foretell in Paradise, "this was the first arrow with which the bow of exile struck him."
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Più caramente; e questo è quello strale
Che l'arco dell esilio pria saetta."
The reader may peruse in the seventeenth canto of the Paradiso, his concise and pathetic account of the sorrows of his later years. Clad in the form of prophecy, it constitutes one of the grandest passages in the whole poem. Some letters, written during his exile, are still extant and breathe a spirit so lofty that versification alone is wanting to equal them to his sublimest inspirations. Amid all the troubles of his eventful life, he still found leisure to study, meditate, and write, and when he died in Ravenna in 1321, the first great poem of modern times was completed.
"Many volumes have been written," says Carlyle, "by way of commentary on Dante and his book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering, sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived; and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The Book, and one might add, that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also deathless; significant of the whole history of Dante. I think it is the mournfullest face that ever was painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud, hopeless pain. A soft, ethereal soul, looking out so stern, implacable, grim, trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice. Withal it is a silent pain, too, a silent, scornful one; the lip is curled in a kind of god-like disdain of the thing that is eating out his heart, as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle, were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle against the world. Affection all converted into indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god. The eye, too, it looks out as in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry, why the world was of such a sort? This is Dante, so he looks, this 'voice of ten silent centuries,' and sing us his 'mystic, unfathomable song.'"
Dante is one of those authors who concentrate all their greatness in one stupendous work. The Vita Nuova has many beauties, the Convito deserves to be read, the Latin Treatises offer numerous points of interest, but it is only in the Divina Commedia that he rises to the height of his sublimity. He was singularly judicious, both in the choice of his subject and in the form of his verse. The Terza Rima carries the reader onwards in its progress, calmly, nobly, irresistibly. Had the work been written in prose, it would not have commanded the attention of future ages, so great is the embalming power of verse. A fine prose work may be neglected in the course of ages; a fine poetical work, never. Had the work been written in Latin verse, as indeed it was begun, it would only be a study for the curious and not a possession for all humanity.
The vivid power of Dante's imagination, the intense and rugged strength of his thoughts, and the graphic realism with which he presents the scenes of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven to his readers, are above praise and can find no parallel in the works of other poets. Milton surpasses him in sustained grandeur, but in picturesqueness the English poet does not attempt to rival the Florentine.
Dante's Poem is so well known that it is needless to insist upon particular beauties. All cultivated readers are familiar with them, if not in the original, at least in translations. If any fault is to be found in the poem, it is that it somewhat falls off; the Purgatorio is not quite so fine as the Inferno; the Paradiso, not quite so fine as the Purgatorio. The poet sometimes has an unfortunate tendency only to hint at the histories of the spirits he meets, so that we are indebted to his commentators rather than to himself for stories worthy to be chronicled in immortal verse. His style is not always free from coarseness on the one hand, and from obscurity on the other. But in so noble an achievement it would be mean to dwell on occasional blemishes, instead of being grateful to the poet who has presented us with a work, perhaps in many respects, the noblest production of the human mind.
As a specimen of Dante's Poem, I quote the last canto of the Inferno, in Cary's translation. The reader will notice the curious passage that seems to prove that Dante was aware, four hundred years before Newton, of the law of gravitation:
CANTO XXXIV.
"The banners of Hell's Monarch do come forth
Towards us; therefore look," so spake my guide,
"If thou discern him." As when breathes a cloud
Heavy and dense, or when the shades of night
Fall on our hemisphere, seems view'd from far
A windmill, which the blast stirs briskly round,
Such was the fabric then methought I saw.
To shield me from the wind, forthwith I drew
Behind my guide: no covert else was there.
Now came I (and with fear I bid my strain
Record the marvel) where the souls were all
Whelmed underneath, transparent, as through glass
Pellucid the frail stem. Some prone were laid,
Others stood upright, this upon the soles,
That on his head, a third with face to feet
Arched like a bow. When to the point we came
Whereat my guide was pleas'd that I should see
The creature eminent in beauty once,
He from before me stepp'd and made me pause.
"Lo!" he exclaimed, "lo Dis! and lo the place
Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with
strength."
How frozen and how faint I then became,
Ask me not, reader! for I write it not,
Since words would fail to tell thee of my state.
I was not dead nor living. Think thyself,
If quick conception work in thee at all,
How I did feel. That Emperor who sways
The Realm of Sorrow, at mid breast from th' ice
Stood forth; and I in stature am more like
A giant, than the giants are his arms.
Mark now how great that whole must be, which suits
With such a part. If he were beautiful
As he is hideous now, and yet did dare
To scowl upon his Maker, well from him
May all our misery flow. Oh what a sight!
How passing strange it seem'd when I did spy
Upon his head three faces: one in front
Of hue vermilion, th' other two with this
Midway each shoulder join'd and at the crest;
The right 'twixt wan and yellow seem'd: the left
To look on, such as come from whence old Nile
Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth
Two mighty wings, enormous as became
A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw
Outstretch'd on the wide sea. No plumes had they,
But were in texture like a bat, and these
He flapp'd i' th' air, that from him issued still
Three winds,