E di ciò sono al mondo aperte prove,
Parmenides, Melisso, Brisso, e molti,
Li quali andavan, e non sapean dove.

[And in the world proofs open of the same,
Parmenides, Melissus, Brissus, stand,
Who knew not of the end to which they
came.]

It is at least noteworthy to find Bacon (Opus Tert. xxxix.) giving the same names in the same connection. "Par menides et Melissus credebant quod omnia corpora mundi fuerunt unum continuum a terra usque ad ultimum cœlum." (4.) Conspicuous as a characteristic of both writers is their pitying recognition of the virtues of the heathen, whom yet their stern theology compelled them to classify among those that were shut out from eternal life.

Che tu dicevi: un uom nasce alla riva
Dell' Indo, e quivi non è chi ragione
Di Cristo, nè chi legga, nè chi scriva :

E tutti i suoi voleri.ed atti buoni
Sono, quanto ragione umana vede,
Senza peccato in vita e in sermoni.

(Paradiso xix. 70-75.)

[For thou didst say, a man his first breath drew
On Indus' banks, and there were none to tell
Of Christ, or write or speak the doctrine
true;

And he in every wish and deed lives well,
As far as human reason may descry,
And, sinless, doth in life and speech excel.]

We ask, where did the poet learn a feeling so much wider and more large hearted than that of the current theology? The answer is not far to seek. He might have imbibed such thoughts from the writings, perhaps even from the lips, of Bacon: "Mirum enim est de nobis Chris

tianis, qui sine comparatione sumus im: perfectiores in moribus quam philosophi infideles. . . . Summus enim zelus castitatus, et mansuetudinis, et patientiæ, et constantiæ, et omnium virtutum fuit apud philosophos (Opus Tert. cxiv.)

tions of the Roman Curia and of the reli-
gious orders. Thus we have in Dante,
speaking of the Franciscan friars as fallen
away from the greatness of their founder:
Ma il suo peculio di nuova vivanda

E fatto ghiott sì, ch' esser non puote
Che per diversi salti non si spanda;
E quando le sue pecore rimote,
E vagabonde più di esso vanno
Più tornano all' ovil di latte vote.

Ben son di quelle che temono il danno
E stringonsi al pastor; ma son si poche
Che le cappe fornisce poco panno.

(Paradiso xi. 124–132.)
[But now his flock so eagerly demands
New food that it, of sheer necessity,
In pastures widely different strays and
stands;

And so, the more his sheep thus scattered lie,
And further from him wander to and fro,
With less milk come they for the flock's
supply.

Some are there who, in fear of that loss, go
Back to their pastor, but so few they be,
That little cloth would make them hoods, I
trow.]

And in Bacon (Compend. Studii, c. 1):
"Consideremus religiosos; nullum ordi-
nem excludo. Videamus quantum ceci-
derunt singuli a statu debito, et novi
ordines jam horribiliter labefacti sunt a
pristinâ dignitate."

under his successors, and says that it had St. Peter speaks of the state of Rome not been his intention to be a watchword for hostile armies:

Nè ch' io fossi figura di sigillo

A' privilegi venduti e mendaci
Ond' io sovente arrosso e disfavillo.

In vesta di pastor lupi rapaci

Si veggion di quassù per tutti i paschi:
O difesa di Dio, perchè pur giaci?

(Paradiso xxvii. 49-54.) [Nor that I should as seal give force of right To venal and corrupt monopolies,

Which make me blush and kindle at the sight.

Wolves, in the shepherd's garb, with greedy

eyes

Are seen from hence, through all the meadows fair;

Elsewhere he recognizes that the old seekers after wisdom had received from God special illumination (Ibid. cxxiv.); or, again, in the very accents of Dante, speaks of the philosophers "qui cum fuerint sine gratiâ gratificante, quæ facit hominem dignum vita æterna, in quâ nos Vengeance of God, why dost thou not arise?] ponimur in baptismo, tamen sine omni comparatione vita eorum fuit melior et in While Bacon gives his own judgment: omni vitæ honestate, et in contemptu"Laceratur enim illa sedes sacra (the mundi, et omnium deliciarum, et divitia- Curia Romana) "fraudibus et dolis inrum et honorum" (Comp. Stud., c. i.). justorum. Mores enim sequuntur ibidem (5.) Another point common to the two perversissimi; regnat superbia, ardet avathinkers is their keen sense of the corrup-ritia, invidia arrodit singulos, luxuria dif

famat totam illam curiam, quæ in omnibus | who had yet been stained with the vilest dominatur."

