1907.] Dante. 519 



WEEKLY EYENINCt MEETING, 

 Friday, March 1, 1907. 



Sir James Crichton-Browne, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S., 

 Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Count A. de Bosdari, Councillor, Italian Embassy. 



Dante in the Critical and Poetical Works of Carducci. 



When I first accepted the invitation of the Managers of this old and 

 illustrious Institution to hold this lecture (a great honour Ijestowed 

 upon me for which I cannot adequately express my gratification), I 

 could not foresee that what was intended to be an eulogy of the 

 greatest of our living poets would turn into a commemoration of 

 one who had just departed to join his great forerunners in the 

 pantheon of the purest Italian glory. It is not without great 

 emotion that I think that when I revisit my country I shall not see 

 again la cara e buona imagine paterna of him whom I had adored as 

 a genius and loved as a father. 



In the year 1865 the then very young Kingdom of Italy 

 celebrated one of its first National Festivities — the Fifth Centenary 

 of the Birth of Dante. Among the crowd which fingered along the 

 streets of Florence there was a young poet, who at the time could 

 have said of himself — 



" il nome mio ancor molto non suona." 



Giosue Carducci, for he it was, had stopped awhile before the 

 statue of St. George in the Loggia dell' Orgagna, and in a sort of 

 soliloquy was urging the saint to descend from his pedestal and 

 disperse with the broad sword he holds in his hands the idle multi- 

 tude, and was calling him fratello. A purple-faced romagnolo heard 

 the word, and taking it as meant for himself, kissed Carducci on 

 both cheeks, and exclaimed, " Viva I'ltalia, il Poeta divino e il Veltro 

 ghibelfino." " The poor man," says Carducci, relating this amusing 

 episode, " did not intend to make poetry ; but the poetry of the period 

 was all more or less of that kind." Further on Carducci describes how 

 good Professor Giuliani used to finish his weekly lessons on Dante by 

 way of an allegorical meeting between Dante and Victor Emanuel 

 " in the region of the sparrows,'' which never failed to excite the 

 loudest applause of the fashionable ladies who used to gather around 

 him. Critics of so manv centuries had tried in vain to find out who 



