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MA" WANT, YEGpe="SCI"NDA.
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STORIES
FROM
THE ITALIAN POETS.
(FIRST SERIES)
DANTE ALIGHIERI
WITH CRITICAL NOTICES OF THE LIFE AND
GENIUS OF THE AUTHOR
BY
LEIGH HUNT
KNICKER
NUGGETS
NEW YORK And London
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press
1888
Press of
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York

1
x
(6
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
"}
IN
N deciding to include in the series of
"Knickerbocker Nuggets a reissue of the
more important of the "Stories from the Italian
Poets" (the first American edition of which
was published by their house in 1848) the pub-
lishers thought that their readers were entitled
to have before them the author's Preface as
originally written for the complete series, even
though this Preface makes reference to certain
tales which it was not practicable to include in
the two volumes now put into print.
In case the public demand warrants, however,
the publishers will be well pleased to complete
the reissue of the series, at an early date, by
the publication of a third volume containing
the Tales from Boiardo" and the metrical
versions given in the Appendix to the first
edition.
NEW YORK, June, 1888.
'
;

B
Z
•
TO SIR PERCY SHELLEY, Bart.
PREFACE
X
Sh
CONTENTS.
DANTE
CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS.
THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
•
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL
THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN
•
•
I
3
الله من
13
87
89
156
219

11
To SIR PERCY SHELLEY, BART.
MY DEAR SIR PERCY :
As I know no man who surpasses yourself in
combining a love of the most romantic fiction
with the coolest good sense, and in passing
from the driest metaphysical questions to the
heartiest enjoyment of humor,-I trust that
even a modesty so true as yours will not grudge
me the satisfaction of inscribing these volumes
with your name.
That you should possess such varieties of taste
is no wonder, considering what an abundance
of intellectual honors you inherit; nor might
the world have been the better for it, had they
been tastes, and nothing more. But that you
should inherit also that zeal for justice to man-
kind which has become so Christian a feature
in the character of the age, and that you should
include in that zeal a special regard for the wel-
fare of your father's friend, is a subject of con-
stant pleasurable reflection to
Your obliged and affectionate
LEIGH HUNT.

Buy
PREFACE.
TH
HE purpose of these volumes is to add to the
stock of tales from the Italian writers; to re-
tain at the same time as much of the poetry of
the originals as it is in the power of the writer's
prose to compass; and to furnish careful bio-
graphical notices of the authors. There have
been several collections of stories from the
novelists of Italy, but none from the poets;
and it struck me that prose versions from these,
of the kind here offered to the public, might
not be unwillingly received. The stories are
selected from the five principal narrative poets,
Dante, Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso; they
comprise the most popular of such as are fit for
translation; are reduced into one continuous
narrative, when diffused and interrupted, as in
the instances of those of Angelica and Armida ;
are accompanied with critical and explanatory
notes; and in the case of Dante, consist of an
abstract of the poet's whole work. The vol-
4
Preface
umes are furthermore interspersed with the
most favorite morceaux of the originals, fol-
lowed sometimes with attempts to versify them;
and in the Appendix, for the better satisfaction
of the student, are given entire stories, also in
the original, and occasionally rendered in like
manner. The book is particularly intended for
such students or other lovers of the language
as are pleased with any fresh endeavors to rec-
ommend it; and at the same time, for such
purely English readers as wish to know some-
thing about Italian poetry, without having lei-
sure to cultivate its acquaintance.
I did not intend, in the first instance, to de-
part from the plan of selection in the case of
Dante; but when I considered what an extraor-
dinary person he was-how intense is every
thing which he says-how widely he has re-at-
tracted of late the attention of the world-how
willingly, perhaps, his poem might be regarded
by the reader as being itself one continued
story (which, in fact, it is), related personally
of the writer-and lastly, what a combination of
difficulties have prevented his best translations
in verse from giving the public a just idea of
his almost Scriptural simplicity-I began to
think that an abstract of his entire work might
possibly be looked upon as supplying some-
thing of a desideratum. I am aware that noth-
Preface
5
ing but verse can do perfect justice to verse;
but besides the imperfections which are par-
donable, because inevitable, in all such metri-
cal endeavors, the desire to impress a grand and
worshipful idea of Dante has been too apt to
lead his translators into a tone and manner the
reverse of his passionate, practical, and creative
style a style which may be said to write
things instead of words; and thus to render
every word that is put out of its place, or
brought in for help and filling up, a misrepre-
sentation. I do not mean to say that he him-
self never does any thing of the sort, or does
not occasionally assume too much of the oracle
and the schoolmaster, in manner as well as
matter; but passion, and the absence of the
superfluous, are the chief characteristics of his
poetry. Fortunately, this sincerity of purpose
and utterance in Dante render him the least
pervertible of poets in a sincere prose transla-
tion; and, since I ventured on attempting one,
I have had the pleasure of meeting with an ex-
press recommendation of such a version * in an
early number of the Edinburgh Review.
The abstract of Daute, therefore, in these vol-
umes (with every deprecation that becomes me
* "It is probable that a prose translation would give a
better idea of the genius and manner of this poet than
any metrical one,” Vol. i., p, 310,
6
Preface
of being supposed to pretend to give a thorough
idea of any poetry whatsoever, especially with-
out its metrical form) aspires to be regarded as,
at all events, not exhibiting a false idea of the
Dantesque spirit in point of feeling and expres-
sion. It is true, I have omitted long, tedious
lectures of scholastic divinity and other learned
absurdities of the time, which are among the
bars to the poems being read through, even in
Italy (which Foscolo tells us is never the case);
and I have compressed the work in other pas-
sages not essentially necessary to the formation
of a just idea of the author. But quite enough
remains to do so in every respect; and in no
part of it have I made additions or alterations.
There is warrant—I hope I may say letter-for
every thing put down. Dante is the greatest
poet for intensity that ever lived; and he ex-
cites a corresponding emotion in his reader-I
wish I could say, always on the poet's side;
but his ferocious hates and bigotries too often
tempt us to hate the bigot, and always compel
us to take part with the fellow-creatures whom
he outrages. At least, such is their effect on
myself. Such a man, however, is the last whom
a reporter is inclined to misrepresent. We re-
spect his sincerity too much, ferocious though
it be; and we like to give him the full benefit
of the recoil of his curses and maledictions. I
Preface
7
hope I have not omitted one. On the other
hand, as little have I closed my feelings against
the lovely and enchanting sweetness which this
great semi-barbarian sometimes so affectingly
utters. On those occasions he is like an angel
enclosed for penance in some furious giant, and
permitted to weep through the creature's eyes.
The stories from good-natured Pulci I have
been obliged to compress for other reasons-
chiefly their excessive diffuseness. A paragraph
of the version will sometimes comprise many
pages. Those of Boiardo and Ariosto are more
exact; and the reader will be good enough to
bear in mind that nothing is added to any of
the poets, different as the case might seem here
and there, on comparison with the originals.
An equivalent for whatever is said is to be found
in some part of the context-generally in letter,
always in spirit. The least characteristically
exact passages are, some in the love-scenes of
Tasso; for I have omitted the plays upon words
and other corruptions in style, in which that
poet permitted himself to indulge. But I have
noticed the circumstance in the comment. In
other respects, I have endeavored to make my
version convey some idea of the different styles
and genius of the writers,-of the severe passion
of Dante, the overflowing gayety and affecting
sympathies of Pulci, several of whose passages
8
Preface
in the "Battle of Roncesvalles" are masterpieces
of pathos; the romantic and inventive elegance
of Boiardo; the great cheerful universality of
Ariosto, like a healthy anima mundi; and the
ambitious irritability, the fairy imagination,
and tender but somewhat effeminate voluptu-
ousness of the poet of Armida and Rinaldo. I
do not pretend that prose versions of passages
from these writers can supersede the necessity of
metrical ones, supposing proper metrical ones
attainable. They demand them more than
Dante, the tone and manner in their case being
of more importance to the effect. But with all
due respect to such translators as Harrington,
Rose, and Wiffen, their books are not Ariosto
and Tasso, even in manner. Harrington, the
gay "godson" of Queen Elizabeth, is not al-
ways unlike Ariosto; but when not in good
spirits he becomes as dull as if her majesty had
frowned on him. Rose was a man of wit and a
scholar; yet he has undoubtedly turned the
ease and animation of his original into inversion
and insipidity. And Wiffen, though elegant
and even poetical, did an unfortunate thing for
Tasso, when he gave an additional line and a
number of paraphrastic thoughts to a stanza al-
ready tending to the superfluous. Fairfax him-
self, who, upon the whole, and with regard to a
work of any length, is the best metrical trans-
Preface
9
lator our language has seen, and, like Chap-
man, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the
sins of prettiness and conceit in his original,
and added to them a love of tautology amount-
ing to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is
below criticism; and other versions I have not
happened to see. Now if I had no acquaintance
with the Italian language, I confess I would
rather get any friend who had to read to me a
passage out of Dante, Tasso, or Ariosto, into
the first simple prose that offered itself, than
go to any of the above translators for a taste of
it, Fairfax excepted; and we have seen with
how much allowance his sample would have to
be taken. I have therefore, with some restric-
tions, only ventured to do for the public what I
would have had a friend do for myself.
The Critical and Biographical Notices I did
not intend to make so long at first; but the in-
terest grew upon me; and I hope the reader
will regard some of them—Dante's and Tasso's
in particular-as being "stories" themselves,
after their kind,-"stories, alas, too true"; "ro-
mances of real life." The extraordinary char-
acter of Dante, which is personally mixed up
with his writings beyond that of any other poet,
has led me into references to his church and
creed, unavoidable at any time in the endeavor
to give a thorough estimate of his genius, and
10
Preface
singularly demanded by certain phenomena of
the present day. I hold those phenomena to
be alike absurd and fugitive; but only so by
reason of their being openly so proclaimed; for
mankind have a tendency to the absurd, if their
imaginations are not properly directed; and
one of the uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty
in a healthy state, and cause it to know its
boundaries. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his
passions, and the strange identification of his
knowledge with all that was knowable, would
fain have made his poetry both a sword against
individuals, and a prop for the support of the
superstition that corrupted them. This was re-
versing the duty of a Christian and a great man;
and there happen to be existing reasons why it
is salutary to show that he had no right to do
so, and must not have his barbarism confounded
with his strength. Macchiavelli was of opinion
that if Christianity had not reverted to its first
principles, by means of the poverty and pious
lives of St. Francis and St. Dominic,* the faith
would have been lost. It may have been; but
*"Discorsi sopra la Prima Decca di Tito Livio," lib. iii.
cap. i. At page 229 of the present volume, I have too hastily
called St. Dominic "the founder of the Inquisition." It
is generally conceded, I believe, by candid Protestant
inquirers, that he was not, whatever zeal in the founda-
tion and support of the tribunal may have been mani-
fested by his order. But this does not acquit him of the
cruelty for which he has been praised by Dante; he
joined in the sanguinary persecution of the Albigenses.
Preface
II
such are not the secrets of its preservation in
times of science and progression, when the
spirit of inquiry has established itself among
all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as
it used to be. A few persons here and there,
who confound a religious reaction in a corner
with the reverse of the fact all over the rest of
Europe, may persuade themselves, if they please,
that the world has not advanced in knowledge
for the last three centuries, and so get up and cry
aloud to us out of obsolete horn-books; but the
community laugh at them. Everybody else is
inquiring into first principles, while they are
dogmatizing on a forty-ninth proposition. The
Irish themselves, as they ought to do, care
more for their pastors than for the Pope, and if
anybody wishes to know what is thought of his
Holiness at head-quarters, let him consult the
remarkable and admirable pamphlet which has
lately issued from the pen of Mr. Mazzini. * I
have the pleasure of knowing excellent Roman
Catholics; I have suffered in behalf of their
emancipation, and would do so again to-mor-
but I believe that if even their external
form of Christianity has any chance of survival
three hundred years hence, it will have been
row;
*It is entitled, “Italy, Austria, and the Pope"; and is
full, not only of the eloquence of zeal and of evidences
of intellectual power, but of the most curious and in-
structive information.
་
12
Preface
owing to the appearance meanwhile of some
extraordinary man in power, who in the teeth
of worldly interests, or rather in charitable and
sage inclusion of them, shall have proclaimed
that the time had arrived for living in the flower
of Christian charity, instead of the husks and
thorns which may have been necessary to guard
it. If it were possible for some new and wonder-
ful Pope to make this change, and draw a line
between these two Christian epochs, like that
between the Old and New Testaments, the world
would feel inclined to prostrate itself again and
for ever at the feet of Rome. In a catholic state
of things like that, delighted should I be, for
one, to be among the humblest of its communi-
cants. How beautiful would their organs be
then! how ascending to an unperplexing heaven
their incense! how unselfish their salvation!
how intelligible their talk about justice and love!
But if charity (and by charity I do not mean
mere toleration, or any other pretended right
to permit others to have eyes like ourselves,
but whatever the beautiful Greek word implies
of good and lovely), if this truly and only
divine consummation of all Christian doctrine be
not thought capable of taking a form of belief
strong" enough, superstition must look out
for some new mode of dictation altogether; for
the world is outgrowing the old.
<<
DANTE:
CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS.
事
​{

x
CRITICAL NOTICE OF DANTE'S LIFE
AND GENIUS.*
D
ANTE was a very great poet, a man of the
strongest passions, a claimant of un-
bounded powers to lead and enlighten the
world; and he lived in a semi-barbarous age,
as favorable to the intensity of his imagination,
as it was otherwise to the rest of his preten-
sions. Party zeal, and the fluctuations of moral
and critical opinion, have at different periods
overrated and depreciated his memory; and if,
in the following attempt to form its just esti-
mate, I have found myself compelled, in some
important respects, to differ with preceding
writers, and to protest in particular against his
* As notices of Dante's life have often been little but
repetitions of former ones, I think it due to the pains-
taking character of this volume to state that, besides
consulting various commentators and critics, from Boc-
caccio to Fraticelli and others, I have diligently perused
the "Vita di Dante" by Cesare Balbo, with Rocco's an-
notations: the "Histoire Littéraire d' Italie," by Gin-
guéné; the Discorso sul Testo della Commedia," by
Foscolo; the "Amori e Rime di Dante" of Arrivabene;
the "Veltro Allegorico di Dante " by Troja; and Oza-
nam's "Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au Trei-
zeième Siècle.”
"(
16
Dante Alighieri
being regarded as a proper teacher on any one
point, poetry excepted, and as far as all such
genius and energy cannot in some degree help
being, I have not been the less sensible of the
wonderful nature of that genius, while acting
within the circle to which it belongs. Daute
was indeed so great a poet, and at the same
time exhibited in his personal character such a
mortifying exception to what we conceive to be
the natural wisdom and temper of great poets;
in other words, he was such a bigoted and ex-
asperated man, and sullied his imagination
with so much that is contradictory to good feel-
ing in matters divine as well as human; that I
should not have thought myself justified in
assisting, however humbly, to extend the influ-
ence of his writings, had I not believed a time
to have arrived, when the community may
profit both from the marvels of his power and
the melancholy absurdity of its contradictions.
Dante Alighieri, who has always been known
by his Christian rather than surname (partly
owing to the Italian predilection for Christian
names, and partly to the unsettled state of
patronymics in his time), was the son of a
lawyer of good family in Florence, and was
born in that city on the 14th of May, 1265
(sixty-three years before the birth of Chaucer).
The stock is said to have been of Roman origin,
Dante Alighieri
17
of the race of the Frangipani; but the only cer-
tain trace of it is to Cacciaguida, a Florentine
cavalier of the house of the Elisei, who died in
the Crusades. Dante gives an account of him
in his “Paradiso."* Cacciaguida married a lady
of the Alighieri family of the Valdipado; and,
giving the name to one of his children, they
subsequently retained it as a patronymic in
preference to their own.
It would appear,
from the same poem, not only that the
Alighieri were the more important house, but
that some blot had darkened the scutcheon of
the Elisei; perhaps their having been poor,
and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from
some disreputable district. Perhaps they were
known to have been of ignoble origin; for, in
the course of one of his most philosophical
treatises, he bursts into an extraordinary ebul-
lition of ferocity against such as adduce a
knowledge of that kind as an argument against
a family's acquired nobility; affirming that
such brutal stuff should be answered not with
words, but with the dagger.† The Elisei, how-
* Canto xv., 88.
For the doubt apparently implied respecting the dis-
trict, see canto xvi., 43, or the summary of it in the pres-
ent volume. The following is the passage alluded to in
the philosophical treatise: "Risponder si vorrebbe, non
colle parole, ma col coltello, a tauta bestialità."-"Con-
vito," "Opere Minori," 12 mo., Fir., 1834, vol. ii., p. 432.
Beautiful mode" (says Perticeri in a note) "of settling
questions."
<<
18
Dante Alighieri
ever, must have been of some standing; for
Macchiavelli, in his "History of Florence," men-
tions them in his list of the early Guelph and
Ghibelline parties, where the side which they
take is different from that of the poet's imme-
diate progenitors.* The arms of the Alighieri
(probably occasioned by the change in that
name, for it was previously written Aldighieri)
are interesting on account of their poetical and
aspiring character. They are a golden wing on
a field azure.†
It is generally supposed that the name Dante
is an abbreviation of Durante; but this is not
certain, though the poet had a nephew so
called. Dante is the name he goes by in the
* "Istorie Fiorentine," ii., 43 (in "Tutte le Opere,"
4to, 1550).
The name has been varied into Allagheri, Aligieri
Alleghieri, Alligheri, Aligeri, with the accent generally
on the third, but sometimes on the second syllable. See
Foscolo, "Discorso sul Testo," p. 432. He says, that in
Verona, where descendants of the poet survive, they
call it Áligeri. But names, like other words, often wan-
der so far from their source, that it is impossible to
ascertain it. Who would suppose that Pomfret came
from Pontefract, or wig from parrucca ? Coats of arms,
unless in very special instances, prove nothing but the
whims of the heralds.
Those who like to hear of any thing in connection
with Dante or his name, may find something to stir their
fancies in the following grim significations of the word
in the dictionaries :
"Dante, a kind of a great wild beast in Africa, that
hath a very hard skin."-Florio's Dictionary," edited
by Torreggiano.
<<
Dante, an animal called otherwise the Great Beast."
Vocabolario della Crusca, Compendiato," Ven., 1729.
Dante Alighieri
19
gravest records, in law proceedings, in his
epitaph, in the mention of him put by himself
into the mouth of a blessed spirit. Boccaccio
intimates that he was christened Dante, and de-
rives the name from the ablative case of dans
(giving)-a probable etymology, especially for
a Christian appellation. As an abbreviation of
Durante, it would correspond in familiarity with
the Ben of Ben Jonson-a diminutive that
would assuredly not have been used by grave
people on occasions like those mentioned,
though a wit of the day gave the masons a shil-
ling to carve "O rare Ben Jonson!
on his
grave-stone. On the other hand, if given at
the font, the name of Ben would have acquired
all the legal gravity of Benjamin. In the Eng-
lish Navy List, not long ago, one of our gallant
admirals used to figure as "Billy Douglas."
Of the mother of Dante nothing is known
except that she was his father's second wife,
and that her Christian name was Bella, or per-
haps surname Bello. It might, however, be
conjectured, from the remarkable and only op-
portunity which our author has taken of allud-
ing to her, that he derived his disdainful char-
acter rather from his mother than father.* The
*See the passage in "Hell," where Virgil, to express
his enthusiastic approbation of the scorn and cruelty
which Dante shows to one of the condemned, embraces
and kisses him for a right "disdainful soul," and blesses
the "mother that bore him."
20
Dante Alighieri
father appears to have died during the boyhood
of his illustrious son.
The future poet, before he had completed his
ninth year, conceived a romantic attachment
to a little lady who had just entered hers, and
who has attained a celebrity of which she was
destined to know nothing. This was the
famous Beatrice Portinari, daughter of a rich
Florentine who founded more than one charit-
able institution. She married another man,
and died in her youth; but retained the Platon-
ical homage of her young admirer, living and
dead, and became the heroine of his great
poem.
It is unpleasant to reduce any portion of a
romance to the events of ordinary life; but with
the exception of those who merely copy from
one another, there has been such a conspiracy
on the part of Dante's biographers to overlook
at least one disenchanting conclusion to be
drawn to that effect from the poet's own writ-
ings, that the probable truth of the matter must
here for the first time be stated. The case, in-
deed, is clear enough from his account of it.
The natural tendencies of a poetical tempera-
ment (oftener evinced in a like manner than
the world in general suppose) not only made
the boy-poet fall in love, but, in the truly
Elysian state of the heart at that innocent and
Dante Alighieri
21
adoring time of life, made him fancy he had
discovered a goddess in the object of his love;
and strength of purpose as well as imagination
made him grow up in the fancy. He disclosed
himself, as time advanced, only by his manner
-received complacent recognitions in company
from the young lady-offended her by seeming
to devote himself to another (see the poem in
the "Vita Nuova," beginning "Ballata io vo")
-rendered himself the sport of her and her
young friends by his adoring timidity (see the
5th and 6th sonnets in the same work)-in
short, constituted her a paragon of perfection,
and enabled her, by so doing, to show that she
He says, that finding himself unex-
pectedly near her one day in company, he
trembled so, and underwent such change of
countenance, that many of the ladies present
began to laugh with her about him-" si gab-
bavano di me. "" And he adds, in verse,
"Con l' altre donne mia vista gabbate,
E non pensate, donna, onde si mova
Ch'io vi rassembri si figura nova,
Quando riguardo la vostra beltate," etc.-Son. 5.
"You laugh with the other ladies to see how I
look [literally, you mock my appearance]; and
do not think, lady, what it is that renders me
so strange a figure at sight of your beauty."
was none.
And in the sonnet that follows, he accuses
22
Dante Alighieri
""
her of preventing pity of him in others, by
such "killing mockery as makes him wish
for death ("la pietà, che 'l vostro gabbo re-
cinde," etc.)*
Now, it is to be admitted, that a young lady,
if she is not very wise, may laugh at her lover
with her companions, and yet return his love,
after her fashion; but the fair Portinari laughs
and marries another. Some less melancholy
face, some more intelligible courtship, tri-
umphed over the questionable flattery of the
poet's gratuitous worship; and the idol of
Dante Alighieri became the wife of Messer
Simone de' Bardi. Not a word does he say on
that mortifying point. It transpired from a
clause in her father's will. And yet so bent are
the poet's biographers on leaving a romantic
doubt in one's mind, whether Beatrice may not
have returned his passion, that not only do all
of them (as far as I have observed) agree in
taking no notice of these sonnets, but the
author of the treatise entitled "Dante and the
Catholic Philosophy of the Thirteenth Cen-
tury," "in spite " (as a critic says) "of the Beat-
rice, his daughter, wife of Messer Simone de'
Bardi, of the paternal will," describes her as dy-
ing in "all the lustre of virginity." The assump-
*
Opere Minori," vol iii., 12, Flor., 1839, pp. 292, etc.
+"Beatrix quitta la terre dans tout l'éclat de la
jeunesse et de la virginité.” See the work as above en-
Dante Alighieri
23
tion appears to be thus gloriously stated, as a
counterpart to the notoriety of its untruth. It
must be acknowledged that Dante himself gave
the cue to it by more than silence; for he not only
vaunts her acquaintance in the next world, but
assumes that she returns his love in that re-
gion, as if no such person as her husband could
have existed, or as if he himself had not been
married also. This life-long pertinacity of will
is illustrative of his whole career.
Meantime, though the young poet's father
had died, nothing was wanting on the part of
his guardians, or perhaps his mother, to furnish
him with an excellent education. It was so
complete, as to enable him to become master of
all the knowledge of his time; and he added to
this learning more than a taste for drawing and
music. He speaks of himself as drawing an
angel in his tablets on the first anniversary of
Beatrice's death.* One of his instructors was
"}
((
titled, Paris, 1840, p. 60. The words in Latin, as quoted
from the will by the critic alluded to in the Foreign
Quarterly Review (No. 65, art. "Dante Allighieri ") are,
Bici filiæ suæ et uxori D. (Domini) Simonis de Bardis.'
Bici" is the Latin dative case of Bice, the abbreviation
of Beatrice. This employment, by the way, of an abbre-
viated name in a will, may seem to go counter to the de-
ductions respecting the name of Dante. And it may
really do so. Yet a will is not an epitaph, nor the ad-
dress of a beatified spirit; neither is equal familiarity
perhaps implied, as a matter of course, in the abbrevi-
ated names of male and female.
*"Vita Nuova," ut sup. P. 343.
24
Dante Alighieri
Brunetto Latini, the most famous scholar then
living; and he studied both at the universities
of Padua and Bologna. At eighteen, perhaps
sooner, he had shown such a genius for poetry
as to attract the friendship of Guido Cavalcante,
a young noble of a philosophical as well as
poetical turn of mind, who has retained a repu-
tation with posterity: and it was probably at
the same time he became acquainted with
Giotto, who drew his likeness, and with Casella,
the musician, whom he greets with so much
tenderness in the other world.
Nor were his duties as a citizen forgotten.
The year before Beatrice's death, he was at the
battle of Campaldino, which his countrymen
gained against the people of Arezzo; and the
year after it he was present at the taking of
Caprona from the Pisans. It has been supposed
that he once studied medicine with a view to it
as a profession; but the conjecture probably
originated in nothing more than his having
entered himself of one of the city companies
(which happened to be the medical) for the
purpose of qualifying himself to accept office;
a condition exacted of the gentry by the then
democratic tendencies of the republic. It is
asserted also, by an early commentator, that
he entered the Franciscan order of friars, but
quitted it before he was professed; and, indeed,
}
Dante Alighieri
25
the circumstance is not unlikely, considering
his agitated and impatient turn of mind. Per-
haps he fancied that he had done with the
world when it lost the wife of Simone de' Bardi.
Weddings that might have taken place, but
do not, are like the reigns of deceased heirs-
apparent; every thing is assumable in their
favor, checked only by the histories of husbands
and kings. Would the great but splenetic poet
have made an angel and a saint of Beatrice,
had he married her? He never utters the name
of the woman whom he did marry.
Gemma Donati was a kinswoman of the
powerful family of that name. It seems not
improbable, from some passages in his works,
that she was the young lady whom he speaks of
as taking pity on him on account of his passion
for Beatrice*; and in common justice to his
feelings as a man and a gentleman, it is surely
to be concluded that he felt some sort of pas-
sion for his bride, if not of a very spiritual
sort; though he afterwards did not scruple to
intimate that he was ashamed of it, and Bea-
trice is made to rebuke him in the other world
for thinking of any body after herself. † At
*"Vita Nuova," p. 345.
In the article on" Dante," in the Foreign Quarterly Re-
view (ut supra), the exordium of which made me hope
that the eloquent and assumption-denouncing writer
was going to supply a good final account of his author,
26
Dante Alighieri
any rate, he probably roused what was excit-
able in his wife's temper, with provocations
from his own; for the nature of the latter is not
to be doubted, whereas there is nothing but
tradition to show for the bitterness of hers.
Foscolo is of opinion that the tradition itself
arose simply from a rhetorical flourish of Boc-
caccio's, in his "Life of Dante," against the
marriages of men of letters; though Boccaccio
himself expressly adds that he knows nothing to
the disadvantage of the poet's wife, except that
her husband, after quitting Florence, would
never either come where she was, or suffer her
to come to him, mother as she was by him of
so many children;—a statement, it must be
confessed, not a little encouraging to the
tradition.* Be this as it may, Dante married in
equally satisfactory for its feeling and its facts, but
which ended in little better than the customary gratui-
tousness of wholesale panegyric, I was surprised to find
the union with Gemma Donati characterized as "calm
and cold, rather the accomplishment of a social duty
than the result of an irresistible impulse of the heart,"
p. 15. The accomplishment of the "social duty" is an
assumption, not very probable with regard to anybody,
and much less so in a fiery Italian of twenty-six ; but the
addition of the epithets, "calm and cold," gives it a sort
of horror. A reader of this article, evidently the pro-
duction of a man of ability but of great wilfulness, is
tempted to express the disappointment it has given him
in plainer terms than might be wished, in consequence
of the extraordinary license which its writer does not
scruple to allow to his own fancies, in expressing his
opinion of what he is pleased to think the fancies of
others.
*"Le invettive contr' essa per tanti secoli originarono
Dante Alighieri
27
his twenty-sixth year; wrote an adoring ac-
count of his first love (the "Vita Nuova") in
his twenty-eighth; and among the six children
which Gemma brought him, had a daughter
whom he named Beatrice, in honor, it is under-
stood, of the fair Portinari; which surely was
either a very great compliment, or no mean
trial to the temper of the mother. We shall
see presently how their domestic intercourse
was interrupted, and what absolute uncertainty
there is respecting it, except as far as conclu-
sions may be drawn from his own temper and
history.
Italy, in those days, was divided into the
parties of Guelphs and Ghibellines; the for-
mer, the advocates of general church-ascend-
ancy and local government; the latter, of the
pretensions of the Emperor of Germany, who
claimed to be the Roman Cæsar, and para-
mount over the Pope. In Florence, the Guelphs
had for a long time been so triumphant as to
keep the Ghibellines in a state of banishment.
dalla enumerazione rettorica del Boccaccio di tutti gli in-
convenienti del matrimonio, e dove per altro ei dichiara,
-'Certo io non affermo queste cose a Dante essere av-
venute, che non lo so; comechè vero sia, che o a simili
cose a queste, o ad altro che ne fusse cagione, egli una
volta da lei partitosi, che per consolazione de' suoi affan-
ni gli era stata data, mai îè dove ella fusse volle venire,
nè sofferse che dove egli fusse ella venisse giammai, con
tutto che di piú figliuoli egli insieme con lei fusse par-
ente.'"-"Discorso sul Testo," ut sup., Londra, Picker-
ing, 1825, p. 184.
28
Dante Alighieri
Dante was born and bred a Guelph: he had
twice borne arms for his country against Ghi-
belline neighbors; and now, at the age of
thirty-five, in the ninth of his marriage, and
last of his residence with his wife, he was ap-
pointed chief of the temporary administrators
of affairs, called Priors ;-functionaries who held
office only for two months.
Unfortunately, at that moment, his party had
become subdivided into the factions of the
Whites and Blacks, or adherents of two different
sides in a dispute that took place in Pistoria.
The consequences becoming serious, the Blacks
proposed to bring in, as mediator, the French
Prince, Charles of Valois, then in arms for the
Pope against the Emperor; but the Whites, of
whom Dante was one, were hostile to the meas-
ure; and in order to prevent it, he and his brother
magistrates expelled for a time the heads of
both factions, to the satisfaction of neither. The
Whites accused them of secretly leaning to the
Ghibellines, and the Blacks of openly favoring
the Whites; who being, indeed, allowed to
come back before their time, on the alleged
ground of the unwholesomeness of their place
of exile, which was fatal to Dante's friend Ca-
valcante, gave a color to the charge. Dante
answered it by saying, that he had then quitted
office; but he could not show that he had lost
Dante Alighieri
29
his influence.
Meantime, Charles was still
urged to interfere, and Dante was sent ambas-
sador to the Pope to obtain his disapprobation
of interference; but the Pope (Boniface the
Eighth), who had probably discovered that the
Whites had ceased to care for any thing but
their own disputes, and who, at all events, did
not like their objection to his representative,
beguiled the ambassador and encouraged the
French prince; the Blacks, in consequence, re-
gained their ascendancy; and the luckless poet,
during his absence, was denounced as a corrupt
administrator of affairs, guilty of peculation;
was severely mulcted; banished from Tuscany
for two years; and subsequently, for contuma-
ciousness, was sentenced to be burnt alive, in
case he returned ever. He never did return.
From that day forth, Dante never beheld
again his home or his wife. Her relations ob-
tained possession of power, but no use was made
of it except to keep him in exile. He had not
accorded with them; and perhaps half the se-
cret of his conjugal discomfort was owing to
politics. It is the opinion of some, that the
married couple were not sorry to part; others
think that the wife remained behind, solely to
scrape together what property she could, and
bring up the children. All that is known is,
that she never lived with him more.
30
Dante Alighieri
Dante now certainly did what his enemies had
accused him of wishing to do: he joined the old
exiles whom he had helped to make such, the
party of the Ghibellines. He alleges, that he
never was really of any party but his own; a
naïve confession, probably true in one sense,
considering his scorn of other people, his great
intellectual superiority, and the large views he
had for the whole Italian people. And, indeed,
he soon quarrelled in private with the individ-
uals composing his new party, however staunch
he apparently remained to their cause. His
former associates he had learnt to hate for their
differences with him and for their self-seeking;
he hated the Pope for deceiving him; he hated
the Pope's French allies for being his allies,
and interfering with Florence; and he had
come to love the Emperor for being hated by
them all, and for holding out (as he fancied)
the only chance of reuniting Italy to their con-
fusion, and making her the restorer of himself,
and the mistress of the world.
With these feelings in his heart, no money in
his purse, and no place in which to lay his head,
except such as chance patrons afforded him, he
now began to wander over Italy, like some
lonely lion of a man, "grudging in his great
disdain." At one moment he was conspiring
and hoping; at another, despairing and endeav-
Dante Alighieri
31
oring to conciliate his beautiful Florence: now
again catching hope from some new movement
of the Emperor's; and then, not very hand-
somely threatening and re-abusing her; but
always pondering and grieving, or trying to
appease his thoughts with some composition,
chiefly of his great work. It is conjectured,
that whenever any thing particularly affected
him, whether with joy or sorrow, he put it, hot
with the impression, into his "sacred poem."
Everybody who jarred against his sense of
right or his prejudices he sent to the infernal
regions, friend or foe: the strangest people who
sided with them (but certainly no personal foe)
he exalted to heaven. He encouraged, if not
personally assisted, two ineffectual attempts of
the Ghibellines against Florence; wrote, be-
sides his great work, a book of mixed prose and
poetry on "Love and Virtue" (the "Convito," or
Banquet); a Latin treatise on Monarchy ("De
Monarchia"), recommending the “divine right”
of the Emperor; another in two parts, and in
the same language, on the "Vernacular Tongue"
("De Vulgari Eloquio "); and learnt to know
meanwhile, as he affectingly tells us, "how hard
it was to climb other people's stairs, aud how
salt the taste of bread is that is not our own.
is even thought not improbable, from one awful
passage of his poem, that he may have "placed
It
32
Dante Alighieri
himself in some public way," and, "stripping
his visage of all shame, and trembling in his
very vitals," have stretched out his hand “for
charity "*—an image of suffering, which, proud
as he was, yet considering how great a man, is
almost enough to make one's common nature
stoop down for pardon at his feet; and yet he
should first prostrate himself at the feet of that
nature for his outrages on God and man.
Several of the princes and feudal chieftains
of Italy entertained the poet for a while in their
houses; but genius and worldly power, unless
for worldly purposes, find it difficult to accord,
especially in tempers like his. There must be
great wisdom and amiableness on both sides to
save them from jealousy of one another's preten-
sions. Dante was not the man to give and take
in such matters on equal terms; and hence he
is at one time in a palace, and at another in a
solitude. Now he is in Siena, now in Arezzo,
now in Bologna; then probably in Verona with
Can Grande's elder brother; then (if we are to
believe those who have tracked his steps) in
Casentino; then with the Marchese Moroello
Malaspina in Lunigiana; then with the great
Ghibelline chieftain Faggiuola in the moun-
tains near Urbino; then in Romagna, in Padua,
in Paris (arguing with the churchmen), some
* Foscolo, in the Edinburgh Review, vol., xxx., p. 351.
1
Dante Alighieri
33
say in Germany, and at Oxford; then again in
Italy; in Lucca (where he is supposed to have
relapsed from his fidelity to Beatrice in favor of
a certain "Gentucca"); then again in Verona
with the new prince, the famous Can Grande
(where his sarcasms appear to have lost him a
doubtful hospitality); then in a monastery in the
mountains of Umbria; in Udine; in Ravenna:
and there at length he put up for the rest of his
life with his last and best friend, Guido Novello
da Polenta, not the father, but the nephew of
the hapless Francesca.
It was probable in the middle period of his
exile, that in one of the moments of his great-
est longing for his native country, he wrote that
affecting passage in "Convito," which was evi-
dently a direct effort at conciliation. Excusing
himself for some harshness and obscurity in the
style of that work, he exclaims: "Ah! would
it had pleased the Dispenser of all things that
this excuse had never been needed; that neither
others had done me wrong, nor myself under-
gone penalty undeservedly-the penalty, I say,
of exile and of poverty. For it pleased the citi-
zens of the fairest and most renowned daughter
of Rome-Florence-to cast me out of her most
sweet bosom, where I was born, and bred, and
passed half of the life of man, and in which,
with her good leave, I still desire with all my
34
Dante Alighieri
heart to repose my weary spirit, and finish the
days allotted to me; and so I have wandered
in almost every place to which our language
extends, a stranger, almost a beggar, exposing
against my will the wounds given me by fortune,
too often unjustly imputed to the sufferer's
fault. Truly I have been a vessel without sail and
without rudder, driven about upon different
ports and shores by the dry wind that springs
out of dolorous poverty; and hence have I ap-
peared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps,
by some better report had conceived of me a
different impression, and in whose sight not
only has my person become thus debased, but
an unworthy opinion created of every thing
which I did, or which I had to do."*
*"Ahi piaciuto fosse al Dispensatore dell' universo,
che la cagione della mia scusa mai non fosse stata; che
nè altri contro a me avria fallato, nè io sofferto avrei
pena ingiustamente; pena, dico, d' esilio e di povertà.
