
 also he left an equal authority against his as- 
 sumption of the coveted and perilous Tem- 
 poral power. His teaching on obedience to 
 God's Law has rung in every Itahan church 
 and sounded in every Italian heart for six hun- 
 dred years, and so in Italian minds has re- 
 mained his teaching of the separation of the 
 Spiritual and Temporal power. Both have 
 sunk deep into the heart of Italy and both 
 have borne rich fruit. Italy is one in loyalty 
 to him, the noble ruler whose arms are on the
 
 210 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 flag that flies over the Quirinal, and one in 
 spiritual loyalty to him, the Holy Father who 
 rules the Church from the Seat of St. Peter. 
 But for Dante it is possible that neither might 
 be to-day in Rome. 
 
 Upborne by his adoration of the Divine Wis- 
 dom he was lifted, like St. Paul, to the Seventh 
 Heaven — in what form, "who can tell?" and 
 saw glories which even he could not describe; 
 but what he wrote lifted the world and sent 
 it forward with a new conception of man's 
 duty, and a new faith in the foundation prin- 
 ciples of Religion. Think you it did not re- 
 quire courage in those days to picture prelates 
 and, far more, Popes in Hell ^ 
 
 Two centuries before, the Emperor himself 
 had come to Canossa to kneel barefoot and, in 
 a penitent's shirt, to crave pardon of a Pope, 
 and within a century a King of England had 
 walked barefoot doing penance at a Pope's 
 command. And the Pope yet had power to 
 bring Charles of \ alois to quell Florence and 
 maintain those who condemned Dante to be 
 burnt alive, and to crown Charles King of 
 Sicily. 
 
 Yet, if Dante "damned to everlasting fame"
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 211 
 
 those whom he deemed the Enemies of Italy 
 even though they might have worn the Mitre 
 and held the Keys of St. Peter, he was the 
 most faithful of the Faithful to the fundamental 
 doctrines of the Church and more than Pope 
 or Curia he established the Italian people in 
 the truths of Christianity. What the Bishops 
 inculcated in their pastorals, he with the 
 parish-priest taught in the parish-church and 
 the home. 
 
 Presentation has been made of Dante's stand 
 upon the division between the Divine and Su- 
 preme Spiritual Authority of the Vicar of 
 Christ to feed and guide His flock and the 
 Temporal authority which he unrighteously as- 
 serted. He had argued on this theme power- 
 fully in his prose essays. In his Comedy he de- 
 clares it as a prophet and messenger of God, 
 with an authority superior to that of the 
 holder of St. Peter's Keys himself. He is not 
 now addressing his conclusions to Florence or 
 even to an Emperor. He is speaking to man- 
 kind and with the power of a final Judge. It 
 is no longer argument, it is judgment. 
 
 Even in the beginning — in the dusky wood 
 where he is lost at the very start of his strange
 
 213 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 journey, he finds himself dismayed by the lean 
 and hungry wolf, the Avarice of the Church, 
 who 
 
 "E molte gente fe' gia viver grana." 
 
 "Also had man}' made ere now to live forlorn." 
 
 The guilt of Simony he charges in imperish- 
 able pictures against the Church, scoring the 
 Church's worldly head himself: as when in 
 the eighth circle he finds Nicholas III stuck 
 upside down, and Nicholas, hearing, but not 
 seeing his interlocutor, cries out: 
 
 "Se* tu gia, costi ritto, 
 se' tu gia costi ritto, Bonifazio ? 
 di parecchi anni mi menti lo scritto 
 Se' tu si tosto di quell' aver sazio, 
 per lo qual non temesti torre a inganno 
 la bella donna, e di poi fame strazio ? "* 
 
 "Art thou there already? 
 Art thou already there, O Boniface ? 
 By several years the writing lied to me— 
 Art thou so early sated holding that 
 For which thou fearedst not 
 To fraudulently seize the lovely Lady 
 And then make slaughter of her." 
 
 Of the avarice of the Church he speaks also 
 in the Vllth Canto of the Inferno, where hav- 
 
 * Inferno, XIX, 52.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 213 
 
 ing descended into the Fourth Circle of Hell 
 he finds the Avaricious and the Prodigal 
 doomed to one punishment, dashing weights 
 against each other ceaselessly with cries: "Why 
 holdest thou so fast?" "And why castest 
 thou away?" And among them he finds 
 "both Popes and Cardinals o'er whom Avarice 
 dominion absolute maintains." 
 
