DANTE. 



593 



entirely imaginary subject, and filled with learning, 

 which yet keeps the interest of the reader awake 

 throughout. Other great epics are founded on 

 tales or historical facts, preserved in the memory of 

 the poet's countrymen ; but, with him, the whole 

 \vas fiction, at least everything beyond the common 

 dogma of hell, purgatory, and heaven. At the 

 same tune, it cannot be denied, that his learning 

 sometimes, though seldom, renders him unpoetical ; 

 for instance, when he gives long astronomical de- 

 scriptions. It has often oeen said, and often denied, 

 that, in his Heaven, the interest diminishes. We 

 must assent to the first opinion, which is founded, 

 indeed, on human nature ; for evil and suffering are 

 far more exciting, and, on this account, more in- 

 teresting than tranquil happiness. Does not every 

 comedy close as soon as the couple are united, and 

 tlie tragedy, when the wicked are punished ? 



The name Commedia is derived from Dante's idea 

 concerning the forms of eloquence, which were, in 

 his opinion, tragic, comic, and elegiac, as he relates 

 in his work De vulgari Eloquentia, which was pro- 

 bably first written in Latin. What he called tragedy 

 was a piece commencing with happy and peaceful 

 scenes, and ending with events of a painful, and 

 terrible character ; and what he called comedy was 

 a piece which, beginning unpleasantly, terminated 

 happily. The qualifying word divina was, how- 

 ever, added by others ; but. in the oldest editions, 

 the poet himself was called by the appellations of // 

 Divine and // Teologo. The poem of Dante has been 

 considered, by some persons, but, in our opinion, 

 unworthily, to have taken its rise from the author's 

 circumstances. We may also mention the opinion 

 maintained in 1753, by Bottari, that Dante made use 

 of the Vision of Alberico, a monk who lived in the 

 twelfth century, in a monastery on monte Cassino, 

 in Naples. There have been many such visions, 

 from the earliest ages of Christianity ; as, for in- 

 stance, the vision of an English monk, which 

 Matthew Paris mentions, in his history of England 

 (in the year 1196), and which resembled Dante's 

 poem much more than the vision of Alberico, pub- 

 lished by Cancellieri, in 1814, at Rome, with obser- 

 vations (Osservazioni intorno alia Questione sopra la 

 Originalitd delta Divina Commedia di Dante) ; and, 

 moreover, the vision of a gentleman named Tundall, 

 in Ireland, which also fells in the first part of the 

 twelfth century. It is, therefore, very possible that 

 Dante here and there may have borrowed a thought 

 or image from those visions ; but this is no fault : 

 the recollections of great men are sparks which serve 

 to kindle mighty flames. 



There is no poet who bears so distinctly the 

 impress of his age, and yet rises so high above it, as 

 Dante. The Italians justly regard lu'm as the 

 creator of their poetical language, and the father of 

 their poetry, which, regulated and controlled by his 

 genius, at once assumed a purer and far nobler form 

 than it had previously worn. The terzina first 

 reached its perfection in the time of Dante, on 

 which account he has been erroneously regarded as 

 the inventor of it. 



The best editions of the Divina Commedia are 

 those of Lombardi (Rome, 1791, three vols., 4to), 

 and the edition of Milan (in 1804, in three vols.). 

 Of the former, a second and much improved edition 

 appeared in 1815 17, at Rome, published by 

 Romano de' Roman!, in which the vision of Alberico 

 is also contained. In 1821, Luigi Fantoni published 

 an edition of the Divina Commedia, stated to have 

 been printed from a manuscript in the hand-writing 

 of Boccaccio. An Italian professor at Paris, Biagioli, 

 also published an edition of this poem, from the 

 text of the Crusca edition, in 1818, together with a 



good commentary, in three volumes. Dante's com- 

 plete works appeared in Venice in 1757 58, 

 published by Zatta (in five vols., 4to). His lyric 

 poems, sonnets, and canzonets, of which some are 

 beautiful, others dull and heavy, were written at 

 different periods of his life. We have yet to men- 

 tion his Banquet (// Convito) a prose work, worthy, 

 says Bouterwek, to stand by the side of the bfst 

 works of antiquity. It contains the substance of all 

 his knowledge and experience, and thus illustrates 

 his poetry and his lite. The marquis Trivulzio 

 edited a new edition of it, in 1826, in Milan. A 

 work containing much valuable matter to elucidate 

 Dante is Del Veltro Allegorica. di Dante (Florence, 

 1826, 8vo., with an interesting appendix), extracted 

 from a very old Codex Mediceus, belonging, at pre- 

 sent, to the Biblioteca Laurenziana, marked No. viii. 

 bench xxix. Among the best modern commentaries 

 on Dante are the treatises of doctor Witte in the 

 Hermes, and also in the Silesian Provinzial- Slattern, 

 in 1825. There is a good English translation of the 

 Divina Commedia, by Mr Carey (London, 1819, 

 three vols., 8vo). There is also a good English 

 translation by Wright. 



In one respect, Dante stands unrivalled by any 

 man, as he, we might almost say, created the 

 language, which he elevated at once to its highest 

 perfection. Before him, very little was written in 

 Italian, Latin being the literary language ; but no 

 one attempted to use the lingua volgare for the pur- 

 poses of dignified composition. The poet, indeed, 

 thought it necessary to excuse himself for having 

 written in Italian, after having attempted to com- 

 pose his poem in Latin. Thus he is to be regarded 

 as the founder of Italian literature. One of the 

 strangest productions of Dante is his De Monarchia, 

 already mentioned. He labours, in this work, to 

 prove that the emperor ought to have universal 

 authority, and draws his arguments from the Sacred 

 Scriptures and from profane writers, which, in this 

 book, appear very often with equal authority. The 

 dialectics of the schoolmen are here exhibited in a 

 most characteristic way. The De Monarchia is 

 valuable as a source of information respecting the 

 great struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, and 

 its influence upon the Christian world at that time. 

 This struggle was a part of the great convulsion 

 attending the separation of the civil power from the 

 ecclesiastical, with which, in the earliest ages, it is 

 always united. On the whole, Dante's works are 

 important chiefly in three respects as. the produc- 

 tions of one of the greatest men that ever lived, as 

 one of the keys to the history of his time, and as ex- 

 hibiting the state of learning, theology, and politics 

 in that age. To understand Dante, it is necessary 

 to be acquainted with the history and spirit of his 

 time, particularly with the struggle of the Guelphs 

 and Ghibelines, the state of the north of Italy, and 

 the excitement caused by the beginning of the study 

 of the ancients ; also to have studied the Catholic 

 theology and the history of the court of Rome, and 

 to keep always in mind that Dante was an exile, 

 deprived of home and happiness. The Germans, at 

 present, pay much attention to Dante. They have 

 some excellent translations, by Kannegiesser and 

 Streckfuss, and valuable works on the poet by 

 Abeken, in Berlin, and others. 



Pietro Vincenzio, of the family of Rainaldi, was 

 surnamed Dante, because he endeavoured to imitate 

 this great poet. He and his whole family were 

 celebrated for their knowledge of mathematical 

 science. 



Giovanni Battista Dante, of Perugia, probably 

 belonging to the same femily, is well known by the 

 surname of Daedalus, which lie obtained on account 

 2 i' 



