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 Cornell University Library 
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 A teacher of Dante, and other studies, in 
 
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 V 
 
A Teacher of Dante 
 
 and other studies in 
 
 Italian Literature 
 
\ VC\ X) !tlr; 
 
A 
 
 TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER STUDIES IN 
 ITALIAN LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 NATHAN HASKELL DOLE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE PILGRIMS," "FAMOUS COMPOSBRS, 
 ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 

 '^^ 
 
 H 
 
 ^.'/x^o^(, 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY 
 MOFFAT, YARD & CO., NEW YORK 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERrSD 
 PUBLISHED MARCH, 1908 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 £> LA Teacher of Dante 3 
 
 ® II. Dante and the Picturesque ... 43 
 
 & III. Lyric Poetry and Petrarca ... 89 
 
 IV. Boccaccio and the Novella . . . 142 
 
 V. The Rise of the Italian Drama . .201 
 
 VL - Goldoni and Italian Comedy . . 243 
 
 VII. Alfieri and Tragedy 299 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024240818 
 
A Teacher of Dante 
 
 and other studies in 
 
 Italian Literature 
 
I 
 
 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 F^ANTE and his master in their course 
 ^~^ through the inverted cone of hell, ever 
 winding to the left, come to the third girone of 
 the seventh circle, where "over all the sandy soil, 
 with a slow falling, rain broad flakes of fire, like 
 snow on windless Alps." Along the banks of 
 a little ruddy stream, the fume of which saves the 
 margin and the water itself from being kindled 
 by the fire, they meet a throng of tormented 
 souls, one of whom stretches out his hand and 
 plucks the younger poet by the hem of his gar- 
 ment, crying: 
 
 "What a marvel!" 
 
 Dante, fixing his eyes on the baked visage, 
 recognises him, and, bending over so as almost 
 to touch his face with his hand, answers with 
 respect in his very words, as Boccaccio expresses 
 it in his commentary, quasi parlando admirative: 
 
 "Are you here, Ser Brunetto ?" 
 
 Dante offers to sit down with him and talk, 
 but Brunetto Latini replies : 
 
 " O son, whoever of this flock stops an instant 
 3 
 
4 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 then lies a hundred years without defence when 
 the fire strikes him." 
 
 So they strode slowly side by side, though 
 Dante, on a higher level of the road, not daring 
 to go equal with him, has to bend his head " like 
 a man who walks reverently." 
 
 Brunetto in the course of their talk prophesies 
 that Dante, if he follow his star, cannot miss the 
 port of glory, and Dante replies : 
 
 " If all my demands were satisfied you would 
 not now be banished from human nature; for 
 in my mind is fixed and now my heart retains 
 the dear, good, paternal image of you in the 
 world, when hour by hour you taught me how 
 man immortalises himself. And in what esteem 
 I hold you it behooves me while I live to show 
 in my tongue." 
 
 The interview ends with the approach of a 
 new smoke rising from the sandy soil and 
 Brunetto Latini thus takes his leave : 
 
 "Men come with whom I must not be. Be 
 my "Tesoro" recommended unto thee, wherein I 
 still live, and more I ask not." 
 
 So little is really known of Dante's life that, 
 as in the case of Chaucer, Shakespeare and 
 scores of other famous men, biographers have 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 5 
 
 boldly amplified obscure hints into categorical 
 statements and then built elaborate super- 
 structures on these semi-imaginary foundations. 
 Dante acquired his learning somewhere, and 
 those beautifully complimentary lines — 
 
 Che in la mente m e ftta ed or m' accuora 
 La cara buona imagine paterna 
 Di voi nel mondo, quando, ad ora ad ora 
 Mi 'nsegnavate come I'uom s'eierna — 
 
 certainly give a plausible basis for the state- 
 ment, that is found in almost all the lives of 
 Dante, that Brunetto Latini was his teacher. 
 In spite of Imbriani, who learnedly argues to the 
 contrary, and in spite of Scartazzini, who de- 
 clares that the theory is now generally discredited, 
 we will assume that such was the fact, but we 
 will not allow ourselves to insinuate that 
 Dante repaid former acts of discipline on the 
 part of his preceptor by dooming him to a rain 
 of fire midway in the pit of the Inferno. We 
 know nothing of Brunetto as an instructor, but 
 the debt that Dante owed to him as a poet is 
 easily demonstrated. In this sense our title is 
 justified. It is also an instructive lesson, for 
 it shows the immensity of the gulf that separates 
 the two. 
 
6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Brunetto Latini, ere he flies across the sandy 
 plain like "those who at Verona run after the 
 green pallio" fleeting "like one who wins and 
 not like one who loses," recommends to Dante 
 his "Tesoro." 
 
 Now who was Brunetto Latini and what was 
 his "Tesoro"? 
 
 The year of Brunetto's birth is not certain. 
 A portrait engraved from an oil painting in 
 Florence gives the date of his birth as 1230; 
 other authorities refer it back ten or even fifteen 
 years. His father was Bonacorsi Latini, who 
 must have died before 1254. 
 
 Villari, the Florentine chronicler, says that he 
 was cominciatore e maestro in digrossare i Ftoren- 
 tini e farli scorti in bene parlare ed in sapere 
 guidare e reggere la nostra repuhhlica secondo 
 la politico; in other words, that he was supreme 
 master in rhetoric and eloquence and taught the 
 Florentines the precepts of good government. 
 Boccaccio calls him a valente uomo, a man of 
 ability, in "several of the liberal arts and in 
 philosophy, though his chief profession was that 
 of a notary" — Burnectus notarius filius quon- 
 dam Bonnacorsi Latini. Such is his aflBdavit 
 on a deed of sale. 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 7 
 
 Boccaccio goes on to say that having made a 
 mistake in a contract drawn up by him he was 
 charged with falsita and, preferring to be 
 called a forger to confessing his error, he left 
 Florence in indignation and left behind him a 
 book which he had composedcalled "II Teso- 
 retto." 
 
 Boccaccio in this charge against Brunetto has 
 been followed by other commentators, but the 
 probability is that it was invented by one of his 
 political opponents, he being a Guelf. Boc-. 
 caccio also states that he went to Paris, was 
 there for a long time and was thought to have 
 died there. Here again Boccaccio erred, for 
 Ricordano Malispini chronicles the fact that 
 when Alfonso of Spain became Emperor the 
 Guelfs of Florence sent ambassadors urging 
 him to take their side in the great quarrel that 
 was agitating their city: "And the ambassador 
 was Ser Brunetto Latini, a man of great judg- 
 ment; but before the mission was accomphshed 
 the Florentines were defeated at Monte Aperti, 
 and King Manfred waxed greatly in power, 
 winning almost all 'Talia, and the might of the 
 Church was greatly diminished." 
 The defeat of the Guelfs took place on the 
 
8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 4th of September, 1260. Brunetto Latini him- 
 self chronicles the fact in the last chapter of the 
 second part of Book I. of his "Livres dou 
 Tresor": 
 
 "This Frederick [II.] reigned about thirty 
 years, until by reason of the grievous persecu- 
 tions which he inflicted upon the Holy Church 
 he was excommunicated by sentence of the 
 Apostolic fathers and finally was deposed 
 from his dignity by sentence of Pope Innocent 
 IV., with the unanimous consent of the General 
 Council. And after his death, as God willed, 
 the empire was long without either king or 
 emperor until Manfred [Mainfroiz], the son of 
 the aforementioned Frederick, though not born 
 in legal marriage, seized the kingdom of Naples 
 and Sicily [le roiaume de Puille et de Secile] 
 contrary to God and contrary to right, since it 
 was all against Holy Church. And therefore he 
 made many wars and divers persecutions against 
 all the Italians who held to Holy Church, espe- 
 cially against the Guelf party of Florence, so 
 that they were driven out of the city and their 
 property was subjected to fire and destruction; 
 and with them was driven out also maistre 
 Brunez Latin; and by reason of this war he 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 9 
 
 went as an exile into France, where he wrote 
 this book for love of his friends." 
 
 In another passage, not found in all manu- 
 scripts, he relates how he went to France to 
 make his living there and found a fellow citizen, 
 also a Guelf, very rich, very polite and very 
 sensible, who did him great honour and proved 
 very useful to him; and as this friend was 
 naturally a good speaker and was very anxious 
 to know what had been said by the ancients 
 regarding rhetoric, Brunetto Latini, who was a 
 careful student of literature and much given to 
 the study of rhetoric, wrote the book and dedi- 
 cated it to his friend. 
 
 Brunetto's stay in Paris could not have been 
 very long, for Manfred was defeated by King 
 Charles on the last day of February, 1265, the 
 Ghibellines left Florence in their turn in the 
 following November, and the Guelfs were defi- 
 nitely reestablished two years later, and in 1269 
 Brunetto Latini was protonotario della curia 
 for King Charles of Sicily. In 1273 he was 
 notary and secretary of councils of the Com- 
 mune of Florence. In 1280 he was one of the 
 signatories in the famous peace between the 
 Guelfs and GhibeUines conducted by Cardinal 
 
10 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Latino. He had other honourable functions, 
 which would seem to do away with Boccaccio's 
 indictment of him as a "forger." 
 
 He died in Florence in 1294 and was buried 
 in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where 
 the inscription reads: Sepulcrum Ser Brunetti 
 Latini et filiorum. Villani says: 
 
 " In the said year 1294 there died in Florence 
 a worthy citizen named Ser Brunetto Latini, 
 who was a great philosopher and was a supreme 
 master [sommo maestro] in rhetoric, both in theory 
 and przctice[tanto in bene sapere dire come in bene 
 dittare\2Lndi he it was who expounded the rhetoric 
 of Cicero and wrote the good and useful book 
 called 'Tesoro' and 'II Tesoretto' and many 
 other works on philosophy and dealing with 
 vices and virtues, and was secretary or speaker 
 of our commune [dittatore del nostra comune]." 
 
 Dante places Brunetto Latini in that part of 
 hell where the sins against nature are punished. 
 Villari says fu mondano uomo, which may or 
 may not be interpreted in a derogatory sense. 
 Brunetto himself in the twenty-first capitolo of 
 his "Tesoretto" gives some colour to an evil 
 suggestion in the word. After relating his 
 conversion he says: 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE ii 
 
 Che sai che siam tenuti 
 Un poco mondanetti. 
 
 But on the same principle of interpretation one 
 might charge him with being guilty of all the 
 sins that he animadverts upon in the same 
 chapter, and this would surely be absurd. It 
 is easier to explain the matter by remembering 
 that although Dante and Brunetto were both 
 Guelfs they seemed to have belonged to 
 rival factions. Moreover, Brunetto himself 
 utters his indignation against those who are 
 guilty of the horrible vice which the flakes of 
 flame forever falling brand but never purify. 
 
 A portrait of Brunetto Latini is to be seen 
 in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. A different 
 one is preserved in the Chapel of the Podesta's 
 palace, while in the cupola of Dante's tomb at 
 Ravenna the four medallions decorating the 
 vault respectively represent Vergil, Can Grande, 
 Guido Cavalcanti and Brunetto Latini. 
 
 Brunetto Latini, as we have seen, recommends 
 his "Tesoro" or Thesaurus to Dante and posterity. 
 It is an open question whether he means "Li 
 Livres dou Tresor," a monumental compilation 
 written in French, but often called "II Gran 
 Tesoro," or his poetical crystallisation of the 
 
12 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 same written in short rhyming Italian couplets. 
 Why did he write "Li Tresors" in French? 
 He himself tells why: 
 
 "And if any ask why this work is written in 
 romance, according to the language of the 
 French, while we are Italian, I will state that 
 it is for two reasons: first, we are in France, 
 and secondly because French is the more 
 agreeable and widely known than many other 
 languages" — or, according to other texts, "is 
 more delightful, more ornate and more com- 
 monly known than other languages."* 
 
 The work is divided into three books. The 
 first, consisting of five parts, in 202 chapters, 
 treats of the origin of the world, and contains 
 a summary of sacred and profane history and 
 dissertations on astronomy, geography and 
 natural history. Some of the animals which 
 he describes in the fifth part would add much 
 to the attractiveness of a circus. Brunetto 
 Latini took not a little of his information from 
 Pliny and the fascinating bestiaries which were 
 
 *Et se aucuns demandoit par quoi cist livres est escrix en romans, 
 sehnc U langage des Francois, puisque nos sames Tialiens, je diroie 
 que ce est? par ij. raisons: I'une, car nos somes en France; et I'autre 
 porce que jrancois est plus delitaubles tengages et plus communs que 
 moult d^autres. 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 13 
 
 so popular .all through the Middle Ages. He 
 gives precious details regarding the habits of 
 sirens, the wonderful powers of salamanders, 
 halcyons, the phoenix and the unicorn. 
 
 The second part treats of virtues and vices 
 and is a sort of abridgement of Aristotle's Ethics, 
 complemented with the teachings of mains autres 
 sages: the apostles, Seneca, St. Bernard, Cicero, 
 Ovid and others. The third part is devoted to 
 an exposition of rhetoric: les enseignemens 
 de hone parleure, and to a brief treatise on the 
 government des villes and des cites. A Latin 
 note, possibly emanating from the copyist and 
 appended to the very end, states that the work 
 was finished die xix. Augusti anno Domini 
 MCCLXXXHI." 
 
 Interesting as is "Li Livres dou Tresor" 
 from an historical, literary and linguistic stand- 
 point, there is nothing in it that throws any 
 light upon the training of Dante. He may 
 very likely have known "Li Tresors," for the 
 compilation immediately became extremely pop- 
 ular, as is proved by the multitudes of manu- 
 scripts, in nearly every dialect of mediaeval 
 French, that have come down to us, and by the 
 Italian paraphrases that were made of it. 
 
14 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 The "Tesoretto,"on the other hand, has a defi- 
 nite value in the study of the "Commedia." A 
 very superficial examination will show that 
 Dante did not hesitate to imitate Brunetto Latini 
 in many curious little details. 
 
 A short analysis of this poem may, therefore, 
 be interesting to Dante students who are un- 
 familiar with the original. 
 
 It begins with a dedication to the worthy 
 Signore whose superior cannot be found on earth, 
 who has no equal either in peace or in war; fault- 
 less, and of lofty lineage; a second Solomon in 
 wisdom, in all benignity the like of Alexander, 
 who holds as nothing lands, gold and silver; by 
 lofty understanding of all poetry wears the crown 
 and mantle of courage and fine valour, thus equal 
 to the gallant Achilles in fame acquired, to the 
 good Hector of Troy, to Lancelot and Tristan; 
 in eloquence, either in council or in debate, the 
 equal of the good Roman Tullius; the superior 
 in reasoning of Seneca and Cato; in fine, the very 
 paragon of all good qualities. To him he says: 
 
 I, Brunetto Latino, 
 Myself recommend to you 
 And now present and send to you 
 This Treasure which I hold 
 Worth more than wealth of gold. 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 15 
 
 He begs him to hold it dear and keep it as a 
 miser keeps his treasures, for he declares that 
 he has seen many precious things and jewels 
 held In low esteem by people. 
 
 " I know well," he says, " that good is much 
 less valuable to him who keeps it hidden in 
 himself than that which is spread abroad, just 
 as the candle shines less on him who hides it. 
 But I have already written things of great 
 tenderness, both in prose and in rhyme, and 
 then most secretly given them to some dear 
 friend, only, and I grieve to confess it, to 
 see them afterward in the hands of chil- 
 dren, and so multiplied that all secrecy had 
 vanished." 
 
 " If such a thing should happen to this," he 
 says, " let it be cursed and thrown into hell." 
 
 This long rhymed dedication leaves open 
 the question for whom it was intended. M. 
 Chabaille, the editor of the Imperial edition of 
 "Li Tresors," does not hesitate to state that 
 II valente Signore was the Florentine poet 
 Rustico di Filippo, whom Brunetto mentions by 
 name in the second chapter of his "Faveletto," 
 which is sometimes considered as a part of the 
 "Tesoretto"; but the royal comparisons which 
 
i6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 he makes of his patron and the rather fulsome 
 flattery which he heaps on him lend some 
 plausibility to the Abbe Zannoni's conjecture 
 that it was written in Paris and dedicated 
 to Louis IX., who mounted the throne in 
 November, 1226, and died in July, 1270, who 
 he says " was of high lineage, gallant in 
 war, great in peace, so humble-minded and 
 benignant that he accounted state and wealth 
 as nothing, of vast knowledge and eloquent, 
 strong in misfortunes and eminent in every 
 virtue." 
 
 If the "Tresors" was written in Paris, "II 
 Tesoretto" must also have been composed 
 shortly before or at least while he had the " Gran 
 Tesoro" already planned in his mind; because 
 at the end of the fourteenth capitolo he says: 
 "In this little book I will speak openly [senza 
 veste] of Courtesy and Generosity and Loyalty 
 and Valour, of all these I will speak, but of the 
 others I will not promise to speak or to relate; 
 but whoever may wish to find them may search in 
 the " Gran Tesoro" which I will write for those 
 who have their hearts set higher, and there I 
 will make a great endeavour to treat them more 
 at length in the French tongue; 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 17 
 
 Cerchi nel gran Tesoro 
 Ch' io faro per coloro 
 Ch' hanno lo cor ptii alto. 
 La faro il gran salto 
 Per dirle piu distese 
 Nella lingua franzese." 
 
 It is evident, then, that Brunetto felt a greater 
 tenderness for his poetical thesaurus than for 
 his French one; that Dante took from the 
 dedication the recommendation to his patron 
 to treat it as a treasure. 
 
 The second chapter relates how the " Teso- 
 retto, " which he still calls "Tesoro," "begins 
 at the time when Florence was flourishing and 
 was fruitful, so that it was in all respects the 
 mistress of Tuscany." This wise commune, 
 he goes on to say, sent him on an embassy to 
 the mighty King Nanfosse, that is to say, Alfonso. 
 
