Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them.
high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them.
Stories from the Italian Poets
His pride did not deign to
pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a
deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins on the seashore;
he never broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of
his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved
by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of
this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most
beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a few
months she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that
Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in
some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even
to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest
of his days in a silence which was never broken. " Hazlitt's _Journey
through France and Italy_, p. 315. ]
[Footnote 11: Sordello was a famous Provençal poet; with whose writings
the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of
M. Raynouard, in his _Choix des Poésies des Troubadours_, &c. ]
[Footnote 12: "Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca. " An exquisite
image of newness and brilliancy. ]
[Footnote 13: "Salve, Regina:" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant
to the Virgin. ]
[Footnote 14: "With nose deprest," says Mr. Cary. But Dante says,
literally, "small nose,"--_nasetto_. So, further on, he says, "masculine
nose,"--_maschio naso_. He meant to imply the greater or less
determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed
to indicate. ]
[Footnote 15: An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign
for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect. But Henry was a
devout servant of the Church. ]
[Footnote 16:
"Era già l'ora che volge 'l desio
A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore
Lo dì ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;
E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore. "
A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to
be the voice of Evening herself.
'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
Every body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from
Dante's--
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. "
Nothing can equal, however, the _tone_ in the Italian original,--the
"Pàia 'l giorno pianger the si muòre. "
Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his
personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have
left us a work truly to be called Divine? ]
[Footnote 17:
"Te lucis ante terminum;"--a hymn sung at evening service. ]
[Footnote 18: Lucy, _Lucia_ (supposed to be derived from _lux, lucis_),
is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic
countries may be said to preside over _light_, and who is really invoked
in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for
that reason among others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
they had been cured. In her spiritual character she represents the light
of grace. ]
[Footnote 19: The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the second,
horror of it; the third, zeal to amend. ]
[Footnote 20: The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the
commentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the learning and
judgment requisite to use it. ]
[Footnote 21: "Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and
St. Augustine. ]
[Footnote 22:
"Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
Che vola a giustizia senza schermi? "
"Know you not, we are worms
Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms? "
[Footnote 23:
"Più ridon le carte
Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
L'onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte. "
[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
and the poet, who is to "chase them from the nest," _caccerà di nido_
(as the not very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the statement becoming? It
was certainly not necessary. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship
with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti,
probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition; far they
could be proud themselves; and the son has the reputation of scepticism,
as well as the father. See the _Decameron, Giorn_. vi. _Nov. 9_. ]
[Footnote 25: This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein," from the awful
necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with some other commentators, thinks
that the "trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not
rather mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case it certainly
does; for it was in consideration of the pang to his pride, that the
good deed rescued him from worse punishment. ]
[Footnote 26: The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of
Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of
such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose
it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call
to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on
Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous,
of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
the reconcilement with absurdity. ]
[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of
the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and
admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for
them, and his impatience to see them triumph. " So said the Inquisition.
The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed,
or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions. ]
[Footnote 28:
"_Sàvia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapìa_
Fosse chiamata. "
The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian
name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is
the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented
on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in
English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name. " It
is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the
punsters. --It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at
the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some
zeal of faction]
[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a
little envy, but far more pride:
"Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
Ma picciol tempo; che poch' è l'offesa
Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
Troppa è più la paura ond' è sospesa
L'anima mia del tormento di sotto
Che già lo 'ncarco di là giù mi pesa. "
The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second,
affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have
allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to
women. ]
[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned
to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her
sister Herse.
The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful
and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and
violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to
suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his
thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for
his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.
Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros
is thunder-claps crashing into one another--broken thunder. This is
exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful
music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness. If it were
not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two
silences; for I doubt whether they are not better even than one. At all
events, the final silence is tremendous. ]
[Footnote 30: St. Luke ii. 48. ]
[Footnote 31: The stoning of Stephen. ]
[Footnote 32: These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not
always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird
as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as
he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake,
Philomela, in the _Metamorphoses_. ]
[Footnote 33: So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards; and
I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite
intimations at each successive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly
having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the
outset. The whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
wanted his final revision. ]
[Footnote 34: What an instance to put among those of haste to do good!
But the fame and accomplishments of Cæsar, and his being at the head of
our Ghibelline's beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted
impartiality. ]
[Footnote 35: A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of
it in the original has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the
last recesses of feeling, and disgusts us with the denouncer. ]
[Footnote 36: The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in
the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association
of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that
Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his
dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a
metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when
we find the man called, not _the_ butcher, or _that_ butcher, or butcher
in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
Paris" (_un beccaio di Parigi_), and when this designation is followed
up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the
ordinary construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems
to have had no ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless
considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed, condescended to
feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it,
in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt
contradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeatedly said, that
the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth
excepted) are a heap of contradictions. ]
[Footnote 37: Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in which there
is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an
impression to the same effect. ]
[Footnote 38:
"O Signor mio, quando sarò io lieto
A veder la vendetta the nascosa
Fa dolce l'ira tua nel tuo segreto! "
The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian,
viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being
"too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth
century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine! God hugs
revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a
poor grinning Florentine! ]
[Footnote 39: A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The allusion
is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her
husband, the priest Sichæus, for his riches. The term "parricide" is
here applied in its secondary sense of--the murderer of any one to whom
we owe reverence. ]
[Footnote 40: Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael. ]
[Footnote 41: A grand and beautiful fiction. ]
[Footnote 42: Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation
for this fancy, except in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in
another passage, not necessary to give, confounds the poet Statius who
was from Naples, with a rhetorician of the same name from Thoulouse. ]
[Footnote 43:
"Parèn l'occhiaje anella senza gemme. "
This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one
of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the
physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (_homo_, man), written in the face
of the human being, might easily have seen the letter _m_ in theirs. "
"Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge _o m o_,
Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_. "
The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples
form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman
domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin! ]
[Footnote 44:
"Se le svergognate fosser certe
Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte. "
This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John
Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted
to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness,
and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays.
But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the
worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer
him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take
good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those
self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins
they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to. " He was
a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The
defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing. ]
[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having
availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such
candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The
words in the original are
"Se ti riduci a mente
Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
Ancor fia grave il memorar presente. "
Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast
with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee
still. "
His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of Æneas's
descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
spotless. ]
[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
present volume. ) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
some rumour. ]
[Footnote 47: A celebrated and charming passage:
"Io mi son un, che quando
Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo
Che detta dentro, vo significando. "
I am one that notes
When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell
In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.
[Footnote 48: Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment
to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the
Notary, and Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of
the day. The latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his
translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last
day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under
_crudel martire_), _because_ an inscription will then be seen on his
forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love! An odd way for a
poet to shew his feelings, and a friar his religion! ]
[Footnote 49: Judges vii. 6. ]
[Footnote 50: _Summæ Deus clementiæ_. The ancient beginning of a hymn in
the Roman Catholic church; now altered, say the commentators, to "Summæ
parens clementiæ. "]
[Footnote 51: _Virum non cognosco_. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How
shall this be, seeing I know not a man? "--_Luke_ i. 34.
