August i8, 1898J 



NA rURE 



Z^Z 



he has published his work in the form of an essay ; in 

 my opinion, he should have appended his notes to an 

 edition of the whole text of the Paradisoj for his 

 valuable remarks would then have presented themselves 

 to the reader singly, and each in its proper place ; but 

 in the form they have been published, my conviction 

 compels me to say that the uninitiated, for whom the 

 book is avowedly intended, will be rather discouraged 

 or repulsed by the mass of theological and ethical 

 disquisitions the book mainly consists of, with but a 

 very few glimpses of the poetry which richly adorns 

 Paradiso, and makes the serious matters dealt with in 

 it attractive, enjoyable, and exalting. In reading Mr. 

 ■Gardners book, one would almost think that Dante in 

 his Paradiso simply rhymed St. Thomas Aquinas, 

 Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Bernard, and Richard 

 of St. Victor ; whereas, in reality, he was the great 

 Christian poet who expressed in the language of his 

 people, and handed down to posterity, vivified and 

 enhanced with his beautiful poetry, the thoughts and 

 ideas which the school and the cloister entertained and 

 preached concerning the deep questions of human 

 existence. Mr. Gardner should have kept in mind the 

 words which he himself quotes on p. 48 of his book : — 



" Matter potete ben per I'alto sale 

 Vostro navigio, servando mio solco 

 Dinnanzi I'acqua che ritorna uguale." 



Par., C. ii., lines 13-15. 



Had he done so, had he been more graphic in his 

 account of the sublime ethereal pilgrimage, his readers 

 would follow much more easily his guidance, and feel a 

 greater interest in the poem. The fact is that Dante's 

 Paradiso should be read and studied (with good notes, 

 of course) in the very words of the sublime poet himself ; 

 in truth, many passages in the translations already pub- 

 lished of it are dim and clumsy rendering of the original, 

 and oftentimes, for anybody who knows any Italian at 

 all, more difficult to understand than the original text 

 itself. Little, far too little is said by Mr. Gardner about 

 the beautiful diction, the marvellous style, and the stupen- 

 dous poetic conceptions abundantly displayed by Dante in 

 the last, but the greatest and most sublime, of the three 

 parts of the Divina Commedia j and he has said scarcely 

 anything at all of his surprising and admirable knowledge 

 of the physical sciences and astronomy. But, surely, it is 

 for these eminent qualities I have just enumerated that 

 Dante is entitled to that great and ever-increasing con- 

 sideration and admiration which he attracts at the present 

 time ; it is the all-surveying, all-embracing, all-stirring 

 character of his intellect that arrests and commands the 

 attention of all the thinking minds of the present 

 inquiring age. As Mr. Gardner cannot, I think, be 

 one of those critics who injudiciously hold that science 

 is opposed to poetry— that the one must inevitably mar 

 the scope of the other— I cannot understand why he does 

 not praise Dante for his great and, considering the age 

 he lived in, truly amazing knowledge of the highest 

 problems of science. Had not Dante's mind been so 

 copiously stored with all the learning of the best in- 

 structed of his contemporaries, most certainly his poetic 

 imagination could never have taken its start from the 

 lofty plane it rose from in the Divina Commedia^ and 

 his Paradiso could never have been more than a grand 

 NO. 1503, VOL. 58] 



rhapsody. It suffices to compare Dante's magnificent 

 poem with the Vision of Alberigo, the monk of Monte 

 Cassino, or " De Jerusalem Celesti," of Fra Giacomino 

 of Verona, to see how puerile even poetic conceptions 

 will appear when they are expressed by minds untaught, 

 and obliged to rely upon their unaided natural resources. 

 The Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, the work of heaven 

 and earth, 



" Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra," 



Par., C. XXV., line 2. 



contain innumerable passages, which prove Dante's im- 

 mense knowledge of the physical sciences, and astronomy. 

 With reference to the physical sciences, I will only mention 

 the following points : — 



His allusion to the principle of universal gravitation : 

 Inf , C. xxxiv., lines 73 and 74. 



His remarkably accurate description of the origin of 

 rain : Purg., C. v., line 109-112. 



His explanation of the way in which the vegetable 

 humour of the vine, fostered by the light and heat of the 

 sun, becomes grapes : Purg., C. xxv., lines 77 and 78. 



His knowledge of the theory of the decomposition of 

 light ; in fact, the prismatic nature of the solar spectrum : 

 Purg., C. xxix., lines 73-78. 



His knowledge that flowers are only leaves meta- 

 morphosed : Par., C. xxxvii., lines 38 and 39. 



And, to go no further in this department, his recom- 

 mendation of experiment and scientific observation, in 

 preference to empiricism: Par., C. ii., lines 95-97- 



In astronomy, Dante's knowledge was still more 

 remarkable ; not so much for any great discovery made 

 by himself, but because of the thorough mastery he 

 possessed of what was then known of that science, and 

 also because of the many theories then advocated, his 

 pre-eminently eclectic mind seems, generally, to have 

 embraced those only which more recent researches 

 have proved to be the correct ones. And if it be said 

 that Dante did not acquiesce in the Pythagorean system 

 of astronomy {Convito ; Bk. iii., Ch. 5), we must re- 

 member that the illustrious astronomer Ptolemy himself 

 also withheld his approval of that grand but badly 

 advocated system, and, what is more, three centuries 

 after Dante the immortal Galileo was, at first, strongly 

 opposed to the Pythagorean system, as revived and 

 supported by Copernicus. 



The following lines, for instance, unmistakably show 

 that Dante knew the theory of the Precession of the 

 Equinoxes, in about 26,000 years. To indicate the vanity 

 of worldly fame, Dante makes a spirit ask him what his 

 fame will be in a thousand years, 



" ch' e pill corto 

 Spazio air eterno, ch' un muover di ciglia 

 Al cerchio che piii tardi in cielo e torto." 



Purg., C. xi., lines 106-108. 



Also the following lines, in which our poet describes 

 the obliquity of the ecliptic, and eloquently reminds us 

 of the beneficial influence therefrom : — 



" Vedi come da indi si dirama 

 L' obliquo cerchio che i pianeti porta, 

 Per satisfare al mondo die Ii chiama ; 



E se la strada lor fosse men torta, 

 Molta virtu nel ciel sarebbe invano, 

 E quasi ogni potenzia quaggiii morta." 



Par., C. X., lines 13-18. 