[He from whom now turns to me thy regard,
Is of a soul the light, in thought so stern,
It deemed the way to death both slow and
hard.]

This is the spirit of the Sigieri of whom I have already spoken, who is identified as having taught at Paris by the locality which Dante names. How is it, we ask, that one whom Dante thus admires has that admiration as his only record? It is at least curious that Bacon once and again lavishes the highest praise on a Parisian teacher, whom he does not name :

Unus solus est qui potest in hoc (alchemy), at peritissimus est in istis omnibus. Non enim cognosco nisi unum qui laudari potest in operibus hujus scientiæ; nam ipse non curat de sermonibus et pugnis verborum, sed persequitur opera sapientiæ et in illis quiescit. Et ideo quod, alii cæcutientes nituntur videre, ut vespertilio lucem solis in crepusculo, ipse in pleno fulgore contemplatur. (Opus Tert., c. xii., xiii.)

form of impurity. Bacon (Compend. Studii, c. ii.) describes a like corruption of morals as having prevailed in Paris in his time: "Multi theologi Parisiis et qui legerunt in theologia, sunt relegati a civitate et a regno Francia, per multos annos, publice damnati propter sodomiticas vilitates.'

(8.) In one point, over and above their keen and ardent zeal in the pursuit of physical science, the poet and the thinker would have found a bond of sympathy. They agreed in their love and veneration for the mysterious power of music. Milton's reference to Casella, whom Dante woo'd to sing,

Met in the milder shades of Purgatory, has made one instance of that reverence a household word in English literature. That which Dante had most loved in Casella's music was that it poured forth the amorous song

Che mi solea quetar tutte le voglie. [Which calmed, of yore, my every eager care.] He seeks for its consolation in the terror with which the world behind the veil had filled his soul. And music is, as has often been noted, the pervading element both of the Purgatorio and Paradiso. In the one it is the healer of the soul from the sickness contracted during its earthly pilgrimage. In the other it is the utterance of the praise of the saints in proportion as they drink in the love and light of It is possible that Bacon may mean the beatific vision. Each circle of the himself, or his friend Peter of Maharncu- mount of purification has its appropriate ria, of whom he elsewhere speaks in nearly canticle. Each sphere of the blessed equal terms of praise, but it is against echoes with a strain of marvellous and this view that he is not shy of speaking unearthly sweetness. Nowhere in the of his own merits in propriâ personâ, whole range of literature has the power and that he often names his friend. Is it of music to soothe and assuage, to purify not possible that Dante's Sigieri may and strengthen, been so nobly set before have been the man thus described? Do us. Bacon's language is, however, not the invidiosi veri of which the poet speaks precisely correspond with the teaching which Bacon describes, and which had left one whom both he and Dante admired as one of the master spirits of the age out in the cold, while less worthy teachers had their full share of patronage and popularity?

(7) The state of the University of Paris in the last quarter of the thirteenth century supplies yet another point of comparison. Dante, in his Inferno (xv. 106), places, in company with his own master Brunetto, many who in their day were honored as

E letterati grandi e di gran fama,

scarcely less rapturous and glowing (Opus Tert., c. lxxiii.): "Mira enim musicæ super omnes scientias est et spectanda potestas. ... Mores enim reformat, ebrietates sedat, infirmitates curat, sanitatem conservat, quietem somni inducit." If we did but know the inner secrets of the art, brutes would be tamed by its subtle power. "Similiter et hominum animi in quemlibet gratum devotionis raperentur, et in plenum cujuslibet virtutis amorem excitarentur, et in omnem sanitatem et vigorem."

