CANTO VILL.

The Veronese, (though in a much slighter degree) are in a predicament of a similar kind: and it better becomes them to explain away the insults which Dante suffered in their town, than to blazon their own ancestors' ingratitude by representing the visit with which he honored them as long, or the verses which he composed during it as numerous. That at the board of a tyrant whom they misname great, such scurrility should have been directed against the greatest man of that age, is what requireth explanation; and to show that this was not so grossly the case as is usually recorded, is what would really exculpate both Verona and the family of La Scala. The ingenuity of the Marchese Maffei would have been patriotically employed, had it sought, either to liberate Verona at the expense of its boy-despot, by showing that not being a free republic, like Florence, it were not fair to hold the people responsible for his inurbanity; or to controvert the authority of Petrarch (1), and make us disbelieve the tales of the servants at Court receiving orders to gather the bones round the table and fling them under Dante's chair, and of Can's having asked Dante publicly on another occasion, how it came to pass that he was less admired by every one than the court jester or fool (2). Or if

(1) Rer. Mem. 1. 4..

(2) To such ribaldry the Poet certainly replied in the sarcastic tone it merited that if his appetite was greedy in leaving much bones, theirs was greedier in leaving none; and that as to predilection for a

CANTO VIII.

those unworthy tales be too substantiated for controversy, and that Maffei still preferred to be the apologist of that sovereign, it would have been a more effectual plea to have reminded us of his youth, and of how pardonable are levities in the spring of life, when it is exposed to intrigues of flatterers and heart-hardening power; and to have assured the readers (instead of leading them astray by a conscious subversion of chronology) that when Can extolled his buffoon over the aimable gravity of an all-accomplished guest, it was less from congeniality of disposition than festive distraction; that if his coarse jests necessitated the departure of the distinguished stranger, he lost no time in expressing compunction and soliciting his return; and that if in a moment of forgetfulness he spurned an 'Angel visit,' lasting regret almost compensated for the gross error. Throwing aside the many considerations, that are either irrelative, or ill-timed, or both; adding, that wherever the Cantos were written, they could not have been written in Verona, for that their Author did not go there till 1308, and that he had finished the

buffoon, it was natural for people to like those best whom they resembled most. Yet though Dante was not deficient in the wit of a man of the world, it must have cut him to have been obliged to make such use of it; and the conscious dignity of genius suffering alike by the insult and the repartee, he was soon engaged to leave Verona for ever -as soon as Can attained the full sovereignty. Hell, Comment, Canto 1. p. 48.

CANTO VIN.

whole Canticle of Hell before that time (1): I say, rejecting every vain conjecture and coming to plain matter of evidence, we first discern, from comparing dates, that these seven first Cantos, of thirty that were published at latest in 1308, must have been written before the summer of 1307; and then comes the absolute affirmation of half a dozen incontestible witnesses, all of them the contemporaries, and one of them the nephew of Dante, that they were committed to paper previous to his exile. It is the most authentic information we have concerning the composition of any part of the Divine Comedy, (and is indeed curious from being more authentic, than almost any thing else we know about any epic poem whatever) and it leads to the precise dates of Dante's movements during the first five years of his exile. If we add them to those after his coming to Verona (1308 (2)), we have a chronological series surprisingly entire

(1) They who pretend otherwise make many breaches in chronology. I have quoted from the legal documents themselves that his exile was in 1302 (Hell, Comment, Canto vI. p. 363 ): and he was then in his thirty-seventh year (Hell, Comment, Canto 11. p. 133). Yet Bettinelli writes Dante's exile happened in 1300' (il suo esilio avvenuto al 1300. Risorgimento, Cap. 5 ); and Maffei, that it happened in 1301 when he was thirty-five years of age' dopo che fu in esilio il quale seguì nel 1301, quando era in età di 35 anni. Verona Illus. It is hard to give much credit to writers, who, on the very points they profess to elucidate, make such mistakes mistakes, which however trivial in themselves, become of consequence as proofs of inaccuracy; for to have looked into Villani, Macchiavelli, or any of the principal Italian historians would have prevented them.

(2) Hell, Comment, Canto 1. p. 48.

GANTO VII.

from the period of his banishment from Florence up to the day of his death; and which might enable a biographer to narrate at least that portion of his life with much exactness of detail. No reason. able doubt can attach to the literary anecdote I am about to relate; for, at the same time that it contradicts nothing told in any of the elder comments, it is itself most circumstantially given by two of the oldest of them, Boccaccio and the Riccardi M. S. which only vary enough to corroborate each other, by showing (an observation already made by me in speaking of Francesca da Rimini) that they were not derived from identical sources, though their account is identical (1).

Dante was Florentine Ambassador in Rome when the first sentence of banishment was pronounced against him in January, 1302; and immediately · upon learning it, he departed from a city, where it is likely he could not have staid with any safety {since Boniface vi. was yet alive) and retiring to Sienna and thence to Arezzo, was named by the Chiefs of the white Guelphs (as soon as they were exiled, about three months after he had been so himself) one of the twelve counsellors entrusted with the supreme authority; and in this quality he accompanied them in that unsuccessful attempt to re-instate themselves at home in 1304, which, I said formerly, was patronised by the new Pontiff

(1) Hell, Comment, Canto v. p. 300.

CANTO VII.

Benedict XI; and which terminated so unfortu nately, not only for the White Chiefs themselves, but for the whole of the White party (1). After that overthrow, our Poet, wandered into the north of Italy, and took up his residence for at least a short time in Padua ; for there is extant a legal instrument belonging to the Papafava family (2), which bears Dante's signature, as one of the witnesses. The asking of him to witness it was probably intended as a compliment to an illustrious stranger; and his signature, besides its usual mode of designating his family and country, informs us that he was regularly domiciliated there, and even tells in what street his house stood (3). Returning into Tuscany we find him signing a treaty in Mugello in 1307, without specification of month or day (4); but probably in January. From Mugello (where the Whites made a last feeble struggle) he went early in the same year, to the Marquis Malaspina's near Sarzana. Thus full five years had elapsed since his exile, when he found himself with Malaspina. Although this be an instance in which Boc

(1) Hell, Comment, Canto vi. p. 367.

(2) The Marchese Papafava is still the most considerable nobleman of Padua.

(3) Millesimo trecentesimo sexto.... die vigesimo septimo mensis Augusti, Padue in contrata S. Martini in domo...... Domini Papafave; presentibus Dantino Alligerii de Florentia qui nunc stat Padue in contrata S. Laurentii, etc. Pelli, Mem. ec. p. 96.

(4) In Dei nomine Amen 1307. Actum in Choro Ab. S. Gaudentii, presentibus, etc. Dom. Torrigianus, Dante Alleghierii, etc. etc. Pelli, Mem. p. 98.