To punish thee, since neighbors yet abstain,
Capraia and Gorgona from the ground
Rise, and a mole o'er Arno's entrance throw,
Till with her waters all in thee be drowned.
That he thy castles had betrayed although
Count Ugolino was accused by fame,
His children thou should'st not have tortured so.

The shield of innocence which youth may claim (New Thebes) Uguccion and Brigata share."

Inferno, canto xxxiii. ll. 79-89.

In relating his conversation with Pope Nicholas the Fourth, he says:

"I know not if too rashly I my mind

Expressed, but my reply this burden bore: 'Alas! now tell me, when our Lord inclined To put the keys into St. Peter's power, What treasures did he first of him demand? None-Follow me,' he said, and asked no

more.

Peter and th' others of Matthias's band

Nor gold nor silver took, when lots they cast For one in Judas's forfeit place to stand.

Then stay where thy just punishment thou hast,

And look that well thou guard that wealth ill gained,

Whence thou against King Charles embold

ened wast.

And if it were not that I am restrained

By reverence for the keys which once did fill Thy grasp, while cheerful life to thee remained, The words I speak would be severer still; Because your avarice the whole world hath grieved,

Trampling the good, and raising up the ill. You shepherds the Evangelist perceived,

When her who on the waters sits he saw, And who with kings in filthy whoredom lived. Her who with seven heads born could also draw

From the ten horns conclusive argument,

While yet she pleased her spouse with virtue's law.

What could the idolater do more, who bent

To gold and silver, which you make your
God?

But worship to a hundred ye present

For one! Ah! Constantine, what ills have flowed

Though not from thy conversion, from the dower

Which to thy gift the first rich father owed." Inferno, canto xix. 88. Dante, without question, like Luther at the commencement of his career, acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, and held most of the doctrines of the Church of Rome. In short, he was a sincere Catholic. But in early life he had become acquainted with the Holy Scriptures, and the result is obvious throughout his poem. To them, and not to his own labors, learning, experience, or philosophy, he ascribes the light of truth which had

been poured into his soul. In reply to the question, "What is faith?" he answers: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen." In answer to St. Peter's comes it?" he replies: "The copious question: "This previous faith, whence rain of the Holy Spirit, which is poured out on the Old and New Testament, and an argument which so conclusively convinces me that every other proof seems obtuse in comparison therewith." After having recited the articles of his belief, he concludes:

"And this revealed profundity divine

Which now I touch on, to my heart has given

And sealed the evangelic doctrine mine. This is the root, the spark whose fiery leaven, Wide spreading, kindles to a vivid flame, And in me sparkles like a star in heaven." Paradiso, canto xxiv. ll. 142-147. Dante regarded the temporal sovereignty of the Pope as the source of papal corruption, and of the misery of his country.

"Rome, that of old reformed the world, bestowed Light from two suns, to show how each way tends

That of the civil state, and that of God;

One has the other quenched, confusion blends The sword and crosier; and when thus together, They can not fitly work to their due ends; Because when joined the one fears not the other.

But if thou doubt it, see what fruits abound; Each plant is known when we the harvest gather.

The Church of Rome, now fallen in mire confess,

By her confounding these two regiments, Herself makes filthy and her charge no less." Purgatorio, canto xvi. ll. 106-129. Although Dante has interpreted to us the Middle Ages, it would seem that, in many cases, he himself needs an interpreter. Accordingly his works have had a greater number of commentators and translators than any other literary production, except the sacred writings. This may be accounted for from the interest they have excited, as well as from their profundity. "All knowledge," says Coleridge, "begins with wonder, passes through an interspace of admiration, mixed with research, and ends in wonder again." Among the commentators of Dante, the greatest diversity of inter