The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of
Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by
spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.
A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question
suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of
letters. ]
[Footnote 52: An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;--not, I
think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart
from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is
rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express
love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be
taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity. ]
[Footnote 53:
"Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie. "
Even as from branch to branch
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south. "--_Cary_.
"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's
sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to
the Decameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec. , G. 5, N.
8, and Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in
it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta. "--_Translation of
Dante_, ut sup. p. 121. ]
[Footnote 54: Lethe, _Forgetfulness_; Eunoe, _Well-mindedness_. ]
[Footnote 55:
"Senza alcuno scotto
Di pentimento. "
Literally, _scot-free_. --"Scotto," scot;--"payment for dinner or supper
in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor
of the _Parnaso Italiano_, and a very summary gentleman); "here used
figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and
grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that
collection, vol. ii. p. 297. ]
[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (_pargoletta_) or any
other fleeting vanity,
"O altra vanità con sì breve use,"
is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he
liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they
might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?
Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as
a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the
sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape;
and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells
us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of
Signor Rubbi, is no better than _snubbing_;--to say nothing of the
vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.
I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an
exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out
of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and
his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in
charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so
many things, hates nothing.
Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them. ]
[Footnote 57:
"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. "--Psalm li. 7. ]
[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years. ]
III.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. Argument.
The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of
astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets
according to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond these, or that of the
Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the
moveless Earth; and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which
is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by
its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue; and Dante visits each
under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes,
on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally
admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the
Great First Cause.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in
Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed
his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself in Heaven.
He had been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by
his side.
The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empyrean, and heard
the music of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven,
the circle of the orb of the moon.
This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed,
outside, as solid, though as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as
sunbeams are admitted into water without dividing the substance. It now
appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of
which they saw but dimly; and they beheld many faces eagerly looking at
them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding
whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn. [1]
Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom
they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right; and he entered
into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost
him. It was Piccarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he
had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason
of her wonderful increase in beauty. She and her associates were such
as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity and Religion, but had been
Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in
Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso. [2] On
Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of bliss, she and
her sister-spirits gently smiled; and then answered, with faces as happy
as first love,[3] that they willed only what it pleased God to give
them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer,
that every place in Heaven was Paradise, though the bliss might be of
different degrees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side,
lustrous with all the glory of the region, Costanza, daughter of the
king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the
wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began
singing _Ave Maria_; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as
substances disappear in water. [4]
A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next
circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet Mercury, the
residence of those who had acted rather out of Desire of Fame than Love
of God. The spirits here, as in the former Heaven, crowded towards them,
as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their
eyes sparkled with celestial joy; and the more they thought of their
joy, the brighter they grew; till one of them who addressed the poet
became indistinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of
the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman
empire up to his time; and then gave an account of one of his associates
in bliss, Romèo, who had been minister to Raymond Beranger, Count of
Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every
one became a queen; and all this had been brought about by Romèo, a poor
stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romèo, incited
Raymond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had
brought his master's treasury twelve-fold for every ten it disbursed.
Romeo quitted the court, poor and old; "and if the world," said
Justinian, "could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his
bread as he went, crust by crust--praise him as it does, it would praise
him a great deal more. "[5]
"Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth,
Superillumining with light of light
The happy fires of these thy Malahoth! "[6]
Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian; and then, turning
as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire.
Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven,
or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous. [7] He only knew it by the
increased loveliness in the face of his companion.
The spirits in this orb, who came and went in the light of it like
sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun
round in circles of delight, each with more or less swiftness, according
to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out
of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his
patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why
diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of
the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth;
and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and
Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy
Land, and whose place was next Folco. [8] Cunizza said that she did not
at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar
might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel
who was close to her, Folco--contrasted his zeal with the inertness of
her contemptible countrymen--and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the
latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed
in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is
expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the
lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or
Hercules; but added, that he had no recollection of them, except a
joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven),
but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Folco concluded with
explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing
the indifference of popes and cardinals (those adulterers of the Church)
to every thing but accursed money-getting. [9]
In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth
Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of
them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon,
singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be
exported, was not conveyable by expression to mortal fancy. The spirits
composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus,
Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius
the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede,
Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the
namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak; but
when he had done speaking, they began resuming it, one by one, and
circling as they moved, like the wheels of church-clocks that sound one
after another with a sweet tinkling, when they summon the hearts of the
devout to morning prayer. [10]
Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of
the order of St. Dominic; but with generous grace he held up the founder
of the Franciscans, with his vow of poverty, as the example of what a
pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On
the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their
appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling
round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new
circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle,
and Saint Buonaventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.
Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity, the holy wrestler,--benign
to his friends and cruel to his enemies;[11]--and so confined his
reproofs to his own Franciscan order. He then, as St. Thomas had done
with the doctors in the inner circle, named those who constituted the
outer: to wit, Illuminato, and Agostino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and
Petrus Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty-first, Nathan the Prophet,
Chrysostom, Anselmo of Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach grammar,
Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of Calabria. The two circles then varied
their movement by wheeling round one another in counter directions; and
after they had chanted, not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of Three Persons
in One, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's thoughts by intuition, again
addressed him, discoursing of mysteries human and divine, exhorting
him to be slow in giving assent or denial to propositions without
examination, and bidding him warn people in general how they presumed
to anticipate the divine judgment as to who should be saved and who
not. [12] The spirit of Solomon then related how souls could resume their
bodies glorified; and the two circles uttering a rapturous amen, glowed
with such intolerable brightness, that the eyes of Beatrice only were
able to sustain it. Dante gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and
suddenly found himself in the fifth Heaven.
It was the planet Mars, the receptacle of those who had Died Fighting
for the Cross. In the middle of its ruddy light stood a cross itself, of
enormous dimensions, made of light still greater, and exhibiting, first,
in the body of it, the Crucified Presence, glittering all over with
indescribable flashes like lightning; and secondly, in addition to and
across the Presence, innumerable sparkles of the intensest mixture
of white and red, darting to and fro through the whole extent of the
crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a
sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols,
before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from
the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which
entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words,
"Arise and conquer," as one who hears and yet hears not.
On a sudden, with a glide like a falling star, there ran down from the
right horn of the Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this
cluster of splendours, distinguishing itself, as it went, like flame in
alabaster.
