522 Count A. de Bosdari [March 1, 



words of Carducci himself, because I think that only a poet can seize 

 certain shades which, besides historical reasons, can show us how the 

 poetry of love of mediaeval troubadours became through religion 

 worthy of the loftiest minds. 



The third period of the rhymes of Dante symbolic and philo- 

 sophical, according to a very clever conjecture of our critic dates 

 back to the time after the death of Beatrice, when the poet met a 

 mysterious lady, as every one of you will remember to have read in 

 the " A^ita Nuova." Then began a series of passing loves which 

 the poet expiates in his purgatory, before ascending to his paradise. 

 Because our critic quite rightly thinks that the symbol and the 

 allegory is not all in this last part of the lyric works of the AUghieri. 

 It had been a dogma of his, repeatedly affirmed in the " Vulgare 

 Eloquio," that vulgar rhymes could only serve the purpose of 

 expressing the thoughts of love. Depicting human wisdom under 

 the shadow of an allegorical woman could not, in the long run, be 

 sufficient to a man who felt something more in love, and to whom, 

 according to his first biographer, even sensuality was not altogether 

 without attraction. Ricordati, ricordati, as Virgil tells him in the 

 purgatory ; and our critic (remember he was writing this essay in the 

 prime of his youth) cannot but be indulgent for the warmth of the 

 amorous passions which appear through " /'/ velame delU versi strani.'''' 

 But the results of those sensual sins, which the great human poet was 

 not successful in concealing under a philosophical allegory, were the 

 tremendous reproach addressed to him by Beatrice at the end of the 

 purgatory. As Carducci quotes it at length in his essay, I hope you 

 will allow me to read it as a conclusion of this hurried summary of it. 



(Dante, Purgatorio xxx., 121-137; xxxi., 28-30 and 49-60.) 



The two discourses on "la varia fortuna di Dante" are an 

 attempt, somewhat incomplete and unsuccessful, to write the story 

 of the fame attained by Dante through the various ages of the 

 Italian literature. The critical portion of this writing is quite 

 imperfect, and, accordingly, was omitted from the edition of the 

 selected prose works of Carducci, revised and approved by the author 

 himself. But, out of the whole, I have still to mention two chapters, 

 which have been inserted therein, and are really worth studying. 



The first is an account of the opinions held on Dante by his 

 contemporaries till the end of the ISth century, such as Giovanni 

 da Virgilio the Latin poet of Bologna, Cecco d'Avcoli Dante's fierce 

 detractor. Cardinal del Poggetto, who wanted the Inquisition to burn 

 the book of the " Monarchia," and finally the poet's own sons Pietro and 

 Jacopo, the first editors and explainers of the Divine Comedy. 



In the other chapter Carducci brings together the three giant figures 

 of the Italian middle age, Dante, Petrarca,and Boccaccio, and from their 

 being near each other a new light arises to make clearer their images 

 to us. The touching modesty and unreserved admiration of Boccaccio 



