ITALY. DANTE. 1265-1321. WOULD that any utterance of mine were worthy of the sublime genius who, with Homer, Eschylus, and Shakespeare, forms, in my judgment, the fourth main pillar in the temple of European song. My object being, however, simply to consider a few of the world's great singers, as the interpreters of their age and as illustrating the progress of humanity, I am obliged to content myself with a very brief analysis of their works, alluding, at the same time, to a few of the influences inherited from the past, which tended to modify their genius, together with the new germs of sentiment and thought cast by each into the seed-plot of the world, without dwelling, as I would fain do, upon the manifold charm and beauty of their poetry. The "Divina Commedia," which may be said to have inaugurated the literature of Modern Europe, while the most individual of poems, permeated, so to speak, with the personality of the author, may, at the same time, be regarded as an epitome of the century which gave it birth. In the poem, as in the age, elements the most heterogeneous are found side by side; Classicalism and Mediævalism, Catholicism and Materialism, beatific visions and appalling crimes, transcendental philosophy and subtlest scholasticism, with a growing taste for science and art, these, and other features of the medieval age, are mirrored in the immortal poem of Dante. Profoundly impressed by the violence and disorder which everywhere prevailed, and which left the cities of Italy a prey to anarchy and civil war, he longed for the simultaneous sovereignty of two co-ordinate powers, each ruling by divine right, and absolute in his respective sphere, the Pope and the Emperor, by whose joint action alone, the reign of law and order could, in his judgment, be restored. Rising, moreover, above mere local and temporary interests, he regarded man as a twofold being, ordained for beatitude in this life and also in the life eternal, and consequently as requiring twofold direction, that of the supreme pontiff in spiritual, and of the Emperor in temporal matters, the supremacy of both being co-extensive with the globe, and indissolubly connected with the city of Rome. This ideal polity, a poet's dream, incapable of realization, yet cherished with passionate earnestness by Dante, is a pervading element in the "Divina Commedia," which, however, in its ultimate purpose, rises into a still loftier sphere transcending any mere mundane consideration. Sharing the sentiment of the mediæval age, which regarded this world as valueless in itself, and as deriving its significance solely from its association with the world to come, the poet's primal aim appears to have been to bring home to the reader's mind the reality of things unseen, as revealing God's will, in the moral government of the world; or, to quote his own words: "The subject of the whole work, taken literally, is the state of souls after death; but, if the work is taken allegorically, the subject is Man, as, in the exercise of his free will, for good or for evil, rendering himself liable to reward or punishment." With transcendent genius, the poet enforces the great truth that the visible and invisible worlds, being associated as parts of one great whole, are equally under the immediate government of the Most High. The men and women who have passed into the unseen world are, in his poem, as real as those who are still playing their parts in this familiar scene; there, however, being judged by character alone, external distinctions disappear; Dante is no respecter of persons; high and low, rich and poor, are associated together on equal terms, in bliss or in bale, enjoying the reward of their virtues or expiating their crimes. Vast is the scope of the poem, and vast also is the range of emotion inspired by its perusal. In the Inferno," as we descend from circle to circle, we are more and more impressed with "the exceeding sinfulness of sin," in its infinite variety of manifestation, and in some of its shapes, with its unutterable loathsomeness and malignity. We realize that lawless passion, gluttony, avarice, bestiality, hypocrisy, treachery and other deadly sins, constitute the soul's true Hell, of which the physical torments, by whose contemplation our hearts are wrung with pity and terror, are, for the most part, the outward and appropriate symbols. Thus Paolo and Francesca, whose deeply pathetic story touches us to the quick, with the other victims of ungoverned passion, are swept onward, in sleepless agony, by the whirling blast. (Infer. v.) Cerberus, the voracious hell-hound, fitly symbolizes the sin of gluttony, whose victims, rent by his remorseless jaws, wallow in the loathsome mire. (Infer. vi.) Those in whom wrath, malice, and greed