1907.] Oil Dante in the Works of Gardacci. 521 



superior to ull, he at the beginning was but one of them, and he had 

 to start his poetical career by some of those competitions which 

 were the fashion of the day. Some of his early productions are 

 unpoetical, and some of them unmistakably ugly, and on this ground 

 have l^een repudiated Ijy many critics ; but the tendency of the critic 

 of Carducci is to accept as authentic as many as possible, as he very 

 rightly tliinks that no great man becomes such in a moment. More- 

 over, much more conversant than the greatest part of liis predecessors 

 with the mysteries and intricacies of the ancient Italian poetical 

 technicalities, he is able to find arguments for the authenticity 

 of such poems, which had entirely escaped the notice of men like 

 Fraticelli and Giuliani. Dante did not l^elong more than a few years 

 to this period of transformation. He was trying to find a new way, 

 and it was not long before he discovered it. All of you remember 

 the passage of the purgatory, where he meets Bonagiunta de Lucca, a 

 poet of the period. Bonagiunta asks Dante how is it that the sweet 

 new style he now hears is so different from what he and his com- 

 panions had been able to create. You know what Dante answers : 

 " I am one who writes when love inspires me, and I set down what it 

 dictates in my innermost soul." Let me read to you those celeln'ated 

 lines which give us a key and an* explanation of the second period of 

 the rhymes of Dante, which according to our critic is to be styled 

 Mystic : — 



(Dante. Purgatorio, xxiv., 49-63.) 



Mystic, because our poet soon resorted to rehgion as a refuge from 

 the torment and unrest of earthly love. " In the souls," says 

 Carducci, " in which wrath is more powerful, love is usually 

 deeper and more thoughtful, and even sensuality seems to have 

 something ideal about it. Those lyons appear to feel as a need of 

 rest, and, leaning their heads on love, to dream, and to find in the 

 dream of the beloved eyes a sort of refuge from the desert and the 

 hell which is round them in the world." With such a soul this man 

 who, as Byron said, " loved before knowing the name of love,'' who fed 

 his love with its own strength without any exterior satisfaction, must 

 have found a sort of exaltation in what was denied to him. Add to 

 this the presentiment of the near end of Beatrice, on which he so 

 very often dwells, as her weakness and the paleness of her cheeks 

 seemed to afford a sufiicient reason for his fears. You would have 

 said that he was perceiving the wings of an angel appearing on the 

 handsome shoulders of the Florentine, and that he watched her as 

 she slowly abandoned the earth to ascend to the heavens, so that 

 Dante never ceased since to look heavenwards. The Beatrice of the 

 rhymes of this period is not yet the symbol of divine wisdom, but 

 already a creature sent by God into the world to show it a miracle — 

 " di cielo in terra a miracol mostrare " — and come for its salvation — 

 " e venne in terra per nostra salute." I have here quoted the very 



