CANTO VIII.

ed with his movements), and finding he was in Lunigiana at the Marquis Malaspina's (1), he wrote a letter to the Marquis himself; inclosing the seven Cantos which he intreated that eminent nobleman to present to his mighty guest, and to use all his interest with him that a work should be continued whose splendid exordium promised something of such super-human glory; although none but the Author could foresee what. Frescobaldi's preferring to address the feudal prince, rather than the poet, is to be accounted for, either from a consciousness of the bad grace which the request of a Florentine deserved to have in Dante's eyes, or from a belief that it would really require the warmest intercession and actual presence of an illustrious friend, (as Malaspina proved himself to Dante) to engage a man, who had begun a poem in youth and prosperity, to take it up again after a long lapse of time, when he was fallen into grief and mendicity, exasperated by numberless wrongs and insults, himself driven from his home and family, and these in dependance on his bitterest enemies, and when he was persecuted, in fine, by all the accumulated cares public and private that can conspire to poison the fountains of poetry to fester the heart and deaden the imagination. In this latter opinion Frescobaldi would have been partly

(1) Ed avendo investigato, e trovato che Dante era in Lunigiana col Marchese M. de' Malaspini, pensò di non mandargli a Dante, ma al Marchese. Boccaccio, Comento, ut supra.

CANTO VI.

right, for it is said to have been with much difficulty that the Marquis could induce Dante to resume his poetical occupation; although he saw his long-lost Cantos with melancholy pleasure; adding, that he verily thought they had been stolen as well as all the rest of his writings and effects, when his house was put to sack, and that so he had quite relinquished every concern about them (1).' At last the spark was struck : and, with a flush of prophetic enthusiasm, the bard exclaimed Yes they have restored me my long-meditated work; and it shall be to my imperishable honor (2). It was not without considerable effort that he succeded in recalling the train of his ideas and kindling up anew the lofty fancy which had been so many years smothered; and then the Faithful, I follow in my song' (lo dico seguitando) of the text came in quite naturally, and the more so from no other similar formulary occurring any where else throughout the poem:

(1) Veggendo il quaderno Dante se ne maravigliò, ch'era bene 5 anni che lasciato l'aveva; ma essendone confortato forte dal Marchese, ripigliò i Canti, ec. (Bib. Ricc. M. S. ut supra)... Dante rispose, Io estimava veramente che questi, con altre mie cose e scritture assai, fossero, nel tempo che rubata mi fu la casa, perduti, e però del tutto n' avea l'animo e il pensiero levato; ma poichè a Dio è piaciuto, che perduti non sieno, e hammegli rimandati iunanzi, io adopererò ciò, ec. Boccaccio, Comento, ut supra.

(2) Redditus est mihi maximus labor cum honore perpetuo. Benvenuti Im. ap. Mur. Antiq. Ital. Vol. 1. p. 1042. The expressiou maximus, when coupled with the annunciation in the Vita Nuova ( Hell, Comment, Canto 11. p. 114), is surely enough to make us decide that the Divine Comedy was begun at least prior to the publication of

SANTO VIII.

although such words taken by themselves alone, would not (as I have avowed) prove any thing (1). Frescobaldi, ere forwarding the Cantos to Lunigiana, kept a copy of them; in which copy the lines. about Ciacco (in Canto vi.), as well as probably various others, were must have been wanting. Boccaccio wonders he never saw any such defective copy. But in the first place, he does not say he ever asked his authorities, Andrea and Perrini, to show it to him; and indeed seems to have amused himself in his old age with recounting facts as he received them, and allowing full scope to his own reveries, without taking the pains of nicely sifting even matters far less insignificant than this. With regard to this 'he did enough, in a comment composed for a Florentine audience, when he recounted his story, and indicated the difficulties it presented, and referred his hearers for further explanation to three of their own citizens, Frescobaldi, Andrea, and Perrini; who, as well as Dante's wife, were all probably alive and resident in Florence: an observation that also applies, at least in part, to the writer of the Riccardi M. S. In the second place, there are many ways of accounting for the total disappearance of the imperfect Cantos. Fres

the Vita Nuova - that is, prior to his twenty-sixth year, much more prior to his exile. Nothing but what had been meditated for a long period could have been called maximus labor. Benvenuti adds sed non sine maguo labore resumpsit altam phantasiam. Id. Id.

