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with a pride as natural as that of Fair Annie in the old ballad, and compares herself as advantageously with the "brown, brown bride" who had supplanted her. If this be a ghost, we do not need be told that she is a woman still.1 We must remember, however, that Beatrice had to be real that she might be interesting, to be beautiful that her goodness might be persuasive, nay, to be beautiful at any rate, because beauty has also something in

1 This touch of nature recalls another. The Italians claim humor for Dante. We have never been able to find it, unless it be in that passage (Inferno, XV. 119) where Brunetto Latini lingers under the burning shower to recommend his Tesoro to his former pupil. There is a comical touch of nature in an author's solicitude for his little work, not, as in Fielding's case, after its, but his own damnation. We are not sure, but we fancy we catch the momentary flicker of a smile across those serious eyes of Dante's. There is something like humor in the opening verses of the XVI. Paradiso, where Dante tells us how even in heaven he could not help glorying in being gently born, he who had devoted a Canzone and a book of the Convito to proving that nobility consisted wholly in virtue. But there is, after all, something touchingly natural in the feeling. Dante, unjustly robbed of his property, and with it of the independence so dear to him, seeing

"Needy nothings trimmed in jollity,

And captive Good attending Captain Ill,"

would naturally fall back on a distinction which money could neither buy nor replace. There is a curious passage in the Convito which shows how bitterly he resented his undeserved poverty. He tells us that buried treasure commonly revealed itself to the bad rather than the good. "Verily I saw the place on the flanks of a mountain in Tuscany called Falterona, where the basest peasant of the whole countryside digging found there more than a bushel of pieces of the finest silver, which perhaps had awaited him more than a thousand years." (Tr. IV. c. 11.) One can see the grimness of his face as he looked and thought, "how salt a savor hath the bread of others!"

1

it of divine. Dante has told, in a passage already quoted, that he would rather his readers should find his doctrine sweet than his verses, but he had his relentings from this Stoicism.

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Canzone, I believe those will be rare

Who of thine inner sense can master all,

Such toil it costs thy native tongue to learn;
Wherefore, if ever it perchance befall

That thou in presence of such men shouldst fare

As seem not skilled thy meaning to discern,

I

pray thee then thy grief to comfort turn,

Saying to them, 'O thou my new delight,

Take heed at least how fair I am to sight.'"' 1

We believe all Dante's other Ladies to have been as purely imaginary as the Dulcinea of Don Quixote, useful only as motives, but a real Beatrice is as essential to the human sympathies of the Divina Commedia as her glorified Idea to its allegorical teaching, and this Dante understood perfectly well.2 Take her out of the poem, and the heart of it goes with her; take out her ideal, and it is emptied of its soul. She is the menstruum in which letter and spirit dissolve and mingle into unity. Those who doubt her existence must find Dante's graceful sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti as provoking as Sancho's story of his having seen Dulcinea winnowing wheat was to his master, "so alien is it from all

1 L'Envoi of Canzone XIV. of the Canzoniere, I. of the Convito. Dante cites the first verse of this Canzone, Paradiso, VIII. 37.

2 How Dante himself could allegorize even historical personages may be seen in a curious passage of the Convito (Tr. IV. c. 28), where, commenting on a passage of Lucan, he treats Martia and Cato as mere figures of speech.

3 II. of the Canzoniere. See Fraticelli's preface.

that which eminent persons, who are constituted and preserved for other exercises and entertainments, do and ought to do."1 But we should always remember in reading Dante that with him the allegorical interpretation is the true one (verace sposizione), and that he represents himself (and that at a time when he was known to the world only by his minor poems) as having made righteousness (rettitudine, in other words, moral philosophy) the subject of his verse.2 Love with him seems first to have meant the love of truth and the search after it (speculazione), and afterwards the contemplation of it in its infinite source (speculazione in its higher and mystical sense.) This is the divine love "which where it shines darkens and wellnigh extinguishes all other loves." 3 Wisdom

1 Don Quixote, P. II. c. viii.

2 De Vulgari Eloquio, 1. ii. c. 2. He says the same of Giraud de Borneil, many of whose poems are moral and even devotional. See, particularly, "Al honor Dieu torn en mon chan " (Raynouard, Lex Rom. I. 388), "Ben es dregz pos en aital port" (Ib. 393), “Jois sia comensamens” (Ib. 395), and “Be veg e conosc e say" (Ib. 398). Another of his poems (“Ar ai grant joy,” Raynouard, Choix, III. 304), may possibly be a mystical profession of love for the Blessed Virgin, for whom, as Dante tells us, Beatrice had a special devotion.

