but that is false -ma ciò è falso; for, considering that Dante fell in love with her towards the close of his ninth year, it follows that it was about April 1274, he being born in May 1265; and the same Dante telling us that Beatrice had entered her ninth year a little before then, who does not clearly see that she must have been born in the said month of April 1265, and that in June 1290 she must have fully completed twenty-six years of age (1)?' But, far from seeing clearly, I ask who can understand any thing of all this? In the text, she died in her twenty-sixth year; in the note, after having fully completed twenty-six years of age, ergo when she was in her twenty-seventh year. First, she is nearly a year younger than Danentering her ninth when he was closing his ninth year; secondly, as a month older than him being born in April and he in May of the self-same year 1265; thirdly, as a year older than him- having fully completed twenty-six years when he was only entering them. The same identical page therefore represents him, and with the same tone of decision, as her senior by a year, as her junior by a month, and as her junior by a whole twelvemonth. Again, she is said to have entered her ninth year a little before April

te

(1) .... aveva 26 anni compiti. Mem. per la vita di Dante. p. 65.

CANTO F

1274, when she would, on the contrary, have been on the point of closing it, were the other assertion not incorrect of her having been born in May 1265. But let that pass and turn to the conclusion which undertakes to rectify Boccaccio― this latter saying that when Beatrice died in June 1290 she was in her twenty-fourth year, and Pelli that she was twenty-six years old. Dante was truly born in May 1265; so that Beatrice who was about a year younger (in Dante's words she was entering her ninth when he was closing his ninth year) must have been born in or about May the first 1266; but probably on the first itself, from the circumstance of the ball which, I before remarked (1), her father gave on that day, and which being a usual birth-day commemoration in distinguished families, was more likely to be given on the anniversary of her birth than on any other day within the week or fortnight, and within the week or fortnight, either immediately before or after the first of May, she must have been born, according to that phrase of Dante's. Then from May 1266 to May 1267 she was still in her first year; therefore during the first four months of 1290 she was still in her twenty-fourth. She entered her twenty-fifth however in or about May the first, so that on the ninth of the following month she certainly had outlived her twenty-fourth by

(1) p. 95.

132

COMMENT

GANTO 11.

some days or weeks. Boccaccio then by saying she died in her twenty-fourth is not mathematically precise, but makes her a week or two younger than the truth; but the impugner, who accuses him of speaking false, makes her a couple of years too old by asserting she had then completed twenty-six years of age. The slightest correction of the press, and Boccaccio's date is geometrically exact: but, to correct the other's laboured incongruities the entire passage must be expunged. Yet I do not enter into these details, either to blame Pelli, or from any weight that I attach to the nice ascertainment of the dying lady's age; but I select his book to exemplify the inaccuracy, not to say slovenliness, of writers on Dante as to dates, exactly because I think Pelli a very satisfactory biogra pher in several other respects, and because he has obtained the reputation of being very accurate; and I trouble my readers with this digression, in order to merit their confidence for the future. For, if I show that such a man as Pelli who profess edly undertakes to give a long, minute, chronological memoir on the life of Dante, is quite inexact on the very point on which he had chosen to display himself at issue with Boccaccio, I may reasonably hope, that on various future occasions I shall have credit for prefering Boccaccio to many modern critics and commentators of less reputa tion than Pelli, and for even frequently dissenting from these latter, without being always under the

culation as to the age of Beatrice is correct will be easily verified by a moment's reflection, or indeed even without it, upon glancing over the biographical table which I shall here set down, not only to answer the present purpose, but also because it may be sometimes a convenient reference hereafter.

Dante born in May 1265 and Beatrice about May 1266, they (from May to May) were in

1270

6,

7, she her first,

70, she her fourth,

1, she her fifth,

But she died when barely entered into her twenty-fifth year June the ninth, 1290; and he died in the fourth month of his fifty-seventh

1321.

September the fourteenth,

I am aware of no further details to be procured with regard to the lady of whom we are treating; many could scarcely be expected about one who died young, and who during her life performed no mighty part on the theatre of the world. Of the generality of females in her situation the entire history is comprised in this, that they were born, solaced or fretted their housholds for a while, and died. To her noble birth and noble marriage she could add, that she inspired the greatest man of her age with the purest love of which our heavenly souls are susceptible while here on earth, such love as an angel would delight to awake; that the decease of her mortal frame was mourned universally by her fellow citizens, and her spirit greeted with an unrivalled compliment by being made to personify God-like wisdom; that her name is identified with one of those few productions destined to survive such long lapses of time, that passing generations sooth their own feelings by attributing its superiority to some superhuman