Ye other few, who have look'd up on high For angels' food betimes, e'en here supplied Largely, but not enough to satisfy,--

Mid the deep ocean ye your course may take, My track pursuing the pure waters through, Ere reunites the quickly-closing wake.

Those glorious ones, who drove of yore their prow To Colchos, wonder'd not as ye will do, When they saw Jason working at the plough.

WRIGHT'S _Dante_.]

The character of the _Commedia_ belongs much more, in its excellence and its imperfections, to the poet himself and the nature of his work, than to his age. That cannot screen his faults; nor can it arrogate to itself, it must be content to share, his glory. His leading idea and line of thought was much more novel then than it is now, and belongs much more to the modern than the medieval world. The _Story of a Life_, the poetry of man's journey through the wilderness to his true country, is now in various and very different shapes as hackneyed a form of imagination, as an allegory, an epic, a legend of chivalry were in former times. Not, of course, that any time has been without its poetical feelings and ideas on the subject; and never were they deeper and more diversified, more touching and solemn, than in the ages that pa.s.sed from S. Augustine and S. Gregory to S. Thomas and S. Bonaventura. But a philosophical poem, where they were not merely the colouring, but the subject, an _epos_ of the soul, placed for its trial in a fearful and wonderful world, with relations to time and matter, history and nature, good and evil, the beautiful, the intelligible, and the mysterious, sin and grace, the infinite and the eternal--and having in the company and under the influences of other intelligences, to make its choice, to struggle, to succeed or fail, to gain the light, or be lost--this was a new and unattempted theme. It has been often tried since, in faith or doubt, in egotism, in sorrow, in murmuring, in affectation, sometimes in joy--in various forms, in prose and verse, completed or fragmentary, in reality or fiction, in the direct or the shadowed story, in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, in Rousseau's _Confessions_, in _Wilhelm Meister_ and _Faust_, in the _Excursion_. It is common enough now for the poet, in the faith of human sympathy, and in the sense of the unexhausted vastness of his mysterious subject, to believe that his fellows will not see without interest and profit, glimpses of his own path and fortunes--hear from his lips the disclosure of his chief delights, his warnings, his fears--follow the many-coloured changes, the impressions and workings, of a character, at once the contrast and the counterpart to their own.

But it was a new path then; and he needed to be, and was, a bold man, who first opened it--a path never trod without peril, usually with loss or failure.

And certainly no great man ever made less secret to himself of his own genius. He is at no pains to rein in or to dissemble his consciousness of power, which he has measured without partiality, and feels sure will not fail him. "Fidandomi di me piu che di un altro"[51]--is a reason which he a.s.signs without reserve. We look with the distrust and hesitation of modern days, yet, in spite of ourselves, not without admiration and regret, at such frank hardihood. It was more common once than now. When the world was young, it was more natural and allowable--it was often seemly and n.o.ble. Men knew not their difficulties as we know them--we, to whom time, which has taught so much wisdom, has brought so many disappointments--we who have seen how often the powerful have fallen short, and the n.o.ble gone astray, and the most admirable missed their perfection. It is becoming in us to distrust ourselves--to be shy if we cannot be modest; it is but a respectful tribute to human weakness and our brethren's failures. But there was a time when great men dared to claim their greatness--not in foolish self-complacency, but in unembarra.s.sed and majestic simplicity, in magnanimity and truth, in the consciousness of a serious and n.o.ble purpose, and of strength to fulfil it. Without pa.s.sion, without elation as without shrinking, the poet surveys his superiority and his high position, as something external to him; he has no doubts about it, and affects none. He would be a coward, if he shut his eyes to what he could do; as much a trifler in displaying reserve as ostentation. Nothing is more striking in the _Commedia_ than the serene and unhesitating confidence with which he announces himself the heir and reviver of the poetic power so long lost to the world--the heir and reviver of it in all its fulness. He doubts not of the judgment of posterity. One has arisen who shall throw into the shade all modern reputations, who shall bequeath to Christendom the glory of that name of Poet, "che piu dura e piu onora," hitherto the exclusive boast of heathenism, and claim the rare honours of the laurel:

S rade volte, padre, se ne coglie Per trionfare o Cesare o poeta, (Colpa e vergogna dell'umane voglie), Che partorir letizia in su la lieta Delfica deita dovra la fronda Peneia quando alcun di se a.s.seta.--_Parad._ 1.[52]

[Footnote 51: _Convito_, 1, 10.]

[Footnote 52:

For now so rarely Poet gathers these, Or Caesar, winning an immortal praise (Shame unto man's degraded energies), That joy should to the Delphic G.o.d arise When haply any one aspires to gain The high reward of the Peneian prize.--WRIGHT.]

He has but to follow his star to be sure of the glorious port:[53] he is the master of language: he can give fame to the dead--no task or enterprise appals him, for whom spirits keep watch in heaven, and angels have visited the shades--"tal si part dal cantar alleluia:"--who is Virgil's foster child and familiar friend. Virgil bids him lay aside the last vestige of fear. Virgil is to "crown him king and priest over himself,"[54] for a higher venture than heathen poetry had dared; in Virgil's company he takes his place without diffidence, and without vain-glory, among the great poets of old--a sister soul.[55]

[Footnote 53: Brunetto Latini's Prophecy, _Inf._ 15.]