Poichè fupiacere de' cittadini della bellissima e famosissi-
ma figlia di Roma, Fiorenza, di gettarmi fuori del suo
dolcissimo seno (nel quale nato e nudrito fui sino al col-
mo della mia vità, e nel quale, con buona pace di quella,
desidero con tutto il core di riposare l' animo stanco, e
terminare il tempo che m' è dato); per le parti quasi
tutte, alle quali questa lingua si stende, peregrino, quasi
mendicando, sono andato, mostrando contro a mia voglia
la piaga della fortuna, che suole ingiustamente al pic-
gato molte volte essere imputata. Veramente io sono
stato legno sanza vela e sanza governo, portato a diversi
porti e foci e liti dal vento secco che vapora la dolorosa
povertà; e sono vile apparito agli occhi a molti, che
forse per alcuna fama in altra forma mi aveano imma-
ginato; nel cospetto de' quali non solamente mia per-
cona invilið, ma di minor pregio si fece ogni opera, si
¡ià fatta, come quella che fosse a fare, Opere Minori,"
ut sup. vol, ii., p. 20,
>> ((
Dante Alighieri
35
How simply and strongly written! How full
of the touching yet undegrading commiseration
which adversity has a right to take upon itself,
when accompanied with the consciousness of
manly endeavor and a good motive! How
could such a man condescend at other times to
rage with abuse, and to delight himself in
images of infernal torment!
The dates of these fluctuations of feeling
towards his native city are not known; but it
is supposed to have been not very long before
his abode with Can Grande that he received
permission to return to Florence, on conditions
which he justly refused and resented in the fol-
lowing noble letter to a kinsman. The old
spelling of the original (in the note) is retained
as given by Foscolo in the article on
"Dante
in the Edinburgh Review (vol. xxx., No. 60);
and I have retained also, with little difference,
the translation which accompanies it :
"From your letter, which I received with due
respect and affection, I observe how much you
have at heart my restoration to my country. I
am bound to you the more gratefully, inasmuch
as an exile rarely finds a friend. But after ma-
ture consideration, I must, by my answer, dis-
appoint the wishes of some little minds; and I
confide in the judgment to which your impar-
tiality and prudence will lead you. Your
>>
36
Dante Alighieri
nephew and mine has written to me, what in-
deed had been mentioned by many other friends,
that by a decree concerning the exiles, I am
allowed to return to Florence, provided I pay a
certain sum of money, and submit to the hu-
miliation of asking and receiving absolution ;
wherein, my Father, I see two propositions that
are ridiculous and impertinent. I speak of the
impertinence of those who mention such condi-
tions to me; for in your letter, dictated by judg-
ment and discretion, there is no such thing. Is
such an invitation, then, to return to his country
glorious to d. all. [Dante Allighieri], after suf-
fering in exile almost fifteen years? Is it thus
they would recompense innocence which all the
world knows, and the labor and fatigue of un-
remitting study? Far from the man who is
familiar with philosophy be the senseless base-
ness of a heart of earth, that could act like a
little sciolist, and imitate the infamy of some
others, by offering himself up as it were in
chains; far from the man who cries aloud for
justice, this compromise by his money with his
persecutors. No, 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 shall not derogate from
the fame and honor of d. [Dante]; but if by no
such way Florence can be entered, then Flor-
1.
Dante Alighieri
37
ence I shall never enter. What! shall I not
everywhere enjoy the light of the sun and
stars? and may I not seek and contemplate, in
every corner of the earth, under the canopy of
heaven, consoling and delightful truth, without
first rendering myself inglorious, nay infamous,
to the people and republic of Florence? Bread,
I hope, will not fail me." *
*In licteris vestris et reverentia debita et affectione
receptis, quam repatriatio mea cures it vobis ex animo
grata mente ac diligenti animaversione concepi, etenim
tanto me districtius obligastis, quanto rarius exules
invenire amicos contingit. ad illam vero significata re-
spondeo et si non eatenus qualitur forsam pusillanimi-
tas appeteret aliquorum, ut sub examine vestri consilii
ante judicium, affectuose deposco. ecce igitur quod per
licteras vestri mei: que nepotis, necnon aliorum quam-
plurium amicorum significatum est mihi. per ordina-
mentum nuper factum Florentie super absolutione
bannitorum. quod si solvere vellem certam pecunie
quantitatem, vellemque pati notam oblationis et absolvi
possem et redire ut presens. in quo quidem duo ridenda
et male perconciliata sunt. Pater, dico male percon-
ciliata per illos qui tali expresserunt: nam vestre
litere discretius et consultius clausulate nicil de tali-
bus continebant. estne ista revocatio gloriosa qua de
all. [i. e., Dantes Alligherius] revocatur ad patriam per
trilustrium fere perpessus exilium? hecne meruit con-
scientia manifesta quibuslibet? hec sudor et labor con-
tinuatus in studiis ?absit a viro philosophie domestica
temeraria terreni cordis humilitas, ut more cujusdam
cioli et aliorum infamiam quasi vinctus ipse se patiatur
offerri. absit a viro predicante justitiam, ut perpêssus in-
juriam inferentibus. velud benemerentibus, pecuniam
suam solvat. non est hec via redeundi ad patriam, Pater
mi, sed si alia per vos, aut deinde per alios invenietur que
fame d. [Dantis] que onori non deroget, illam non lentis
passibus, acceptabo. quod si per nullam talem Florentia
introitur, nunquam Florentiam introibo. quidni? nonne
solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam ? nonne
dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique sub celo
ni prius inglorium, imo ignominiosum populo, Floren-
tineque civitati me reddam ? quippe panis non deficiet."
38
Dante Alighieri
Had Dante's pride and indignation always
vented themselves in this truly exalted manner,
never could the admirers of his genius have re-
fused him their sympathy; and never, I con-
ceive, need he either have brought his exile
upon him, or closed it as he did. To that close
we have now come, and it is truly melancholy
and mortifying. Failure in a negotiation with
the Venetians for his patron, Guido Novello, is
supposed to have been the last bitter drop which
made the cup of his endurance run over. He
returned from Venice to Ravenna, worn out,
and there died, after fifteen years' absence from
his country, in the year 1231, aged fifty-seven.
His life had been so agitated that it probably
would not have lasted so long but for the solace
of his poetry and the glory which he knew it
must produce him. Guido gave him a sumptu-
ous funeral, and intended to give him a monu-
ment; but such was the state of Italy in those
times, that he himself died in exile the year
after. The monument, however, and one of a
noble sort, was subsequently bestowed by the
father of Cardinal Bembo, in 1483; and
another, still nobler, as late as 1780, by Cardi-
nal Gonzaga. His countrymen, in after years,
made two solemn applications for the removal
of his dust to Florence; but the just pride of
the Ravennese refused them.
Dante Alighieri
39
Of the exile's family, three sons died young;
the daughter went into a nunnery; and the two
remaining brothers, who ultimately joined
their father in his banishment, became respect-
able men of letters, and left families in Ra-
venna, where the race, though extinct in the
male line, still survives through a daughter in
the noble house of Serego Alighieri. No direct
descent of the other kind from poets of former
times is, I believe, known to exist.
The manner and general appearance of Dante
have been minutely recorded, and are in strik-
ing agreement with his character. Boccaccio
and other novelists are the chief relaters; and
their accounts will be received accordingly
with the greater or less trust, as the reader con-
siders them probable; but the author of the "De-
cameron " personally knew some of his friends
and relations, and he intermingles his least fa-
vorable reports with expressions of undoubted
reverence. The poet was of middle height, of
slow and serious deportment, had a long, dark
visage, large, piercing eyes, large jaws, an
aquiline nose, a projecting under lip, and thick
curling hair—an aspect announcing determina-
tion and melancholy. There is a sketch of his
countenance in his younger days, from the im-
mature but sweet pencil of Giotto; and it is a
refreshment to look at it, though pride and diş-
40
Dante Alighieri
ments.
content, I think, are discernible in its linea-
It is idle, and no true compliment to
his nature to pretend, as his mere worshippers
do, that his face owes all its subsequent gloom
and exacerbation to external causes, and that he
was in every respect the poor victim of events
-the infant changed at nurse by the wicked.
What came out of him he must have had in
him, at least in the germ; and so inconsistent
was his nature altogether, or at any rate, such
an epitome of all the graver passions that are
capable of coexisting, both sweet and bitter,
thoughtful and outrageous, that one is some-
times tempted to to think he must have had an
angel for one parent, and—I shall leave his own
toleration to say what-for the other.
To continue the account of his manners and
inclinations: He dressed with a becoming grav-
ity; was temperate in his diet; a great student;
seldom spoke, unless spoken to, but always to
the purpose; and almost all the anecdotes re-
corded of him, except by himself, are full of
pride and sarcasm. He was so swarthy that a
woman, as he was going by a door in Verona,
is said to have pointed him out to another with
a remark which made the saturnine poet smile:
"That is the man who goes to hell whenever
he pleases, and brings back news of the people
there." On which her companion observed:
Dante Alighieri
4I
"Very likely; don't you see what a curly beard
he has; and what a dark face? owing, I dare
say, to the heat and smoke." He was evidently
a passionate lover of painting and music; is
thought to have been less strict in his conduct
in regard to the sex than might be supposed
from his platonical aspirations (Boccaccio says
that even a goitre did not repel him from the
pretty face of a mountaineer); could be very
social when he was young, as may be gathered
from the sonnet addressed to his friend Caval-
cante about a party for a boat; and though his
poetry was so intense and weighty, the laudable
minuteness of a biographer has informed us
that his handwriting, besides being neat and
precise, was of a long and particularly thin
character—" meagre" is his word.
There is a letter said to be nearly coeval
with his time, and to be written by the prior of
a monastery to a celebrated Ghibelline leader,
a friend of Dante's-which, though hitherto ac-
counted apocryphal by most, has such an air of
truth, and contains an image of the poet in his
exile so exceedingly like what we conceive of
the man, that it is difficult not to believe it gen-
uine, especially as the handwriting has lately
been discovered to be that of Boccaccio.* At
all events, I am sure the reader will not be
* "Opere Minori," ut sup., vol. iii., p. 186.
42
Dante Alighieri
sorry to have the substance of it. The writer
says that he perceived one day a man coming
into the monastery whom none of its inmates.
knew. He asked him what he wanted; but the
stranger saying nothing, and continuing to
gaze on the building, as though contemplating
its architecture, the question was put a second
time; upon which, looking round on his inter-
rogators, he answered, "Peace!" The prior,
whose curiosity was strongly excited, took the
stranger apart, and discovering who he was,
showed him all the attention becoming his
fame; and then Dante took a little book out of
his bosom, and observing that perhaps the prior
had not seen it, expressed a wish to leave it
with his new friend as a memorial. It was "a
portion," he said, "of his work." The prior
received the volume with respect; and politely
opening it at once, and fixing his eyes on the
contents, in order, it would seem, to show the
interest he took in it, appeared suddenly to
check some observation which they suggested.
Dante found that his reader was surprised at
seeing the work written in the vulgar tongue
instead of Latin. He explained that he wished
to address himself to readers of all classes; and
concluded with requesting the prior to add
some notes, with the spirit of which he fur-
nished him, and then forward it (transcribed, I
Dante Alighieri
43
presume, by the monks) to their common
friend, the Ghibelline chieftain-a commission
which, knowing the prior's intimacy with that
personage, appears to have been the main ob-
ject of his coming to the place.*
This letter has been adduced as an evidence
of Dante's poem having transpired during his
lifetime; a thing which, in the teeth of Boccac-
cio's statement to that effect; and indeed the
poet's own testimony, † Foscolo holds to be so
impossible that he turns the evidence against
the letter. He thinks that if such bitter invec-
tives had been circulated, a hundred daggers
would have been sheathed in the bosom of the
exasperating poet. But I cannot help being
of opinion with some writer whom I am unable
at present to call to mind (Schlegel, I think),
that the strong critical reaction of modern
times in favor of Dante's genius has tended to
exaggerate the idea conceived of him in rela-
tion to his own. That he was of importance,
and bitterly hated in his native city, was a dis-
tinction he shared with other partisans who
have obtained no celebrity, though his poetry,
no doubt, must have increased the bitterness ;
* "Veltro Allegorico di Dante," ut sup., p. 208, where
the Appendix contains the Latin original.
+ See Fraticelli's "Dissertation on the Convito," in
((
Opere Minori," ut sup., vol. ii., p. 560.
Discorso sul Testo," p. 54.
44
Dante Alighieri
that his genius also became more and more felt
out of the city by the few individuals capable
of estimating a man of letters in those semi-
barbarous times, may be regarded as certain;
but that busy politicians in general, war-mak-
ing statesmen, and princes constantly occupied
in fighting for their existence with one another,
were at all alive either to his merits or his in-
vectives, or would have regarded him as any
thing but a poor wandering scholar, solacing
his foolish interference in the politics of this
world with the old clerical threats against his
enemies in another, will hardly, I think be
doubted by any one who reflects on the differ-
ence between a fame accumulated by ages, and
the living poverty that is obliged to seek its
bread. A writer on a monkish subject may
have acquired fame with monks, and even with
a few distinguished persons, and yet have been
little known, and less cared for, out of the pale
of that very private literary public which was
almost exclusively their own. When we read
nowadays of the great poet's being so politely
received by Can Grande, Lord of Verona, and
sitting at his princely table, we are apt to fancy
that nothing but his great poetry procured him
the reception, and that nobody present com-
peted with him in the eyes of his host. But to
say nothing of the different kinds of retainers
Dante Alighieri
45
that could sit at a prince's table in those days,
Can, who was more ostentatious than delicate
in his munificence, kept a sort of caravansera
for clever exiles, whom he distributed into
lodgings classified according to their pursuits * ;
and Dante only shared his bounty with the
rest, till the more delicate poet could no longer
endure either the buffoonery of his companions
or the amusement derived from it by the mas-
ter. On one occasion his platter is slily heaped
with their bones, which provokes him to call
them dogs, as having none to show for their
Another time Can Grande asks him how
it is that his companions give more pleasure
at court than himself; to which he answers,
"Because like loves like." He then leaves the
court, and his disgusted superiority is no doubt
regarded as a pedantic assumption.
own.
He stopped long nowhere, except with Guido
Novello; and when that prince, whose downfall
was at hand, sent him on the journey above
mentioned to Venice, the senate (whom the
poet had never offended) were so little aware of
his being of consequence, that they declined
giving him an audience. He went back and
broke his heart. Boccaccio says that he would
get into such passions with the very boys and
girls in the street, who plagued him with party-
*"Balbo," Naples edition, p. 132.
46
Dante Aligbiert
words, as to throw stones at them—a thing
that would be incredible, if persons acquainted
with his great but ultra-sensitive nation did not
know what Italians could do in all ages, from
Dante's own age down to the times of Alfieri
and Foscolo. It would be as difficult, from the
evidence of his own works and of the exaspera-
tion he created, to doubt the extremest reports
of his irascible temper, as it would be not to
give implicit faith to his honesty. The charge
of peculation, which his enemies brought
against this great poet, the world has univer-
sally scouted with an indignation that does it
honor. He himself seems never to have conde-
scended to allude to it; and a biographer would
feel bound to copy his silence, had not the ac-
cusation been so atrociously recorded. But on
the other hand, who can believe that a man so
capable of doing his fellow-citizens good and
honor would have experienced such excessive
enmity, had he not carried to excess the provo-
cations of his pride and scorn? His whole his-
tory goes to prove it, not omitting the confes-
sion he makes of pride as his chief sin, and the
eulogies he bestows on the favorite vice of the
age-revenge. His Christianity (at least as
shown in his poem) was not that of Christ, but
of a furious polemic. His motives for changing
his party, though probably of a mixed nature,
Dante Alighieri
47
like those of most human beings, may reasona-
bly be supposed to have originated in some-
thing better than interest or indignation. He
had most likely not agreed thoroughly with
any party, and had become hopeless of seeing
dispute brought to an end, except by the repre-
sentative of the Cæsars. The inconsistency of
the personal characters of the popes with the
sacred claims of the chair of St. Peter, was also
calculated greatly to disgust him; but still, his
own infirmities of pride and vindictiveness
spoiled all; and when he loaded everybody
else with reproach for the misfortunes of his
country, he should have recollected that, had
his own faults been kept in subjection to his
understanding, he might possibly have been its
savior. Dante's modesty has been asserted on
the ground of his humbling himself to the
fame of Virgil, and at the feet of blessed spir-
its; but this kind of exalted humility does not
repay a man's fellow-citizens for lording it over
them with scorn and derision. We learn from
Boccaccio, that when he was asked to go am-
bassador from his party to the Pope, he put to
them the following useless and mortifying que-
ries: "If I go, who is to stay? and if I stay,
who is to go?" Neither did his pride make
* "Di se stesso presunse maravigliosamente tanto, che
essendo egli glorioso nel colmo del reggimento della re-
publica, e ragionandosi trà maggiori cittadini di man-
48
Dante Alighieri
him tolerant of pride in others. A neighbor
applying for his intercession with a magistrate
who had summoned him for some offence,
Dante, who disliked the man for riding in an
overbearing manner along the streets (stretch-
ing out his legs as wide as he could, and hin-
dering people from going by), did intercede
with the magistrate, but it was in behalf of
doubling the fine in consideration of the horse-
manship. The neighbor, who was a man of
family, was so exasperated, that Sacchetti, the
novelist, says it was the principal cause of
Dante's expatriation. This will be considered
(C
dare, per alcuna gran bisogna, ambasciata a Bonifazio
Papa VIII., e che principe della ambasciata fosse Dante,
ed egli in ciò in presenzia di tutti quegli che ciò con-
sigliavano richiesto, avvenne, che soprastando egli alla
risposta, alcun disse, che pensi? alle quali parole egli
rispose penso, se io vo, chi rimane; e s' io riînango, chi
va: quasi esso solo fosse colui che tra tutti valesse e per
cui tutti gli altri valessero." And he goes on to say, re-
specting the stone-throwing : Appresso, come che il
nostro poeta nelle sua avversità paziente o no si fosse,
in una fu impazientissimo: ed egli infino al comincia-
mento del suo esilio stato guelfissimo non essendogli
aperta la via del ritornare in casa sua, si fuor di modo di-
vento ghibellino, che ogni femminellá, ogni picciol fanci-
ullo e quante volte, avesse voluto ragionando di parte, e la
guelfa proponendo alla ghibellina, l'avrebbe non sola-
mente fatto turbare, ma a tanta insania commosso, che se
taciuto non fosse, a gittar le pietre l'avrebbe condotto "
Vita di Dante," prefixed to the Paris edition of the
"Commedia." 1844, p. 25). And then the "buon Boccac-
cio," with his accustomed sweetness of nature, begs par-
don of so great a man for being obliged to relate such
things of him, and doubts whether his spirit may not be
looking down on him that moment disdainfully from
heaven! Such an association of ideas had Dante pro-
duced between the celestial and the scornful!
Dante Alighieri
49
the less improbable, if, as some suppose, the
delinquent obtained possession of his derider's
confiscated property; but at all events, nothing
is more likely to have injured him. The bitter-
est animosities are generally of a personal na-
ture; and bitter indeed must have been those
which condemned a man of official diguity and
of genius to such a penalty as the stake.*
That the Florentines of old, like other half-
Christianized people, were capable of any ex-
tremity against an opponent, burning included,
was proved by the fates of Savonarola and
others; and that Dante himself could admire.
the burners is evident from his eulogies and
beatification of such men as Folco and St.
Dominic. The tragical as well as "fantastic
tricks" which
"Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority."
plays with his energy and bad passions under
the guise of duty, is among the most perplexing
of those spectacles which, according to a greater
understanding than Dante's, "make the angels
weep." (Dante, by the way, has introduced in
his heaven no such angels as those; though he
has plenty that scorn and denounce.) Lope de
*"Novelle di Franco Sacchetti," Milan edition, 1804
vol. ii., p. 148. It forms the setting, or frame-work, of an
inferior story, and is not mentioned in the heading.
50
Dante Alighieri
Vega, though a poet, was an officer of the Inqui-
sition, and joined the famous Armada that was
coming to thumbscrew and roast us into his
views of Christian meekness. Whether the
author of the story of " Paulo and Francesca "
could have carried the Dominican theories into
practice, had he been the banisher instead of
the banished, is a point that may happily be
doubted; but at all events he revenged himself
on his enemies after their own fashion; for he
answered their decree of the stake by putting
them into hell.
Dante entitled the saddest poem in the world a
Comedy, because it was written in a middle style;
though some, by a strange confusion of ideas,
think the reason must have been because it "end-
ed happily!” that is, because, beginning with
"hell" (to some), it terminated with "heaven"
(to others). As well might they have said that
a morning's work in the Inquisition ended hap-
pily because, while people were being racked in
the dungeons, the officers were making merry
in the drawing-room. For the much-injured
epithet of "Divine," Dante's memory is not
responsible. He entitled his poem arrogantly
enough, yet still not with the impiety of arro-
gance, "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a
Florentine by nation but not by habits." The
word "divine" was added by some transcriber ;
Dante Alighieri
5I
and it heaped absurdity on absurdity, too much
of it, alas! being literally infernal tragedy. I
am not speaking in mockery, any further than
the fact itself cannot help so speaking. I re-
spect what is to be respected in Dante; I admire
in him what is admirable; would love (if his
infernalities would let me) what is lovable; but
this must not hinder one of the human race
from protesting against what is erroneous in
his fame, when it jars against every best feeling,
human and divine. Mr. Cary thinks that Dante
had as much right to avail himself of "the pop-
ular creed in all its extravagance” as Homer
had of his gods, or Shakespeare of his fairies.
But the distinction is obvious. Homer did not
personally identify himself with a creed, or do
his utmost to perpetuate the worst parts of it in
behalf of a ferocious inquisitorial church, and to
the risk of endangering the peace of millions of
gentle minds.
The great poem thus misnomered is partly a
system of theology, partly an abstract of the
knowledge of the day, but chiefly a series of
passionate and imaginative pictures, altogether
forming an account of the author's times, his
friends, his enemies, and himself, written to
vent the spleen of his exile, and the rest of his
feelings, good and bad, and to reform church
and state by a spirit of resentment and obloquy,
52
Dante Alighieri
which highly needed reform itself. It has also
a design strictly self-referential. The author
feigns, that the beatified spirit of his mistress
has obtained leave to warn and purify his soul
by showing him the state of things in the next
world. She deputes the soul of his master Vir-
gil to conduct him through hell and purgatory,
and then takes him herself through the spheres
of heaven, where St. Peter catechises and con-
firms him, and where he is finally honored
with sights of the Virgin Mary, of Christ, and
even a glimpse of the Supreme Being!
His hell, considered as a place, is, to speak
geologically, a most fantastical formation. It
descends from beneath Jerusalem to the centre
of the earth, and is a funnel graduated in circles,
each circle being a separate place of torment for
a different vice or its coördinates, and the point
of the funnel terminating with Satan stuck into
ice. Purgatory is a corresponding mountain on
the other side of the globe, commencing with
the antipodes of Jerusalem, and divided into
exterior circles of expiation, which end in a
table-land forming the terrestrial paradise.
From this the hero and his mistress ascend by
a flight, exquisitely conceived, to the stars ;
where the sun and the planets of the Ptolemaic
system (for the true one was unknown in
Dante's time) form a series of heavens for dif-
Dante Alighieri
53
ferent virtues, the whole terminating in the
empyrean, or region of pure light, and the pres-
ence of the Beatific Vision.
The boundaries of old and new, strange as it
may now seem to us, were so confused in those
days, and books were so rare, and the Latin
poets held in such invincible reverence, that
Dante, in one and the same poem, speaks of the
false gods of paganism, and yet retains much of
its lower mythology; nay, invokes Apollo him-
self at the door of paradise. There was, per-
haps, some mystical and even philosophical in-
clusion of the past in this medley, as recognizing
the constant superintendence of Providence ;
but that Dante partook of what may be called
the literary superstition of the time, even for
want of better knowledge, is clear from the
grave historical use he makes of poetic fables
in his treatise on "Monarchy," and in the very
arguments which he puts into the mouths of
saints and apostles. There are lingering feel-
ings to this effect even now among the peasan-
try of Italy; where, the reader need not be
told, pagan customs of all sorts, including re-
ligious and most reverend ones, are existing
under the sanction of other names;-heathen-
isms christened. A Tuscan postilion, once
enumerating to me some of the native poets,
concluded his list with Apollo; and a plaster-
54
Dante Alighieri
cast man over here, in London, appeared much
puzzled, when conversing on the subject with a
friend of mine, how to discrepate Samson from
Hercules.
Dante accordingly, while, with the frightful
bigotry of the schools, he puts the whole pagan
world into hell-borders (with the exception of
two or three, whose salvation adds to the ab-
surdity), mingles the hell of Virgil with that of
Tertullian and St. Dominic; sets Minos at the
door as judge; retains Charon in his old office
of boatman over the Stygian lake; puts fabulous
people with real among the damned, Dido, and
Cacus, and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope
Nicholas the Fifth ; and associates the Centaurs
and the Furies with the agents of diabolical
torture. It has pleased him also to elevate
Cato of Utica to the office of warder of purga-
tory, though the censor's poor good wife,
Marcia, is detained in the regions below. By
these and other far greater inconsistencies, the
whole place of punishment becomes a reductio
ab absurdum, as ridiculous as it is melancholy;
so that one is astonished how so great a man,
and especially a man who thought himself so
far advanced beyond his age, and who possessed
such powers of discerning the good and beauti-
ful, could endure to let his mind live in so foul
and foolish a region for any length of time, and
I
Dante Alighieri
55
there wreak and harden the unworthiest of his
passions. Genius, nevertheless, is so commen-
surate with absurdity throughout the book, and
there are even such sweet and balmy as well as
sublime pictures in it occasionally, nay, often,
that not only will the poem ever be worthy of
admiration, but, when those increasing purifica-
tions of Christianity which our blessed reform-
ers began, shall finally precipitate the whole
dregs of the author into the mythology to which
they belong, the world will derive a pleasure
from it to an amount not to be conceived till
the arrival of that day. Dante, meantime, with
an impartiality which has been admired by
those who can approve the assumption of a
theological tyranny at the expense of common
feeling and decency, has put friends as well as
foes into hell: tutors of his childhood, kinsmen
of those who treated him hospitably, even the
father of his beloved friend, Guido Calvacante—
the last for not believing in a God: therein do-
ing the worst thing possible in behalf of the
belief, and totally differing both with the pious
heathen Plutarch, and the great Christian phil-
osopher Bacon, who were of opinion that a con-
tumelious belief is worse than none, and that it
is far better and more pious to believe in "no
God at all," than in a God who would "eat his
children as soon as they were born." And
56
Dante Alighieri
Dante makes him do worse; for the whole un-
baptized infant world, Christian as well as pa-
gan, is in his Tartarus.
Milton has spoken of the "milder shades of
Purgatory"; and truly they possess great beau-
ties. Even in a theological point of view they
are something like a bit of Christian refresh-
ment after the horrors of the "Inferno." The
first emerging from the hideous gulf to the
sight of the blue serenity of heaven, is painted
in a manner inexpressibly charming. So is the
sea-shore with the coming of the angel; the
valley, with the angels in green; the repose at
night on the rocks; and twenty other pictures
of gentleness and love. And yet, special and
great has been the escape of the Protestant
world from this part of Roman Catholic belief;
for purgatory is the heaviest stone that hangs
about the neck of the old and feeble in that
communion. Hell is avoidable by repentance;
but purgatory, what modest conscience shall
escape? Mr. Cary, in a note on a passage in
which Dante recommends his readers to think
on what follows this expiatory state, rather
than what is suffered there,* looks upon the
poet's injunction as an unanswerable objec-
tion to the doctrine of purgatory,” it being diffi-
((
* "The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of
Dante Alighieri," etc. Smith's edition, 1844, p. 90.
Dante Alighieri
57
cult to conceive "how the best can meet death
without horror, if they believe it must be fol-
lowed by immediate and intense suffering."
Luckily, assent is not belief; and mankind's
feelings are for the most part superior to their
opinions; otherwise the world would have been
in a bad way indeed, and nature not been vin-
dicated of her children. But let us watch and
be on
our guard against all resuscitations of
superstition.
As to our "Florentine's heaven," it is full of
beauties, also, though sometimes of a more
questionable and pantomimical sort than is to
be found in either of the other books. I shall
speak of some of them presently; but the gen-
eral impression of the place is, that it is no
heaven at all. He says it is, and talks much of
its smiles and its beatitude; but always except-
ing the poetry—especially the similes brought
from the more heavenly earth-we realize little
but a fantastical assemblage of doctors and
doubtful characters, far more angry and theo-
logical than celestial; giddy raptures of monks
and inquisitors dancing in circles, and saints
denouncing popes and Florentines; in short, a
heaven libelling itself with invectives against
earth, and terminating in a great presumption.
Many of the people put there, a Calvinistic
Dante would have consigned to the
"other
58
Dante Aligbiert
place"; and some, if now living, would not be
admitted into decent society. At the beginning
of one of the cantos, the poet congratulates
himself, with a complacent superiority, on his
being in heaven and occupied with celestial
matters, while his poor fellow-creatures are
wandering and blundering on earth. But he
had never got there! A divine-worthy of
that name-of the Church of England (Dr.
Whichcote), has beautifully said that "heaven
is first a temper, and then a place." According
to this truly celestial topography, the implacable
Florentine had not reached its outermost court.
Again, his heavenly mistress, Beatrice, besides
being far too didactic to sustain the womanly
part of her character properly, alternates her
smiles and her sarcasms in a way that jars hor-
ribly against the occasional enchantment of
her aspect. She does not scruple to burst into
taunts of the Florentines in the presence of
Jesus himself; and the spirit of his ancestor,
Cacciaguida, in the very bosom of Christian
bliss, promises him revenge on his enemies! Is
this the kind of zeal that is to be exempt from
objection in a man who objected to all the world?
or will it be thought a profaneness against such
profanity, to remind the reader of the philosopher
in Swift, who "while gazing on the stars, was
betrayed by his lower parts into a ditch!"
Dante Alighieri
59
The reader's time need not be wasted with
the allegorical and other mystical significations
given to the poem; still less on the question
whether Beatrice is theology, or a young lady,
or both; and least of all on the discovery of the
ingenious Signor Rossetti, that Dante and all
the other great old Italian writers meant
nothing, either by their mistresses or their
mythology, but attacks on the court of Rome.
Suffice it, that besides all other possible mean-
ings, Dante himself has told us that his poem
has its obvious and literal meaning; that he
means a spade by a spade, purgatory by purga-
tory, and truly and unaffectedly to devote his
friends to the infernal regions whenever he
does so.
I confess I think it is a great pity
that Guido Cavalcante did not live to read the
poem, especially the passage about his father.
The understanding of Guido, who had not the
admiration for Virgil that Dante had (very likely
for reasons that have been thought sound in
modern times), was in all probability as good
as that of his friend in many respects, and per-
haps more so in one or two; and modern criti-
cism might have been saved some of its pains
of objection by the poet's contemporary.
The author did not live to publish, in any
formal manner, his extraordinary poem, proba-
bly did not intend to do so, except under those
60
Dante Alighieri
circumstances of political triumph which he
was always looking for; but as he showed
portions of it to his friends, it was no doubt
talked of to a certain extent, and must have ex-
asperated such of his enemies as considered
him worth their hostility. No wonder they did
all they could to keep him out of Florence.
What would they have said of him, could they
have written a counter poem? what would
even his friends have said of him? for we see in
what manner he has treated even those; and
yet how could be possibly know, with respect
either to friends or enemies, what passed be-
tween them and their consciences? or who was
it that gave him his right to generate the
boasted distinction between an author's feel-
ings as a man and his assumed office as a theo-
logian, and parade the latter at the former's ex-
pense? His own spleen, hatred, and avowed
sentiments of vengeance, are manifest through-
out the poem; and there is this, indeed, to be
said for the moral and religious inconsistencies
both of the man and his verse, that in those
violent times the spirit of Christian charity,
and even the sentiment of personal shame, were
so little understood, that the author in one part
of it is made to blush by a friend for not having
avenged him; and it is said to have been
thought a compliment to put a lady herself into
Dante Alighieri
61
hell, that she might be talked of, provided it
was for something not odious. An admirer of
this infernal kind of celebrity, even in later
times, declared that he would have given a sum
of money (I forget to what amount) if Dante
had but done as much for one of his ancestors.
It has been argued, that in all the parties con-
cerned in these curious ethics there is a gener-
ous love of distinction, and a strong craving
after life, action, and sympathy of some kind or
other. Granted; there are all sorts of half-
good, half-barbarous feelings in Dante's poem.
Let justice be done to the good half; but do not
let us take the ferocity for wisdom and piety;
or pretend, in the complacency of our own
freedom from superstition, to see no danger of
harm to the less fortunate among our fellow-
creatures in the support it receives from a man
of genius. Bedlams have been filled with such
horrors; thousands, nay millions of feeble
minds are suffering by them or from them, at
this minute, all over the world. Dante's best
critic, Foscolo, has said much of the heroical
nature of the age in which the poet lived; but
he adds, that its mixture of knowledge and ab-
surdity is almost inexplicable. The truth is,
that like every thing else which appears harsh
and unaccountable in nature, it was an excess
of the materials for good, working in an over-
62
Dante Alighieri
active and inexperienced manner; but know-
ing this, we are bound, for the sake of the good,
not to retard its improvement by ignoring
existing impieties, or blind ourselves to the
perpetuating tendencies of the bigotries of
great men. Oh! had the first indoctrinators of
Christian feeling, while enlisting the "divine
Plato" into the service of diviner charity, only
kept the latter just enough in mind to discern
the beautiful difference between the philoso-
pher's unmalignant and improvable evil, and
their own malignant and eternal one, what a
world of folly and misery they might have
saved us! But as the evil has happened, let us
hope that even this form of it has had its uses.
If Dante thought it salutary to the world to
maintain a system of religious terror, the same
charity which can hope that it may once have
been so, has taught us how to commence a
better. But did he, after all, or did he not,
think it salutary? Did he think so, believing
the creed himself? or did he think it from an
unwilling sense of its necessity? Or, lastly,
did he write only as a mythologist, and care for
nothing but the exercise of his spleen and
genius? If he had no other object than that,
his conscientiousness would be reduced to a low
pitch indeed. Foscolo is of opinion he was not
only in earnest, but that he was very near tak-
G
Dante Alighieri
63
ing himself for an apostle, and would have done
so had his prophecies succeeded, perhaps with
success to the pretension.* Thank heaven, his
"Hell" has not embittered the mild reading-
desks of the Church of England. If King
George the Third himself, with all his arbitrary
notions, and willing religious acquiescence,
could not endure the creed of St. Athanasius
with its damnatory enjoinments of the impos-
sible, what would have been said to the inscrip-
tion over Dante's hell-gate, or to the account of
Ugolino eating an archbishop, in the gentle
chapels of Queen Victoria? May those chapels
have every beauty in them, and every air of
heaven, that painting and music can bestow-
divine gifts, not unworthy to be set before their
Divine Bestower; but far from them be kept
the foul fiends of inhumanity and superstition!
It is certainly impossible to get at a thor-
ough knowledge of the opinions of Dante even
in theology; and his morals, if judged accord-
ing to the received standard, are not seldom
puzzling. He rarely thinks as the popes do;
sometimes not as the Church does; he is lax,
for instance, on the subject of absolution by the
priest at death. † All you can be sure of is, the
predominance of his will, the most wonderful
* "Discorso sul Testo," pp. 64, 77-90, 335-338.
"Purgatorio," canto iii., 118, 138; referred to by Fos-
colo, in the "Discorso sul Testo," p. 383.
64
Dante Alighieri
poetry, and the notions he entertained of the
degrees of vice and virtue. Towards the errors
of love he is inclined to be so lenient (some
think because he had indulged in them him-
self), that it is pretty clear he would not have
put Paulo and Francesca into hell, if their story
had not been too recent, and their death too
sudden, to allow him to assume their repent-
ance in the teeth of the evidence required. He
avails himself of orthodox license to put "the
harlot Rahab" into heaven ("cette bonne fille
de Jericho," as Ginguéné calls her); nay, he
puts her into the planet Venus, as if to compli-
ment her on her profession; and one of her
companions there is a fair Ghibelline, sister of
the tyrant Ezzelino, a lady famous for her gal-
lantries, of whom the poet good-naturedly says,
that she " was overcome by her star "-to wit,
the said planet Venus; and yet he makes her
the organ of the most unfeminine triumphs over
the Guelphs. But both these ladies, it is to be
understood, repented-for they had time for re-
pentance; their good fortune saved them. Poor
murdered Francesca had no time to repent;
therefore her mischance was her damnation !
Such are the compliments theology pays to the
Creator. In fact, nothing is really punished in
Dante's Catholic hell but impenitence, deliber-
ate or accidental. No delay or repentance,
1
Dante Alighieri
65
however dangerous, hinders the most hard-
hearted villain from reaching his heaven. The
best man goes to hell for ever, if he does not
think he has sinned as Dante thinks; the worst
is beatified, if he agrees with him; the only
thing which everybody is sure of, is some
dreadful duration of agony in purgatory-the
great horror of Catholic death-beds. Protestant-
ism may well hug itself on having escaped it.
O Luther! vast was the good you did us! O
gentle Church of England! let nothing per-
suade you that it is better to preach frightful
and foolish ideas of God from your pulpits,
than loving-kindness to all men, and peace
above all things!
If Dante had erred only on the side of indul-
gence, humanity could easily have forgiven
him-for the excesses of charity are the exten-
sions of hope; but, unfortunately, where he is
sweet-natured once, he is bitter a hundred
times. This is the impression he makes on
universalists of all creeds and parties; that is to
say, on men who having run the whole round
of sympathy with their fellow-creatures, be-
come the only final judges of sovereign preten-
sion. It is very well for individuals to make a
god of Dante for some encouragement of their
own position or pretension; but a god for the
world at large he never was, or can be; and I
66
Dante Alighieri
doubt if an impression to this effect was not al-
ways, from the very dawn of our literature, the
one entertained of him by the genius of our
native country, which could never long endure
any kind of unwarrantable dictation. Chaucer
evidently thought him a man who would spare
no unnecessary probe to the feelings (see the
close of his version of "Ugolino"). Spenser says
not a word of him, though he copied Tasso, and
eulogized Ariosto. Shakespeare would assuredly
have put him into the list of those presumptu-
ous lookers into eternity who "take upon them-
selves to know" (“Cymbeline," act v., sc. 4).
