SANTO II. In one place, he blames his eyes for ever ceasing to weep before death mai, se non dopo la morte, non dovrebbero le vostre lacrime essere ristate: and in another, as if in compassion of himself, he sings How oft my weeping and my sighs You saw yourselves, O eyes of mine! my Some pilgrims on their way to Rome passing through Florence, (the city where sweet 'Beatrice was born and lived and died' dove nacque e vivette e mori) he was struck with their air of composure in traversing a spot, which, he thought, ought to excite agonizing sensations in every bosom, as well as in his own; and he said to himself: 'if I could but speak to them, I should soon set them weeping; for words have pow. er to make any one weep' se io gli potessi tenere alquanto io pur gli farei piangere, chè io gli direi parole le quali farebber piangere chiunque le intendesse. In short his relatives, perceiving that not even time conquered his grief, engaged him at last to marry; in order to occupy his attention by the cares of domestic life. The experiment succeeded. His wife seems to have been to him a faithful partner. His offspring by her were numerous; and she certainly cherished them with exemplary affection. As to her having been a Xantippe, chasing all domestic peace from Dante's CANTO II. household, nothing of the kind is fairly to be drawn either from Boecaccio or any ancient com. mentator. The tales to her disparagement seem to be mere, groundless, modern reveries; little authentic is known about her, but that little is, we shall find, to her credit. At present I shall only remark, that this matrimonial tie alleviated his sorrow; and hallowed, not removed, his memory of Beatrice. His love for her, having indeed been pure and virtuous, he had always considered it as holy and often described it as an incentive to goodness. So her name became henceforward more than ever dedicated to his various muses; and, whether in prose or poetry, almost every thing he afterwards wrote represents her as the source of all his best knowledge and the object of all his most fervent hopes. But strangely organized must that head be, which can consider her as no more than a mystical creation of the writer himself, after having at tended to the narrative of her birth, life and death thus minuted in a diary more circumstantial than almost any other penned by a lover, either before or since. Many however have called in doubt her real existence; but I persuade myself they had not carefully perused the Vita Nuova. Otherwise I should feel myself in a situation, which never is pleasant, that of being at variance with another about what appears to me a self-evident proposition. And how can I think it to be less? Can those amatory details be applied to a mere CANTO M. fantastic image, without the grossest perversion? What biography of love is to be credited, if this is not? I know of no relation of the kind that carries with it so many internal marks of truth. Were the name of Beatrice unrecorded any where else, her existence and her story are sufficiently made known in this work. This alone, without other reference, (although, if such be sought, there is plenty in Boccaccio and the ancient commentators) is enough to make me consider further argument as quite superfluous. There are points which it is worse than useless to argue; if one believes it is midnight and another that it is noon-day, why discuss their difference? Neither can be convinced, one must have lost his eyesight or his reason or both. I were as decidedly at issue with a person, who could read the Vita nuova and still doubt as to Beatrice's mortality. That book had ended thus: 'I had a vision of my glorious lady, such as she appeared before she left us, --- prima che si partio da noi—and she seemed clad in the same members of the same sanguine complexion and the same tender age, as when I saw her for the first time giovane in simile età a quella in che prima la vidi; but, shortly after, she favoured me with a still more marvellous visitation, and I saw things that made me resolve to write no more of the dear saint, until I should be able to do so in a manner less unworthy of her; and she looking down upon me knows, that I verily study for that purpose CANTO H. without intermission as closely as I cane di venire a ciò io studio quant' io posso: so that, if it but pleaseth the Almighty to spare me my life for some years longer, I hope to say that of her which was never yet said of any female' spero di dire di lei quello, che mai non fu detto d'alcuna. Such is the promise so gloriously redeemed in the present poem; which, even at that early period, was probably begun, viz. in 1291; for this is about the date of the publication of the Vita Nuova : earlier it could not have been finished, since it contains verses written on the anniversary of Beatrice's death; nor much later, without doing too much violence to Boccaccio's testimony, who affirms Dante terminated it towards his twenty-sixth year quasi nel suo ventesimo sesto anno (1). At least, this peremptory annunciation of a great work prevents its being absurd to conjecture that it was already partly in existence, if not upon pa per, at any rate in its author's mind. That his affections were dedicated to a real lady, that that lady was deceased, and that it was his long-cherished wish to immortalize her name, are then facts above controversy: and it is also a fact, easily collected from a little attention to his life and writings, that it was his paramount ambition to render all his productions useful to mankind in general. How were such various objects to be re (1) Bocc. Vita di Dante. p. 254. CANTO IL conciled? I know not if there was another mode than that which he selected and which, as he rightly says, had never been adopted by any one before. It was in truth one of his noblest inventions, this of making his lady a personification of that know. ledge, which, if not quite illimitable, is at least without other superior than the uncreated fountain whence it emanates. Former poets had treated of wars and the founding of empires: had he sung simply of a girl, could all his genius have exalted his compositions to a level with theirs? In taking so circumscribed a flight, would he not have been unjust to his own powers, and conferred less honor even upon her memory? Could he then have benefited society at large, by showering out his treasures of science? Or have called, as we shall, find him do, upon the God of verse to crown him with the laurel, affirming with honest pride that the subject-matter of his song rendered him worthy of it (1)? He had at one time intended to write a comment on his poem; in which case he would himself have explained all this: but pecuniary dif ficulties, and at last death, prevented him. He had in fact scarcely finished the text when he expired. But, in default of his own comment on the Divine Comedy, we have what he probably intend (1) Venir vedrámi al tuo diletto legno, E coronarmi allor di quelle foglie, Parad. 1. |