literary art, it abounds in sentiment without a tinge of sentimentalism. By its artless freedom it reveals Dante's personal character at this period with special clearness and charm, and it is a matter of delightful interest to find in Dante, the lover of Beatrice Portinari, the same traits that appear in Dante, exul immeritus. The Dante of the "Vita Nuova" charms by his tenderness, humility, learning, and delicate imagination; the Dante of the "Commedia” compels reverence by all these traits emphasized by the discipline of a struggle with sorrow, and our gentle poet has now become a hero, "crowned and mitred o'er himself." 1 To analyze a human character is a perplexing task. But its difficulties are somewhat diminished when the nature under consideration is of the depth and earnestness of that of Dante; the greater the earnestness of a character, the greater is its simplicity of purpose; the more intense the aim, the more closely do the individual parts group themselves around a common centre. Dante's writings are essentially of an autobiographic nature, 66 quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella but the "Vita Nuova," the "Divina Commedia," and the "Convito" are those which give not only in themselves but by their comparison the surest indications of the poet's personality. These three works represent the stages of his relation to Beatrice, which was the controlling influence of his life, and the expression of which serves to reveal most significantly the force of his imagination. From the outset Beatrice is to him of a nature more than human. Of her in her childhood it could be said, "in the words of the poet Homer: 'She seemeth not the daughter of mortal man, but of 1 Purgatorio, xxvii. 142. 2 Hor. S. II. i. 32. God,'" and she remains the type of the divine when she has become a woman. When, with her two companions, she passes along the streets of Florence clad in purest white, symbol of her own purity, she salutes Dante where he stood "very timidly," "per la sua ineffabile cortesia, la quale è oggi meritata nel grande secolo."2 She mingles with the work-a-day world, she has her friends, and is loyal to them too; she brightens the wedding feast, her presence is a benediction in the street, but with it all, "Dice di lei Amor: Cosa mortale Come esser puote sì adorna e si pura? She is "la speranza de' beati,”5 "Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente, "Dicevano molti, poichè passata era: Questa non è femina, anzi è uno de' bellissimi Angeli del cielo. Ed altri dicevano: Questa è una meraviglia; che benedetto sia lo Signore che si mirabilmente sa operare." After" the Lord of Justice called this most gentle one to glory," to Beatrice, "loda di Dio vera," 1 was, to the poet's mind, natural and easy. She was exalted by his fond imagination. to a higher and yet higher plane, till he had indeed said of her "what was never said of any woman;" till, in poetic ecstasy, he had beheld the "glory of that blessed Beatrice, who in glory looketh upon the face of Him, qui est per omnia saecula benedictus," 2- who had now herself become to him the "brightness of the eternal light, the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God."3 This change in Beatrice to a completely spiritual being indicates the marvellous extent to which Dante lived in the scenes fashioned by his imagination. His nature was strangely twofold, for he both engaged eagerly in practical life, and also lived a silent existence of his own, entirely apart from the world in which he was dwelling. The soldier at Campaldino 1 and Caprona,5 the member of the priorate, the ambassador to Rome, the weary, wandering exile, was a man who was not prevented, by actual experiences, from shaping the three worlds of Eternity, with an imagination purified and intensified by the conflict with sin and grief. The striking qualities of the imagination that are most plainly manifested in the "Commedia" reveal themselves first in the "Vita Nuova." Time and race account to a great extent for a susceptible imagination, but the definiteness with. which the purely fanciful becomes actual is all Dante's own.. The visions with which the "Vita Nuova "6 is replete are the foreshadowings of those in which the poet beheld the "Paradiso." The vividness of his descriptions may perhaps be ascribed to his memory, which seems to have been so exact 1 Inferno, ii. 103. 2 V. N., xliii. 8 Wisdom of Solomon, as quoted by Dante, Convito, Tr. iii. xv. 4 Aretino cites a letter of Dante's in which he says: "I was present not a boy in arms, and where I felt much fear, but in the end the greatest pleasure from the various changes of the fight." 5 Inferno, xxi. 95. 6 Convito, Tr. ii. c. xiii. that the details of what he saw and heard were involuntarily stored away, to be used at convenience, a trait that would lead to a certain accurate habit of mind, naturally finding expression in words like these: Again, “O mente, che scrivesti ciò ch' io vidi, "Quando io udi' questa profferta, degna Only the sounds and sights of the supernal glories of Paradise, it is beyond his memory to retain completely: "Ma Beatrice sì bella e ridente Mi si mostrò, che tra quelle vedute Si vuol lasciar che non seguir la mente." 3 Thus whatever he found in men's minds and in the life around him he appropriated unto himself, and transformed it by the Midas's touch of his fancy. That his imagination was open to the impression of current superstitions is shown by his treatment of numbers, and his credence of their mystic properties. With special reference to the mystic number ten and to the sacred three, he arranged the poems of the "New Life" in a triple series of tens; and to the same numbers the "Divine Comedy" corresponds, in its terza rima, and its one hundred cantos, or rather, perhaps, its ninety-nine cantos, thirty-three in each of the three parts, with the first canto of the" Inferno" as introduction. One of the most marked characteristics of the "Vita Nuova " is the frequent reference to the number nine as friendly to Beatrice. "Quasi dal principio del suo anno nono apparve a me, ed io la vidi quasi alla fine del mio nono." He says 1 Inferno, ii. 8. For the same figure cf. V. N. i. 2 Paradiso, xxiii. 52. 4 V. N. i. 8 Paradiso, xiv. 79 also ib. xxiii. 51. he would have made no mention of his serventese containing the names of sixty gentlewomen of Florence," se non per dire quello che componendola maravigliosamente addivenne, cioè che in alcuno altro numero non sofferse il nome della mia donna stare, se non in sul nove, tra' nomi di queste donne."1 The vision of the death of Beatrice came to him on the ninth day of his illness; 2 she died on the ninth day of the month, in the year when, says Dante, "the perfect number was completed for the ninth time in that century in which she had been placed in this world."3 Finally it was at the hour of nones when the vision of Beatrice moved his heart to repent of its wanderings, and all his "thoughts returned to their most gentle Beatrice." 4 Dante's mind was of the quality that would draw him instinctively toward the speculations of the schoolmen, and though in the "Vita Nuova" it is out of place to look for philosophical views, it is interesting to find here the schoolmen's abstractions affording the material for his imagination; as, for instance, when he makes little spirits actually inhabit the body of man, personifying them and endowing them with a distinct existence. But Dante was hardly less a scholar than he was poet, and. knowledge was to him in truth "die hohe, die himmlische Göttin." A passage in the "Convito" represents his conception of learning as only a scholar could form it. "Onde non si dee dicere vero filosofo alcuno che per alcuno diletto colla sapienzia in alcuna parte sia amico; siccome sono molti che si dilettano in intendere Canzoni e di studiare in quelle, e che si dilettano studiare in Rettorica e in Musica, e l'altre scienze fuggono e abbandonano, che sono tutte membra di sapienzia. Non si dee chiamare vero filosofo colui ch'è amico di sapienzia per utilità; siccome sono li Legisti, Medici e quasi tutti li Religiosi, che non per sapere 1 V. N. vi. 4 Ib. xl. 2 Ib. xxiii. 8 Ib. xxx.; also xxix. 5 Ib. i., xi.; xiv. ; Son. vii.; xxii. |