"O flesh of my flesh! " it exclaimed to Dante; "O superabounding Divine
Grace! when was the door of Paradise ever twice opened, as it Shall have
been to thee? "[13] Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice, and saw
such a rapture of delight in her eyes, that he seemed, at that instant,
as if his own had touched the depth of his acceptance and of his
heaven. [14]
The light resumed its speech, but in words too profound in their meaning
for Dante to comprehend. They seemed to be returning thanks to God. This
rapturous absorption being ended, the speaker expressed in more human
terms his gratitude to Beatrice; and then, after inciting Dante to ask
his name, declared himself thus:
"O branch of mine, whom I have long desired to behold, I am the root of
thy stock; of him thy great-grandsire, who first brought from his mother
the family-name into thy house, and whom thou sawest expiating his sin
of pride on the first circle of the mountain. Well it befitteth thee to
shorten his long suffering with thy good works. Florence,[15] while yet
she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the
bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste
and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy
sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were
not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries
too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to
separate; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared
to practise. The heights of Rome had not been surpassed by your tower of
Uccellatoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its aspiring. I saw
Bellincion Berti walking the streets in a leathern girdle fastened with
bone; and his wife come from her looking-glass without a painted face.
I saw the Nerlis and the Vecchios contented with the simplest doublets,
and their good dames hard at work at their spindles. O happy they! They
were sure of burial in their native earth, and none were left desolate
by husbands that loved France better than Italy. One kept awake to tend
her child in its cradle, lulling it with the household words that had
fondled her own infancy. Another, as she sat in the midst of her family,
drawing the flax from the distaff, told them stories of Troy, and
Fiesole, and Rome. It would have been as great a wonder, then, to see
such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man as Lapo Salterello, as it
would now be to meet with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia. [16]
"It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful time," continued the poet's
ancestor, "when we all lived in such good faith and fellowship, and in
so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin vouchsafed the first sight
of me to the cries of my mother; and there, in your old Baptistery, I
became, at once, Christian and Cacciaguida. My brothers were called
Moronto and Eliseo. It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdipado,
thy family name of Alighieri. I then followed the Emperor Conrad, and
he made me a knight for my good service, and I went with him to fight
against the wicked Saracen law, whose people usurp the fold that remains
lost through the fault of the shepherd. There, by that foul crew, was I
delivered from the snares and pollutions of the world; and so, from the
martyrdom, came to this peace. "
Cacciaguida was silent. But his descendant praying to be told more of
his family and of the old state of Florence, the beatified soldier
resumed. He would not, however, speak of his own predecessors. He said
it would be more becoming to say nothing as to who they were, or the
place they came from. All he disclosed was, that his father and
mother lived near the gate San Piero. [17] With regard to Florence, he
continued, the number of the inhabitants fit to carry arms was at that
time not a fifth of its present amount; but then the blood of the
whole city was pure. It had not been mixed up with that of Campi, and
Certaldo, and Figghine. It ran clear in the veins of the humblest
mechanic.
"Oh, how much better would it have been," cried the soul of the old
Florentine, "had my countrymen still kept it as it was, and not brought
upon themselves the stench of the peasant knave out of Aguglione, and
that other from Signa, with his eye to a bribe! Had Rome done its duty
to the emperor, and so prevented the factions that have ruined us,
Simifonte would have kept its beggarly upstart to itself; the Conti
would have stuck to their parish of Acone, and perhaps the Buondelmonti
to Valdigrieve. Crude mixtures do as much harm to the body politic as to
the natural body; and size is not strength. The blind bull falls with a
speedier plunge than the blind lamb. One sword often slashes round about
it better than five. Cities themselves perish. See what has become of
Luni and of Urbisaglia; and what will soon become of Sinigaglia too, and
of Chiusi! And if cities perish, what is to be expected of families? In
my time the Ughi, the Catellini, the Filippi, were great names. So were
the Alberichi, the Ormanni, and twenty others. The golden sword of
knighthood was then to be seen in the house of Galigaio. The Column,
Verrey, was then a great thing in the herald's eye. The Galli, the
Sacchetti, were great; so was the old trunk of the Calfucci; so was that
of the peculators who now blush to hear of a measure of wheat; and the
Sizii and the Arrigucci were drawn in pomp to their civic chairs. Oh,
how mighty I saw them then, and how low has their pride brought them!
_Florence_ in those days deserved her name. She _flourished_ indeed; and
the balls of gold were ever at the top of the flower. [18] And now the
descendants of these men sit in priestly stalls and grow fat. The
over-weening Adimari, who are such dragons when their foes run, and such
lambs when they turn, were then of note so little, that Albertino Donato
was angry with Bellincion, his father-in-law, for making him brother
to one of their females. On the other hand, thy foes, the Amidei, the
origin of all thy tears through the just anger which has slain the
happiness of thy life, were honoured in those days; and the honour was
par taken by their friends. O Buondelmonte! why didst thou break thy
troth to thy first love, and become wedded to another? Many who are now
miserable would have been happy, had God given thee to the river Ema,
when it rose against thy first coming to Florence. But the Arno had
swept our Palladium from its bridge, and Florence was to be the victim
on its altar. "[19]
Cacciaguida was again silent; but his descendant begged him to speak
yet a little more. He had heard, as he came through the nether regions,
alarming intimations of the ill fortune that awaited him, and he was
anxious to know, from so high and certain an authority, what it would
really be.
Cacciaguida said, "As Hippolytus was forced to depart from Athens by the
wiles of his cruel step-dame, so must even thou depart out of Florence.
Such is the wish, such this very moment the plot, and soon will it be
the deed, of those, the business of whose lives is to make a traffic of
Christ with Rome. Thou shalt quit every thing that is dearest to thee
in the world. That is the first arrow shot from the bow of exile. Thou
shalt experience how salt is the taste of bread eaten at the expense of
others; how hard is the going up and down others' stairs. But what shall
most bow thee down, is the worthless and disgusting company with whom
thy lot must be partaken; for they shall all turn against thee, the
whole mad, heartless, and ungrateful set. Nevertheless, it shall not be
long first, before themselves, and not thou, shall have cause to hang
down their heads for shame. The brutishness of all they do, will shew
how well it became thee to be of no party, but the party of thyself. [20]
"Thy first refuge thou shalt owe to the courtesy of the great Lombard,
who bears the Ladder charged with the Holy Bird. [21] So benignly
shall he regard thee, that in the matter of asking and receiving, the
customary order of things shall be reversed between you two, and the
gift anticipate the request. With him thou shalt behold the mortal, born
under so strong an influence of this our star, that the nations shall
take note of him. They are not aware of him yet, by reason
of his tender age; but ere the Gascon practise on the great
Henry, sparkles of his worth shall break forth in his contempt
of money and of ease; and when his munificence appears in all
its lustre, his very enemies shall not be able to hold their
tongues for admiration. [22] Look thou to this second benefactor
also; for many a change of the lots of people shall he make, both rich
and poor; and do thou bear in mind, but repeat not, what further I shall
now tell thee of thy life. " Here the spirit, says the poet,
foretold things which afterwards appeared incredible to their very
beholders;--and then added: "Such, my son, is the heart and mystery of
the things thou hast desired to learn. The snares will shortly gather
about thee; but wish not to change places with the contrivers; for thy
days will outlast those of their retribution. "
Again was the spirit silent; and yet again once more did his descendant
question him, anxious to have the advice of one that saw so far, and
that spoke the truth so purely, and loved him so well.
