MR. SYMONDS' INTRODUCTION TO DANTE.* MR. CARLYLE compares a true

book to a great tree, standing from age to age, and every year producing a new crop of leaves, and blossoms, and fruits, which we call essays and commentaries. And Chaucer says :—

" Out of the olde fielder, as men saith, Cometh the newe come yere by yere ; And out of the olde booker, in good faith, Cometh the newe science that mon lere."

And such flowers and fruit, pleasant and nutritious, and with much good seed for future harvests, Mr. Symonds gives his readers from the old tree and the old fields of Dante, in the volume before us. He knows his subject thoroughly, he has a refined and sensi- tive appreciation of literary and poetic art, and he combines his knowledge and taste with an intellectual grasp without which knowledge is apt to be dry and taste mawkish and sentimental. He to whom the writings of Dante are so familiar that he can never be tired of them, he who desires intelligent help in a study which he has already begun, and he to whom the subject is alto- gether new, will alike find pleasant reading in these sketches of Dante's personal history, and that of his times, and of his character and genius as a man and a poet. Mr. Symonds might have taken for his text—as its key-note is that of his whole volume—Dante's Sonnet on Beauty and Virtue :—

" To me, upon the mountain-top of Thought, Two ladies came, and talked to mo of love. One had with her courage and courtesy, And honesty and prudence in her train ; The other beauty had, and tender grace, And gentle charms, to give her honour due: And I, by favour of my own sweet lord, Would lay my heart at both those ladies' feet. Beauty and Virtue to my spirit spoke, And questioned me how I might yield one heart To ladies two, in perfect love for each : Then answer gave the fount of gentle speech,— That Beauty might be loved for her delights, And Virtue as the source of lofty deeds."

In the study of beauty as embodied in poetry Dante was trained by the Provencal poets. During a century and a half, says Mr. Symonds,— "The language of Provence continued to be the medium of civilising culture to the South of Europe. Through the singers of Toulouse and Aix and Arles, the spirit of the modern world found vocal utterance. Then, suddenly, amid corruption from within and persecution from without, the literature of Provence perished ; not, however, before the mantle of the troubadours had fallen on a nobler race of poets, upon Piero delle Vigne, upon Guido Cavalcanti, upon Cino da Pistoja, upon Dante, and on Petrarch, all of whom were confessedly and obviously scions of the old Provencal stem, though bearing a more splendid wealth of blossom, and a more enduring fruitage of sustained and solid thought."

The spirit of Chivalry in all its forms was the life of this Pro- vencal poetry. Mr. Symonds, who really enters into and under- stands what chivalry was and is--which many men even of culture do not—gives an interesting account of " the poetry of Chivalrous Love," comparing its ideal enthusiasm with that con- ceived by Plato but otherwise wholly foreign to the classical mind,

* An Introduction to the Study of Dante. By John Addington Symonds, MA., late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. 1872.

and showing how profoundly it influenced the character and fife- of Dante in his pure love for Beatrice. Only we cannot agree with Mr. Symonds that this love of chivalry—the love which Dante said withdrew his thought from all vile things, and turned his soul to God—" never ended in marriage." If it could be con- ceived to exist under the actual relations of Launcelot and Guini- vere, still less could it he in itself incompatible with the marriage bond. And in fact the loves of Awadis and Oriana did end in marriage ; and Amadis, in chivalrous love, as in everything else, was the highest embodiment of the ideal of knighthood. The description in the romance of the love which filled his heart for Oriana in the moment in which he first saw her, when they were still children, so exactly corresponds with that of Dante for Beatrice, as he tells of it in the Vita IVuova, that one might seem to be copied from the other, To understand the other element of Dante's character, and bow he was trained to love " virtue as the source of lofty deeds," we must consider the political history of his country and of his own times, with a masterly sketch of which Mr. Symonds begins his book :—