Milton, in his sonnet to Henry Lawes, calls him
"that sad Florentine "- -a lamenting epithet,
by which we do not designate a man whom we
desire to resemble. The historian of English
poetry, admirably applying to him a passage
out of Milton, says that
Hell grows darker at his frown.”*
، ،
Walter Scott could not read him, at least not
with pleasure. He tells Miss Seward that the
“plan” of the poem appeared to him un-
happy; the personal malignity and strange
mode of revenge presumptuous and uninterest-
ing." Uninteresting, I think, it is impossible
((
* Warton's "History of English Poetry," edition of
1849, vol. iii., p. 214.
"Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.," vol.
ii., p. 122.
1.
Dante Alighieri
67
to consider it. The known world is there, and
the unknown pretends to be there; and both
are surely interesting to most people.
Landor, in his delightful book the "Penta-
meron ❞—a book full of the profoundest as
well as sweetest humanity-makes Petrarch
follow up Boccaccio's eulogies of the episode of
Paulo and Francesca with ebullitions of sur-
prise and horror:
"Petrarca. Perfection of poetry! The greater
is my wonder at discovering nothing else of the
same order or cast in this whole section of the
poem. He who fainted at the recital of Fran-
cesca,
( And he who fell as a dead body falls.'
would exterminate all the inhabitants of every
town in Italy! What execrations against
Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, Genoa ! what
hatred against the whole human race! what ex-
ultation and merriment at eternal and immiti-
gable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but
consider the 'Inferno' as the most immoral
and impious book that ever was written. Yet,
hopeless that our country shall ever see again
such poetry, and certain that without it our future
poets would be more feebly urged forward to ex-
cellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from
cancelling it, if this had been his intention." *
*"Pentameron and Pentalogia," pp. 44-50.
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Dante Alighieri
Most happily is the distinction here inti-
mated between the undesirableness of Dante's
book in a moral and religious point of view,
and the greater desirableness of it, nevertheless,
as a pattern of poetry; for absurdity, however
potent, wears itself out in the end, and leaves
what is good and beautiful to vindicate even so
foul an origin.
Again, Petrarch says: "What an object of
sadness and of consternation, he who rises up
from hell like a giant refreshed!
Boccaccio. Strange perversion! A pillar of
smoke by day and of fire by night, to guide no
one. Paradise had fewer wants for him to satisfy
than hell had, all which he fed to repletion; but
let us rather look to his poetry than his temper.'
See also what is said in that admirable book
further on (p. 50), respecting the most impious
and absurd passage in all Dante's poem, the as-
sumption about Divine Love in the inscription
over hell-gate-one of those monstrosities of
conception which none ever had the effrontery
to pretend to vindicate, except theologians who
profess to be superior to the priests of Moloch,
and who yet defy every feeling of decency and
humanity for the purpose of explaining their
own worldly, frightened, or hard-hearted sub-
mission to the mistakes of the most wretched
understandings.
Dante Alighieri
69
Ugo Foscolo, an excellent critic where his
own temper and violence did not interfere,
sees nothing but jealousy in Petrarch's dislike
of Dante, and nothing but Jesuitism in similar
feelings entertained by such men as Tiraboschi.
But all gentle and considerate hearts must dis-
like the rage and bigotry in Dante, even were it
true (as the Dantesque Foscolo thinks) that
Italy will never be regenerated till one half of
it is baptized in the blood of the other! Such
men, with all their acuteness, are incapable of
seeing what can be effected by nobler and
serener times, and the progress of civilization.
They fancy, no doubt, that they are vindicating
the energies of Nature herself, and the inevita-
ble necessity of "doing evil that good may
come." But Dante in so doing violated the
Scripture he professed to revere; and men
must not assume to themselves that final
knowledge of results, which is the only war-
rant of the privilege, and the possession of
which is to be arrogated by no earthly wisdom.
One calm discovery of science may do away
with all the boasted eternal necessities of the
angry and the self-idolatrous. The passions
that may be necessary to savages are not bound
to remain so to civilized men, any more than
*"Discorso sul Testo," p. 226. The whole passage
(sect. cx.) is very eloquent, horrible, and self-betraying.
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Dante Alighieri
the eating of man's flesh or the worship of Jug-
gernaut. When we think of the wonderful
things lately done by science for the intercourse
of the world, and the beautiful and tranquil
books of philosophy written by men of equal
energy and benevolence, and opening the
peacefulest hopes for mankind, and views of
creation to which Dante's universe was a nut-
shell,—such a vision as that of his poem (in a
theological point of view) seems no better than
the dream of an hypochondriacal savage, and his
nutshell a rottenness to be spit out of the mouth.
Heaven send that the great poet's want of
charity has not made myself presumptuous and
uncharitable! But it is in the name of society
I speak; and words, at all events, nowadays are
not the terrible, stake-preceding things they
were in his. Readers in general, however, even
those of the literary world, have little concep-
tion of the extent to which Dante carries either
his cruelty or his abuse. The former (of which
I shall give some examples presently) shows
appalling habits of personal resentment; the
latter is outrageous to a pitch of the ludicrous—
positively screaming. I will give some speci-
mens of it out of Foscolo himself, who collects
them for a different purpose; though, with all
his idolatry of Dante, he was far from being in-
sensible to his mistakes,
Dante Alighieri
71
((
"The people of Siena," according to this
national and Christian poet, were a parcel of
coxcombs; those of Arezzo, dogs; and of Cas-
entino, hogs. Lucca made a trade of perjury.
Pistoia was a den of beasts, and ought to be re-
duced to ashes; and the river Arno should
overflow and drown every soul in Pisa. Almost
all the women in Florence walked half-naked
in public, and were abandoned in private.
Every brother, husband, son, and father in
Bologna set their women to sale. In all Lom-
bardy were not to be found three men who were
not rascals; and in Genoa and Romagna people
went about pretending to be men, but in reality
were bodies inhabited by devils, their souls
having gone to the 'lowest pit of hell' to join
the betrayers of their friends and kinsmen.” *
So much for his beloved countrymen. As for
foreigners, particularly kings, "Edward the
First of England, and Robert of Scotland, were
a couple of grasping fools; the Emperor Albert
was an usurper; Alphonso the Second, of Spain,
a debauchee; the King of Bohemia a coward;
Frederick of Arragon a coward and miser; the
Kings of Portugal and Norway forgers; the
King of Naples a man whose virtues were ex-
pressed by a unit, and his vices by a million;
and the King of France, the descendant of a
* "Discorso," as above, p. 101,
·
72
Dante Alighieri
Paris butcher, and of progenitors who poisoned
St. Thomas Aquinas, their descendants conquer-
ing with the arms of Judas rather than of sol-
diers, and selling the flesh of their daughters to
old men in order to extricate themselves from a
danger.'
))☀
When we add to these invectives damnations
of friends as well as foes, of companions, law-
yers, men of letters, princes, philosophers,
popes, pagans, innocent people as well as guilty,
fools and wise, capable and incapable, men,
women, and children, it is really no better than
a kind of diabolical sublimation of Lord Thur-
low's anathemas in the "Rolliad," which begins
with
"Damnation seize ye all";
and ends with
"Damn them beyond what mortal tongue can tell,
Confound, sink, plunge them all to deepest, blackest
hell." +
In the gross, indeed, this is ridiculous enough.
No burlesque can beat it. But in the particu-
lar one is astonished and saddened at the
cruelties in which the poet allows his imagina-
tion to riot: horrors generally described with
too intense a verisimilitude not to excite our
* "Discorso," p. 103.
"
+ Criticisms on the Rolliad, and Probationary Odes
for the Laureateship." Third edit., 1785, p. 317.
Dante Alighieri
73
1
4
admiration, with too astounding a perseverance
not to amaze our humanity, and sometimes with
an amount of positive joy and delight that
makes us ready to shut the book with disgust
and indignation. Thus, in a circle in hell
where traitors are stuck up to their chins in ice
(canto xxxii.), the visitor, in walking about,
happens to give one of their faces a kick; the
sufferer weeps, and then curses him-with such
infernal truth does the writer combine the ma-
lignant with the pathetic! Dante replies to
the curse by asking the man his name. He is
refused it. He then seizes the miserable wretch
by the hair, in order to force him to the disclos-
ure and Virgil is represented as commending
the barbarity ! * But he does worse. To bar-
barity he adds treachery of his own. He tells
another poor wretch, whose face is iced up with
tears, as if he had worn a crystal vizor, that if he
will disclose his name and offence, he will re-
lieve his eyes awhile, that he may weep. The man
does so and the ferocious poet then refuses to
perform his promise, adding mockery to false-
hood, and observing that ill manners are the
only courtesy proper towards such a fellow!†
*The writer of the article on Dante in the Foreign
Quarterly Review (as above) concedes that his hero in
this passage becomes "almost cruel." Almost! Tor-
menting a man further who is up to his chin in ever-
lasting ice, and whose face he has kicked!
+"Cortesia fu lui esser villano."
-"Inferno," canto xxxiii., 150.
74
Dante Alighieri
It has been conjectured that Macchiavelli ap-
parently encouraged the enormities of the
princes of his time, with a design to expose
them to indignation. It might have been
thought of Dante, if he had not taken a part in
the cruelty, that he detailed the horrors of his
hell out of a wish to disgust the world with its
frightful notions of God. This is certainly the
effect of the worse part of his descriptions in an
age like the present. Black burning gulfs, full
of outcries and blasphemy, feet red-hot with
fire, men eternally eating their fellow-creatures,
frozen wretches malignantly dashing their iced
heads against one another, other adversaries
mutually exchanging shapes by force of an at-
traction at once irresistible and loathing, and
spitting with hate and disgust when it is done-
Enough, enough, for God's sake! Take the
disgust out of one's senses, O flower of true
Christian wisdom and charity, now beginning
to fill the air with fragrance!
But it will be said that Dante did all this out
of his hate of cruelty itself, and of treachery
itself. Partly no doubt he did; and entirely he
thought he did. But see how the notions of
such retribution react upon the judge, and pro-
duce in him the bad passions he punishes. It
is true the punishments are imaginary. Were
a human being actually to see such things, he
{
Dante Alighieri
75
must be dehumanized or he would cry out
against them with horror and detestation. But
the poem draws them as truths; the writer's
creed threatened them; he himself contributed
to maintain the belief; and however we may
suppose such a belief to have had its use in giv-
ing alarm to ruffian passions and barbarously
ignorant times, an age arrives when a beneficent
Providence permits itself to be better under-
stood, and dissipates the superfluous horror.
Many, indeed, of the absurdities of Dante's
poem are too obvious nowadays to need remark.
Even the composition of the poem, egotistically
said to be faultless by such critics as Alfieri,
who thought they resembled him, partakes, as
everybody's style does, of the faults as well as
good qualities of the man. It is nervous, con-
cise, full almost as it can hold, picturesque,
mighty, primeval; but it is often obscure, often
harsh, and forced in its constructions, defective
in melody, and wilful and superfluous in the
rhyme. Sometimes, also, the writer is incon-
sistent in circumstance (probably from not hav-
ing corrected the poem); and he is not above
being filthy. Even in the episode of Paulo and
Francesca, which has so often been pronounced
faultless, and which is unquestionably one of
the most beautiful pieces of writing in the
world, some of these faults are observable, par-
76
Dante Aligbieri
ticularly in the obscurity of the passage about
tolta forma, the cessation of the incessant tem-
pest, and the non-adjuration of the two lovers
in the manner that Virgil prescribes.
But truly it is said that when Dante is great,
nobody surpasses him. I doubt if anybody
equals him as to the constant intensity and in-
cessant variety of his pictures; and whatever
he paints he throws, as it were, upon his own
powers; as though an artist should draw figures
that started into life, and proceeded to action
for themselves, frightening their creator. Every
motion, word, and look of these creatures be-
comes full of sensibility and suggestions. The
invisible is at the back of the visible; darkness
becomes palpable; silence describes a character,
nay, forms the most striking part of a story; a
word acts as a flash of lightning which displays
some gloomy neighborhood where a tower is
standing, with dreadful faces at the window; or
where, at your feet, full of eternal voices, one
abyss is beheld dropping out of another in the
lurid light of torment. In the present volume
a story will be found which tells a long story in
half a dozen lines. Dante has the minute prob-
abilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest
and most generalizing poetry; and this feeling
of matter-of-fact is impressed by fictions the
most improbable, nay, the most ridiculous and
Dante Alighieri
77
revolting. You laugh at the absurdity, you are
shocked at the detestable cruelty, yet, for the
moment, the thing almost seems as if it must
be true. You feel as you do in a dream, and
after it; you wake and laugh, but the absurdity
seemed true at the time; and while you laugh
you shudder.
Enough of this crueller part of his genius has
been exhibited; but it is seldom you can have
the genius without sadness. In the circle of
hell, soothsayers walk along weeping, with
their faces turned the wrong way, so that their
tears fall between their shoulders. The picture
is still more dreadful. Warton thinks it ridicu-
lous. But I cannot help feeling with the poet,
that it is dreadfully pathetic. It is the last
mortifying insult to human pretension. War-
ton, who has a grudge against Dante natural to
a man of happier piety, thinks him ridiculous
also in describing the monster Geryon lying
upon the edge of one of the gulfs of hell "like
a beaver" (canto xvii.). He is of opinion that
the writer only does it to show his knowledge of
natural history. But surely the idea of so
strange and awful a creature (a huge mild-faced
man ending in a dragon's body) lying familiar-
ly on the edge of the gulf, as a beaver does by
the water, combines the supernatural with the
familiar in a very impressive manner. It is
78
Dante Alighieri
this combination of extremes which is the life
and soul of the whole poem; you have this
world in the next; the same persons, passions,
remembrances, intensified by superhuman de-
spairs or beatitudes; the speechless entrance-
ments of bliss, the purgatorial trials of hope and
patience; the supports of hate and anger (such
as they are) in hell itself; nay, of loving de-
spairs, and a self-pity made undoubtedly pathetic
by endless suffering. Hence there is no love-
story so affecting as that of Paulo and Francesca
thus told and perpetuated in another world; no
father's misery so enforced upon as Ugolino's,
who, for hundreds of years, has not grown tired
of the revenge to which it wrought him. Dante
even puts this weight and continuity of feeling
into passages of mere transient emotion or illus-
tration, unconnected with the next world; as
in the famous instance of the verses about
evening, and many others which the reader will
meet with in this volume. Indeed, if pathos
and the most impressive simplicity, and grace-
ful beauty of all kinds, and abundant grandeur,
can pay (as the reader, I believe, will think it
does even in a prose abstract), for the pangs of
moral discord and absurdity inflicted by the
perusal of Dante's poem, it may challenge com-
petition with any in point of interest. His
Heaven, it is true, though containing both sub-
$
Dante Alighieri
79
lime and lovely passages, is not so good as
his Earth. The more unearthly he tried to
make it, the less heavenly it became. When
he is content with earth in heaven itself,-when
he literalizes a metaphor, and with exquisite
felicity finds himself arrived there in conse-
quence of fixing his eyes on the eyes of Bea-
trice, then he is most celestial. But his en-
deavors to express degrees of beatitude and
holiness by varieties of flame and light,—of
dancing lights, revolving lights, lights of smiles,
of stars, of starry crosses, of didactic letters and
sentences, of animal figures made up of stars
full of blessed souls, with saints forming an
eagle's beak and David in its eye !—such super-
human attempts become for the most part
tricks of theatrical machinery, on which we
gaze with little curiosity and no respect.
His angels, however, are another matter.
Belief was prepared for those winged human
forms, and they furnished him with some of
his most beautiful combinations of the natural
with the supernatural. Ginguéné has remarked
the singular variety as well as beauty of Dante's
angels. Milton's, indeed, are commonplace in
the comparison. In the eighth canto of the
"Inferno," the devils insolently refuse the
poet and his guide an entrance into the city of
Dis-an angel comes sweeping over the Stygian
80
Dante Alighieri
lake to enforce it; the noise of his wings makes
the shores tremble, and is like a crashing whirl-
wind, such as beats down the trees and sends
the peasants and the herds flying before it.
The heavenly messenger, after rebuking the
devils, touches the portals of the city
with his wand; they fly open; and he returns
the way he came without uttering a word to the
two companions. His face was that of one oc-
cupied with other thoughts. This angel is
announced by a tempest. Another, who brings
the souls of the departed to Purgatory, is first
discovered at a distance, gradually disclosing
white splendors, which are his wings and gar-
ments. He comes in a boat, of which his wings
are the sails; and as he approaches, it is im-
possible to look him in the face for its bright-
ness. Two other angels have green wings and
green garments, and the drapery is kept in
motion like a flag by the vehement action of
the wings. A fifth has a face like the morning
star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth is
of a lustre so oppressive, that the poet feels a
weight on his eyes before he knows what is
coming. Another's presence affects the senses
like the fragrance of a May morning; and
another is in garments dark as cinders, but has
a sword in his hand too sparkling to be gazed
at. Dante's occasional pictures of the beauties
1.
Dante Alighieri
81
of external nature are worthy of these angelic
creations, and to the last degree fresh and
lovely. You long to bathe your eyes, smarting
with the fumes of hell, in his dews. You gaze
enchanted on his green fields and his celestial
blue skies, the more so from the pain and sor-
row in the midst of which the visions are
created.
Dante's grandeur of every kind is proportion-
ate to that of his angels, almost to his ferocity;
and that is saying every thing. It is not always
the spiritual grandeur of Milton, the subjection
of the material impression to the moral; but it
is equally such when he chooses, and far more
abundant. His infernal precipices-his black
whirlwinds-his innumerable cries and clasp-
ings of hands-his very odors of huge loath-
someness-his giants at twilight standing up to
the middle in pits, like towers, and causing
earthquakes when they move-his earthquake
of the mountain in purgatory, when a spirit is
set free for heaven-his dignified Mantuan
Sordello, silently regarding him and his guide
as they go by, "like a lion on his watch ”—his
blasphemer, Capaneus, lying in unconquered
rage and sullenness under an eternal rain of
flakes of fire (human precurser of Milton's
Satan)—his aspect of paradise, “as if the uni-
verse had smiled "-his inhabitants of the whole
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Dante Alighieri
planet Saturn crying out so loud, in accordance
with the anti-papal indignation of Saint Pietro
Damiano, that the poet, though among them,
could not hear what they said—and the blush-
ing eclipse, like red clouds at sunset, which
takes place at the apostle Peter's denunciation
of the sanguinary filth of the court of Rome-
all these sublimities, and many more, make us
not know whether to be more astonished at the
greatness of the poet or the raging littleness of
the man. Grievous is it to be forced to bring
two such opposites together; and I wish, for
the honor and glory of poetry, I did not feel
compelled to do so. But the swarthy Floren-
tine had not the healthy temperament of his
brethren, and he fell upon evil times. Com-
pared with Homer and Shakespeare, his very
intensity seems only superior to theirs from an
excess of the morbid; and he is inferior to both
in other sovereign qualities of poetry-to the
one, in giving you the healthiest general im-
pression of nature itself—to Shakespeare, in
boundless universality-to most great poets, in
thorough harmony and delightfulness. He
wanted (generally speaking) the music of a
happy and a happy-making disposition. Homer,
from his large vital bosom, breathes like a
broad fresh air over the world, amidst alternate
storm and sunshine, making you aware that
Dante Alighieri
83
there is rough work to be faced, but also activ-
ity and beauty to be enjoyed. The feeling of
health and strength is predominant. Life
laughs at death itself, or meets it with a noble
confidence—is not taught to dread it as a ma-
lignant goblin. Shakespeare has all the smiles
as well as tears of nature, and discerns the
"soul of goodness in things evil." He is com-
edy as well as tragedy-the entire man in all
his qualities, moods, and experiences; and he
beautifies all. And both those truly divine
poets make nature their subject through her
own inspiriting medium-not through the dark-
ened glass of one man's spleen and resentment.
Dante, in constituting himself the hero of his
poem, not only renders her, in the general im-
pression, as dreary as himself, in spite of the
occasional beautiful pictures he draws of her,
but narrows her very immensity into his petti-
He fancied, alas, that he could build her
universe over again out of the politics of old
Rome and the divinity of the schools!
ness.
Dante, besides his great poem, and a few
Latin eclogues, of no great value, wrote lyrics
full of Platonical sentiment, some of which an-
ticipated the loveliest of Petrarch's; and he
was the author of various prose works, political
and philosophical, all more or less masterly for
the time in which he lived, and all coadjutors
84
Dante Alighieri
of his poetry in fixing his native tongue. His
account of his Early Life (the "Vita Nuova ")
is a most engaging history of a boyish passion,
evidently as real and true on his own side as
love and truth can be, whatever might be its
mistake as to its object. The treatise on the Ver-
nacular Tongue ("De Vulgari Eloquio ") shows
how critically he considered his materials for
impressing the world, and what a reader he was
of every production of his contemporaries. The
Banquet ("Convito") is but an abstruse commen-
tary on some of his minor poems; but the book
on Monarchy (“De Monarchia ") is a compound
of ability and absurdity, in which his great genius
is fairly overborne by the barbarous pedantry of
the age. It is an argument to prove that the
world must all be governed by one man; that
this one man must be the successor of the
Roman Emperor-God having manifestly de-
signed the world to be subject forever to the
Roman empire; and lastly, that this Emperor
is equally designed by God to be independent
of the Pope-spiritually subject to him, indeed,
but so far only as a good son is subject to the
religious advice of his father; and thus making
church and state happy forever in the two
divided supremacies. And all this assump-
tion of the obsolete and impossible the author
gravely proves in all the forms of logic, by
Dante Alighieri
85
arguments drawn from the history of Eneas,
and the providential cackle of the Roman
geese!
How can the patriots of modern Italy, justi-
fied as they are in extolling the poet to the skies,
see him plunge into such depths of bigotry in
his verse and childishness in his prose, and con-
sent to perplex the friends of advancement with
making a type of their success out of so erring
though so great a man? Such slavishness, even
to such greatness, is a poor and unpromising
thing, compared with an altogether unpreju-
diced and forward-looking self-reliance. To
have no faith in names has been announced as
one of their principles; and "God and Human-
ity" is their motto. What, therefore, has
Dante's name to do with their principles? or
what have the semi-barbarisms of the thirteenth
century to do with the final triumph of "God
and Humanity"? Dante's lauded wish for that
union of the Italian States, which his fame has
led them so fondly to identify with their own,
was but a portion of his greater and prouder wish
to see the whole world at the feet of his boasted
ancestress, Rome. Not, of course, that he had
no view to what he considered good and just
government (for what sane despot purposes to
rule without that?); but his good and just gov-
ernment was always to be founded on the sine
86
Dante Alighieri
qua non principle of universal Italian domina-
tion.*
All that Dante said or did has its interest for
us in spite of his errors, because he was an earn-
est and suffering man and a great genius; but
his fame must ever continue to lie where his
greatest blame does, in his principal work. He
was a gratuitous logician, a preposterous politi-
cian, a cruel theologian; but his wonderful
imagination, and (considering the bitterness.
that was in him) still more wonderful sweet-
ness, have gone into the hearts of his fellow-
creatures, and will remain there in spite of the
moral and religious absurdities with which they
are mingled, and of the inability which the best
natured readers feel to associate his entire mem-
ory, as a poet, with their usual personal delight
in a poet and his name.
* Every body sees this who is not wilfully blind. "Pas-
sionate," says the editor of the " Opere Miñori,” “
"""for the
ancient Italian glories, and the greatness of the Roman
name, he was of opinion that it was only by means of
combined strength, and one common government, that
Italy could be finally secured from discord in its own
bosom and enemies from without, and recover its ancient
empire over the whole world." "Amantissimo delle anti-
che glorie Italiane, e della grandezza del nome romano,
ei considerava, che soltanto pel mezzo d'una general for-
za ed autorità poteva l' Italia dalle interne contesee dalle
staniere invasioni restarsi sicura, e rscuperare l'antico
impereo sopra tutte le genti.-Ut sup., vol. fii., p. 8.
THE ITALIAN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
tí

急​画
​AP
I.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
ARGUMENT.
TH
HE infernal regions, according to Dante, are situate
in the globe we inhabit, directly beneath Jerusa-
lem, and consist of a succession of gulfs or circles,
narrowing as they descend, and terminating in the
centre; so that the general shape is that of a funnel.
Commentators have differed as to their magnitude; but
the latest calculation gives 315 miles for the diameter of
the mouth or crater, and a quarter of a mile for that of
its terminating point. In the middle is the abyss, per-
vading the whole depth, and 245 miles in diameter at the
opening; which reduces the different platforms, or ter-
ritories that surround it, to a size comparatively small.
These territories are more or less varied with land and
water, lakes, precipices, etc. A precipice, fourteen
miles high, divides the first of them from the second.
The passages from the upper world to the entrance are
various; and the descents from one circle to another are
effected by the poet and his guide in different manners
-sometimes on foot through by-ways, sometimes by the
conveyance of supernatural beings. The crater he finds
to be the abode of those who have done neither good nor
evil, caring for nothing but themselves. In the first
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Dante Alighieri
circle are the whole unbaptized world-heathens and in-
fants-melancholy, though not tormented. Here also is
found the Elysium of Virgil, whose Charon and other in-
fernal beings are among the agents of torment. In the
second circle the torments commence with the sin of in-
continence; and the punishment goes deepening with
the crime from circle to circle, through gluttony, avarice,
prodigality, wrath, sullenness, or unwillingness to be
pleased wth the creation, disbelief in God and the soul
(with which the punishment by fire commences), usury,
murder, suicide, blasphemy, seduction, and other carnal
enormities, adulation, simony, soothsaying, astrology,
witchcraft, trafficking with the public interest, hypoc-
risy, highway robbery (on the great Italian scale),
sacrilege, evil counsel, disturbance of the Church, her-
esy,
false apostleship, alchemy, forgery, coining (all
these, from seduction downwards, in one circle); then,
in the frozen or lowest circle of all, treachery; at the bot-
tom of this is Satan, stuck in the centre of the earth.
With the centre of the globe commences the antipo-
dean attraction of its opposite side, together with a
rocky ascent out of it, through a huge ravine. The poet
and his guide, on their arrival at this spot, accordingly
find their position reversed and so conclude their
downward journey upwards, till they issue forth to light
on the borders of the sea which contains the island of
Purgatory.


THE JOURNEY THROUGH HELL.
ANTE says, that when he was half-way on
his pilgrimage through this life, he one
day found himself, towards nightfall, in a wood
where he could no longer discern the right
path. It was a place so gloomy and terrible,
every thing in it growing in such a strange and
savage manner, that the horror he felt returned
on him whenever he thought of it. The pass
of death could hardly be more bitter. Travel-
ling through it all night with a beating heart, he
at length came to the foot of a hill, and look-
ing up, as he began to ascend it, he perceived
the shoulders of the hill clad in the beams of
morning; a sight which gave him some little
comfort. He felt like a man who has buffeted
his way to land out of a shipwreck, and who,
though still anxious to get farther from his
peril, cannot help turning round to gaze on the
wide waters. So did he stand looking back on
the pass that contained that dreadful wood.
ᎠᏎ
D
After resting a while, he again betook him
up the hill; but had not gone far when he be-
92
Dante Alighieri
held a leopard bounding in front of him, and
hindering his progress. After
After the leopard
came a lion, with his head aloft, mad with hun-
ger, and seeming to frighten the very air *;
and after the lion, more eager still, a she-wolf,
so lean that she appeared to be sharpened with
every wolfish want. The pilgrim fled back in
terror to the wood, where he again found him-
self in a darkness to which the light never pen-
etrated. In that place, he said, the sun never
spoke a word. But the wolf was still close
upon him.‡
While thus flying, he beheld coming towards
him a man, who spoke something, but he knew
not what. The voice sounded strange and
feeble, as if from disuse. Dante loudly called
out to him to save him, whether he was a man
or only a spirit. The apparition, at whose sight
the wild beasts disappeared, said that he was
"Parea che l' aer ne temesse."
"Là dove '1 sol tace.'
})
"The sun to me is dark,
And silent is the moon,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."-Milton.
There is great difference among the commentators
respecting the meaning of the three beasts; some sup-
posing them passions, others political troubles, others
personal enemics, etc. The point is not of much im-
portance, especially as a mystery was intended; but
nobody, as Mr. Cary says, can doubt that the passage
was suggested by one in the prophet Jeremiah, v. 6:
"Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and
the wolf of the evenings shall spoil them; a leopard
shall watch over their cities."
The Journey through hell
93
no longer man, though man he had been in the
time of the false gods, and sung the history of
the offspring of Anchises.
"And art thou, then, that Virgil," said
Dante, "who has filled the world with such
floods of eloquence? O glory and light of all
poets, thou art my master, and thou mine
author; thou alone the book from which I
have gathered beauties that have gained me
praise. Behold the peril I am in, and help me,
for I tremble in every vein and pulse."
Virgil comforted Dante. He told him that he
must quit the wood by another road, and that
he himself would be his guide, leading him first
to behold the regions of woe underground, and
then the spirits that lived content in fire be-
cause it purified them for heaven; and then
that he would consign him to other hands
worthier than his own, which should raise him
to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of
whom he was one, had been rebels to the law
of him that reigns there, nobody could arrive at
Paradise by their means.
*
* "Che quello 'mperador che là su regna
Perch' i' fu' ribellante a la sua legge,
Non vuol che 'n sua città per me si vegna."
The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never
heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel to
Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which
the impious effrontery or scarcely less impious admis-
sions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at defi-
ance, retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for
Work
94
Dante Alighieri
So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and
Dante closely followed. He expressed a fear,
however, as they went, lest being "neither
Æneas nor St. Paul," his journey could not be
worthily undertaken, or end in wisdom. But
Virgil, after sharply rebuking him for his faint-
heartedness, told him, that the spirit of her
whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down from
heaven, on purpose to commend her lover to
his care; upon which the drooping courage of
the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confi-
dence; as flowers that have been closed and
bowed down by frosty nights, rise all up on
their stems in the morning sun.
*
"Through me is the road to the dolorous city;
Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows;
Through me is the road to the lost people.
Justice was the motive of my exalted maker;
I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom,
and by primal love;
Before me was no created thing, if not eternal; and
eternal am I also.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter."
the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is
odd," as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as
the others argued, much more so, they had at least an
equal claim on the submission of the reason; since the
greater the irrationality, the higher the theological
triumph.
*"Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl' imbianca,
Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo.'
Like as the flowers that with the frosty night
Are bowed and closed, soon as the sun returns,
Rise on their stems, all open and upright.
The Journey through hell
95
Such were the words which Dante beheld
written in dark characters over a portal. "Mas-
ter," said he to Virgil, "I find their meaning
hard."
"A man," answered Virgil, "must conduct
himself at this door like one prepared. Hither
must he bring no mistrust. Hither can come
and live no cowardice. We have arrived at the
place I told thee of. Here thou art to behold
the dolorous people who have lost all intellec-
tual good.
"*
So saying, Virgil placed his hand on Dante's,
looking on him with a cheerful countenance;
and the Florentine passed with him through
the dreadful gate.
They entered upon a sightless gulf, in which
was a black air without stars; and immediately
* This loss of intellectual good, and the confession of
the poet that he finds the inscription over hell-portal
hard to understand (il senso lor m'è duro), are among
the passages in Dante which lead some critics to sup-
pose that his hell is nothing but an allegory, intended
at once to imply his own disbelief in it as understood by
the vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it
nevertheless, as a salutary check both to the foolish and
the reflecting;-to the foolish, as an alarm; and to the
reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the teeth of
many appearances to the contrary, that such may have
been the case; but in the doubt that it affects either the
foolish or the wise to any good purpose, and in the cer-
tainty that such doctrines do a world of mischief to ten-
der consciences and the cause of sound piety, such mon-
strous contradictions, in terms, of every sense of justice
and charity which God has implanted in the heart of
man, are not to be passed over without indignant com-
ment.
Jorm
96
Dante Alighieri
heard a hubbub of groans, and wailings, and
terrible things said in many languages, words of
wretchedness, outcries of rage, voices loud and
hoarse, and sounds of the smitings of hands
one against another. Dante began to weep.
The sound was if the sand in a whirlwind were
turned into noises, and filled the blind air with
incessant conflict.
Yet these were not the souls of the wicked.
They were those only who had lived without
praise or blame, thinking of nothing but them-
selves. These miserable creatures were mixed
with the angels who stood neutral in the war
with Satan. Heaven would not dull its bright-
ness with those angels, nor would lower hell
receive them, lest the bad ones should triumph
in their company.
"And what is it," said Dante, "which makes
them so grievously suffer?"
"Hopelessness of death," said Virgil. "Their
blind existence here, and immemorable former
life, make them so wretched, that they envy
every other lot. Mercy and justice alike dis-
dain them. Let us speak of them no more.
Look, and pass."
The companions went on till they came to a
great river with a multitude waiting on the
banks. A hoary old man appeared crossing
the river towards them in a boat; and as he
1.
The Journey through bell
97
came, he said, "Woe to the wicked. Never ex-
pect to see heaven. I come to bear you across
to the dark regions of everlasting fire and ice."
Then looking at Dante, he said, "Get thee
away from the dead, thou who standest there,
live spirit."
"Torment thyself not, Charon,” said Virgil.
"He has a passport beyond thy power to ques-
tion."
The shaggy cheeks of the boatman of the
livid lake, who had wheels of fire about his
eyes, fell at these words; and he was silent.
But the naked multitude of souls whom he had
spoken to changed color, and gnashed their
teeth, blaspheming God, and their parents, and
the human species, and the place, and the hour,
and the seed of the sowing of their birth; and
all the while they felt themselves driven on-
wards, by a fear which became a desire towards
the cruel river-side, which awaits every one
destitute of the fear of God. The demon
Charon, beckoning to them with eyes like
brasiers, collected them as they came, giving
blows to those that lingered, with his oar. One
by one they dropped into the boat like leaves
from a bough in autumn, till the bough is left
bare; or as birds drop into the decoy at the
sound of the bird-call.
There was then an earthquake, so terrible
98
Dante Alighieri
that the recollection of it made the poet burst
into a sweat at every pore. A whirlwind issued
from the lamenting ground, attended by ver-
milion flashes, and he lost his senses, and fell
like a man stupified.
A crash of thunder through his brain woke up
the pilgrim so hastily that he shook himself
like a person roused by force. He found that
he was on the brink of a gulf, from which
ascended a thunderous sound of innumerable
groanings. He could see nothing down it. It
was too dark with sooty clouds. Virgil himself
turned pale, but said: "We are to go down
here. I will lead the way."
"O master," said Dante, "if even thou fear-
est, what is to become of myself?"
"that
"It is pity, not fear," replied Virgil,
makes me change color."
With these words his guide led him into the
first circle of hell, surrounding the abyss. The
great noise gradually ceased to be heard, as
they journeyed inwards, till at last they became
aware of a world of sighs, which produced a
trembling in the air. They were breathed by
the souls of such as had died without baptism,
men, women, and infants; no matter how
good; no matter if they worshipped God before
the coming of Christ, for they worshipped him
not "properly." Virgil himself was one of
1
The Journey through hell
99
them. They were all lost for no other reason,
and their "only suffering" consisted in "hope-
less desire!"
Dante was struck with great sorrow when he
heard this, knowing how many good men must
be in that place. He inquired if no one had
ever been taken out of it into heaven. Virgil
told him that there had, and he named them,
to wit: Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David,
obedient Abraham the patriarch, and Isaac, and
Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for
whom Jacob did so much,-and many more,"
adding, however, that there was no instance of
salvation before theirs.
Journeying on through spirits as thick as
leaves, Dante perceived a lustre at a little dis-
tance, and observing shapes in it evidently of
great dignity, inquired who they were that thus
lived apart from the rest. Virgil said that
heaven thus favored them by reason of their
renown on earth.
on earth. A voice was then heard
exclaiming : 'Honor and glory to the lofty
poet! Lo, his shade returns.' Dante then
saw four other noble figures coming to-
wards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheer-
ful.
(C
"Observe him with the sword in his hand,"
said Virgil, as they were advancing. "That is
Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him
Ugrm
100
Dante Alighieri
comes Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the
last is Lucan."
"And thus I beheld," says Dante, "the bright
school of the loftiest of poets, who flies above
the rest like an eagle."
For awhile the illustrious spirits talked to-
gether, and then turned to the Florentine with
a benign salutation, at which his master smiled :
and "further honor they did me," adds the
father of Italian poetry, "for they admitted me
of their tribe; so that to a band of that high ac-
count I added a sixth."*
The spirits returned towards the bright light
in which they lived, talking with Dante by the
way, and brought him to a magnificent castle,
girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended
with a river, which they all passed as if it had
been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them
into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a
race whose eyes moved with a deliberate sober-
ness, and whose whole aspects were of great
authority, their voices sweet, and their speech
seldom.† Dante was taken apart to an eleva-
tion in the ground, so that he could behold
* It is seldom that a boast of this kind—not, it must be
owned, bashful-has been allowed by posterity to be
just; nay, in four out of the five instances, below its
claims.
+"Genti v' eran, con occhi tardi e gravi,
Di grande autorità ne' lor sembianti:
Parlavan rado, con voci soavi.”
The Journey through hell
IOI
enam-
them all distinctly; and there, on the
elled green,'* were pointed out to him the great
spirits, by the sight of whom he felt exalted in
his own esteem. He saw Electra with many
companions, among whom were Hector and
Æneas, and Cæsar in armor with his hawk's
eyes; and on another side he beheld old King
Latinus with his daughter Lavinia, and the
Brutus that expelled Tarquin, and Lucretia, and
Julia, and Cato's wife Marcia, and the mother
of the Gracchi, and, apart by himself, the Sultan
Saladin. He then raised his eyes a little, and
beheld the "master of those who know"†
(Aristotle), sitting amidst the family of philoso-
phers, and honored by them all. Socrates and
Plato were at his side. Among the rest was
Democritus, who made the world a chance, and
Diogenes, and Heraclitus, etc., and Dioscorides,
the good gatherer of simples. Orpheus also he
saw, and Cicero, and the moral Seneca, and
Euclid, and Hippocrates, and Avicen, and
Averroes, who wrote the great commentary,
and others too numerous to mention. The com-
pany of six became diminished to two, and Vir-
gil took him forth on a far different road, leav-
*** Sopra '1 verde smalto." Mr. Cary has noticed the
appearance, for the first time, of this beautiful but now
commonplace image.
