CANTO 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 biographer 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 professedly 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 reputation than Pelli, and for even frequently dissenting from these latter, without being always under the CANTO 1. necessity of digressing much to justify that preference, or that dissent. That my preceding calculation 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 6, he his sixth he his eighth he his ninth 1269 7, she her first, 70, she her fourth, 3, she her seventh, 8, she her twelfth, 5, 1298 9, 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 September the fourteenth, 1321. 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 CANTO II. power, and therefore lavish on it the epithets of divine and immortal, although they are not ignorant that these cannot be strictly merited by anything terrestrial; and, in fine, that she was canonized, if not by a general Council of her Church, at least by one of its most learned theological doctors. I am conscious of being slow, perhaps tiresome: but I have at present lingered with the less scruple, both on account of my desire to give a complete idea of the heroine from her first appearance, and because we shall not see her again for more than half the poem. How can I close better a note spun out to almost an essay than by a hope that the tender, pious poet had his prayer realized; and that, on departure from this state of existence, his soul was permitted to ascend and rejoin its lady, the 'sacred Beatrice living in the glorious contemplation of the Being who is blessed throughout eternity? (1).' I have said Beatrice is to be received as the personification of supreme Philosophy; and it is in that character that Virgil styles her 'queen of the highest virtue.' The whole address much resembles that of Boetius on a similar occasion-0 omnium magistra virtutum! supero cardine delapsa venisti? Nihilne te ipsa loci facies movet? (2). (1) Vita Nuova. Firenze 1723. (2) De Consol. 1. 1. cap. 3—4. N. LXXVIII. CANTO II. It appears to have been the author's fixed intent to include in these two prefatory Canti some reference to each department of the sciences that are to be more familiarly introduced on various occasions. Thus he here prepares his reader by an indication of his astronomical system, which was the one then received by all learned men, who by no treatises of theirs could have rendered its knowledge half so popular, as this widely diffused poem did; wherein there are scattered so many references to that branch of erudition, that the audience (if they had taken the pains to become masters of the two first Canticles) must have attained an entire acquaintance with it, even long previous to their arrival at its recapitulated and more detailed exemplification in the third Canticle or Paradise. A few words are enough at present: the nine heavens of Ptolemy are followed with the addition of a tenth, a moveless infinite one beyond the others, and inwrapping them and all things, according to the Christian belief. They therefore are in this order: that moveless Empyrean, within which rolls the prime mover, within it the orbit of the fixed stars, then, one within the other, the seven planets, of which the Moon is the inmost and consequently describes the narrowest circle. These are celestial: but within or, in other words, beneath the moon lie all terrene 1 |