Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

CANTO I

after having heard him offer to take him through it? Milton considered it to mean the gate of Paradise certainly: for it is hard to believe, that the first English translator of Dante had not this poem uppermost in his memory, when writing

They pass the planets seven and pass the fixed
And the crystalline sphere

[ocr errors]

And now Saint Peter at heaven's wicket seems
To wait them with his keys (1).

(1) Parad. Lost. b. 3.

[blocks in formation]

If the preceding Canto be a general introduction

to the whole poem, this one is a prologue to its first Canticle, Hell; and prologue is the title it bears in some editions (1), which, in this particular, I follow ,as perhaps more methodical. Virgil, after having, in the first Canto, extricated Dante from the allegorical forest and proposed to him an unearthly journey, now finds him shrinking from the emprize as too sublime. Upon this he tells him his journey is sanctioned by Providence; and that it was his own adored and sainted mistress, Beatrice, who descended from heaven to Elysium and said so. On which the pupil, replete with confidence and courage, calls on his master to lead on: and the Canto ends. As to the time, it is clear that a day has been consumed in the first Canto: so that it is now night-fall, April the eighth 1300 (2).

(1) Buonanni. Fiorenza. 1522.

(2) Comment, Hell, Canto 1. p. 24.

CANTO 11.

The opening verses are said to be worthy of Virgil; it may be added they are manifestly borrowed from him,

Nox erat et terras animalia fessa per omnes

Alituum pecudumque genus sopor altus habebat,
Cum pater

Aeneas tristi turbatus pectore bello (2) etc.

The expression 'war' guerra (3) to denote moral difficulty, is much employed by Dante and by his countrymen after him: so Petrarch in his hymn to the Virgin

[blocks in formation]

Mente che non erra is the original; which non erra shows that mente does not here signify generally the mind or intellect, but only that faculty of it which does not err, the memory: which is defined by Locke to be « the power to revive in our minds those ideas which were there before. » Hence it is clear that it cannot err; because when those old ideas are exclusively retraced, there is so far no error; and when we mingle them with new ones, it is some other intellectual power that we exert, although perhaps unconsciously, and not memory. And if we mistake in our estimate of

(1) Hist. Litt. d'Italie vol. 2. p. 32.

(2) Aeneid. 1. vIII. V. 26.

(3) v. 4.

SANTO II.

those ideas, the fault is in our judgment; and not in our memory. One may err from want of memory; but to speak of the fault of one's memory is quite illogical. It is then a very exact definition of memory, to call it that mental power which is faultless. Dante, having once given this precise notion of what he means by mente, mind, continues to use it, without further scruple, as synonimous with memory; as for example, only two lines lower

And thou, inditing mind!

O mente che scrivesti!

He found it probably a more convenient word than memoria: In the same peculiar sense, we ourselves also employ mind; as, time out of mind, or, we call to mind his covenant.

C.

----

Nobility nobilitate -is thus defined in the Monarchia 'By virtue are men ennobled; by their own, or by that of their ancestors. According to the Philosopher, nobility is virtue and ancient heritage: and, Juvenal wrote nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus. Nobility then is twofold, personal and ancestral (1).' Dante aspired to them both for, if he now claims the former for his intellectual endowments, we shall, hereafter, hear him challenging the latter, with the pride of

(1) p. 31.

CANTO 11.

elevated birth and the minuteness of a profound genealogist.

[ocr errors]

In the Original, parente is put for father, with a licence similar to one already noticed (1). It is a grand conception to represent the adventures of Aeneas, the glories of the latin worthies and imperial Rome herself, as the pre-ordained forerunners of Christianity: and no doubt but it is an improvement on the Virgilian exordium

Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem.

[blocks in formation]

To appreciate much of what follows, it is necessary to consider this passage a little, not as detached from the context, but as strictly explanatory of it; and as purposely set down here, to be the head and front of an entire system: those therefore who pass it by cursorily are very likely to be puzzled hereafter, on coming to invectives poured out against the same See, which is at present mentioned with extreme veneration. Such praise and such blame may appear inconsistent to an inattentive reader; whereas they, on the contrary, afford the most luminous proof of our Author's unshakeable consistency. He was a devout believer in Catholicism; and a steady friend of liberty: how narrow

(1) Hell, Comment. Canto 1. p. 38.

« AnteriorContinuar »