3 Convito, Tr. III. c. 14. In the same chapter is perhaps an explanation of the two rather difficult verses which follow that in which the verace speglio is spoken of (Paradiso, XXVI. 107, 108).

"Che fa di sè pareglie l' altre cose

E nulla face lui di sè pareglio."

Buti's comment is, "that is, makes of itself a receptacle to other things, that is, to all things that exist, which are all seen in it." Dante says (ubi supra), “The descending of the virtue of one thing into another is a reducing that other into a likeness of itself.

is the object of it, and the end of wisdom to contemplate God the true mirror (verace speglio, speculum), wherein all things are seen as they truly are. Nay, she herself "is the brightness of the eternal light, the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God." 1

...

Whence we see that the sun sending his ray down hitherward reduces things to a likeness with his light in so far as they are able by their disposition to receive light from his power. So I say that God reduces this love to a likeness with himself as much as it is possible for it to be like him." In Provençal pareilh means like, and Dante may have formed his word from it. the four earliest printed texts read:

--

"Che fa di sè pareglio all' altre cose."

But

Accordingly we are inclined to think that the next verse should be corrected thus: :

"E nulla face a lui di sè pareglio."

We would form pareglio from parere (a something in which things appear), as miraglio from mirare (a something in which they are seen). God contains all things in himself, but nothing can wholly contain him. The blessed behold all things in him as if reflected, but not one of the things so reflected is capable of his image in its completeness. This interpretation is confirmed by Paradiso, XIX. 49-51.

"E quinci appar ch' ogni minor natura

E corto recettacolo a quel bene

Che non ha fine, e sè con sè misura."

1 Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 26, quoted by Dante (Convito, Tr. III. c. 15). There are other passages in the Wisdom of Solomon besides that just cited which we may well believe Dante to have had in his mind when writing the Canzone, beginning,

"Amor che nella mente mi ragiona,"

and the commentary upon it, and some to which his experience of life must have given an intenser meaning. The writer of that book also personifies Wisdom as the mistress of his soul: "I loved her and sought her out from my youth, I desired to make her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty." He says of

There are two beautiful passages in the Convito, which we shall quote, both because they have, as we believe, a close application to Dante's own experience, and because they are good specimens of

...

Wisdom that she was 66 present when thou (God) madest the world," and Dante in the same way identifies her with the divine Logos, citing as authority the "beginning of the Gospel of John." He tells us, "I perceived that I could not otherwise obtain her except God gave her me," and Dante came at last to the same conclusion. Again, "For the very true beginning of her is the desire of discipline; and the care of discipline is love. And love is the keeping of her laws; and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption." But who can doubt that he read with a bitter exultation, and applied to himself passages like these which follow? "When the righteous fled from his brother's wrath, she guided him in right paths, showed him the kingdom of God, and gave him knowledge of holy things. She defended him from his enemies and kept him safe from those that lay in wait, that he might know that godliness is stronger than all. She forsook him not, but delivered him from sin; she went down with him into the pit, and left him not in bonds till she brought him the sceptre of the kingdom, . . . and gave him perpetual glory." It was, perhaps, from this book that Dante got the hint of making his punishments and penances typical of the sins that earned them. Wherefore, whereas men lived dissolutely and unrighteously, thou hast tormented them with their own abominations." Dante was intimate with the Scriptures. They do even a scholar no harm. M. Victor Le Clerc, in his Histoire Littéraire de la France au quatorzième siècle (tom. ii. p. 72), thinks it " not impossible" that a passage in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, paraphrased by Dante, may have been suggested to him by Rutebeuf or Tristan, rather than by the prophet himself! Dante would hardly have found himself so much at home in the company of jongleurs as in that of prophets. Yet he was familiar with French and Provençal poetry. Beside the evidence of the Vulgari Eloquio, there are frequent and broad traces in the Commedia of the Roman de la Rose, slighter ones of the Chevalier de la Charette, Guillaume d'Orange, and a direct imitation of Bernard de Ventadour.

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