" The essential characteristic in Italian History is Diversity, diversity of race and language, diversity of political interests, of internal develop- ment, of traditional customs. It is to this diversity that we can trace the strength as well as the weakness of the Italians. There is no modern nation which, on the whole, has produced so much as the Italians in Science, Literature, and Art. This pre- eminence they owe to the variety of conditions offered by their several and disjoined States, which has proved not only favourable to the growth of individual character, but has also served to stimulate by generous emulation, to educate by mutual comparison, and to intensify by long- continued rivalry. No nation, on the other hand, has hitherto so com- pletely failed to attain constitutional stability or historical unity, owing to deep-seated differences and divisions in its very elements. These diversities, which have stimulated spiritual liberty, have been a fatal source of national instability. If from one point of view it is impossible to understand the greatness of the achievements of the Italian intellect without regarding Italy as a whole, from another point of view it is im- possible to comprehend the history of the Italians, to appreciate the conditions under which their greatest men have had to work, without taking note of the complete disintegration of the race."

This failure of medieval Italy to attain that national unity which would have bound together its contending elements of diversity into an harmonious constitutional whole Mr. Symonds traces to the imperfect conquest of Italy by the Lombards,—to what they did, and what they failed to do. They never thoroughly subdued and assimilated Italy as the Normans did England ; after they were conquered by the Franks, and the empire of the Franks had passed to the Germans, the monarch who should have been, and still claimed to be, the head and representative. of the State, remained a mere foreign and external anti-national power. This gave opportunity and occasion for the growth of an antagonistic evil, the temporal power of the Papacy. If there had been a suc- cession of national sovereigns, upholding the supreme authority of the State within itself, the Church would have kept within its proper limits and in the exercise of its proper functions of awakening and educating the spiritual life of the nation ; but when the State was represented by a foreign power, often, no doubt, asserting important principles against the pretensions of the Papacy, yet being in relation to Italy anti-national and the supporter of oligarchy and despotism, the Church, while contending for national and popular rights against such despotic preten- sions, unhappily claimed for itself a temporal power which continually led it to imitate the worst vices of its rivals, and even to call in French aid against the hated Germans. Aud then each fresh stage of national growth gave opportunity for some new manifestation of this primal curse. As the Cities rose to that glorious independence of which the history cau never die, the warfare of Popes and Emperors, Guelfs and Ghibellines, was reproduced in the contests of the cities with each other, and of the citizens among themselves and with their rulers, whether lawful or usurping, and at last in the basest forms of town factions and family feuds. Dis- cord and dismemberment within, fostered by foreign interference and control, raged more and more, and were all in full activity throughout Italy when Dante began his career. Florence, Dante's native city, was no exception. The Florentine families of the Douati and the Cerchi being at feud, adopted respectively the sides of the Neri and Bianchi, two families of Pistoja, who were engaged in internecine warfare. All Florence joined in the struggle, and the Guelf city became divided into pure Guelfs and lukewarm Ghibellines. Dante was oue of the Priors who formed the Executive Government, and with his colleagues suppressed both factions for the time ; but the Neri appealed to Pope Boni- face, and called Charles of Valois to their aid ; while Dante and three other ambassadors were pleading the cause of the Priors at Rome Charles entered Florence, the Neri drove the Cerchi to their towers, carried fire and sword through a third part of the • city, took the government into their own hands, and condemned, exiled, and confiscated at their pleasure. Dante was among the proscribed, and was thenceforth a banished man. He had lost his way, while still in the vigour of life, in that gloomy, savage wood of civil and political confusion, as well as of personal troubles from within and without, of which the very remembrance was almost as terrible and bitter as death itself. It was in this hard school that Dante's character was formed, and that he learnt to rise above all parties and factions into the highest philosophy, and poetry, and theology, without losing anything of that interest in actual life which filled him at once with savage sternness and passionate tenderness, so that, as Browning says, he "Loved well because he hated,

Hated wickedness that hinders loving."

