THE " PARADIS•E " OF DANTE.• As Mr. Butler's ambition
does not soar higher than the produc- tion of a good " crib " to Dante, we may dispense with any minute criticisms on his excellent prose version of the Paradiso.
His task was harder here than when he translated the Purga- folio ; his sncoess is quite as marked and meritorious. Occasion-
ally, indeed, as understanding certain passages perfectly himself, he leaves his readers too much in the dark. For when, for instance (p. 201), he gives us Florence standing " within the ancient circle from which she still takes both tierce and nones," and (p. 202) depicts Bellincione Berti as going " girt in leather and bone," and (p. 289) makes St. Benedict say that his " rule has remained below for the spoiling of paper," we feel that an ordinary reader has a right to say of such passages, Davus sum. non aidipus. And although Mr. Butler's English is not always elegant, as, indeed, it could hardly be, his vocabulary is for the most part so pure that we are surprised at his using such a word as " transhumanation " (p. 7). That he may have authority for this monster, as we venture to call it, is possible enough, for stranger words may be fished up from Owen Felltham's Resolves; but no authority would reconcile us to it. We may add, too, that nothing can reconcile us to the absence of an index, were it only so meagre a one as Dr. Carlyle—so different in this respect to his illustrious brother—was satisfied with for his version of the Inferno. Nor can we congratulate Mr. Butler on his supremely useless table of " contents " (p. xii.) Had he printed his sufficiently brief " arguments " there, as well as in the body of his work, he would have changed, more frequently than he appears to have thought possible, an exasperated into a mollified reader. As to the notes, they call for nothing, on the whole, but praise ; and we only wish, as may be inferred from what we have already said, that there were more of them. There is one remark, however, to be made. In the most import- ant of these notes, quotations are made from Greek and Latin authors in the original. Now, we are very far from wishing to quarrel with Mr. Butler for this procedure,—and, indeed, his good-humoured banter in defence of it is unanswerable. We do not, however, so readily accede to his contention that the Latin rendering, the medium through which St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante read their Aristotle, was "sufficiently accurate to make it quite possible for us to follow them in the original Greek." To discuss this question is quite beyond the scope of this notice ; the fact that we wish to lay stress on it is that Mr. Butler's " us " represents a very select audience, and that unless a reader has much Latin and more Greek, he will find that in buying this book he has bought more than he bargained for. And this consideration brings us, so to speak, face to face with one of the two points to which our present remarks will mainly be confined. These are, first, what manner of readers, at this time of day, may study the Paradiso not unprofitably P And, secondly, what rank does the Paradiso —or, to speak more accurately, the whole of the Divina Com- media—entitle Dante to claim in the hierarchy of the world's greatest poets P
The Paradiso, then, with all due deference to the writer of a remarkably bright and freshly written article on Dante in a recent Blackwood, is essentially a work for men of abundant erudition and abundant leisure. To "the general" it remains, and always must remain, " caviare." Without referring to other critics and commentators, a few steps taken in company—but not always in agreement—with Mr. Butler through his preface, will perhaps be sufficient for our purpose. He is aware—and, as it seems to us, even painfully aware—of that falling-off in interest which marks the transition from the Inferno and the Purga- torio to the Paradiso, and in the true spirit of a translator and commentator, though, we must say, with singular moderation, he endeavours to mask that falling-off. Yet we cannot say that his efforts are very successful; nor do we in the least under- stand his plea that "most of the personages who are introduced in the Paradiso are, as it were, the property of all mankind." Gibbon, Voltaire, George Washington, and Napoleon are "the property, as it were, of all mankind." De the passages in which • The "Paradise" of Darde Alighieri. Edited, with Translation and Notes, by Arthur John Butler, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London ; Macmillan and Co. these " personages are introduced" in Byron's poetry show any " falling-off in human interest?" And " in that noble summary of Roman history," as Mr. Butler calls it, " put into the month of Justinian, in which the reader almost hears the rush of the eagle down his triumphant course," are Scipio and Pompey, are Hannibal and Coma; and " la trista Cleopatra," less interesting figures than are " the two Counts of Montefeltro, Forese, and a score of other great unknowns, whom we meet with in the first two divisions of the great poem ? But we repeat that we do not understand Mr. Butler's argument here, and remembering Coleridge's warning, are willing to admit that we may perhaps be misrepresenting it. We are pretty clear, though, in our apprehension that the superior interest—and, let us add, the superior poetry—of the above-mentioned "first two divisions" are due to something more than to the fact that "while physical pain offers an endless choice of possibilities, the only pleasure which is admitted by the dignity of the Christian heaven is in its nature incapable of much variation." Dante was misled, if we may say so, rather than aided, by the " endless possibilities" of representing physical pain ; and if in the Paradise he falls, as Mr. Butler says he does, now and again, "into what verges on the grotesque," he plunges in the Inferno over head and shoulders, more than now and again, into what does not verge merely on the grotesque, but is the palpable grotesque itself. None the less, the Inferno moves us far more than the Paradiso ever does. And why ? Well, in Goethe's phrase, perhaps, because a man cannot jump off his own shadow. Compassion is one of the noblest, if not the noblest, feeling of which the human heart is capable, and in heaven there is no room for compassion. The wings of Milton's muse flagged in the empyrean, and so do the wings of Dante's. The greatest of poets may write as a fool if he neglects St. Paul's warning. Milton's heaven is, after all, hardly more than Mahomet's "refined through strainers." Dante is what he himself calls a great festival of sparkling, coruscation following coruscation in bewildering magnificence, and " dark with excessive bright." Yet we are not sure that we agree with Mr. Butler as to the pitfall into which Dante fell when striving to avoid monotony in the midst of heaven's "primal, essential, all-pervading light." It was something that verged on the grotesque, no doubt ; but Mr. Butler, if we understand him rightly, places this in the " introduction of vulgar and even coarse images in the midst of the most elevated passages." We should place it rather in conceptions, like that of the Imperial Eagle, all compact of " studded fire," whose beak spake in a way that "voice has never borne, nor ink written, nor has it been by fancy ever comprehended," and whose eye was formed of souls, whereof one was the soul of- " Rhipens, jwitissimus nuns Qui fait in Teucris, at servantissimus aoqui."