"Too plainly, my father," said Dante, "do I see the time coming, when a
blow is to be struck me, heaviest ever to the man that is not true to
himself. For which reason it is fit that I so far arm myself beforehand,
that in losing the spot dearest to me on earth, I do not let my verses
deprive me of every other refuge. Now I have been down below through the
region whose grief is without end; and I have scaled the mountain from
the top of which I was lifted by my lady's eyes; and I have come thus
far through heaven, from luminary to luminary; and in the course of this
my pilgrimage I have heard things which, if I tell again, may bitterly
disrelish with many. Yet, on the other hand, if I prove but a timid
friend to truth, I fear I shall not survive with the generations by whom
the present times will be called times of old. "
The light that enclosed the treasure which its descendant had found in
heaven, first flashed at this speech like a golden mirror against the
sun, and then it replied thus:
"Let the consciences blush at thy words that have reason to blush. Do
thou, far from shadow of misrepresentation, make manifest all which thou
hast seen, and let the sore places be galled that deserve it. Thy bitter
truths shall carry with them vital nourishment--thy voice, as the wind
does, shall smite loudest the loftiest summits; and no little shall that
redound to thy praise. It is for this reason that, in all thy journey,
thou hast been shewn none but spirits of note, since little heed would
have been taken of such as excite doubt by their obscurity. "
The spirit of Cacciaguida now relapsed into the silent joy of its
reflections, and the poet was standing absorbed in the mingled feelings
of his own, when Beatrice said to him, "Change the current of thy
thoughts. Consider how near I am in heaven to one that repayeth every
wrong. "
Dante turned at the sound of this comfort, and felt no longer any other
wish than to look upon her eyes; but she said, with a smile, "Turn thee
round again, and attend. I am not thy only Paradise. " And Dante again
turned, and saw his ancestor prepared to say more.
Cacciaguida bade him look again on the Cross, and he should see various
spirits, as he named them, flash over it like lightning; and they did
so. That of Joshua, which was first mentioned, darted along the Cross
in a stream. The light of Judas Maccabeus went spinning, as if joy had
scourged it. [23] Charlemagne and Orlando swept away together, pursued
by the poet's eyes. Guglielmo[24] followed, and Rinaldo, and Godfrey of
Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard of Naples; and the light of Cacciaguida
himself darted back to its place, and, uttering another sort of voice,
began shewing how sweet a singer he too was amidst the glittering choir.
Dante turned to share the joy with Beatrice, and, by the lovely paling
of her cheek, like a maiden's when it delivers itself of the burden of
a blush,[25] knew that he was in another and whiter star. It was the
planet Jupiter, the abode of blessed Administrators of Justice.
Here he beheld troops of dazzling essences, warbling as they flew, and
shaping their flights hither and thither, like birds when they rise from
the banks of rivers, and rejoice with one another in new-found pasture.
But the figures into which the flights were shaped were of a more
special sort, being mystical compositions of letters of the alphabet,
now a D, now an I, now an L, and so on, till the poet observed that they
completed the whole text of Scripture, which says, _Diligite justitiam,
qui judicatis terram_--(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the
earth). The last letter, M, they did not decompose like the rest, but
kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the
silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a
song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on the top, of
the letter; and then, from the body of it, rose thousands of sparks, as
from a shaken firebrand, and, gradually expanding into the form of an
eagle, the lights which had descended like lilies distributed themselves
over the whole bird, encrusting it with rubies flashing in the sun.
But what, says the poet, was never yet heard of, written, or
imagined,--the beak of the eagle spoke! It uttered many minds in one
voice, just as one heat is given out by many embers; and proclaimed
itself to have been thus exalted, because it united justice and mercy
while on earth.
Dante addressed this splendid phenomenon, and prayed it to ease his mind
of the perplexities of its worldly reason respecting the Divine nature
and government, and the exclusion from heaven of goodness itself, unless
within the Christian pale.
The celestial bird, rousing itself into motion with delight, like a
falcon in the conscious energy of its will and beauty, when, upon being
set free from its hood, it glances above it into the air, and claps its
self-congratulating wings, answered nevertheless somewhat disdainfully,
that it was impossible for man, in his mortal state, to comprehend such
things; and that the astonishment he feels at them, though doubtless it
would be excusable under other circumstances, must rest satisfied with
the affirmations of Scripture.
The bird then bent over its questioner, as a stork does over the
nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and
renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, "As my notes are to thee
that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to
thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly
regions that did not believe in Christ, either after he was crucified or
before it. Yet many, who call Christ! Christ! shall at the last day be
found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings
of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment
opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dishonour? In
that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict
on Bohemia:[26]--in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that
adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's
teeth:--in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the
Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds:--in
that book, the luxury of the Spaniard, and the effeminate life of the
Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy:--in that
book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a
unit, and his worthlessness by a million:--in that book, the avarice and
cowardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died;
and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness,
the writing shall be in short-hand; and his uncle's and his brother's
filthy doings shall be read in that book--they who have made such
rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the
Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner
of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O
blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer! --O blessed
Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain
walls! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest
of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the
beast, who keeps so close in the path of the herd his brethren. "
The blessed bird for a moment was silent; but as, at the going down of
the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth into innumerable
stars which the sun lights up,[27] so the splendours within the figure
of the bird suddenly became more splendid, and broke forth into songs
too beautiful for mortal to remember.
O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy
manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere
thoughts of those pious hearts!
After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their
angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes
falling from rock to rock, and chews, by the fulness of its tone, the
abundance of its mountain spring; and as the sound of the guitar is
modulated on the neck of it, and the breath of the pipe is accordant to
the spiracle from which it issues, so the murmuring within the eagle
suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in
words. The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye; because,
of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the
eye were the noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the
pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now
enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment. Of the
five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was
Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it
costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell
before he was translated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah,
whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death: next Hezekiah,
Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of
a pastor, he had unwittingly brought destruction on the world: next
Constantine, William the Good of Sicily, whose death is not more
lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown and lastly, next
William, Riphaeus the Trojan. "What erring mortal," cried the bird,
"would believe it possible to find Riphæus the Trojan among the
blest? --but so it is; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace
than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth. "[28]
The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the
happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering and
expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and content,
having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness. [29]
But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans
in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.