 So in 1260 he took companions and went to 
 Spain and accomplished the mission which had 
 been entrusted to him, and then without delay 
 started to return; but on the road through the 
 plain of Roncesvalles he fell in with a student 
 on a bay mule coming from Bologna, and when 
 he demanded news of Tuscany in gentle and 
 plain speech, the traveller told him courteously 
 that the Guelfs of Florence had by evil 
 
i8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 providence and force of war been banishea and 
 many had sufFeried imprisonment and death. 
 And he says he turned to Nature; for though 
 every man who comes into the world is born 
 first to his parents, then for his relatives, and 
 then for his Commune, still Nature is, in last 
 analysis, the mother of all .* 
 
 And as he goes his heart almost bursts with 
 grief to think of the great honour, the wealth 
 and the power — ricca potenza — which Florence 
 once enjoyed, and as he walks along he loses 
 the highway and finds himself in the midst of 
 a strange forest. Brunetto Latini's selva diversa 
 is, of course, the selva oscura in which Dante 
 finds himself "in the midst of the road of this 
 our life." 
 
 Brunetto, suddenly coming to himself, looks 
 toward a mountain and beholds a vast throng 
 of strange animals — such, perhaps, as he after- 
 ward described in the bestiary division of his 
 "Tresors" — "men and women, beasts, ser- 
 
 *jE(f to ponendo cura 
 Tornat alia natura 
 Ck'audivi dir che tene 
 Ogn'uom ch' al mondo vent 
 E nasce primamenU 
 Al padre, e al parente 
 E pot al suo Commutto, 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 19 
 
 pents and wild creatures and fish in great schools 
 and every kind of flying birds and herbs and 
 fruits and flowers and stones and pearls such as 
 are greatly prized and so great a multitude of 
 other things that no speaking man could name 
 them or classify them." 
 
 But he could see "that they obeyed a figure 
 and in accordance with her commands finished 
 and began, died and generated, and took their 
 characteristics." 
 
 This figure, which is the personification or 
 incarnation of Nature, touches the very sky, 
 which appears her veil, and sometimes causes 
 it to change and sometimes to grow stormy. 
 At her command the Firmament moves and un- 
 folds, so that the whole world seems to be enclosed 
 in her arms. Now her face smiles and then again 
 it displays anger and pain. And Brunetto says: 
 
 "And I, beholding the lofty circumstance 
 and her mighty power and her arbitrary will 
 [some editions, however, read clemenza instead 
 of licenza], awakened from my melancholy 
 thoughts and resolved on sufficient hardihood 
 to come into her presence with all reverence, 
 so that I might see all her power and learn 
 surely of her state." 
 
20 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 As he regards her closer he beholds that the 
 hair of her head is of fine gold, parted without 
 tresses, and all the other charms which are 
 united under her white brow — the beautiful 
 eyes and eyebrows and the rosy lips and the 
 clear-cut nose and the pearly teeth. That last 
 detail is literally dente argentato — silvery — for 
 the sake of the rhyme; for it must be confessed 
 that the exigencies of these settenarie couplets 
 sometimes lead Ser Brunetto into forced 
 rhymes, into quaint obscurities , and the really 
 fine imagery of personified Nature which dis- 
 tinguishes the third chapter is not kept up to the 
 end. 
 
 As he regards her he knows that not in speech 
 or in writing could he or any man do justice to her 
 beauty or her might in air, or in earth, or in the 
 sea, in creation and in destruction, however 
 life begins or however it ends. 
 
 But as soon as this majestic personage beholds 
 him she smiles on him and says: lo sono la 
 Natura. 
 
 I am Nature 
 And I am the creature 
 Of the Sovereign Creator. 
 By Him was I created. 
 By Him was I begun ; 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 21 
 
 But His almighty power 
 Had no beginning hour. 
 It has no end or limit, 
 But all that I create, 
 Whate'er illuminate. 
 Must meet its final fate. 
 He is omnipotent — 
 But nothing can I do 
 Unless He wills me to. 
 He foresees everything. 
 His eye is everywhere. 
 He knows all that is past 
 And what the future 'U bring 
 And what is doing now. 
 Save what He may allow, 
 I am quite impotent. 
 I make whate'er he wills, 
 Through me all life fulfils; 
 I am His working hand 
 And act at His command. 
 And thus in earth and air 
 I am his own vicaire. 
 
 She goes on to speak at length , and very didac- 
 tically, of the " four modes " set in operation at 
 the beginning of time, the seven days of Crea- 
 tion, of the birth of Christ, His Mother pure and 
 wholly chaste, a Virgin uncorrupted. His death 
 that men might live. Then, descending to 
 particulars, she relates the details of creation day 
 by day — on the first, the jocund light — la 
 
22 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 luce gioconda — the sky, the earth, the sea, the 
 air, and the angels, each separately and from 
 nothing; on the second, the Firmament; on 
 the fourth all the luminaries, the diverse and 
 varied stars; on the fifth every creature that 
 swims in aqua pura, and so on till the sixth day, 
 when Adam and Eve were created, only to be 
 driven from Paradise and to become mortal 
 and to entail all manner of woes on their 
 descendants, because the ancient serpent, our 
 enemy, seduced in such a shameful way that 
 first woman. 
 
 Then it seems to him that all creatures and 
 things approach Nature to ask her permission 
 to fulfil their mission, and so great is his anxiety 
 to know the truth of all that she had said that 
 each hour seemed to him longer than a day, and 
 instead of going on his way he kneels down and 
 begs Nature to complete her great story — tutta 
 la grande storia. 
 
 Accordingly she explains to him the subtle 
 genius and power of the human mind. How 
 first and foremost God created at the head of 
 all created things the angelic substance which 
 is of His own nature and gave them all good 
 things and precious, all virtues and eternal 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 23 
 
 salvation and beauty of limbs and complexion 
 and immortality; how then into Lucifer's mind 
 entered pride and he felt himself equal to God; 
 but in the struggle he was thrust out of the 
 kingdom with all those who held with him and 
 fell as if rained into hell, into sempiternal 
 fire. How afterward, in the guise of a serpent, 
 he deceived Eve and then Adam, thus bringing 
 on man pain and discord and sorrow and tra- 
 vail. From that moment began the division of 
 time: 
 
 // giorno e I'mese e V anno 
 Venne da quell' inganno — 
 
 and sorrow of bearing and labour in the earth and 
 war and homicide and sin. 
 
 She cannot go into the divine subtlety of 
 creation of the fruitful earth without any sowing 
 of seed or affair of living man, but she calls his 
 attention to the fact that nature is full of variety 
 — no two animals are alike nor is there any 
 concordance either in form or in face. But this 
 she declares is certain — that man stands above 
 all created things and that God omnipotent 
 desires that all his trials should end for the best; 
 according to the proverb that the end will crown 
 the work; man, therefore, is the noblest and 
 
24 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 worthiest and most precious of all things and 
 has sovereignty over all the earth. Other 
 animals face the ground, signifying the great 
 baseness of their condition, being without reason, 
 but man has noble speech, reason and science, 
 and the mind of man is so worthy and dear and 
 noble and excellent that it is lodged in the head 
 and is the light and crown of the whole person; 
 is able to discern good and evil. 
 
 "In the head," she says, "are three cells. 
 The one in front is the seat or receptacle of all 
 the intellect and the power of learning what- 
 ever you can understand. In the middle one are 
 reason and discretion, the power of discern- 
 ment of good and evil and of the crooked and 
 the straight. The one behind contains the glory 
 of good memory, which retains whatever comes 
 into it, the source of the five senses whose func- 
 tions are to bring to the cells good and evil, facts 
 and fancies." 
 
 She goes on to tell of the four humours of 
 different colours which make the different com- 
 plexions or temperaments of man — the melan- 
 choly, the sanguine, the phlegmatic and the 
 choleric; of the four elements — air, water, fire, 
 earth, and how cold is opposed to heat, dry to 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 25 
 
 wet. Then of the seven planets, each in its 
 parete or circle, and of the twelve signs of the 
 zodiac with their specific duty of giving the differ- 
 ent qualities of weather. There is a hint of the 
 astrological importance of these heavenly pheno- 
 mena, but Brunetto was evidently more inter- 
 ested in what he calls storlomia, or astronomy, 
 than in the more subtle division of mediaeval 
 science. 
 
 When she has finished her long genesis, which 
 is very curious in comparison with Milton's 
 cosmogony, both perhaps being in no small 
 measure derived from Boethius, Nature causes 
 him actually to behold the principal rivers, four 
 in number, flowing out of Paradise; Euphrates, 
 rolling down toward Hipotania precious stones 
 and gems of vast value and purest water; Gion, 
 bathing the whole land of Egypt, restoring the 
 injury that Egypt gets in never having rain; 
 the Tigris, never seen by living man, the Phison, 
 so distant and strange that none ever navigates 
 it, dividing from us the Levant, where are jewels 
 of priceless value: balsam and amber and 
 purple, aloes and cardamon, ginger and cinna- 
 mon and many other spices, the best and purest 
 and most medicinal; and tigers and griiFons, 
 
26 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 elephants Qeofanti) and lions, camels and 
 dragumenes, basilisks, hyenas and panthers and 
 beavers and ants of gold and many other animals, 
 the names of which happen to fall conveniently 
 into rhyme. 
 
 The golden ants — formiche dell' oro — of 
 which he makes mention are more fully de- 
 scribed in "Li Tresors." They are Ethio- 
 pian insects as big as dogs, and they dig up the 
 gold with their feet, and then guard it so faith- 
 fully that none can get at it and live! The 
 Ethiopians, however, had a method of outwitting 
 these gold-loving creatures, and thus they grew 
 
 t richer than other nations. Brunette Latini 
 thus anticipated Edgar Allan Poe's " Gold- 
 Bug," as well as Dante. Then the potent 
 Queen extends her hand toward the ocean-sea 
 which girdles and encloses the land, and has a 
 nature hard to comprehend, growing greatly for 
 some hours and then sinking again; and near 
 this ocean-sea are the great columns which 
 Hercules the powerful set up as signs . to all 
 nations that here the land ended; and hence 
 extends the navigation from Spain to Pisa and 
 Greece and Tuscany and Egypt; but what he 
 learned in this visit he will tell in prose, and 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 27 
 
 therefore you will find it in the geographical 
 part of his "Gran Tesoro," written, as he re- 
 peatedly informs us, in French. 
 
 Then, since Nature perceives that it is time 
 for him to depart, she begins with grace and 
 love to speak her farewell, and gives him direc- 
 tions how to go safely through the forest until 
 he shall see Filosofia and all her sisters and hear 
 news from the four Virtues, and, if he likes, 
 may find Ventura — that is to say. Fortune — 
 and if he would put his trust in one who has no 
 certain way he will see Baratteria — that is, 
 Barter — who gives good and ill. If he is fear- 
 less he may see God and Love and many people 
 in bliss and woe. 
 
 Then, having kissed her feet, he sees her no 
 more. Brunetto Latini sets forth 
 
 Through the narrow road 
 Seeking to see, 
 To touch and to know 
 Whatever is fated. 
 
 And soon he finds himself in the desert, where 
 is neither certain road nor path. His ex- 
 clamation : 
 
 De che paese fsro 
 Trovai in quelle parti ! — 
 
28 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 "Ah, what a wild country I found in those 
 parts " — corresponds closely enough with 
 Dante's 
 
 Ahi quanta a dir qual era e cosa dura 
 Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte! 
 
 Read the first lines of the first canto of the 
 Inferno and then read these lines of Brunetto: 
 
 Quivi non ha viaggio 
 Quivi non ha persone, 
 Quivi non ha mangione, 
 Non bestia, non uccello, 
 Non fiume, non ruscello, 
 Non formica, ne mosca, 
 Ne cosa che' t' conosca: — 
 
 All savage, no way, no person, no dwelling, no 
 beast, no bird, no river, no brook, no ant, no 
 fly, nothing that he had ever seen! And as 
 he looks about he gives himself up for dead, for 
 this wilderness — quel paese snagiato — stretches 
 three hundred miles in every direction, but he 
 plucks up courage, and at the end of the third 
 day he finds himself in a great jocund plain, the 
 gayest in the world and the most delightful, 
 and he will not relate all he finds and sees, nor 
 can he believe his eyes, for he sees emperors and 
 kings and grand signers and masters of science 
 and, above all, says he: 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 29 
 
 I saw an empress 
 
 Whose name the people said 
 
 Was Virtue and the head 
 
 And salvation 
 
 Of all politeness 
 
 And of good manners 
 
 And of the good rules 
 
 Whereby the people live. 
 
 And with my eyes I saw 
 
 Four queenly daughters born of her. 
 
 These four daughters are Prudence, Temper- 
 ance, Bravery and Justice, and by a miracle 
 they seem now together one and then separate 
 and divided. And each in this quahty of divi- 
 sion having her own Hneage and course and 
 affairs, has her court and state. 
 
 He goes first to the court of Prudence, where 
 she is served by four royal women : Providence, 
 Respect, Knowledge and Instruction; then to 
 the palace of Temperance with her retinue of 
 five grand princesses : Exactness, Honesty, Chas- 
 tity, Understanding and Restraint, correspond- 
 ing to the five senses and holding together rich 
 converse of great edification; thence to the great 
 fortress where Bravery {Fortezza or Prodezza) 
 dwells surrounded by six countesses: Magnifi- 
 cence, Faithfulness, Security, Magnanimity, 
 Patience and Firmness. Thence a little farther 
 
30 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 on and he sees " the crowned lady in a hall hold- 
 ing high festival and over the entrance in gilded 
 letters: "I am called Justice everywhere," 
 and elsewhere he sees four maestre grandi, 
 to whose commands almost all the nations are 
 obedient. 
 
 These eighteen, or as Brunetto says, for the 
 sake of the meter, these twenty donne reali, 
 royal ladies, the offspring of Virtue, have such 
 grandeur and nobleness that no tongue or pen 
 could do justice to them; but those who are 
 most worshipful and useful to men are four: 
 
 Cortesia e Larghevsza 
 
 E Leanza e Prodexxa — 
 
 Courtesy and Generosity and Loyalty and 
 
 Prowess. Three of these he finds in the casa 
 
 di Giustizia. First, Generosity gives him at 
 
 considerable length her instructions in regard 
 
 to all wise living and shows him how no man by 
 
 generosity ever comes to poverty, how he is 
 
 broad and sage who spends his money to save 
 
 his penny. She expands the Latin proverb 
 
 bis dat qui cito dat into the jingling couplet — 
 
 Che donar tostamente 
 E donar doppiamente. 
 
 But she guards against foolish giving and all 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 31 
 
 vain glory or spending in taverns and throwing 
 away money in drink. " I have seen," she says, 
 "persons buying capons, partridges or a great fish 
 where there was no gain from the expenditure ! " 
 
 In the companioiiship of a cavalier valente 
 to whom Larghezza directed him he next goes 
 in search of Cortesia and she Hkewise gives him 
 good advice: to refrain from tattling, not to 
 use injurious language, not to lie or say any 
 villainy of others, not to speak even under pro- 
 vocation a vulgar word; then from negative 
 she comes to positive commands and shows him 
 how he may walk through the city with those 
 of lower or of higher rank: " If your companion 
 is of lower rank," she says, "you may walk a 
 step in advance, and if you ride on horseback 
 see that you go very courteously, ride gracefully 
 cavalca lellamente with the head a little bent, 
 since to ride with loose rein seems great bar- 
 barism, and do not hold the head so high as 
 to look at all the house-tops ! " 
 
 Then still in company with his cavalier 
 giocoso e molto confortoso, who shows in his face 
 the delight he had felt in hearing Courtesy's 
 words, Brunetto Latini passes on to Leanza, 
 Loyalty, who begins her discourse by a warning 
 
32 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 against lying, for the lie returns in shame and 
 has brief run. She preaches devotion to the 
 Commune and love and faith in the Holy Church 
 and honour to Christ and the saints. 
 
 Prodezza, Bravery, or Prowess, has similar 
 good advice to offer and she cautions against 
 fear of death: "No screen hast thou to hide a 
 man from death when death comes" is the 
 teaching. "Then be fearless, injure no living 
 man, even if thou art stronger, all the more be 
 on thy guard; use gentle speech and go writh 
 sense, but if sense avail not, then put force 
 against force"; and this brings her to speak 
 of private and public quarrels and the proper 
 behaviour of a gentleman: 
 
 "If perchance the commune send out an 
 army of cavalry I will that thou go in their 
 ranks bearing thyself with baron's state and 
 showing thyself greater than thou really art; 
 and display thy valour and make fine show of 
 intrepidity and be not slow or late, for no 
 coward ever wins honour or becomes great." 
 
 Having thus heard all that the four great 
 mistresses of morals have to say, Brunetto with 
 his mysterious companion, the cavalier, who in 
 Dante of course is Vergil, takes the road to the 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 33 
 
 right, and, passing by vales and mountains, 
 groves, forests and seas, they reach a beautiful 
 meadow such as is in Dante described as the 
 home of the philosophic family. It is full of 
 flowers, the richest in the world. It is a mys- 
 terious place, for he says: "Now it seemed 
 round, now square, now dark, now bright and 
 shining. Now I see many people, now I see no 
 one; now I see a pavilion, now I see houses 
 and towers. One lies prone, another races; one 
 flies, another chases; one stands, another strives; 
 one enjoys, another goes mad; one weeping, 
 the other consoling." 
 
 Here he finds a confessional and is absolved 
 from all sin and given courage to proceed, and 
 a little farther he finds four children whom in 
 courtesy he begs to show him the way and tell 
 him of the place and the people, and the wisest 
 of them tells him briefly: 
 
 Thou must know, Mastro Brunetto, 
 
 That here is monsignore. 
 
 The Head and God of Love. 
 
 If thou believest me. 
 
 Pass on and thou shalt see 
 
 Whereof I dare not speak. 
 
 They vanish in an instant, he knows not how 
 nor whither, nor does he know their signs or 
 
34 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 their names. But going farther he sees many 
 people, some joyous and some sad, and before 
 the signore appears another throng making a 
 great noise, and then . he sees a fresh young 
 child standing erect and naked, with bow and 
 arrows, and he has wings and feathers, but he 
 is blind and he often shoots off his arrows at 
 haphazard. 
 
 This infant's name is Piacere, or sensual 
 love, and near him are four donne volenti, who 
 hold the mastery over men, and he sees the 
 measure and reason of their mastery, and their 
 names he hears: 
 
 Paura e Disianza 
 
 E Amore e Speramai — 
 
 Fear and Longing and Love and Hope, each 
 exercising her arts and power and knowledge 
 to her utmost, thus Desire swaying the mind 
 and compelling it to get possession of the object 
 desired without thought of honour or reputation 
 or death. 
 