"Il maestro di color che sanno,"
I02
Dante Alighieri
ing that serene air for a stormy one; and so
they descended again into darkness.
It was the second circle into which they now
came—a sphere narrower than the first, and by
so much more the wretcheder. Minos sat at
the entrance, gnarling-he that gives sentence
on every one that comes, and intimates the
circle into which each is to be plunged by the
number of folds into which he casts his tail
round about him. Minos admonished Dante
to beware how he entered unbidden, and warned
him against his conductor; but Virgil sharply
rebuked the judge, and bade him not set his
will against the will that was power.
The pilgrims then descended through hell-
mouth, till they came to a place dark as pitch,
that bellowed with furious cross-winds, like a
sea in a tempest. It was the first place of tor-
ment, and the habitation of carnal sinners. The
winds, full of stifled voices, buffeted the souls
forever, whirling them away to and fro, and
dashing them against one another. Whenever
it seized them for that purpose, the wailing and
the shrieking was loudest, crying out against
the Divine Power. Sometimes a whole multi-
tude came driven in a body like starlings be-
fore the wind, now hither and thither, now up,
now down; sometimes they went in a line like
cranes, when a company of those birds is be-
The Journey through hell 103
held sailing along in the air, uttering its dolor-
ous clangs.
Dante, seeing a group of them advancing,
inquired of Virgil who they were.
"Who are
these," said he, coming hither, scourged in
the blackest part of the hurricane?"
"She at the head of them," said Virgil, "was
empress over many nations. So foul grew her
heart with lust, that she ordained license to be
law, to the end that herself might be held
blameless. She is Semiramis, of whom it
said that she gave suck to Ninus, and espoused
him. Leading the multitude next to her is Dido,
she that slew herself for love, and broke faith to
the ashes of Sichæus; and she that follows with
the next is the luxurious woman, Cleopatra.”
(C
Dante then saw Helen, who produced such a
world of misery; and the great Achilles, who
fought for love till it slew him, and Paris; and
Tristan; and a thousand more whom his guide
pointed at, naming their names, every one of
whom was lost through love.
The poet stood for a while speechless for pity,
and like one bereft of his wits. He then be-
sought leave to speak to a particular couple
who went side by side, and who appeared to be
borne before the wind with speed lighter than
the rest. His conductor bade him wait till they
came nigher, and then to entreat them gently
104
Dante Alighieri
by the love which bore them in that manner,
and they would stop and speak with him. Dante
waited his time, and then lifted up his voice be-
tween the gusts of wind, and adjured the two
weary souls to halt and have speech with him,
if none forbade their doing so; upon which they
came to him like doves to the nest.*
<<
There was a lull in the tempest, as if on pur-
pose to let them speak; and the female ad-
dressed Dante, saying, that as he showed such
pity for their state, they would have prayed
heaven to give peace and repose to his life, had
they possessed the friendship of heaven.†
This is the famous episode of Paulo and Francesca.
She was daughter to Count Guido da Polenta, lord of
Ravenna, and wife to Giovanni Malatesta, one of the sons
of the lord of Rimini. Paulo was her brother-in-law.
They were surprised together by the husband, and slain
on the spot.
"
Quali colombe, dal disio chiamate,
Con l'ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
Volan per l' aer dal voler portate:
"Cotali uscir de la schiera ov' è Dido,
A noi venendo per l' aer maligno,
Sì forte fu l' affettuoso grido.'
"}
As doves, drawn home from where they circled still,
Set firm their open wings, and through the air
Come sweeping, wafted by their pure good-will:
So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign,
Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer.
Francesca is to be conceived telling her story in
anxious intermitting sentences-now all tenderness for
her lover, now angry at their slayer; watching the poet's
face, to see what he thinks, and at times averting her
own. I take this excellent direction from Ugo Foscolo,
The Journey through hell
105
"Love," she said, "which is soon kindled in
a gentle heart, seized this my companion for
the fair body I once inhabited—how deprived of
it, my spirit is bowed to recollect. Love, which
compels the beloved person upon thoughts of
love, seized me in turn with a delight in his
passion so strong, that, as thou seest, even here
it forsakes me not. Love brought us both to
one end. The punishment of Cain awaits him
that slew us."
The poet was struck dumb by this story. He
hung down his head, and stood looking on the
ground so long, that his guide asked him what
was in his mind. "Alas!" answered he, "such
then was this love, so full of sweet thoughts;
and such the pass to which it brought them!
O Francesca!" he cried, turning again to the
sad couple, “thy sufferings make me weep.
But tell me, I pray thee, what was it that first
made thee know, for a certainty, that his love
was returned?-that thou couldst refuse him
thine no longer?"
"There is not a greater sorrow," answered
she, "than calling to mind happy moments in
the midst of wretchedness.* But since thy de-
sire is so great to know our story to the root,
hear me tell it as well as I may for tears. It
*: "Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Ne la miseria."
106
Dante Alighieri
chanced, one day, that we sat reading the tale
of Sir Launcelot, how love took him in thrall.
We were alone, and had no suspicion. Often,
as we read, our eyes became suspended,* and
we changed color; but one passage alone it was
that overcame us. When we read how Genevra
smiled, and how the lover, out of the depth of
his love, could not help kissing that smile, he
that is never more to be parted from me kissed
me himself on the mouth, all in a tremble.
Never had we go-between but that book. The
writer was the betrayer. That day we read no
more."
While these words were being uttered by one
of the spirits, the other wailed so bitterly, that
the poet thought he should have died for pity.
His senses forsook him, and he fell flat on the
ground, as a dead body falls.†
*"Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
Quella lettura.'
}}
"To look at one another," says Boccaccio; and his in-
terpretation has been followed by Cary and Foscolo; but,
with deference to such authorities, I beg leave to think
that the poet meant no more than he says, namely, that
their eyes were simply "suspended"-hung, as it were,
over the book, without being able to read on; which is
what I intended to express (if I may allude to a produc-
tion of which both those critics were pleased to speak
well), when, in my youthful attempt to enlarge this
story, I wrote--
"And o'er the book they hung, and nothing said,
And every lingering page grew longer as they read."
Story of Rimini.”
((
"Mentre che l' uno spirto questo disse,
L'altro piangeva sì, che di pietade
1
The Journey through hell
107
On regaining his senses, the poet found him-
self in the third circle of hell, a place of ever-
lasting wet, darkness, and cold, one heavy slush
of hail and mud, emitting a squalid smell. The
triple-headed dog Cerberus, with red eyes and
greasy black beard, large belly, and hands with
claws, barked above the heads of the wretches
who floundered in the mud, tearing, skinning,
and dismembering them, as they turned their
sore and soddened bodies from side to side.
When he saw the two living men, he showed
his fangs, and shook in every limb for desire of
their flesh. Virgil threw lumps of dirt into his
mouth, and so they passed him.
It was the place of Gluttons. The travellers
passed over them, as if they had been ground
to walk upon.
But one of them sat up, and ad-
I' venni men così com' io morisse,
E caddi come corpo morto cade."
This last line has been greatly admired for the corre-
sponding deadness of its expression.
While thus one spoke the other spirit mourn'd
With wail so woful, that at his remorse
I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd
Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.
The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commen-
tators think) because he had sinned in the same way;
and if Foscolo's opinion could be established-that the
incident of the book is invention-their conclusion would
receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance of
the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being
likely enough to have occurred to Dante. But the same
probability applies in the case of the lovers. The read-
ing of such books was equally the taste of their own
times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's
having been found in the room where they perished.
108
Dante Alighieri
dressed the Florentine as his acquaintance.
Dante did not know him, for the agony in his
countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog
(Ciacco), and by no other name does the poet,
or any one else, mention him. His countryman
addressed him by it, though declaring at the
same time that he wept to see him. Hog pro-
phesied evil to his discordant native city, add-
ing that there were but two just men in it—all
the rest being given up to avarice, envy, and
pride. Dante inquired by name respecting the
fate of five other Florentines, who had done
good, and was informed that they were all, for
various offences, in lower gulfs of hell. Hog
then begged that he would mention having
seen him when he returned to the sweet world;
and so, looking at him a little, bent his head,
and disappeared among his blinded companious.
"Satan! hoa, Satan!" roared the demon
Plutus, as the poets were descending into the
fourth circle.
"Peace!” cried Virgil, "with thy swollen lip,
thou accursed wolf. No one can hinder his
coming down. God wills it." *
* Plutus' exclamation about Satan is a great choke-
pear to the commentators. The line in the original is
Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe."
(C
The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not
the business of this abstract to discuss such points;
and therefore I content myself with believing that the
context implies a call of alarm on the Prince of Hell at
the sight of the living creature and his guide.
1.
The Journey through hell 109
Flat fell Plutus, collapsed, like the sails of a
vessel when the mast is split.
This circle was the most populous one they
had yet come to. The sufferers, gifted with
supernatural might, kept eternally rolling
round it, one against another, with terrific vio-
lence, and so dashing apart, and returning.
"Why grasp?" cried the one "Why throw
away?” cried the other; and thus exclaiming,
they dash furiously together.
They were the Avaricious and the Prodigal.
Multitudes of them were churchmen, including
cardinals and popes. Not all the gold beneath
the moon could have purchased them a mo-
Dante asked if none of them were
to be recognized by their countenances. Virgil
said, "No"; for the stupid and sullied lives
which they led on earth swept their faces away
from all distinction forever.
ment's rest.
In discoursing of fortune, they descend by
the side of a torrent, black as ink, into the fifth
circle, or place of torment for the Angry, the
Sullen, and the Proud. Here they first beheld
a filthy marsh, full of dirty naked bodies, that
in everlasting rage tore one another to pieces.
In a quieter division of the pool were seen
nothing but bubbles, carried by the ascent, from
its slimy bottom of the stifled words of the
sullen. They were always saying: "We were
IIO
Dante Alighieri
sad and dark within us in the midst of the sweet
sunshine, and now we live sadly in the dark
bogs." The poets walked on till they came to
the foot of a tower, which hung out two blazing
signals to another just discernible in the dis-
tance. A boat came rapidly towards them,
ferried by the wrathful Phlegyas *; who cried
out: "Aha, felon! and so thou hast come at
last!"
"
Thou errest," said Virgil. "We come for
no longer time than it will take thee to ferry
us across thy pool."
Phlegyas looked like one defrauded of his
right; but proceeded to convey them. During
their course a spirit rose out of the mire, look-
ing Dante in the face, and said, "Who art
thou, that comest before thy time?"
"Who art thou?" said Dante.
"Thou seest who I am," answered the other;
"one among the mourners.'
"Then mourn still, and howl, accursed spir-
it," returned the Florentine. "I know thee,—
all over filth as thou art."
*Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo
for setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the
violation of his daughter Coronis. The actions of gods
were not to be questioned, in Dante's opinion, even
though the gods turned out to be false. Jugghanaut is
as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theo-
logical puzzle, involving very nice questions; but at any
rate, had our poet been a Brahmin of Benares, we know
how he would have written about it in Sanscrit.
The Journey through hell III
The wretch in fury laid hold of the boat, but
Virgil thrust him back, exclaiming, "Down
with thee! down among the other dogs!"
Then turning to Dante, he embraced and
kissed him, saying: "O soul, that knows how
to disdain, blessed be she that bore thee? Ar-
rogant, truly, upon earth was this sinner, nor
is his memory graced by a single virtue. Hence
the furiousness of his spirit now. How many
kings are there at this moment lording it as
gods, who shall wallow here, as he does, like
swine in the mud, and be thought no better of
by the world!"
"I should like to see him smothering in it,”
said Dante, "before we go."
"and thou
"A right wish," said Virgil,
shalt, to thy heart's content."
On a sudden the wretch's muddy companions
seized and drenched him so horribly that (ex-
claims Dante) "I laud and thank God for it
now at this moment."
"Have at him!" cried they; "have at Fil-
ippo Argenti"; and the wild fool of a Floren-
tine dashed his teeth for rage into his own
flesh.*
* Filippo Argenti (Philip Silver,-so called from his
shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Flor-
entine remarkable for bodily strength and extreme
irascibility. What a barbarous strength and confusion
of ideas is there in this whole passage about him I Ar-
rogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother
II2
Dante Alighieri
The poet's attention was now drawu off by a
noise of lamentation, and he perceived that he
was approaching the city of Dis.* The turrets
glowed vermilion with the fire within it, the
walls appeared to be of iron, and moats were
round about them. The boat circuited the
walls till the travellers came to a gate, which
Phlegyas, with a loud voice, told them to quit
the boat and enter. But a thousand fallen an-
gels crowded over the top of the gate, refusing
to open it, and making furious gestures.
At
length they agreed to let Virgil speak with
them inside; and he left Dante for awhile,
standing in terror without. The parley was in
vain. They would not let them pass. Virgil,
however, bade his companion be of good cheer,
and then stood listening and talking to him-
blessed for the unchristian disdainfulness of her son,
revenge boasted of and enjoyed, passion arguing in a
circle Filippo himself might have written it. Dante
says,
"Con piangere e con lutto
Spirito maladetto, ti rimani.-
Via costa con gli altri cani," etc.
Then Virgil kissing and embracing him,
"Alma sdegnosa
Benedetta colei che 'n te s' incinse," etc.
And Dante again,
CC
Maestro, molto sarei vago
Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," etc.
Dis, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for
Satan. Within the walls of the city of Dis commence
the punishments by fire.
The Journey through hell
113
self; disclosing by his words his expectation
of some extraordinary assistance, and at the
same time his anxiety for its arrival.
On a
sudden, three raging figures arose over the
gate, colored with gore. Green hydras twisted
about them; and their fierce temples had
snakes instead of hair.
"Look," said Virgil. The Furies! The
one on the left is Megara; Alecto is she that
is wailing on the right; and in the middle is
Tisiphone." Virgil then hushed.
Virgil then hushed. The furies
stood clawing their breasts, smiting their hands
together, and raising such hideous cries, that
Dante clung to his friend.
<<
Bring the Gorgon's head!" cried the Fu-
ries, looking down; "turn him to adamant !"
"Turn round," said Virgil, "and hide thy
face; for if thou beholdest the Gorgon, never
again wilt thou see the light of day." And
with these words he siezed Daute and turned
him round himself, clapping his hands over
his companion's eyes.
And now was heard coming over the water a
terrible crashing noise, that made the banks on
either side of it tremble. It was like a hurri-
cane which comes roaring through the vain
shelter of the woods, splitting and hurling
away the boughs, sweeping along proudly in a
huge cloud of dust, and making herds and
114
Dante Alighieri
herdsmen fly before it. "Now stretch your
eyesight across the water," said Virgil, letting
loose his hands;-"there, where the smoke of
the foam is thickest." Dante looked; and saw
a thousand of the rebel angels, like frogs be-
fore a serpent, swept away into a heap before
the coming of a single spirit, who flew over the
tops of the billows with unwet feet. The spirit
frequently pushed the gross air from before his
feet, as if tired of the base obstacle; and as he
came nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messen-
ger from heaven, looked anxiously at Virgil.
Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow
down.
The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon
as he arrived at the gate, touched it with a
wand that he had in his hand, and it flew open.
"Outcasts of heaven," said he; "despicable
race? whence this fantastical arrogance? Do
ye forget that your torments are laid on thicker
every time ye kick against the Fates? Do ye
forget how your Cerberus was bound and
chained till he lost the hair off his neck like a
commou dog?"
So saying he turned swiftly and departed the
way he came, not addressing a word to the
travellers. His countenance had suddenly a
look of some other business, totally different
from the one he had terminated.
The Journey through hell
115
The companions passed in, and beheld a
place full of tombs red-hot. It was the region
of Arch-heretics and their followers. Dante
and his guide passed round betwixt the walls
and the sepulchres as in a churchyard, and
came to the quarter which held Epicurus and
his sect, who denied the existence of spirit
apart from matter. The lids of the tombs re-
maining unclosed till the day of judgment, the
soul of a noble Florentine, Farinata degli
Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as
a countryman, asking him to stop. Dante,
alarmed, beheld him rise half out of his sepul-
chre, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell
itself. Finding who Dante was, he boasted of
having three times expelled the Guelphs.
Perhaps so," said the poet; "but they came
back again each time; an art which their ene-
mies have not yet acquired."
-X-
A visage then appeared from out another
tomb, looking eagerly, as if it expected to see
some one else. Being disappointed, the tears
came into its eyes, and the sufferer said, "If it
is thy genius that conducts thee hither, where
is my son, and why is he not with thee?"
"It is not my genius that conducts me,”
<<
* Farinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of
Dante, and had vanquished the poet's connections at the
battle of Montaperto.
116
Dante Alighieri
said Dante, "but that of one, whom perhaps
thy son held in contempt."
"How sayest thou?" cried the shade ;—
"held in contempt? He is dead then? He
beholds no longer the sweet light?" And
with these words he dropped into his tomb, and
was seen no more. It was Cavalcante Caval-
canti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido.*
The shade of Farinata, who had meantime
been looking on, now replied to the taunt of
Dante, prophesying that he should soon have
good reason to know that the art he spoke of
had been acquired; upon which Dante, speak-
ing with more considerateness to the lofty
sufferer, requested to know how the gift of
prophecy could belong to spirits who were
ignorant of the time present. Farinata an-
swered that so it was; just as there was a kind
of eyesight which could discern things at a
distance though not at hand. Dante then ex-
pressed his remorse at not having informed
Cavalcante that his son was alive. He said it
was owing to his being overwhelmed with
thought on the subject he had just mentioned,
and entreated Farinata to tell him so.
-
* What would Guido have said to this? More, I sus-
pect, than Dante would have liked to hear, or known
how to answer. But he died before the verses trans-
pired; probably before they were written; for Dante
in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and
seasons he finds most convenient,
The Journey through hell
117
Quitting this part of the cemetery, Virgil led
him through the midst of it towards a descent
into a valley, from which there ascended a
loathsome odor. They stood behind one of the
tombs for a while, to accustom themselves to
the breath of it; and then began to descend a
wild fissure in a rock, near the mouth of which
lay the infamy of Crete, the Minotaur. The
monster beholding them gnawed himself for
rage; and on their persisting to advance, began
plunging like a bull when he is stricken by the
knife of the butcher. They succeeded, how-
ever, in entering the fissure before he recovered
sufficiently from his madness to run at them;
and at the foot of the descent, came to a river
of boiling blood, on the strand of which ran
thousands of Centaurs armed with bows and
arrows. In the blood, more or less deep accord-
ing to the amount of the crime, and shrieking
as they boiled, were the souls of the Inflicters
of Violence; and if any of them emerged from
it higher than he had a right to do, the Cen-
taurs drove him down with their arrows. Nes-
sus, the one that bequeathed Hercules the
poisoned garment, came galloping towards the
pilgrims, bending his bow, and calling out
from a distance to know who they were; but
Virgil, disdaining his hasty character, would
explain himself only to Chiron, the Centaur
118
Dante Alighieri
who instructed Achilles. Chiron, in conse-
quence, bade Nessus accompany them along
the river; and there they saw tyrants immersed
up to the eyebrows;-Alexander the Great
among them, Dionysius of Syracuse, and Ez-
zelino the Paduan. There was one of the Pazzi
of Florence, and Rinieri of Corneto (infestors
of the public ways), now shedding bloody tears,
and Attila the Scourge, and Pyrrhus King of
Epirus. Further on, among those immersed
up to the throat, was Guy de Montfort, the
Englishman, who slew his father's slayer,
Prince Henry, during divine service, in the
bosom of God; and then by degrees the river
became shallower and shallower till it covered
only the feet; and here the Centaur quitted
the pilgrims, and they crossed over into a
forest.
The forest was a trackless and dreadful forest
—the leaves not green, but black-the boughs
not freely growing, but knotted and twisted-
the fruit no fruit, but thorny poison. The
Harpies wailed among the trees, occasionally
showing their human faces; and on every side
of him Dante heard lamenting human voices,
but could see no one from whom they came.
"Pluck one of the boughs," said Virgil. Dante
did so; and blood and a cry followed it.
"Why pluckest thou me?" said the trunk.
$
The Journey through hell
119
"Men have we been, like thyself; but thou
couldst not use us worse, had we been ser-
pents." The blood and words came out to-
gether, as a green bough hisses and spits in the
fire.
The voice was that of Piero delle Vigne, the
good chancellor of the Emperor Frederick the
Second. Just though he had been to others,
he was thus tormented for having been unjust
to himself; for, envy having wronged him to
his sovereign, who sentenced him to lose his
eyes, he dashed his brains out against a wall.
Piero entreated Dante to vindicate his memory.
The poet could not speak for pity; so Virgil
made the promise for him, inquiring at the
same time in what manner it was that Suicides
became thus identified with trees, and how
their souls were to rejoin their bodies at the day
of judgment. Piero said, that the moment the
fierce self-murderer's spirit tore itself from the
body, and passed before Charon, it fell, like a
grain of corn, into that wood, and so grew into
a tree. The Harpies then fed on its leaves,
causing both pain and a vent for lamentation.
The body it would never again enter, having
thus cast away itself, but it would finally drag
the body down to it by a violent attraction;
and every suicide's carcass will be hung upon
the thorn of its wretched shade.
120
Dante Alighieri
The naked souls of two men, whose profusion
had brought them to a violent end, here came
running through the wood from the fangs of
black female mastiffs-leaving that of a suicide
to mourn the havoc which their passage had
made of his tree. He begged his country-
man to gather his leaves up and lay them
at the foot of his trunk, and Dante did so;
and then he and Virgil proceeded on their
journey.
They issued from the wood on a barren sand,
flaming hot, on which multitudes of naked souls
lay down, or sat huddled up, or restlessly
walked about, trying to throw from them inces-
sant flakes of fire, which came down like a fall
of snow. They were the souls of the Impious.
Among them was a great spirit, who lay scorn-
fully submitting himself to the fiery shower, as
though it had not yet ripened him.* Overhear-
ing Dante ask his guide who he was, he answer-
ed for himself, and said: "The same dead as
living. Jove will tire his flames out before they
conquer me."
((
Capaneus," exclaimed Virgil, "thy pride is
thy punishment. No martyrdom were sufficient
*Sì che la pioggia non par che '1 maturi."
This is one of the grandest passages in Dante. It was
probably (as English commentators have observed) in
Milton's recollection when he conceived the character of
Satan.
The Journey through hell
121
for thee equal to thine own rage." The be-
sieger of Thebes made no reply.
In another quarter of the fiery shower the
pilgrims met a crowd of Florentines, mostly
churchmen, whose offence is not to be named,
after which they beheld Usurers; and then ar-
rived at a huge waterfall, which fell into the
eighth circle, or that of the Fraudulent. Here
Virgil, by way of bait to the monster Geryon,
or Fraud, let down over the side of the water-
fall the cord of St. Francis, which Dante wore
about his waist, * and presently the dreadful
creature came up and sate on the margin of the
fall, with his serpent's tail hanging behind him
in the air, after the manner of a beaver; but the
point of the tail was occasionally seen glancing
upwards. He was a gigantic reptile, with the
face of a just man, very mild. He had shaggy
claws for arms, and a body variegated all over
with colors that ran in knots and circles, each
within the other, richer than any Eastern dra-
pery. Virgil spoke apart to him, and then
mounted on his back, bidding his companion,
who was speechless for terror, do the same.
*The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as
Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery.
The monster Geryon son of Chrysaor (Golden-sword),
and the Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (Fair-flowing) was rich
in the possession of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his
derivatives, rendered him this instrument of satire. The
monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point of venom,
and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be.
122
Dante Aligbiert
Geryon pushed back with them from the edge
of the precipice, like a ship leaving harbor;
and then, turning about, wheeled, like a sullen
successless falcon, slowly down through the air
in many a circuit. Dante would not have known
that he was going downward, but for the air that
struck upwards on his face. Presently they
heard the crash of the waterfall on the circle
below, and then distinguished flaming fires and
the noises of suffering. The monster Geryon,
ever sullen as the falcon who seats himself at a
distance from his dissatisfied master, shook his
riders from off his back to the water's side, and
then shot away like an arrow.
*
This eighth circle of hell is called Evil-
Budget, and consists of ten compartments, or
gulfs of torment, crossed and connected with
one another by bridges of flint. In the first
were beheld Pimps and Seducers, scourged like
children by horned devils; in the second Flat-
*"Malebolge," literally Evil-Budget. Bolgia is an old
form of the modern baule, the common term for a valise
or portmanteau. "Bolgia," (says the "Vocabolaria della
Crusca, compendato," Ven., 1792), “a valise; Latin, bul-
ga, hippopera; Greek, inлолýра. In reference to valises
which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
word to signify those compartments which he feigns in
his Hell." (Per similitudine di quelle valigie, che s' aprono
per lo lungo, a guisa di cassa, significa quegli sparti-
menti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.) The reader will
think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and
the contempt which great and awful states of mind have
for conventional notions of rank in phraseology. It is a
part, if well considered, of their grandeur.
The Journey through hell
123
terers, begrimed with ordure; in the third
Simonists, who were stuck like plugs into cir-
cular apertures, with their heads downward and
their legs only discernible, the soles of their
feet glowing with a fire which made them in-
cessantly quiver. Dante, going down the side
of the gulf with Virgil, was allowed to address
one of them who seemed in greater agony than
the rest; and doing so, the sufferer cried out in
a malignant rapture: "Aha, is it thou that
standest there, Boniface?* Thou hast come
sooner than it was prophesied." It was the soul
of Pope Nicholas the Third that spoke. Dante
undeceived and then sternly rebuked him for
his avarice and depravity, telling him that noth-
ing but reverence for the keys of St. Peter hin-
dered him from using harsher words, and that
it was such as he that the Evangelist beheld in
the vision, when he saw the woman with seven
heads and ten horns, who committed whoredom
with the kings of the earth.
"O Constantine!" exclaimed the poet, "of
what a world of evil was that dowry the mother,
which first converted the pastor of the church
into a rich man!" The feet of the guilty pope
*Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and
one of the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet
contrives to put his enemies in hell before their time.
† An allusion to the pretended gift of the Laterin by
Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by
Ariosto and others.
124
Dante Alighieri
spun with fiercer agony at these words; and
Virgil, looking pleased on Dante, returned with
him the way he came, till they found them-
selves on the margin of the fourth gulf, the hab-
itation of the souls of False Prophets.
It was a valley, in which the souls came walk-
ing along, silent and weeping, at the pace of
choristers who chant litanies. Their faces were
turned the wrong way, so that the backs of their
heads came foremost, and their tears fell on
their loins. Dante was so overcome at the sight,
that he leant against a rock and wept; but Vir-
gil rebuked him, telling him that no pity at all
was the only pity fit for that place.* There was
Amphiraraus, whom the earth opened and swal-
lowed up at Thebes; and Tiresias, who was
transformed from sex to sex; and Aruns, who
lived in a cavern on the side of the marble
mountains of Carrara, looking out on the stars
and ocean; and Manto, daughter of Tiresias
(her hind tresses over her bosom), who wan-
dered through the world till she came and lived
* A truly infernal sentiment. The original is :
"C
Qui vive la pietà quand, è ben morta."
Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
"Chi è pitu scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui,
Ch' al giudicio divin passion porta."
That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his im-
passioned feelings against the judgments of God?" The
answer is: He that attributes judgments to God which
are to render humanity pitiless.
The Journey through hell
125
in the solitary fen, whence afterwards arose the
city of Mantua; and Michael Scot, the ma-
gician, with his slender loins *; and Eurypylus,
the Grecian augur, who gave the signal with
Calchas at Troy when to cut away the cables
for home. He came stooping along, projecting
his face over his swarthy shoulders. Guido
Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of Forli; and
Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes
he had stuck to his last; and the wretched
women who quit the needle and the distaff to
wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such
was the punishment of those who, desiring to
see too far before them, now looked only be-
hind them, and walked the reverse way of their
looking.
The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, con-
stantly heaving and subsiding throughout, and
bubbling with the breath of those within it.
They were Public Peculators. Winged black
devils were busy about the lake, pronging the
sinuers when they occasionally darted up their
backs for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their
jaws like frogs. Dante at first looked eagerly
* Ne' fianchi così poco. Michael Scot had been in Flor-
ence; to which circumstance we are most probably in-
debted for this curious particular respecting his shape.
The consignment of such men to hell is a mortifying in-
stance of the great poet's participation in the vulgarest
errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice,
considering what we see him swallowing every moment,
or pretending to swallow.
126
Dante Alighieri
down into the gulf, like one who feels that he
shall turn away instantly out of the very horror
that attracts him. (( See-look behind thee!"
said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from
the place where he stood, to a covert behind a
crag. Dante looked round, and beheld a devil
coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across
his shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and
then dashed down after him, like a mastiff let
loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca,
where every soul was a false dealer except Bon-
turo.* The devil called out to other devils, and a
heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks
as he rose to the surface; telling him, that he
must practise there in secret, if he practised at
all; and thrusting him back into the boiling
pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot.
The devils were of the lowest and most revolt-
ing habits, of which they made disgusting jest
and parade. Some of them, on a sudden, per-
ceived Dante and his guide, and were going to
seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual
holy rebuke. For awhile they let him alone;
and Dante saw one of them hand a sinner out
of the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him
up sprawling like an otter. The rest fell then
upon him and flayed him.
*"Bonturo must have sold him something cheap,"
exclaimed a hearer of this passage. No: the exception
is an irony! There was not one honest man in all Lucca !
pl
The Journey through Bell 127
It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service
of the good Thiebault, king of Navarre. One
of his companions under the pitch was Friar
Gomita, governor of Gallura; and another, Mi-
chael Zanche, also a Sardinian. Ciampolo ul-
timately escaped by a trick out of the hands of
the devils, who were so enraged that they turned
upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil, catching up
Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does
a child in a burning house, plunged with him
out of their jurisdiction into the borders of gulf
the sixth, the region of Hypocrites.
The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked
about in a wearisome and exhausted manner, as
if ready to faint. They wore huge cowls, which
hung over their eyes, and the outsides of which
were gilded, but the insides of lead. Two of
them had been rulers of Florence; and Dante
was listening to their story, when his attention
was called off by the sight of a cross, on which
Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breath-
ing hard all the while through his beard with
sighs. It was his office to see that every soul
which passed him, on its arrival in the place,
was oppressed with the due weight. His father-
in-law, Annas, and all his council, were stuck
in like manner on crosses round the borders of
the gulf. The pilgrims beheld little else in this
region of weariness, and soon passed into the
128
Dante Alighieri
borders of one of the most terrible portions of
Evil-Budget, the land of transformation of Rob-
bers.
The place was thronged with serpents of the
most appalling and unwonted description,
among which ran tormented the naked spirits
of the robbers, agonized with fear. Their hands
were bound behind them with serpents-their
bodies pierced and enfolded with serpents.
Dante saw one of the monsters leap up and
transfix a man through the nape of the neck;
when, lo! sooner than a pen could write o or i,
the sufferer burst into flames, burnt up, fell to
the earth a heap of ashes-was again brought
together, and again became a man, aghast with
his agony, and staring about him, sighing.*
Virgil asked him who he was.
"I but lately rained down into this dire gul-
let," said the man, "amidst a shower of Tuscans.
The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led the brutal
life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pis-
toia."
((
Compel him to stop," said Dante, “and re-
late what brought him hither. I knew the
bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive.”
The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to
* [C Intorno si mira
Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
Ch' egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira."
This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of ago-
nized astonishment ever painted.
The Journey through hell
129
these words, turned round to the speaker with
the most painful shame in his face, and said:
"I feel more bitterly at being caught here by
thee in this condition, than when I first arrived.
A power which I cannot resist compels me to
let thee know, that I am here because I com-
mitted sacrilege and charged another with the
crime; but now, mark me, that thou mayest
hear something not to render this encounter so
pleasant; Pistoia hates thy party of the Whites,
and longs for the Blacks back again. It will
have them, and so will Florence; and there will
be a bloody cloud shall burst over the battle-field
of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the
earth. I tell thee this to make thee miserable."
So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of con-
tempt with his thumb and finger towards
heaven, and said: "Take it, God—a fig for
thee !"'*
* I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant
ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own
audacity, but a salutary warning specimen of the ex-
tremes of impiety generated by extreme superstition;
for their first cause is the degradation of the divine char-
acter. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence
of the South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the
course of half an hour, from the lips of an Italian postil-
ion, than are probably uttered in England, by people
not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the words,
after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-na-
tured fellow, and I believe presented no image to his
mind of any thing he was saying. Dante, however, would
certainly not have taught him better by attempting to
frighten him. A violent word would have only produced
more violence. Yet this was the idle round which the
great poet thought it best to run !
130
Dante Alighieri
"From that instant," said Dante, "the ser-
pents and I were friends; for one of them
throttled him into silence, and another dashed
his hands into a knot behind his back. O
Pistoia! Pistoia! why art not thou thyself
turned into ashes, and swept from the face of
the earth, since thy race has surpassed in evil
thine ancestors? Never, through the whole
darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire
as this—not even Capaneus himself."
The Pistoian fled away with the serpents
upon him, followed by a Centaur, who came
madly galloping up, crying: "Where is the
caitiff!" It was the monster-thief Cacus,
whose den upon earth often had a pond of
blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in
his rage, when he slew him, gave a whole
hundred blows with his club, though the
wretch perceived nothing after the ninth.
He was all over adders up to the mouth,
and upon his shoulders lay a dragon with its
wings open, breathing fire on whomsoever it
met.
The Centaur tore away, and Dante and Virgil
were gazing after him, when they heard voices
beneath the bank on which they stood, crying:
"Who are ye?" The pilgrims turned their
eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits, one
of whom, looking about him, said: Where 's
"
•
The Journey through hell
131
Cianfa?" Dante made a sign to Virgil to say
nothing.
Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a
serpent with six feet.*
"If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I
am about to tell thee," says the poet, "be so ;
it is no marvel; for I myself, even now, scarcely
credit what I beheld."
The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the
three men front to front, clasping him tightly
with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into
either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a
tree as the horrible monster grappled with
every limb of that pinioned man. The two
forms then gradually mingled into one another
like melting wax, the colors of their skin giving
way at the same time to a third color, as the
white in a piece of burning paper recedes before
the brown, till it all becomes black. The
other two human shapes looked on, exclaim-
ing: "Oh, how thou changest, Agnello! See,
thou art neither two nor yet one."
And truly,
though the two heads first became one, there
still remained two countenances in the face.
The four arms then became but two, and such
also became the legs and thighs, and the two
*Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's
sort, and robber on a large scale, is said to have been
one of the Donati family, connections of the poet by
marriage.
132
Dante Alighieri
trunks became such a body as was never be-
held, and the hideous two-fold monster walked
slowly away.*
A small black serpent on fire now flashed like
lightning on to the body of one of the other
two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling
on the ground, and lying stretched before him.
The wounded man, fascinated and mute, stood
looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavoring
to stand steady on his legs, yawning the while
as if smitten with lethargy or fever; the adder,
on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man,
and both of them breathed hard, and sent forth
a smoke that mingled into one volume.
And now, let Lucan never speak more of the
wretched Sabellus or Nisidius, but listen and be
silent; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor speak
again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his
fountain that was Arethusa; for, says the Tus-
can poet, I envy him not. Never did he change
the natures of two creatures face to face, so
that each received the form of the other.
With corresponding impulse, the serpent split
his train into a fork, while the man drew his
legs together into a train; the skin of the ser-
pent grew soft, while the man's hardened; the
*This, and the transformation that follows, may well
excite the pride of such a poct as Dante, though it is
curious to see how he selects inventions of this kind as
special grounds of self-complacency. They are the most
appalling ever yet produced.
The Journey through hell 133
serpent acquired tresses of hair, the man grew
hairless; the claws of the one projected into
legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into
his shoulders; the face of the serpent, as it
rose from the ground, retreated towards the
temples, pushing out human ears; that of the
man, as he fell to the ground, thrust itself
forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same
time its ears into its head, as the slug does its
horns; and each creature kept its impious eyes
fixed on the other's, while the features beneath
the eyes were changing. The soul which had
become the serpent then turned to crawl away,
hissing in scorn as he departed; and the ser-
pent, which had become the man, spat after him,
and spoke words at him. The new human-
looking soul then turned his back on his late
adversary, and said to the third spirit, who re-
mained unchanged: "Let Buoso now take to
his crawl, as I have done."
The two then hastened away together, leav-
ing Dante in a state of bewildered amazement,
yet not so confused but that he recognized
the unchanged one for another of his country-
men, Puccio the Lame. "Joy to thee Florence!"
cried the poet; "not content with having thy
name bruited over land and sea, it flourishes
throughout hell."
The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and
134
Dante Alighieri
looked down from its barrier into the eighth
gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, dis-
tinct from one another, flickering all over the
place like fire-flies.
"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls,
each tormented with the fire that swathes it."
"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the
summit. Are the Theban brothers in it?"
"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are
Diomed and Ulysses." The sinners punished
in this gulf were Evil Counsellors, and those
two were the advisers of the stratagem of the
Trojan horse.
Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the
conclusion of his adventures, not to be found in
books; how he tired of an idle life, and sailed
forth again into the wide ocean, and how he
sailed so far that he came into a region of new
stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he
ever saw, when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell
upon them from the shore, thrice whirled their
vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air
and the prow under water, and sent the billows
over their heads.
"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no
more." The soul of Guido di Montefeltro,
overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a
Lombard dialect, asked him news of the state
of things in Romagna, and then told him how
The Journey through hell
135
he had lost his chance of paradise by thinking
Pope Boniface could at once absolve him from
his sins, and use them for his purposes.* He
was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St.
Francis, who came on purpose to fetch him,
when a black angel met them, and demanded
his absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim.
"To repent evil, and to will to do it, at one
and the same time, are," said the dreadful
angel, "impossible: therefore wrong me not."