[Footnote 54: See the grand ending of _Purg._ 27.

Tratto t'ho qui con ingegno e con arte; Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce: Fuor se' dell'erte vie, fuor se' dell'arte.

Vedi il sole che 'n fronte ti riluce.

Vede l'erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli Che questa terra sol da se produce.

Mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli Che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno, Seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli.

Non aspettar mio dir piu ne mio cenno; Libero, dritto, sano e tuo arbitrio, E fallo fora non fare a suo senno: Perch'io te sopra te corono e mitrio.]

[Footnote 55: _Purg._ c. 21.]

Poiche la voce fu restata e queta, Vidi quattro grand'ombre a noi venire: Sembianza avean ne trista ne lieta:

Cos vidi adunar la bella scuola Di quel signor dell'altissimo canto Che sovra gli altri come aquila vola.

Da ch'ebber ragionato insieme alquanto Volsersi a me con salutevol cenno E 'l mio maestro sorrise di tanto.

E piu d'onore ancora a.s.sai mi fenno: Ch'essi mi fecer della loro schiera, S ch'io fui sesto tra cotanto senno.--_Inf._ 4.[56]

[Footnote 56:

Ceased had the voice--when in composed array Four mighty shades approaching I survey'd;-- Nor joy, nor sorrow did their looks betray.

a.s.sembled thus, was offered to my sight The school of him, the Prince of poetry, Who, eagle-like, o'er others takes his flight.

When they together had conversed awhile, They turned to me with salutation bland, Which from my master drew a friendly smile: And greater glory still they bade me share, Making me join their honourable band-- The sixth united to such genius rare.--WRIGHT.]

This sustained magnanimity and lofty self-reliance, which never betrays itself, is one of the main elements in the grandeur of the _Commedia_. It is an imposing spectacle to see such fearlessness, such freedom, and such success in an untried path, amid unprepared materials and rude instruments, models scanty and only half understood, powers of language still doubtful and suspected, the deepest and strongest thought still confined to unbending forms and the harshest phrase; exact and extensive knowledge, as yet far out of reach; with no help from time, which familiarises all things, and of which, manner, elaboration, judgment, and taste are the gifts and inheritance;--to see the poet, trusting to his eye "which saw everything"[57] and his searching and creative spirit, venture undauntedly into all regions of thought and feeling, to draw thence a picture of the government of the universe.

[Footnote 57: "Dante che tutto vedea."--_Sacchetti_, Nov. 114.]

But such greatness had to endure its price and its counterpoise. Dante was alone:--except in his visionary world, solitary and companionless.

The blind Greek had his throng of listeners; the blind Englishman his home and the voices of his daughters; Shakspere had his free a.s.sociates of the stage; Goethe, his correspondents, a court, and all Germany to applaud. Not so Dante. The friends of his youth are already in the region of spirits, and meet him there--Casella, Forese;--Guido Cavalcanti will soon be with them. In this upper world he thinks and writes as a friendless man--to whom all that he had held dearest was either lost or embittered; he thinks and writes for himself.

And so he is his own law; he owns no tribunal of opinion or standard of taste, except among the great dead. He hears them exhort him to "let the world talk on--to stand like a tower unshaken by the winds."[58] He fears to be "a timid friend to truth," "--to lose life among those who shall call this present time antiquity."[59] He belongs to no party. He is his own arbiter of the beautiful and the becoming; his own judge over right and injustice, innocence and guilt.

He has no followers to secure, no school to humour, no public to satisfy; nothing to guide him, and nothing to consult, nothing to bind him, nothing to fear, out of himself. In full trust in heart and will, in his sense of truth, in his teeming brain, he gives himself free course. If men have idolised the worthless, and canonised the base, he reverses their award without mercy, and without apology; if they have forgotten the just because he was obscure, he remembers him: if "Monna Berta and Ser Martino,"[60] the wimpled and hooded gossips of the day, with their sage company, have settled it to their own satisfaction that Providence cannot swerve from their general rules, cannot save where they have doomed, or reject where they have approved--he both fears more and hopes more. Deeply reverent to the judgment of the ages past, reverent to the persons whom they have immortalised for good and even for evil, in his own day he cares for no man's person and no man's judgment. And he shrinks not from the auguries and forecastings of his mind about their career and fate. Men reasoned rapidly in those days on such subjects, and without much scruple; but not with such deliberate and discriminating sternness.

The most popular and honoured names in Florence,

Farinata e 'l Tegghiaio, che fur s degni, Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, e 'l Mosca E gli altri, ch'a ben far poser gl'ingegni;

have yet the d.a.m.ning brand: no reader of the _Inferno_ can have forgotten the shock of that terrible reply to the poet's questionings about their fate:

Ei son tra le anime piu nere.[61]

[Footnote 58: _Purg._ 5.]