It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of
justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same
reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption;
and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of
Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to
the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird
mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they
quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced
by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes. [30]
Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice,
and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer
there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at
every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been
able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the
planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy
Contemplation.
pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a
deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins on the seashore;
he never broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of
his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved
by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of
this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most
beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a few
months she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that
Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in
some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even
to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest
of his days in a silence which was never broken. " Hazlitt's _Journey
through France and Italy_, p. 315. ]
[Footnote 11: Sordello was a famous Provençal poet; with whose writings
the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of
M. Raynouard, in his _Choix des Poésies des Troubadours_, &c. ]
[Footnote 12: "Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca. " An exquisite
image of newness and brilliancy. ]
[Footnote 13: "Salve, Regina:" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant
to the Virgin. ]
[Footnote 14: "With nose deprest," says Mr. Cary. But Dante says,
literally, "small nose,"--_nasetto_. So, further on, he says, "masculine
nose,"--_maschio naso_. He meant to imply the greater or less
determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed
to indicate. ]
[Footnote 15: An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign
for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect. But Henry was a
devout servant of the Church. ]
[Footnote 16:
"Era già l'ora che volge 'l desio
A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore
Lo dì ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;
E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore. "
A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to
be the voice of Evening herself.
'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
Every body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from
Dante's--
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. "
Nothing can equal, however, the _tone_ in the Italian original,--the
"Pàia 'l giorno pianger the si muòre. "
Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his
personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have
left us a work truly to be called Divine? ]
[Footnote 17:
"Te lucis ante terminum;"--a hymn sung at evening service. ]
[Footnote 18: Lucy, _Lucia_ (supposed to be derived from _lux, lucis_),
is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic
countries may be said to preside over _light_, and who is really invoked
in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for
that reason among others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
they had been cured. In her spiritual character she represents the light
of grace. ]
[Footnote 19: The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the second,
horror of it; the third, zeal to amend. ]
[Footnote 20: The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the
commentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the learning and
judgment requisite to use it. ]
[Footnote 21: "Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and
St. Augustine. ]
[Footnote 22:
"Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
Che vola a giustizia senza schermi? "
"Know you not, we are worms
Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms? "
[Footnote 23:
"Più ridon le carte
Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
L'onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte. "
[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
and the poet, who is to "chase them from the nest," _caccerà di nido_
(as the not very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the statement becoming? It
was certainly not necessary. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship
with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti,
probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition; far they
could be proud themselves; and the son has the reputation of scepticism,
as well as the father. See the _Decameron, Giorn_. vi. _Nov. 9_. ]
[Footnote 25: This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein," from the awful
necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with some other commentators, thinks
that the "trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not
rather mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case it certainly
does; for it was in consideration of the pang to his pride, that the
good deed rescued him from worse punishment. ]
[Footnote 26: The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of
Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of
such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose
it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call
to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on
Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous,
of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
the reconcilement with absurdity. ]
[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of
the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and
admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for
them, and his impatience to see them triumph. " So said the Inquisition.
The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed,
or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions. ]
[Footnote 28:
"_Sàvia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapìa_
Fosse chiamata. "
The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian
name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is
the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented
on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in
English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name. " It
is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the
punsters. --It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at
the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some
zeal of faction]
[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a
little envy, but far more pride:
"Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
Ma picciol tempo; che poch' è l'offesa
Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
Troppa è più la paura ond' è sospesa
L'anima mia del tormento di sotto
Che già lo 'ncarco di là giù mi pesa. "
The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second,
affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have
allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to
women. ]
[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned
to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her
sister Herse.
The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful
and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and
violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to
suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his
thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for
his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.
Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros
is thunder-claps crashing into one another--broken thunder. This is
exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful
music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness. If it were
not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two
silences; for I doubt whether they are not better even than one. At all
events, the final silence is tremendous. ]
[Footnote 30: St. Luke ii. 48. ]
[Footnote 31: The stoning of Stephen. ]
[Footnote 32: These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not
always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird
as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as
he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake,
Philomela, in the _Metamorphoses_. ]
[Footnote 33: So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards; and
I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite
intimations at each successive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly
having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the
outset. The whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
wanted his final revision. ]
[Footnote 34: What an instance to put among those of haste to do good!
But the fame and accomplishments of Cæsar, and his being at the head of
our Ghibelline's beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted
impartiality. ]
[Footnote 35: A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of
it in the original has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the
last recesses of feeling, and disgusts us with the denouncer. ]
[Footnote 36: The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in
the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association
of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that
Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his
dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a
metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when
we find the man called, not _the_ butcher, or _that_ butcher, or butcher
in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
Paris" (_un beccaio di Parigi_), and when this designation is followed
up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the
ordinary construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems
to have had no ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless
considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed, condescended to
feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it,
in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt
contradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeatedly said, that
the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth
excepted) are a heap of contradictions. ]
[Footnote 37: Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in which there
is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an
impression to the same effect. ]
[Footnote 38:
"O Signor mio, quando sarò io lieto
A veder la vendetta the nascosa
Fa dolce l'ira tua nel tuo segreto! "
The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian,
viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being
"too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth
century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine! God hugs
revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a
poor grinning Florentine! ]
[Footnote 39: A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The allusion
is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her
husband, the priest Sichæus, for his riches. The term "parricide" is
here applied in its secondary sense of--the murderer of any one to whom
we owe reverence. ]
[Footnote 40: Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael. ]
[Footnote 41: A grand and beautiful fiction. ]
[Footnote 42: Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation
for this fancy, except in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in
another passage, not necessary to give, confounds the poet Statius who
was from Naples, with a rhetorician of the same name from Thoulouse. ]
[Footnote 43:
"Parèn l'occhiaje anella senza gemme. "
This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one
of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the
physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (_homo_, man), written in the face
of the human being, might easily have seen the letter _m_ in theirs. "
"Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge _o m o_,
Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_. "
The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples
form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman
domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin! ]
[Footnote 44:
"Se le svergognate fosser certe
Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte. "
This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John
Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted
to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness,
and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays.
But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the
worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer
him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take
good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those
self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins
they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to. " He was
a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The
defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing. ]
[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having
availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such
candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The
words in the original are
"Se ti riduci a mente
Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
Ancor fia grave il memorar presente. "
Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast
with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee
still. "
His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of Æneas's
descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
spotless. ]
[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
present volume. ) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
some rumour. ]
[Footnote 47: A celebrated and charming passage:
"Io mi son un, che quando
Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo
Che detta dentro, vo significando. "
I am one that notes
When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell
In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.
[Footnote 48: Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment
to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the
Notary, and Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of
the day. The latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his
translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last
day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under
_crudel martire_), _because_ an inscription will then be seen on his
forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love! An odd way for a
poet to shew his feelings, and a friar his religion! ]
[Footnote 49: Judges vii. 6. ]
[Footnote 50: _Summæ Deus clementiæ_. The ancient beginning of a hymn in
the Roman Catholic church; now altered, say the commentators, to "Summæ
parens clementiæ. "]
[Footnote 51: _Virum non cognosco_. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How
shall this be, seeing I know not a man? "--_Luke_ i. 34.