"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido,
"when he laid his hands upon me!" And with
these words the flame writhed and beat itself
about for agony, and so took its way.
The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the
ninth gulf, where the Sowers of Scandal, the
Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False
Religions underwent the penalties as such as
load themselves with the sins of those whom
they seduce.
The first sight they beheld was Mahomet,
tearing open his own bowels, and calling out to
them to mark him. Before him walked his
*Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of
that day, became a Franciscan in his old age in order to
repent of his sins, but being consulted in his cloister by
Pope Boniface on the best mode of getting possession of
an estate belonging to the Colonna family, and being
promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including
the opinion requested, he recommended the holy father
to "promise much, and perform nothing" (molto pro-
mettere, e nulla attendere).
136
Dante Alighieri
son-in-law, Ali, weeping, and cloven to the
chin, and the divisions in the church were
punished in like manner upon all the schismat-
ics in the place. They all walked round the
circle, their gashes closing as they went, and on
their reaching a certain point a fiend hewed
them open again with a sword. The Arabian
prophet, ere he passed on, bade the pilgrims
warn Friar Dolcino how he suffered himself to
be surprised in his mountain-hold by the star-
vations of winter-time if he did not wish speed-
ily to follow him.*
Among other mangled wretches, they behold
Piero of Medicina, a sower of dissension, ex-
hibiting to them his face and throat all over
wounds; and Curio, compelled to show his
tongue cut out for advising Cæsar to cross the
Rubicon; and Mosca de' Lamberti, an adviser
of assassination, and one of the authors of the
Guelph and Ghibelline miseries, holding up the
bleeding stumps of his arms, which dripped on
* Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a com-
munity of goods, including women, and to have pre-
tended to a divine mission for reforming the church. He
appears to have made a considerable impression, having
thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the
mountains where they lived, and burnt with his female
companion Margarita, and many others. Landino says
he was very eloquent, and that "both he and Margarita
endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better
cause." Probably his real history is not known for
want of somebody in such times bold enough to write it.
The Journey through hell
137
(C
his face. 'Remember Mosca," cried he; re-
member him, alas! who said: 'A deed done is a
thing ended.' A bad saying of mine was that
for the Tuscan nation."
“And death to thy family," cried Dante.
The assassin hurried away like a man driven
mad with grief upon grief; and Dante now be-
held a sight, which, if it were not, he says, for
the testimony of a good conscience-that best
of friends, which gives a man assurance of him-
self under the breastplate of a spotless inno-
cence he should be afraid to relate without
further proof. He saw-and while he was writ-
ing the account of it he still appeared to see-a
headless trunk about to come past with the
others. It held its severed head by the hair,
like a lantern; and the head looked up at the
two pilgrims, and said: "Woe is me!" The
head was, in fact, a lantern to the paths of the
*
A
* Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing him-
self to be pure":
"Sotto l' osbergo del sentirsi pura."
The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not
allowable in English, and is the only one admitting no
equivalent which I have met with in the whole poem. It
might be argued, perhaps, against the perfection of the
passage, that a good "conscience," and a man's "know-
ing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante
himself has already used that word:
"Conscienzia m' assicura ;
La bouna compagnia che l' uom francheggia
Sotto l' osbergo,” etc.
But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and
I wish I could have kept it.
138
Dante Alighieri
trunk; and thus there were two separated things
in one, and one in two; and how that could be,
he only can tell who ordained it. As the figure
came nearer, it lifted the head aloft, that the
pilgrims might hear better what it said.
((
Behold," it said, "behold, thou that walk-
est living among the dead, and say if there be
any punishment like this. I am Bertrand de
Born, he that incited John of England to rebel
against his father. Father and son I set at
variance-closest affections I set at variance-
and hence do I bear my brain severed from the
body on which it grew. In me behold the work
of retribution." *
The eyes of Dante were so inebriate with all
that diversity of bleeding wounds, that they
longed to stay and weep ere his guide proceeded
further. Something also struck them on the sud-
den which added to his desire to stop. But Vir-
gil asked what ailed him, and why he stood
gazing still on the wretched multitude. "Thou
hast not done so," continued he, "in any other
portion of this circle; and the valley is twenty-
two miles farther about, and the moon already
below us. Thou hast more yet to see than thou
wottest of, and the time is short."
Dante, excusing himself for the delay, and
*This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting
of physical horror with the truest pathos.
The Journey through hell
139
proceeding to follow his leader, said he thought
he had seen, in the cavern at which he was
gazing so hard, a spirit that was one of his own
family-and it was so. It was the soul of Geri
del Bello, a cousin of the poet's. Virgil said
that he had observed him, while Dante was
occupied with Bertrand de Born, poiuting at his
kinsman in a threatening manner.
"Waste
not a thought on him," concluded the Roman,
"but leave him as he is."
"O honored guide!" said Dante, "he died a
violent death, which his kinsmen have not yet
avenged; and hence it is that he disdained to
speak to me; and I must needs feel for him the
more on that account."*
They came now to the last partition of the
circle of Evil-Budget, and their ears were as-
sailed with such a burst of sharp wailings, that
Dante was fain to close his with his hands.
The misery there, accompanied by a horrible
odor, was as if all the hospitals in the sultry
marshes of Valdichiana had brought their mala-
dies together into one infernal ditch. It was
the place of punishment for pretended Alchem-
ists, Coiners, Personators of other people, False
Accusers, and Imposters of all such descriptions.
They lay on one another in heaps, or attempted
*The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic
instance of the ferocity of the time.
140
Dante Alighieri
to crawl about-some itching madly with lep-
rosies-some swollen and gasping with dropsies
-some wetly reeking, like hands washed in
winter-time. One was an alchemist of Siena,
a nation vainer than the French; another a
Florentine, who tricked a man into making a
wrong will; another, Sinon of Troy; another,
Myrrha; another, the wife of Potiphar. Their
miseries did not hinder them from giving one
another malignant blows; and Dante was listen-
ing eagerly to an abusive conversation between
Sinon and a Brescian coiner, when Virgil re-
buked him for the disgraceful condescension,
and said it was a pleasure fit only for vulgar
minds. *
The blushing poet felt the reproof so deeply
that he could not speak for shame, though he
manifested by his demeanor that he longed to
do so, and thus obtained the pardon he de-
spaired of. He says he felt like a man that,
during an unhappy dream, wishes himself
dreaming while he is so, and does not know it.
Virgil understood his emotion, and, as Achilles
did with his spear, healed the wound with the
tongue that inflicted it.
*This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been
no ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which
could have made Dante allow himself to be the person
rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps it was a sort
of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into
the unworthiness.
The Journey through hell
141
A silence now ensued between the compan-
ions; for they had quitted Evil-Budget, and
arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the
mound of which they passed along, looking
quietly and steadily before them. Daylight
had given place to twilight; and Dante was
advancing his head a little, and endeavoring
to discern objects in the distance, when his
whole attention was called to one particular
spot, by a blast of a horn so loud that a thunder-
clap was a whisper in comparison. Orlando
himself blew no such terrific blast, after the
dolorous rout, when Charlemagne was defeated
in his holy enterprise. * The poet raised his
head, thinking he perceived a multitude of
lofty towers. He asked Virgil to what region
they belonged; but Virgil said: "Those are no
towers; they are giants, standing each up to his
middle in the pit that goes round this circle."
Dante looked harder; and as objects clear up
by little and by little in the departing mist, he
saw, with alarm, the tremendous giants that
warred against Jove, standing half in and half
out of the pit, like the towers that crowned the
citadel of Monteseggione. The one whom he
saw plainest, and who stood with his arms
* By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favor-
ite a topic with the poets. The circumstance of the horn
is taken from the Chronicle of the pretended Arch-
bishop Turpin, chapter xxiv.
142
Dante Alighieri
((
hanging down on each side, appeared to him to
have a face as huge as the pinnacle of St.
Peter's, and limbs throughout in proportion.
The monster, as the pilgrims were going by,
opened his dreadful mouth, fit for no sweeter
psalmody, and called after them, in the words
of some unknown tongue: Rafel, maee a
mech zabee_almee.”* (6
'Dull wretch!" ex-
claimed Virgil, "keep to thine horn, and so
vent better whatsoever frenzy or other passion
stuff thee. Feel the chain round thy throat,
thou confusion! See, what a clenching hoop
is about thy gorge!" Then he said to Dante:
“His howl is its own mockery. This is Nim-
rod, he through whose evil ambition it was that
mankind ceased to speak one language. Pass
him, and say nothing; for every other tongue is
to him as his is to thee."
The companions went on for about the length
of a sling's throw, when they passed the second
giant, who was much fiercer and huger than
Nimrod. He was fettered round and round
with chains, that fixed one arm before him and
the other behind him-Ephialtes his name, the
same that would needs make trial of his strength
against Jove himself. The hands which he then
*The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel
a, is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-
stupid speaker. It is like the babble of the gigantic in-
fancy of the world.
$.
The Journey through bell 143
wielded were now motionless, but he shook
with passion; and Dante thought he should
have died for terror, the effect on the ground
about him was so fearful. It surpassed that of
a tower shaken by an earthquake. The poet
expressed a wish to look at Briareus, but he was
too far off. He saw, however, Antæus, who,
not having fought against heaven, was neither
tongue-confounded nor shackled; and Virgil
requested the "taker of a thousand lions," by
the fame which the living poet had it in his
power to give him, to bear the travellers in his
arms down the steep descent into this deeper
portion of hell, which was the region of tor-
menting cold. Antæus, stooping, like the lean-
ing tower of Bologna, to take them up, gathered
them in his arms, and, depositing them in the
gulf below, raised himself to depart like the
mast of a ship. *
Had I hoarse and rugged words equal to my
subject, says the poet, I would now make them
fuller of expression, to suit the rocky horror of
this hole of anguish; but I have not, and there-
fore approach it with fear, since it is no jesting
enterprise to describe the depths of the universe,
* "Nè sì chinato li fece dimora,
E come albero in nave si levò.”
A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic ex-
pression of the original raised himself, instead of saying
rose, because it seemed to me to give the more grand and
deliberate image.
144
Dante Alighieri
nor fit for a tongue that babbles of father and
mother.* Let such of the Muses assist me as
turned the words of Amphion into Theban
walls; so shall the speech be not too far differ-
ent from the matter.
Oh, ill-starred creatures! wretched beyond all
others, to inhabit a place so hard to speak of—
better had ye been sheep or goats.
The poet was beginning to walk with his
guide along the place in which the giant had
set them down, and was still looking up at the
height from which he had descended, when a
voice close to him said: "Have a care where
thou treadest. Hurt not with thy feet the heads
of thy unhappy brethren."
Dante looked down and before him, and saw
that he was walking on a lake of ice, in which
were Murderous Traitors up to their chins, their
teeth chattering, their faces held down, their
eyes locked up frozen with tears. Dante saw
two at his feet so closely stuck together, that
the very hairs of their heads were mingled. He
asked them who they were, and as they lifted
up their heads for astonishment, and felt the
*Of “màmma" and "bàbbo," says the primitive poet.
We have corresponding words in English, but the feeling
they produce is not identical. The lesser fervor of the
northern nations renders them, in some respects, more
sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the "art-
ful" Italians.
The Journey through hell
145
cold doubly congeal them, they dashed their
heads against one another for hate and fury.
They were two brothers who had murdered each
other.*
Near them were other Tuscans, one of
whom the cold had deprived of his ears; and
thousands more were seen grinning like dogs,
for the pain.
Dante, as he went along, kicked the face of
one of them, whether by chance, or fate, or
will,† he could not say. The sufferer burst into
tears, and cried out: "Wherefore dost thou tor-
ment me? Art thou come to revenge the defeat
at Montaperto?" The pilgrim at this question
felt eager to know who he was; but the un-
happy wretch would not tell. His countryman
seized him by the hair to force him; but still he
said he would not tell, were he to be scalped a
thousand times. Dante, upon this, began
plucking up his hairs by the roots, the man
barking, with his eyes squeezed up, at every
pull; when another soul exclaimed: "Why,
* Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Al-
berto, lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After
their father's death they tyrannized over the neighboring
districts, and finally had a mortal quarrel. The name of
Napoleon used to be so rare till of late years, even in
Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting sur-
prise to meet with it.
+"Se voler fu, o destino o fortuna,
Non so."
What does the Christian reader think of that?
‡ Latrando.
146
Dante Alighieri
Bocca, what the devil ails thee? Must thou
needs bark for cold as well as chatter? "*
(C
Now, accursed traitor, betrayer of thy coun-
try's standard," said Dante, "be dumb if thou
wilt; for I shall tell thy name to the world.”
"Tell and begone!" said Bocca; "but carry
the name of this babbler with thee: 't is Buoso,
who left the pass open to the enemy between
Piedmont and Parma, and near him is the
traitor for the Pope, Beccaria; and Ganellone,
who betrayed Charlemagne; and Tribaldello,
who opened Faenza to the enemy at night-time.”
The pilgrims went on, and beheld two other
spirits so closely locked up together in one hole
of the ice that the head of one was right over the
other's like a cowl; and Dante, to his horror,
saw that the upper head was devouring the
lower with all the eagerness of a man who is
famished. The poet asked what could possibly
make him shew a hate so brutal, adding that,
if there were any ground for it, he would tell
the story to the world.†
The sinner raised his head from the dire repast,
and after wiping his jaws with the hair of it,
*Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog, oc-
casioned the defeat of the Guelphs at Montaperto, in the
year 1260, by treacherously cutting off the hand of the
standard-bearer.
This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed
the castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved
with his children in the Tower of Famine.
The Journey through hell
147
said: "You ask a thing which it shakes me to
the heart to think of. It is a story to renew all
my misery. But since it will produce this wretch
his due infamy, hear it, and you shall see me
speak and weep at the same time. How thou
camest hither I know not, but I perceive by thy
speech that thou art Florentine.
<<
Learn, then, that I was the Count Ugolino,
and this man was Ruggieri the Archbishop.
How I trusted him, and was betrayed into
prison, there is no need to relate, but of his
treatment of me there, and how cruel a death I
underwent, hear, and then judge if he has of-
fended me.
“I had been imprisoned with my children a
long time in the tower which has since been
called from me the Tower of Famine; and many
a new moon had I seen through the hole that
served us for a window, when I dreamt a dream
that foreshadowed to me what was coming.
Methought that this man headed a great chase
against the wolf, in the mountains between
Pisa and Lucca. Among the foremost in his
party were Gualandi, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi,
and the hounds were thin and eager, and high-
bred; and in a little while I saw the hounds
fasten on the flanks of the wolf and the wolf's
children, and tear them. At that moment I
awoke with the voices of my own children in
148
Dante Alighieri
my ears, asking for bread. Truly cruel must
thou be if thy heart does not ache to think of
what I thought then. If thou feel not for a
pang like that, what is it for which thou art
accustomed to feel? We were now all awake,
and the time was at hand when they brought us
bread, and we had all dreamt dreams which
made us anxious. At that moment I heard the
key of the horrible tower turn in the lock of the
door below, and fasten it. I looked at my chil-
dren, and said not a word. I did not weep. I
made a strong effort upon the soul within me.
But my little Anselm said: 'Father, why do
you look so? Is any thing the matter?' Nev-
ertheless I did not weep, nor say a word all the
day, nor the night that followed. In the morn-
ing a ray of light fell upon us through the win-
dow of our sad prison, and I beheld in those
four little faces the likeness of my own face,
and then I began to gnaw my hands for misery.
My children, thinking I did it for hunger,
raised themselves on the floor, and said: 'Father,
we should be less miserable if you would eat our
own flesh. It was you that gave it us. Take it
again.' Then I sat still, in order not to make
them unhappier; and that day and the next we
all remained without speaking. On the fourth
day Gaddo stretched himself at my feet, and
said: 'Father, why won't you help me?' and
The Journey through hell
149
there he died. And as surely as thou lookest on
me, so surely I beheld the whole three die in the
same manner. So I began in my misery to
grope about in the dark for them, for I had be-
come blind; and three days I kept calling on
them by name, though they were dead; till
famine did for me what grief had been unable
to do."
With these words, the miserable man, his
eyes starting from his head, seized that other
wretch again with his teeth, and ground them
against the skull as a dog does with a bone.
O Pisa! scandal of the nations! since thy
neighbors are so slow to punish thee, may the
very islands tear themselves up from their roots
in the sea, and come and block up the mouth
of thy river, and drown every soul within thee!
What if this Count Ugolino did, as report says
he did, betray thy castles to the enemy? his
children had not betrayed them, nor ought
they to have been put to an agony like this.
Their age was their innocence, and their deaths
have given thee the infamy of a second Thebes.*
The pilgrims passed on, and beheld other
traitors frozen up in swathes of ice, with their
* I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of
this story, if there did not seem grounds for believing
that the poet was too hasty in giving credit to parts of it,
particularly the ages of some of his fellow-prisoners, and
the guilt of the archbishop.
150
Dante Alighieri
heads upside down. Their very tears had hin-
dered them from shedding more; for their eyes
were encrusted with the first they shed, so as to
be enclosed with them as in a crystal visor,
which forced back the others into an accumu-
lation of anguish. One of the sufferers begged
Dante to relieve him of this ice, in order that he
might vent a little of the burden which it re-
pressed. The poet said he would do so provided
he would disclose who he was. The man said
he was the friar Alberigo, who invited some of
his brotherhood to a banquet in order to slay
them.
"What!" exclaimed Dante, "art thou no
longer, then, among the living?"
"Perhaps I appear to be," answered the
friar; "for the moment any one commits a
treachery like mine, his soul gives up his body
to a demon, who thenceforward inhabits it in
the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca
Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche?
He seems to be walking the earth still, and yet
he has been in this place many years. >> -*-
'Impossible!" cried Dante; "Branca Doria
is still alive; he eats, drinks, and sleeps, like
any other man.”
"I tell thee," returned the friar, "that the
((
* This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am
aware, in the whole circle of literature.
The Journey through bell
151
soul of the man he slew had not reached that
lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him,
ere the soul of his slayer was in this place, and
his body occupied by a demon in its stead. But
now stretch forth thy hand, and relieve mine
eyes."
Dante relieved them not. Ill manners, he
said, were the only courtesy fit for such a
wretch.*
O ye Genoese! he exclaims,-men that are
perversity all over, and full of every corruption
to the core, why are ye not swept from the face
of the earth? There is one of
There is one of you whom you
fancy to be walking about like other men, and
he is all the while in the lowest pit of hell!
"Look before thee," said Virgil, as they ad-
vanced: "behold the banners of the King of
Hell."
Dante looked, and beheld something which
appeared like a windmill in motion, as seen
from a distance on a dark night. A wind of in-
conceivable sharpness came from it.
* "Dortesia fu lui esser villano." This is the foulest
blot which Dante has cast on his own character in all
his poem (short of the cruelties he thinks fit to attribute
to God). It is argued that he is cruel and false, out of
hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then add to
the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to
be suffering eternally? It is idle to discern in such bar-
barous inconsistencies any thing but the writer's own
contributions to the stock of them. The utmost credit
for right feeling is not to be given on every occasion to a
man who refuses it to every one else.
152
Dante Alighieri
The souls of those who had been traitors to
their benefactors were here frozen up in depths
of pellucid ice, where they were seen in a va-
riety of attitudes, motionless; some upright,
some downward, some bent double, head to
foot.
At length they came to where the being stood
who was once eminent for all fair seeming.*
This was the figure that seemed tossing its arms
at a distance like a windmill.
"Satan," whispered Virgil; and put himself
in front of Dante to reassure him, halting him
at the same time, and bidding him summon all
his fortitude. Dante stood benumbed, though
conscious; as if he himself had been turned to
ice. He felt neither alive nor dead.
The lord of the dolorous empire, each of his
arms as big as a giant, stood in the ice half-way
*"La creatura ch' ebbe il bel sembiante."
This is touching; but the reader may as well be pre-
pared for a total failure in Dante's conception of Satan,
especially the English reader, accustomed to the sublim-
ity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman Catholic poet
intended to honor the fallen angel with no sublimity, but
to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has
overdone and degraded the picture into caricature. A
great stupid being, stuck up in ice, with three faces,
one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each eating a
sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus,-is an object
for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his
everlasting bonnes-bouches, divides derision with disgust.
The passage must be given, otherwise the abstract of
the poem would be incomplete; but I cannot help
thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a
great poet.
The Journey through hell
153
up his breast. He had one head, but three
faces; the middle, vermilion; the one over the
right shoulder a pale yellow; the other black.
His sails of wings, huger than ever were beheld
at sea, were in shape and texture those of a bat;
and with these he constantly flapped, so as to
send forth the wind that froze the depths of
Tartarus. From his six eyes the tears ran
down, mingling at his three chins with bloody
foam; for at every mouth he crushed a sinner
with his teeth, as substances are broken up by
an engine. The middle sinner was the worst
punished, for he was at once broken and flayed,
and his head and trunk were inside the mouth.
It was Judas Iscariot. Of the other two, whose
heads were hanging out, one was Brutus, and
the other Cassius. Cassius was very large-
limbed. Brutus writhed with agony, but ut-
tered not a word.*
*This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus,
especially from a man like Dante, and the more because
it is extorted. Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, par-
ticularly treachery to the leader of his beloved Roman
emperors; forgetting three things; first, that Cæsar was
guilty of treachery himself to the Roman people; sec-
ond, that he, Dante, has put Curio in hell for advising
Cæsar to cross the Rubicon, though he has put the
crosser among the good Pagans; and third, that Brutus
was educated in the belief that the punishment of such
treachery as Cæsar's by assassination was one of the
first of duties. How differently has Shakespeare, him-
self an aristocratic rather than democratic poet, and full
of just doubt of the motives of assassins in general,
treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Pla-
tonic philosopher!

154
Dante Alightert
'Night has returned," said Virgil, “and all
has been seen. It is time to depart onward."
Dante then, at his bidding, clasped, as Virgil
did, the huge inattentive being round the neck;
and, watching their opportunity, as the wings
opened and shut, they slipped round it, and so
down his shaggy and frozen sides, from pile to
pile, clutching it as they went; till suddenly,
with the greatest labor and pain, they were
compelled to turn themselves upside down, as
it seemed, but in reality to regain their proper
footing; for they had passed the centre of grav-
ity, and become Antipodes. Then looking
down at what lately was upward, they saw Lu-
cifer with his feet towards them; and so taking
their departure, ascended a gloomy vault, till
at a distance, through an opening above their
heads, they beheld the loveliness of the stars.*
I
((
*At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absur-
dity, sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossi-
ble for any reflecting heart to avoid asking, Cui bono?
What is the good of it to the poor wretches, if we are to
suppose it true? and what to the world-except, indeed,
as a poetic study and a warning against degrading no-
tions of God-if we are to take it simply as a fiction?
Theology, disdaining both questions, has an answer con-
fessedly incomprehensible. Humanity replies: As-
sume not premises for which you have worse than no
proofs.

X
x
II.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
ARGUMENT.
PU
URGATORY, in the system of Dante, is a mountain
at the Antipodes, on the top of which is the Terres-
trial Paradise, once the seat of Adam and Eve. It
forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and pos-
sesses a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two excep-
tions of redeemed Pagans, is occupied by Excomunicated
Penitents and by Delayers of Penitence, all of whom
are compelled to lose time before their atonement com-
mences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is
divided into circles or plains, in which are expiated the
Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet ascends from circle to circle
with Virgil and Statius, and is met in a forest on the top
by the spirit of Beatrice, who transports him to Heaven.


THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
W
HEN the pilgrims emerged from the open-
ing through which they beheld the stars,
they found themselves in a scene which en-
chanted them with hope and joy. It was dawn:
a sweet pure air came on their faces; and they
beheld a sky of the loveliest oriental sapphire,
whose color seemed to pervade the whole serene
hollow from earth to heaven. The beautiful
planet which encourages loving thoughts made
all the orient laugh, obscuring by its very radi-
ance the stars in its train; and among those
which were still lingering and sparkling in the
southern horizon, Dante saw four in the shape
of a cross, never beheld by man since they glad-
dened the eyes of our first parents. Heaven
seemed to rejoice in their possession. O wid-
owed northern pole ! bereaved art thou, indeed,
since thou canst not gaze on them !"*
*
(C Dolce color d' oriental zaffiro
Che s' accoglieva nel sereno aspetto
De l' aer puro infino al primo giro,
158
Dante Alighieri
The poet turned to look at the north where he
had been accustomed to see stars that no longer
appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man,
who struck his beholder with a veneration like
that of a son for his father. He had grey hairs,
and a long beard which parted in two down his
bosom; and the four southern stars beamed on
his face with such lustre, that his aspect was as
radiant as if he had stood in the sun.
"Who are ye?" said the old man, "that have
escaped from the dreadful prison-house? Can
the laws of the abyss be violated? Or has
"A gli occhi miei ricominciò diletto,
Tosto ch' io usci' fuor de l' aura morta
Che m' avea contristati gli occhi e 'l petto.
"Lo bel pianeta, ch' ad amar conforta,
Faceva tutto rider l' oriente,
Velando i Pesci, ch' erano in sua scorta.
(C Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mento
All' altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
Non viste mai, fuor ch' a la prima gente ;
"Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiammelle.
O settentrional vedovo sito,
Poi che privato sei di mirar quelle !"
The sweetest oriental sapphire blue,
Which the whole air in its pure bosom had,
Greeted mine eyes, as far as the heavens withdrew;
So that again they felt assured and glad,
Soon as they issued forth from the dead air,
Where every sight and thought had made them sad.
The beauteous star, which lets no love despair
Made all the orient laugh with loveliness,
Veiling the Fish that glimmered in its hair.
I turned me to the right to gaze and bless,
And saw four more, never of living wight
Beheld, since Adam brought us our distress;
The Journey through Purgatory 159
Heaven changed its mind, that thus ye are al-
lowed to come from the regions of condemna-
tion into mine?"
It was the spirit of Cato of Utica, the warder
of the ascent of purgatory.
The Roman poet explained to his countryman
who they were, and how Dante was under heav-
enly protection; and then he prayed leave of
passage of him by the love he bore to the chaste
eyes of his Marcia, who sent him a message
Heaven seemed rejoicing in their happy light.
O widowed northern pole, bereaved indeed,
Since thou hast had no power to see that sight!
Readers who may have gone thus far with the "Italian
Pilgrim's Progress," will allow me to congratulate them
on arriving at this lovely scene, one of the most admired
in the poem.
This is one of the passages which make the religious
admirers of Dante inclined to pronounce him divinely
inspired; for how could he otherwise have seen stars,
they ask us, which were not discovered till after his
time, and which compose the constellation of the Cross?
But other commentators are of opinion, that the Cross,
though not so named till subsequently (and Dante, we
see, gives no prophetic hint about the name) had been
seen probably by stray navigators. An Arabian globe is
even mentioned by M. Artaud (see Cary), in which the
Southern Cross is set down. Mr. Cary, in his note on the
passage, refers to Seneca's prediction of the discovery of
America; most likely suggested by similar information.
"But whatever," he adds, "may be thought of this, it is
certain that the four stars are here symbolical of the four
cardinal virtues " ; and he refers to canto xxxi., where
those virtues are retrospectively associated with these
stars. The symbol, however, is not necessary. Dante
was a very curious inquirer on all subjects, and evidently
acquainted with ships and seamen as well as geography;
and his imagination would eagerly have seized a magnifi-
cent novelty like this, and used it the first opportunity.
Columbus' discovery, as the reader will see, was antici-
pated by Pulci.
(
C
(
(
{
C
{
C
،
C
(
1
160
Dante Alighieri
from the Pagan circle, hoping that he would
still own her.
Cato replied, that although he was so fond of
Marcia while on earth that he could deny her
nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new
laws, to have any affection for her, now that
she dwelt beyond the evil river; but as the pil-
grim, his companion, was under heavenly pro-
tection, he would of course do what he desired.*
He then desired him to gird his companion with
one of the simplest and completest rushes he
would see by the water's side, and to wash the
stain of the lower world out of his face, and so
take their journey up the mountain before them,
by a path which the rising sun would disclose.
And with these words he disappeared. †
The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of
one who thinks every step in vain till he finds
the path he has lost. The full dawn by this
* Generous and disinterested!-Cato, the republican
enemy of Cæsar, and committer of suicide, is not luckily
chosen for his present office by the poet, who has put
Brutus into the devil's mouth in spite of his agreeing
with Cato, and the suicide Piero delle Vigne into hell in
spite of his virtues. But Dante thought Cato's austere
manners like his own.
†The girding with the rush (giunco schietto) is sup-
posed by the commentators to be an injunction of sim-
plicity and patience. Perhaps it is to enjoin sincerity;
especially as the region of expiation has now been en-
tered, and sincerity is the first step to repentance. It
will be recollected that Dante's former girdle, the cord
of the Franciscan friars, has been left in the hands of
Fraud,
Maou
The Journey through Purgatory 161
time had arisen, and they saw the trembling of
the sea in the distance.* Virgil then dipped his
hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun
had least affected it, and with the moisture
bathed the face of Dante, who held it out to
him, suffused with tears; † and then they went
on till they came to a solitary shore, whence no
voyager had ever returned, and there the loins
of the Florentine were girt with the rush.
On this shore they were standing in doubt
how to proceed,-moving onward, as it were, in
mind, while yet their feet were staying,-when
they beheld a light over the water at a distance,
rayless at first as the planet Mars when he looks
redly out of the horizon through a fog, but
speedily grows brighter and brighter with
amazing swiftness. Dante had but turned for
an instant to ask his guide what it was, when,
**
"L'alba vinceva l' ora mattutina
Che fuggia 'nnanzi, sì che di lontano
Conobbi il tremolar de la marina.”
The lingering shadows now began to flee
Before the whitening dawn, so that mine eyes
Discerned far off the trembling of the sea.
"Conobbi il tremolar de la marina"
is a beautiful verse, both for the picture and the sound.
This evidence of humility and gratitude on the part
of Dante would be very affecting, if we could forget all
the pride and passion he has been showing elsewhere,
and the torments in which he has left his fellow-crea-
tures. With these recollections upon us, it looks like an
overweening piece of self-congratulation at other peo-
ple's expense.
Dor M
162
Dante Alighieri
on looking again, it had grown far brighter.
Two splendid phenomena, he knew not what,
then developed themselves on either side;
and, by degrees, another below it. The two
splendors quickly turned out to be wings; and
Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in
silence, cried out, "Down, down,-on thy knees!
It is God's angel. Clasp thine hands. Now thou
shalt behold operancy indeed. Lo, how he needs
neither sail nor oar, coming all this way with
nothing but his wings! Lo, how he holds them
aloft, using the air with them at his will, and
knowing they can never be weary."
The "divine bird" grew brighter and brighter
as he came, so that the eye at last could not
sustain the lustre ; and Dante turned his to the
ground. A boat then rushed to the shore
which the angel had brought with him, so light
that it drew not a drop of water. The celestial
pilot stood at the helm, with bliss written in his
face; and a hundred spirits were seen within
the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the
Psalm beginning "When Israel came out of
Egypt." At the close of the Psalm, the angel
blessed them with the sign of the cross, and
they all leaped to shore; upon which he turned
round, and departed as swiftly as he came.
The new-comers, after gazing about them for
awhile, in the manner or those who are as-
*
The Journey through Purgatory 163
tonished to see new sights, inquired of Virgil
and his companion the best way to the moun-
tain. Virgil explained who they were; and the
spirits, pale with astonishment at beholding
in Dante a living and breathing man, crowded
about him, in spite of their anxiety to shorten
the period of their trials. One of them came
darting out of the press to embrace him, in a
manner so affectionate as to move the poet to
return his warmth; but his arms again and
again found themselves crossed on his own
bosom, having encircled nothing. The shadow,
smiling at the astonishment in the other's face,
drew back; and Dante hastened as much for-
ward to show his zeal in the greeting, when the
spirit in a sweet voice recommended him to de-
sist. The Florentine then knew who it was,
Casella, a musician, to whom he had been much
attached. After mutual explanations as to their
meeting, Dante requested his friend, if no ordi-
nance opposed it, to refresh his spirit awhile
with one of the tender airs that used to charm
away all his troubles on earth. Casella imme-
diately began one of his friend's own produc-
tions, commencing with the words,
"Love, that delights to talk unto my soul
Of all the wonders of my lady's nature."
And he sang it so beautifully, that the sweet-
ness rang within the poet's heart while record-
164
Dante Alighieri
ing the circumstance. The other spirits lis-
tened with such attention, that they seemed to
have forgotten the very purpose of their com-
ing; when suddenly the voice of Cato was
heard, sternly rebuking their delay; and the
whole party speeded in trepidation towards the
mountain.*
none.
The two pilgrims, who had at first hastened
with the others, in a little while slackened
their steps; and Dante fo. ad that his body pro-
jected a shadow, while the form of Virgil had
When arrived at the foot of the moun-
tain, they were joined by a second party of
spirits, of whom Virgil inquired the way up it.
One of the spirits, of a noble aspect, but with a
gaping wound in his forehead, stepped forth,
and asked Dante if he remembered him. The
poet humbly answering in the negative, the
stranger disclosed a second wound, that was in
*“Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona
De la mia donna disiosamente,
>>
is the beginning of the ode sung by Dante's friend. The
incident is beautifully introduced; and Casella's being
made to select a production from the pen of the man
who asks him to sing, very delicately implies a graceful.
cordiality in the musician's character.
Milton alludes to the passage in his sonnet to Henry
Lawes,
<<
'Thou honor'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
To honor thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,
That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story.
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.”
The Journey through Purgatory 165
his bosom; and then, with a smile, announced
himself as Manfredi, king of Naples, who was
slain in battle against Charles of Anjou, and
died excommunicated. Manfredi gave Dante a
message to his daughter Costanza, Queen of Ar-
ragon, begging her to shorten the consequences
of the excommunication by her prayers; since
he, like the rest of the party with him, though
repenting of his contumacy against the church,
would have to wander on the outskirts of pur-
gatory three times as long as the presumption
had lasted, unless relieved by such petitions
from the living.*
Dante went on, with his thoughts so full of
this request, that he did not perceive he had ar-
rived at the path which Virgil asked for, till the
wandering spirits called out to them to say so.
The pilgrims then, with great difficulty, began
to ascend through an extremely narrow pas-
sage; and Virgil, after explaining to Dante how
it was that in this antipodal region his eastward
* Manfredi was the natural son of the Emperor Frede-
rick the Second. "He was lively and agreeable in his
manners," observes Mr. Cary, "and delighted in poetry,
music, and dancing. But he was luxurious and ambi-
tious, void of religion, and in his philosophy an epicu-
rean."" Translation of Dante," Smith's edition, p. 77.
Thus King Manfredi ought to have been in a red-hot
tomb, roasting forever with Epicurus himself, and with
the father of the poet's beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante;
but he was the son of an emperor, and a foe to the house
of Anjou; so Dante gives him a passport to heaven.
There is no ground whatever for the repentance as-
sumed in the text.
166
Dante Alighieri
face beheld the sun in the north instead of the
south, was encouraging him to proceed man-
fully in the hope of finding the path easier by
degrees, and of reposing at the end of it, when
they heard a voice observing, that they would
most likely find it expedient to repose a little
The pilgrims looked about them, and
observed close at hand a crag of a rock, in the
shade of which some spirits were standing, as
men stand idly at noon. Another was sitting
down, as if tired out, with his arms about his
knees, and his face bent down between them.*
sooner.
<< 'Dearest master!" exclaimed Dante to his
guide, "what thinkest thou of a croucher like
this, for manful journeying? Verily he seems
to have been twin-born with Idleness herself.”
The croucher, lifting up his eyes at these
words, looked hard at Dante, and said: "Since
thou art so stout, push on."
Dante then saw it was Belacqua, a pleasant
acquaintance of his, famous for his indolence.
"That was
a good lesson," said Belacqua,
"that was given thee just now in astronomy."
The poet could not help smiling at the manner
in which his acquaintance uttered these words,
it was so like his ways of old. Belacqua pre-
tended, even in another world, that it was of no
* The unexpected bit of comedy here ensuing is very
remarkable and pleasant. Belacqua, according to an
old commentator, was a musician.
The Journey through Purgatory 167
use to make haste, since the angel had prohib-
ited his going higher up the mountain. He
and his companions had to walk round the foot
of it as many years as they had delayed repent-
ing; unless, as in the case of Manfredi, their time
was shortened by the prayers of good people.
A little further on, the pilgrims encountered
the spirits of such Delayers of Penitence as,
having died violent deaths, repented at the last
moment. One of them, Buonconte da Monte-
feltro, who died in battle, and whose body could
not be found, described how the devil, having
been hindered from seizing him by the shedding
of a single tear, had raised in his fury a tremen-
dous tempest, which sent the body down the
river Arno, and buried it in the mud.*
Another spirit, a female, said to Dante: "Ah!
when thou returnest to earth, aud shalt have
rested from thy long journey, remember me,—
Pia. Siena gave me life; the Marshes took it
from me. This he knows who put on my
finger the wedding-ring."†
* Buonconte was the son of that Guido da Montefeltro,
whose soul we have seen carried off from St. Francis hy
a devil, for having violated the conditions of penitence.
It is curious that both father and son should have been
contested for in this manner.
This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all
brief stories :
"Deh quando tu sarai tornato al mondo,
E riposato de la lunga via,
Seguitò '1 terzo spirito al secondo,
168
Dante Alighieri
The majority of this party were so importunate
with the Florentine to procure them the prayers
of their friends, that he had as much difficulty
"Ricorditi di me che son la Pia :
Siena mi fè; disfecemi Maremma ;
Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria
((
Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma.”
Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth
(Said then a female soul), remember me-
Pia: Siena was my place of birth,
The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he
Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring.
"Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work en-
titled "De l'Amour," "obtained in marriage the hand
of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the Ptolomei, the richest
and most noble family of Siena. Her beauty, which was
the admiration of all Tuscany, gave rise to a jealousy in
the breast of her husband, that, envenomed by wrong
reports and suspicions continually reviving, led to a
frightful catastrophe. It is not easy to determine at this
day if his wife was altogether innocent; but Dante has
represented her as such. Her husband carried her with
him into the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as
now, for the pestiferous effects of the air. Never would
he tell his wife the reason of her banishment into so
dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to pronounce
either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone,
in a deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins
on the sea-shore; he never broke his disdainful silence,
never replied to the questions of his youthful bride, never
listered to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved by her,
for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapors of this
unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing fea-
tures the most beautiful, they say, that in that age had
appeared upon earth. In a few months she died. Some
chroniclers of these remote times report that Nello em-
ployed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the
marshes in some horrible manner; but the mode of her
death remained a mystery, even to her contemporaries.
Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest of his days in
a silence which was never broken."-Hazlitt's "Journey
Through France and Italy," p. 315.
The Journey through Purgatory 169
to get away as a winner at dice has to free him-
self from the mercenary congratulations of the
bystanders. On resuming their way, Dante
quoted to Virgil a passage in the Æneid, decry-
ing the utility of prayer, and begged him to ex-
plain how it was to be reconciled with what
they had just heard. Virgil advised him to wait
for the explanation till he saw Beatrice, whom,
he now said, he should meet at the top of the
mountain. Dante, at this information, ex-
pressed a desire to hasten their progress; and
Virgil, seeing a spirit looking towards them as
they advanced, requested him to acquaint them
with the shortest road.
The spirit, maintaining a lofty and reserved
aspect, was as silent as if he had not heard the
request; intimating by his manner that they
might as well proceed without repeating it, and
eyeing them like a lion on the watch. Virgil,
however, went up to him, and gently urged it ;
but the only reply was a question as to who
they were and of what country. The Latin
poet, beginning to answer him, had scarcely
mentioned the word 'Mantua," when the
stranger went as eagerly up to his interrogator
as the latter had done to him, and said: "Man-
tua! My own country! My name is Sordello."
And the compatriots embraced.
(C
O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land
170
Dante Alighieri
without affections, without principle, without
faith in any one good thing! here was a man
who could not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-
citizen's voice without feeling his heart gush
towards him, and there are no people now in
any one of thy towns that do not hate and tor-
ment one another.
Sordello, in another tone, now exclaimed:
"But who are ye?"
Virgil disclosed himself, and Sordello fell at
his feet. *
Sordello now undertook to accompany the
great Roman poet and his friend to a certain
distance on their ascent towards the penal
quarters of the mountain; but as evening was
drawing nigh, and the ascent could not be made
properly in the dark, he proposed that they
should await the dawning of the next day in a
recess that overlooked a flowery hollow. The
hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled
with flowers that surpassed the exquisitest dyes,
and green with a grass brighter than emeralds
newly broken. † There rose from it also a fra-
grance of a thousand different kinds of sweet-
* Sordello was a famous Provençal poet, with whose
writings the world has but lately been made acquainted
through the researches of M. Raynouard, in his " Choix
des Poésies des Troubadours," etc.
+ "Fresco smeraldo in l' ora che si fiacca."
An exquisite image of newness and brilliancy.
The Journey through Purgatory 171
ness, all mingled into one that was new aud
indescribable; and with the fragrance there
ascended the chant of the prayer beginning :
"Hail, Queen of Heaven,"* which was sung by
a multitude of souls that appeared sitting on the
flowery sward.
Virgil pointed them out. They were peni-
tent delayers of penitence, of sovereign rank.
Among them, however, were spirits who sat
mute; one of whom was the Emperor Rodolph,
who ought to have attended better to Italy, the
garden of the empire; and another, Ottocar,
King of Bohemia, his enemy, who now comforted
him; and another, with a small nose,† Philip
the Third of France, who died a fugitive, shed-
ding the leaves of the lily; he sat beating his
breast; and with him was Henry the Third of
Navarre, sighing with his cheek on his hand.
One was the father, and one the father-in-law
of Philip the Handsome, the bane of France;
and it was on account of his unworthiness they
grieved.
But among the singers Virgil pointed out the
strong-limbed King of Arragon, Pedro; and
*"Salve, Regina," the beginning of a Roman Catholic
chant to the Virgin.
"With nose deprest," says Mr. Cary. But Dante
says, literally, "small nose, "-nasetto. So, further on,
he says, "masculine nose,"-maschio naso. He meant to
imply the greater or less determination of character,
which the size of that feature is supposed to indicate.
172
Dante Alighieri
Charles, King of Naples, with his masculine
nose (these two were singing together); and
Henry the Third of England, the king of the
simple life, sitting by himself; * and below
these, but with his eyes in heaven, Guglielmo,
Marquis of Montferrat.
It was now the hour when men at sea think
longingly of home, and feel their hearts melt
within them to remember the day on which
they bade adieu to beloved friends; and now,
too, was the hour when the pilgrim, new to his
journey, is thrilled with the like tenderness,
when he hears the vesper-bell in the distance,
which seems to mourn for the expiring day.t
*An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign
for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect.
But Henry was a devout servant of the church.
† "Era già l' ora che volge 'l desio
A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore
Lo dì ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;
"E che lo nuovo peregrin d' amore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore.”
A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, in-
deed, worthy to be the voice of Evening herself.
'T was now the hour, when love of home melts through
Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
Thrills if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
Every body knows the line in Gray's "Elegy," not un-
worthily echoed from Dante's-
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
Nothing can equal, however, the tone in the Italian origi-
nal,-the
The Journey through Purgatory 173
At this hour of the coming darkness, Dante be-
held one of the spirits in the flowery hollow
arise, and after giving a signal to the others to
do as he did, stretch forth both hands, palm to
palm, towards the East, and with softest emo-
tion commence the hymn beginning,
"Thee before the closing light." *
Upon which all the rest devoutly and softly
followed him, keeping their eyes fixed on the
heavens. At the end of it they remained, with
pale countenances, in an attitude of humble ex-
pectation; and Dante saw the angels issue from
the quarter to which they looked, and descend
towards them with flaming swords in their
hands, broken short of the point. Their wings
were as green as the leaves in spring; and they
wore garments equally green, which the fan-
ning of the wings kept in a state of streaming
fluctuation behind them as they came. One of
them took his stand on a part of the hill just
over where the pilgrims stood, and the other on
a hill opposite, so that the party in the valley
were between them. Dante could discern the
"Pàia '1 giòrno piànger che si muòre."
Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been supe-
rior enough to his personal griefs to write a whole book
full of such beauties, and so have left us a work truly to
be called Divine?
*Te lucis ante terminum " ;-a hymn sung at even-
ing service.
174
Dante Alighieri
hair on their heads, notwithstanding its bright-
ness; but their faces were so dazzling as to be
undistinguishable.
"They come from Mary's bosom," whispered
Sordello, "to protect the valley from the de-
signs of our enemy yonder,—the Serpent.”
Dante looked in trepidation towards the only
undefended side of the valley, and beheld the
Serpent of Eve coming softly among the grass
and flowers, occasionally turning its head, and
licking its polished back. Before he could
take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two
angels had come down like falcons, and at the
whirring of their pinions the serpent fied. The
angels returned as swiftly to their stations.
Aurora was now looking palely over the east-
ern cliff on the other side of the globe, and the
stars of midnight shining over the heads of
Dante and his friends, when they seated them-
selves for rest on the mountain's side. The
Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for
weariness, and was overcome with sleep. In his
sleep he dreamt that a golden eagle flashed down
like lightning upon him, and bore him up to the
region of fire, where the heat was so intense
that it woke him, staring and looking round
about with a pale face. His dream was a shad-
owing of the truth. He had actually come to
another place,-to the entrance of purgatory
The Journey through Purgatory 175
itself. Sordello had been left behind, Virgil
alone remained, looking him cheerfully in the
face. Saint Lucy had come from heaven, and
shortened the fatigue of his journey by carry-
ing him upwards as he slept, the heathen
poet following them. On arriving where they
stood, the fair saint intimated the entrance of
purgatory to Virgil by a glance thither of her
beautiful eyes, and then vanished as Dante
woke.*
The portal by which purgatory was entered
was embedded in a cliff. It had three steps,
each of a different color; and on the highest of
these there sat, mute and watching, an angel in
ash-colored garments, holding a naked sword,
which glanced with such intolerable brightness
on Dante, whenever he attempted to look, that
he gave up the endeavor. The angel demanded
who they were, and receiving the right answer,
gently bade them advance.
Dante now saw, that the lowest step was of
marble, so white and clear that he beheld his
face in it. The color of the next was a deadly
* Lucy, Lucia (supposed to be derived from lux, lucis),
is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman
Catholic countries may be said to preside over light, and
who is really invoked in maladies of the eyes. She was
Dante's favorite saint, possible for that reason among
others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
they had been cured. In her spiritual character she rep-
resents the light of grace.
176
Dante Alighieri
black, and it was all rough, scorched, and full
of cracks. The third was of flaming porphyry,
red as a man's blood when it leaps forth under
the lancet.* The angel, whose feet were on the
porphyry, sat on a threshold which appeared to
be rock-diamond. Dante, ascending the steps,
with the encouragement of Virgil, fell at the
angel's feet, and after thrice beating himself on
the breast, humbly asked admittance. The angel,
with the point of his sword, inscribed the first
letter of the word peccatum (sin) seven times
on the petitioner's forehead; then, bidding him
pray with tears for their erasement and be cau-
tious how he looked back, opened the portal
with a silver and a gold key. The hinges
roared, as they turned, like thunder; and the
pilgrims on entering, thought they heard, min-
gling with the sound, a chorus of voices sing-
ing, "We praise thee, O God!" It was like
the chant that mingles with a cathedral organ,
when the words that the choristers utter are at
one moment to be distinguished, and at another
fade away.
The companions continued ascending till they
reached a plain. It stretched as far as the eye
* The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the sec-
ond, horror of it; the third, zeal to amend.
The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the com-
mentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the
learning and judgment requisite to use it.
"Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St.
Ambrose and St. Augustine.
The Journey through Purgatory 177
could see, and was as lonely as roads across
deserts.
This was the first flat, or table-land, of the as-
cending gradations of purgatory, and the place
of trial for the souls of the Proud. It was bor-
dered with a mound, or natural wall, of white
marble, sculptured all over with stories of hu-
mility. Dante beheld among them the Annun-
ciation, represented with so much life, that the
sweet action of the angel seemed to be uttering
the very word, "Hail!" and the submissive
spirit of the Virgin to be no less impressed,
like very wax, in her demeanor. The next
story was that of David dancing and harping
before the ark-an action in which he seemed
both less and greater than a king. Michael was
looking out upon him from a window, like a
lady full of scorn and sorrow. Next to the story
of David was that of the Emperor Trajan, when
he did a thing so glorious, as moved St. Gregory
to gain the greatest of all his conquests-the de-
livering of the emperor's soul from hell.
A widow, in tears and mourning, was laying
hold of his bridle as he rode amidst his court
with a noise of horses and horsemen, while the
Roman eagles floated in gold over his head.
The miserable creature spoke out loudly among
them all, crying for vengeance on the murderers
of her sons. The emperor seemed to say, "Wait
till I return."
178
Dante Alighieri
But she, in the hastiness of her misery, said,
Suppose thou returnest not?"
"Then my successor will attend to thee," re-
plied the emperor.
<<
"And what hast thou to do with the duties of
another man," cried she, "if thou attendest not
to thine own?"
"Now be of good comfort," concluded Tra-
jan, "for verily my duty shall be done before I
go; justice wills it, and pity arrests me.'
Dante was proceeding to delight himself
further with these sculptures, when Virgil whis-
pered him to look round and see what was
coming. He did so, and beheld strange figures
advancing, the nature of which he could not
at first make out, for they seemed neither hu-
man, nor aught else which he could call to
mind. They were souls of the proud, bent
double under enormous burdens.
"O proud, miserable, woe-begone Chris-
tians!" exclaims the poet; "ye who, in the
shortness of your sight, see no reason for ad-
vancing in the right path! Know ye not that
we are worms, born to compose the angelic but-
terfly, provided we throw off the husks that im-
pede our flight?”*
The souls came slowly on, each bending down
*"Non v' accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
Natia formar l' angelica farfalla,
Che vola a giustizia senzi schermi ?"
The Journey through Purgatory 179
in proportion to his burden. They looked like
the crouching figures in architecture that are
used to support roofs or balconies, and that
excite piteous fancies in the beholders. The
one that appeared to have the most patience,
yet seemed as if he said: "I can endure no
further."
The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish,
raised their voices in a paraphrase on the Lord's
Prayer, which they concluded with humbly
stating, that they repeated the clause against
temptation, not for themselves, but for those
who were yet living.
Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance,
requested them to show the best way of going
up to the next circle. Who it was that answered
him could not be discerned, on account of their
all being so bent down; but a voice gave them the
required direction; the speaker adding, that he
wished he could raise his eyes, so as to see the liv-
ing creature that stood near him. He said that
his name was Omberto-that he came of the
great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco—and that
his countrymen, the Sienese, murdered him
on account of his arrogance.
Dante had bent down his own head to listen,
and in so doing he was recognized by one of
Know you not, we are worms
Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms?
180
Dante Alighieri
the sufferers, who, eying him as well as he
could, addressed him by name. The poet re-
plied by exclaiming: "Art thou not Oderisi,
the glory of Agubbio, the master of the art of
illumination?"
"Ah!" said Oderisi, "Franco of Bologna has
all the glory now. His colors make the pages
of books laugh with beauty, compared with
what mine do. I could not have owned it
while on earth, for the sin which has brought
me hither; but so it is; and so will it ever be,
let a man's fame be never so green and flour-
ishing, unless he can secure a dull age to come
after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept
the field against all comers, and now the cry is
'Gioto.' Thus, in song, a new Guido has de-
prived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is
born who shall drive both out of the nest.†
*"Più ridon le carte
Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese :
L'onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte."
<<
+ The new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante
(now dead); the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose
writings Dante had an esteem: and the poet, who is to
chase them from the nest," caccerà di nido (as the not
very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the
statement becoming? It was certainly not necessary.
Dante, notwithstanding his friendship with Guido, ap-
pears to have had a grudge against both Cavalcanti,
probably for some scorn they had shown to his super-
stition; for they could be proud of themselves; and
the son has the reputation of scepticism, as well
as the father. See the Decameron," Giorn. vi.
Nov. 9.
((
((
The Journey through Purgatory 181
Fame is but a wind that changes about from all
quarters. What does glory amount to at best,
that a man should prefer living and growing
old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and
his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thou-
sand years? A thousand years!-the twinkling
of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before
me; his name resounded once over all our Tus-
cany, and now it is scarcely whispered in his
native place. He was lord there at the time
that your once proud but now loathsome Flor-
ence had such a lesson given to its frenzy at the
battle of Arbia."
"And what is his name?" inquired Dante.
Salvani," returned the limuer. "He is
here, because he had the presumption to
think that he could hold Siena in the hol-
low of his hand. Fifty years has he paced
in this manner. Such is the punishment for
audacity."
"But why is he here at all," said Dante,
"and not in the outer region, among the de-
layers of repentance?"
<<
>>
'Because," exclaimed the other, "in the
height of his ascendency he did not disdain
to stand in the public place in Siena, and,
trembling in every vein, beg money from the
people to ransom a friend from captivity. Do
I appear to thee to speak with mysterious sig-
182
Dante Alighieri
nificance? Thy countrymen shall too soon help
thee to understand me. "*
Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi,
and bade him notice the ground on which they
were treading. It was pavement, wrought all
over with figures, like sculptured tombstones.
There was Lucifer among them, struck flaming
down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to
the earth with the thunderbolt, and, with other
giants, amazing the gods with his hugeness;
and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot
of Babel; and Niobe, with her despairing eyes,
turned into stone amidst her children; and
Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and
Arachne, now half spider, at fault on her own
broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his inso-
lence, flying in terror in his chariot; and Alc-
mæon, who made his mother pay with her life
for the ornament she received to betray his
father; and Sennacherib, left dead by his son
in the temple; and the head of Cyrus, thrown
by the motherless woman into the goblet of
blood, that it might swill what it had thirsted
>>
*This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein,"
from the awful necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with
some other commentators, thinks that the "trembling
implies fear of being refused. But does it not rather
mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case
it certainly does; for it was in consideration of the pang
to his pride, that the good deed rescued him from worse
punishment.
The Journey through Purgatory 183
for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his Assy-
rians flying at his death; and Troy, all become
cinders and hollow places. Oh! what a fall
from pride was there! Now, maintain the loft-
iness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk
with proud steps, bending not your eyes on the
dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of your
ways.
*
(C
Behold," said Virgil, "there is an angel
coming."
The angel came on, clad in white, with a face
that sent trembling beams before it, like the
morning star. He showed the pilgrims the way
up to the second circle; and then, beating his
wings against the forehead of Dante, on which
the seven initials of sin were written, told him
he should go safely, and disappeared.
On reaching the new circle, Dante instead of
the fierce wailings that used to meet him at
every turn in hell, heard voices singing,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit."† As he went,
* The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mix-
ture of Paganism and the Bible in this passage, espe-
cially the introduction of such fables as Niobe and
Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose it intended
to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not
call to mind the grave authority given to fables in the
poet's treatise on Monarchy, and the whole strange
spirit, at once logical and gratuitous, of the learning of
his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
the reconcilement with absurdity.
+"Beati pauperes spiritu." Blessed are the poor in
spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven "-one of the
"
184
Dante Alighieri
he perceived that he walked lighter, and was
told by Virgil that the angel had freed him
from one of the letters on his forehead. He
put his hand up to make sure, as a man does in
the street when people take notice of something
on his head of which he is not aware; and Vir-
gil smiled.
In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated.
After the pilgrims had proceeded a mile, they
heard the voices of invisible spirits passing
them, uttering sentiments of love and charity;
for it was charity itself that had to punish envy.
The souls of the envious, clad in sack-cloth,
sat leaning for support and humiliation, partly
against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly
on one another's shoulders, after the manner of
beggars that ask alms near places of worship.
Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks
in training, but not so as to hinder them from
shedding tears, which they did in abundance;
and they cried, "Mary, pray for us!—Michael,
Peter, and all the saints, pray for us!"
beautiful passages of the beautiful sermon on the
Mount. How could the great poet read and admire such
passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of
his very love for them, and his impatience to see them
triumph." So said the Inquisition. The evil was con-
tinued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons
they supposed, or from blindness to the indulgence of
their blind passions.
The Journey through Purgatory 185
Dante spoke to them; and one, a female,
lifted up her chin as a blind person does when
expressing consciousness of notice, and said
she was Sapia of Siena, who used to be pleased
at people's misfortunes, and had rejoiced when
her countrymen lost the battle of Colle.
" Sa-
pia was my name," she said, "but sapient I
was not,* for I prayed God to defeat my coun-
trymen; and when he had done so (as he had
willed to do), I raised my bold face to heaven,
and cried out to him, 'Now do thy worst, for I
fear thee not!' I was like the bird in the fa-
ble, who thought the fine day was to last for-
ever. What I should have done in my latter
days to make up for the imperfect amends of
my repentance, I know not, if the holy Piero
Pettignano had not assisted me with his pray-
But who art thou that goest with open
eyes, and breathest in thy talk?"
ers.
"Mine eyes," answered Dante, "may yet
*" Sàvia non fui, avvegna che Sapla
Fosse chiamata."
"
The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English; for
though the Italian name may possibly remind its reader
of sapienza (sapience), there is the difference of a v in
the adjective savia, which is also accented on the first
syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in Eng-
lish, Sophist I find myself, though Sophia is my
name." It is pleasant, however, to see the great satur-
nine poet among the punsters. It appears, from the
commentators, that Sapia was in exile at the time of the
battle, but they do not say for what; probably from
some zeal of faction.
186
Dante Alighieri
have to endure the blindness in this place,
though for no long period. Far more do I
fear the sufferings in the one that I have just
left. I seem to feel the weight already upon
me." *
The Florentine then informed Sapia how he
came thither, which, she said, was a great sign
that God loved him; and she begged his pray-
ers. The conversation excited the curiosity of
two spirits who overheard it; and one of them,
Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the
poet of what country he was. Dante, without
mentioning the name of the river, intimated
that he came from the banks of the Arno; upon
which the other spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked
his friend why the stranger suppressed the
name, as though it was something horrible.
Guido said he well might; for the river,
throughout its course, beheld none but bad
men and persecutors of virtue. First, he said,
* We are here led into Dante's confessions. He owns
to a little envy, but far more pride:
"Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
Ma picciol tempo; che poch'è l'offesa
Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
<<
Troppa è più la paura ond 'è sospesa
L'anima mia del tormento di sotto:
Che già lo 'ncarco di là giù mi
pesa."
The first confession is singularly ingenuous and mod-
est; the second, affecting. It is curious to guess what
sort of persons Dante could have allowed himself to
envy-probably those who were more acceptable to
women.
The Journey through Purgatory 187
it made its petty way by the sties of those bru-
tal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then ar-
rived at the dignity of watering the kennels of
the curs of Arezzo, who excelled more in bark-
ing than in biting; then, growing unluckier as
it grew larger, like the cursed and miserable
ditch that it was, it found in Florence the dogs
become wolves; and finally, ere it went into
the sea, it passed the den of those foxes, the
Pisans, who were full of such cunning that they
held traps in contempt.
"It will be well," continued Guido, "for
this man to remember what he hears"; and
then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and
confessing to Dante his sin of envy, which used
to make him pale when any one looked happy,
he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that
house of Calboli which now inherits not a spark
of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in the house
of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Ro-
magnia? Where is the good Lizio?-where
Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagn-
ese have all become bastards. A mechanic
founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin di
Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Fa-
enza! Wonder not, Tuscan, to see me weep,
when I think of the noble spirits that we have
lived with-of the Guidos of Prata, and the
Ugolins of Azzo—of Federigo Tignoso and his
188
Dante Alighieri
band-of the Traversaros and Anastagios, fami-
lies now ruined-and all the ladies and the
cavaliers, the alternate employments and de-
lights which wrapped us in a round of love
and courtesy, where now there is nothing but
ill-will! O castle of Brettinoro! why dost thou
not fall? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo
done, who will have no more children. Who
would propagate a race of Counties from such
blood as the Castrocaros and the Conios? Is
not the son of Pagani called the demon? and
would it not be better that such a son were
swept out of the family? Nay, let him live to
show to what a pitch of villainy it has arrived.
Ubaldini alone is blessed, for his name is good,
and he is too old to leave a child after him.
Go, Tuscan-go; for I would be left to my
tears."
Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and
had scarcely done so when a tremendous voice
met them, splitting the air like peals of thun-
der, and crying out: "Whoever finds me will
slay me!" then dashed apart like the thunder-
bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had
scarcely recovered its silence, when a second
crash ensued from a different quarter near
them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly
into one another. "I am Aglauros," it said,
'that was turned into stone." Dante drew
The Journey through Purgatory 189
closer to his guide; and there ensued a dead
silence.*
The sun was now in the west, and the pil-
grims were journeying towards it, when Dante
suddenly felt such a weight of splendor on his
eyes as forced him to screen them with both his
hands. It was an angel coming to show them
the ascent to the next circle, a way that was
less steep than the last. While mounting, they
heard the angel's voice singing behind them,
"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy!" and on his leaving them to proceed
by themselves, the second letter on Dante's
forehead was found to have been effaced by the
splendor.
The poet looked round in wonder on the new
* Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was
turned to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy
his passion for her sister Herse.
The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in
Dante. Truly wonderful and characteristic is the way
in which he has made physical noise and violence ex-
press the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not
to suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he
has passed us, by his thunderous and headlong words.
Dante may well make him invisible, for his words are
things-veritable thunderbolts.
Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps.
The voice of Aglauros is thunder-claps clashing into one
another-broken thunder. This is exceedingly fine also,
and wonderful as a variation upon that awful music
but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness.
If it were not, however, for the second thunder, we
should not have had the two silences; for I doubt
whether they are not better even than one. At all events
the final silence is tremendous.
190
Dante Alighieri
circle, where the sin of Anger was expiated, and
beheld, as in a dream, three successive specta-
cles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The
first was that of a crowded temple, on the
threshold of which a female said to her son, in
the sweet manner of a mother, "Son, why hast
thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father
and I have sought thee sorrowing
>> * and
here she became silent, and the vision ended.
The next was the lord of Athens, Pisistratus,
calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to
put to death her daughter's lover, who, in a
transport, had embraced her in public. “If we
are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, "with
those that love us, what is to be done with such
as hate?" The last spectacle was that of a fu-
rious multitude shouting and stoning to death
a youth who, as he fell to the ground, still kept
his face towards heaven, making his eyes the
gates through which his soul reached it, and
imploring forgiveness for his murderers.†
The visions passed away, leaving the poet
staggering as if but half awake. They were
succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through
which he followed his leader with the caution
of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly telling him
not to quit him a moment. Here they heard
voices praying in unison for pardon to the
* St. Luke, ii., 48.
+ The stoning of Stephen.
•
>
The Journey through Purgatory 191
"Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of
the world." They were the spirits of the angry.
Dante conversed with one of them on free-will
and necessity; and after quitting him and issu-
ing by degrees from the cloud, beheld illustra-
tive visions of anger; such as the impious
mother, who was changed into the bird that
most delights in singing; Haman, retaining
his look of spite and rage on the cross; and La-
vinia, mourning for her mother, who slew her-
self for rage at the death of Turnus.*
These visions were broken off by a great light,
as sleep is broken; and Dante heard a voice out
of it saying: "The ascent is here." He then,
as Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle,
felt an air on his face, as if caused by the fanning
of wings, accompanied by the utterance of the
words: "Blessed are the peace-makers"; and
his forehead was lightened of the third letter.†
* These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced,
and the instances not always pointed. A murderess, too,
of her son, changed into such a bird as the nightingale,
was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
Dante found it; and I am surprised that he made use of
it, intimate as he must have been with the less inconsis-
tent story of her namesake, Philomela, in the "Meta-
morphosis."
† So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards;
and I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied
the similar requisite intimations at each successive step
in Purgatory, the poet seemingly having forgotten to do
so. It is necessary to what he implied in the outset. The
whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
wanted his final revision.
192
Dante Aligbiert
In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarm-
ness, or defect of zeal for good. The sufferers
came speeding and weeping round the moun-
tain, making amends for the old indifference by
the haste and fire of the new love that was in
them. "Blessed Mary made haste,” cried one,
"to salute Elizabeth." "And Cæsar," cried
another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida."* "And
the disobedient among the Israelites," cried
others, “died before they reached the promised
land." “And the tired among the Trojans pre-
ferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium." It
was now midnight, and Dante slept and had a
dream.
His dream was of a woman who came to him,
having a tongue that tried ineffectually to speak,
squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pal-
lid face. Dante looked earnestly at her, and
his look acted upon her like sunshine upon
cold. Her tongue was loosened, her feet made
straight, she stood upright, her paleness be-
came a lovely rose-color, and she warbled so
beautifully that the poet could not have refused
to listen had he wished it.
* What an instance to put among those of haste to
do good! But the fame and accomplishments of Cæsar
and his being at the head of our Ghibelline's beloved
emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted impar-
tiality.
The Journey through Purgatory 193
"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made
the mariners turu pale for pleasure in the sea.
I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song;
and he that harbors with me once, rarely departs
ever, so well I pay him for what he abandons."
Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of
holy and earnest countenance came up to shame
her. "O Virgil!" she cried angrily, "who
is this?" Virgil approached, with his eyes
fixed on the lady; and the lady tore away the
garments of the woman, and showed her to be
a creature so loathly, that the sleeper awoke
with the horror. *
Virgil said: "I have called thee three times
to no purpose. Let us move, and find the place
at which we are to go higher."
It was broad day, with a sun that came warm
on the shoulders; and Dante was proceeding
with his companion, when the softest voice
they ever heard directed them where to ascend,
and they found an angel with them, who pointed
his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped
them against the pilgrims, taking away the
fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel,
"for they shall be comforted."
((
*A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the
close of it in the original has an intensity of the revolt-
ing, which outrages the last recesses of feeling, and dis-
gusts us with the denouncer,
194
Dante Alighieri
The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle,
and beheld the expiators of Avarice grovelling
on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they
could for the tears that choked them: "My
soul hath cleaved to the dust." Dante spoke
to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the
Fifth. The poet fell on his knees; but Adrian
bade him rise and err not. "I am no longer,"
said he, "spouse of the Church, here, but fel-
low-servant with thee and with all others. Go
thy ways, and delay not the time of my deliver-
}}
ance.
The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a
spirit exclaim, in the struggling tones of a wo-
man in child-bed: "O blessed Virgin! That
was a poor roof thou hadst when thou wast de-
livered of thy sacred burden. O good Fabricius!
virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not
vice with riches." And then it told the story of
Nicholas, who, hearing that a father was about
to sacrifice the honor of his three daughters for
want of money, threw bags of it in at his win-
dow, containing portions for them all.
Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know
who he was; and the spirit said it would tell
him, not for the sake of help, for which it
looked elsewhere, but because of the shining
grace that was in his questioner, though yet
alive.
The Journey through Purgatory 195
"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil
plant which overshadows all Christendom to
such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor
of the Philips and Louises of France, offspring
of a butcher of Paris, when the old race of kings
was sworn out.* We began by seizing the gov-
ernment in Paris, then plundered in Provence;
then, to make amends, laid hold of Poitou,
Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make
amends, put Conradin to death and seized
Naples; then, always to make amends, gave
Saint Aquinas his dismissal to heaven by
poison. I see the time at hand when a de-
scendant of mine will be called into Italy, and
* The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquizing about the Virgin
in the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous
an association of ideas. It was for calling this prince
the son of a butcher that Francis the First prohibited
the admission of Dante's poem into his dominions. Mr.
Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may
be simply a metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness
of Capet's father. But when we find the man called, not
the butcher, or that butcher, or butcher in reference to
his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
Paris" (un beccaio di Parigi), and when this designation
is followed up by the allusion to the extinction of the
previous dynasty, the ordinary construction of the words
appears indisputable. Dante seems to have had no
ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless con-
sidered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed,
condescended to feel as such. He met with the notion
somewhere, and chose to believe it, in order to vex the
French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt con-
tradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeat-
edly said that the only true nobility is in the mind. But
his writings (poetical truth excepted) are a heap of con-
tradictions.
196
Dante Alighieri
*
the spear that Judas jousted with shall trans-
fix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money
to a Marquis of Ferrara. Another seizes the
pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again
in the person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the
veil of the temple, solely to seize its money. O
Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance
which even now thou huggest in delight to thy
bosom! t
"Of loving and liberal things," continued
Capet, "we speak while it is light; such as
thou heardest me record, when I addressed
myself to the blessed Virgin. But when night
comes, we take another tone. Then we de-
nounce Pygmalion, ‡ the traitor, the robber,
*Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in
which there is a combat of this kind between Jesus and
his betrayer. I have an impression to the same effect.
"O Signor mio, quando sarò io lieto
A vedar la vendetta che nascosa
Fa dolce l' ira tua nel tuo segreto !"
The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to
another Italian-viz., that the reason why God prohib-
ited revenge to mankind was its being "too delicate a
morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the
thirteenth century, who has been held up as a great
Christian divine! God hugs revenge to his bosom with
delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a poor
grinning Florentine !
A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The al-
lusion is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and
who murdered her husband, the priest Sichæus, for his
riches. The term "parricide " is here applied in its
secondary sense of-the murderer of any one to whom
we owe reverence,
The Journey through Purgatory 197
and the parricide, each the result of his glut-
tonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained
his wish, to the laughter of all time; and the
thief Achan, who still seems frightened at the
wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her hus-
band, whom we accuse over again before the
Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling *; and
Crassus, on whom we call with shouts of derision
to tell us the flavor of his molten gold. Thus
we record our thoughts in the nighttime, now
high, now low, now at greater or less length, as
each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
was thus thou didst hear me recording also by
daytime, though I had no respondent near me.
The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were
eagerly pursuing their journey, when, to the
terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain
of purgatory tremble, as though it were about
to fall in. The island of Delos shook not so
awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought
forth the twin eyes of heaven. A shout then
arose on every side, so enormous, that Virgil
stood nigher to his companion, and bade him
be of good heart. Glory be to God in the
highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
((
* Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly
treated by Raphael,
198
Dante Alighieri
gather the words only from those who were
near him.
It was purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance
of a soul out of its bounds.*
The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were
journeying in amazement onwards; and it
turned out to be that of Statius, who had been
converted to Christianity in the reign of Domi-
tian.† Mutual astonishment led to inquiries
that explained who the other Latin poet was;
and Statius fell at his master's feet.
Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of
Avarice, not for that vice, but for the opposite
one of prodigality.
An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter
from Dante's forehead; and the three poets hav-
ing ascended into the sixth round of the moun-
tain, were journeying on lovingly together,
Dante listening with reverence to the talk of
the two ancients, when they came up to a sweet-
smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream
came tumbling from a rock beside it, and dif-
fusing itself through the branches. The Latin
poets went up to the tree, and were met by a
voice which said: "Be chary of the fruit. Mary
* A grand and beautiful fiction.
† Readers need hardly be told that there is no founda-
tion for this fancy, except in the invention of the
churchmen. Dante, in another passage, not necessary
to give, confounds the poet Statius who was from Naples,
with a rhetorician of the same name from Toulouse.
The Journey through Purgatory 199
thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
visitors, when she said: "They have no wine.'
The women of oldest Rome drank water. The
beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns.
thirst made nectar out of the rivulet. The Bap-
tist fed on locusts and wild honey, and became
great as you see him in the Gospel."
Its
The poets went on their way; and Dante was
still listening to the others, when they heard
behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
weeping, which produced an effect at once sad
and delightful. It was the psalm, “O Lord,
open thou our lips!" and the chanters were ex-
piators of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and
Drinks. They were condemned to circuit the
mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit
and waters of the tree in vain. They soon came
up with the poets-a pallid multitude, with hol-
low eyes, and bones staring through the skin.
The sockets of their eyes looked like rings from
which the gems had dropped.* One of them
*"Parèn l' occhiaje anella senza gemme."
This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the orig-
inal by one of the most fantastical conceits of the time.
The poet says, that the physiognomist, who "reads the
word oмO (homo, man), written in the face of the human
being, might easily have seen the letter m in theirs.”
"Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge o mo,
Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'emme.”
The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose
and temples form the letter M, and the eyes the two o's.
The enthusiast for Roman domination must have been
delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin !
200
Dante Alighieri
knew and accosted Dante, who could not recog-
nize him till he heard him speak. It was Forese
Donati, one of the poet's most intimate connec-
tions. Dante, who had wept over his face when
dead, could as little forbear weeping to see him
thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
expected to find him in the outskirts of the
place, among the delayers of repentance. He
asked his friend how he had so quickly got
higher. Forese said it was owing to the prayers
and tears of his good wife Nelly; and then he
burst into a strain of indignation against the
contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general
depravity of the Florentine women, whom he
described as less modest than those half-naked
savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
"What is to be said of such creatures?" con-
tinued he. "O my dear cousin! I see a day at
hand, when these impudent women shall be for-
bidden from the pulpit to go exposing their
naked bosom. What savages or what infidels
ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what
Heaven has in store for them, their mouths
would be this instant opened wide for howl-
ing.'
"'*
*"Se le svergognate fosser cete
Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
Già per urlare avrian le bocche aperte.'
>>
This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle
Christian John Knox, who, instead of offering his own
"cheek to the smiters," delighted to smite the cheeks of
The Journey through Purgatory 201
Forese then asked Dante to explain to him-
self and his astonished fellow-sufferers how
it was that he stood there, a living body of
flesh and blood, casting a shadow with his
substance.
"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what
sort of a life thou and I led together, the recol-
lection may still grieve thee sorely. He that
walks here before us took me out of that life ;
and through his guidance it is that I have vis-
ited in the body the world of the dead, and am
now traversing the mountain which leads us to
the right path.” *
After some further explanation, Forese pointed
out to his friend, among the expiators of intem-
perance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and
women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness, and
threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on
Sundays. But, it will be said, he looked to consequences.
Yes; and produced the worst himself, both spiritual and
temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer him. However
he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must
take good and bad together, and hope the best in the
end.
Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have
been one of those self-ignorant or self-exasperated de-
nouncers, who
"Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to."
He was a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too
little clothed. The defacing of "God's image" in his
own person he considered nothing.
*The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of
Dante's having availed himself of the license of the
202
Dante Alighieri
Pope Martin the Fourth, with a face made
sharper than the rest for the eels which he used
to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila,
grinding his teeth on air; and Archbishop Bon-
iface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on his flock;
and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time
enough to drink in the other world, and yet was
never satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante eyed
one another with curiosity; and the former
murmured something about a lady of the name
of Gentucca.
"Thou seemest to wish to speak to me," said
Dante.
"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of
my native
place," said Buonaggiunta; "and yet, if thou
time; though, in justice to such candor, we are bound
not to think worse of it than can be helped. The words
in the original are:
(( Se ti riduci a mente
Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
Ancor fia grave il memorar presente.'
")
Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of per-
son) thou wast with me, and what I was with thee, the
recollection may oppress thee still."
His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil
(construed in the literal sense, in which, among other
senses, he has directed us to construe him), may imply,
either that the delight of reading Virgil first made him
think of living in a manner more becoming a man of in-
tellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of
Æneas' descent into hell turned his thoughts to reli-
gious penitence. Be this as it may, his life, though
surely it could at no time have been of any very licen-
tious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
spotless.
The Journey through Purgatory 203
art he whom I take thee to be, there is a dam-
sel there shall make it please thee. Art thou
not author of the poem beginning
(( ( Ladies, that understand the lore of love'? ” *
“I am one,” replied Dante, “who writes as
Love would have him, heeding no manner but
his dictator's, and uttering simply what he sug-
gests."+
“Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned
Buonaggiunta; "and I now see what it was
that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and
myself, from hitting the right natural point.”