(9.) Common to the two thinkers is a somewhat subtle theory as to the stellar influences, and the power they exercise

have belonged to Oxford. If it does not | media can henceforth be considered as prove the theory I am maintaining, it at even approximating to completeness if least falls in with it. it ignores the relation between the two.

(13.) Dante's mystic prophecy of the reformer of the evils of the Church as one who was to be indicated by the mysterious numerals of

Un cinquecento dieci e cinque,

in which commentators see either the word Dux (= Dvx515) or the initials of the name of Can Grande of Verona, finds a suggestive counterpart in Bacon's explanation of the number of the beast, in which, among other hypotheses, he names (following Bede) one which finds that number in the two words, DIC, LUX, because the Antichrist will say that he is the light of the world (Compend. Stud., c. vi.).

It may naturally be asked why, on the assumption of the indebtedness which I have endeavored to prove, Dante should make no mention of the teacher to whom he owed so much. The answer to that question is not, I think, far to seek. Bacon, like Dante, was an idealist reformer of abuses in Church and State; but the ideal to which he looked as the pattern of a perfect polity was the very opposite of Dante's. The one, as we know, in the Ghibellinism of his later life, looked to the rule of a supreme potentate as representing the majesty of the Roman empire, ruling the nations, for their good doubtless, yet ruling with a rod of iron, at least co-ordinate with the successor of I close for the present the comparison St. Peter, and in his own sphere absowhich furnishes materials for the induc- lutely independent of him. Bacon's ideal, tion, but I do so with the feeling that it on the other hand, was essentially demois as yet far from being complete. It cratic and ecclesiastical. There was but would be found, I believe, that an exam- one perfect legislator," and that was ination of the section on geography in the God's vicar upon earth. It was his to "Opus Majus" would furnish many illus-" dispose of all kingdoms, and to rule over trations of the allusions to the remoter the whole world" (Opus Tert., c. xiv.). regions of the earth's surface which He dwelt upon prophecies, which he Dante scatters profusely throughout his poems, that well-nigh every reference of his to the facts of physical science and astronomy might receive fresh light from the thinker who, in these regions of knowledge, was confessedly the master spirit of his time. As Ozanam, in his "Dante et la Philosophie Catholique," has shown with an exhaustive fulness which leaves nothing to be desired, that, as a theologian and ethical philosopher, the Florentine poet, whom his epitaph rightly describes as

urged Clement IV. to fulfil, of a reforming pope who should restore the canon law in its purity from the cavils and frauds of the jurists and bring about a reign of universal justice (Opus Tert., xiv.). He recognizes the right of the people to depose and put to death an unrighteous ruler, and to choose another. "Not to do this is to disobey God himself, and men are not responsible for the blood that may thus be shed. If they choose an unworthy ruler, and his unwor thiness be proved, let them depose him and elect yet another" (MS. cited by Dantes theologus nullius dogmatis expers, Charles, "Roger Bacon, sa Vie et ses has followed step by step the teachings Ouvrages," p. 255). Dante complained of Thomas of Aquinum, so it will, I that the jurists of Italy were studying the think, be admitted that the evidence now Decretals instead of the Gospel and the produced warrants the conclusion that he Fathers (Paradiso ix. 134). Bacon's comembodies also the physical science of his plaint, on the contrary, was that the study age, as that science was represented by of the canon law was neglected, and that the Franciscan friar of Oxford. I do not men were expending their labors upon the say that the evidence of derivation, civil law the basis of the Ghibelline though it is the natural inference from the theory of polity - which was "destroying converging lines of external tradition and the Church of God, and through which internal coincidence, is demonstrative; the whole world was lying in wickedbut, even on the hypothesis of entire in-ness (Comp. Stud., c. Iv.; Opus Tert., dependence, proof has, it is believed, been c. xxiv.). Lastly, and here we come to given that any student of Dante would do well to prepare himself for his task by gaining some knowledge of the science of the thirteenth century, as presented by Bacon, that no commentary on the "Com

the point of divergence which must have touched the author of the "Commedia” most keenly to the very quick, Bacon taught that the distinction between hell and purgatory and paradise was not local,

and that there was therefore no motion from one to the other as from place to place; that the three conditions, that is, were spiritual states and not places (Opus Tert., c. i.).