have triumphed over their better nature-tyrants, murderers, and robbers, seething in Phlegethon's boiling river of blood, and guarded by the Centaurs, find their representative in the Minotaur,-half human and half brute (Infer. xii.); while the blasphemers, those who have bid defiance to the Most High, lying prone and scorched upon the fiery sand, are rained upon by flakes of everspreading flame. (Infer. xiv.) are As still further illustrating the symbolic character of punishment in the "Inferno," I may refer to the Popes who had been guilty of simony, and who, "having inverted the true order of the spiritual society," represented as plunged head downward in their fiery pits (Infer. xix.); thus also the hypocrites wear leaden cloaks and cowls, of crushing weight, overlaid with glittering gold (Infer. xxiii.). The authors of schism are them selves cleft in twain; while those who, like Bertram de Boru, severed the ties of kindred, bear, in their hands, their own heads severed from the trunk." (Infer. xxvii.) Finally, the lake of ice, with its frozen depths, divided into four concentric circles, typifies the sin of treachery; "the hardness and coldness which is the ultimate doom of this, the most malignant form of evil, is gradually intensified as the traitors sink lower into the ice." (Infer. xxxiii.) Our horror at the ghastly torments and brutalities of the "Inferno," is intensified by the awful words inscribed upon the gate : "My lofty Maker was by justice moved; The power of God it was that fashioned me, This inscription is founded upon the doctrine of Aquinas, who taught that Divine love required the eternal misery of the lost. How the Medieval Church could reconcile its conception of God, as Infinite Love, with its belief in an eternity of sin, involving an eternity of physical agony and mental anguish, is a curious psychological problem. Nowhere is this anomaly more strikingly exhibited than in the "Divina Commedia," where, in the "Inferno," the torments of the lost are portrayed with relentless ferocity, while, in the "Paradiso," the poet dwells with ecstasy upon the vision of the Most High, as the perennial source of light and love; innumerable passages might, moreover, be quoted to show that, following in the footsteps of St. Bernard, Dante regarded love as the true fulfilling of the law, and consequently as lying at the root of all moral regeneration. This union of apparently incompatible qualities, which forms so striking a feature of the "Divina Commedia," manifests itself also in the character of the poet. Thus, at times, his yearning pity for the sufferers is so intense that, after listening to the tale of Paolo and Francesca, he falls prostrate like a dead man (Infer. v. 141); while the savage joy with which he contemplates the torments of his compatriot, Filippo Argenti (Infer. viii. 37-60), recalls the fierce hatred which occasionally finds expression in his letters, of which it has been said, that "they bite like vitriol, and scald like boiling lead." That the prolonged contemplation of physical agony, as a manifestation of the divine justice, must tend to sear the conscience, and to harden the heart, finds striking illustration in the cruelty and treachery which Dante represents himself as practising towards Bocca degli Abbate, and Fra Alberigo, two traitors who were meeting their doom in the lowest depths of Hell. (Infer. xxxii. 97-104; xxxiii. 116-140.) That the poet should, with evident self-glorification, attribute to himself conduct so atrocious, is most instructive, as exhibiting the mental blindness generated by the indulgence of hatred and scorn, even when directed against so vile a traitor as Fra Alberigo. Doubtless, in coming in contact with paganism, Christianity assimilated not only many of its conceptions, but also many of its modes of thought and feeling, her emancipation from which, with the progress of civilization, has been a slow and gradual process. As reflecting this phase of Christianity, deep interest attaches to the" Inferno," where, in a nominally Christian poem, we are met, at every turn, by pagan images and personages, borrowed from Hades, as portrayed by the classical poets. Thus we are introduced to the four rivers of Hell, Acheron, with its grim ferryman, Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus; Minos the judge, passes sentence upon the lost, whom he relegates to their respective circles. As we descend, we encounter Cerberus with his triple jaws, Plutus, Phlegyas, and the city of Dis, guarded by the Furies; Medusa and the Minotaur; Centaurs and Harpies; the winged monster Geryon, Ephialtes, Antæus, and other direful shapes, in harmony with the horrors of the Medieval Hell. It would almost seem, indeed, as if the poet recognized |