And here he ceased speaking, looking like one
contented to have ascertained a truth.‡
* The mention of Gentucca might be thought a com-
pliment to the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice af-
terwards treat his regard for any one else but herself
with so much contempt. (See page 215 of the present
volume.) Under that circumstances, it is hardly acting
like a gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed,
he thought her a person who would be pleased with the
notoriety arising even from the record of a fugitive re-
gard; and in that case the good taste of the record
would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to
be, that Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this
opportunity of bearding some rumor.
((
† A celebrated and charming passage:
Io mi son un, che quando
Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo
Che detta dentro, vo significando.'
I am one that notes
When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell
In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.
Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant com-
pliment to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Ja-
copo da Lentino, called the Notary, and Fra Guittone of
204
Dante Alighieri
The whole multitude then, except Forese,
skimmed away like cranes, swift alike through
eagerness and through leanness. Forese lin-
gered a moment to have a parting word with
his friend, and to prophesy the violent end of
the chief of his family, Corso, run away with
and dragged at the heels of his horse faster and
faster, till the frenzied animal smites him dead.
Having given the poet this information, the
prophet speeded after the others.
The companions now came to a second fruit-
tree, to which a multitude were in vain lifting
up their hands, just as children lift them to a
man who tantalizes them with showing some-
thing which he withholds; but a voice out of a
thicket by the road-side warned the travellers
not to stop, telling them that the tree was an
offset from that of which Eve tasted.
"Call to
mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the
clouds, the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them
their lives. Remember the Hebrews, how they
dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to
quench their effeminate thirst.
""
Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of the day. The
latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his
translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the
trumpet, at the last day, dividing mankind into the
happy and the tormented (sufferers under crudel mar-
tire), because an inscription will then be seen on his fore-
head, showing that he had been a slave to love! An odd
way for a poet to show his feelings, and a friar his reli-
gion!
*Judges vii., 6.
1.
The Journey through Purgatory 205
The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till
they heard another voice of nature that made
Dante start and shake as if he had been some
paltry hackney.
"Of what value is thought," said the voice,
"if it lose its way? The path lies hither.”
Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a
shape glowing red as in a furnace, with a visage
too dazzling to be looked upon.
It met him,
nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from
the fanning of its wings fresh as the first breath-
ing of the wind on a May morning, and fra-
grant as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth
letter on his forehead, and ascended with the
two other poets into the seventh and last circle
of the mountain.
This circle was all in flames, except a narrow
path on the edge of its precipice, along which
the pilgrims walked. A great wind from out-
side of the precipice kept the flames from raging
beyond the path; and in the midst of the fire
went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence.
They sang the hymn beginning "God of con-
summate mercy!"* Dante was compelled to
divide his attention between his own footsteps
and theirs, in order to move without destruction.
* Summæ Deus clementiæ. The ancient beginning
of a hymn in the Roman Catholic Church; now altered,
say the commentators, to Summæ parens clementiæ."
((
206
Dante Alighieri
At the close of the hymn they cried aloud, "I
know not a man!" and then recommenced
it; after which they again cried aloud, saying:
"Diana ran to the wood, and drove Calisto out
of it, because she knew the poison of Venus!"
And then again they sang the hymn, and then
extolled the memories of chaste women and
husbands; and so they went on without ceas-
ing, as long as their time of trial lasted.
Occasionally the multitude that went in one
direction met another which mingled with and
passed through it, individuals of both greeting
tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do,
when in passing they touch the antennæ of one
another. These two multitudes parted with
loud and sorrowful cries, proclaiming the of-
fences of which they had been guilty; and then
each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.
The souls here, as in former circles, knew
Dante to be a living creature by the shadow
which he cast; and after the wonted explana-
tions, he learned who some of them were. One
*Virum non cognosco. "Then said Mary unto the
angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”.
Luke i., 34.
The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and
Ovid's story of Calisto, upon apparently the same identi-
cal footing of authority, by spirits in all the sincerity of
agonized penitence, is very remarkable. A dissertation,
by some competent antiquary, on the curious question
suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome nov-
elty in the world of letters.
1
The Journey through Purgatory 207
was his predecessor in poetry, Guido Guinicelli,
from whom he could not take his eyes for love
and reverence, till the sufferer, who told him
there was a greater than himself in the crowd,
vanished away through the fire as a fish does in
water. The greater one was Arnauld Daniel,
the Provençal poet, who, after begging the
prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like
manner.
The sun by this time was setting on the fires
of purgatory, when an angel came crossing the
road through them, and then, standing on the
edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and
singing, "Blessed are the pure in heart!” in-
vited the three poets to plunge into the flames
themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent
by which the summit of the mountain was
gained. Dante clasping his hands, and raising
them aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of
all that he had just witnessed made him feel as
if his own hour of death was come. His com-
panion encouraged him to obey the angel; but
he could not stir. Virgil said, "Now mark me,
son; this is the only remaining obstacle be-
tween thee and Beatrice"; and then himself and
Statius entering the fire, Dante followed them.
“I could have cast myself," said he, “into
molten glass to cool myself, so raging was the
furnace."
208
Dante Alighieri
((
""
Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He
said, Methinks I see her eyes beholding us.
There was, indeed, a great light upon the quar-
ter to which they were crossing; and out of the
light issued a voice, which drew them onwards,
singing, "Come, blessed of my Father! Behold,
the sun is going down, and the night cometh,
and the ascent is to be gained."
The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out
of the fire; and the voice and the light ceased,
and the night was come. Unable to ascend
farther in the darkness, they made themselves a
bed, each of a stair in the rock; and Dante, in
his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat
lying down for the night near two shepherds.
Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of
the star of love, he had a dream, in which he
saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a
lea, and bending every now and then to gather
flowers; and as she bound the flowers into a
garland, she sang, “I am Leah, gathering flow-
ers to adorn myself, that my looks may seem
pleasant to me in the mirror. But my sister
Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless;
contented with her beautiful eyes. To behold
is my sister's pleasure, and to work is mine." *
* An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life ;-
not, I think, a happy one, though beautifully painted.
It presents, apart from its terminating comment, no
necessary intellectual suggestion; is rendered, by the
1.
The Journey through Purgatory 209
When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn
were visible; and they now produced a happi-
ness like that of the traveller who every time
he awakes knows himself to be nearer home.
Virgil and Statius were already up, and all three,
resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood
upon it at last, and gazed round about them on
the skirts of the terrestrial Paradise.
The sun
was sparkling bright over a green land, full of
trees and flowers. Virgil then announced to
Dante, that here his guidance terminated, and
that the creature of flesh and blood was at
length to be master of his own movements, to
rest or to wander as he pleased, the tried and
purified lord over himself.
The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty,
left his companions awhile, and strolled away
through the celestial forest, whose thick and
lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the
midst of the brightest sun. A fragrance came
from every part of the soil; a sweet uninter-
mitting air streamed against the walker's face;
and as the full-hearted birds, warbling on all
sides, welcomed the morning's radiance into the
trees, the trees themselves joined in the con-
cert with a swelling breath, like that which
comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express
love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sen-
tence, might be taken for a picture of two different forms
of vanity.
210
Dante Alighieri
rises among the pines of Chiassi, when Eolus
lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering
melody comes rolling through the forest from
bough to bough.*
Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight
of the point at which he entered, when he found
himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with
whose crystal purity the limpidest water on
earth were clouded. And yet it flowed under a
perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either
of sun or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the
darkness was colored with endless diversities
of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in
admiration, looking up at it along its course,
when he beheld something that took away
every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone,
on the other side of the water, singing and cull-
ing flowers.
"Ah, lady!" said the poet, "who, to judge
* "Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie."
Even as from branch to branch
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south.-Cary.
"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene
of Boccaccio's sublimest story (taken entirely from Eli-
naud, as I learn in the notes to the 'Decameron,' ediz.
Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See 'Dec.,' G. 5, N. 8, and Dry-
den's Theodore and Honoria.' Our poet perhaps wan-
dered in it during his abode with Guido Novello da
Polenta."-Translation of Dante, ut sup., p. 121.
<
The Journey through Purgatory 211
by the cordial beauty in thy looks, hast a heart
overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee
nearer to the stream, that I may understand the
words thou singest. Thou remindest me of
Proserpine, of the place she was straying in,
and of what sort of creature she looked, when
her mother lost her, and she herself lost the
spring-time on earth.”
As a lady turns in the dance when it goes
smoothest, moving round with lovely self-pos-
session, and scarcely seeming to put one foot
before the other, so turned the lady towards the
water over the yellow and vermilion flowers,
dropping her eyes gently as she came, and sing-
ing so that Dante could hear her. Then when
she arrived at the water, she stopped, and raised
her eyes towards him, and smiled, showing him
the flowers in her hands, and shifting them with
her fingers into a display of all their beauties.
Never were such eyes beheld, not even when
Venus herself was in love. The stream was a
little stream; yet Dante felt it as great an inter-
vention between them, as if it had been Lean-
der's Hellespont.
The lady explained to him the nature of the
place, and how the rivulet was the Lethe of
Paradise ;-Lethe, where he stood, but called
Eunoe higher up; the drink of the one doing
away all remembrance of evil deeds, and that
212
Dante Alighieri
of the other restoring all remembrance of good.*
It was the region, she said, in which Adam and
Eve had lived; and the poets had beheld it
perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus,
and hence imagined their golden age;—and at
these words she looked at Virgil and Statius,
who by this time had come up, and who stood
smiling at her kindly words.
Resuming her song, the lady turned and
passed up along the rivulet the contrary way of
the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate
of time on his side of it; till on a sudden she
cried, "Behold, and listen!" and a light of ex-
ceeding lustre came streaming through the
woods, followed by a dulcet melody. The poets
resumed their way in a rapture of expectation,
and saw the air before them glowing under the
green boughs like fire. A divine spectacle en-
sued of holy mystery, with evangelical and
apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way
and disclosed a car brighter than the chariot of
the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs, and
showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers,
in the midst of which stood a maiden in a white
veil, crowned with olive.
The love that had never left Dante's heart
from childhood told him who it was; and trem-
bling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil
*Lethe, Forgetfulness; Eunoe; Well-mindedness,
The Journey through Purgatory 213
for encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that
moment, Paradise and Beatrice herself could
not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend;
and the tears ran down his cheeks.
"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the
stream, "weep not that Virgil leaves thee.
Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper
sword is coming, at which it will behoove thee
to weep." Then assuming a sterner attitude
and speaking in the tone of one who reserves
the bitterest speech for the last, she added:
"Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest,
Beatrice indeed;-Beatrice, who has to con-
gratulate thee on deigning to seek the mountain
at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn,
that here only can man be happy?"
Dante, casting down his eyes at these words,
beheld his face in the water, and hastily turned
aside, he saw it so full of shame.
Beatrice had the dignified manner of an
offended parent; such a flavor of bitterness was
mingled with her pity.
She held her peace; and the angels abruptly
began singing, "In thee, O Lord, have I put
my trust"; but went no farther in the
psalm than the words, "Thou hast set my feet
in a large room. The tears of Dante had
hitherto been suppressed; but when the sing-
ing began, they again rolled down his cheeks.
>>
214
Dante Alighieri
Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels
"This man, when he proposed to himself in
his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so
gifted, that every good habit ought to have
thrived with him; but the richer the soil, the
greater peril of weeds. For awhile, the inno-
cent light of my countenance drew him the
right way; but when I quitted mortal life, he
took away his thoughts from remembrance of
me, and gave himself to others. When I had
risen from flesh to spirit, and increased in worth
and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation,
and he turned into other paths, and pursued
false images of good that never keep their
promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the
power of interfering in his behalf, and endeav-
ored to affect him with it night and day. So
little was he concerned, and into such depths
he fell, that nothing remained but to show him
the state of the condemned; and therefore I
went to their outer regions, and commended him
with tears to the guide that brought him hither.
The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if
Lethe could be passed, and the fruit beyond it
tasted, without any payment of remorse.*
*"Senza alcuno scotto
Di pentimento.”
Literally, scot-free.-"Scotto," scot:-"payment for din-
ner or supper in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal
rather than Dantesque editor of the "Parnaso Italiano,"
The Journey through Purgatory 215
((
‘O thou,” she continued, addressing herself
to Dante, "who standest on the other side of
the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth?"
Dante was so confused and penitent, that the
words failed as they passed his lips.
"What could induce thee," resumed his
monitress, "when I had given thee aims in-
deed, to abandon them for objects that could
end in nothing?"
Dante said: "Thy face was taken from me,
and the presence of false pleasure led me astray."
"Never didst thou behold," cried the maiden,
"loveliness like mine; and if bliss failed thee
because of my death, how couldst thou be al-
lured by mortal inferiority? That first blow
should have taught thee to disdain all perish-
able things, and aspire after the soul that had
gone before thee. How could thy spirit endure
to stoop to further chances, or to a childish girl,
or any other fleeting vanity? The bird that is
newly out of the nest may be twice or thrice
tempted by the snare; but in vain, surely, is
the net spread in sight of one that is older.” *
and a very summary gentleman); "here used figura-
tively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on
serious and grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri).
êd
See his Dante in that collection, vol. ii., p. 297.
*The allusion to the childish girl (pargoletta) or any
other fleeting vanity,
"O altra vanità con si breve uso,"
is not handsome.
It was not the fault of the childish
216
Dante Alighieri
Dante stood as silent and abashed as a sorry
child.
"If but to hear me," said Beatrice, "thus
afflicts thee, lift up thy beard, and see what
sight can do."
Dante, though feeling the sting intended by
the word "beard," did as he was desired. The
angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of
flowers about the maiden; and he beheld her,
though still beneath her veil, as far surpassing
her former self in loveliness, as that self had
surpassed others. The sight pierced him with
such pangs, that the more he had loved any
thing else, the more he now loathed it; and he
fell senseless to the ground.
girls that he liked them; and he should not have taunted
them, whatever else they might have been. What an-
swer could they make to the great poet?
Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this
scene, whether as a woman or an allegory. If she is
Theology, or Heavenly Grace, etc., the sternness of the
allegory should not have been put into female shape;
and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the
poet also tells us she is), her treatment of the poor sub-
îmissive lover, with leave of Signor Rubbi, is no better
than snubbing-to say nothing of the vanity with which
she pays compliments to her own beauty.
I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's
thinking it an exalted symptom on his part to hate
every thing he had loved before, out of supposed com-
pliment to the transcendental object of his affections
and his own awakened merits. All the heights of love
and wisdom terminate in charity; and charity by very
reason of its knowing the poorness of so many things,
hates nothing. Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have
helped to lower with our own gratified passions, and
pretend a right to scorn them.
The Journey through Purgatory 217
When he recovered his senses, he found him-
self in the hands of the lady he had first seen
in the place, who bidding him keep firm hold
of her, drew him into the river Lethe, and so
through and across it to the other side, speed-
ing as she went like a weaver's shuttle, and im-
mersing him when she arrived, the angels all
the while singing, "Wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow. ›› She then delivered him
into the hands of the nymphs that had danced
about the car,-nymphs on earth, but stars and
cardinal virtues in heaven; a song burst from
the lips of the angels; and Faith, Hope, and
Charity, calling upon Beatrice to unveil her
face, she did so; and Dante quenched the ten-
years' thirst of his eyes in her ineffable beauty.†
After a while he and Statius were made
thoroughly regenerate with the waters of Eu-
noe; and he felt pure with a new being, and fit
to soar into the stars.
*"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," etc. Purge me
with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow."-Psalm li., 7.
†Beatrice had been dead ten years.
((

な
​
C
III.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
ARGUMENT.
TH
HE Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the
received system of astronomy was the Ptolemaic,
consists of the seven successive planets according
to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond
these, or that of the Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile,
or First Mover of them all round the moveless Earth;
and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which
is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres
is occupied by its proportionate degree of Faith and
Virtue; and Dante visits each under the guidance of
Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes, on theolog-
ical and other subjects (here left out), and being finally
admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a
glimpse of the Great First Cause.

看了
​
*
X
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
IT
T was evening now on earth, and morning on
top of the hill in Purgatory, when Beatrice,
having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed
his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself
in Heaven.
He had been transported by the attraction of
love, and Beatrice was by his side.
The poet beheld from where he stood the
blaze of the empyrean, and heard the music
of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or
lowest heaven, the circle of the orb of the
Moon.
This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to
enter. It had seemed outside as solid, though
as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as
sunbeams are admitted into water, without di-
viding the substance. It now appeared, as it
enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence
of which they saw but dimly; and they beheld
many faces eagerly looking at them, as if about
to speak, but not more distinct from the sur-
222
Dante Alighieri
rounding whiteness than pearls themselves are
from the forehead they adorn.* Dante thought
them only reflected faces, and turned round to
see to whom they belonged, when his smiling
companion set him right; and he entered into
discourse with the spirit that seemed the most
anxious to accost him. It was Piccarda, the
sister of his friend, Forese Donati, whom he had
met in the sixth region of purgatory. He did
not know her, by reason of her wonderful in-
crease in beauty. She and her associates were
such as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity
and Religion, but had been Compelled by Others
to Break their Vows. This had been done, in
Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso.† On
* A curious and happy image.
Tornan de' nostri visi le postille
Debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte
Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille:
“Tali vid' io più facce a parlar pronte.
""
† Rodolfo da Tossignano, "Hist. Seraph. Relig.," P. i.,
p. 138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend
of Piccarda: "Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage
against his virgin sister, having joined with him Fari-
nata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other abandoned
ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried
away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then,
tearing off her religious habit, compelled her to go in a
secular garment to her nuptials. Before the spouse of
Christ came together with her new husband, she knelt
down before a crucifix and recommended her virginity
to Christ. Soon after her whole body was smitten with
leprosy, so as to strike grief and horror into the behold-
ers; and thus in a few days, through the divine disposal,
she passed with a palm of virginity to the Lord. Per-
haps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being
able to certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has
The Journey through heaven
223
Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher
state of bliss, she and her sister-spirits gently
smiled, and then answered, with faces as happy
as first love,* that they willed only what it
pleased God to give them, and therefore were
truly blest. The poet found by this answer that
every place in heaven was paradise, though the
bliss might be of different degrees. Piccarda
then showed him the spirit at her side, lustrous
with all the glory of the region, Costanza,
daughter of the king of Sicily, who had been
forced out of the cloister to become the wife of
the Emperor Henry. Having given him this in-
formation, she began singing "Ave Maria,"
and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as
substances disappear in water.†
A loving will transported the two compan-
ions, as before, to the next circle of heaven,
where they found themselves in the planet
chosen to pass it over discreetly, by making Piccarda
say: 'God knows how, after that, my life was framed.'"
·Cary, ut sup., p. 137.
* A lovely simile indeed.
"Tanto lieta
Ch' arder parea d' amor nel primo foco."
CC
Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus
taken out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor
Frederick the Second. She was fifty years old or more
at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting from Muratori and
others); "and because it was not credited that she could
have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion
and it was given out that any lady who pleased was at
liberty to see her. Many came and saw her, and the
suspicion ceased.'" Translation of Dante," ut sup., p.
137.
224
Dante Alighieri
Mercury, the residence of those who had acted
rather out of Desire of Fame than Love of God.
The spirits here, as in the former heaven,
crowded towards them, as fish in a clear pond
crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their
eyes sparkled with celestial joy, and the more
they thought of their joy the brighter they
grew, till one of them who addressed the poet
became indistinguishable for excess of splen-
dor. It was the soul of the Emperor Justinian.
Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman
empire up to his time, and then gave an ac-
count of one of his associates in bliss, Romèo,
who had been minister to Raymond Beranger,
Count of Provence, Four daughters had been
born to Raymond Beranger, and every one be-
came a queen; and all this had been brought
about by Romèo, a poor stranger from another
country. The courtiers, envying Romèo, in-
cited Raymond to demand of him an account
of his stewardship, though he had brought his
master's treasury twelvefold for every ten it
disbursed. Romèo quitted the court poor and
old; "and if the world," said Justinian, “could
know the heart such a man must have had,
begging his bread as he went, crust by crust,
praise him as it does, it would praise him a
great deal more.” *
* Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings.
The Journey through heaven_225
;
❤
"Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth,
Superillumining with light of light
The happy fires of these thy Malahoth!"*
Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor
Justinian; and then, turning as he sang, van-
ished with those about him, like sparks of fire.
Dante now found himself, before he was
aware, in the third heaven, or planet Venus,
the abode of the Amorous.† He only knew it
by the increased loveliness in the face of his
companion.
The spirits in this orb, who came and went in
the light of it like sparks in fire, or like voices
chanting in harmony with voice, were spun
round in circles of delight, each with more or
less swiftness, according to its share of the
beatific vision. Several of them came sweep-
ing out of their dance towards the poet who
had sung of Love, among whom was his patron,
Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who showed
him the reason why diversities of natures must
occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of the
tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this
her star when on earth; and Folco the Trou-
badour, whose place was next Cunizza in
*((
Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth
Superillustrans claritate tuâ
Felices ignes horum Malahoth."
Malahoth, Hebrew, kingdoms.
†The epithet is not so strong, as will be seen by the
nature of the inhabitants,
226
Dante Alighieri
heaven; and Rahab the harlot, who favored
the entrance of the Jews into the Holy Land,
and whose place was next Folco.* Cunizza
said that she did not at all regret a lot which
carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar
might think of such an opinion. She spoke of
the glories of the jewel who was close to her,
Folco-contrasted his zeal with the inertness
of her contemptible countrymen, and foretold
the bloodshed that awaited the latter from wars
* Charles Martel, son of the king of Naples and Sicily,
and crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become
acquainted with Dante during the poet's youth, when
the prince met his royal father in the city of Florence.
He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father,
and who was the friend of Petrarch.
"The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influ-
ence of her star," says Cary, "are related by the chroni-
cler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i., cap. 3, in "Muratori, Rer.
Ital. Script." tom. viii., p. 173. She eloped from her first
husband, Richard of St Boniface, in the company of
Sordello (see Purg. canto vi. and vii.), with whom she is
supposed to have cohabited before her marriage; then
lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife was living at
the same time in the same city; and, on his being mur-
dered by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother
married to a nobleman of Braganzo; lastly, when he
also had fallen by the same hand, she, after her brother's
death, was again wedded in Verona."-"Translation of
Dante," ut sup., p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in
the "Discorso sul Testo,” p. 329.
Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between
Cunizza and Rahab, is no other than Folques, bishop of
Thoulouse, the persecutor of the Albigenses. It is of
him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being asked,
during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the
orthodox and heterodox were to be distinguished, he
said, "Kill all: God will know his own."
For Rahab, see Joshua, chap. ii, and vi, and Hebrews,
xi., 31.
The Journey through Heaven
227
and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile,
glowed in his aspect like a ruby stricken with
the sun; for in heaven joy is expressed by ef-
fulgence, as on earth by laughter. He con-
fessed the lawless fires of his youth, as great
(he said) as those of Dido or Hercules; but
added, that he had no recollection of them, ex-
cept a joyous one, not for the fault (which does
not come to mind in heaven), but for the good
which heaven brings out of it. Folco con-
cluded with explaining how Rahab had come
into the third heaven, and with denouncing
the indifference of popes and cardinals (those
adulterers of the Church) to every thing but
accursed money-getting.*
In an instant, before he could think about it,
Dante was in the fourth heaven, the Sun, the
abode of the Blessed Doctors of the Church.
A band of them came encircling him and his
guide, as a halo encircles the moon, singing a
song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich
to be exported, was not conveyable by expres-
sion to mortal fancy. The spirits composing
the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Albertus Magnus, Gratian the Benedictine,
*The reader need not be required to attend to the
extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the
preceding passage, nor yet to consider how much more
they disclose, than theology or the poet might have
desired.
228
Dante Alighieri
Pietro Lombardo,
Lombardo, Solomon, St. Dionysius
the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isi-
dore, the Venerable Bede, Richard of St. Vic-
tor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas
was the namer of them to Dante.
Their song
had paused that he might speak; but when he
had done speaking, they began resuming it,
one by one, and circling as they moved, like
the wheels of church clocks that sound one
after another with a sweet tinkling, when they
summon the hearts of the devout to morning
prayer.*
Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas
addressed the poet. He was of the order of St.
Dominic; but with generous grace he held up
the founder of the Franciscans, with his vow
* These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and
schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for
the most part, no longer worth mention. The same
may be said of the band that comes after them.
Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impos-
sible (every respectfulness of endeavor notwithstand-
ing) to maintain the gravity of one's imagination at
the thought of a set of doctors of the Church, Venerable
Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so
many dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ec-
static anilities with voices tinkling like church clocks.
You may invest them with as much light or other blessed
indistinctness as you please: the beards of the old ages
will break through. In vain theologians may tell us
that our imaginations are not exalted enough. The an-
swer (if such a charge must be gravely met) is, that
Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted enough,
however wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools,
and the forms of Catholic worship, held even his imag-
ination down. There is more heaven in one placid idea
of love than in all these dances and tinklings.
The Journey through heaven 229
of poverty, as the example of what a pope
should be, and reproved the errors of no order
but his own. On the other hand, a new circle
of doctors of the Church making their appear-
ance, and enclosing the first as rainbow en-
closes rainbow, rolling round with it in the
unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new
circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole
attracts the needle, and St. Buonaventura, a
Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.
Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity,
the holy wrestler,-benign to his friends and
cruel to his enemies*;-and so confined his
reproofs to his own Franciscan order. He
then, as St. Thomas had done with the doctors
in the inner circle, named those who consti-
tuted the outer: to wit, Illuminato, and Agos-
tino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and Petrus
Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty-first,
*"Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo.”
Cruel indeed; the founder of the Inquisition ! The
"loving minion " is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of
(( amoroso drudo.” But what a minion, and how loving!
With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of course)
to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments,
down other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Span-
iard. So was Borgia. So was Philip the Second. There
seems to have been an inherent semi-barbarism in the
character of Spain, which it has never got rid of to this
day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern
patriots, it would hardly appear to belong to the right
European community. Even Lope de Vega was an in-
quisitor and Mendoza, the entertaining author of
Lazarillo de Tormes," a cruel statesman. Cervantes,
however, is enough to sweeten a whole peninsula,
230
Dante Alighieri
Nathan the Prophet, Chrysostom, Anselmo of
Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach
grammar, Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of
Calabria. The two circles then varied their
movement by wheeling round one another in
counter directions; and after they had chanted,
not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of three Per-
sons in One, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's
thoughts by intuition, again addressed him,
discoursing of mysteries human and divine,
exhorting him to be slow in giving assent or
denial to propositions without examination,
and bidding him warn people in general how
they presumed to anticipate the divine judg-
ment as to who should be saved and who not.*
The spirit of Solomon then related how souls
could resume their bodies glorified; and the
two circles uttering a rapturous Amen, glowed
with such intolerable brightness, that the eyes
of Beatrice only were able to sustain it. Dante
gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and sud-
denly found himself in the fifth heaven.
It was the planet Mars, the receptacle of
those who had Died Fighting for the Cross.
In the middle of its ruddy light stood a cross
itself, of enormous dimensions, made of light
still greater, and exhibiting, first, in the body
*What a pity the reporter of this advice had not hu-
mility enough to apply it to himself!
The Journey through heaven 231
of it, the Crucified Presence, glittering all over
with indescribable flashes like lightning; and
secondly, in addition to and across the Presence,
innumerable sparkles of the intensest mixture
of white and red, darting to and fro through
the whole extent of the crucifix. The move-
ment was like that of motes in a sunbeam.
And as a sweet dinning arises from the multi-
tudinous touching of harps and viols, before the
ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like
manner from the whole glittering ferment a
harmony indistinct but exquisite, which en-
tranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt.
He heard even the words: "Arise and con-
quer," as one who hears and yet hears not.
On a sudden, with a glide like a falling star,
there ran down from the right horn of the
Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this
cluster of splendors, distinguishing itself, as it
went, like flame in alabaster.
"O flesh of my flesh!" it exclaimed to
Dante; "O superabounding Divine Grace!
when was the door of Paradise ever twice
opened, as it shall have been to thee?" *
Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice,
*"O sanguis meus, o superinfusa
Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui
Bis unquam cœli janua reclusa ?"
The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compli-
ment to the poet in "the obscurity of a learned lan-
guage." And in truth it is a little strong.
232
Dante Alighieri
and saw such a rapture of delight in her eyes,
that he seemed, at that instant, as if his own
had touched the depth of his acceptance and of
his heaven.*
The light resumed its speech, but in words
too profound in their meaning for Dante to
comprehend. They seemed to be returning
thanks to God. This rapturous absorption be-
ing ended, the speaker expressed in more hu-
man terms his gratitude to Beatrice; and then,
after inciting Dante to ask his name, declared
himself thus:
"O branch of mine, whom I have long de-
sired to behold, I am the root of thy stock; of
him thy great-grandsire who first brought from
his mother the family-name into thy house,
and whom thou sawest expiating his sin of
pride on the first circle of the mountain. Well
it befitteth thee to shorten his long suffering
with thy good works. Florence,† while yet
she was confined within the ancient boundary
* "Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso
Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo
De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso.”
That is, says Lombardi: "I thought my eyes could not
possibly be more favored and imparadised" (Pensai che
non potessero gli occhi miei essere graziati ed impara-
disati maggiormente). - Variorum edition of Dante,
Padua, 1822, vol. iii., p. 373.
† Here ensues the famous description of those earlier
times in Florence, which Dante eulogizes at the expense
of his own,
•
¦
The Journey through heaven 233
which still contains the bell that summons her
to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste
and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then,
no head-tires, no gaudy sandals, no girdles
more worth looking at than the wearers.
Fathers were not then afraid of having daugh-
ters, for fear they should want dowries too
great, and husbands before their time. Fami-
lies were in no haste to separate; nor had
chamberers arisen to show what enormities
they dared to practise. The heights of Rome
had not been surpassed by your tower of Uccel-
latoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its
aspiring. I saw Bellincion Berti walking the
streets in a leathern girdle fastened with bone;
and his wife came from her looking-glass with-
out a painted face. I saw the Nerlis and the
Vecchios contented with the simplest doublets,
and their good dames hard at work at their
spindles. O happy they! They were sure of
burial in their native earth, and none were left
desolate by husbands that loved France better
than Italy. One kept awake to tend her child
in its cradle, lulling it with the household
words that had fondled her own infancy.
Another, as she sat in the midst of her family,
drawing the flax from the distaff, told them
stories of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome. It
would have been as great a wonder, then, to
234
Dante Alighieri
see such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man
as Lapo Salterello, as it would now be to meet
with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia.*
"It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful
time," continued the poet's ancestor,
"when
we all lived in such good faith and fellowship,
and in so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin
vouchsafed the first sight of me to the cries of
my mother; and there, in your old Baptistery,
I became, at once, Christian and Cacciaguida.
My brothers were called Moronto and Eliseo.
It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdi-
pado, thy family name of Alighieri. I then
followed the Emperor Conrad, and he made me
a knight for my good service, and I went with
him to fight against the wicked Saracen law,
whose people usurp the fold that remains lost
through the fault of the shepherd. There, by
that foul crew, was I delivered from the snares
and pollutions of the world; and so, from the
martyrdom, came to this peace.”
* Bellincion Berti, was a noble Florentine, of the
house of the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been
an abandoned woman, of manners as shameless as her
morals. Lapo Salterello, one of the co-exiles of Dante,
and specially hated by him, was a personage who ap-
pears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge
and fop. An old commentator, in recording his atten-
tion to his hair, seems to intimate that Dante alludes to
it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so, Lapo
might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his
beloved Cæsar-that he once saw him scratching the
top of his head with the tip of his finger, that he might
not discompose the locks.
The Journey through heaven
235
Cacciaguida was silent. But his descendant
praying to be told more of his family and of the
old state of Florence, the beatified soldier re-
sumed. He would not, however, speak of his
own predecessors. He said it would be more
becoming to say nothing as to who they were,
or the place they came from. All he disclosed
was, that his father and mother lived near the
gate San Piero.* With regard to Florence, he
continued, the number of the inhabitants fit to
carry arms was at that time not a fifth of its
present amount; but then the blood of the
whole city was pure. It had not been mixed
up with that of Campi, and Certaldo, and Fig-
ghine. It ran clear in the veins of the hum-
blest mechanic.
*“Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,
Più è tacer che ragionare onesto.”
Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these an-
cestors, from the lowness of their origin; others that he
did not choose to make them a boast, for the height of
it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general charac-
ter, and from the willingness he has avowed to make
such boasts (see the opening of canto xvi., Paradiso, in
the original), that while he claimed for them a descent
from the Romans (see "Inferno," canto xv., 73. etc.), he
knew them to be poor in fortune, perhaps of humble
condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract,
about the purity of the old Florentine blood, even in the
veins of the humblest mechanic, may seem to intimate
some corroboration of this; and is a curious specimen
of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's
neighbors is neither good Christianity, nor surely any
very good omen of that Italian union, of which " Young
Italy" wishes to think Dante such a harbinger.
All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a
vision of Christ on the Cross!
236
Dante Alighieri
Oh, how much better would it have been,"
cried the soul of the old Florentine, "had my
countrymen still kept it as it was, and not
brought upon themselves the stench of the
peasant knave out of Aguglione, and that other
from Signa, with his eye to a bribe! Had
Rome done its duty to the emperor, and so pre-
vented the factions that have ruined us, Simi-
fonte would have kept its beggarly upstart to
itself;
the Conti would have stuck to their
parish of Acone, and perhaps the Buondelmon-
ti to Valdigrieve. Crude mixtures do as much
harm to the body politic as to the natural body;
and size is not strength. The blind bull falls
with a speedier plunge than the blind lamb.
One sword often slashes round about it better
than five. Cities themselves perish. See what
has become of Luni and of Urbisaglia; and
what will soon become of Sinigaglia too, and
of Chiusi! And if cities perish, what is to be
expected of families? In my time the Ughi,
the Catellini, the Filippi, were great names.
So were the Alberichi, the Ormanni, and
twenty others. The golden sword of knight-
hood was then to be seen in the house of Gali-
gaio. The Column, Verrey, was then a great
thing in the herald's eye. The Galli, the
Sacchetti, were great; so was the old trunk of
the Calfucci; so was that of the peculators who
((
The Journey through Heaven 237
name.
now blush to hear of a measure of wheat; and
the Sizii and the Arrigucci were drawn in pompto
their civic chairs. Oh, how mighty I saw them
then, and how low has their pride brought
them! Florence in those days deserved her
She flourished indeed; and the balls of
gold were ever at the top of the flower.* And
now the descendants of these men sit in priestly
stalls and grow fat. The over-weening Adi-
mari, who are such dragons when their foes
run, and such lambs when they turn, were then
of note so little, that Albertino Donato was
angry with Bellincion, his father-in-law, for
making him brother to one of their females.
On the other hand, thy foes, the Amidei, the
origin of all thy tears through the just anger
which has slain the happiness of thy life, were
honored in those days; and the honor was
partaken by their friends. O Buondelmonte!
why didst thou break thy troth to thy first love,
and become wedded to another? Many who
are now miserable would have been happy, had
God given thee to the river Ema, when it rose
against thy first coming to Florence. But the
Arno had swept our Palladium from its bridge,
*The Column, Verrey (vair, variegated, checkered
with argent and azure), and the Balls or (Palle d'oro),
were arms of old families. I do not trouble the reader
with notes upon mere family names, of which nothing
else is recorded.
238
Dante Alighieri
and Florence was to be the victim on its
altar." *
Cacciaguida was again silent; but his de-
scendant begged him to speak yet a little more.
He had heard, as he came through the nether
regions, alarming intimations of the ill-fortune
that awaited him, and he was anxious to know,
from so high and certain an authority, what it
would really be.
Cacciaguida said: "As Hippolytus was forced
to depart from Athens by the wiles of his cruel
step-dame, so must even thou depart out of
Florence. Such is the wish, such this very
moment the plot, and soon will it be the deed,
of those, the business of whose lives is to make
traffic of Christ with Rome. Thou shalt quit
every thing that is dearest to thee in the
world. That is the first arrow shot from
the bow of exile. Thou shalt experience
how salt is the taste of bread eaten at the
expense of others; how hard is the going
*An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the super-
stitious popular opinion that the peace of Florence was
bound up with the statue of Mars on the old bridge, at
the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence
were supposed to have first begun. Macchiavelli's ac-
count of him is, that he was about to marry a young
lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him,
contrived that he should see her; the consequence of
which was, that he broke his engagement, and was as-
sassinated. Historie Fiorentine, lib. ii.
((
"
As
The Journey through heaven
239
up and down others' stairs. But what shall
most bow thee down, is the worthless and dis-
gusting company with whom thy lot must be
partaken; for they shall all turn against thee,
the whole mad, heartless, and ungrateful set.
Nevertheless, it shall not be long first, before
themselves, and not thou, shall have cause to
hang down their heads for shame. The bru-
tishness of all they do, will show how well it
became thee to be of no party, but the party of
thyself. *
"Thy first refuge thou shalt owe to the cour-
tesy of the great Lombard, who bears the Lad-
der charged with the Holy Bird. † So benignly
shall be regard thee, that in the matter of ask-
ing and receiving, the customary order of things
shall be reversed between you two, and the gift
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Più caramente; e questo è quello strale
Che l'arco de l' esilio pria saetta.
"Tu proverai si come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com' è duro calle
Lo scendere e 'l salir per l' altrui scale.
"E quel che più ti graverà le spelle,
Sarà la campagnia malvagia e scempia
Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
"Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta empia
Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso
Ella, non tu, n' avrà rossa la tempia.
"Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
Farà la pruova, si ch' a te fia bello
Averti fatta parte per te stesso.”
†The Roman Eagle. These are the arms of the Scali-
gers of Verona.
240
Dante Aligbieri
*
anticipate the request. With him thou shalt be-
hold the mortal, born under so strong an influ-
ence of this our star, that the nations shall
take note of him. They are not aware of him
yet, by reason of his tender age; but ere the
Gascon practise on the great Henry, sparkles
of his worth shall break forth in his contempt
of money and of ease; and when his munifi-
cence appears in all its lustre, his very enemies
shall not be able to hold their tongues for ad-
miration. Look thou to this second benefac-
tor also; for many a change of the lots of the
people shall he make, both rich and poor; and
do thou bear in mind, but repeat not, what
further I shall now tell thee of thy life.” Here
the spirit, says the poet, foretold many things
which afterwards appeared incredible to their
very beholders; and then added: "Such, my
son, is the heart and mystery of the things
thou hast desired to learn. The snares will
shortly gather about thee; but wish not to
change places with the contrivers; for thy days
will outlast those of their retribution."