 These four passions so affect a man that 
 when he falls in love he yearns and fears and 
 hopes and loves and the keen arrows from 
 Pleasure's bow pierce him and make him desire 
 corporeal delight, so much is love a matter of 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 35 
 
 the heart. And these four though acting in 
 different fields, and even in opposition (Fear 
 against Hope), yet work in common for one end. 
 Brunetto confesses that he himself in spite 
 of his efforts to shield himself from the infant's 
 darts yet fell into the power of Love. But 
 suddenly turning round he sees in a rich mantle 
 Ovid, the great master who had told of the acts 
 of Love and put them into verse, and at his 
 request Ovid tells him frankly: 
 
 E lo bene e lo male 
 Del Fante delle ale — 
 
 both the good and the evil qualities of the winged 
 infant. Ovid replies to his questions, not in 
 Latin, but in volgare, that is in Italian, showing 
 that this popular language was already be- 
 ginning to appeal even to learned men: he says 
 that no one who had failed to experience the 
 power of Love knows anything about it and 
 bids him search into his own heart for the good 
 and the delight and the evil and error which 
 is born of Love: 
 
 Cercati fra lo petto 
 Del bene e del diletto, 
 Del male e dell' errore 
 Che nasce per amore. 
 
36 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 And when he would fain have fled he finds 
 himself, as it were, rooted to the spot, but 
 Ovid, by his art, gives him the mastery, so that 
 he finds his way again. But such had been 
 his fear and weariness and pain that he is 
 resolved to turn to God and his saints, and 
 humbly confess his sins to the priests and friars 
 and to submit to them his libretto, begging 
 them to correct it and collate this as well as all his 
 writings with the teachings of the Christian faith. 
 
 Here really ends the "Tesoretto," and the 
 twentieth chapter begins the "Penitenza," 
 which, in two quite long cantos, leads in turn 
 to the "Favoletto," dedicated to his friend 
 Rustico di Felippo. 
 
 Finding that Fortune turns her wheel in the 
 wrong direction, that all earthly things are 
 sinful and painful and that man is vanity, that 
 even Julius Caesar, the first Emperor, and 
 Samson, the strongest man, were soon laid low 
 in their graves, and Alexander, the conqueror 
 of the world, Absalom the beautiful. Hector 
 the generous, Solomon the wise, Octavian the 
 rich — not one lived a day beyond their ap- 
 pointed time, while flowers, leaves and fruits, 
 birds, beasts and fishes are alike subject to 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 37 
 
 death: therefore he reasons that Solomon is 
 right in saying that all things are vanitate vana. 
 
 "Friend," he says, "engage in war, and 
 travel through all the earth, and go ploughing the 
 sea before the wind; wear costly things and eat 
 rich food; gain silver and gold; amass great 
 treasure ! What does it all amount to ? — wrath, 
 fatigue and shame!" 
 
 Seeing, therefore, that he is a guilty man, a 
 sinner, and on the road to perdition, he deter- 
 mines to desist in time. So he enters the con- 
 fessional at Monposlieri, by which he means 
 Montpensier, and tells the friars all his sins: 
 "Ah lasso! how corrupt I was! What evil 
 deeds worse than crimes I had committed! 
 What sins worse than death ! " 
 
 And he especially confesses to the charge of 
 
 having been rather dissolute or worldly: 
 
 Che sai che siam tenuti 
 Un poco mondanetti. 
 
 He had wrecked himself on the rocks of pride. 
 Had he loved his Creator with all his heart, or 
 been obedient to His commands; had he boasted 
 of what he had done of good or folly; had he 
 been hypocritical; had he been proud and 
 haughty by reason of riches and good breeding. 
 
38 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 grand relatives, praise for his actions ? Through 
 pride, the head and root of evil and sin, had he 
 claimed to have vphat he had not ? He antici- 
 pates Shakespeare in his per orgogliamento — 
 fallio r angel matto — " Through pride fell the 
 mad angel, and Eve broke the compact, and the 
 death of Abel and the tower of Babel, and the 
 Trojan war." 
 
 These sins are perhaps by implication, for he 
 puts them apparently into the friar's mouth, and 
 follows them up with a long homily against envy 
 and irreverence and presumption and other 
 mortal sins. After inveighing, for instance, 
 against the sin of passing a false florin, which 
 probably Brunetto Latini was never even 
 tempted to do, the friar proceeds: 
 
 "The man who is too avaricious \scarso\ 
 — I believe has his heart burnt within him, 
 and he who has no pity on the poor or those 
 in prison falls wholly into hell. Through 
 avarice only arises gluttony, whereby come 
 weariness and sickness and inebriation, the 
 source of scorn. And from ghiottornta the 
 road leads straight to sensuality — lussuria — 
 and how shameful this sin is in an old man 
 — a double sin [doppio peccato}! " 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 39 
 
 Thence he goes on to speak of those special 
 forms of lussuria which Dante punishes in 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth cantos of the 
 Inferno. Dante takes him at his word and 
 adjudges him guilty of the terrible indictment : 
 
 Ma tra questi peccati 
 Son vie piit condannati 
 Que' che son soddomiti. 
 Deh come son periti 
 Que' che contra natura 
 Brigen cotal lussura. 
 
 "Now," says the friar, "behold, my dear 
 friend, and heed what I say. See how many 
 sins I have told you of, and all are mortal, and 
 thou knowest that thou art guilty of such — very 
 few of which are cured. See, it is no joking 
 matter [«om e gtoco'\ to fall into sin, and I 
 advise thee in all friendliness to beware lest 
 the world entice thee!" 
 
 Brunetto having received absolution — and 
 this surely ought to have given him a chance 
 at the purification of Purgatory — he returns 
 to the forest on a festal day, and on the morning 
 after he finds himself on the monte d' Olempo, 
 on its very summit, from which he sees the 
 whole world and how it is round, and all the 
 land and the sea and the air and the fire above 
 
40 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 the air; that is to say, the four elements which 
 
 are the sustenance of all creatures according to 
 
 their natures; and turning he beholds a white 
 
 mantle near a great broom tree, and when he 
 
 looks more closely he beholds a being with a 
 
 white visage with a long beard spreading over 
 
 the breast, and when he approaches it proves to 
 
 be Ptolemy, the 
 
 Mastro di storlomia 
 E di filosojia. 
 
 Ptolemy, who corresponds to Statius in Dante, 
 receives him politely and gives him a full ex- 
 planation of the cause and reason and nature 
 of the four elements and of their foundations. 
 It is supposed that these teachings of Ptolemy 
 were to have been given in Italian prose, 
 but the prose is missing and the poem ends 
 abruptly. 
 
 The two chapters of the "Favoletto" have no 
 connection whatever with the "Tesoretto," 
 though written in the same doggerel rhyme and 
 meter. We maytherefore dismiss itwith aword. 
 Nor do the other writings of Brunetto especially 
 interest us, not even his "Fiore di Filosofi e di 
 Molti Savi," which consists of short articles, 
 all beginning with pretty much the same phrase: 
 
A TEACHER OF DANTE 41 
 
 Pittagora fue uno filosofo, Socrate fue grandissi- 
 mo filosofo, and the like. 
 
 Brunette Latini's ingenuity in keeping up his 
 jerky doggerel for three thousand lines or more 
 is something wonderful. Of course, it often leads 
 him into discursiveness, but oftentimes it gives 
 a certain epigrammatic spiciness. It soon 
 grows monotonous, and the occasional poetic 
 imagery does not show for what it is worth. 
 As a study of language, the "Tresors" and the 
 "Tesoretto" are each interesting in their own 
 way, but, aside from the linguistic value which 
 the Italian has, often showing, as it does, the 
 less sophisticated meaning of words that after- 
 ward became subtle, the student is probably 
 right in giving more attention to " Li Tresors." 
 
 But it seems palpable that the man himself 
 appears in the poem and we can construct with 
 some satisfaction an outline of his character. 
 He was scholarly, but he was genial. He was 
 loyal to Florence and a patriot, but he was free 
 from that acid bitterness that seared Dante's 
 very soul. He was more ingenious than poet- 
 ical. No real poet could possibly have stuck 
 so determinedly to a scheme of rhyme that 
 was destined from its very nature to be largely 
 
42 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 doggerel. Even the epigrammatic couplets have 
 nothing of the popular proverb about them. 
 There are few that cling to the memory and 
 serve as apt quotations. It is not exaggeration 
 to say that Dante quite obscured his feeble 
 light as the sun obscures the light of Mercury. 
 But by reason of Dante's indebtedness to him, 
 as well as from a certain quaint originality in 
 the man himself, he is worth studying. 
 
 At the end we cannot help wondering how 
 Dante had the heart to condemn to those regions 
 of pitiless fire the man who, whether he was 
 his teacher or not, left a statement of philosophy 
 and morals that in view of its wide dissemination 
 throughout the Middle Ages must have had a 
 vast influence for good. 
 
II 
 
 DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 
 
 "T^ANTE, under the similitude of a mountain, 
 ■^'^ may be approached from a dozen dif- 
 ferent sides. He stands, as it were, on the 
 summit of an age, the one predominant among 
 a score of prominent figures. He serves to 
 divide the dark from the light. Behind him 
 are the centuries of intellectual night; before 
 him lie the aeons of dawn. He was of course 
 conditioned by the thought, the atmosphere, 
 the environment in which he was placed; but 
 he was also the prophet of the new, of the 
 advanced, of the future. With what passionate 
 eloquence he held up before men's eyes the lofty 
 ideal of patriotism, of freedom under law, of 
 religion, of stainless character. 
 
 It is a wonderful thing about this great man 
 that men in all times have found in him some- 
 thing that appealed to their inmost needs. In 
 countless thousands his writings have awakened 
 a new sense of mental power, have stimulated 
 new trains of thought and have opened up new 
 fields of action. Students of one class have 
 43 
 
44 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 discovered in him a key to history; those of 
 another have learned by their study of his per- 
 fect art to appreciate all that is best in poesy; 
 those of still another have thrilled with mystical 
 exaltation at the allegorical and symbolical 
 significance which they have read into his 
 simplest lines. To others Nature has through 
 his interpretation assumed a mightier meaning; 
 to still others Religion has in his alembic dis- 
 tilled a subtler and more penetrating elixir of 
 life. 
 
 Even those who approach Dante with the 
 practical skepticism of these modern days fall 
 under his spell. They may not be willing to 
 confess or they may not be quite conscious of 
 the secret of the charm, but it sways them. 
 
 Here and there a solitary voice of dissent is 
 lifted, as where Matthew Browne is quoted with 
 approbation as saying that Dante "was the 
 embodiment of the jealousy, party-spirit and 
 stunted inhuman scholasticism of the Middle 
 Ages ... his imagination was harsh and 
 personal with no light relieving touch of phan- 
 tasy any more than his genius was genial and 
 attractive." But even while one may see the 
 force of this statement, one is again and again 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 45 
 
 drawn back to the melodious text and the spell 
 begins to work anew. 
 
 A recent writer, after giving various specimens 
 of the horrors which Dante so vividly portrayed 
 in the Inferno — souls swept by never-ceasing 
 hellish winds, pelted by snow, hail and putrid 
 water, lapped by devouring flames, grilling in 
 vile boiling pitch, entombed in everlasting ice, 
 declared that " if this be poetry, then Caligula 
 and Alva may be classed among the 'mute 
 inglorious Miltons' and poetic inspiration may 
 be found in slaughtering an ox, performing a 
 surgical operation or executing a criminal in 
 the most barbarous manner ever known to the 
 penal code of England." 
 
 Another critic makes this sweeping remark: 
 
 "Subtract from the 'Inferno' its revolting 
 pictures, some of which the art of Dore has so 
 vividly realised to our actual vision, and it will 
 be seen that little or nothing of interest remains 
 — little at all events that would be recognised 
 under the name of poetry, however it might 
 have passed in former times for theology or 
 philosophy." 
 
 Dante's cruelty was the inheritance of the 
 ages: the Old Testament in its most rapturous 
 
46 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 flights of poetic eloquence depicted the Al- 
 mighty as rejoicing in the torment or destruction 
 of His enemies, as holding them in derision. 
 The cruel animal out of which grew generous, 
 gentle, civilised man, left as its inheritance the 
 tendency to take delight in the agonies and 
 torments of his fellows. It was not strange 
 that even in religion this relic should crop out 
 now in the passionate eloquence of the Church 
 Fathers, now in the poems of a Dante or a New 
 England Wigglesworth, now in the excesses of 
 the Inquisition or the bigotries of the Puritans. 
 
 Dante had many predecessors who equalled 
 or even excelled him in depicting the horrors 
 of the Damned. Tertullian whose life ended 
 just fourteen centuries before Shakespeare's 
 ( 170-216 A. D. ) wrote thus in his book 
 "De Speculis": "At that greatest of all spec- 
 tacles, the Last Judgment and final, how shall 
 I admire, how laugh, how rejoice,how exult when 
 I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the 
 lowest abyss of darkness, so many magistrates 
 liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled 
 against the Christians, so many wise philosophers 
 blushing in red hot flames with their deluded 
 pupils, so many tragic singers more tuneful in 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 47 
 
 the expression of their own suffering, so many 
 dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish 
 than ever before from applause." 
 
 Minucius Felix who Hved about a hundred 
 years later thus described the nature of penal 
 fire: 
 
 " In hell, the intelligent fire burns the limbs 
 and restores them, feeds on them and nourishes 
 them." 
 
 Lactantius about 312 A. 0. also described 
 the divine fire: 
 
 " It always lives on itself and flourishes with- 
 out any nourishment nor has it any smoke 
 mixed with it but is pure and liquid and fluid 
 like water — the same fire with one and the 
 same energy will both burn the wicked and form 
 them again and will replace as much as it will 
 consume of their bodies and will supply itself 
 with eternal nourishment." 
 
 Even he of the golden voice, St. Chrysostom, 
 whose sixty years of life ended in 407 a. d., 
 speaking of the inextinguishable fire, says: 
 "How horrible it is, no words can tell." He 
 compares it to a furiously boiling bath or a 
 most consuming fever. "Truly," he goes on, 
 "we shall grate our teeth under the agony of 
 
48 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 the intolerable torment and none shall bring 
 succour and we shall groan heavily while the 
 Hame presses us ever more fiercely." 
 
 It does not seem to mitigate the horror of it 
 that the good saint included himself in the 
 general condemnation. Peter Lombard, whose 
 life covered the first sixty years of the twelfth 
 century, was not so generous and was more 
 bloodthirsty: "The elect will behold the tor- 
 ture of the impious and as they look they will 
 not grieve. Their minds will be sated with 
 joy as they gaze on the unspeakable anguish of 
 the wicked and they will sing hallelujahs for 
 their own immunity." 
 
 Just about a hundred years later Suso, a 
 pupil of Eckhardt's, tried to give some slight 
 notion of the length of the eternity "of the 
 sobbing, sighing, weeping, howling, lamenting, " 
 by comparing it to a millstone as broad as the 
 whole earth and so large as to touch the sky all 
 around and pecked at by a little bird that should 
 come once in a hundred thousand years, reducing 
 it by a particle as large as the tenth part of a 
 grain of millet, so that in a million years a par- 
 ticle as large as a grain of millet should be taken 
 from it. If by the time the stone were reduced 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 49 
 
 to nothing there were hope for the Damned it 
 would console them. 
 
 Saint Bonaventura, author of the "Biblia 
 Pauperum," the Doctor seraphicus whose mysti- 
 cism so enthralled Luther, had the same material 
 notion of the infernal punishments by means of 
 fire and ice and worms and stenches and all 
 things horrible. But none of the Church Fathers 
 exceed St. Bernard, the opponent of Abelard. 
 He says: 
 
 "Oh Gehenna — a region to be shunned, 
 where are burning fire, stiffening frost, horrible 
 faces of demons. . . . Behold this most hor- 
 rible chaos, the subterranean lake, the deepest 
 of pits and all of fire. Likewise imagine a 
 mighty city, horrible and dark within, burning 
 with most obscure and terrible flames, with weep- 
 ing and wailing and moaning everywhere from in- 
 explicable woes and everything of the sort that 
 can be conceived by the mind of man. Think 
 of the bitterness of the punishment, for the heat 
 of this fire is to ours as our fire is to a painted 
 flame. And also think of the cold and the foul 
 odours. The bitterness of this punishment is 
 patent from the gnashing of teeth, from the 
 groaning and the wailing and the blaspheming. 
 
50 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 And so of other things. Consider the multi- 
 tude of punishments; for there one will find 
 inextinguishable most subtle fire, intolerable 
 cold, horrible stench, palpable darkness. There 
 will be punishment for all the senses: to the 
 sight in horrible faces and aspects of demons; to 
 the hearing, in lamentable groans and clamours 
 arising from that wretched company and the 
 cruelty of the torturers who, pitiless, never 
 weary of torturing or are moved to pity. Con- 
 sider also that in those members whereby they 
 sinned will souls be tormented. Likewise the 
 internal passions will reign in them: for espe- 
 cially will there be wraths and envyings and 
 they will be like rabid dogs and they will yearn 
 to die and find it impossible." 
 
 Thus Dante showed no originality in his 
 conception of the torments of the damned. 
 But his pictures have a gruesome picturesque- 
 ness which seems to bring them vividly before 
 the mind especially when we recognise in these 
 writhing tormented wretches the faces of states- 
 men and popes. Many poets before Dante 
 had taken an imaginary pilgrimage through the 
 regions of the dead. Not to speak of the two 
 great pagan classic prototypes, it may be that 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 51 
 
 he was familiar with the "Visio Tungdah" 
 which depicted an Irish Inferno where a viler 
 Lucifer than Tartarus boasted tormented lost 
 souls. Then there were the famous visions of St. 
 Patrick and the vision of Frate Alberico and 
 undoubtedly there were still others, for what is 
 more natural than that men should use all the 
 powers of their imaginations to realise to them- 
 selves what the Unseen may disclose ? 
 