[Footnote 59:

La luce in che rideva il mio tesoro Ch'io trovai l, si fe' prima corrusca, Quale a raggio di sole specchio d'oro; Indi rispose: coscienza fusca O della propria o dell'altrui vergogna Pur sentira la tua parola brusca; Ma nondimen, rimossa ogni menzogna, Tutta tua vision fa manifesta, E lascia pur grattar dov'e la rogna: Che se la voce tua sara molesta Nel primo gusto, vital nutrimento Lascera poi quando sara digesta.

Questo tuo grido fara come vento Che le piu alte cime piu percuote: E ci non fia d'onor poco argomento.

Per ti son mostrate, in queste ruote, Nel monte, e nella valle dolorosa, Pur l'anime che son di fama note.

Che l'animo di quel ch'ode non posa, Ne ferma fede, per esemplo ch'aja La sua radice incognito e nascosa, Ne per altro argumento che non paja.--_Parad._ 17.]

[Footnote 60:

Non creda Monna Berta e Ser Martino Per vedere un furare, altro offerere, Vederli dentro al consiglio divino: Che quel pu surger, e quel pu cadere.--_Ibid._ 13.]

[Footnote 61: _Inf._ 6.]

If he is partial, it is no vulgar partiality: friendship and old affection do not venture to exempt from its fatal doom the sin of his famous master, Brunetto Latini;[62] n.o.bleness and great deeds, a kindred character and common wrongs, are not enough to redeem Farinata; and he who could tell her story bowed to the eternal law, and dared not save Francesca. If he condemns by a severer rule than that of the world, he absolves with fuller faith in the possibilities of grace. Many names of whom history has recorded no good, are marked by him for bliss; yet not without full respect for justice. The penitent of the last hour is saved, but he suffers loss. Manfred's soul is rescued; mercy had accepted his tears, and forgiven his great sins; and the excommunication of his enemy did not bar his salvation:

Per lor maladizion s non si perde Che non possa tornar l'eterno amore Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde.--_Purg._ 3.

[Footnote 62:

Che in la mente m'e fitta, ed or m'accuora, _La cara buona imagine paterna._--_Inf._ 15.]

Yet his sin, though pardoned, was to keep him for long years from the perfection of heaven.[63] And with the same independence with which he a.s.signs their fate, he selects his instances--instances which are to be the types of character and its issues. No man ever owned more unreservedly the fascination of greatness, its sway over the imagination and the heart; no one prized more the grand harmony and sense of fitness which there is, when the great man and the great office are joined in one, and reflect each other's greatness. The famous and great of all ages are gathered in the poet's vision; the great names even of fable--Geryon and the giants, the Minotaur and Centaurs, and the heroes of Thebes and Troy. But not the great and famous only: this is too narrow, too conventional a sphere; it is not real enough. He felt, what the modern world feels so keenly, that wonderful histories are latent in the inconspicuous paths of life, in the fugitive incidents of the hour, among the persons whose faces we have seen. The Church had from the first been witness to the deep interest of individual life. The rising taste for novels showed that society at large was beginning to be alive to it. And it is this feeling--that behind the veil there may be grades of greatness but nothing insignificant--that led Dante to refuse to restrict himself to the characters of fame. He will a.s.sociate with them the living men who have stood round him; they are part of the same company with the greatest. That they have interested him, touched him, moved his indignation or pity, struck him as examples of great vicissitude or of a perfect life, have pleased him, loved him--this is enough why they should live in his poem as they have lived to him. He chooses at will; history, if it has been negligent at the time about those whom he thought worthy of renown, must be content with its loss. He tells their story, or touches them with a word like the most familiar names, according as he pleases. The obscure highway robber, the obscure betrayer of his sister's honour--Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo, and Caccianimico--are ranked, not according to their obscurity, but according to the greatness of their crimes, with the famous conquerors, and "scourges of G.o.d," and seducers of the heroic age, Pyrrhus and Attila, and the great Jason of "royal port, who sheds no tear in his torments."[64] He earns as high praise from Virgil, for his curse on the furious wrath of the old frantic Florentine burgher, as if he had cursed the disturber of the world's peace.[65] And so in the realms of joy, among the faithful accomplishers of the highest trusts, kings and teachers of the nations, founders of orders, sainted empresses, appear those whom, though the world had forgotten or misread them, the poet had enshrined in his familiar thoughts, for their sweetness, their gentle goodness, their n.o.bility of soul; the penitent, the nun, the old crusading ancestor, the pilgrim who had deserted the greatness which he had created, the brave logician, who "syllogised unpalatable truths" in the Quartier Latin of Paris.[66]

[Footnote 63: Charles of Anjou, his Guelf conqueror, is placed above him, in the valley of the kings (_Purg._ 7), "Colui dal maschio naso"--notwithstanding the charges afterwards made against him (_Purg._ 20).]

[Footnote 64: See the magnificent picture, _Inf._ 18.]

[Footnote 65: _Ibid._ 8.]