Again was the spirit silent; and yet again
once more did his descendant question him,
anxious to have the advice of one that saw so
far, and that spoke the truth so purely, and
loved him so well.
* A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala,
who had received Dante at his court.
The Journey through heaven
241
"Too plainly, my father," said Dante, “do I
see the time coming, when a blow is to be
struck me, heaviest ever to the man that is not
true to himself. For which reason it is fit that
I so far arm myself beforehand, that in losing
the spot dearest to me on earth, I do not let
my verses deprive me of every other refuge.
Now I have been down below through the
region whose grief is without end; and I have
scaled the mountain from the top of which I
was lifted by my lady's eyes; and I have come
thus far through heaven, from luminary to
luminary; and in the course of this my pil-
grimage I have heard things which, if I tell
again, may bitterly disrelish with many. Yet,
on the other hand, if I prove but a timid friend
to truth, I fear I shall not survive with the
generations by whom the present times will be
called times of old."
The light that enclosed the treasure which
its descendant had found in heaven, first flashed
at this speech like a golden mirror against the
sun, and then it replied thus:
"Let the consciences blush at thy words that
have reason to blush. Do thou, far from the
shadow of misrepresentation, make manifest
all which thou hast seen, and let the sore places
be galled that deserve it. Thy bitter truths
shall carry with them vital nourishment-thy
242
Dante Alighieri
voice, as the wind does, shall smite loudest the
loftiest summits; and no little shall that re-
dound to thy praise. It is for this reason that,
in all thy journey, thou hast been shown none
but spirits of note, since little heed would have
been taken of such as excite doubt by their
obscurity."
The spirit of Cacciaguida now relapsed into
the silent joy of its reflections, and the poet
was standing absorbed in the mingled feelings
of his own, when Beatrice said to him, "Change
the current of thy thoughts. Consider how near
I am in heaven to one that repayeth every
wrong."
Dante turned at the sound of this comfort,
and felt no longer any other wish than to look
upon her eyes; but she said, with a smile,
“Turn thee round again, and attend. I am not
thy only paradise." And Dante again turned,
and saw his ancestor prepared to say more.
Cacciaguida bade him look again on the
Cross, and he should see various spirits, as he
named them, flash over it like lightning; and
they did so. That of Joshua, which was first
mentioned, darted along the Cross in a stream.
The light of Judas Maccabeus went spinning, as
if joy had scourged it. * Charlemagne and
Orlando swept away together, pursued by the
* "Letizia era ferza del paléo."
The Journey through heaven 243
poet's eyes. Guglielmo* followed, and Rinal-
do, and Godfrey of Bouillon, and Robert Guis-
card of Naples; and the light of Cacciaguida
himself darted back to its place, and, uttering
another sort of voice, began showing how
sweet a singer he too was amidst the glitter-
ing choir.
Dante turned to share the joy with Beatrice,
and, by the lovely paling of her cheek, like a
maiden's when it delivers itself of the burden
of a blush,† knew that he was in another and
whiter star. It was the planet Jupiter, the
abode of blessed Administrators of Justice.
Here he beheld troops of dazzling essences,
warbling as they flew, and shaping their flights
hither and thither, like birds when they rise
from the banks of rivers, and rejoice with one
* Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time
of Charlemagne, or the Second, who followed Godfrey of
Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the former; and the men-
tion of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin ?) seems
to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in
the text brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the
name of Rinaldo in Dante) might possibly mean "Raim-
baud," the kinsman and associate of the second Wil-
liam. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered
Naples.
+ Exquisitely beautiful feeling !
(C
Quale è il trasmutare in picciol varco
Di tempo in bianca donna, quando 'l volto
Suo si discarchi di vergogna il carco."
What follows respecting letters of the alphabet and the
Roman eagle, is in a very different taste, though mixed
with many beauties.
244
Dante Alighieri
another in new-found pasture. But the figures
into which the flights were shaped were of a
more special sort, being mystical compositions
of letters of the alphabet, now a D, now an I,
now an L, and so on, till the poet observed that
they completed the whole text of Scripture,
which says, Diligite justitiam, qui judicatis ter-
ram-(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of
the earth). The last letter, M, they did not de-
compose like the rest, but kept it entire for
awhile, and glowed so deeply within it that the
silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with
gold. Other lights, with a song of rapture,
then descended like a crown of lilies on the top
of the letter; and then, from the body of it,
rose thousands of sparks, as from a shaken fire-
brand, and, gradually expanding into the form
of an eagle, the lights which had descended like
lilies distributed themselves over the whole
bird, encrusting it with rubies flashing in the
sun.
But what, says the poet, was never yet heard
of, written, or imagined,—the beak of the eagle
spoke! It uttered many minds in one voice,
just as one heat is given out by many embers;
and proclaimed itself to have been thus exalted
because it united justice and mercy while on
earth.
Dante addressed this splendid phenomenon,
The Journey through heaven 245
and prayed it to ease his mind of the perplexi-
ties of its worldly reason respecting the Divine
nature and government, and the exclusion from
heaven of goodness itself, unless within the
Christian pale.
The celestial bird, rousing itself into motion
with delight, like a falcon in the conscious en-
ergy of its will and beauty, when, upon being
set free from its hood, it glances above it into
the air, and claps its self-congratulating wings,
answered nevertheless somewhat disdainfully,
that it was impossible for man, in his mortal
state, to comprehend such things; and that the
astonishment he feels at them, though doubtless
it would be excusable under other circum-
stances, must rest satisfied with the affirmations
of Scripture.
The bird then bent over its questioner, as a
stork does over the nestling newly fed when it
looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and
renewing its warble, concluded it with saying:
"As my notes are to thee that understandest
them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to
thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended
into these heavenly regions that did not believe
in Christ, either after he was crucified or before
it. Yet many who call Christ! Christ! shall at
the last day be found less near to him than such
as knew him not. What shall the kings of
246
Dante Alighieri
Islam say to your Christian kings when they
see the book of judgment opened and hear all
that is set down in it to their dishonor? In that
book shall be read the desolation which Albert
will inflict on Bohemia :*-in that book the
woes inflicted on Paris by that adulterator
of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the
hog's teeth; in that book the ambition which
makes such mad fools of the Scotch and Eng-
lish kings that they cannot keep within their
bounds; in that book the luxury of the Span-
iards, and the effeminate life of the Bohemian,
who neither knows nor cares for any thing
worthy; in that book the lame wretch of Jeru-
salem, whose value will be expressed by a unit
and his worthlessness by a million; in that
The Emperor Albert the First, when he obtained Bo-
hemia for his son Rodolph. Of the sovereigns that fol-
low, he who adulterated his people's money, and died
by the "hog's teeth" (a wild boar in hunting), is the
French king, Philip the Fourth; the quarrelling fools
of England and Scotland are Edward the First and
Baliol; the luxurious Spaniard is Ferdinand the Fourth,
said to have killed himself in his youth by intemperance;
the effeminate Bohemian, Winceslaus the Second; the
"lame wretch of Jerusalem," Charles the Second of
Naples, titular king of Jerusalem; the cowardly warder
of the Isle of Fire (Sicily), Frederick of the house of Ar-
ragon; his filthy brother and uncle, James of Arragon
and James of Minorca; the Portuguese (according to the
probable guess of Cary), the rebellious son of King Di-
onysius; the Norwegian, Haco; and the Dalmatian,
Wladislaus, but why thus accused, not known. As to
Hungary, its crown was then disputed by rival princes;
Navarre was thinking of shaking off the yoke of France;
and Nicosia and Famagosta, in Cyprus, were complain-
ing of their feeble sovereign, Henry the Second.
The Journey through Heaven 247
book the avarice and cowardice of the warder
of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died ;—
and that the record may answer the better to
his abundant littleness, the writing shall be in
short-hand; and his uncle's and his brother's
filthy doings shall be read in that book-they
who have made such rottenness of a good old
house and two diadems; and there also shall
the Portuguese and the Norwegian be known
for what they are, and the coiner of Dalmatia,
who beheld with such covetous eyes the Vene-
tian ducat. O blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst
resolve to endure no longer! O blessed Na-
varre, if thou wouldst but keep out the French-
man with thy mountain walls! May the cries
and groans of Nicosia and Famagosia be an
earnest of those happier days, proclaiming as
they do the vile habits of the beast, who keeps
so close in the path of the herd his brethren.”
The blessed bird for a moment was silent;
but as at the going down of the sun the heavens
are darkened, and then break forth into innu-
merable stars which the sun lights up, so the
splendors within the figure of the bird suddenly
became more splendid, and broke forth into
songs too beautiful for mortal to remember.
*
O dulcet love, that dost show thee forth in
smiles, how ardent was thy manifestation in the
* The opinion in the time of Dante.
248
Dante Alighieri
lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere
thoughts of those pious hearts!
After the gems in that glittering figure had
ceased chiming their angelic songs, the poet
seemed to hear the murmur of a river which
comes falling from rock to rock, and shows, by
the fulness of its tone, the abundance of its
mountain spring; and as the sound of the gui-
tar is modulated on the neck of it, and the
breadth of the pipe is accordant to the spiracle
from which it issues, so the murmuring within the
eagle suddenly took voice, and, rising through
the neck, again issued forth in words. The
bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its
eye, because of all the fires that composed its
figure, those that sparkled in the eye were the
noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante be-
held in the pupil was that of the royal singer
who danced before the ark, now enjoying the
reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment.
Of the five spirits that composed the eyebrow,
the one nearest the beak was Trajan, now expe-
rienced above all others in the knowledge of
what it costs not to follow Christ, by reason of
his having been in hell before he was trans-
lated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah,
whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his
death; next Hezekiah, Constantine, though in
letting the pope become a prince instead of a
The Journey through heaven
249
pastor he had unwittingly brought destruction
on the world; next Constantine, William the
Good of Sicily, whose death is not more
lamented than the lives of those who contest
his crown; and lastly, next William, Riphæus
the Trojan. "What erring mortal," cried the
bird, “would believe it possible to find Riphæus
the Trojan among the blest? But so it is; and
he now knows more respecting the divine grace
than mortals do, though even he discerns it not
to the depth."*
The bird again relapsing into silence, ap-
peared to repose on the happiness of its
thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering
and expatiating through all its airy warble, be-
comes mute and content, having satisfied its
soul to the last drop of its sweetness.†
*All this part about the eagle, who, it seems, is beheld
only in profile, and who bids the poet "mind his eye,”
in the pupil of which is King David, while the eyebrow
consists of orthodox sovereigns, including Riphæus the
Trojan, is irresistibly ludicrous. No consideration can
or ought to hinder us from laughing at it. It was mere
party-will in Dante to lug it in; and his perverseness in-
jured his fancy, as it deserved.
In the next passage the real poet resumes himself,
and with what relief to one's feelings!
+ Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
(6
Qual lodoletta che 'n aere si spazia
Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia."
In the "Pentameron and Pentalogia," Petrarch is made
to say, "All the verses that ever were written on the
nightingale are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this
divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats them]. In
250
Dante Alighieri
But again Dante could not help speaking, being
astonished to find Pagans in heaven; and once
more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.
It told him that Trajan had been delivered from
hell, for his love of justice, by the prayer's of
St. Gregory; and that Riphæus, for the same
reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowl-
edge of the Redemption; and then it ended
with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of Pre-
destination, and on the joy of ignorance itself
when submitting to the Divine will. The two
blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird men-
tioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to
sweet singer, when they quiver to his warble as
it goes, manifested the delight they experienced
by the movements of accord simultaneous as
the twinkling of two eyes.*
the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her
wings against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my
ear is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented.
"Boccaccio.-I agree with you in the perfect and un-
rivalled beauty of the first; but in the third there is a re-
dundance. Is not contenta quite enough without che la
sazza? The picture is before us, the sentiment within
us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
"Petrarch.-I acknowledge the correctness and propri-
ety of your remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be
examined as carefully as blemishes, and even more.".
p. 92.
Perhaps Dante would have argued that sazia expresses
the satiety itself, so that the very superfluousness be-
comes a propriety.
"E come a buon cantor buon citarista
F seguitar lo guizzo de la corda
In che più di piacer lo canto acquista ;
The Journey through heaven 251
Dante turned to receive his own final delight
from the eyes of Beatrice, and he found it,
though the customary smile on her face was no
longer there. She told him that her beauty in-
creased with such intensity at every fresh as-
cent among the stars, that he would no longer
have been able to bear the smile; and they
were now in the seventh heaven, or the planet
Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed
their lives in Holy Contemplation.
In this crystal sphere, called after the name of
the monarch who reigned over the Age of Inno-
cence, Dante looked up, and beheld a ladder,
the hue of which was like gold when the sun
glisters it, and the height so great that its top
was out of sight; and down the steps of this
ladder he saw coming such multitudes of shin-
ing spirits, that it seemed as if all the lights of
heaven must have been there poured forth; but
not a sound was in the whole splendor. It
was spared to the poet for the same reason that
he missed the smile of Beatrice. When they
came to a certain step in the ladder, some of
the spirits flew off it in circles or other careers,
like rooks when they issue from their trees in
the morning to dry their feathers in the sun,
<<
Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda,
Ch' io vidi le duo luci benedette,
Pur come batter d' occhi si concorda,
"Con le parole muover le fiammette."
252
-7
Dante Alighieri
part of them going away without returning,
others returning to the point they left, and
others contenting themselves with flying round
about it. One of them came so near Dante
and Beatrice, and brightened with such ardor,
that the poet saw it was done in affection tow-
ards them, and begged the loving spirit to tell
them who it was.
I so
"Between the two coasts of Italy," said the
spirit, "and not far from thine own country,
the stony mountains ascend into a ridge so lofty
that the thunder rolls beneath it. Catria is its
name. Beneath it is a consecrated cell; and in
that cell I was called Pietro Damiano.*
devoted myself to the service of God, that with
no other sustenance than the juice of the olive,
I forgot both heat and cold, happy in heavenly
meditation. That cloister made abundant re-
turns in its season to these granaries of the
Lord; but so idle has it become now, that it is
fit the world should know its barrenness. The
days of my mortal life were drawing to a close,
when I was besought and drawn into wearing
the hat which descends every day from bad
* A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
and much employed in public affairs, preferred the sim-
plicity of a private life. He has left writings, the elo-
quence of which, according to Tiraboschi, "is worthy of
a betterage." Petrarch also makes honorable mention of
him. See Cary, ut sup., p. 169. Dante lived a good while
in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished
his poem there.-"Lombardi in loc.," vol. iii., p. 547.
The Journey through heaven 253
head to worse. * St. Peter and St. Paul came
lean and barefoot, getting their bread where
they could; but pastors nowadays must be lifted
from the ground, and have ushers going before
them, and train-bearers behind them, and ride
upon palfreys covered with their spreading
mantles, so that two beasts go under one skin.†
O Lord, how long!"
At these words Dante saw more splendors
come pouring down the ladder, and wheel round
and round, and become at every wheel more
beautiful. The whole dazzling body then gath-
ered round the indignant speaker, and shouted
something in a voice so tremendous, that the
poet could liken it to nothing on earth. The
thunder was overwhelming, and he did not even
hear what they said.‡
Pallid and stunned, he turned in affright to
Beatrice, who comforted him as a mother com-
forts a child that wants breath to speak. The
* The cardinal's hat.
+"Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle."
"Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
E fero un grido di sì alto suono,
Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi :
Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono."
Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have
put this passage into his treatise on the Sublime.
254
Dante Alighieri
shout was prophetic of the vengeance about to
overtake the Church. Beatrice then directed
his attention to a multitude of small orbs, which
increased one another's beauty by interchang-
ing their splendors. They enclosed the spirits
of those who most combined meditation with
love. One of them was St. Benedict; and oth-
ers Macarius and Romoaldo.* The light of St.
Benedict issued forth from among its compan-
ions to address the poet; and after explaining
how its occupant was unable farther to disclose
himself, inveighed against the degeneracy of
the religious orders. It then rejoined its fel-
lows, and the whole company clustering into
one meteor, swept aloft like a whirlwind. Beat-
rice beckoned the poet to ascend after them.
He did so, gifted with the usual virtue by her
eyes; and found himself in the twin light of
the Gemini, the constellation that presided over
his birth. He was now in the region of the
fixed stars.
"Thou art now," said his guide, so near the
summit of thy prayers, that it behooves thee to
take a last look at things below thee, and see
how little they should account in thine eyes."
Dante turned his eyes downward through all
the seven spheres, and saw the earth so diminu-
*Benedict, the founder of the order called after his
name. Macarius, an Egyptian Monk and moralist. Ro-
moaldo, founder of the Camaldoli.
The Journey through heaven 255
rare.
tive, that he smiled at its miserable appearance.
Wisest, thought he, is the man that esteems it
least; and truly worthy he that sets his thoughts
on the world to come. He now saw the moon
without those spots in it which made him
formerly attribute the variation to dense and
He sustained the brightness of the face
of the sun, and discerned all the signs and mo-
tions and relative distances of the planets.
Finally, he saw, as he rolled round with the
sphere in which he stood, and by virtue of his
gifted sight, the petty arena, from hill to har-
bor, which filled his countrymen with such fero-
cious ambition; and then he turned his eyes to
the sweet eyes beside him.*
Beatrice stood wrapt in attention, looking
*The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a
passage in Cowley.
"Lo, I mount; and lo,
How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title show!
<< Where shall I find the noble British land?
Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
Which in the sea does lie,
And seems a grain o' the sand.
For this will any sin, or bleed?
Of civil wars is this the meed?
And is it this, alas, which we,
Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie?"
And he afterward, on reaching higher depths of silence,
says very finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the
all-conclusiveness of the Deity by the use of a singular
instead of a plural verb,-
"Where am I now? angels and God is here."
All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of
St. Peter, is full of grandeur and loveliness.
256
Dante Alighieri
earnestly toward the south, as if she expected
some appearance. She resembled the bird that
sits among the dewy leaves in the darkness of
night, yearning for the coming of the morn-
ing, that she may again behold her young and
have light by which to seek the food, that ren-
ders her fatigue for them a joy. So stood
Beatrice, looking; which caused Dante to watch
in the same direction, with the feelings of one
that is already possessed of some new delight
by the assuredness of his expectation.*
The quarter on which they were gazing soon
became brighter and brighter, and Beatrice ex-
claimed, “Behold the armies of the triumph of
Christ!" Her face appeared all fire, and her
eyes so full of love, that the poet could find no
words to express them.
As the moon, when the depths of heaven are
serene with her fulness, looks abroad smiling
*"Come l' augello intra l' amate fronde,
Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
(( Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
66 Previene '1 tempo in su l' aperta frasca,
E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
Fiso guardando pur che l' alba nasca
" Così la donna mia si stava eretta
E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
Sotto la quale il sol mostra inen fretta:
"Sì che veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
Fecimi quale è quei che disiando
Altro vorria, e sperando s' appaga.”
The Journey through heaven 257
*
among her eternal handmaids the stars, that
paint every gulf of the great hollow with
beauty; so brightest, above myriads of splen-
dors around it, appeared a sun which gave
radiance to them all, even as our earthly sun
gives light to the constellations.
"O Beatrice!" exclaimed Dante, overpow-
ered, "sweet and beloved guide!"
"Overwhelming," said Beatrice, “is the vir-
tue with which nothing can compare. What
thou hast seen is the Wisdom and the Power,
by whom the path between heaven and earth
has been laid open."†
Dante's soul-like the fire which falls to earth
out of the swollen thunder-cloud, instead of
rising according to the wont of fire-had grown
too great for his still mortal nature; and he
could afterwards find within him no memory of
what it did.
"Open thine eyes," said Beatrice, “and see
me now indeed. Thou hast beheld things that
empower thee to sustain my smiling."
Dante, while doing as he was desired, felt
like one who has suddenly waked up from a
dream, and endeavors in vain to recollect it.
Never," said he, can that moment be
((
(C
*
Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
Che dipingono '1 ciel per tutti i seni."
+ He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person.
:
258
Dante Alighieri
erased from the book of the past. If all the
tongues were granted me that were fed with the
richest milk of Polyhymnia and her sisters, they
could not express one thousandth part of the
beauty of that divine smile, or of the thorough
perfection which it made of the whole of her
divine countenance."
But Beatrice said, "Why dost thou so enamour
thee of this face, and lose the sight of the beau-
tiful guide, blossoming beneath the beams of
Christ? Behold the rose, in which the Word
was made flesh.* Behold the lilies, by whose
odor the way of life is tracked."
Dante looked, and gave battle to the sight
with his weak eyes.†
As flowers on a cloudy day in a meadow are
suddenly lit up by a glean of sunshine, he be-
held multitudes of splendors effulgent with
beaming rays that smote on them from above,
though he could not discern the source of the
effulgence. He had invoked the name of the
Virgin when he looked; and the gracious
fountain of the light had drawn itself higher up
within the heaven, to accommodate the radi-
ance to his faculties. He then beheld the Vir-
gin herself bodily present,-her who is fairest
*The Virgin Mary.
t "Mi rendei
A la battaglia de' debili cigli."
The Journey through heaven
259
now in heaven, as she was on earth; and while
his eyes were being painted with her beauty,*
there fell on a sudden a seraphic light from
heaven, which, spinning into a circle as it came,
formed a diadem round her head, still spinning,
and warbling as it spun. The sweetest melody
that ever drew the soul to it on earth would
have seemed like the splitting of a thunder-
cloud, compared with the music that sung
around the head of that jewel of Paradise.†
"I am Angelic Love," said the light, "and I
spin for joy of the womb in which our Hope
abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I
thus attend thee, as long as thou art pleased to
attend thy Son, journeying in his loving-kind-
ness from sphere to sphere."
All the other splendors now resounded the
name of Mary. The Virgin began ascending
to pursue the path of her Son; and Dante, un-
able to endure her beauty as it rose, turned his
eyes to the angelical callers on the name of
Mary, who remained yearning after her with
their hands outstretched, as a babe yearns after
the bosom withdrawn from his lips. Then ris-
*"Ambo le luci mi dipinse."
+"Qualunque melodia più dolce suona
Qua giù, e più a se l' anima tira,
Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
<<
Comparata al sonar di quella lira
Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
Del quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira."
260
Dante Alighieri
ing after her themselves, they halted ere they
went out of sight, and sung "O Queen of
Heaven" so sweetly, that the delight never
quitted the air.
A flame now approached and thrice encircled
Beatrice, singing all the while so divinely, that
the poet could retain no idea expressive of its
sweetness. Mortal imagination cannot unfold
such wonder. It was St. Peter, whom she
had besought to come down from his higher
sphere, in order to catechise and discourse with
her companion on the subject of faith.
The catechising and the discourse ensued,
and were concluded by the Apostle's giving the
poet the benediction, and encircling his forehead
thrice with his holy light.
"So well," says
Dante, was he pleased with my answers.”*
<<
*Benedicendomi catando
Tre volte cinse me, si com' io tacqui,
L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
"Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui."
"
It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which
led Foscolo to suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to
a divine mission; an opinion which has excited great
indignation among the orthodox. See his "Discorso sul
Testo," ut sup., pp. 64. 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
of the Milanese Editors to the Convito" of Dante-
Opere Minori," 12mo, vol. ii., p. xvii. Foscolo's con-
jecture seems hardly borne out by the context; but I
think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough to
have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned
out as he expected. What man but himself (supposing
him the believer he professed to be) would have thought
of thus making himself free of the courts of Heaven, and
constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist !
The Journey through heaven 261
"If ever," continued the Florentine, "the
sacred poem to which heaven and earth have
set their hands, and which for years past has
wasted my flesh in the writing, shall prevail
against the cruelty that shut me out of the
sweet fold in which I slept like a lamb, wishing
harm to none but the wolves that beset it,-
with another voice, and in another guise than
now, will I return, a poet, and standing by the
fount of my baptism, assume the crown that
belongs to me; for I there first entered on the
faith which gives souls to God; and for that
faith did Peter thus encircle my forehead.*
A flame enclosing St. James now succeeded
to that of St. Peter, and after greeting his
predecessor as doves greet one another, mur-
muring and moving round, proceeded to exam-
ine the mortal visitant on the subject of Hope.
* The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude
the twenty-fourth canto of "Paradise"; and those, of
which the passage just given is a translation, commence
the twenty-fifth:
"Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
Al quale ha posta mano e cielo e terra
Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
"Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra
Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerro;
"Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
Del mio battesmo prenderò '1 capello:
"Perocchè ne la fede che fa conte
L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte."
262
Dante Alighieri
The examination was closed amidst resounding
anthems of "Let their hope be in thee "*; and
a third apostolic flame ensued, enclosing St.
John, who completed the catechism with the
topic of Charity. Dante acquitted himself with
skill throughout; the spheres resounded with
songs of “Holy, holy," Beatrice joining in the
warble; and the poet suddenly found Adam
beside him. The parent of the human race
knew by intuition what his descendant wished
to learn of him; and manifesting his assent be-
fore he spoke, as an animal sometimes does by
movements and quiverings of the flesh within
its coat, corresponding with its good-will, † told
him, that his fall was not owing to the fruit
which he tasted but to the violation of the
injunction not to taste it; that he remained in
the Limbo on hell-borders upwards of five
thousand years; and that the language he
* Sperent in te.' Psalm ix., 10. The English version
says: And they that know thy name will put their
trust in thee."
"
"Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
Sì che l'affetto convien che si paia
Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia."
A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently digni-
fied image for the occasion. It is difficult to be quite
content with a former one, in which the greetings of St.
Peter and St. James are compared to those of doves
murmuring and sidling round about one another;
though Christian sentiment may warrant it, if we do
not too strongly present the Apostles to one's imagina-
tion.
The Journey through Heaven
263
spoke had become obsolete before the days of
Nimrod.
The gentle fire of St. Peter now began to
assume an awful brightness, such as the planet
Jupiter might assume, if Mars and it were birds,
and exchanged the color of their plumage.
Silence fell upon the celestial choristers; and
the Apostle spoke thus:
*
"Wonder not if thou seest me change color.
Thou wilt see, while I speak, all which is round
about us color in like manner.
He who usurps
my place on earth,—my place, I say,—ay, mine,
-which before God is now vacant,-has con-
verted the city in which my dust lies buried
into a common-sewer of filth and blood; so
that the fiend who fell from hence rejoices
himself down there."
At these words of the Apostle the whole face
of heaven was covered with a blush, red as
dawn or sunset; and Beatrice changed color,
like a maiden that shrinks in alarm from the
report of blame in another. The eclipse was
like that which took place when the Supreme
died upon the Cross.
* "Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
Fossero augelli e cambiassersi
penne."
Nobody who opened the "Commedia " for the first time
at this fantastical image would suppose the author was
a great poet, or expect the tremendous passage that
ensues!
#
264
Dante Alighieri
St. Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully
changed than his appearance:
"Not for the purpose of being sold for money
was the spouse of Christ fed and nourished
with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,—
the blood of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for
it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor Urban; men,
for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They
died that souls might be innocent and go to
Heaven. Never was it intention of ours that
the sitters in the holy chair should divide one
half of Christendom against the other; should
turn my keys into ensigns of war against the
faithful; and stamp my very image upon mer-
cenary and lying documents, which make me,
here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think
of. Arm of God, why sleepest thou? Men out
of Gascony and Cahors are even now making
ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning,
to what vile conclusion must thou come ! But
the high Providence, which made Scipio the
sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the
world, will fail not its timely succor. And
thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal
clothing must again descend to earth, see thou
that thou openest thy mouth, and hidest not
from others what has not been hidden from
thyself."
As white and thick as the snows go streaming
The Journey through heaven 265
athwart the air when the sun is in Capricorn,
so the angelical spirits that had been gathered
in the air of Saturn streamed away after the
Apostle, as he turned with the other saints to
depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them
till they became viewless.*
The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to
herself; and at the same instant the two com-
panions found themselves in the ninth heaven
or Primum Mobile, the last of the material
heavens, and the mover of those beneath it.
Here he had a glimpse of the Divine Essence,
in likeness of a point of inconceivably sharp
brightness enringed with the angelic hierarch-
ies. All earth, and heaven, and nature hung
from it. Beatrice explained many mysteries to
him connected with that sight; and then vehe-
mently denounced the false and foolish teachers
*In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse
out of a blush, and in the positive bathos, and I fear
almost indecent irrelevancy of the introduction of Bea-
trice at all on such an occasion, much more under the
feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,-
this scene altogether is a very grand one; and the vio-
lence itself of the holy invective awful.
A curious subject for reflection is here presented.
What sort of Pope would Dante himself have made?
Would he have taken to the loving or the hating side of
his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic? I am afraid, all
things considered, we should have had in him rather a
Gregory the Seventh or Julius the Second than a Bene-
dict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine church
hymns he would have written!
266
Dante Alighieri
that quit the authority of the Bible for specula-
tions of their own, and degrade the preaching
of the Gospel with ribald jests and legends
of St. Anthony and his pig.*
Returning, however, to more celestial
thoughts, her face became so full of beauty
that Dante declares he must cease to endeavor
to speak of it, and that he doubts whether the
sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed by any
save its Maker. Her look carried him upward
as before, and he was now in the Empyrean, or
region of Pure Light ;-of light made of in-
tellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy;
joy, transcendant above all sweetness.
Streams of living radiance came rushing and
flashing round about him, swathing him with
light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and
dashes against the blinded eyes; but the light
was love here, and instead of injuring, gave new
power to the object it embraced.
With this new infusion of strength into his
organs of vision, Dante looked, and saw a vast
flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendors,
and pouring down like a river between banks
painted with the loveliest flowers. Fiery living
* She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence !)
that for the same reason the denouncement itself is out
of its place. The preachers brought St. Anthony and
his pig into their pulpits; she brings them into heaven!
+ "Certo io credo
Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda."
The Journey through heaven_267
sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched
themselves into the cups of the flowers, where
they remained awhile, like rubies set in gold;
till inebriated with the odors, they recast them-
selves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as
one returned, another leaped forth. Beatrice
bade him dip his eyes into the light, that he
might obtain power to see deeper into its na-
ture; for the river, and the jewels that sprang
out of it to and fro, and the laughing flowers on
the banks, were themselves but shadows of the
truth which they included; not, indeed, in
their essential selves, but inasmuch as without
further assistance the beholder's eyes could not
see them as they were. Dante rushed to the
stream as eagerly as the lips of an infant to the
breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and
his eyelashes had no sooner touched it than the
length of the river became a breadth and a cir-
cle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him,
like a face when a mask is taken off. It was
the whole two combined courts of heaven, the
angelical and the human, in circumference
larger than would hold the sun, and all blazing
beneath a light, which was reflected downwards
in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mo-
bile below it, the mover of the universe. And
as a green cliff by the water's side seems to de-
light in seeing itself reflected from head to foot
268
Dante Alighieri
with all its verdure and its flowers, so, round
about on all sides, upon thousands of thrones,
the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat
beholding themselves in the light. And yet
even all these together formed but the lowest
part of the spectacle, which ascended above
them, tier upon tier, in the manner of an im-
measurable rose, all dilating itself, doubling
still and doubling, and all odorous with the
praises of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base
of it, as into the yellow of the flower, with a
dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Bea-
trice drew forward her companion and said :
"Behold the innumerable assemblage of the
white garments! Behold our city, how large
its circuit! Behold our seats, which are, never-
theless, so full that few comers are wanted to
fill them! On that lofty one on which thou art
looking, surmounted with the crown, and which
shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal
feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry,
who would fain set Italy right before she is pre-
pared for it. The blind waywardness of which
ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who,
while he is dying of hunger, kicks away his
purse. And Rome is governed by one who can-
*The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol,
at the close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in
Italy his hopes of restoration to his country were at an
end.
The Journey through heaven
269
not walk in the same path with such a man,
whatever be the road. But God will not long
endure him. He will be thrust down into the
pit with Simon Magus; and his feet, when he
arrives there, will thrust down the man of
Alagna still lower." †
In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed
multitude of human souls lay manifest before
the eyes of the poet; and now he observed,
that the winged portion of the blest, the angels,
who fly up with their wings nearer to Him that
fills them with love, came to and fro upon the
rose like bees; now descending into its bosom,
now streaming back to the source of their affec-
tion. Their faces were all fire, their wings
golden, their garments whiter than snow. When-
ever they descended on the flower, they went
from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and com-
municating the peace and ardor which they
gathered as they gave. Dante beheld all,-
every flight and action of the whole winged
multitude,-without let or shadow; for he stood
in the region of light itself, and light has no
obstacle where its is deservedly vouchsafed.
Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface,
was now dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot
tomb which the poet had prepared for him.
† Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red-hot feet are to
thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So
says the gentle Beatrice in heaven, and in the face of all
that is angelical!
270
Dante Alighieri
Oh," cries the poet, "if the barbarians that
came from the north stood dumb with amaze-
ment to behold the magnificence of Rome,
thinking they saw unearthly greatness in the
Lateran, what must I have thought, who had
thus come from human to divine, from time to
eternity, from the people of Florence to beings
just and sane?"
Dante stood, without a wish either to speak
or to hear. He felt like a pilgrim who has ar-
rived within the place of his devotion, and who
looks round about him, hoping some day to re-
late what he sees. He gazed upwards and down-
wards, and on every side round about, and saw
movements graceful with every truth of inno-
cence, and faces full of loving persuasion, rich
in their own smiles and in the light of the
smiles of others.
"C
He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone ;—
gone, as a messenger from herself told him, to
resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the
messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in
the third circle from the top, as far from Dante
as the bottom of the sea is from the region of
thunder; and yet he saw her as plainly as if
she had been close at hand. He addressed words
to her of thanks for all she had done for him,
and a hope for her assistance after death; and
she looked down at him and smiled.
The Journey through heaven
271
The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade
the poet lift his eyes higher; and Dante beheld
the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in
the centre of an intense redness of light,
like another dawn. Thousands of angels were
hanging buoyant around her, each having its
own distinct splendor and adornment, and
all were singing, and expressing heavenly
mirth; and she smiled on them with such
loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all the
blessed.
At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful—
she that opened the wound which Mary closed;
and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice;
and at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then
Judith, then Rebecca, then Ruth, ancestress of
him out of whose penitence came the song of
the Miserere *; and so other Hebrew women,
down all the gradations of the flower, dividing,
by the line which they made, the Christians
who lived before Christ from those who lived
after; a line which, on the opposite side of the
rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders
of the Church, at the top of whom was John the
Baptist. The rose also was divided horizontally
by a step which projected beyond the others,
and underneath which, known by the childish-
ness of their looks and voices, were the souls of
* David.
272
Dante Alighieri
such as were too young to have attained heaven
by assistance of good works.
St. Bernard then directed his companion to
look again at the Virgin, and gather from her
countenance the power of beholding the face of
Christ as God. Her aspect was flooded with
gladness from the spirits around her; while the
angel who had descended to her on earth now
hailed her above with "Ave, Maria!" singing
till the whole host of heaven joined in the
song, St. Bernard then prayed to her for help
to his companion's eyesight. Beatrice, with
others of the blest, was seen joining in the
prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the
Virgin, after benignly looking on the peti-
tioners, gazed upwards herself, showing the
way with her own eyes to the still greater
vision. Dante then looked also, and beheld
what he had no words to speak, or memory
to endure.
He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a
sense of sweetness that ever trickled to his
heart.
Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that
grace might be so far vouchsafed to a portion of
his recollection, as to enable him to convey to
his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the
glory of what he saw, his ardor was so em-
boldened by help of the very mystery at whose
The Journey through heaven 273
sight he must have perished had he faltered,
that his eyes, unblasted, attained to a perception
of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld, concen-
trated in one spot-written in one volume of
Love-all which is diffused, and can become
the subject of thought and study throughout
the universe-all substance and accident and
mode-all so compounded that they become one
light. He thought he beheld at one and the
same time the oneness of this knot, and the uni-
versality of all which it implies; because, when
it came to his recollection, his heart dilated,
and in the course of one moment he felt ages of
impatience to speak of it.
But thoughts as well as words failed him; and
though ever afterwards he could no more cease
to yearn towards it, than he could take defect
for completion, or separate the idea of happi-
ness from the wish to attain it, still the utmost
he could say of what he remembered would fall
as short of right speech as the sounds of an in-
fant's tongue while it is murmuring over the
nipple; for the more he had looked at that
light, the more he found in it to amaze him, so
that his brain toiled with the succession of the as-
tonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear
self-subsistence, three circles of three different
colors of the same breadth, one of them reflect-
ing one of the others as rainbow does rainbow,
274
Dante Alighieri
and the third consisting of a fire equally breath-
ing from both.*
O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thy-
self alone, thou alone, understandest thyself,
and art by thyself understood, and, so under-
standing, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.
The second, or reflected circle, as it went
round, seemed to be painted by its own colors
with the likeness of a human face.†
But how this was done, or how the beholder
was to express it threw his mind into the same
state of bewilderment as the mathematician ex-
periences when he vainly pores over the circle
to discover the principle by which he is to
square it.
He did, however, in a manner discern it. A
flash of light was vouchsafed him for the pur-
pose; but the light left him no power to impart
the discernment; nor did he feel any longer
impatient for the gift. Desire became absorbed
in submission, moving in as smooth unison as
the particles of a wheel, with the Love that is
the mover of the sun and the stars.‡
*The Trinity.
†The Incarnation.
In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup., vol. iii., p.
845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the
Cavaliere Giuseppe de Cesare, was the first to notice (not
long since, I presume) the curious circumstance of
Dante's having terminated the three portions of his
poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was
done as a happy augury of life and renown to the sub-
ject. The literal intention, however, seems to have been
to show us, how all his aspirations terminated.
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