DANTE'S " DIVINA COMMEDIA."•

Ix is with surprise that we read in Father Bowden's preface to the excellent translation of Dr. Hettinger's essay on " the scope and value" of Dante's work, that the volume he edits is the first attempt by an English Catholic to explain, as a Catholic can beet do, the profounder meanings and larger import of this vision of humanity. Of Dante, Dr. Hettinger well says :—" He anticipated the most pregnant development of Catholic doctrine, mastered its subtlest distinctions, and treated its hardest problems with almost faultless accuracy. Were all the libraries in the world destroyed and the Holy Scriptures with them, the whole Catholic system of doctrine and morals might be almost reconstructed out of the Divina Contmedia." Cardinal Manning, in a letter prefixed to this essay by the distinguished German theologian, writes that the poem unites "dogma and devotion clothed in conceptions of intensity and beauty which have never been surpassed or equalled ;" he regrets that it has been left to non-Catholic hands to honour the name of " the greatest of poets, who, by every title of genius, and by the intensity of his whole heart and soul, is the master-poet of the Catholic faith." Doubtless the Car- dinal judges rightly when he suggests that this neglect is because of " certain burning words against the human and secular scandals in the medimval world." These words are -satisfactory, after the somewhat cold andinadequatepreface of the editor, who in half-hearted fashion apologises for Dante as a mere Ghibelline who " eagerly adopted a theory of politics which both harmonised with his wounded feelings and served as a vehicle for their expression." Father Bowden assures us that, "in fact and theory, Dante was equally at fault" when he writes vehement words of righteous indignation against greed and tyranny in the highest and most sacred places, whether of the Church or the Empire. He ventures to be certain that Dante has "assailed with calumnies some of the Church's holiest rulers, and has met with singular lenity in return." We can make allowance for official optimism, but we protest against the remark that " to his faith Dante owed his extraordinary graphic power, which no learning or natural genius could have supplied." Why, then, are there not as many Dantes as there are canonised saints P Father Bowden is unnecessarily jealous for the ecclesiastical monopoly of teaching power when he writes :—" Doubtless -Dante, wherever he had lived, would have been a poet of Nature; but to suppose that he opened men's eyes anew to the visible • 1. Dantes Divine Commedia Saps and Value. From the German of Franz Hettinger, D.D. Edited by H. 5. Bowden. London: Burns and Oates. Y. Th. Diroma Conamedia of Dante Aliehieri. Translated by Frederick K. H. Ha:01foot, M.A. London : Regan Pant, Trench, and Co.

world or to its higher teaching, is a mistake." These criticisms are suggestive of the narrowing effects of controversies which have rent Christendom since Dante's era. We refer Father Bowden to Dr. Hettinger, who says that Dante's-

"Strictures are not aimed at the unity of the Church or the divine character of the Papacy, but at what he deemed abuses. Such ntteranoes have always been allowed by the Church, and have often come from her devoted servants ; as, for instance, SS. Peter Damian, Bernard, Bonaventnre, and Catherine of Siena. Dante has ever been honoured in the Catholic Church by writers of all degrees, from simple monks who read and expounded him, to Popes themselves, and from S. Catherine of Siena to Boccaccio and Tirabosold. Visconti, Arch. bishop of Milan, founded an association for editing his works, and Serravalle, Bishop of Fermo, translated the Comm/die into Latin. In Florence, Orvieto, Pisa, Bologna, Venice, and Piacenza, public lectures on the poet were given in church. And in 1857 Pius IX. himself placed a wreath on the tomb of Dante at Ravenna."

But it is not easy even by "faint praise" to check the rising tide of veneration for the great poet who is, more especially of late, giving voice to a half-understood desire for the ideal federa- tion of nations and for cosmopolitan unity. The modern cult of Dante, which seemed dead a hundred years ago, is hardly for the vigour of his style or the truth of his painting, whether of figure or landscape, unequalled as they are. He is the prophet of that splendid conception of civil government which he called the Empire, and of which the rough framework was broken np in the century of his birth, to his indignant and far-seeing grief. As Dr. Hettinger remarks, " Amid the turbid stream of human passions, the ideals of the great Emperors and Popes had been sorely disfigured;" and who can wonder that Dante should witness with stern anger the impulse given by Rome in her French alliance to the creation of separate nationalities ? We do not pretend that Dante's conception of a just and universal government could be ever adequately fulfilled ; but it is in harmony with very advanced modern ideas, and viewed in the light of European history, we cannot but see that if Dante's vision of a supreme civil power, guided but not coerced by a supreme teacher, had been possible of realisation, the devastating quarrels of nations and sects might have been moderated, and the Christian religion would not have been made for local purposes a mere bit in the mouth of the people. The thought which governed Dante's politics slumbered for five centuries, but international adhesion is once again demanded for it by far-sighted men even of the most Radical type, all un- conscious that the chief Christian poet, the medimval patrician, is their spokesman. Dr. Hettinger's essay is of value in pointing out the vast scope of Dante's philosophy, and the pro- found knowledge of humanity which must bring his burning words to the hearts of men at epochs of reconstruction such as oars. It is not, therefore, strange that the European family is awakening to his teaching, astonished to find in it more than beauty of poetry and force of style, and, to mention a detail, marvelling that the Tuscan of the thirteenth century, before the Renaissance, had assimilated that Indian mysticism which seems to us a new thing among Western Europeans.