66

the pit of woe, it is a solace, that he will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these altai guai. And the racking winds in that aer bruno, whirl them away again to wail forever! Dante was the friend of this poor Francesca's father. Francesca, herself, may have sat upon the poet's knee, when a bright, innocent child. Infinite pity, yet infinite rigor of law; it is so nature is made, it is so Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry notion is that, of his Divine Comedy's being a poor splenetic, impotent, terrestrial libel; putting those into hell whom he could not be avenged upon on earth! I suppose, if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any man, it was

in Dante's. But a man who does not know vigor, can not know pity either. His very pity will be cowardly, egotistic sentimentality, or little better. I know not in the world an affection equal to Dante's. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love, like the wail of Eolian harps, and soft as a young child's heart. Those longings of his toward Beatrice; their meeting in Paradise; his gazing in her pure, transfigured eyes; her that had been purified by death so long, separated so far. One likens it to the song of angels; it is among the purest utterances that ever

came out of a human soul.

"Dante is intense in all things. His scorn, his grief, are transcendent as his love; as, indeed, what are they but the inverse or converse of his love? A Dio spacienti, ed a' nemici sui:' Hateful both to God and to his enemies! Lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; Non ragionam di lor: We will not speak of them, but look and pass. Or think of this, Non ha speranza di morte:' They have not the hope to die. For rigor, earnestness, and depth, Dante is not to be paralleled in the modern world; to seek his parallel, we must go to the Hebrew Bible, and live with the antique prophets.

"Dante's poem is a sublime embodiment of the soul of Christianity. It expresses how he felt good and evil to be the two polar elements of this creation, on which it all turns; that these two differ, not by preferability of

*We are told by Goethe, in his autobiography, that he had attained his sixth year when the terrible earthquake at Lisbon took place; an event," he says, "which greatly disturbed his

peace of mind for the first time." He could not reconcile a catastrophe so suddenly destructive to thousands with the idea of a Providence, all-powerful and all-benevolent. But he afterward learned, he tells us, to recognize in such events the "God of the Old Testament." Yes, it is the God of the Old Testament whom we see exhibited in all nature and all providence; and it is our wisdom and duty, however little we can comprehend his proceedings, to exercise full confidence in their justice and propriety. "Clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne."

one to the other, but by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent and high, as light and heaven, the other hideous, black-black as Gehenna and the pit of hell. Everlasting justice, yet with penitence, with everlasting pity."

In Dante's

It must, however, be admitted, that the Divina Commedia is not without its faults. What human work is perfect? Homer sometimes nods, particularly in the management of his machinery, or treatment of the gods of Olympus. The blending of Pagan mythology with Christian tradition and the truths of Holy Scripture, makes Dante's poem in some parts appear like the debatable ground between the ancient superstition and the newer faith; in which, however, the latter is victorious, and the dethroned and desecrated gods of the Pantheon, transformed to demons, are dragged at the chariotwheels of the conqueror. age, the Ptolemaic system was universally received; the poet, accordingly, regards the earth as immovably fixed in the centre of the universe; and the sun, with all the planets and fixed stars, as moving round it once in eveAt that time, ry twenty-four hours. too, the authority of Aristotle was undisputed and paramount; so that a quotation from his works, with an ipse dixit, was deemed sufficient, and allconclusive in any controversy. Even in theology, though himself a heathen, his authority was appealed to by Christian divines. Dante makes a what prodigal display, occasionally, of his Aristotelian lore. Yet, endowed as he was, with a rare sagacity, he went far ahead of his time, not only in theology, as we have seen, but also in physics. It was not until after the middle of the fifteenth century, that European voyagers crossed the line; yet in the imaginary voyage of Ulysses to the Antipodes, Dante has foreshadowed the discoveries of the Portuguese, and may have given a hint to Columbus himself. Ulysses in describing southward, says:

his

voyage

some

"Each star of the other pole, as on we bore, The night beheld, and ours had sunk so low, That now it rose not on the ocean-floor."

Inferno, canto xxvi. ll. 137-139. And in relating his own voyage to the Mount of Purgatory, Dante says: