discovi:ky 



281 



•wisdom." The student's impassioned quest of philo- 

 sophical truth, with its alternations of success and failure, 

 is translated into the language of the earthly lover in 

 his pursuit of a mortal mistress, and philosophy herself 

 becomes an idealised human personality whose body 

 is wisdom and whose soul is love. The supreme, 

 triumphant expression of this suprasensible intellec- 

 tual passion is found in the second canzone of the 

 Convivio : " Love that in my mind discourses to me." 

 (where the presentation of the lady of the poet's mj'sti- 

 cal creed is modelled upon the Beatrice of the Vila 

 Nuovay; the record of some hour in the student's labour 

 ■when the clouds suddenly lift, height above height is 

 revealed, and the path seems clear and easy to the 

 aerial battlements of some spiritual fortress that before 

 seemed inaccessible. I believe that the canzoni, 

 " Love that movest thy power from heaven," and 

 " I so feel the great might of love," together with 

 several minor lyrics which Professor Barbi similarly 

 classes as " rime d' amore," should be placed in the 

 same series. A pendant to this group is given by the 

 two didactic canzoni, in which Dante, when inspiration 

 flags, turns from singing of philosophical love to some 

 humbler ethical theme, " for the good of the world 

 that liveth ill " ; the canzoni on gentilezza, true nobility, 

 and leggiadria, the outward manifestation of a chival- 

 rous soul in man and its counterpart in woman. 



Dante wrote few lyrics in exile, but two are among 

 his greatest. The canzone, " Tlirce ladies have come 

 around my heart " (which fascinated Coleridge), has been 

 ■called his poetical " apologia pro vita sua." From the 

 legend of the apparition of Lady Poverty and her two 

 companions to St. Francis, and the fifty-first chapter 

 of Isaiah, it weaves an allegorical representation of 

 how the call came to Dante to stand forth as the 

 proclaimcr of justice, vir praedicans justitiam. It is 

 here that the poet declares that he holds his exile as 

 an honour, and first utters the prophetical note which 

 is to sound again in sterner accents in the Divina 

 Commedia. Almost as powerful and impressive, 

 though of less purely poetical value, is the canzone, 

 " Grief brings courage to my heart," upon which, in 

 the De Vulgari Eloqiientia, Dante bases his claim 

 to rank as the poet of " rectitudo." In its scathing 

 satire of vice, its realism and psychological insight, 

 this canzone, too, prepares us for the Divina Commedia ; 

 but it is on a lower spiritual plane than its predecessor. 

 There is evidence that Dante intended to comment upon 

 these two poems in the fourteenth and fifteenth treatises 

 •of the Convivio, if that work had been completed. 

 It is strange enough, after these poems, to find Dante 

 singing once more of earthly love, in a canzone of 

 •which the true significance in his inner life remains 



' A close comparison with the first canzone of the Vita 

 J^tiova, Donne ch' avele intellelto d' amore, makes this quite clear. 



an impenetrable mystery. That I cannot follow 

 Professor Barbi in closing the Rime with a love sonnet : 

 Per qitella via die la bellezza corre; "Along that way 

 which beauty runs when she goes to waken love in the 

 mind " ; for this seems to me to belong unquestionably 

 to a date before Dante's exile. Rather should I take 

 as the epilogue to his lyrical work one of the sonnets to 

 Cino da Pistoia : 



" lo mi credea del tutto esser partito 

 da queste nostre rime, messer Cino, 

 ch4 si conviene omai altro cammino 

 a la mia nave piii lungi dal lito." 



" I deemed myself utterly departed from these rhj'mes 

 of ours, Messer Cino, for henceforth another track 

 befits my ship more distant from the shore." Dante's 

 lyrical work was now a thing of the past, for the ship 

 of his genius had put forth upon the boundless waters 

 of the Divina Commedia. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

 Le opere di Dante, testo critico delta Societd. Dantesca Ilaliana 

 (Florence, Bcmporad, 36 lire, 1921) ; Tutle le opere di Dante 

 Alighieri (The Oxford Dante, 3rd edition, O.xford, 1904) ; The 

 Vita Nuova and Canzoniere of Dante, edited by Okey and 

 Wicksteed (Temple Classics, Dent, London, 1906) ; Benedetto 

 Croce, La poesia di Dante (Bari, Laterza, 1921), cap. i. The 

 following pieces in the Oxford Dante are spurious : Sest. 

 Ill, Sest. IV, Canz. XVII, Canz. XVIII ; Sonnets XXVllI, 

 XXXI, XXXllI, XXXV, XXXVll, XLII. XLV, XLVIIl, L; 

 Ballate IV and IX. The following are regarded by Prof. Barbi 

 as doubtful: Canz. XXI, Son. XXXVIII, Son. XXXIX, 

 Son. XLVll, Ball. Ill, Ball. V (Ball. VII is not a ballata, 

 but a stanza). Among the poems classed as "certainly 

 genuine " in the Temple Classics, only Son. V is rejected by 

 Prof. Barbi. Of the " probably authentic." Son. XIV is genuine. 

 Son. XV spurious. Son. XVI doubtful. Ball. V doubtful. Of 

 the " probably spurious," Son. XVII and Son. XVIII are 

 rightly so described. Son. XIX, XX, XXI (according to Prof. 

 Barbi) authentic. Ball. VI doubtful. The new edition includes 

 many lyrics which are not contained in the Oxford Dante, 

 the Temple Classics, or any other previous edition. 



The Electric Arc in 

 Chemical Industry 



By J. N. Pring, M.B.E., D.Sc. 



Researcli Ueparlmenl, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich 



The most obvious uses to which electricity has been 

 put in the last fifty years, a time which the future 

 historian will no doubt label as the electrical age, have 

 been in the realm of telegraphy, locomotion, artificial 

 light. X-rays, and the transmission of power. But 

 one development, although more in the background. 