 Artists also have done their part both in sug- 
 gestion and illustration, and we find the best 
 commentary on Dante in the pictures that were 
 painted about his own time to illumine the great 
 Drama of Sin and Redemption — to Dante's 
 friend Giotto di Bordone who painted the Apoc- 
 alyptic Vision in the Church of Santa Chiara 
 in Naples and the Last Judgment at Padua, or 
 to Andrea Orcagna who transferred to the walls 
 of chapels in Pisa and Florence scenes from the 
 " Inferno." The quaint and crude designs that 
 illustrate the famous edition of 1491 are in a 
 certain sense more satisfactory than the more 
 artistic conceptions of Michelangelo who has 
 been called "the great art commentator of 
 Dante" jwhose soul Hves again in his immortal 
 works. His Last Judgment may indeed have 
 
52 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 been inspired by the "Divine Comedy" but 
 Michelangelo and Rafael and Tintoretto, as well 
 as Flaxman and Doreand dozens of other artists, 
 great though they be, are too modern in spirit 
 perfectly to bring out the mediaeval spirit of 
 Dante's work. We must go to the Prerafaelites 
 if we would see with Dante's eyes. Possibly 
 we should find anything but aesthetic, figurative, 
 symbolical beauty in a painting of Beatrice 
 painted by Cimabue or Taddeo Bartolo or 
 Taddeo Gaddi. Ideals of female beauty change 
 from age to age. 
 
 When it is realised that between three and 
 four thousand books and innumerable articles 
 in periodicals have been written about Dante, 
 the comparison to a mountain approached from 
 many different sides becomes plain prose. 
 Keen indeed has been the interest which the 
 world has felt for more than six hundred years 
 in the life and works of that stern uncompromis- 
 ing patriot-poet. His biography has been writ- 
 ten with great confidence and in wonderful 
 detail, but, as in the case of Shakespeare, legend 
 seems inextricably mixed with truth and the 
 mere external facts are few. 
 
 Yet his personality stands out before us with 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 53 
 
 extraordinary distinctness. We know exactly 
 what was his mystical conception of Beatrice, 
 what he intended to be read into the four-fold 
 allegory of the "Divine Comedy," how far he 
 was a disciple of Plato or of Aristotle; to what an 
 extent he was influenced by the Arabian glosses 
 of Ibn Roshd known to him as Averroes. In 
 many of the landscapes of the "Purgatory" we 
 detect the reminiscences of his travels ; here and 
 there are easily recognised bits of autobiographi- 
 cal information. The whole poem so vividly 
 reflects his character that probably no mediaeval 
 personage is more real to us than Dante. The 
 learning of the ages, the acuteness of the bright- 
 est scholars of Europe and America have been 
 lavished in discussing every phrase of his prose 
 and verse. The tides of opinion go sweeping 
 over disputed passages as the sea sweeps over 
 sunken boulders. One learned commentator 
 spends years in puzzling over the question why 
 the Latin poet Statius is so many times men- 
 tioned in the " Purgatory" and at last comes 
 laboriously to the sensible conclusion that it 
 was simply because the poet chose to mention 
 him so many times. 
 
 Dante and Vergil generally occupy the fore- 
 
54 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 ground in all the scenes that are panoramically 
 unfolded in the first half of the great poem. 
 So true is this that in many of the fifteenth 
 century wood cuts illustrating the journey they 
 are introduced no less than three times labelled 
 with the initials V. and D. like haloes over their 
 heads. More than one modern artist also has 
 used his highest powers in depicting the two 
 poets in their memorable journey — Vergil, from 
 some antique bust or from imagination, but 
 Dante from contemporary portraiture either in 
 words as in Boccaccio's description or in paint- 
 ings more or less dubious. 
 
 Boccaccio, who knew Dante personally, thus 
 describes him: 
 
 "This poet of ours was of medium stature, 
 and when he reached the age of maturity, walked 
 a little bent, and his gait was dignified and 
 gentle. He was always clad in very respectable 
 clothes, in a habit suitable to his time of life. 
 His face was long and his nose aquiline and his 
 eyes rather large [^rojj/] than small; his jaws 
 large [grandi] and the upper lip projected over 
 the lower; and his complexion was dark; his 
 hair and beard thick, black and curling, and 
 he always looked melancholy and thoughtful." 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 55 
 
 Dante, in his first Latin Eclogue written 
 toward the end of his Hfe, conveys the impression 
 that his hair was Hght; some scholars understand 
 the words solitum flavescere to mean that his 
 hair was yellow. 
 
 Leonardi Bruni who was born in 1370 — 
 consequently nearly half a century after Dante's 
 death — and wrote a life of him in the ver- 
 nacular, after speaking of his mediocre patri- 
 mony says: 
 
 "He was a very polished man, of decent 
 stature and of pleasant appearance and full of 
 gravity; slow and sparing in speech but very 
 clever in his repartees. His own portrait is to 
 be seen in the Chiesa di Santa Croce about the 
 middle of the Church, on the left hand as you 
 go toward the High Altar, admirably painted 
 from Hfe by a perfect painter of his day." 
 
 It is one of the disputed questions whether 
 Boccaccio did not take some contemporary 
 portrait as the basis of his description. Scar- 
 tazzini, in his "Introduction to the Study of 
 Dante," does not hesitate to say that a review 
 of the abundant literature on Dante's portrait 
 convinces him that probably we have not a 
 single authentic picture of the great poet. "Who 
 
56 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 would have painted it?" he asks. "Even 
 granting that while he was one of the Priors of 
 Florence, one had been hung in some public 
 place, such a portrait, though according to 
 Bruni, found in the Chiesa di Santa Croce, 
 would undoubtedly have been destroyed at the 
 time when Florence condemned, banished, 
 cursed and would gladly have put to death her 
 great son. It requires great credulity to believe 
 that in such times the Florentines would have 
 endured in a public place the portrait of a ban- 
 ished, cursed, detested citizen. The multitude 
 of portraits of Dante that we possess are nothing 
 else but fancy pictures, most likely inspired by 
 Boccaccio's description." 
 
 We may also ask how much dependence may 
 be placed on the authenticity of the death-mask 
 which some claim gives an absolutely correct 
 notion of his features. The sympathetic trans- 
 lator of the "Inferno," the late T. W. Parsons, 
 exclaims : 
 
 How stern of lineament, how grim, 
 The father was of Tuscan song I 
 
 calls him "an anchorite" and continues the pic- 
 ture in these words: 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 57 
 
 The lips as Cumae's caverns close. 
 The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin, 
 
 The rigid front, almost morose. 
 
 But for the patient hope within. . . . 
 
 Peace dwells not here — this rugged face 
 Betrays no spirit of repose; 
 The sullen warrior sole we trace, 
 The marble man of many woes. 
 
 This stern prophet, before whom women shrank 
 and children trembled as if he had been himself 
 a sad-eyed ghost returned from the tomb, is 
 portrayed by some of his biographers as stand- 
 ing on the shore of the Gulf of Spezzia near the 
 monastery of Santa Croce del Corno, gazing out 
 at the wondrous prospect. The monks struck 
 by his pensive melancholy and evident burden 
 of sorrows approached and asked him what he 
 desired. He replied "Peace": — 
 
 The single boon for which he prayed 
 The convent's charity was rest. 
 
 If they had asked him where in this world Peace 
 was to be found he might have replied in the 
 .words of the " Paradiso" : In la sua voluntade e 
 nostra pace — In His will is our peace. 
 
 The stern Dante of the "Inferno" enthralls our 
 imagination but still it is pleasant to conceive 
 of him as a flaxen-haired lover writing sonnets 
 
58 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 and canzoni to the beautiful ladies of Florence. 
 In this fascinating pursuit he certainly showed 
 precocity, but it is remarkable how little we really 
 know of the facts. He himself tells us that he 
 was born in Florence but what else is there that 
 we can say of his father's family except names ? 
 The weight of evidence seems to hold against 
 nobility of origin. Neither his father's family 
 nor his mother's was inscribed among the nohili 
 or the popolane of the city. It is also significant 
 that Giovanni Villani, a contemporary chronicler, 
 does not speak of him as noble. Moreover, 
 after the Florentines had passed a decree that 
 no member of a noble family should take part 
 in their affairs, Dante was elected Prior of the 
 city. Apparently of so little importance was 
 the Alighieri family that when the Guelfs, to 
 which party it belonged, was politically allied, 
 were driven from Florence by the Ghibellines 
 in 1260, Alighiero, a humble bourgeois, either 
 stayed behind with his second wife, whose name 
 was Bella, or left her there. According to the 
 best authorities the son that conferred not 
 merely nobility but immortality on the name 
 first saw the light in 1265. The details furnished 
 by Boccaccio and other biographers in regard to 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 59 
 
 his family and education are wholly imaginary. 
 How much truth, then, is there in Dante's own 
 account of his first meeting with Beatrice ? 
 How far may we go in believing that this ideal- 
 ised maiden was an actual earthly love, a woman 
 of living flesh and blood ? 
 
 That she stands as a symbol no one can doubt. 
 But it is always more interesting to us practical 
 modern readers to interpret literally rather than 
 etherialise characters into abstractions. We 
 accept "Pilgrim's Progress" as an actual journey 
 of actual people such as we meet every day, and 
 the moment we take the heroes and heroines of 
 Spenser's " Faerie Queene" as personified Virtues 
 and Vices we lose all interest in them. Even the 
 Song of Solomon is shorn of half its beauty wheii 
 it is regarded as a prophetic illustration of the 
 love of Christ for His Church. To be sure the 
 internal development of Dante's life may be 
 seen to follow metaphysical and allegorical 
 lines. The mysticism can not be gainsaid: 
 Dante himself bids us read between the lines. 
 Students of a later day are too much inclined, 
 however, to interpret them in accordance with 
 modern transcendentalism, and of course there 
 is room for discussion as to his meaning, but in 
 
6o A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 studying Dante one must never forget the 
 difference between his viewpoint and ours. It 
 is something like playing Bach sonatas on a 
 modern concert-grand piano: we realise that 
 while it may have been absolute music to the 
 composer's inner sense yet he never heard them 
 except as they were rendered on a tinkling 
 clavichord tickled with a quill. 
 
 Now it is of very little importance whether 
 or no we give credence to the literal interpreta- 
 tion of Dante's "Vita Nuova"; whether or no 
 the donna gentilissima whom he says many 
 called Beatrice was Messer Folco Portinari's 
 daughter, who in 1286 married the Cavaliere 
 Simon dei Bardi. There is known to have been 
 such a Beatrice and she lived only a few steps 
 from Dante's home. But the arguments against 
 this tradition — for it is only tradition — are 
 thoroughly convincing — to those who are not 
 convinced of the contrary! 
 
 But there is no reason why we should regard 
 "La Vita Nuova" as simply and solely alle- 
 gorical. Dante says his most gentle lady was 
 a year younger than himself, that she was born, 
 lived and died in the Via del Corso, that at her 
 father's death she was bowed with grief, that 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 6i 
 
 she herself died in the first hour of the ninth of 
 June, 1290, on the very threshold of the second 
 period of her life : that is to say, at the age of 
 twenty-four. He relates that the image of 
 Beatrice that he wore imprinted on his heart 
 was of such noble virtue that it never suffered 
 Love to hold lordship over him without the 
 faithful counsel of Reason; that it made his 
 heart light and gay, inflamed him with holy 
 charity, impelled him to love his neighbours and 
 forgive his enemies, withdrew his imagination 
 from all things vile, guided him in the straight 
 path, and raised him to the love of the highest 
 good, which is God. 
 
 After her fair limbs are laid in the dust he 
 tells of their meetings and of the influence which 
 his love for her had exerted upon his life and 
 character. When first he saw her he was near 
 the end and she was near the beginning of their 
 ninth year : 
 
 "She appeared to me," he says, "clad in most 
 noble colour, a modest and becoming red, and 
 she was girt and adorned in such wise as suited 
 her very youthful time of life." 
 
 The thrill that passed over him foretold the 
 coming of the strong God destined to rule over 
 
62 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 him, and this strong God commanded him often- 
 times when he was a boy to seek to see that most 
 youthful angel — quest' angiola giovanissima — 
 who was his bliss, and he says that he saw her of 
 such noble and praiseworthy deportment that 
 in the words of Homer "she seemed not the 
 daughter of mortal man but of God." And 
 when nine years had passed since he first saw 
 her, "it chanced that this admirable lady ap- 
 peared to him again clad in whitest white 
 \colore bianchissimo] — between two older ladies, 
 and as she passed along the street she let her 
 eyes fall upon him as he stood timidly regarding 
 her and saluted him with such ineffable courtesy 
 that it seemed to him that he then experienced 
 all the bounds of bliss — [tutti i termini della 
 beatudine}. For the first time her voice sounded 
 in his ears and so intoxicated was he by the 
 sweetness of it that he retired to his own cham- 
 ber and dreamed that a marvellous vision ap- 
 peared to him — a cloud of fire colour wherein 
 he discerned the shape of his Lord, that is Love, 
 who in his arms bore the Lady of the Salutation, 
 sleeping, wrapt in a diaphanous robe of crimson 
 cloth. In one hand he held the youth's heart 
 all on fire and he awoke her that slept and pre- 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 63 
 
 vailed upon her to eat it and she ate it timidly. 
 Then the lord of fearful aspect changed from 
 joy to lament and as he wept he gathered up the 
 lady into his arms and went away with her 
 toward heaven." 
 
 From that moment, as expressed in the, to us, 
 grotesque image of his lady devouring his flam- 
 ing heart, love wastes his flesh; his appearance 
 becomes grievous to his friends, nor could they 
 doubt, since they saw so many signs of love in 
 his face that it was love that was wasting him; 
 but when they asked "for whom" he smiled 
 and left them, as he left us, to conjecture. It 
 certainly seems absurd that he should have seen 
 the face of a girl who lived a few doors from him 
 only twice in eighteen years and only once heard 
 her voice. 
 
 But Dante's face, wasted by his youthful 
 passion for this idealised love, appeals to our 
 imagination. Would that we had it painted 
 by Giotto! 
 
 There are many paintings in words which 
 present Beatrice and her friends to us and they 
 must all be interpreted to the eye in the style of 
 the mediaeval painters — a style that one per- 
 haps grows to like. The environment is quite 
 
64 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 certain to be ecclesiastical. He prefers to use a 
 circumlocution for church. He calls it the 
 place where are heard words concerning the 
 Queen of Glory and where he could behold his 
 bliss. This circumlocution is characteristic of 
 Dante's prose style. He never calls Florence 
 by name but rather speaks of it as the city where 
 my lady was stationed by the all High Father 
 — la cittade ove la mia donna fu posta daW 
 Altissimo Sire — or as the city where his gen- 
 tilissima donna was born, lived and died. 
 
 In this church, between Dante and Beatrice, 
 sat a gentle lady of very pleasing aspect who 
 often looked at him, wondering that he should 
 gaze at her; and many persons noticed it and 
 supposed that the unnamed lady was the one 
 who was wasting his life. So he allows her to be 
 the screen of the truth and for months and years 
 he dissembles, even writing rhymes for her, so as 
 to keep his secret the more to himself. 
 
 Afterward he tells her how the Lord of the 
 Angels summoned to his glory a young lady of 
 the city of most gentle appearance who had been 
 exceedingly beautiful; and he beheld her 
 body lying without its soul in the midst of 
 many ladies who were weeping piteously. And 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 65 
 
 because she had once been in the company of the 
 lady of his heart he writes or devises two 
 sonnets as a guerdon to her. 
 
 Then follow more visions: he goes on a 
 journey and his most sweet lord appears to his 
 imagination like a pilgrim meanly clad, out of 
 spirits and gazing on a fair, rapid and most 
 pellucid stream which flows along by the road 
 where he is walking. 
 
 But when he returns to Florence he takes 
 another lady for his screen and shield and 
 cultivates her so assiduously that men impute 
 vice to him ; and his most gentle Beatrice, hear- 
 ing the injurious gossip, when she sees him in 
 a public place denies him her most sweet salute 
 in which lay all his bliss. He retires to his 
 chamber and after many tears and lamentations 
 falls asleep. Love, whom he had called to his 
 aid, appears like a youth clad in purest white 
 and with grave and thoughtful face. The 
 poet takes the occasion to compose another 
 sonnet or rather, this time, a hallata which is 
 to go forth on Love's trace and explain to the 
 lady the reasons for his apparent faithlessness. 
 
 He next sees Beatrice at a wedding and the 
 sight of her robs him of all his senses, even the 
 
66 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 spirit of sight; and the ladies that are present 
 beholding him as he leans against a mural 
 painting, make mock at him together with 
 Beatrice. "Ah!" he cries, "if this lady 
 realised my state she would not make sport of 
 me: she would rather have pity on me." 
 
 One more picture from "La Vita Nuova." 
 He had been ill many days, su^ering grievous 
 anguish, and on the ninth day, as he thinks of 
 the slight tenure of his life, it suddenly occurs 
 to him that "gentlest Beatrice" must also some 
 time die. Then bewilderment overcomes him, 
 he closes his eyes in a sort of frenzy; ladies with 
 dishevelled hair appear to him and say: 
 "Thou too must die," and then strange faces 
 horrible to behold come and say: "Thou art 
 dead ! " 
 
 Then he knows not where he is and it seems 
 to him that the ladies with the dishevelled hair 
 pass by piteously weeping and the sun grows 
 dark and the stars change colour and, as it were, 
 weep and the birds as they fly fall dead and 
 mighty earthquakes occur. And a certain 
 friend comes to him saying: "Dost thou not 
 know? Thine admirable lady is departed 
 from the world!" And as with streaming eyes 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 67 
 
 he looks toward heaven it seems to him he sees 
 a multitude of angels returning thither, before 
 them a cloudlet of exceeding whiteness and they 
 sing gloriously Osanna in Excelsis. 
 
 So strong is his errant fancy that it shows 
 to him the lady dead as she lay, her head 
 covered with a white veil and face seeming to 
 say: "Now do I behold the beginning of peace." 
 It is only a vision but so real that he wakes 
 with a sound of grievous lamentation and calls 
 on Death to take him away. And a young and 
 gentle lady, of nearest kinship, supposing it is 
 the pain of his infirmity, weeps for fear and the 
 other ladies in the chamber send her away and 
 try to comfort him. 
 
 The Beatrice of the Vita Nuova died, accord- 
 ing to Dante, on the ninth of June, 1290, and he 
 vowed that if his life should be prolonged to say 
 of her what was never said of any woman. He 
 was to go to behold the glory of the lady of his 
 soul, that blessed Beatrice who in heaven 
 looked on the face of Him qui est per omnia 
 saecula benedictus! 
 