 In the XlXth Canto he contrasts the de- 
 mand made of St. Peter; "Follow me," with 
 the avarice of Pope Nicholas III and charges 
 against the Pope 
 
 "Your avarice 
 O'ercasts the world with mourning, under foot 
 Treading the good and raising bad men up." 
 
 And then he utters his lament against Con- 
 stantine and his alleged gift to Pope Sylvester 
 on which the Papacy based its claim to Tem- 
 poral Power. 
 
 "Ah ! Constantine, to how much ill gave birth 
 Not thy conversion but the plenteous dower 
 Which the first wealthy Father gained from thee." 
 
 In the XVIth Canto (line 109 and seq.) of 
 the Purgatorio, through Marco Lombardo, he 
 charges the unhappy condition of the times to
 
 214 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 thef Avarice of the Church for Temporal power, 
 which "hastened the world to *evil.'" 
 
 "Rome that turned it unto good 
 Was wont to boast two suns whose several beams 
 Cast light on either way; the world's and God's. 
 One since hath quenched the other, and the Sword 
 Is grafted on the Crook. . . . 
 
 The Church of Rome 
 Mixing two Governments that ill assort. 
 Hath missed her footing, fallen into the mire. 
 And there herself and burden much defiled." 
 
 — Cary. 
 
 In the XXVIIth Canto of the Paradiso, 
 where Dante is approaching the ninth Heaven, 
 St. Peter flushing red with indignation apos- 
 trophises the avarice of his successors, espe- 
 cially of Boniface: 
 
 "—My place 
 He who usurps on earth (my place, aye, mine 
 Which in the presence of the Son of God 
 Is void), the same hath made my cemetery 
 A common sewer of puddle and of blood.'* 
 
 "No purpose was of ours 
 That on the right hand of our successors. 
 Part of the Christian people should be set. 
 And part upon their left; nor that the keys. 
 Which were vouchsafed me, should for ensign serve 
 Unto the banners, that do levy war
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 215 
 
 On the baptized; nor I, for sigil-mark, 
 
 Set upon sold and lying privileges: 
 
 Which makes me oft to bicker and turn red. 
 
 In shepherd's clothing, greedy wolves below 
 
 Range wide o'er all the pastures. Arm of God ! 
 
 Why longer sleep'st thou ?" 
 
 — Cary. 
 
 It will cause, then, little surprise to learn that 
 some of Dante's works were placed on the Index 
 by the Ecclesiastical authorities and were ordered 
 to be burnt. But this was some twenty-five 
 years after his death and they had too firm a 
 hold on the Italian mind to suffer permanent 
 damage. 
 
 Nor will one, knowing this, be surprised to 
 know that many critics and commentators have 
 found serious fault with Dante — some have 
 indeed reviled him. He has been characterized 
 as "a Reformer"; "a bawdy historiographer"; 
 as "extravagant, absurd, disgusting"; as "a 
 Methodist Parson in Bedlam"; as "one of the 
 most obscure of writers"; as "a fire-and-smoke 
 poet"; as "a lustreless glow-worm"; as "a 
 talkative showman"; as "a great master of the 
 disgusting," etc., etc., while others have given 
 him every virtue and grace and compared him 
 with the greatest poets and literary masters 
 of every race and every age.
 
 2i6 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 After this we may not even be surprised to 
 learn that his authorship of the Divine Comedy 
 has been questioned, and that the greatest epic 
 of Modern times has been attributed to "an 
 obscure writer of the XVth Century who . . . 
 pubHshed that work under the name of Dante, 
 a well-known Author." ^ But it should be said 
 that the same discoverer also states that the 
 Mneid was written by a Benedictine Monk in 
 the Xlllth Century. What a pity it is that 
 this Clerical investigator lived too early to lend 
 his authority to the theory of the Baconian 
 Cipher ! 
 