Of Dante's lofty creed, political, philosophical, and religions, Mr. Symonds gives a striking summary from the treaties De Monarchic ; and then proceeds to notice some of the characteristic features of that still higher embodiment of his faith, the Commedia, one of the greatest, if not, as some think, the greatest of the poems of the world.

Mr. Symonds quotes, with apparent approval, Shelley's defini- tion of an epic poet, which, while it purports to include Homer and Dante, " excludes Virgil, and every other so-called epic poet, except Milton." Shelley's definition would be excellent as a description of one of the characteristics of all poetry of the highest kind, but as a definition of epic poetry it is bad for uncertainty ; and we think Dante showed a more perfect insight into his own work when he called it Commedia, that is, a drama with a prosperous ending. For while the subject-matter of both dramatic and epic poetry is the great battle between the Human Will and Destiny or the Divine Will, the epic relates it historically, and as a completed action of which the end is announced from the beginning,—A8s ai reXsiero gouXii ; while the drama sets the action itself before us, and carries us into the midst of it, so that we take a part in it, and only reach the end when the actors reach it too. And this is what Dante's Divine Comedy does for us. It is a drama, just as the Book of Job or the Book of Revelation is a drama ; and we claim Mr. Symonds as a witness on our aide when he says that it is rather an Apocalypse than an Allegory, even while he recognises and lucidly explains its alle- gorical portions. For the rest, we cannot too strongly praise the chapters in which Mr. Symonds analyses the general scheme of the poem, and then examines in detail a succession of passages of grandeur, beauty, or tenderness. He does not approve the dis- position of those critics—though there are great names among them—who bestow scanty admiration on the Purgatorio and Paradiso in comparison with that they award to the Inferno: - "Dante," he says, "is aware that, leaking the stern tragedy of the Inferno, his Purgatorio must appeal to more delicate sensibilities and a

subtler intelligence He who cannot appreciate its peculiar beauties has a mind incapable of following the poet's plan."

And again of the Paradiso:-

' None but the purest soul could have rejoiced to bathe itself in that illimitable sea of love. We are what we imagine. The 'endless morn of light' which Milton dreamed of, Dante realised. His spirit, 'shaping wings' for the eternal shore, in exile, age, and disappointment, sang these deathless songs of joy, so high, so piercing, that the ear scarcely sustains

their intense melody Those to whom music, light, and love are elemental as the air they breathe, will be at home in Paradise. Discord, hate, and gloom, the passions of the flesh, the tempests of tho heart, the toil of the understanding, are found to all satiety in the Inferno. Between them both, as we have seen, stands Purgatory, humane and mild, the temperate zone of that imagined world. Among all the marvels of Dante's poem, this perhaps remains the greatest—the gradations and the rhythm of its structure,—the line of beauty, plastic in the poet's hand, which curves and is complete in the three cantiche."

For the details of this analysis we must refer the reader to the book itself. So we must for its interesting comparisons and con- trasts of Dante with ]schylus, Shakespeare, Milton, and other great poets, as also with the painteri and sculptors of mediaeval Italy and of the Renaissance. Mr. Symonds points out that the frescoes of the Campo Santo and the Strozzi Chapel are the counterparts of the Divine Commedia, as those of the Sistine Chapel are of the Paradise Lost, while the allegorical pageant of .the Purgatorio is composed in the spirit of those of Memmi or Lorenzetti. Nor is Dante's sympathy with and anticipation of the spirit of his age in painting more noticeable than " the deep intui- tion into the future of Italian sculpture which the Purgatorio con- tains." Mr. Symonds quotes the descriptions of the wall and the pavement of Purgatory with which every reader of Dante is familiar, and points out their marvellous anticipation of the

façade of Orvieto, the reliefs of Rosellini, da Majano, and the other Tuscan sculptors, and the pavement of the Cathedral of Sienna. " It is impossible not to feel that we have here in poetry what the hands of those pure Tuscan sculptors wrought in atone. The spirit of devotion is the same. The union of grace and naiveté is the same. Dante anticipates the development of two centuries."