It can scarcely be thought surprising that with these serious differences in their conception of the polity of earth and heaven that Dante should have declined to assign to Bacon a place in his Paradise side by side with Aquinas and Buonaventura. The respect which he felt for him as a teacher and a man would, however, as naturally deter him from placing him in the Inferno or the Purgatorio. It is significant that he is in like manner silent about Abelard, though he places St. Bernard high in the celestial spheres.

II.

DANTE IN CHAUCER AND HIS FOL-
LOWERS.

IT will not, I think, be without interest to trace the influence of the great poet of Italy on the first, in order of time, of the great poets of England. That influence is all the more remarkable from the contrast between the character and the works of the two writers. It is scarcely possible to imagine a greater unlikeness in literature than that between the dreamy, yet passionate idealist of the "Commedia," never losing his self-consciousness, subjective to the last degree of subjectivity, and the healthy, objective geniality of Chaucer, sympathizing with all forms of human character, sensual or spiritual, humorous rather than enthusiastic, anticipating almost, or altogether, the all-embracing humanity of Shakespeare.

known the three great names in the Ital
ian literature of the time, shows that there
was a more real fraternization between the
men of letters of the two countries than
has been common since. It was partly,
perhaps, consequent on the intercourse of
England with the papal see, and the con-
sequent missions from one court to the
other partly also to the habits of the
university life of the time, which led
Italian students to come to Oxford and
Cambridge, and English students to visit
Bologna and Padua. When Chaucer was
chosen in 1368 as an envoy to Genoa, it
was probably because he was already
known to possess some acquaintance
with the language and literature of the
people to whom he was despatched. The
mission to which he was thus appointed
was connected with the marriage of
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, a son of Ed-
ward III., with Violante, the daughter
of the duke of Milan, at which Petrarch
was present. To this intercourse with
the Italian poet, Chaucer refers his knowl-
edge of the tale of Griseldis, the Clerke's
Tale:

I wol tell you a tale, which that I
Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
As preved by his wordes and his werk.
He is now ded, and nailed in his cheste,
I pray to God so yeve his soule reste.

Fraunceis Petrarke, the laureat poete,
Highte this clerke, whose rethorike swete
Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie.

It is a reasonable inference that it was Chaucer became acquainted with the through this converse with Petrarch that

66

own.

Decamerone" of Boccaccio, of which he afterwards made such full use in the Canterbury Tales," and with Dante. The relation of the two in order of time he brought back with him may reasonably The manuscript of Dante's works which is also significant. Dante died in exile be looked on as the first copy that had in 1321. Chaucer was born in 1328. Yet found its way to England. Chaucer, at by the time the latter had grown up to all events, was not slow to recognize the manhood the fame of the former was rec-greatness of the poet whose life and charognized not only in his own country, in acter presented so vivid a contrast to his which, while he lived, he had been as a prophet without honor, but had reached the extremi Britanni, whom, as we have seen, he had probably visited in his youth. In 1373, Boccaccio, then at the age of sixty, was appointed to lecture on the "Commedia" at Florence; but Chaucer's acquaintance with Dante's writings must have begun at an earlier date, and was probably, as we shall see, traceable rather to Petrarch than to the author of the "Decamerone." That he, an English gentleman, filling this or that office in the Lauender laundry-maid, and used by Chaucer as court of Edward III., should thus have a euphemistic equivalent of meretrice.

Thus we find in the Prologue to the ably in 1382:"Legend of Good Women," written prob

Envie is lauender of the Court alway; For she ne parteth, neither night nor day, Out of the house of Cæsar, thus saith Dant, where we have a manifest reference to the Inferno (xiii. 64), where envy is painted as