 The chief of the Anti-Dantists was Voltaire 
 — ^whether it was owing to a GaUic disposition 
 to undervalue Italian work and go counter to 
 Italian enthusiasm, or whether it was Dante's 
 fundamental solemnity and profound Christian 
 faith — Voltaire, who in his earlier work merely 
 ignored and passed by the work of the great 
 Florentine Master, the Father of Tuscan — 
 indeed, of Italian Poetry; later on grew to be 
 his most unmeasured critic and attempted to 
 do by his wit and ridicule what he had not been 
 able to effect by serious discussion. He, how- 
 
 * Father Hardouin's "Doutes sur I'Age de Dante," cited, Dante 
 in English Literature, I, p. 217.
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 217 
 
 ever, failed completely in his purpose. He 
 aroused a storm of indignant protest from 
 Italian writers domiciled in England, whose 
 polemical spirit was not less intemperate than 
 his own and he not only failed in any purpose 
 to lower the prestige of the great "first Chris- 
 tian poem," if such he had, but actually brought 
 it into a note which it might not have had in 
 England for years to come but for the interest 
 excited by the bitter controversy that arose 
 between him and Rolli, Baretti, Martinelli 
 and others. These showed up Voltaire's igno- 
 rance of his subject in a way that touched him 
 to the quick and the close was mere vulgar 
 vituperation that diminished Voltaire's fame 
 and substituted, for the time being, mere 
 notoriety. 
 
 It would appear impossible that there could 
 be much sympathy between the railing philos- 
 opher and the successful litterateur and financier 
 who corresponded with Kings and Savants, and 
 the bowed scholar-poet, the gloomy exile who 
 trod so bitterly the stairs of arrogant patrons 
 who complained that he did not amuse them. 
 Let him who thinks strange this want of sym- 
 pathy look at the face of Voltaire when he was 
 the most famous literary man on the continent
 
 2i8 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 of Europe and then gaze on Dante's face and 
 he will see that it was impossible to have been 
 otherwise — as impossible as to harmonize Pagan 
 Scepticism and Christian Faith. 
 
 It has become popular in our own time to 
 study and analyze a man's feeling, tempera- 
 ment, psychic personality. We term it, when 
 professionally analyzed, psychology, and we 
 speak of it as though the science of Psychology 
 were something new in our time. But it is as 
 old as Solomon, as Plato, Aristotle, and other 
 Greek Philosophers. In ages following theirs 
 St. Paul went deeply into it and other Saints 
 of lesser note followed him. St. Augustine ana- 
 lyzed the Soul's progress. But neither before 
 nor since has any one gone so deeply and with 
 such complete analysis into his own psychology 
 and, by consequence, into universal Psychology, 
 as Dante. 
 
 From the beginning when Love expanded his 
 soul he presents his soul as bare as Marsyas, 
 whom Apollo's breath drew out of his skin. 
 Like a Psychic Anatomist he pierced to the 
 soul's inmost centre and in prose and verse has 
 laid bare its every emotion; its every passion. 
 It is in part this which interwoven with other 
 elements differentiates Dante from other poets
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 219 
 
 in greater or less degree — from all save the 
 very greatest in an immeasurable degree. 
 
 Of the symbolism of Dante, we can scarcely 
 speak in the compass permitted us. Whole 
 volumes have been written on this one aspect 
 of his writings.^ It embraces the whole body 
 of his work; pervades its every part; lurks in 
 every turn, and peeps forth so unexpectedly 
 and tantalizingly from pictures, characters, and 
 even phrases, that Dante-students become 
 mystified and tend to discover a mystical sym- 
 boHsm in even the simplest and plainest decla- 
 rations. Yet there is enough symbolism to 
 render any forced interpretation unnecessary, 
 and often they pile one on another. For Dante 
 was at once a mystic and a master of the art 
 of expressing two ideas at once — the particular 
 and the general, the concrete and the abstract. 
 He began it as a youth — and it is woven inex- 
 tricably into the Vita Nuova. He developed 
 it in the Convito, or Banquet; and he gave it 
 full rein in the Comedy, where it starts with 
 the first line in the Selva oscura and thence- 
 forth throughout the entire course attends his 
 footsteps like another shadow — almost indeed 
 like a substantial guide at Virgil's side, telHng 
 
 * CJ. Symbolism of Dante, J. B. Fletcher.
 
 220 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 in mysterious undertone the connection be- 
 tween that which passed before them in pan- 
 oramic vision and the miHtant Hfe of the strug- 
 ghng soul still encased in its mortal frame. 
 