 No modern critical spirit must breathe on 
 this ideal picture of a mediaeval Love. The 
 tears and the sentimentality, the burning hearts 
 
68 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 and the white-robed angels, the illness and the 
 secrecy hiding or rather one might say betraying 
 the affliction which was a delight were all a part 
 of the phenomenon. In Florence where, accord- 
 ing to the Troubadours, "joy and song and love 
 were perfect and adorned," such a celebration 
 of a heart-passion was natural and comprehen- 
 sible. In June, 1283, a thousand or more men 
 all clad in white gowns, with a leader called the 
 Lord of Love, gave themselves up to games and 
 sports and dancing and processions through 
 the city with trumpets and other instruments 
 of gaiety, and the festival lasted for two 
 whole months and was the most famous ever 
 held in Tuscany. 
 
 When a city or a nation suddenly awakens to 
 a new life, intellectual or moral or religious or 
 artistic, there is likely to be an excess of joy in 
 all manifestations of the revival. In the early 
 days of this country a new religious effervescence 
 was called by the name of enthusiasm. Dante 
 lived in the Florence of the thirteenth century : 
 what splendours of fresh architecture, of noble 
 painting, of rich sculptures must have delighted 
 his eyes ! What generous rivalry of letters and 
 song! The " Purgatory " betrays his admiration 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 69 
 
 for the plastic arts; everywhere we find evi- 
 dences of his love for music. 
 
 Nothing of political life, no reflection of the 
 unsafer passions that were gathering for fatal 
 explosion are to be found in the Vita Nuova. 
 It is a simple love story with no plot: a succes- 
 sion of visions and love-poems, sonnets and 
 canzoni, strung together with quaint and 
 curiously symbolical artifice. One must under- 
 stand the ancient significance of numbers to 
 realize how the figure nine rules the destiny of 
 Beatrice. The mystic three and one and three 
 thrice multiplied plus one, making the so- 
 called perfect number, regulate the arrange- 
 ment of the poems, longer and shorter. Both 
 Dante and Beatrice are nine or on the verge of 
 nine when they first meet and twice nine when 
 they meet again and the date of the fair lady's 
 death is the ninth of June. 
 
 The "Divine Comedy" consists of three parts, 
 aggregating a hundred cantos. Hell is laid out in 
 nine circles, Purgatory in seven besides the Ante- 
 Purgatory and the Terrestrial Paradise; Para- 
 dise has nine heavens. There are three wild 
 beasts, three blessed women, three guides, three 
 faces of Lucifer; even the verse is the terza rima. 
 
70 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Yet in spite of the artificiality and the laboured 
 puns and conceits that are lavished in descrip- 
 tions, in spite of the circumlocutions and the 
 lack of definiteness, in spite of the symbolism 
 and the allegory, Dante's Beatrice stands out 
 as one of the most living and natural maidens 
 in the vporld: real, because she appeals pe- 
 culiarly to the imagination and therefore — 
 because painted with the few masterly touches 
 of the poet — most picturesque and beautiful. 
 No details encumber the free play of fancy 
 and therefore she is a maiden for all hearts to 
 love whether depicted under the stiff draperies 
 of a modern Prerafaelite or in the realism of a 
 Dresden Koch — so pure, so chaste, so beauti- 
 ful, so divine ! 
 
 Gaspary sees in her the ideal of platonic love; 
 but aside from the probability that Dante was 
 wholly unacquainted with what we understand 
 by platonic love, it seems to me that the utter 
 one-sidedness of the passion is fatal to any such 
 ideal : a platonic affection is a mutual exchange 
 of love with the idea of possession excluded. 
 The woman has the same interest in the man as 
 the man has in the woman. Sex is ignored. 
 But in Dante's case Beatrice is worshipped from 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 71 
 
 afar and, dying, becomes the regnant influence 
 of his hfe. Had it been a vulgar earthly passion, 
 had he dreamed of a union other than spiritual, 
 the symbolical significance of the Vita Nuova 
 would have been an absurdity. This lofty 
 purity is what sets this golden book studded 
 with gems above the Song of Solomon. 
 
 When we go from the Vita Nuova to the 
 great Vision, we are assuredly in the domain of 
 the symbolical. We may regard Dante him- 
 self in this marvellous journey under a twofold 
 aspect: he represents humanity, he is the poet 
 of the Vita Nuova. In either case Beatrice is 
 something more concrete than abstract theo- 
 logy or even divine wisdom: she is abstract 
 woman, she is also perhaps the Saving Church. 
 But to us she is interesting only as the one 
 woman, only as a picturesque figure, as seen 
 by the poet as a man and not as a mediaeval 
 theologian. 
 
 It will be remembered that Dante in middle 
 age — as he expresses it in his characteristic 
 circumlocution, nell mezzo del cammin di nostra 
 vita — finds himself wandering in a dark 
 forest, prevented by three wild beasts from 
 climbing the mountain that should bring him 
 
72 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 to the Terrestrial Paradise; the first is a beauti- 
 ful spotted panther, variously interpreted as 
 meaning Florence or the sin of incontinence; 
 the second is a rabid lion that makes the very 
 air affrighted, this signifying France or pride 
 or ambition or violence; and the third a lean 
 she-wolf that seems burdened with hungry 
 cravings, meaning Rome or fraud, or the 
 avarice of the Guelfs or the hatred of Dante's 
 enemies. Dante himself vouchsafes no ex- 
 planation and the range of choice is very wide. 
 
 As he slowly retreats into the pass that had 
 filled the lake of his heart with terror he beholds 
 one who through long silence seemed feeble or 
 hoarse. It is Vergil who has come to rescue 
 him. Vergil throughout the Middle Ages is 
 regarded as a powerful magician, a necromancer, 
 the pagan prophet of Christianity. To Dante 
 he is the honour and light of poetry, his master 
 and his author, the one from whom alone he 
 took the beautiful style — lo hello stile — that 
 had done him honour, but in the mystic sense 
 the type of right reason. 
 
 As Vergil proceeds to lead Dante through the 
 eternal place where he should hear the despairing 
 shrieks of those ancient spirits of woe who cry 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 73 
 
 out for the second death, he relates how the 
 rescue came about: 
 
 "I was among those that dwell suspended in 
 limbo, betwixt hell and heaven; and a lady 
 blessed and beautiful \beata e bella] called me 
 and I besought her to command. Her eyes 
 shone brighter than the Sun or Venus and sweet 
 and low she began in her own tongue with her 
 angelic voice." 
 
 Here, by the way, is the excuse for Dante's 
 composing the poem in Italian instead of Latin 
 as at first he intended: the vernacular was 
 vastly richer in poetic possibilities, for a living 
 literature must have a spoken language as its 
 organ and Beatrice's own tongue was the 
 melodious Tuscan, young and beautiful daugh- 
 ter of Vergil's Latin. Those words of Vergil 
 give to our ears the incomparable music of its 
 form, so hopelessly beyond the power of any 
 translation, prose or rhythmical, to express: — 
 
 E donna mi chiamo beata e bella 
 Tal che di comandar to la richiesi. 
 
 Lucevan gli occhi suoi piu che la Stella 
 E cominciommi a dir soave e plana 
 
 Con angelica voce in sua favella. 
 
 Beatrice tells the courteous Mantuan how, as 
 she was sitting with the ancient Rachel, Lucia 
 
74 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 (by whom the commentators understand Dante 
 to mean illuminating grace) comes as a mes- 
 senger from a gentle lady in heaven who 
 breaks stern Judgment and disarms Justice, 
 (this being either the Virgin Mary or the Divine 
 Goodness personified), and tells her of the 
 desperate strait of him who for love of her had 
 deserted the vulgar herd and was now combating 
 death beside the flood of passions and political 
 tumults more stormy than the sea. 
 
 And Beatrice tells him how, swifter than men 
 seek their advantage and flee their hurt, she had 
 come down from that seat of beatitude, and as 
 she said it, weeping she turned her lucent eyes 
 upon him. 
 
 Is not that a picture to linger in the memory ? 
 Those two gracious figures, one of course in the 
 Roman toga, the type of the noble Roman who 
 used to meet Augustus at the villa of Maecenas, 
 the other the beautiful Florentine Donna, the 
 type of all that was loveliest and best in Italian 
 womanhood, dressed, though a spirit, in robes 
 such as she was wont to wear at Florentine 
 festivals. 
 
 It is the only pleasant picture that relieves 
 the gloom of hell unless one — as one must 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 75 
 
 indeed — except the description of Limbo. Dante 
 and his serene Guide are welcomed there 
 by four great shades — quattro grand' ombre — 
 Homer, sword in hand, lord of the rest, the 
 sovereign poet; Horace the Satirist, Ovid and 
 Lucan; and they welcome Dante as the sixth. 
 And together the fair school of that lord of 
 loftiest song pass on until they reach the foot 
 of a noble castle seven times girt by lofty walls, 
 defended round about by a beautiful streamlet. 
 They ford it as if it had been dry land and 
 through seven gates enter upon a meadow of 
 fresh verdure — prato di fresca verdura — where 
 were people with slow and serious eyes, with 
 great authority in their looks, who spake seldom 
 but with sweet voices. 
 
 In an open place, lofty and luminous, were 
 gathered all these great spirits on the enamelled 
 green: Hector and Aeneas, Caesar in armour 
 with his falcon eyes and Aristotle the Master of 
 those that know, seated in the midst of the 
 filosofica famiglia, all of whom looked up to 
 him, all did him honour; and nearest to him 
 Socrates and Plato and then all the pagan 
 poets and great men, worthy of heaven indeed, 
 but through fatal ignorance deprived of that 
 
76 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 higher felicity but not unhappy, knowing not 
 of the higher heavens for those that believed. 
 
 Out from that calm and quiet retreat Vergil 
 leads Dante into the air that trembles, into the 
 darkness that stifles and they begin the dread 
 descent through the spiral circles narrowing 
 down into the awful pits where the Damned are 
 forever punished. 
 
 Dante has been criticised for his cruel imagi- 
 nation of the pangs of hell. But he only followed 
 the fashion of his day and generation, he only 
 accepted the faith of his Church. Moreover, 
 viewed symbolically, each punishment is seen 
 to be but the logical outcome of the special sin : 
 blasphemers are seen lying prone in the desert of 
 sand beaten by a rain of fire, their helplessness 
 before God typified in their attitude; in the third 
 pit those guilty of simony, who sold the precious 
 pearl for worldly possessions, who sought the bad, 
 who trod the good under foot, have now dark- 
 ness for light, bitter for sweet, and are depicted 
 with their heads and bodies in the dirt and their 
 legs in the air. Thieves are changed into ser- 
 pents, church-robbers, like Vanni Fucci, adding 
 sacrilege to theft are burnt to all eternity in a 
 consuming fire, ever sinking to ashes and rising 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE ^^ 
 
 again like the phoenix. Mohammed, who rent 
 the Christian Church, is split from chin to 
 rump, while those guilty of cold treachery, 
 unwarmed by a spark of feeling, are in the 
 lowest deeps where the tears freeze in their 
 eyes and they are themselves rigid with never- 
 yielding frost. 
 
 In the eighth song, while they are crossing the 
 turbid waters of the Styx in the ancient boat of 
 Phlegyas, a soul full of filthy mud stretches out 
 his two hands to them. Vergil thrusts him 
 disdainfully back saying: "Away, with the 
 other dogs" — Via casta con gli altri cani — and 
 to Dante, after expressing a blessing on the 
 mother who bore him, he expresses all his scorn 
 for that persona orgogliosa — that haughty per- 
 sonage who together with proud kings like swine 
 in the vile filth are now wallowing. 
 
 Dante replies: "Master, I should be full 
 fain to see him swallowed up in this mire 
 before we depart from the lake."* Vergil 
 assures him that it is fitting he should have 
 such a wish gratified, and a moment later 
 he beholds him in such torment under the 
 
 * Maestro, molio sarei vago 
 Di vederlo attufare in questa broda 
 Prima che not uscissimo del lago* 
 
78 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 attentions of the fangosi genii — the filthy tribe 
 — that he praises and thanks God for it. 
 Thus Dante revenges himself on Filippo Argenti 
 whom he calls lo fiorentino spirito bizarro, where 
 the strange word bizarro seems to mean "of 
 wily but inexorable temper." 
 
 The most familiar picture from the "Inferno" 
 is that of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo, her 
 lover, borne swiftly on the murky air — aer 
 nero — like starlings, hither, thither, up and 
 down — di qua, di 11, di giii, di su — so light 
 upon the wind. And when for one brief moment 
 the wind is silent come those million-times 
 cited lines: 
 
 Nessun maggior dolore 
 
 Che ricordarsi del tempo felice 
 
 Nella miseria. 
 
 But are they true — those words so entirely 
 contrary to those others: 
 
 'T is better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all ? 
 
 If Paolo and Francesca loved guiltily and were 
 punished in accordance with the nature of their 
 crime, was not most of the bitterness removed 
 by the fact that they were at least together through 
 the long aeons of measureless time ^ Or can 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 79 
 
 we read into the punishment the quite modern, 
 idea that their enforced companionship was a 
 greater torment than separation would have 
 been ? In accordance with the materialism 
 of the "Divine Comedy" the physical agonies of 
 the damned were even keener than they would 
 have been in the flesh. But, evidently, Dante, 
 whose stern being was nevertheless attuned to 
 all the harmonies of love, felt deep sorrow for 
 the hapless pair who though technically guilty, 
 have more than any historic lovers carried 
 the sympathy of the world. The few lines 
 in which the story is told contain the quint- 
 essence of a tragedy which has been elaborated 
 into long dramas, has been presented on the 
 lyric stage and has inspired the rhapsodies of 
 the greatest musicians. Nowhere is Dante's 
 art more admirably illustrated than in that 
 final line of Francesca's pathetic explanation 
 where never oijce she complains of Fate or hints 
 that the "punishment is undeserved. Having 
 told of the temptation and of the fatal kiss she 
 hints at the jealous husband's vengeance in 
 these words : Qu^i giorno piii non vi leggemmo 
 avante — "We read no further In the book that 
 day." 
 
8o A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Among the multitude of picturesque though 
 horrible details in the " Inferno " perhaps the ride 
 of the two Poets on the huge shoulders of the 
 monster Geryon from the seventh circle — of 
 those that have done violence to Art — down to 
 the eighth where Pope Nicholas III suffers, is 
 the most striking: We see the huge dragon 
 stretching out his long tail, gathering in the air 
 with his paws and moving his mighty vans. 
 "I was in the air on every side," says Dante. 
 " Every sight vanished save that of the dragon. 
 It went away, swimming slowly, slowly wheeled 
 and descended, but I perceived it not save that 
 the wind blew on my face and from below." 
 
 Every detail fills the mind with the satisfac- 
 tion of vision: it is a triumph of description. 
 
 Another picture from the " Inferno " which 
 haunts the memory is that of the monarch of 
 the dolorous realm with his three faces, red, 
 yellow and black, with his six enormous wings 
 like those of a bat and flapping forth three 
 winds congealing all Cocytus : 
 
 "With his six eyes he weeps and over his 
 three chins trickle the tears and the bloody 
 slaver, while in his three mouths he is crunching 
 with his teeth, like a hemp-masher, Judas 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 8i 
 
 Iscariot, Brutus andCassius" — the three cham- 
 pion traitors of the world. 
 
 Tutto avem veduto — they had seen it all. 
 They have now reached the centre of the earth 
 which according to the Ptolemaic system is also 
 the centre of the Universe, and when at last they 
 pass through the hidden passage to return to the 
 bright world, they behold through a round 
 aperture the beauteous things that the heavens 
 bear and once more look upon the stars. It has 
 been a long hard journey for only four and 
 twenty hours. The rest of his pilgrimage takes 
 much more time to accomplish and seems to 
 offer far less in the way of picturesque detail. 
 The descriptions are more transcendental and 
 offer less occasion to the artist that would at- 
 tempt to illustrate the poem. The concrete 
 shapes, though so horrible, that swarm through 
 the pages of the " Inferno," give place to bril- 
 liant lights, to angelic songs. 
 
 Exquisitely beautiful and pictorial is the be- 
 ginning of the " Purgatory." At the very first 
 we have the atmosphere like soft Oriental 
 sapphire; the fair planet that incites to love 
 makes all the East smile, the heavens seem to 
 rejoice in the four stars — symbols of the four 
 
82 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 cardinal virtues. Prudence, Temperance, Forti- 
 tude and Justice; and the contrast to the fearful 
 region which we have just left makes all the 
 more vivid the beauty of the hopeful landscape 
 which is introductory to the region of purgative 
 pains. 
 
 After speech with the younger Cato who 
 appears like an aged man with a reverend white 
 beard and his face illumined by the rays of the 
 four holy stars, they pass across the plain until 
 they behold the glittering sea — il tremolar della 
 marina, and soon they come to the shores of 
 those desert waters which man crosses only 
 once. How beautiful is the approach of the 
 swift boat — preceded by a light swifter than 
 aught earthly flies, and guided by the angel of 
 God, the Celestial Pilot in the stern and a con- 
 voy of a hundred spirits singing together with 
 one voice! 
 
 The description of the gate of Purgatory is 
 fine with its symbolical three steps: the first of 
 white marble, mirror-like, polished; the second 
 of rugged rock, rough, coarse-grained and 
 cracked; the third of fiery porphyry like blood 
 that gushes from the vein ; and the silent warder 
 dressed in ashen gray standing on the topmost 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 83 
 
 step with naked sword reflecting dazzling rays 
 and holding the silver and the golden key. • 
 
 Then when they have entered they pass the 
 walls sculptured with a multitude of intaglios 
 each so lovingly described. It is interesting to 
 note that Dante expressed his belief that Poly- 
 kleitos, the Greek sculptor, was able to surpass 
 Nature in his art and he practically recommends 
 the practice of adorning churches with repre- 
 sentations of Bibhcal scenes so that those unable 
 to read might through their eyes win instruction. 
 
 Vergil accompanies Dante through most of 
 the circles of Purgatory and when at last the 
 seven P's, standing for the peccavi of the seven 
 mortal sins, have been cleared from the poet's 
 brow Vergil pronounces his will free, upright 
 and sane — Lthero, drttto, sano e tuo arhitrio — 
 and he is ready to enter into the terrestrial 
 paradise. 
 