The unequalled force and beauty of its poetry kept the Divina OUntinedia alive through epochs of paganism and the confusion of battling sects, through decay of faith and shipwreck of the best-anchored political systems ; but Dr. Hettinger does not dwell on qualities which even Voltaire could not altogether deny ; he usefully reminds us that the threefold city of Dante's vision is real now as when he wrote of it, for it is as long-lived as humanity, and as wide as man's farthest thought. It ex- presses the terror of condemnation, the craving for expiation, the fruition of that desire which is rather felt than under- stood, but which is the motor-power of the world, and to satisfy which is the aim of all progress. We hope that Dr. Hettinger's essay may be widely read, for it will help superficial readers to get further than the Inferno in their study of Dante. Extraordinary as are its vivid paintings, and the force of its words, which thrust home as no other uninspired words do, it is but a misleading fragment if taken alone. For instance, by neglect of the Purgatory and the Paradise the poet of divinest love became chiefly notable for hatred. Ill-doers, shown in their necessary place wilfully chosen by their own act, are half-pitied as victims of Ghibelline prejudice. The realism of the terrible picture of bell prevents thoughtless readers from seeing that hell is primarily a state in which are men who may yet be present with us, but who are "dead in trespasses and sins," as was Branco d'Oria. The number and terror and foulness of the tortures shock easy- going folks who have never known remorse or felt the degrada-

tion of sin as the great Scriptural writers felt it, and whose horror of it is re-echoed by Dante ; but it is notable that in the Inferno none complain of their punishment, each knowing that he has found his allotted place in the great harmony of God's law. The student who climbs with Dante the mount of puri- fication will find in the poet a vigour of pity and of joy greater than his sorrowful condemnation of men, whether Guelf or Ghibelline, Emperor or Pope, by justice doomed. Let us only wonder at his stern courage of rebuke when rebuke was reckoned well-nigh blasphemy ; while, as Dr. Hettinger writes, " Love was the key-note of his life," and his anger was but " love irate." The current portraits of Dante have probably emphasised for those who have only read the Inferno the current idea of him. The engraving in this volume is taken from the Giotto fresco in the Bargello Palace ; but even this is seared and lined more than is the original, injured as that has been by restoration. What must Dante's face have been but like Stephen's, " as that of an angel," as he passed through the prismatic light of Purgatory to the pure white splendour of Heaven ! What tenderness and humble thankfulness must have brightened it as he stood, contrite but hopeful, before Beatrice in the terrestrial paradise ! Let us endeavour to think of him as, "pure and made apt for mounting to the stars," he contemplated the living rose of the redeemed,-

" Who then

From Human to Divine had passed, from time Unto eternity, and out of Florence, To justice and to troth."

No doubt, to our shame be it said, the ordinary students of Dante find the conception of the Inferno better within their reach than the ascent of Purgatory and the mystic contempla- tion of Heaven. The chief value of Dr. Hettinger's work is in the assistance which his knowledge of scientific theology, of Christian philosophy and mysticism, renders to our modern ignorance of the high themes familiar in Dante's time. The distinguished and most orthodox Professor treats his theme with a breadth and a fearless application of modern thought which perhaps only a champion of Catholic theology could provide us, for he can afford to brash aside the partisan and sectarian glosses of men who sheltered their spites under the name of the great Master. Dr. Hettinger brings the vision within ken of common eyes ; and pointing out the deep humanity of its main features, enables the most modern of politicians, thinkers of the newest schools, and Christians even of the Salvation Army, to bow before the universal genius in whose terse lines are found the germs of all that men struggle for if they be of " good will." Dante should help to illustrate the scholastics, to whom many are looking now for help in the solu- tion of great problems ; he can show the true aim and right boundaries of that mysticism after which men are everywhere groping, whether in Eastern antiquity or in their own inner being. In a review necessarily short as is this, we cannot give long quotations, but as an example of Dr. Hettinger's sugges- tiveness, we commend to readers interested in Indian thought his note on the lines that end the Divina Cammedia

"Here vigour failed the towering phantasy ;

Bat yet the will rolled onward like a wheel In even motion by the love impelled, That moves the eon in Heaven and all the stars."

"The simile of the wheel has a deep significance. As a wheel in turning touches the ground at every point in its circumference, so now in the poet the harmony is complete between desire and possession, mind and heart, soul and body."

