152 
Butler — Dante. 
Buridan, rector of Paris University, who, according to tradition, 
declared that, if an ass were placed exactly between two hay¬ 
stacks, he must starve, being in a balance of motives. Buridan’s 
ass became proverbial. But when Buridan’s works were ran¬ 
sacked and the saying was nowhere discovered, the asinine poser 
was claimed as Dante’s invention. The truth is, after all, that 
this proof of determinism is older than Aristotle. In his treatise 
Tre.pl ovpavov , he says that in his time it was a common saying, 
that “ any one” [his indefinite pronoun may mean either donkey 
or doctor] “ any one equidistant from equally good eatables and 
drinkables, must remain motionless. ” 
Dante was an imitator of contemporaries no less than of 
the ancients. His first lines say he was lost in a wood. An 
identical phrase had formed the commencement of a poem by 
his own schoolmaster Brunetto. He denounces usury as “ a sin 
against nature, ” the very words in which the practice had been 
stigmatized by Brunetto. 
The main scenes in Dante’s trilogy he had seen acted on the 
stage in dramatic mysteries, or carved on cathedral walls in 
bass-relief and emblazoned on their stained glass, — most of all, 
in Orvieto. His triple world was symbolized in the architec¬ 
ture of every church. The stone cried out of the wall and the 
beam out of the timber answered it where a stone inscribed 
Basso di Dante beside the Florentine cathedral to this day tells 
us that he was wont to sit. 
It is even possible that some magnificent window, emblem of 
the mystic Madonna rose, was the inspiration of his eternal and 
infinite rose-amphitheater, the sublimest image in all poetry 
or speech, in which his Paradise culminates. 
At the recent convention of the Modern Language Associa¬ 
tion one of the best-received papers was entitled, “A forerun¬ 
ner of Bunyan in the twelfth century ” by Prof. Francke of Har¬ 
vard. This relic appears to be just now discovered by moderns, 
but one is slow to believe that it was unknown to Dante, or 
that it escaped paying him a tax. 
The music which enlivened Dante’s march onward and upward 
was all borrowed from time-honored anthems and theodies of the 
church. Snatches of its Latin are built into his verses, as 