 It is supposed that Dante got his inspiration 
 for the scenery of the earthly paradise from his 
 memory of Ravenna where he lived two years — 
 the heavenly forest dense and green — la divina 
 foresta spessa e viva — through which he makes 
 his way, the soil everywhere breathing fragrance, 
 the wind making low music in the pines, his brow 
 
84 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 cooled by the soft breeze — blowing toward the 
 west, the river of clear waters with grasses bend- 
 ing down to meet their own reflections, the 
 varied May blossoms full of dew and amid them 
 the fair lady, Matilda, the type of virtuous 
 activity, who appears solitary singing like a 
 maid in love — cantando come donna innamo- 
 rata. She gathers the flowers that paint her 
 pathway: — 
 
 Then as fair lady moving in the dance 
 
 Turns with her soles just lifted from the ground 
 
 And scarcely one foot forward doth advance. 
 
 She among red and golden flowers turned round 
 
 To me. 
 
 She leads him forward and exclaims "My 
 brother look and listen" — Frate mio, guarda e 
 ascolta. A sweet melody runs through the 
 luminous air; under the green branches is seen 
 something like a blazing fire and the sweet 
 sound becomes a song. A fair array brighter 
 than the full moon in March approaches : there 
 are people clad in spotless white; the water of 
 the stream grows resplendent; flamelets like 
 streaming pennants mark the air with seven 
 broad zones of colour like a rainbow and 
 four and twenty elders crowned with fleur de 
 lys walk two by two singing "Blessed art 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 85 
 
 thou among the daughters of Adam and blessed 
 forever be thy beauties." 
 
 These are followed by four living creatures 
 — animali — crowned with bright green leaf- 
 age, each feathered with six wings, argus- 
 eyed. Then comes a triumphal two-wheeled 
 chariot drawn by a gryphon — half eagle, 
 half lion, typifying the dual nature of Christ: 
 the bird-members gold, the rest vermilion 
 and white. Three ladies, representing (it is 
 supposed) Faith, Hope and Charity, one, 
 ruddy as fire, one like bright emerald, one 
 white as new-fallen snow, come dancing about 
 the chariot on the right; on the left are four in 
 festal array, dressed in imperial purple; these 
 are the four cardinal virtues and the colour of 
 their garb typifies their dominance over human 
 life. These take their step from their leader. 
 Prudence, whose three eyes look at the past, 
 the present and the future. Then come two 
 old men and four others humble in appear- 
 ance, representing and personifying the latter 
 books of the Testament. They are robed 
 in white and are crowned with roses. And 
 a hundred voices sing Benedictus qui vents 
 and those lovely words from the Aeneid, 
 
86 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 manihus o date lilia plenis — "scatter lilies in 
 handfuls." 
 
 And now to Dante's streaming eyes appears, 
 within a cloud of flowers falling within and 
 without the chariot, a lady with an olive-wreath, 
 symbol of peace and wisdom, above a white 
 veil and robed in colour of living flame under a 
 green mantle : the three colours of Faith, Charity 
 and Hope. Vergil suddenly vanishes. The 
 lady hid by the veil and circled by the leaf of 
 Minerva haughty in her manner cries: "Behold 
 me! Beatrice am I" — Guardami hen: hen son, 
 hen son Beatrice! With the sternest reproach in 
 her voice she asks how he dares to approach 
 the mountain. And his eyes cast down see 
 his own shame reflected in the clear crystal 
 stream. Then she grows silent and the angels 
 sing in Latin: "In thee, O Lord, do I put 
 my trust." And their compassion for him 
 causes the ice around his heart to melt and the 
 breath and water with anguish pour from his 
 breast through his mouth and through his eyes. 
 
 But when she has sufficiently humiliated him 
 and filled him with contrition, Matilda drags 
 him into the stream and then the beautiful lady 
 opens her arms, clasps his head and causes him 
 
DANTE AND THE PICTURESQUE 87 
 
 to swallow some of the water which brings 
 forgetfulness of sins, and when he had thus been 
 bathed she brings him within the minuet of the 
 four Beautiful Ones — the cardinal virtues, and 
 each of them covers him with her arm. 
 
 All this richness of symbolical but picturesque 
 imagery would form a panoramic frieze such as 
 it would seem an Abbey might take delight 
 in realising. 
 
 The "Paradiso" offers far less of satisfying 
 illustrative material. One reads on and on, 
 as in a mist of indefinite light and with in- 
 effable sounds of music ringing in the ears. 
 All one feels is that Dante is with his thrice- 
 sanctified mistress in bliss unspeakable. One 
 could not depict with success the strange bodiless 
 dance of the two companies of saints so elabo- 
 rately compared to the marshalling of the stars 
 of heaven. No artist could satisfactorily portray 
 such supernal flights of the poet's imagination. 
 No, to find fit and agreeable pictures one must 
 travel back into the "Purgatory" and there occa- 
 sionally will come across a hint of a landscape 
 such as the patient copyer of mediaeval missals 
 loved to introduce into his illuminations, such 
 as this for instance in the seventh canto : 
 
88 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Twixt hill and plain a winding path did trend 
 
 Which led within the bosom of the vale, 
 To where the ledge doth more than half descend. 
 
 Gold, silver, crimson, ceruse splendour pale. 
 The Indian wood so lucent and serene. 
 
 Fresh emerald, when its outer coat doth scale. 
 Placed in that vale the plants and flowers between. 
 
 Would each and all be found surpassed in hue. 
 As less by greater overpowered is seen. 
 
 Alas, that no translation can do justice to the 
 music of that exquisite verse! Dante had all 
 the mediaeval delight in green. The two angels 
 with the two pointless swords that appear in the 
 seventh book of the " Purgatory" are dressed in 
 green like new born leaves, and spread green 
 wings. That does not comport with our usual 
 idea of angels but possibly amid the throng of 
 dazzlingly white spirits the eye might find 
 infinite rest in verdant-winged angels. 
 
 No one can doubt that Dante was an artist. 
 To say nothing of his mastery of poetic form, his 
 loving reference to colour and to plastic creation 
 shows how thoroughly permeated he was with 
 the spirit that at that time was beginning to 
 spread through Italy and was to bring forth such 
 wonderful paintings, statues and architecture. 
 The obligation of art to the great poet has 
 never been sufficiently realised; it never can be. 
 
Ill 
 
 LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 
 I 
 
 npHE sun of Poesy shone bright on the 
 -*■ lovely lands of Provence. Numberless 
 Troubadours went wandering through Europe 
 — gay, vagrant bards, furnished with lute and 
 voice, hovering Hke musical birds in the per- 
 fumed atmosphere of luxurious courts and 
 restlessly enjoying their chance existences. 
 
 Thus Pierre Vidal is found in Spain and 
 Hungary and the Far East. In 1189 he was 
 with the Marchese Bonifacio in Montferrat 
 where he delighted the nobles with his praises 
 of a fair Lombarda. In 1205 he was in the 
 Island of Malta with Count Enrico. Rambauld 
 de Vaquieras also came to Montferrat and so 
 won favour that the Marquis made him a che- 
 valier and brother-in-arms. He sang of Boni- 
 facio's sister or daughter, with whom he had very 
 intimate relations. In 1194 he went to Sicily 
 with the Marquis whose life he saved in a battle 
 near Messina. In 1202 he went with him to 
 89 
 
90 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Jerusalem where five years later he perished by 
 his side. These are only two out of number- 
 less examples of similar relationships. 
 
 The Troubadours taught their art to the 
 cultured inhabitants of upper Italy, where 
 Provencal became an almost twin language 
 with Tuscan. Princes and ladies caught the 
 trick of song. Beatrice d'Este, the daughter 
 of Azzo VI. and Emilia of Ravenna, sang of 
 chivalrous love. 
 
 Not merely of love did the Troubadours sing: 
 they took active part in politics, choosing sides 
 in the great conflicts between the Guelfs and the 
 Ghibellines, urging Emperors to greater zeal 
 against proud Milan or Genova la superha. 
 
 Uc de Saint Circ, in a poem addressed to 
 Count Guido Guerra and other Italian Guelfs, 
 displays the bitterest hatred against Frederic 
 the Heretic, threatens his supporters with mis- 
 fortunes and urges Francis and the Church to a 
 crusade against the Empire, "for the infidel 
 should have no land." 
 
 Then if ever in the history of the world a 
 single song was worth more than the ablest 
 Latin pamphlet. 
 
 If the Italians wrote sometimes in Proven9al, 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 91 
 
 Rambauld de Vaquieras himself at least twice 
 composed Italian verse. In one song he makes 
 a beautiful Genoese speak in her own dialect, 
 and these verses are regarded as among the 
 most ancient in Italian: they must have been 
 written before 1200, for about that time he left 
 Italy never to return. 
 
 The dialect of Northern Italy being not so 
 very different from Provencal, the imitators 
 seemed not to think of raising their own tongue 
 to the dignity of a poetic function; in copying 
 they copied both the model and the language in 
 which the model was composed. 
 
 The most celebrated of the Italian Trouba- 
 dours was Sordello of Mantua, who is praised 
 by Dante in his treatise of "Popular Eloquence," 
 and, in the sixth and succeeding cantos of the 
 "Purgatory" is transfigured as the type of gen- 
 erous patriotic pride. He wrote the "Treasure of 
 Treasures," but his works are Proven9al if his 
 fame is Italian. 
 
 Curiously, but at the same time naturally 
 enough, Sicily was where Italian poetry first 
 began. Northern Italy was too near Marseilles, 
 celebrated by Raimon de Tors as the abode of 
 valour, courtesy, love, song and pleasure; Cen- 
 
92 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 tral Italy had no splendid courts, but in Sicily 
 still lingered the beneficent effects of the pre- 
 ceding Arab civilisation, and Federigo II. en- 
 deavoured to maintain and even enhance these 
 conditions. He was in every way a remarkable 
 man: interested in science and literature, 
 excelling all his contemporaries in culture and 
 statesmanship. He founded the University of 
 Naples in 1224, collected Arabic and Greek 
 manuscripts and had them translated. He 
 introduced Aristotle to Italy; rhetoric flour- 
 ished at his court. He had his faults; if he fa- 
 voured reform it was because he hated the Papal 
 power, but he burnt heretics because he saw in 
 them dangers to his state. The Papal party 
 declared that he denied the immortality of the 
 soul, and Dante placed him in hell as a heretic 
 and atheist in spite of the admiration which he 
 felt for him. He tolerated Mussulmans; he was 
 on friendly terms with the Sultan of Egypt and 
 he followed Oriental usages in maintaining 
 an extensive harem. Indeed, he was called the 
 Baptised Sultan of Sicily, and he deserved the 
 epithet by reason of his love of wisdom, his 
 despotic powers so strangely mixed with mag- 
 nanimity, and his brutal sensuality. 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 93 
 
 Though under his immediate predecessors 
 Arabic poetry had flourished in Sicily, its in- 
 fluence entirely vanished under the Provenfal 
 poetry of love. Federigo, his son Enzo, King 
 of Sardinia, his favourite statesman. Pier della 
 Vigna of Capua, all wrote verse under this 
 influence. The life of Della Vigna, even to its 
 tragic ending in 1249, ^^ one long romance. 
 
 But otherwise little is known of the Sicilian 
 school except their names and the places from 
 which they came. As their verse was founded 
 on Provencal models, it lacked freshness and 
 originality. The new language seemed to 
 exert no vivifying influences. They all sang 
 chivalrous love — a love which, tested by a 
 standard of purity, was far from golden. The 
 truth about the Troubadours can hardly be told 
 unless in French. Yet this chivalrous love, as 
 expressed in song, represents humble and sup- 
 pliant adoration: service and obedience are its 
 keynotes. The Troubadour is unworthy; the 
 lady is cruel and causes him to languish in vain; 
 his sorrows bring him even to death, but he will 
 never cease to love her, since from love are 
 derived all valour and virtue. He must, therefore, 
 persevere; faithful service may help him to 
 
94 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 reach the summit of his desires: suffering and 
 death will give him honour and glory, since he 
 dies for the nohilissima donna. 
 
 In Provence this ideal of love, artificial as it 
 seems, was indigenous, springing from a real 
 condition of things, from an actual state of 
 society. It had a certain amount of warmth 
 and sincerity, delicacy, elegance. But trans- 
 planted into Italy, after it had outlived its full 
 maturity and was already beginning to wane, 
 it bore very unsatisfactory fruit. The im- 
 ported thoughts and sentiments corresponded 
 to no real life: Italy, Sicily, had no feudal 
 chivalry. Their festivals and tourneys were 
 stage celebrations. What did Federigo with 
 his seraglio, guarded by eunuchs, know or care 
 for an ideal love ? What did he do for the once 
 powerful nobility of the Island but hold it under 
 his iron hand and do his best to destroy it ? 
 
 The ancient Sicilian lyric, of which he wrote 
 no small number of delightful examples, is there- 
 fore marked by what Gaspary calls a pallid 
 conventionality. Madonna is always the very 
 image of abstract perfection, without life and 
 without movement. She is the flower of women, 
 the fragrant rose; she is the mirror of beauty, like 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 95 
 
 the morning star; her splendour excels that of 
 pearls and precious stones; all excellent quali- 
 ties belong to her and from her are derived all 
 the prizes that poets boast. Love is an abstrac- 
 tion, a personification, a being w^ith whom the 
 poet talks and to whom he confesses his woes. 
 Colourless, stiff and immobile are the relations 
 of the lovers in all these conventional poems. 
 Madonna is forever cold; the suitor is sighing 
 out his vows, humbling himself in the dust 
 scarcely daring to hope; in view of his undying 
 love will she not mitigate his torment ? Here is an 
 example from the works of the Emperor Federigo : 
 
 Oh give me courage, sweetest lady mine, 
 
 Whose heart before thee humbly doth incline. 
 
 And while I bow what right have I 
 
 To such a wished-for gift of love. 
 
 Save that I hope and still shall hope. 
 
 Save that belief is strong in me 
 
 That joy will make my heart beat high 
 
 That hope in thee alone doth move. 
 
 That without thee I blindly grope 
 
 And none on earth would serve but thee. 
 
 And when thy lovely face I see. 
 
 My dearest love I feel great joy. 
 
 I trust thou knowest no annoy 
 
 But rather pleasure in my service free. 
 
 Oh thou who art the flower of womankind. 
 
 Most perfect, most delightful, most refined I 
 
96 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Here are the well-remembered commonplaces; 
 and in others of the same school one constantly 
 comes across the idea that from the beloved no 
 guerdon were better than the greatest from other 
 women. He would not be king at the cost of 
 losing her. Love is frequently depicted as a 
 fire; the lover is like gold tried in this fire. 
 Passion is the tempestuous sea. The lover's 
 kiss is conventionalised as the spear of Peleus 
 whose wounds can be healed only by touching 
 them again with the same deadly weapon. 
 Forever appear the old stand-bys: Paris and 
 Helen, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan and 
 Isolde. 
 
 Another characteristic is the introduction of 
 some of the fabulous animals of the Bestiaries, 
 so popular in the Middle Ages. The lover living 
 in the fire is like the salamander; the lady 
 killing with her eyes is compared to the basilisk; 
 the song of the dying swan is heard; the tiger 
 robbed of her young has her mission. The 
 panther attracting other animals by her odorous 
 breath is a type of the lady who lures by her 
 grace. 
 
 A considerable part of this conventional orna- 
 mentation is attributed to Richard de Bar- 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 97 
 
 bezien who was especially popular in Italy. 
 Yet in Sicily there was some attempt to be 
 original and to invent new images. "Water," 
 says Guido delle Colonne in one of his canzone, 
 "is only heated and not destroyed by fire be- 
 cause of the wall of the cup separating them: 
 so he himself who once had been like cold water, 
 yea, like unto ice, has been heated to the boiling 
 point by love and would have entirely eva- 
 porated had it not been for madonna." Cer- 
 tainly this making a sort of tea-kettle of his 
 inamorata is delightfully original! 
 
 In another poem the suffering lover declares 
 that just as the load-stone can attract iron only 
 because it uses air as a medium, so love ob- 
 serves that madonna is required to draw the 
 lover to himself. 
 
 The metrical form, as might be expected, 
 takes all sorts of curious conventionalities, 
 reminding one of the seventeen-syllable ^=112 
 hokku of the Japanese. The canzone con- 
 sisted of strophes of similar structure and equal 
 length, with a shorter one at the end called 
 comiato, congedo, licenza, chiusa or ritornella. 
 The art consisted in variety of accents, in choice 
 or neglect of caesural pauses, in the judicious 
 
98 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 and musical mixture of open or close vowel 
 sounds. In Italian double, or feminine, rhymes 
 prevail — the sharp masculine rhyme being almost 
 as comic to the Southern ear as the triple rhyme 
 to ours, and therefore reserved usually for 
 humorous verse. 
 
 The length of the lines varied but the most 
 prevalent were the endecasyllabic and the 
 settenario; these two were chiefly employed in 
 later times by Petrarca whose example made 
 these meters classic. 
 
 The Italian strophe was generally more com- 
 plicated than the Provencal and more rarely 
 lacks the artificial division. This consisted of 
 two parts similar in construction, called by 
 Dante pedes, and one of different form called 
 syrma. Sometimes there were four divisions: 
 three pedes and a versus. 
 
 The Proven9al was rather richer in rhymes 
 than even the Italian, and the Troubadours 
 delighted in carrying the same rhyme-scheme 
 through their poems: these were known as 
 coblas unisonans, while the Italians introduced 
 new rhymes called coblas singulares. 
 
 The sonnet arose from the tripartite strophe 
 of the canzone and in its origin is nothing more 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 99 
 
 than the singular strophe adopted by the Trouba- 
 dours under the name of coblas esparsas, espe- 
 cially designed to convey moral precepts. 
 
 The Sicilians rarely used the sonnet-form. 
 There is one by Pier della Vigna, one by King 
 Enzo, one by Mazzo Ricco and a few by lacopo 
 da Lentini. As if in atonement for this lack 
 they made use of a lyric form called Discord 
 corresponding to the Provencal Descort or Lais. 
 Here was no division into strophes. They were 
 generally very brief; and as they were probably 
 meant to be sung, not too much attention was 
 lavished on their meaning. Here is an example 
 of one and it would defy the most skilful trans- 
 lator or overscetter, as the Norwegians signi- 
 ficantly name the rash poet that tries to cross 
 the turbulent stream of poesy, for the meaning 
 is elusive and the form is vaporous; 
 
 Si mi sdura 
 Scura 
 
 Figura 
 Di quant' eo ne veto 
 Gli occhi avere 
 
 E vedere 
 
 E volere 
 E loro no disio. 
 
