Dante: His Times and His Work

bject, and the quantity which remains to be written. The first involves the reading of an enormous mass of literature in several languages, and very various in qual

s; and it was not until a new critical spirit began to apply to it the methods which had hitherto been reserved for the Greek and Latin classics, that the study got any chance of development. How enormously it has developed during the pr

blic burdens. Ablebodied men could not be spared when, as was usually the case, fighting was toward; all men of mental capacity were needed in council or in administration. And, after all, the area to be administered, the ground to be fought over, were so small, that the man of letters might do his duty by the community and yet have plenty of time to spare for his studies. He might handle his pike at Caprona or Campaldino one day, and be at home among his books the next. Then, again, the society was a cultivated and quick-witted one, with many interests. Arts and letters were in high esteem, and eminence in them as sure a road t

ught or feeling at the roots of human nature, there will be no need of any harder study than is involved in going through it with a translation. Indeed, it will hardly be worth while to go to the original at all. The pleasure, one might almost say the physical pleasure, der

which only tell them what their own wits could divine without any other assistance than the text itself gives. No commentator seems yet to have realised that, in order to understand Dante thoroughly, he must put himself on Dante's level so far as regards a knowledge of all the available literature. The more obvious quarries from which Dante obtained the materials for his mighty structure-the Bible, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle-have no doubt been pretty thoroughly examined, and many obscurities which the

ken with fever? For such place their hope of rest in a change of posture, and so, wh

his mind when he wrote that bitter apostrophe to his ow

i ricorda,

igliante a qu

rovar posa in

olta suo dol

hich one feels certain he possessed. A real "Dante's library"[2] would comprise pretty well every book in Latin, Italian, French, or Proven?al, "published," if we may use the term, up to the year 1300. Of course a good many Latin books were

kindled, and at last I spake with my tongue." The old classical literature had said its last word when Claudian died; and though men continued to compose, often with ability and intelligence, the histories and chronicles which practically formed the only non-theological writings of the so-called "Dark Ages," letters in the full sense of the term lay dormant for centuries. Not till the twelfth century was far advanced did any signs of a re-awakening appear. Then, to use a phrase of Dante's, the dead poetry arose, a

ely connected with this, the influence of external nature upon the observer begins for the first time to be recognised and to form a subject for poetical treatment.[4] Horace has several charming descriptions of the sights and sounds of spring; but they suggest to him merely that life is short, or that he is thirsty, and in either case he cannot do better than h

sumer

uomen durc

?che en

e vogel

m ich

r anger

er brunne

walde wa

ahtegale

known Fre

ies et series. Nicolete jut une nuit en son lit, et vit la lune cler par une fenestre, et s

ly unknown E

Mershe an

biginneth

foul hat

lud to

e in lov

kest of a

e blisse

hire baun

e thirteenth century the spring, and the nightingales, and the flower

neis; professional or official persons, like Jacopo the notary of Lentino, or Guido dalle Colonne the judge of Messina; fighting men, like several of the Troubadours; political intriguers, like Bertrand del Born-all have left verses which, for beauty of thought and melody of rhythm, have seldom been matched. But the great poem was yet to

e d

powerless

unfitly, known as the Wonder of the World. The medi?val Papacy, though about to undergo a loss of prestige which it never retrieved, outlived its rival, and had seldom been a greater force in the political world than it was in the hands of the ambitious and capable Boniface VIII. The scholastic philosophy, which had directed

aced that of Gaul. In the countries where the Empire had till recently been an ever-present power, Germany and Italy, the work of consolidation went on far less rapidly; indeed, it has been reserved for our own age to see it completed. With Germany we have here nothing directly to do; but it is all-important to the right understanding of Dante's position that we should glance briefly at the political state of Italy and especially of Tuscany during the latter half of the thirteenth century. By good fortune we have very copious information on this matter. A contemporary and neighbour of Dante's, by name John Villani, happened to be at Rome during the great Jubilee of 1300. The sight of the imperial city and all its ancient glories set him meditating on its history, written, as he says (in a collocation of names which looks odd to us, but was usual enough then), "by Virgil, by Sallust and Lucan, by Titus Livius, Valerius, and Paulus Orosius," and moved him, as an unworthy disciple, to do for

TNO

ris., Anna

nte; Illustrations and Notes, privately printed by Messrs. T. & A. Constable, at Edinburgh, 1890. He does not, however,

ogether. The only instance in classical literature that I can recall of what may be termed the modern view of the subject is that of H?mon

e as Canticles ii. 10-14 shows that Oriental poets felt the sentiment from ver

right there the birds were singing; thither came I, on my way over a long meadow wh

serene. Nicolete lay one night on her bed, and saw the moon shine clear through a window, yea, and heard the nigh

seemliest; he = she; in hi