Boccacio has given an account which greatly mitigates the crime of Francesca; and he insinuates, that still further particulars were known to Dante. He relates, that Guido engaged to 'give his daughter in marriage to Lanciotto, the eldest son of his enemy the master of Rimini. Lanciotto, who was hideously deform'ed in countenance and figure, foresaw, that if he presented him'self in person, he should be rejected by the lady. He therefore resolved to marry her by proxy, and sent, as his representative, his younger brother Paolo, the handsomest and most accomplished man in all Italy. Francesca saw Paolo arrive, and imagined she 'beheld her future husband. That mistake was the commencement ' of her passion. The friends of Guido addressed him in strong remonstrances and mournful predictions of the dangers to which he exposed a daughter, whose high spirit would never brook to be 'sacrificed with impunity. But Guido was no longer in a condition 'to make war; and the necessities of the politician overcame the feelings of the father. '* Dante abstained from employing any of those circumstances, though highly poctical. He knew that pathos, by being expanded over a number of objects, loses of its force. His design was to produce, not tragedies, but single scenes; and Francesca, to justify herself, must have criminated her father, and thus diminished the affecting magnanimity with which her character is studiously endowed by the poet. To record this stain upon the illustrious family of a benefactor and a friend, may in our eyes appear indelicate and ungrateful; especially as it may be supposed, from his placing Francesca in Hell, that he meant to hold her up to execration. An observation which perhaps has not escaped the learned men of Italy, but which they have never expressed, from the dread of provoking the savage bigotry of their priests, explains this point. Dante constantly distinguishes between the sins and merits of each individual. Divine Justice, in his poem, punishes sin whenever it is actually committed; but human sympathy, or pity, laments or extenuates the offence, according to the circumstances under which it was committed. The poet dispenses censure and praise, according to the general qualities of the persons-the good or evil they had done their country-the glory or the infamy they had left behind them. He, however, carefully abstains from laying down this maxim in words, whilst he invariably acts upon it both in the Inferno and the Purgatorio. In the Paradiso, there is plainly no room for its operation. * Opere del Boccacio, vol. V. towards the end. Florence edition, 1721. From this principle he has deduced, that those who have done neither good or evil in their day, are the most despicable of beings. They are described as Questi sciaurati che mai non fur vivi— These wretches who ne'er lived. He places them between Hell, the abode of the damned, and Limbo, the abode of the souls of infants and good men ignorant of the Christian faith; and with singular boldness of opinion as well as style, he says God's justice disdains to punish, and his mercy disdains to pardon, those who were useless in their lives. Fama di lor nel mondo esser non lassa, Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarde e passa. Fame of them the world hath none, Nor suffers. Mercy and Justice scorn them both. Among those, he has had the boldness to place Saint Celestino, who abdicated the pontificate through weakness, and acquired his titles to canonization in a hermit's cell. He also finds amongst them the angels that in the war of Lucifer against God took neither side, and thought only of themselves. In those who merited that God should weigh their lives against their sins, Dante has generally implanted a strong desire of celebrity. The prospect of being named by the poet, on his return to the living, suspends awhile the sense of their pains. Great souls, though expiating the guilt and shamefulness of the heaviest sins, entreat him to mention his having seen them. This he always promises; and often, for the purpose of engag ing them to speak with him more freely, pledges his faith that they shall not be forgotten. The shades of those only who in their lives were sunk in habitual crime and infamy, conceal from him their names. It is in the middle age, between barbarism and refinement, that men most strongly feel this desire of having their names preserved from oblivion. The passions, at that period, have yet lost no portion of their vigour, and are ruled by impulse rather than by calculation. Man has then more difficulties to rouse, and more courage to sustain him; and, rather than be checked in his course, will plunge with eclat into any gulf that opens in his way. Of this the age of Dante furnishes examples scarcely credible in an age like ours, in which nothing retains sufficient novelty to make a strong impression, and the objects of pursuit are so multiplied, that no one can excite a commanding interest. It is obvious, however, Re that the strong passions of less polished times bear men on to great virtues great crimes-great calamities; and thus form the characters that are most proper for poetry. Dante had only to look round him for characters such as these. He found them already formed for his purpose, without the necessity of a single heightening touch from his own invention. finement had not yet produced that sameness of individual physiognomy in the great mass of a nation. Individual originality, now rare, dangerous, ridiculous, and often affected, was then common and undisguised. Poetry, in later times, has succeeded in catching its shades for the purposes of fine comedy-as in the Misanthrope of Moliere; and of pretty satire-as in Pope's Rape of the Lock. But all that this species of poetry can do, is to seize that exterior of character which every age and nation decks out after its own fashion; whilst the poetry, whose business is with the human heart, is coeval and coextensive with human nature. Pope, accordingly, no sooner lighted, in an almost barbarous age, upon a poetical personage, governed both in action and in writing by feeling alone, than he produced the Epistle of Eloisa, and proved that he had genius. Many a woman of that day resembled Eloisa in her misfortunes and her love; but they left few, if any, letters behind them. Even those of Eloisa have reached us only by their connexion with the writings of her lover. At present, the fair sex write much more, and perhaps feel as much less; and accordingly, our later poets, not finding poetical characters at home, are driven to seek for them in Turkey and in Persia; -while the