 It was written by lacopo da Lentini. 
 
loo A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 It is remarkable that a good deal of the Sici- 
 lian poetry is so modern in form and so free 
 from any admixture of Sicilian dialect. Some 
 theorists have argued that we have these poems 
 not as they were originally written but as later 
 translations into Tuscan. Dante praises Guido 
 delle Colonne and others of the SiciHans for 
 having risen above the vulgar vernacular and 
 made a purer and nobler language. The school 
 of Sicilian poetry ceased only about forty years 
 before his day. 
 
 It is certainly a remarkable circumstance that 
 in three great departments of literature — the 
 drama, lyric poetry and the modern novel — 
 Sicily should have played such an important 
 part. But still more remarkable is it that in at 
 least two of these departments the impulse to a 
 national literature should have come from 
 aliens and enemies. 
 
 Federigo II. and his prime minister. Pier 
 della Vigna, were foreigners both, but they lived 
 as frequently in Naples as in Palermo and thus 
 cultivated that wonderfully pure Italian which 
 so puzzles the student in that it seems to have 
 sprung almost perfect from the head of its parent 
 Latin, as Minerva is fabled to have sprung 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA loi 
 
 from the brain of Jupiter, without any visible 
 signs of a long and painful gestation. And 
 again, it is wonderful that between the day of 
 the Sicilians whose poems are the earliest known 
 and the forerunners of the great school of Tus- 
 can song, not quite a century can be reckoned. 
 One fragment attributed to Cuillo d'Alcamo men- 
 tions Saladin as living in his day and this seems 
 to place him at the end of the twelfth century — 
 about 1 193 — and Dante was banished from 
 Florence in 1202. 
 
 There is still another reason to explain the 
 exceptional purity of the Sicilian Italian of the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries and that is the 
 fact that Federigo II. attracted to his court poets 
 from many different provinces, and the elegance 
 and refinement of the society tended to smooth 
 down the crudenesses which they might have 
 brought with them. It is interesting to notice 
 how, the more nearly one approaches the poetry 
 of the people, the more simple, natural and 
 effective it becomes. The dreary convention- 
 alities disappear. The lady-love is no longer 
 cold and distant and severe; the lover no longer 
 humbles himself in the dust; he awakes from 
 his indolent posture of adoration, and if he mourn 
 
102 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 it is because he must leave her, though he may 
 envy his ovpn heart because that at least is left 
 in her keeping. While far away from her, in 
 camp, or on the crusade, he remembers her 
 lovely eyes — suoi bet occhi — and her bright 
 tresses — hiondi tressi. 
 
 In some cases the lady is described as descend- 
 ing from the windows of her palace and throwing 
 herself into the poet's arms. She is represented 
 with a little animation when she talks — weep- 
 ing, expostulating, using her eyes. And it is 
 undoubtedly a more honest poetry. For the 
 cold and apparently chaste verse of the Trouba- 
 dours was only a whited sepulchre; the chival- 
 rous love of the Middle Ages was fair only on 
 the outside ; the courts of honour were dens of 
 dishonour and the real truth of Feudalism can- 
 not be told. 
 
 The dramatic element that is to be detected 
 in some of the early fragments of Sicilian verse 
 is indicative of an approaching change. For 
 instance in one contrasto, or dialogue, beginning 
 Rosa fresca aulentissima — " Fresh fragrant rose 
 that bloomest in the springtime" — a man and 
 woman are represented as engaged in lively 
 conversation. He prays her to listen; she 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 103 
 
 resists. He grows petulant, she becomes angry 
 and threatens to go into a convent or kill herself. 
 
 It was long supposed that this fresh and 
 lively poem was the production of a poet en- 
 dowed with the name of Cielo dal Camo. By 
 the middle of the sixteenth century it had be- 
 come transmogrified into Cuillo — which is a 
 form of Vencenzo — d'Alcamo, and the inhabi- 
 tants of the httle city of Alcamo became so 
 proud of their supposed poet that they called a 
 piazza by his name and actually raised a monu- 
 ment to his memory. But the poet of Alcamo 
 is as great a myth as Wilhelm Tell. The story 
 proves very abundantly that the poet that writes 
 a single good lyric which appeals to the world's 
 heart and is never forgotten is more fortunate 
 than the more ambitious genius that leaves 
 behind him an epic which may be called great 
 but is never read except as a curiosity or an exer- 
 cise for students of literature. 
 
 The growth of the myth about Cuillo d'Alcamo 
 is an interesting phenomenon. It was generally 
 decided that as the young woman who is the 
 heroine of his poem speaks of the wealth of 
 the Saladin, her lover must have been a great 
 feudal baron, owner of cities and castles. Hal- 
 
104 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 lam, in his "History of the Middle Ages," says: 
 " There is not a vestige of Italian poetry older 
 than a few fragments of Cuillo d'Alcamo, a 
 Sicilian, who must have written before 1193, 
 since he mentions Saladin as then living." 
 
 Not until 1875 was it settled from internal 
 evidence of the language of the poem itself that 
 it could not have been written before 123 1 and 
 it is now regarded by the best judges as either 
 a solitary example of the ancient popular poetry 
 of Sicily or, more probably, an imitation of one 
 by a so-called cantor di piazza. In either case it 
 is far more interesting than the vast majority of 
 the poems that have come down to us and are 
 preserved in the great collection at the Vatican. 
 
 By 1266 the lyric poetry of chivalry and love 
 had ceased to produce any flowers in Sicily; but 
 Florence, which had been rapidly growing in 
 wealth and culture, was ready to adopt the beau- 
 tiful art. 
 
 The founders of this new lyric school were 
 Guido Guinicelli, Guittone d'Arezzo and Guido 
 Cavalcante. Guittone d'Arezzo composed his 
 great canzone on the Battle of Monte Aperti 
 just before the birth of Dante. It was a political 
 satire on that battle when the Guelfs of Florence 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 105 
 
 were disastrously defeated by the Sienese and 
 King Manfred's cavaliers, and the Ghibellines 
 who had been expelled two years before returned 
 in triumph. Guittone, like Dante, Brunetto 
 Latini and Petrarca's father, was a Guelf and 
 he laments the fallen city overturned by its own 
 sons and subjected to the German sword and 
 the enemies of their commune. It seems heavy 
 and prosaic to us, but it has some energy as he 
 depicts "Florence, that ever reviving flower," 
 calling in her enemies and conquered by force 
 and the Sienese when she ought to be Queen of 
 Tuscany. 
 
 All of these early versifiers borrowed phrases 
 and ideas and conventional forms of speech from 
 the Troubadours of Provence. It was a decided 
 advance, however, on the former custom of 
 writing in Proven9al. 
 
 Among the favourite amusements of these 
 singers was the composition of tenzoni in which 
 two poets are represented as comparing their 
 lady-loves. Thus Dante de Maiano (who was 
 born near Fiesole) demands of Tommaso da 
 Faenza an answer to the question: "What is 
 the greatest pang of love ? " Another favour- 
 ite exercise would be the defence of some such 
 
io6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 question as "Whether it is wiser to court a 
 maiden than a widow," and this would be con- 
 ducted in a long sequence of sonnets. 
 
 As a general thing love in the Middle Ages 
 had nothing to do with maidenly affections. 
 It may be imagined that a country which even 
 in our own day and generation tolerated the 
 strange system of the cavaliere servente — 
 typified in Lord Byron's relations with the 
 Countess Guiccioli — was even less strict in the 
 Middle Ages. The mariage de convenance 
 made its own allowance for the demands of 
 natural passion and thus one of the strange 
 phenomena of humanity is easily and naturally 
 explained. We no longer wonder at Dante or 
 Petrarca addressing their sonnets to ladies hon- 
 estly wedded and the mothers of respectable 
 families. 
 
 The artificiality of these sonneteers is quite 
 peculiar and deserves mention because the con- 
 ventions affected the greatest of their successors 
 and thus had an influence on all the poetry of 
 the modern world. Verbal conceits abound; 
 quibbles are artfully introduced. Thus the 
 word amore which means love is of malice pre- 
 pense confused with amaro, which means bitter. 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 107 
 
 In the same way Petrarca rings the changes on 
 I'aura, the breeze and lauro the laurel and 
 Laura, the fair object of his passion. 
 
 Complications of internal rhymes also attest 
 the ingenuity, if not the inspiration, of the school 
 of Guittone, as for example : 
 
 Similemente — gente — crtatura 
 
 La portatura — pura — ed awenente 
 
 Faite plagente ■ — ■ mente — per natura 
 Si che 'n altura — cura — volagente. 
 
 These difficult and complicated rhyming 
 schemes are called in Provencal rims cars — 
 dear rhymes. Alliterations, repetitions, verbal 
 conceits, naturally led to affectation of far-fetched 
 obscurity. A poet devoted to such filigree work 
 was Arnaut Daniel, who was praised by 
 Dante in the twenty second canto of the "Pur- 
 gatory" " as a better smith of the maternal 
 speech" than Guido Guinicelli. "In love- 
 verses and romantic prose," Dante makes 
 Guido say — in versi d'amore e prose di romanze 
 soverchio tuttt — "he surpassed all," and he com- 
 pliments him by writing eight lines in Provencal. 
 Guittone d'Arezzo grew more and more ad- 
 dicted to this metaphysical and obscure style, 
 until it became almost a disease. At first he 
 
io8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 sang of love: without love there could be no 
 excellence, so he begs love to enter into him and 
 inform him. He urges his old master Bandino 
 to teach him the secret. But suddenly by an 
 impulse not at all uncommon in the Middle 
 Ages, he turns from human love to love divine. 
 At the age of thirty-five he abandons wife and 
 child, accepting literally the words of Scripture, 
 enters the order of the Cavalieri di Santa Maria; 
 he condemns his former life and his own sonnets 
 and canzoni in which he had sung of love, and 
 gives himself up to dry sermonising on the 
 existence of God, in scholastic language, with 
 which he mixes citations from Aristotle and 
 Cicero, Seneca and Boethius. He died in 1294. 
 These earlier poets were constantly making 
 experiments in poetic forms and working the 
 sonnet into its permanent classic shape. The 
 very megatherium of verse is the sonnetto doppio, 
 and equally uncouth is the sonnetto renterzato; 
 in length and portentous bulk comes the ich- 
 thyosaurus of sonnets consisting of four quartine 
 and three terzine. One relic of those antedi- 
 luvian forms, as the camel and elephant are 
 relics of prehistoric fauna, is the tailed sonnet, 
 one example of which was left by Milton. 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 109 
 
 Chiaro Davanzati had some skill in such 
 conceits. Thus, in one of his dialogues in sonnet 
 form he says : " It chanced to me as to the bird 
 that flies away and comes not back. In the 
 pasture which it finds delightful it dwells and 
 remains: thus my heart has flown to thee." A 
 Japanese poet-emperor might have said that. 
 
 But his love replies : " I deny that I have thy 
 heart, and, if I had, I would give it back to thee." 
 
 In another sonnet Chiaro says: "The Hght 
 or sun when he appears resplendent sends bright- 
 ness into every darkest part; such virtue hath 
 his gaze, so superior to all other is his splendour; 
 so doth madonna fill with joy at sight of her 
 whoever hath a pang." 
 
 Dante copies the same pretty conceit. Chiaro 
 Davanzati fought in the famous battle of Monte 
 Aperti and was dead in 1280: that is nearly all 
 that is known about him. 
 
 Hitherto, in Italian verse as in the typical 
 verse of the Troubadours, the donna — madonna 
 to use the sweet Tuscan word — is an abstrac- 
 tion, or at least a painting removed from the 
 passions of the every-day world; but as the 
 transition begins we find a more realistic state 
 of things. Thus in the canzoni of Compa- 
 
no A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 gnetto da Prato we catch glimpses of women 
 unhappily wedded and pouring out their com- 
 plaints into the ears of their lovers. It seems 
 like folk-poetry in many cases, and certainly 
 the morality, or affectation of morality, vanishes 
 when a poem represents a girl complaining that 
 her father intends to marry her to a man whom 
 she detests and her lover comforts her by bidding 
 her unhesitatingly to take the hated spouse as 
 so many others do, since this impediment will 
 not prevent their loving each other still and 
 being happy: 
 
 Assai donne mariti anno 
 
 Che da lor son forte odiati 
 De' be' sembianti lor danno 
 
 Pero non son di piti atnati 
 
 Cost voglio che tu faccia 
 Ed avrai molta gtoia. ' ' 
 
 In Other cases the wife is represented as 
 earnestly desirous of the death of her spouse : 
 in presence of others she would weep and would 
 even wear decent-appearing weeds of mourning, 
 but secretly she would rejoice; like the young 
 widow who went into the parlour where lay the 
 cold and rigid form of her aged millionaire hus- 
 band and bending over the coffin was heard to 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA in 
 
 exclaim: "The Lord hath given and the Lord 
 hath taken away, blessed be the name of the 
 Lord." 
 
 The discovery of the lost works of Aristotle 
 had a profound influence on the thought of the 
 thirteenth century; this was speedily shown in 
 the productions of the poets, and was first 
 shown in the new school of Bologna. Guido 
 Guinicelli was the founder of this sweet new 
 style — dolce stil nuovo. Dante finds him in 
 purgatory and speaks of him as 
 
 si padre 
 mio e Jegli altri miei miglior che mat 
 Rime d'amore usar dolci e leggiadre, 
 
 thus confessing his indebtedness to him for the 
 sweet and graceful rhymes of love. Guinicelli 
 confesses to Dante that he and those with him — 
 too numerous to call by name — had sinned by 
 obeying no human law, by following their appe- 
 tites like animals, but he says: 
 
 Son Guido Guinicelli e gia mi purgo 
 Per ben dolermi primo ch'allo stremo. 
 
 Repentance before death would ultimately 
 bring about his redemption and Dante confesses 
 his sorrow when he hears the words of him whom 
 he calls father of himself and of his betters. 
 
112 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Then Guinicelli asks Dante why in speech 
 and look he held him dear. Dante replies: — 
 
 It dolci detti vostri, 
 Che quanta durera I'uso moderno 
 Faranno can ancora i loro inchiostri — 
 
 "Your sweet ditties, which as long as the modern 
 fashion shall endure will make dear their 
 manuscripts." 
 
 This Guido Guinicelli was of a noble family of 
 Bologna, but almost all that is known of him is 
 that he died in 1276. He was a disciple of Guit- 
 tone, whom he calls caro padre mio. At first he 
 followed the style of the Sicilian school and in 
 his early verses are seen the same commonplaces, 
 the same images and similitudes, the same 
 vacuity and monotony. But when he outgrew 
 the old idea that love was derived from the 
 senses and exerted his force through the eyes, 
 he established a loftier ideal. Love has his 
 throne only in the noble heart. 
 
 Guido Guinicelli compares the search of 
 Love for a home in some generous breast to 
 the bird seeking amid green foliage its blessed 
 nest. To him nobility of heart and love are 
 as inseparable as the sun and its splendour. 
 Just as the gem when purified from all that 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 113 
 
 contaminates absorbs the virtue of the sun, 
 so the heart, made pure and noble, is inflamed 
 by sight of the beloved lady. Here seems to 
 be the origin of Dante's flaming heart in the 
 "Vita Nuova." And just as water quenches 
 flame, so all impurity puts an end to love. 
 
 Again madonna becomes the abstract com- 
 pendium of all perfections — the very symbol 
 and incarnation of superior qualities. The 
 impure chivalrous passion of the Troubadours 
 is refined into a spiritual love. 
 
 We now begin to meet the figure of the 
 madonna transmuted into an angel come straight 
 from heaven. Thus Lapo Gianni sings: 
 
 Angelica figura nuovamente 
 
 Dal del venuta a spender tua salute, 
 
 Tutta la sua virtute 
 
 Ha in te locata I'alto dio d'Amore. 
 
 This rapid survey brings us directly to Dante 
 who had the manner of thought of his prede- 
 cessors and the same theory of poetry, the same 
 spiritualised concept of love. But while he 
 uses the poetic apparatus of Guittone and 
 Guinicelli, he rises superior to them by his 
 greater genius, his more powerful imagination. 
 Dante reminds one of Palestrina. Just as 
 
114 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 "the Saviour of Music" confined himself to 
 the strictest laws of counterpoint but by his 
 spontaneous invention secured effects not 
 dreamed of before, so Dante excelled all his 
 predecessors and eclipsed them as the sun 
 quenches the light of the morning stars. 
 
 II 
 
 In passing from Dante to Petrarca we come 
 into another world. Dante closes an era: he 
 is the Titan of Italian poetry; with him the 
 mediaeval is summed up forever. 
 
 Petrarca is as modern as Chaucer. Just as 
 in midsummer, sometimes, a few days of genuine 
 spring weather seem to stray like summer birds 
 from their exile in the South, as if impatient to 
 be at home once more, so we find simultaneously 
 in England and Italy these two modern men 
 centuries ahead of their day. How gay, un- 
 sentimental, free from morbidness, from pro- 
 vincialism is Dan Chaucer! He was of humble 
 origin, the name signifying shoemaker, and yet 
 he rose to be courted by kings and emperors and 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 115 
 
 one of his descendants just missed inheriting the 
 throne of England. 
 
 So Petrarca, as is proved by the name, which 
 means Little Peter or Peterkin, sprang from the 
 common people. His father was Ser Petracco 
 di Ser Parenza — unable even to boast a family 
 name — and when he was driven from Florence 
 by that miserable squabble between the two 
 factions that were always tearing the vitals of 
 the city, he carried away with him on that 
 January day in 1302 only a small part of the 
 possessions which he had accumulated as a 
 jurist. 
 
 The misfortune which befell Italy had been 
 prognosticated. In September, 1301, a comet 
 flamed in the western sky and twice that year 
 Saturn and Mars had been in conjunction in 
 the sign of the Lion which was the astrological 
 symbol of Italy. Those of us who place some 
 reliance on astrological prophecies, looking back, 
 may perhaps see in that comet a sign of the 
 coming poet, who should, more than any 
 other, influence the world of letters. 
 
