The Manifold Meanings of his Poems.

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""by actions of merit or demerit, through freedom of the will, he ""justly deserves reward or punishment." To this may be added a third meaning, in Dante's use of historical characters, who are introduced both as the real persons whose names they bear, and also as allegorical ones representative of moral or intellectual powers or principles. The first of these is Love, or Liberty, whereof the prime condition is that 'freedom of the 'will' which Dante writes of in the letter just cited, whether we consider it in its erotic or political sense. The political in Dante's poem includes the religious; for his politics are those of the Church Catholic. His aspirations as a reformer were prudently disguised under the symbol of the most beneficent of the heathen deities, the offspring of the celestial Venus.

It has been asserted that by Love Dante meant no more than this; but Dante himself, while acknowledging the political and religious references in his poems, claims to trace his noble aspirations, whether patriotic or pious, to the root of a real passion, the history and object of which he has recorded in a series of sonnets, accompanied with a prose explanation. There is a psychological truth in the position claimed, and also a moral one, which not only entitles it to credit, but commands our reverence, both for the passion that regenerated, and the man who was purified by its influence. We have used the word 'regenerated here, advisedly; for by the Vita Nuova,' the title of his poem, Dante, it is generally supposed, means a new life, or a regeneration, holding the same relation to the intellectual or literary man, as the new-birth' holds in reference to the spiritual or religious man-making him, as it were, a new creature, by the introduction of new motives of conduct, new principles of action, and a supervened character not previously manifested. The individual is, so to speak, 'clothed upon' by a divine influence descending from heavenly places for the consecration of the human being. Even such a change Dante esteemed needful, to constitute a man a poet; and this change he describes with philosophical precision in the series of sonnets and commentaries to which allusion is now made.

Dante was a precocious lover, and the incidents of his amour have been interpreted with an irreverent levity by a popular critic, who, being a poet himself, ought to have known better. Far be from us any such misrepresentation of the soul-history which Dante has unveiled for the edification of generous minds. Dante was born in 1265, and met with the object of his passion for the first time in 1274, on the first of May. He was then nine years of age, the young lady eight; the latter was familiarly known as Beatrice, but had for surname that of Portinari,

being the daughter of old Folco Portinari, a distinguished citizen of Florence. Dante, in the story of his early life, gives no account of the merry-making, of which Boccaccio ventures a description, but introduces his heroine simply, with no circumstance but that of her attire, stating that her apparel was of a 'most noble tincture, a subdued and becoming crimson,' and that she wore a cincture and ornaments befitting her childish 'years.' 'From that time forth,' he adds, 'I say that Love 'held sovereign empire over my soul, which had so readily been 'betrothed unto him; and through the influence lent to him by 'my imagination he at once assumed such imperious sway and 'mastery over me, that I could not choose but do his pleasure ' in all things.' Yet was the influence to which he was subject of such noble sort, that at no time,' he says, 'did it suffer me 'to be ruled by Love, save with the faithful sanction of reason.' Dante loved wisely, not too well; he was neither a Mark Antony nor an Othello, and held his will in subjection to his conscience. An interval of nine years elapsed, during which the lovers never met; but afterwards he became known to her, and received her frequent salutation, which so confirmed his love that his heart was devoted to the adored one for ever, albeit he never appears to have directly revealed his passion to its object; nay, took such steps to conceal it, by feigning an affection for another lady, whom he used as a screen,' that all the world believed him to be in love with a different person, and Beatrice herself at last came to be of the same opinion. The result was disastrous. Meeting her subsequently with other ladies at a marriage feast, Dante was exposed to their ridicule, in which Beatrice joined, deeming him either a lovesick dreamer, or a faithless lover. The immediate effect of this on Dante's mind was serious. 'chamber of tears, weeping and sadness, he determined to address of the reason of his emotion.

sonnet :

He returned home into the
blushing;' yet, in his mood of
some lines to her, explanatory
They compose the following

'Con l'altre donne mia vista gabbate,
E non pensate, donna, onde si mova,
Ch'io vi rassembri si figura nova,
Quando riguardo la vostra beltate.
Se lo saveste, non porria pietate

Tener più contra me l'usata prova ;
Ch' amor quando si presso a voi mi trova
Prende baldanza, e tanta sicurtate,
Che fiere tra' miei spiriti paurosi,

E quale ancide, e qual pinge di fuora,
Sicch' ei solo rimane a veder vuoi.

Beatrice.

Ond'io mi cangio in figura d'altrui ;

Ma non si ch'io non senta bene allora
Gli guai de' discacciati tormentosi.'

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It is difficult to believe that Beatrice, previously to the time when this sonnet was written, had married. Dante, we think, in that case would not have written it. Nowhere, indeed, does the poet record the fact of her marriage. We learn it only from her father's will, in which she is named as the wife of Domini Simonis de Bardis.' She died, too, at the early age of four and twenty. Be this as it may, Dante in all his works has totally ignored the circumstance. He devoted three sonnets to an analysis of his state of mind. From these we may learn a great deal of the manner in which he contrived to utilize his private feelings for his poetic ends. This point, however, is more fully illustrated in subsequent sonnets, which show his habit of making his love the feeder of his fancies, and cherishing it not so much for the sake of its object, as for the poetic fruit which it produces. Perceiving this æsthetic benefit, he resolves to make his Beatrice henceforth the theme and heroine of his poetry, and improves every incident so as to elevate to an ideal her name and his love. She now becomes no less than Madonna, esteemed both in heaven and on earth, and so favoured by her Creator, that

'Whom he grants to gaze on her must grow

A thing of noble stature, or must die;'

and the whole affair begins to partake of an exclusively subjective character. Thus, in Dante's estimation, love and the gentle heart are the same; they can no more be separated, than reason from the reasoning soul; his throne, too, is within the eyes of Madonna, 'whence all she looks on wears his

The sonnet in the text is thus translated by Mr. T. Martin :-
'With other ladies thou dost flout at me,

Nor thinkest, lady, whence doth come the change,
That fills my aspect with a trouble strange,

When I the wonder of thy beauty see.