The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of
Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by
spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.
A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question
suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of
letters. ]
[Footnote 52: An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;--not, I
think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart
from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is
rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express
love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be
taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity. ]
[Footnote 53:
"Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie. "
Even as from branch to branch
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south. "--_Cary_.
"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's
sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to
the Decameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec. , G. 5, N.
8, and Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in
it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta. "--_Translation of
Dante_, ut sup. p. 121. ]
[Footnote 54: Lethe, _Forgetfulness_; Eunoe, _Well-mindedness_. ]
[Footnote 55:
"Senza alcuno scotto
Di pentimento. "
Literally, _scot-free_. --"Scotto," scot;--"payment for dinner or supper
in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor
of the _Parnaso Italiano_, and a very summary gentleman); "here used
figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and
grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that
collection, vol. ii. p. 297. ]
[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (_pargoletta_) or any
other fleeting vanity,
"O altra vanità con sì breve use,"
is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he
liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they
might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?
Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as
a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the
sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape;
and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells
us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of
Signor Rubbi, is no better than _snubbing_;--to say nothing of the
vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.
I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an
exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out
of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and
his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in
charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so
many things, hates nothing.
Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them. ]
[Footnote 57:
"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. "--Psalm li. 7. ]
[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years. ]
III.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. Argument.
The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of
astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets
according to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond these, or that of the
Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the
moveless Earth; and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which
is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by
its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue; and Dante visits each
under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes,
on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally
admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the
Great First Cause.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in
Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed
his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself in Heaven.
He had been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by
his side.
The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empyrean, and heard
the music of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven,
the circle of the orb of the moon.
This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed,
outside, as solid, though as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as
sunbeams are admitted into water without dividing the substance. It now
appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of
which they saw but dimly; and they beheld many faces eagerly looking at
them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding
whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn. [1]
Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom
they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right; and he entered
into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost
him. It was Piccarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he
had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason
of her wonderful increase in beauty. She and her associates were such
as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity and Religion, but had been
Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in
Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso. [2] On
Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of bliss, she and
her sister-spirits gently smiled; and then answered, with faces as happy
as first love,[3] that they willed only what it pleased God to give
them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer,
that every place in Heaven was Paradise, though the bliss might be of
different degrees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side,
lustrous with all the glory of the region, Costanza, daughter of the
king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the
wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began
singing _Ave Maria_; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as
substances disappear in water. [4]
A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next
circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet Mercury, the
residence of those who had acted rather out of Desire of Fame than Love
of God. The spirits here, as in the former Heaven, crowded towards them,
as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their
eyes sparkled with celestial joy; and the more they thought of their
joy, the brighter they grew; till one of them who addressed the poet
became indistinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of
the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman
empire up to his time; and then gave an account of one of his associates
in bliss, Romèo, who had been minister to Raymond Beranger, Count of
Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every
one became a queen; and all this had been brought about by Romèo, a poor
stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romèo, incited
Raymond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had
brought his master's treasury twelve-fold for every ten it disbursed.
Romeo quitted the court, poor and old; "and if the world," said
Justinian, "could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his
bread as he went, crust by crust--praise him as it does, it would praise
him a great deal more. "[5]
"Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth,
Superillumining with light of light
The happy fires of these thy Malahoth! "[6]
Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian; and then, turning
as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire.
Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven,
or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous. [7] He only knew it by the
increased loveliness in the face of his companion.
The spirits in this orb, who came and went in the light of it like
sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun
round in circles of delight, each with more or less swiftness, according
to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out
of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his
patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why
diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of
the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth;
and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and
Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy
Land, and whose place was next Folco. [8] Cunizza said that she did not
at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar
might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel
who was close to her, Folco--contrasted his zeal with the inertness of
her contemptible countrymen--and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the
latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed
in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is
expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the
lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or
Hercules; but added, that he had no recollection of them, except a
joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven),
but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Folco concluded with
explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing
the indifference of popes and cardinals (those adulterers of the Church)
to every thing but accursed money-getting. [9]
In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth
Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of
them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon,
singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be
exported, was not conveyable by expression to mortal fancy. The spirits
composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus,
Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius
the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede,
Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the
namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak; but
when he had done speaking, they began resuming it, one by one, and
circling as they moved, like the wheels of church-clocks that sound one
after another with a sweet tinkling, when they summon the hearts of the
devout to morning prayer. [10]
Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of
the order of St. Dominic; but with generous grace he held up the founder
of the Franciscans, with his vow of poverty, as the example of what a
pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On
the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their
appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling
round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new
circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle,
and Saint Buonaventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.
Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity, the holy wrestler,--benign
to his friends and cruel to his enemies;[11]--and so confined his
reproofs to his own Franciscan order. He then, as St. Thomas had done
with the doctors in the inner circle, named those who constituted the
outer: to wit, Illuminato, and Agostino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and
Petrus Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty-first, Nathan the Prophet,
Chrysostom, Anselmo of Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach grammar,
Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of Calabria. The two circles then varied
their movement by wheeling round one another in counter directions; and
after they had chanted, not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of Three Persons
in One, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's thoughts by intuition, again
addressed him, discoursing of mysteries human and divine, exhorting
him to be slow in giving assent or denial to propositions without
examination, and bidding him warn people in general how they presumed
to anticipate the divine judgment as to who should be saved and who
not. [12] The spirit of Solomon then related how souls could resume their
bodies glorified; and the two circles uttering a rapturous amen, glowed
with such intolerable brightness, that the eyes of Beatrice only were
able to sustain it. Dante gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and
suddenly found himself in the fifth Heaven.
It was the planet Mars, the receptacle of those who had Died Fighting
for the Cross. In the middle of its ruddy light stood a cross itself, of
enormous dimensions, made of light still greater, and exhibiting, first,
in the body of it, the Crucified Presence, glittering all over with
indescribable flashes like lightning; and secondly, in addition to and
across the Presence, innumerable sparkles of the intensest mixture
of white and red, darting to and fro through the whole extent of the
crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a
sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols,
before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from
the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which
entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words,
"Arise and conquer," as one who hears and yet hears not.
On a sudden, with a glide like a falling star, there ran down from the
right horn of the Cross to the foot of it, one of the lights of this
cluster of splendours, distinguishing itself, as it went, like flame in
alabaster.