If, however, we are mistaken, and Mr. Butler thinks as we do about this bird, and the rose (in Canto xxx.), might he not, may we ask, have hinted as much in his notes ? As to the praise which he has given so nnstintedly to Cacciaguida's description of the old Florentine life, let it pass by all means ; but let us not forget, too, that this description is followed by a canto full of details which are as prosaic as they are parochial. Mr. Butler objects to the intermittent flashes of true poetry which irradiate the metaphysics and theology of the Paradiso, being called " purple patches." Well, be it so ; but Horace, we imagine, would not agree with him, and we, at all events, have no scruple in comparing these flashes to " angels' visits, short and far between." Mr. Butler is far more appreciative, and lauds the skill " which has caused a spring of tender emotion to flow in a desert of metaphysics, and, with a word here or an image there, drawn the music of Apollo's lute out of harsh and crabbed philosophy." This is very prettily written, bat we shall take the liberty of imitating the fault which be notes in Dante,and of reminding Mr. Butler, in "vulgar and even coarse" language, that " fine words butter no parsnips."
We have but little space left for our second point. Strange claims have been advanced by critics of mark on behalf of the Paradiso for its poetry. But we can give no heed to them. Dante's position as a " deacon of his craft " rests, in the last resort, on his Inferno, albeit the Purgatorio may commend itself as plea- santer reading to "the general." We need not, however, draw invidious comparisons between the separate divisions of the Disina Cominsdia. It was written as a whole, and as a whole we are willing to accept it. Does this marvellous whole, then, entitle Dante to be called, as the eloquent writer in Blackwood calls him, " one of the acknowledged triumvirate of the world's literature ?" The present writer would reply in the negative. We assume that triumvirate to be Shakespeare, Homer, Dante ; but there are no end of objections to be made to such a selection. It matters not what colleagues we give him, the name of Shakespeare in a literary triumvirate merely sug- gests a subtraction sum in poetical, as the name of Bonaparte in a consular triumvirate suggested a subtraction sum in poli- tical, arithmetic. In the realms of Parnassus, Shakespeare rules supreme, nee viget quidquam simile ant secunduni. Next to him, but far aloof, sits Homer ; and now, if we choose to form one, the ground is clear for a literary triumvirate. Dante, Milton, and Goethe are probably the names which would win most votes; for each of these great poets was a man possessed of all the learning of his age, each was essentially a teacher as well a singer, and each was noted for the extent and excellence of his prose writings. Mr. Oscar Browning, in his article on Dante in the Encyclo- peedia Britannica, intimates that Milton has had his day, and that the men whose names we have joined with his, are the poets of the present and the future. It may be so ; and with Goethe Societies here, and Dante Societies there, it may go near to be thought so. Yet we cannot consign Milton to neglect with so light a heart as Mr. Browning does. " When Goethe 's read and Dante understood," to parody Byron, " we can't help putting in his claim for praise." His theological system was, in his great poem at all events, as unsatisfying as Dante's ; and the Florentine never sinned so grievously as the Londoner does in the third book of Paradise Lost. Yet Milton might almost seem to have indited some of that poor staff as a foil to the coming glories of his immortal fourth book, a book so full of poetry, of the superbest kind, that for its match we look in vain in any similar number of consecutive lines in any other poet. Those who choose may compare our countryman with Dante and with Goethe, as a man and as a patriot : it is merely as a poet, that we are, here and now, urging his claims to rank at least on a level with Dante and Goethe, amongst " the dead but sceptred sovereigns who rule Our spirits from their urns."
Previous page