Germans explore the ruins of Teutonic castlesand the Italians prudently confine themselves to the mythology of Greece and Rome. În fine, when nations are in a semibarbarous state, the passions are their strongest laws: what else they have under the name of law, is yet without consistency or force. The punishment of an injury is left to him who suffered it-and he regards vengeance as a duty. Dante concludes one of his lyric pieces with the following sentiment How fair is the honour reaped from revenge! Che bell' onor s'acquista in fur vendetta. How strongly does its application to his own poem illustrate the character of his age! Though terrified, at every step, by the objects which Hell presents to his view, the sentiment of vengeance, as a duty, stops him in his course. His eyes are fixed upon a shade that seems to shun him. Virgil reminds him that they must continue their journey; and asks the reason of his delay. Dante answers, • If you knew the reason, you would allow me to remain longer; for in the pit, on which I fixed my eyes, I thought I beheld one of my kinsmen.' Truly, rejoins Virgil, I marked him pointing his finger at you, with a menacing and haughty air."Oh! my master, claims Dante; he was killed by an enemy, and his death has not been yet revenged by any of those to whom that insult was given; and therefore he disdained to speak to me ! ' § ex From those considerations, which we have been tempted to expand perhaps more than was necessary, it is, we think, evident, that the episode of Francesca was every way congenial to th principles, the poetry, and the affections of Dante, as well as to the age in which he lived. To satisfy Divine Justice, he, in fact, places her in Hell; but he introduces her in such a n. ner, that human frailty must pity her. Nature had given to her character the poetic cast. Her story, he knew, was one that could not be concealed ;----and he gave the daughter of his friend the celebrity which popular tradition could not bestew. The husband of Francesca was living and powerful when Dente wrote; but the fearless vengeance of the poet devotes him to infamy; and foretels, that his place, named after Cain, among the fratricides, awaits him in the very centre of Heil. Indeed, the father of Francesca continued to afford protection to Dante, and not only attended his remains to the tomb, but composed and recited a funeral oration over them. His successors, too, defended the Poet's sepulchre against the power of Charles de Velois king of Naples, and the Church-when John the XXIId sent Cardinal Bernardo di Poggetto from Avignon to Ravenna, with orders to drag forth the bones of the poet from the repose of the grave, that they might be burned, and their ashes scattered before the wind. This, indeed, is mentioned only by Boccacio in the life of Dante; and that piece of biography has been generally regarded as a romance. But the fact, we think, is completely verified in the works of Bartole, a celebrated civiban, who was living at the time, and alludes to it very distinctly in treating of the law de Rejudicandis Reis. (ad cod. 1. 1. cod. de Rejudic. &c.) The celebrity of the episode of Francesca, and the little light hitherto thrown upon it has engaged us in a discussion, the unavocable length of which is an additional proof that a commentary upon Dante, which should be useful in a historical and poetical view, still remains to be executed. We hasten now to the close of these desultory observations. But few literary men are acquainted with his lyric compositions; and his prose is Hell, Cant, 29, scarcely ever mentioned. The elegant treatise written by him, to prove that in a nation, divided by so many dialects as Italy, it must be impossible to adapt the dialect of Florence exclusively, was the principal cause of the little value set by the academy of La Crusca and its adherents upon the prose of our poet. For La Crusca always maintained that the language should not be called Italian, or even Tuscan, but Fiorentine. Nevertheless, the literary language of Italy, though founded upon the Tuscan, is a distinct language, created by the commonwealth of authors, never spoken, but always written; as Dante had scen and forescen. His own prose is a fine model of forcible and simple style, harmonious without studied cadences, and elegant without the affected graces of Boccacio and his imitators. We venture upon a short specimen, extracted from the Convito, upon the subject to which we have alluded. Siccome non si può bene manifestare la bellezza d'una donna, quando li adornamenti dell' azzimare e delle vestimenta ia fanno più annumerare che essa medesima. Oude chi vuole bene giudicare d'una donna, guardi quella, quando solo sua naturale bellezza si sta con lei, da tutto accidentale adornamento discompagnata; Sicome sarà questo volgare; nel quale si vedrà l'agevolezza delle sue silabe, le proprieta delle sue condizioni, e le orazioni che di lui si fanno :-ie quali chi bene guarderà, vedrà essere piene di dolcissima e d'amabilissima bellezza. A perpetuale infamia e depressione degli malvagi uomini d'Italia che commendano lo volgare altrui e il loro proprio dispregiano, dico, che la loro mossa viene di cinque abominevoli cagioni. La prima, è cecità di discrezione. La seconda, maliziata scusazione. La terza, cupidita di vanagloria. La quarta, argomento d'invidia. La quinta e l'ultima, viltà d'animo, cio è pusillanimità. E ciascuna di queste reïtà ha si gran setta che pochi son quelli che sieno da essi liberi. Della prina si può cosi ragionare. Siccome la parte sensitiva dell' anima ha i suoi occhi co' quali apprende la differenza delle cose in quanto elle sono di fuori colorate. così la parte razionale ha il suo occhio, col quale apprende la differenza delle cose in quanto sono ad alcun fine ordinate, e questa è la discrezione. E siccome colui che è cicco degli occhi sensibili va sempre secondo che gli altri, così colui che è cieco del lume della discrezione, sempre va nel suo giudizio secondo il grido o diritto o falso. Onde qualunque ora lo guidatore è cieco, conviene che esso e quello anche cieco che a lui s'appoggia vengano a mal fine. Però è scritto ch' il cieco al cieco farà guida e cosi caderanno amenduc nella fossa. Questa guida è stata lungamente contro a nostro volgare per le ragioni che di sotto si ragioneranno. Appresso dì questa i ciechi sopra notati, che sono quasi infiniti, con la mano in su la spalla a questi mentitori sono caduti nella fossa deila falsa opinione, della quale uscire non sanno. Dell' abito di questa luce discretiva massimamente le popolari persone sono orbate, però che occupate dal prin 2 |