"O flesh of my flesh! " it exclaimed to Dante; "O superabounding Divine
Grace! when was the door of Paradise ever twice opened, as it Shall have
been to thee? "[13] Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice, and saw
such a rapture of delight in her eyes, that he seemed, at that instant,
as if his own had touched the depth of his acceptance and of his
heaven. [14]
The light resumed its speech, but in words too profound in their meaning
for Dante to comprehend. They seemed to be returning thanks to God. This
rapturous absorption being ended, the speaker expressed in more human
terms his gratitude to Beatrice; and then, after inciting Dante to ask
his name, declared himself thus:
"O branch of mine, whom I have long desired to behold, I am the root of
thy stock; of him thy great-grandsire, who first brought from his mother
the family-name into thy house, and whom thou sawest expiating his sin
of pride on the first circle of the mountain. Well it befitteth thee to
shorten his long suffering with thy good works. Florence,[15] while yet
she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the
bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste
and sober. She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy
sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers. Fathers were
not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries
too great, and husbands before their time. Families were in no haste to
separate; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared
to practise. The heights of Rome had not been surpassed by your tower of
Uccellatoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its aspiring. I saw
Bellincion Berti walking the streets in a leathern girdle fastened with
bone; and his wife come from her looking-glass without a painted face.
I saw the Nerlis and the Vecchios contented with the simplest doublets,
and their good dames hard at work at their spindles. O happy they! They
were sure of burial in their native earth, and none were left desolate
by husbands that loved France better than Italy. One kept awake to tend
her child in its cradle, lulling it with the household words that had
fondled her own infancy. Another, as she sat in the midst of her family,
drawing the flax from the distaff, told them stories of Troy, and
Fiesole, and Rome. It would have been as great a wonder, then, to see
such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man as Lapo Salterello, as it
would now be to meet with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia. [16]
"It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful time," continued the poet's
ancestor, "when we all lived in such good faith and fellowship, and in
so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin vouchsafed the first sight
of me to the cries of my mother; and there, in your old Baptistery, I
became, at once, Christian and Cacciaguida. My brothers were called
Moronto and Eliseo. It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdipado,
thy family name of Alighieri. I then followed the Emperor Conrad, and
he made me a knight for my good service, and I went with him to fight
against the wicked Saracen law, whose people usurp the fold that remains
lost through the fault of the shepherd. There, by that foul crew, was I
delivered from the snares and pollutions of the world; and so, from the
martyrdom, came to this peace. "
Cacciaguida was silent. But his descendant praying to be told more of
his family and of the old state of Florence, the beatified soldier
resumed. He would not, however, speak of his own predecessors. He said
it would be more becoming to say nothing as to who they were, or the
place they came from. All he disclosed was, that his father and
mother lived near the gate San Piero. [17] With regard to Florence, he
continued, the number of the inhabitants fit to carry arms was at that
time not a fifth of its present amount; but then the blood of the
whole city was pure. It had not been mixed up with that of Campi, and
Certaldo, and Figghine. It ran clear in the veins of the humblest
mechanic.
"Oh, how much better would it have been," cried the soul of the old
Florentine, "had my countrymen still kept it as it was, and not brought
upon themselves the stench of the peasant knave out of Aguglione, and
that other from Signa, with his eye to a bribe! Had Rome done its duty
to the emperor, and so prevented the factions that have ruined us,
Simifonte would have kept its beggarly upstart to itself; the Conti
would have stuck to their parish of Acone, and perhaps the Buondelmonti
to Valdigrieve. Crude mixtures do as much harm to the body politic as to
the natural body; and size is not strength. The blind bull falls with a
speedier plunge than the blind lamb. One sword often slashes round about
it better than five. Cities themselves perish. See what has become of
Luni and of Urbisaglia; and what will soon become of Sinigaglia too, and
of Chiusi! And if cities perish, what is to be expected of families? In
my time the Ughi, the Catellini, the Filippi, were great names. So were
the Alberichi, the Ormanni, and twenty others. The golden sword of
knighthood was then to be seen in the house of Galigaio. The Column,
Verrey, was then a great thing in the herald's eye. The Galli, the
Sacchetti, were great; so was the old trunk of the Calfucci; so was that
of the peculators who now blush to hear of a measure of wheat; and the
Sizii and the Arrigucci were drawn in pomp to their civic chairs. Oh,
how mighty I saw them then, and how low has their pride brought them!
_Florence_ in those days deserved her name. She _flourished_ indeed; and
the balls of gold were ever at the top of the flower. [18] And now the
descendants of these men sit in priestly stalls and grow fat. The
over-weening Adimari, who are such dragons when their foes run, and such
lambs when they turn, were then of note so little, that Albertino Donato
was angry with Bellincion, his father-in-law, for making him brother
to one of their females. On the other hand, thy foes, the Amidei, the
origin of all thy tears through the just anger which has slain the
happiness of thy life, were honoured in those days; and the honour was
par taken by their friends. O Buondelmonte! why didst thou break thy
troth to thy first love, and become wedded to another? Many who are now
miserable would have been happy, had God given thee to the river Ema,
when it rose against thy first coming to Florence. But the Arno had
swept our Palladium from its bridge, and Florence was to be the victim
on its altar. "[19]
Cacciaguida was again silent; but his descendant begged him to speak
yet a little more. He had heard, as he came through the nether regions,
alarming intimations of the ill fortune that awaited him, and he was
anxious to know, from so high and certain an authority, what it would
really be.
Cacciaguida said, "As Hippolytus was forced to depart from Athens by the
wiles of his cruel step-dame, so must even thou depart out of Florence.
Such is the wish, such this very moment the plot, and soon will it be
the deed, of those, the business of whose lives is to make a traffic of
Christ with Rome. Thou shalt quit every thing that is dearest to thee
in the world. That is the first arrow shot from the bow of exile. Thou
shalt experience how salt is the taste of bread eaten at the expense of
others; how hard is the going up and down others' stairs. But what shall
most bow thee down, is the worthless and disgusting company with whom
thy lot must be partaken; for they shall all turn against thee, the
whole mad, heartless, and ungrateful set. Nevertheless, it shall not be
long first, before themselves, and not thou, shall have cause to hang
down their heads for shame. The brutishness of all they do, will shew
how well it became thee to be of no party, but the party of thyself. [20]
"Thy first refuge thou shalt owe to the courtesy of the great Lombard,
who bears the Ladder charged with the Holy Bird. [21] So benignly
shall he regard thee, that in the matter of asking and receiving, the
customary order of things shall be reversed between you two, and the
gift anticipate the request. With him thou shalt behold the mortal, born
under so strong an influence of this our star, that the nations shall
take note of him. They are not aware of him yet, by reason
of his tender age; but ere the Gascon practise on the great
Henry, sparkles of his worth shall break forth in his contempt
of money and of ease; and when his munificence appears in all
its lustre, his very enemies shall not be able to hold their
tongues for admiration. [22] Look thou to this second benefactor
also; for many a change of the lots of people shall he make, both rich
and poor; and do thou bear in mind, but repeat not, what further I shall
now tell thee of thy life. " Here the spirit, says the poet,
foretold things which afterwards appeared incredible to their very
beholders;--and then added: "Such, my son, is the heart and mystery of
the things thou hast desired to learn. The snares will shortly gather
about thee; but wish not to change places with the contrivers; for thy
days will outlast those of their retribution. "
Again was the spirit silent; and yet again once more did his descendant
question him, anxious to have the advice of one that saw so far, and
that spoke the truth so purely, and loved him so well.