Dr. Hettinger also lays due stress on the solidarity of the medimval scholasticism and mysticism when a great soul, such as Dante's, is their exponent; and though the main writings of Plato were probably unknown to him, as to his contem- poraries, he is of instinct Platonist in some conceptions, though Aristotle is his avowed master. Bat perhaps the best chapter of the essay is that which points out the noble- ness of Dante's idea of civil government, as expressed in his De Monarchia ; and while justifying freely Dante's indignant remonstrances against certain occupants of Peter's chair, Dr. Hettinger reduces what he calls his hero's " error " to the excessive admiration for the Roman Empire of Trojan and Justinian which he, without due respect for historical change, believed to give its best title to that of Charlemagne and his successors. Dante was no doubt over-hopeful about the realisa- tion of his idea in the person of the German Emperor, Henry VII.; but the idea survives, and though the name of Dante be forgotten, it is even now active in European forecasts. Yet politics are but one of the interests in this marvellous song of life. As Dr. Hettinger says

"Everything finds with Dante its fitting place and significance. Nothing is excluded or disparaged to serve a higher end. The material world points to the spiritual ; history to its instructive development ; the ancient heritage to the Christian revelation ; the fatherland to the Church. And the secret of this marvellone harmony is that the poet sees all things in God, the one source of unity,' where all time and place are present. "

In an excellent comparison of Dante's summa of man's life with Goethe's Faust, Dr. Hettinger remarks

" Wreck and diseolation of body and soul alike are, with Faust, the only end of this life. Dante, on the other hand, sees one eternal purpose traced and developed in all things, and man through the Redeemer winning his way to God. Nor can the fragmentary form of Faust compare with the organised completeness of Dante's poem. We have said enough, perhaps, to send some of our readers un- acquainted with the Diving Conamsdia to learn how to study it in the pages of Dr. Hettinger. We hardly think Father Bowden need repeat his apologies, should a second edition be called for ; but whatever his private opinion of Dante's orthodoxy, we have to thank him for a very good translation of the German essay, which is rendered in good English, and must have been a diffi- cult performance, considering the precision necessary in trans- lating scholastic terms.

The translation which we have received at the same time with the above essay might be reckoned superfluous except as one more testimony to the homage paid by modern Europe to the chief and father of its poetry. If Mr. Hazelfoot has failed in adequate dignity of language, and added obscurity to the obscurities of the text, he has failed in good company. The cult of Dante is an overmastering one, and we do not wonder that Mr. Hazelfoot, when he had learnt by heart the immortal cantichs, wished to give them the closest translation. To those who love Dante the best of his English translators, Cary, is to him as Dryden to Chaucer, or as Pope's tale of Troy to the Iliad. For mere study of the master as he concentrated and uttered the learning and faith of the world, the politics and temper of his Italy, the simplest and most direct prose is beet. To know him as the transcendent interpreter of human emotion, gifted as never other man was with vision which pierces through the seen to the unseen, riding the very crest of the great Christian wave, and perforce rhythmic by the passion of his sincere utterance, requires not only an education of which perhaps the least part is knowledge of the language in which he wrote, but a " counsellor heart" to be moved by what wrought on him. Mr. Hazelfoot has served Dante for twenty-sir years ; yet a certain triviality in his notes, a ludicrous line in some of the noblest passages, suggest that, while looking after due rendering of mint and cummin, the translator has forgotten the weightier matters of the law. In his preface, speaking of a brother-translator, Mr. Hazelfoot says :—" He is at one time tempted to sacrifice the sense to the rhyme, and another the rhyme to the sense. I consider the latter of these faults by far the worse !" As well might we say of Cologne Cathedral that the carving of its capitals is of more importance to man than the divine idea of which it is the representative, and the Christian cosmos which it embodies. We do not deny to Mr. Hazelfoot some fortunate stanzas. He begins passably the magnificent invocation of the blessed Virgin by St. Bernard till, with in- tolerable bathos, he renders the third tension of the 33rd canto

From Love, rekindled in thy womb, was drawn The warmth which in eternal peace, makes sprout The shoots and buds which so this flower adorn."

We do not profess to have studied all Mr. Hazelfoot's per- formance, but taking one or two test passages, we find in the episode of Francesca da Rimini the well-known line,—

" Farb come colui, the piange e dice,"

contorted into,—

" I'll do as one who speaks though tears down-shower." No doubt that harsh and broken phrases, grating lines, and rough words are used by Dante to strengthen our impression of discord and terror when he leads na among the deformed and ruined souls in hell ; but never to secure a rhyme did the great artist break the music of his verse, nor could he have recognised the hymn to Christ in this translation as worthy of the terrestrial paradise :- " Bleat art thou, Gryphon, since thou hest not thinned With thy beak this wood pleasant to the taste ;

Since the appetite by this perverted sinned."

Still, Mr. Hazelfoot is one of the thirty and odd English trans- lators since the beginning of this century who have helped to remove the stigma of indifference to Dante which lies so heavily

on the pre-revolutionary epoch of. Europe. Which of us have not read the praise of him by Carlyle and Macaulay, by Dean Church, and, perhaps noblest appreciation of any, by Mr.

Lowell P