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CHAPTER IX.

DANTE AND BEATRICE,

CONTINUED.

THROUGH the two parts of the Divina Commedia, (Hell and Purgatory,) Beatrice is merely announced to the reader -she does not appear in person; for what should the sinless and sanctified spirit of Beatrice do in those abodes of eternal anguish and expiatory torment? Her appearance, however, in due time and place, is prepared and shadowed forth in many beautiful allusions for instance, it is she, who descending from the empyreal height, sends Virgil to be the deliverer of Dante in the mysterious forest, and his guide through the abysses of torment.

Io son Beatrice che ti faccia andare;
Vegno di loco ove tornar disio :

Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare.

INFERNO, C. 2.

"I who now bid thee on this errand forth

Am Beatrice; from a place I come

Revisited with joy; love brought me thence,
Who prompts my speech."

CAREY'S TRANS.

And she is indicated, as it were, several times in the course of the poem, in a manner which prepares us for the sublimity with which she is at length introduced, in all the majesty of a superior nature, all the dreamy splendour of an ideal presence, and all the melancholy charm of a beloved and lamented reality. When Dante has left the confines of Purgatory, a wondrous chariot approaches from afar, surrounded by a flight of angelic beings, and veiled in a cloud of flowers ("un nuvola di fiori," is the beautiful ex

pression.)-A female form is at length apparent in the midst of this angelic pomp, seated in the car, and "robed in hues of living flame;" she is veiled: he cannot discern her features, but there moves a hidden virtue from her,

At whose touch

The power of ancient love was strong within him.

He recognises the influence which even in his childish days had smote him—

Che già m' avea trafitto

Prima ch' io fuor della puerizia fosse ;

and his failing heart and quivering frame confess the thrilling presence of his Beatrice

Conosco i segni dell' antica fiamma !

The whole passage is as beautifully wrought as it is feelingly and truly conceived.

Beatrice, no longer the soft, frail and feminine being he had known and loved upon earth, but an admonishing spirit,-rises up in her chariot,

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Dante then puts into her mouth the most severe yet eloquent accusation against himself: while he stands weeping by, bowed down by shame and anguish. She accuses him before the listening angels for his neglected time, his wasted talents, his forgetfulness of her, when she was no longer upon earth to lead him with the light of her "youthful eye," (gli occhi giovinetti.)

Soon as I had changed

My mortal for immortal, then he left me,
And gave himself to others; when from flesh
To spirit I had risen, and increase

Of beauty and virtue circled me,

I was less dear to him and valued less!

PURGATORY, c. 30.-CAREY'S TRANS.

This praise of herself and stern upbraiding of her lover,

would sound harsh from woman's lips, but have a solemnity, and even a sublimity, as uttered by a disembodied and angelic being. When Dante, weeping, falters out a faint ex

cuse

Thy fair looks withdrawn,

Things present with deceitful pleasures turned
My steps aside,—

she answers by reproaching him with his inconstancy to her memory :

Never didst thou spy

In art or nature aught so passing sweet

As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame
Enclosed me, and are scattered now in dust.
If sweetest thing thus failed thee with my death,
What afterward of mortal should thy wish
Have tempted?
PURGATORY, C. 31.

And she rebukes him, for that he could stoop from the memory of her love to be the thrall of a slight girl. This last expression is supposed to allude either to Dante's unfortunate marriage with Gemma Donati,* or to the attachment he formed during his exile for a beautiful Lucchese named Gentucca, the subject of several of his poems. But, notwithstanding all this severity of censure, Dante gazing on his divine monitress, is so rapt by her loveliness, his eyes so eager to recompense themselves for "their ten years' thirst," (Beatrice had been dead ten years) that not being yet freed from the stain of his earthly nature, he is warned not to gaze "too fixedly" on her charms. After a farther probation, Beatrice introduces him into the various spheres which compose the celestial paradise; and thenceforward she certainly assumes the characteristics of an allegorical being. The true distinction seems this, that Dante has not represented Divine Wisdom under the name and form of Beatrice, but the more to exalt his Beatrice, he has clothed her in the attributes of Divine Wisdom.

She at length ascends with him into the Heaven of Heavens, to the source of eternal and uncreated light, without shadow and without bound; and when Dante looks round

*This marriage was one of policy, and negotiated by the friends of Dante and of Gemma Donati: her temper was violent and harsh, and their domestic peace was, probably, not increased by Dante's obstinate regret for his first love.

for her, he finds she has quitted his side, and has taken her place throned among the supreme blessed, "as far above him as the region of thunder is above the centre of the sea:" he gazes up at her in a rapture of love and devotion, and in a sublime apostrophe invokes her still to continue her favour towards him. She looks down upon him from her effulgent height, smiles on him with celestial sweetness, and then fixing her eyes on the eternal fountain of glory, is absorbed in ecstasy. Here we leave her; the poet had touched the limits of permitted thought; the seraph wings of imagination, borne upwards by the inspiration of deep love, could no higher soar, the audacity of genius could dare no farther!

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Dante died at Ravenna in 1321, and was sumptuously interred at the cost of Guido da Polenta, the father of that unfortunate Francesca di Rimini, whose story he has so exquisitely told in the fifth canto of the Inferno. He left several sons and an only daughter, whom he had named Beatrice, in remembrance of his early love: she became a nun at Ravenna.

Now where, in the name of all truth and all feeling, were the heads, or rather the hearts, of those commentators, who could see nothing in the Beatrice thus beautifully pourtrayed, thus tenderly lamented, and thus sublimely commemorated, but a mere allegorical personage, the creation of a poet's fancy? Nothing can come of nothing; and it was no unreal or imaginary being who turned the course of Dante's ardent passions and active spirit, and burning enthusiasm, into one sweeping torrent of love and poetry, and gave to Italy and to the world the Divina Commedia !

CHAPTER X.

CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICAR D.

AFTER Italy, England,-who has ever trod in her footsteps, and at length outstrip her in the race of intellect, -was the next to produce a great and prevailing genius in poetry, a master spirit, whom no change of customs, manners, or language, can render wholly obsolete; and who was destined, like the rest of his tribe, to bow before the influence of woman, to toil in her praise, and soar by her inspiration.

Seven years after the death of Dante, Chaucer was born, and he was twenty-four years younger than Petrarch, whom he met at Padua in 1373; this meeting between the two great poets was memorable in itself, and yet more interesting for having first introduced into the English language that beautiful monument to the virtue of women,the story of Griselda.

Boccaccio had lately sent to his friend the MS. of the Decamerone, of which it is the concluding tale: the tender fancy of Petrarch, refined by a forty years' attachment to a gentle and elegant female, passed over what was vicious and blamable, or only recommended by the wit and the style, and fixed with delight on the tale of Griselda; so beautiful in itself, and so honourable to the sex whom he had poetically deified in the person of one lovely woman. He amused his leisure hours in translating it into Latin, and having finished his version, he placed it in the hands of a citizen of Padua, and desired him to read it aloud. His friend accordingly began; but as he proceeded, the overpowering pathos of the story so affected him, that he was obliged to stop; he began again, but was unable to proceed; the gathering tears blinded him, and choked his

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