"Too plainly, my father," said Dante, "do I see the time coming, when a
blow is to be struck me, heaviest ever to the man that is not true to
himself. For which reason it is fit that I so far arm myself beforehand,
that in losing the spot dearest to me on earth, I do not let my verses
deprive me of every other refuge. Now I have been down below through the
region whose grief is without end; and I have scaled the mountain from
the top of which I was lifted by my lady's eyes; and I have come thus
far through heaven, from luminary to luminary; and in the course of this
my pilgrimage I have heard things which, if I tell again, may bitterly
disrelish with many. Yet, on the other hand, if I prove but a timid
friend to truth, I fear I shall not survive with the generations by whom
the present times will be called times of old. "
The light that enclosed the treasure which its descendant had found in
heaven, first flashed at this speech like a golden mirror against the
sun, and then it replied thus:
"Let the consciences blush at thy words that have reason to blush. Do
thou, far from shadow of misrepresentation, make manifest all which thou
hast seen, and let the sore places be galled that deserve it. Thy bitter
truths shall carry with them vital nourishment--thy voice, as the wind
does, shall smite loudest the loftiest summits; and no little shall that
redound to thy praise. It is for this reason that, in all thy journey,
thou hast been shewn none but spirits of note, since little heed would
have been taken of such as excite doubt by their obscurity. "
The spirit of Cacciaguida now relapsed into the silent joy of its
reflections, and the poet was standing absorbed in the mingled feelings
of his own, when Beatrice said to him, "Change the current of thy
thoughts. Consider how near I am in heaven to one that repayeth every
wrong. "
Dante turned at the sound of this comfort, and felt no longer any other
wish than to look upon her eyes; but she said, with a smile, "Turn thee
round again, and attend. I am not thy only Paradise. " And Dante again
turned, and saw his ancestor prepared to say more.
Cacciaguida bade him look again on the Cross, and he should see various
spirits, as he named them, flash over it like lightning; and they did
so. That of Joshua, which was first mentioned, darted along the Cross
in a stream. The light of Judas Maccabeus went spinning, as if joy had
scourged it. [23] Charlemagne and Orlando swept away together, pursued
by the poet's eyes. Guglielmo[24] followed, and Rinaldo, and Godfrey of
Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard of Naples; and the light of Cacciaguida
himself darted back to its place, and, uttering another sort of voice,
began shewing how sweet a singer he too was amidst the glittering choir.
Dante turned to share the joy with Beatrice, and, by the lovely paling
of her cheek, like a maiden's when it delivers itself of the burden of
a blush,[25] knew that he was in another and whiter star. It was the
planet Jupiter, the abode of blessed Administrators of Justice.
Here he beheld troops of dazzling essences, warbling as they flew, and
shaping their flights hither and thither, like birds when they rise from
the banks of rivers, and rejoice with one another in new-found pasture.
But the figures into which the flights were shaped were of a more
special sort, being mystical compositions of letters of the alphabet,
now a D, now an I, now an L, and so on, till the poet observed that they
completed the whole text of Scripture, which says, _Diligite justitiam,
qui judicatis terram_--(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the
earth). The last letter, M, they did not decompose like the rest, but
kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the
silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a
song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on the top, of
the letter; and then, from the body of it, rose thousands of sparks, as
from a shaken firebrand, and, gradually expanding into the form of an
eagle, the lights which had descended like lilies distributed themselves
over the whole bird, encrusting it with rubies flashing in the sun.
But what, says the poet, was never yet heard of, written, or
imagined,--the beak of the eagle spoke! It uttered many minds in one
voice, just as one heat is given out by many embers; and proclaimed
itself to have been thus exalted, because it united justice and mercy
while on earth.
Dante addressed this splendid phenomenon, and prayed it to ease his mind
of the perplexities of its worldly reason respecting the Divine nature
and government, and the exclusion from heaven of goodness itself, unless
within the Christian pale.
The celestial bird, rousing itself into motion with delight, like a
falcon in the conscious energy of its will and beauty, when, upon being
set free from its hood, it glances above it into the air, and claps its
self-congratulating wings, answered nevertheless somewhat disdainfully,
that it was impossible for man, in his mortal state, to comprehend such
things; and that the astonishment he feels at them, though doubtless it
would be excusable under other circumstances, must rest satisfied with
the affirmations of Scripture.
The bird then bent over its questioner, as a stork does over the
nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and
renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, "As my notes are to thee
that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to
thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly
regions that did not believe in Christ, either after he was crucified or
before it. Yet many, who call Christ! Christ! shall at the last day be
found less near to him than such as knew him not. What shall the kings
of Islam say to your Christian kings, when they see the book of judgment
opened, and hear all that is set down in it to their dishonour? In
that book shall be read the desolation which Albert will inflict
on Bohemia:[26]--in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that
adulterator of his kingdom's money, who shall die by the hog's
teeth:--in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the
Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds:--in
that book, the luxury of the Spaniard, and the effeminate life of the
Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy:--in that
book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a
unit, and his worthlessness by a million:--in that book, the avarice and
cowardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died;
and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness,
the writing shall be in short-hand; and his uncle's and his brother's
filthy doings shall be read in that book--they who have made such
rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the
Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner
of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O
blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer! --O blessed
Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain
walls! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest
of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the
beast, who keeps so close in the path of the herd his brethren. "
The blessed bird for a moment was silent; but as, at the going down of
the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth into innumerable
stars which the sun lights up,[27] so the splendours within the figure
of the bird suddenly became more splendid, and broke forth into songs
too beautiful for mortal to remember.
O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy
manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere
thoughts of those pious hearts!
After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their
angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes
falling from rock to rock, and chews, by the fulness of its tone, the
abundance of its mountain spring; and as the sound of the guitar is
modulated on the neck of it, and the breath of the pipe is accordant to
the spiracle from which it issues, so the murmuring within the eagle
suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in
words. The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye; because,
of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the
eye were the noblest. The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the
pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now
enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment. Of the
five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was
Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it
costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell
before he was translated to heaven. Next to Trajan was Hezekiah,
whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death: next Hezekiah,
Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of
a pastor, he had unwittingly brought destruction on the world: next
Constantine, William the Good of Sicily, whose death is not more
lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown and lastly, next
William, Riphaeus the Trojan. "What erring mortal," cried the bird,
"would believe it possible to find Riphæus the Trojan among the
blest? --but so it is; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace
than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth. "[28]
The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the
happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering and
expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and content,
having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness. [29]
But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans
in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.
It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of
justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same
reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption;
and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of
Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to
the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird
mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they
quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced
by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes. [30]
Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice,
and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer
there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at
every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been
able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the
planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy
Contemplation.