 It, in fact, so underlies the entire volume of 
 his work that some commentators have even 
 questioned whether there ever was a Beatrice 
 in the flesh, and have found in her only Dante's 
 personification of Divine Wisdom and Grace, 
 a conclusion which appears too absurd to be 
 seriously discussed. If ever a woman shone 
 in the flesh to a lover's eyes, it was Bea- 
 trice Portinari; if ever a lover sang from his 
 heart to a beautiful mistress it was Dante to 
 Beatrice Portinari. He sang love to her in a 
 hundred keys, and even after he had exalted 
 her to a mystical symbol drawing him to 
 Heaven with divine compassion, when he finds 
 her in Paradise, to which the bare mention of 
 her name by Virgil had ever given him strength 
 to press on even through the final circles of 
 Purgatory (Canto XXVII), he had not eyes 
 save for her. Her smile; her eyes; her few 
 smiled words made him feel within as Glaucus 
 felt who tasting the herb, was made in the sea a 
 fellow of the other Gods. No. Beatrice in
 
 DANTE AND HIS TEACHING 221 
 
 Paradise was the symbol of Divine Grace and 
 Love, but also she was the symbol and more 
 than the symbol of that Love which had in- 
 spired Dante from the beginning when it first 
 entered his soul: a Love which thenceforth, 
 however it may for a brief period have hidden 
 itself while Dante strayed with Forese Donati 
 amid less-exalted pleasures, yet never had been 
 lost and became so pure and so uplifted that 
 the border between it and the Spiritual Love 
 which led him into Paradise was passed with- 
 out knowing when it came. 
 
 I have spoken of Dante in connection with 
 the modern trend of so-called sociological fic- 
 tion; of Dante's power of analyzing the human 
 soul. There is a branch of this form of so- 
 called sociological fiction which of late years, 
 professing to deal with love, deals rather with 
 her baser sister. To apply the name Love is an 
 irreverence to as holy an emotion as can in- 
 spire the human heart. Those who soil their 
 minds with such so-called literature I would 
 point to Dante's Love. In all the great drama 
 which he has unfolded to our gaze and in which 
 Love is the controlling power, and in which, 
 although it may have only stood in the wings, it
 
 222 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 is ever on the stage or close at hand, there is 
 not a word, not a thought, not a suggestion 
 which is not as clean of earth as Beatrice's 
 brow. 
 
 **E vidi le sue luci tanto mere 
 tanto gioconde." 
 
 "And I beheld her eyes so limpid 
 And so joyous."* 
 
 This too after she had rebuked him for gazing 
 but on her; or as he phrases it: 
 
 "Vincendo me col lume d'un sorriso, 
 ella mi dissi, 'Volgiti ed ascolta, 
 che non pur nei miei occhi e Paradiso.* "• 
 
 "Overcoming me with the light of a smile 
 She said to me, 'Turn and listen, 
 For Heaven is not only in my eyes.'" 
 
 » Paradiso, Canto XVIII, 55. 
 • Paradiso, Canto XVIII, 19-2I.
 
 VII 
 
 DANTE'S AND ITALIAN NATIONALITY 
 
 Boccaccio not only tells us how the first 
 seven Cantos of the Comedy were preserved 
 through the care of Dante's wife, but he tells 
 a story regarding the loss for a time and the 
 miraculous recovery of the last thirteen Cantos 
 of the Paradiso. It appears that at the time 
 of Dante's death these last thirteen cantos were 
 not to be found, so that it was supposed that 
 he had left his great work unfinished and, says 
 Boccaccio: 
 
 "The friends Dante left behind him, his 
 sons and his disciples, having searched at many 
 times and for several months everything of his 
 writing, to see whether he had left any remain- 
 ing cantos; his friends generally being much 
 mortified that God had not at least lent him 
 so long to the world, that he might have been 
 able to complete the small remaining part of 
 his work; and having sought so long and never 
 found it, they remained in despair. Jacopo 
 and Piero were sons of Dante, and each of 
 
 223
 
 224 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 them being a rhymer, they were induced by 
 the persuasions of their friends to endeavor to 
 complete, as far as they were able, their father's 
 work, in order that it should not remain im- 
 perfect; when to Jacopo, who was more eager 
 about it than his brother, there appeared a 
 wonderful vision, which not only induced him 
 to abandon such presumptuous folly, but 
 showed him where the thirteen cantos were 
 which were wanting to the Divina Commedia, 
 and which they had not been able to find. 
 