(1) Onde Dante, confortato dal Marchese, ripigliò il Capitolo nel modo scritto disopra. Bib. Ricc. M. S. ut supra.

CANTO VIII.

cobaldi might have torn them up as worse than useless, when he received from Malaspina that perfect copy, which he had requested might be sent him on the poem's being terminated; or he might have corrected the imperfect Cantos, according to the perfect (1). But there is no setting aside so circumstantial a recital as is given. It is then entitled to a place among other antiquarian trifles; but why its authenticity should ever have been keenly disputed can be well accounted for only from the propensity, which some have, to swell motes into beams. To the Marquis Malaspina, as we are told, the Canticle of Purgatory was dedicated; but the Purgatory must have been written, at earliest, after the Author had left Lunigiana (2): the Canticle Hell is said to have been dedicated to Uguccione della Faggiola, who was Podestà of Arezzo when Dante escaped thither from Rome (3); so that this compliment also dates subsequently (by at least 4 years) to Dante's final departure from the person he compliments. Wherefore, when we find the Paradise

(1) Compiuto che fosse, pregò che adoperasse ch'egli l'avesse. Bib. Ricc. M. S. ut supra. Indeed the disappearance of those seven Cantos is no stranger, than that of all of Dante's autographical writings. Of these scarcely any are extant: whereas of Petrarch's and of Boccaccio's there are several. The present Marquis Malaspina has a multitude of ancient documents in his archives. His collection if accurately examined (which would be a laborious undertaking) might, perhaps, furnish some specimens of the hand-writing of Dante.

(2) He did so to go to Verona. Hell, Comment, Canto 1. p. 45.— Pelli, Mem. ec. p. 100.

(3) In 1302. He soon sought Pistoja. Hell, Comment, Canto vi. p. 366.

CANTO V111.

dedicated to Can, after the poet had abandoned Verona for ever (1): and when we learn that the entire Divine Comedy was dedicated to Frederick III of Sicily (2); a sovereign to whom its Author was once ambassador, but whom, during his exile, he must only for a very short time have visited, if he did so at all: ...-- such considerations imply, that our poet never dedicated a part of his great poem to any one to whom he left the power of repaying his homage by hospitality or any other, vulgar reward. Indeed as to Faggiola and Can, the thing is yet more striking: for his dedications to them were made, not only after he had left them, but after he had been obliged to leave them by

(1) Concerning the close of the Divine Comedy, there is some fable. One of Dante's sons imagined his father's ghost appeared to him, and showed him the secret drawer in which the last thirteen Cantos of Paradise were to be found. This might have been a sick fancy of the young man; or at worst an invention of filial devotion. It however clearly proves, that the Cantos in question were posthumously published. The composition of Paradise then occupied the last years of Dante, and these he past in Ravenna. In Ravenna therefore he wrote the dedication of Paradise. Indeed as the poem (at least the whole of it) was not sent to Can before Dante's death, it is most probable Dante had never sent him the dedication, though composed and ready to be sent; and this suggestion of mine is much strengthened by the fact of the dedication being without a date, though in the form of a letter; while all the other letters which we have of Dante are scrupulously dated.

(2) This is the way to take all discordance from Boccaccio's words; without blaming him, as Pelli does (Mem. ec. p. 144). Boccaccio says (Vita di Dante p. 259), Paradise was dedicated to Frederick; and the whole Divine Comedy, to Can. Either Boccaccio wrote one thing for another, in the hurry of composition; or his copiers, in copying. He must have known Paradise was dedicated to Can; for he had seen the dedication, and translated it, verbatim. Hell, Comment, Canto 1. p. 63.