520 Count A. de Bosdari [March 1, 



the real Beatrice was. How had they not perceived at once that 

 Beatrice was the Italia Una ? Did they not remember that in the 

 purgatory she appears garbed with the three national colours ? Many 

 years after the preface of the " Levia Gravia " from Avhich I have 

 taken the few fragments above, had been written, the official world of 

 Italy desired to use our great national poet as a weapon against 

 the invading clericalism, and they instituted in Rome a chair, the 

 main object of which was to expound whatever the most Christian 

 and most Catholic of all poets had written against the Roman 

 Church. They wanted to have for this chair a celebrated man, and 

 the very first they thought of was Carducci, then at the summit of 

 his fame ; but Carducci refused this rather doubtful honour, and 

 expressed the reasons of his doing so in a celebrated letter to Adriano 

 Lemmi, from which I am going to quote to you a passage, because I 

 think that it is a sort of compendium of the principles of historical 

 sincerity, and, so to say, of poHtical self-denial, with which our 

 Master has taught us to approach Dante : " The aims and intentions 

 of those who have instituted the chair seem to be such as to require 

 in the man who will occupy it opinions on the political and religious 

 ideas of Dante, which I must frankly acknowledge I do not possess. 

 For me the greatness of Dante does not go beyond the circle of 

 middle-age and of strict Catholicism ; the reform which, according to 

 Ugo Foscolo, he had the intention to effect in the Church, if this 

 intention existed at all, did not affect the dogmas ; he aimed at a 

 Catholicism more strict, more ascetic, and more despotic. No one 

 more than the Alighieri dreamed or would have more approved of a 

 conciliation between the Pope and the Empire. But the conciliation 

 is an old Italian Utopia, and we need not be afraid of it. However, 

 let us avoid politics. I only mean that I may be mistaken in these 

 ideas of mine, and would be willing to be persuaded to the contrary, 

 but I know that they are expressed in some books which are now in 

 the hands of many, and it would l)e unbecoming for me to go on the 

 new Chair and contradict them." It was so that, avoiding all the 

 prejudices of his time and only trusting long and laborious historical 

 researches, he set very early to work to build for himself and for his 

 pupils of that school of Bologna, which he never wished to leave, an 

 image of Dante, which might be truthful ; and his very first cares 

 were given to the rhymes of the poet, that marvellous early work so 

 unknown to many, and still so necessary to prepare one's mind to the 

 study of the Divine Comedy. In the essay on the rhymes of Dante 

 he first of all points out the enormous debt of Italian literature, 

 acknowledged l)y Dante, to the Frencli and Provengal predecessors. 

 He then goes on describing how the rhymes can very ai)propriately be 

 divided into three periods, the first of which may be termed a period 

 of transformation. It is known that Dante despised his con- 

 temporary Tuscan poets, and tliat he nuicli more praised those of the 

 school of Bologna. But though he was shortly to become infinitely 