 "A worthy man of Ravenna, whose name 
 was Pier Giardino, and who had long been 
 Dante's disciple, grave in his manner and 
 worthy of credit, relates that after the eighth 
 month from the day of his master's death, there 
 came to his house before dawn Jacopo di Dante, 
 who told him that that night, while he was 
 asleep, his father Dante had appeared to him, 
 clothed in the purest white, and his face re- 
 splendent with an extraordinary light; that he, 
 Jacopo, asked him if he lived, and that Dante 
 replied: 'Yes, but in the true life, not our hfe.' 
 Then he, Jacopo, asked him if he had com- 
 pleted his work before passing into the true 
 hfe, and if he had done so, what had become of 
 that part of it which was missing, which they
 
 DANTE'S AND ITALIAN NATIONALITY 225 
 
 none of them had been able to find. To this 
 Dante seemed to answer: 'Yes, I finished it'; 
 and then took him, Jacopo, by the hand, and 
 led him into that chamber in which he, Dante, 
 had been accustomed to sleep when he Hved in 
 this Hfe, and, touching one of the walls, he said: 
 'What you have sought for so much is here'; 
 and at these words both Dante and sleep fled 
 from Jacopo at once. For which reason Jacopo 
 said he could not rest without coming to explain 
 what he had seen to Pier Giardino, in order 
 that they should go together and search out 
 the place thus pointed out to him, which he 
 retained excellently in his memory, and to see 
 whether this had been pointed out by a true 
 spirit, or a false delusion. For which purpose, 
 though it was still far in the night, they set 
 off together, and went to the house in which 
 Dante resided at the time of his death. Hav- 
 ing called up its present owner, he admitted 
 them, and they went to the place thus pointed 
 out; there they found a mat fixed to the wall, 
 as they had always been used to see it in past 
 days; they lifted it gently up, when they 
 found a little window in the wall, never be- 
 fore seen by them, nor did they even know 
 that it was there. In it they found several
 
 2 26 DANTE 'AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 writings, all mouldy from the dampness of the 
 walls, and had they remained there longer, in a 
 little while they would have crumbled away. 
 Having thoroughly cleared away the mould, 
 they found them to be the thirteen cantos 
 that had been wanting to complete the Com- 
 media."^ 
 
 i Among the works accredited by many com- 
 mentators to Dante are also a poetical version 
 of The Creed in terza rima, and a version of the 
 seven Penitential Psalms, and there is a story 
 of Dante connected with this version of the 
 Creed, which whether apocryphal or not, would 
 appear natural enough in view of Dante's burn- 
 ing criticism of the powerful Hierachy of the 
 church. It runs as follows: "When Dante was 
 writing his book many people who could not 
 understand it said that it was contrary to the 
 Christian Faith. . . . Now at Ravenna there 
 was a learned Franciscan friar, who was an in- 
 quisitor. This man, having heard of Dante's 
 fame, became desirous of making his acquaint- 
 ance, with the intention of finding out whether 
 he were a heretic or no. And one morning, as 
 Dante was in church, the inquisitor entered, 
 and Dante being pointed out to him, he sent 
 for him. Dante reverentially went to him, and 
 
 ' Dante Alighieri, by Paget Toynbee, pp. 207-208.
 
 DANTE'S AND ITALIAN NATIONALITY 227 
 
 was asked by the inquisitor if he were the 
 Dante who claimed to have visited Hell, Pur- 
 gatory, and Paradise. Dante repHed: *I am 
 Dante Alighieri of Florence.' Whereupon the 
 inquisitor angrily said: 'You go writing can- 
 zoni, and sonnets, and idle tales, when you 
 would have done much better to write a 
 learned work, resting on the foundations of 
 the Church of God, instead of giving your time 
 to such like rubbish, which may one of these 
 days serve you out as you deserve.' When 
 Dante wished to reply to the inquisitor, the 
 latter said: 'This is not the time; but on such 
 a day I will see you again, and I will inquire 
 into this matter.' Dante thereupon answered 
 that he should be well pleased for this to be 
 done; and taking leave of the inquisitor, he 
 went home to his own room and there and then 
 wrote out the composition known as the Little 
 Creed, which creed is an affirmation of the 
 whole Christian Faith." The account goes on 
 to say that when Dante gave his composition 
 to the inquisitor, the latter was so confounded 
 that Dante "came off safe and sound. And 
 from that day forward Dante and the inquisitor 
 became great friends." ^ 
 
 ^ Dantt Alighieri, by Paget Toynbee, citing Papanti, op. cit., 
 PP- 47-49.
 
 228 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 This Credo or Professione di Fede consists 
 of a paraphrase of the Apostles' Creed, the ten 
 Commandments, the Pater Noster, and the 
 Ave Maria, together with reflections on the 
 seven Sacraments, and seven Deadly Sins. 
 There are over forty manuscripts of the Creed, 
 the majority of which are attributed to Dante, 
 though in a few it is assigned to Antonio da 
 Ferrara; and it was first printed at Rome about 
 1476, and was reprinted as an appendix to the 
 edition of the Divine Comedy published at 
 Venice by Vendelin da Spira in 1477. The 
 Seven Penitential Psalms were first printed 
 about 1475 at Venice.^ 
 
 In addition to Dante's recognized works 
 there is attributed to him a treatise entitled 
 the Quaestio de Aqua et Terra, the authen- 
 ticity of which is disputed; the object of which 
 was to show that according to Dante, "water 
 cannot in any part of its circumference be 
 higher than the land, together with the reasons 
 for this connection." 
 
 And now of the true measuring of the great 
 Commedia. First we must take it, as he tells 
 in the letter to Can Grande della Scala that it 
 must be taken, in two senses; it must be inter-t 
 
 ' Dante Alighieri, by Paget Toynbee, pp. 259-260.
 
 DANTE'S AND ITALIAN NATIONALITY 229 
 
 preted in a literal sense and in an anagogical 
 sense, and he illustrates this double sense by the 
 example from the psalm: In exitu Israel de 
 ^gypto domus Jacob de populo barharo fecta 
 est ]ud(xa sanctificatio ejus Israel potestas ejus; 
 for he adds if we look only at the literal sense 
 it signifies the going out of the children of 
 Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses; if 
 at the anagogical, it signifies our redemption 
 through Christ; if at the moral, it signifies the 
 conversion of the soul from the grief and misery 
 of sin to a state of grace, and if at the anagogi- 
 cal, it signifies the passage of the blessed soul 
 from the bondage of this corruption to the free- 
 dom of the eternal glory. So also the Com- 
 media must be taken as a beautiful poem and 
 as a wonderful exposition of the soul's experi- 
 ence in its redemption through Christ. 
 
 Lowell has a fine analysis of Dante's work and 
 place in the procession of Modern Literature 
 and of Modern Thought. "Indeed," says he, 
 "as Marvell's drop of dew mirrored the whole 
 firmament; so we find in the Commedia the 
 image of the Middle Ages, and the sentimental 
 gyneolatry of Chivalry, which was at best but 
 skin-deep, is Hfted in Beatrice to an ideal, a 
 universal plane. It is the same with Catholi-
 
 230 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 cism, with imperialism, with scholastic philos- 
 ophy; and nothing is more wonderful than the 
 power of absorption and assimilation in this 
 man, who could take up into himself the world 
 that then was, and reproduce it with such cos- 
 mopolitan truth to human nature and to his 
 own individuality, as to reduce all contempo- 
 rary history to mere comment on his vision." 
 Lowell has further observed that Dante's great 
 poem is the first which has as its theme man 
 and not a man, and that while the poem is 
 "limited by a form of classical severity ... he 
 sums up in himself the two schools of modern 
 poetry which had preceded him and while 
 essentially lyrical in his subject is epic in the 
 handling of it." An admirable statement. 
 
 Carlyle in his Dante and the Divine Comedy 
 reckons Dante "one of the greatest men that 
 ever Hved." And of the Divine Comedy he de- 
 clares that there are few things that exist worth 
 comparing to it. iEschylus, Dante, Shake- 
 speare — one really cannot add another greater 
 name to these ? Catholicism and Loyalty 
 were, he says, ever with him; accordingly, he 
 thinks that "when all records of Catholicism 
 shall have passed away; when the Vatican 
 shall have crumbled into dust and St. Peter's
 
 DANTE'S AND ITALIAN NATIONALITY 231 
 
 and Strasburg Minster shall be no more; for 
 thousands of years to come Catholicism will 
 survive in this sublime epic of antiquity."
 