If thou didst know, thou must for charity
Forswear the wonted rigour of thine eye;

For when Love finds me near thee, he so high
Dominion takes, and scornful mastery,
That on my trembling spirits straight he flies,
And some he slays, and some he drives away,
Till he alone remains to gaze on thee.
Thence am I changed into another's guise;
Yet not so changed, but that the pangs with me,
Which tortured so those exiled spirits, stay.'

' gracious mien.' Whatever happens, interests from its suggestion more than from itself. Thus the father of Beatrice dies. The grief of the daughter appears to have been excessive. Dante inquires of her ladies concerning her sorrow, and he is so affected by the recital that they cannot help remarking that he 'weeps for all the world as if he had seen her, as they had done. All this, of course, leads to the composition of sonnets, and thus to the introduction of a little fiction into the story. Seeing,' says Dante, 'the occasion to be worthy, I determined to write some lines which should embody all that I had heard these ladies say. And as, but for the fear of pro'voking their rebuke, I would fain have asked some questions of them, I dealt with my theme as though I had actually asked 'them, and they had answered me.' On the occasion of Beatrice's own death, the amount of fiction added is even more extensive.

Dante falling ill, on the ninth day suffered the climax of pain, and overwhelmed with dismay, began to think that Beatrice must some time die, and thereupon to see strange visions of women with dishevelled hair, who then announced to him his death and hers. The sun was darkened, and the stars became visible, and of a colour that made him think they wept ; also the birds as they flew by fell dead, and the earth quaked fearfully. A friend came next, and advised him of Beatrice's departure. Thereupon,' adds Dante, 'I fell to weeping most 'piteously, and I wept not in imagination only, but with 'my eyes, bathing them with veritable tears.' A multitude of angels singing gloriously, Osanna in excelsis, and winging their way upwards, bearing a white cloud, were then seen; and Dante fancied that he went to view the body of his dead lady, and saw women covering her head with a white veil. All the requisite mysteries having been completed, Dante gave himself to grief, calling on death, and sobbing forth the name of Beatrice. Some ladies who were watching him during his delirium, then wakened him, and received from him an account of his vision, in which, however, he concealed the name of the departed. These particulars Dante then detailed in a beautiful canzone. After this he had a vision of love and of ladies, and compares his lady Beatrice to the former, describing her as a miracle:

:

A being, seeming sent from heaven among

Mankind, to shew what heavenly wonders be.'

So purely subjective was the matter which served for the occasion and substratum of Dante's earliest compositions. His feelings, thus engendered and supported, naturally expressed

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themselves in verse rather than in prose; he could sing them far better than he could state them.

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Carlyle, indeed, makes Dante's main title to the character of a poet, the circumstance that he was incapable of fitly describing his feelings in that which he regards as the preferable medium. On his verse our cynical critic casts unusual contempt. Except from its positive necessity, it were scarcely endurable. It is merely 'prose cramped into jingling lines, to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for the most part.' But surely such is not the true ideal of verse, not that of Dantean verse, of which the writer of L'Ottimo Comento' had heard Dante himself say, that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say in his rhymes what they were not wont to express for other poets.' Dante was conscious that he was a great singer, and Carlyle indeed allows his rights or privileges as a poet on this special ground, that the heart of him is rapt 'into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him become 'musical by the greatness, depth, and music of his thoughts.' We can, therefore, 'give him right to rhyme and sing; call him 'a Poet, and listen to him as the heroic of speakers-whose 'speech is song.' In all senses, the Divine Comedy is genuinely 6 song. In the very sound of it there is a canto fermo; it 'proceeds as by a chant. The language, his simple terza rima, doubtless helped him in this. One reads along naturally with 'a sort of lilt. It could not be otherwise, for the essence and ' material of the work are themselves rhythmic. Its depth and rapt passion and sincerity make it musical; go deep enough, 'there is music everywhere.' Whatever may become of other versifiers, therefore, Dante was, and is, and will be for all time, justified in his use of metre and rhyme. His use of tercettes grew out of the mysticism which abounds in his poetry generally, and particularly in the Vita Nuova,' regarding which we cannot do better than copy the account given by Mr. Longfellow :

'Whoever has read the "Vita Nuova," will remember the stress which Dante lays upon the mystic numbers Nine and Three; his first meeting with Beatrice at the beginning of her ninth year, and the end of his; his nine days' illness, and the thought of her death, which came to him on the ninth day; her death on the ninth day of the ninth month, "computing by the Syrian method," and in that year of our Lord, "when the perfect number ten was nine times completed in that century," which was the thirteenth. "Moreover," he says, "the number nine was friendly to her, because the nine heavens were in conjunction at her birth, and that she was herself the