 VIII 
 DANTE AND ITALIAN ASPIRATION 
 
 And as Dante transmitted to his fellow 
 countrymen in regions which, for all his travels 
 he never dreamed of, a National Consciousness, 
 so he conferred on them and on us who are not 
 Italians other beneficence. He inculcated the 
 great idea that there inheres in political prob- 
 lems a moral essence; he taught that the aim 
 as well as the essential basis of all justified 
 Government is justice — not the execution of 
 unjust laws; but absolute justice for all. In 
 this he was the forerunner of Montesquieu, of 
 Grotius and Puffendorf; of Jefferson; of Maz- 
 zini. As deeply religious as any Father of the 
 Church he nevertheless taught, as we have 
 seen, with irrefutable reasoning the separation 
 of the Spiritual and the Temporal power, of 
 Church and State, and it was his doctrine that 
 Mazzini carried forward to its ultimate con- 
 clusion. He was the inspiration of the whole 
 band of patriots who rescued Italy from a 
 
 tyranny as supreme as ever ravined on her 
 
 232
 
 DANTE AND ITALIAN ASPIRATION 233 
 
 vitals in Dante's own time. If Dante chose 
 his "good Frederick" or Henry to carry out his 
 scheme, it was not because he loved an Em- 
 peror per se; but because he thought him the 
 fittest instrument for the great work of com- 
 posing the distresses and recouping the dis- 
 asters of Christendom and especially of Italy. 
 And though, like Carducci, we might cheerfully 
 have wished to strike ofF his Emperor's crown 
 and head, like him we follow the poet from the 
 setting to the rising sun. 
 
 But not merely did he inspire the National 
 Consciousness of Italy and breathe into it an 
 immortal spirit; he laid down the confines of 
 Italy according to what he deemed and what 
 Italians since have deemed her Natural bound- 
 aries: boundaries which, though for his own 
 purposes, a great Ruler actually gave her for a 
 brief period and which, at least, mainly she 
 has attained after six hundred years. During 
 the World War, Dante's vision of an Italy 
 rounded out and established and Napoleon's 
 actual delirritation of her boundary from the 
 Stelvio to the Adriatic were constantly held up 
 to the Italian People as their right. And but 
 now in a great International Political Con- 
 ference, one of the most eminent of Italy's
 
 234 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Statesmen, one of her ablest Ministers cited 
 Dante as final authority on this very point. ^ 
 Not that Dante was an Authority on Interna- 
 tional Law; but that he was the voice of Italy 
 — of Immortal Italy, speaking with the au- 
 thority of complete knowledge of her past and 
 with complete knowledge of the principles of 
 Justice to Italy and, therefore, — as Dante felt, 
 as Signor Tittoni feels, as all Italians feel, — 
 to the world. 
 
 There is nothing that I am aware of in Litera- 
 ture outside of the Law with Israel and the 
 Koran with Islam that has the compelling 
 sanction of Dante with the Italian People. 
 
 During the great war we find the Italians 
 after six hundred years citing Dante as final 
 high authority for Italy's right to her Alpine 
 bulwarks. 
 
 It is in his story of the founding of Mantua 
 where he tells^ how: 
 
 "Suso in Italia bella giace un laco 
 a pie deir alpe, che serra Lamagna 
 sopra Tiralli, c'ha nome Benaco." 
 
 **Up there in lovely Italy lies a lake 
 At the foot of the Alps that lock out Germany 
 Above the Tyrol; it has the name Benaco." 
 
 •Tommaso Tittoni. * Inferno, XX, 6i, etc.
 
 DANTE AND ITALIAN ASPIRATION 235 
 
 "Per mllle fonti, credo, e piu si bagna, 
 tra Garda e Val Camonica, Apennino 
 deir acqua che nel detto lago stagna." * 
 
 *"T\vixt Garda and the Val Camonica, 
 Bathe, I believe, the feet of Apennine, 
 The waters of a thousand springs and more 
 Which sink to rest at last within that lake." 
 
 The Divine Comedy has this in common 
 with the Bible that however much it be studied 
 it always discloses to its votaries something 
 new. It requires thought, deep thought to 
 sound its depths; but it carries with it a rich 
 reward. From whatever point it is approached 
 it opens to the pilgrim beauties and enchant- 
 ments. For it is, in short, the greatest marvel 
 performed by the mind of man. It is as 
 much a miracle as the work of Joan of Arc. 
 
 "Dante is indeed," as says one of his com- 
 mentators, "a great part of Italy." Italy is 
 bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. He 
 is the father of Italian Nationality; the in- 
 spirer of ItaHan Ideality; the authority for 
 Italian Aspiration. This is why the people of 
 the Trentino when held by the throat by Aus- 
 trian power, erected at the time of the cele- 
 bration of his birth, a great monument to 
 
 » Inferno, XX, 61-65.
 
 236 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 Dante — to the Father; this is why the people 
 of Trieste when shackled by Austrian chains 
 claimed as their privilege to send the lamp and 
 the oil to burn perpetually where his sacred 
 ashes in Ravenna have made a shrine for all 
 Itahans and, indeed, for all lovers of Liberty 
 throughout the world. 
 
 He has trodden in high companionship the 
 stony ways with many an Italian Exile and 
 Patriot; with them has climbed the steep stairs 
 and for them has sweetened the salty bread of 
 others. He has lightened the darkness of 
 many an Austrian dungeon and cooled the 
 withering heat of the Piombi and many an- 
 other fiery prison. He has consoled many 
 an Italian martyr on the scaffold. He has 
 sung in the heart of many an Italian hero on 
 the field of battle, as he whispered to Battisti 
 and Sauro, as he sang to the gray lines of 
 Italy's sons as they stormed the Assiago, the 
 Grappa, and the Carso.
 
 IX 
 
 DANTE THE MASTER 
 
 This study has not attempted to present in 
 any extension of detail the noble work of Dante 
 Alighieri but rather, certain thoughts upon 
 Dante himself and the influence on the world 
 of his work, as a poet; as a philosopher, as 
 a teacher — as a world-teacher, the Master of 
 Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare and 
 Milton. 
 
 And this has been done chiefly, because it 
 has been felt that it would be too audacious to 
 attempt to quote extensively extracts from the 
 greatest of poets and artists in a tongue pos- 
 sibly difficult even for ItaUans, and whose 
 beauty can only be suitably rendered by one 
 who knows that tongue perfectly. How can 
 one successfully present parts of a work, com- 
 plete as a whole, whose harmonies range from 
 the majestic grandeur of sublimity, compara- 
 ble only to the music of the spheres, to the 
 delicate and melodious flutings of birds ? 
 
 237
 
 238 DANTE AND HIS INFLUENCE 
 
 What I have desired is as an American to 
 do honor to Italy and her greatest poet; to 
 suggest the great debt that we Americans — 
 not only Americans of Italian blood, but other 
 of us, Americans of English blood, owe to him 
 who six hundred years ago, dying in exile, left, 
 as a heritage to us all, the heritage of a compre- 
 hension of Liberty; of Justice; of fear of God; 
 of Devotion to Him; of Reverence for Women: 
 a heritage that has set the world forward and 
 that, if rightly guarded, will in time bring about 
 the realization of Dante's divine vision of 
 Peace and Love and the coming of the King- 
 dom of Right in the ineffable Hght of the 
 Paradise of God. 
 
 Now having given these pictures from the 
 entrancing scenes with which his work is filled 
 as well as with those terrible scenes (mainly 
 from the vision of Hell) which shock the sen- 
 sitive mind, I must recur to the great fact that 
 all these scenes, the dreadful and the beau- 
 tiful alike, are but the outer garment of the 
 spirit of the poem, under which lies the pro- 
 foundest thought that the human mind is capa- 
 ble of. They are but as the arabesques on the 
 sword which Homer holds as the Emblem of his 
 imperial authority over all the Masters of Song.
 
 DANTE THE MASTER 239 
 
 Its thought goes to the bottom of the destiny 
 of the Human Soul and endeavors to solve it 
 all. It deals with the basic structure of Human 
 Society and analyzes alike the working of the 
 mind and the passion of the soul; reasons of 
 the foundations of Creation and of Life, seeks 
 and discloses the primal principles of Justice 
 and Right while it pictures the ceaseless war- 
 fare between Righteousness and wrong. 
 
 In Dante we find the whole cycle of man's 
 intellectual life.' In youth he sings of Love — 
 wholly of Love, as is fitting to Youth. It is, 
 as Carlyle has observed, the singing-time. In 
 middle age, chastened by the experience of 
 Love, he, under mastery of Reason, wrote of 
 Justice, Equity, and Truth. As he grew older 
 and found deeper experience of aspiration and 
 strife and sorrow, his mind, broadened and ele- 
 vated, took in a loftier vision and a vaster 
 scope and he sang of Divine Might, Majesty 
 and Dominion, and of Divine Justice and 
 Mercy. Yet all through the whole of his Life 
 Love ruled and gave the true direction to his 
 song which becomes a part of the great 
 harmony in which under Love's sway move 
 the sun and all the other stars.
 
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