 Ser Patracco took refuge in Arezzo, a city of 
 Tuscany, and found on the so-called Garden 
 Street a house, as the poet says, haud sane 
 
ii6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 ampla sen magnifica, sed quails exsulem de- 
 cuisset — " not indeed magnificent but suitable 
 for an exile." 
 
 On Monday, July 20th, almost at the very 
 hour when the Bianchi were making their last 
 fruitless effort to regain the ascendancy, Fran- 
 cesco di Petracco was born. Here on the 
 fifteenth of June, 1800, so nearly five exact 
 centuries later. Napoleon, about to fight 
 "Marengo's bloody battle," paused to grant, 
 out of honour to Petrarca's memory, amnesty 
 to its inhabitants. 
 
 Petrarca's life lies before us with remarkable 
 clearness. Hundreds of letters give us an 
 almost complete autobiography; but it has been 
 charged against him that he was ashamed of 
 his humble birth. He tells us little about his 
 father's family. We know that his great- 
 grandfather Ser Garzo, a man of considerable 
 native wisdom, though uneducated, lived at 
 Incisa a few miles from Florence and died at 
 the age of 104 on his birth-day, in the very room 
 where he had been born. 
 
 Of Petrarca's mother nothing is known and 
 the Italian biographers are still struggling over 
 the unsolved problem — whether her name was 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 117 
 
 Eletta, as seems to be indicated in his poem on 
 her death, where he calls her Electa Dei tarn 
 nomine quam re — in that case making her a 
 member of the well-known family of Cino 
 Canigiani; or Nicolosa, daughter of Vanni Cini 
 Sizoli, or whether she was Petracco's second 
 wife or whether she was only sixteen when she 
 gave birth to her famous son Francesco — 
 Cecco as they called him. When he was six 
 months old he went with his mother to Incisa 
 and on the way as they crossed the Arno the 
 horse of the servant who was carrying him 
 stumbled and the baby was almost drowned. 
 
 At Incisa he spent the first six or seven years 
 of his life and it is generally believed that he 
 there acquired that perfect Tuscan speech which 
 did him and his country such honour. The 
 house where he dwelt is still shown, though 
 badly ruined, and it bears an inscription to the 
 effect that here the great poet first uttered 
 the sweet sounds of his mother tongue. 
 In 13 12 Petracco assembled his family in Pisa 
 but perhaps found it impossible to support 
 them there. Like many other banished Floren- 
 tines he hoped for better fortunes in France and 
 accordingly took his family to Avignon. 
 
ii8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 The Pope, Clement V., was wandering about 
 France — at Bordeaux, Lyons, Poitiers, Montpel- 
 lier and Avignon, and in October, 1316, his suc- 
 cessor, John XXII. established the Papal Court 
 definitely at Avignon. Hither Petracco came 
 in 13 13 and a second time the son nearly lost 
 his life in a shipwreck near Marseilles. Avi- 
 gnon, on the left bank of the Rhone, was a part of 
 Provence and at this time Provence was the 
 patrimony of King Robert of Naples : here the 
 king had his court from 13 18 until 1324. 
 
 The influences to which Petrarca must have 
 submitted in this transplantation should not be 
 disregarded. Although he detested Avignon 
 itself with its narrow streets and vile odours, yet 
 it was the home of Provencal song and must 
 have given him his first leaning to poetry. 
 
 Little in the way of anecdote can be told of 
 his childhood. An astrologer prophesied that 
 he would win the favour of almost all the princes 
 of his day, and this was fulfilled. Also he him- 
 self relates in one of his letters how his father 
 showed him the picture of a double-bodied boy 
 with twin- heads, four hands and other curious 
 prototypal anticipations of the Siamese twins, 
 that had been born in Florence and lived two 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 119 
 
 or three weeks. He relates that his father gave 
 his ear a sharp twitch that he might the better 
 remember the marvel. ' 
 
 Expenses were high in Avignon and Petracco 
 estabUshed his family at Carpentras, the capital 
 of a little province where were mineral-springs 
 and a quiet easy life. Here Petrarca lived four 
 years and first enjoyed regular schooling at 
 the hands of a scholar named Convennole or 
 Convenevole who had a school there. This 
 Convennole is believed by some to be the author 
 of a portentous Latin poem of very mediocre 
 value. He was in perpetual pecuniary diffi- 
 culties and Petrarca 's father often assisted him, 
 but the man played him a very mean trick. In 
 later years Petrarca himself came to his aid but 
 his generosity was likewise most shabbily 
 acquitted: he took two priceless manuscripts 
 by Cicero and disposed of them. The books 
 must have been destroyed, for no trace of them 
 was ever found and thus were lost Cicero's 
 Libri de Gloria. 
 
 Nevertheless, when Convennole died at Prato 
 in 1340 or 1 344 his fellow-citizens placed a poet's 
 laurel crown on his tomb and Petrarca offered 
 to write his epitaph. 
 
120 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 The progress which Petrarca made in his 
 studies was not remarkable and it is to be deeply 
 regretted that a more liberally cultured scholar 
 had not directed his training. A large part 
 of Petrarca's works is in Latin but he never 
 acquired a perfect style, such as Erasmus was 
 able to wield. His Latin is mediaeval: he 
 himself discovered Cicero's Epistles but it was 
 too late in life to modify his habits. Only his 
 inherent genius enabled him to invest his Latin 
 Letters with a perennial charm. Certainly his 
 correspondence with Boccaccio is one of the 
 most precious possessions of literature and it 
 is one of the strange anomalies of life that it 
 so long has remained a sealed book to English 
 readers. 
 
 Petrarca's principal playmate and friend in 
 Convennole's school was Guido Settimo who 
 became Archbishop of Genoa, their friendship 
 enduring more than fifty years. With the 
 future archbishop the future poet made his 
 first visit to the source of the Sorgue at Vaucluse 
 or Fal chiusa, the Shut-in Valley which he was 
 to immortalise. 
 
 From Carpentras Petrarca was sent to the 
 high school at Montpellier with the idea of 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 121 
 
 fitting him for his father's profession of the 
 law. Here he spent four years but what he 
 studied, or what his experiences were, is wholly 
 unknown, or at least wholly a matter of conjecture 
 mixed with imagination. One single anecdote 
 of tl is time is preserved in Petrarca's corre- 
 spondence. His father, thinking that general 
 literature was too much drawing his son's 
 attention away from the law, came unexpectedly 
 to Montpellier, and making a thorough search 
 for his books succeeded in finding them, care- 
 fully hidden though they had been, and flung 
 them into the fire; moved, however, by his son's 
 bitter tears he allowed him to rescue a copy of 
 Vergil and Cicero's " Rhetoric." 
 
 From Montpellier he went to Bologna in 1323 
 with his brother Gherardo and here again he ne- 
 glected the lectures on civic law to the advantage 
 of what are called "the humanities." He also 
 enjoyed the gaieties of a student's life and in his 
 later days liked to recall them, especially as 
 Bologna was at this time free from the distur- 
 bances that elsewhere were racking the Italian 
 cities. The gates of the town were not closed till 
 late at night, so secure felt the inhabitants, and 
 the students had free course. With one of his 
 
122 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 instructors Petrarca made a visit to Venice and 
 here also he found the highest tide of prosperity. 
 Soon both cities were doomed to vail their glories. 
 
 Among his many friends at Bologna w^as 
 Giacomo Colonna who afterwards became 
 Bishop of Lombes and gave him a home. 
 
 Petracco died in 1326, leaving his family in 
 deep poverty, and the two sons returned to 
 Avignon. Petrarca's only legacy was a manu- 
 script of Cicero. With this, the profession of 
 the law, none too enticing to him in any cir- 
 cumstances, seemed to be out of the question 
 and as the Church offered greater inducements 
 and especially as his friend Colonna was already 
 on the road to high preferment, he decided to 
 adopt this profession. 
 
 On the sixth of April, 1327, almost a year after 
 his father's death and not long after the probable 
 death of his mother, Petrarca saw in the church of 
 Santa Chiara at Avignon for the first time the lady 
 whom he celebrated under the name of Laura. 
 
 Who was she ? 
 
 This question has been a puzzle for two 
 centuries and seems to oflFer no chance of satis- 
 factory solution. Opinions have varied in the 
 widest way. Some scholars have argued that 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 123 
 
 the lady who inspired Petrarca's muse to such 
 lofty flights of song was only a creature of his 
 imagination; others, including Korting, give 
 a certain amount of credence to the ingenious 
 though somewhat sophisticated evidence of the 
 clever Abbe de Sade, who elaborately argued 
 that she was the daughter of Audibert de Noves 
 and that she was born in 1307, that she was 
 wedded to Hugh de Sade, the Abbe's ancestor, 
 and bore him eleven children. A tomb at 
 Avignon was opened in 1533 and in the coffin 
 were found a medal and a sonnet. The sonnet 
 was supposed to be Petrarca's though it was 
 hardly worthy of his fame. On the medal 
 were the initials " M. L. M. I." which were 
 interpreted to mean Madonna Laura morta 
 tacit — " Here lies the body of Madonna 
 Laura." 
 
 This discovery was in accordance with an old 
 tradition that Laura was a De Sade. The 
 Abbe Costaing of Pusignan believed that she 
 was Laura des Beaux, the daughter of the 
 Seigneur de Vaucluse Adhemar de Cavaillon, on 
 her mother's side descended from the house 
 of Orange and that she lived with her relatives 
 on her estates of Galas on the hills overlooking 
 
124 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 the valley, and that she died not of the plague 
 but of a consumption. 
 
 There is no phase of this famous passion that 
 has not been made the subject of an essay or a 
 poem. 
 
 Was she a widow or a maiden or the mother 
 of a patriarchal family? Was Petrarca's de- 
 scription of her beauty based on the reality or 
 is it an ideal figment of his imagination .? Was 
 she a heartless coquette as was believed by Ma- 
 caulay? Would Petrarca have written a fuller 
 and more perfect book of songs had she been 
 perfectly complacent ? So the learned Pro- 
 fessor Zendrini argues. Was Laura an am- 
 bitious woman caring for nothing but her own 
 praise and cold to Petrarca not by reason of 
 virtue but because of her insensibility ? 
 
 A hundred similar questions arise, and how 
 idle they are ! Only one of them we may answer 
 and that in the poet's own words. Some one of 
 his friends had evidently suggested that his 
 complaints were imaginary and his Laura a 
 being of air, as the name implies. He answered 
 as follows : 
 
 "What dost thou mean by saying that I 
 have invented the specious name of L'Aura as 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 125 
 
 if I wished to have something to talk about; 
 that Laura is in reality nothing but a poetic 
 fiction of my mind to which long and unremit- 
 ting study proves that I have been aspiring; but 
 that of this breathing Laura by whose form and 
 beauty I seem to be a captive taken is all manu- 
 factured, verses fictitious, sighs simulated ? 
 Would that in this respect thou wert jesting in 
 earnest! Would that it were simulatio and 
 not furor. But believe me, no one without 
 great effort can long use simulations but to 
 struggle vainly to appear mad is the height of 
 madness \summa insania]. Moreover while 
 we may succeed in counterfeiting illness by our 
 actions, we can not imitate pallor" — tibi pallor 
 tibi labor mens notus est. 
 
 There are several passages in Petrarca's 
 Latin writings where he makes it evident that 
 Laura was an actual person. One is in the 
 treatise concerning Scorn of this World in which 
 he represents himself at the instigation of Truth, 
 who appears to him in. the form of a stately 
 virgin, as holding a three days' conversation 
 with his beloved instructor Saint Augustine. 
 In the third dialogue Saint Augustine points 
 out that Petrarca i§ h^ld in the chains of two 
 
126 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 passions which keep him from the true contem- 
 plation of life and of death : these are love and 
 Glory. Augustine expresses his surprise that 
 a man of Petrarca's talent should spend so large 
 a part of his life in praise of an earthly love; 
 and he predicts that the time will come when he 
 will feel ashamed of himself and of this passion. 
 
 Petrarca replies that he has already, even 
 during her life time, written a sonnet on her 
 approaching death, having seen her once beauti- 
 ful body exhausted by illnesses and frequent — 
 what? Here is one of the mysteries; in the 
 manuscript the word is, as usual, contracted 
 and reads ptbus, which De Sade thinks stands 
 for partuhus — frequent child-bearing; while 
 other manuscripts have the word spelled out: 
 — pertubationibus. If she was the mother of 
 eleven children, De Sade would seem to have 
 reason on his side. 
 
 Petrarca goes on to assure Saint Augustine 
 that in his Laura he had worshipped not the 
 mortal body but the immortal soul and that 
 even if she should die before he did, he would 
 still love her virtue and her spirit. Saint 
 Augustine objects that though she be perfect as 
 a goddess, yet even that which is most beautiful 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 127 
 
 may be loved shamefully — turpiter; but Pe- 
 trarca asseverates the purity of his passion and 
 declares that in nothing but its impetuosity 
 was he guilty before her: that she was the 
 source and origin of all his glory; she had nur- 
 tured the feeble germ of virtue in his breast; 
 she was the mirror of perfection and love has 
 the power to transmute the lover into the stan- 
 dard of the object loved. 
 
 But Saint Augustine is not satisfied : he points 
 out the danger of deception and thinks that the 
 fact that he has loved his love so exclusively 
 has caused him to scorn other human beings and 
 human interests. Earthly love has turned 
 Petrarca from the heavenly and into the straight 
 road to death. 
 
 In the course of the conversation Saint Augus- 
 tine brings Petrarca to confess that he has 
 carried next his heart a portrait of his Laura 
 and that even the laurel wreath is dear to him 
 only because it brings the echo of her name. 
 And when Petrarca asks Saint Augustine what 
 he can do to be saved from such a dangerous 
 passion, the Saint recommends change of scene. 
 
 "Alas," replies the poet, "in vain have I 
 wandered West and North, far and long, even to 
 
128 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 the shores of the Deep,and like the wounded stag 
 carried my wound with me wherever I went." 
 Augustine recommends Italy and here occurs 
 his justly famed magnificent eulogium of that 
 beauteous land. This leads naturally to the 
 other chain — glory. 
 
 The second passage occurs in a poetic epistle 
 to Giacomo Colonna, written probably in 
 August 1337, two days after returning to Avi- 
 gnon after a long journey: 
 
 " Beloved beyond measure is a woman known 
 by her virtue and her ancient lineage — san- 
 guine vetusto. And my songs have given her 
 glory and spread her fame far and vsade. Ever 
 does my heart turn back to her and with renewed 
 pangs of love she overcomes me nor does it 
 seem likely that she will ever renounce her 
 conquest." 
 
 She had conquered him he says not by any 
 arts of coquetry but by the rare beauty of her 
 form. After enduring the chain for ten years, 
 after wasting to a shadow and becoming another 
 man, the fever of love so penetrating the very 
 marrow of his bones that he could hardly drag 
 one leg after another and he yearned for death, 
 suddenly he determined to strik«e for freedom 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 129 
 
 and shake ofF the yoke. God gave him strength 
 to win the. battle; but even then the mistress 
 of his heart pursued him as if he were an es- 
 caped slave. 
 
 " I fly, " he says, " I wander over the whole 
 circle of the world, I dare to plough the stormy 
 billows of the Adriatic and the Tyrrhene seas 
 and I entrust my life, rescued from the toils of 
 love, to a tossing vessel: for why should I, 
 wearied by the torments of the soul, and sick of 
 life, fear a premature death ? I turn my steps 
 toward the West and behold the lofty summits 
 of the Pyrenees from my couch in the sunny 
 grass. I behold the ocean from where the 
 weary God of Day, after his long journey, dips 
 his chariot of fire in the Hesperian flood and 
 where looking up to Atlas turned to stone at 
 sight of Medusa, he causes the steep mountain 
 precipices to throw long shadows, and hides the 
 moors with hastening shades of night. Hence 
 I turn to the North and Boreas, and, lonely, 
 wander through those lands that are filled with 
 the harsh accents of barbarians' tongues, where 
 the gloomy waves of the British sea splash with 
 changeful foam the shores of half-known coasts 
 and where the icy soil denies obedience to the 
 
130 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 friendly plough and keeps the vine-stock alien to 
 the hills. Little by little as I journeyed, the 
 billows of my passion grew calm: pain, wrath 
 and fear began to vanish; now and then peace- 
 ful slumber closed my eyelids moist with tears, 
 and an unaccustomed smile played over my 
 face; and already in my recollection with less 
 of threat and less of authority arose the image of 
 my deserted love." 
 
 Alas, he goes on, he was deceived; he thought 
 he might disregard the sting of passion; the 
 wound was not healed, the anguish was not 
 allayed. He returned, but no sooner was he 
 within the walls of the beloved city than his 
 breast was again laden with the burden of cares. 
 And then follows that superb description not 
 dimmed even in the Latin in which it is couched: 
 
 "The sailor fears not with such terror the 
 reefs as he sails through the night, as I now fear 
 my love's face and her heart-stirring words, 
 her head crowned with golden tresses and her 
 snowy neck encircled writh a chain and her eyes 
 dealing sweet death." 
 
 Even in the secluded vale of Vaucluse he 
 finds no relief: Useless to bewail the vanished 
 years. Waking he sees her and at night her 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 131 
 
 image seems to come through the triple-locked 
 doors of his chamber at midnight and claim him 
 as her slave. Then before the morning paints 
 with crimson the eastern sky, he arises and 
 leaves the house and wanders over mountain 
 and through forest, ever on the watch to see if 
 she is not there. 
 
 "Oft," he says, "when I think I am alone in 
 the pathless woods, the bushes waving in the 
 breeze present her figure and I see her face in the 
 bole of the lonely oak; her image rises from the 
 waters of the spring; I seem to see her in the 
 clouds, in the empty air and even in the adaman- 
 tine stone." 
 
 To the celebration of this love he consecrates 
 291 sonnets, twenty-four canzoni, nine sestini, 
 seven hallata and four madrigals, besides the 
 semi-epic poem written in terza rima like the 
 " Divina Commedia." In these sonnets — which 
 are curious in this respect that they are not a 
 sequence, they mark no progression: they are 
 like a placid lake, not a river — Petrarca cele- 
 brates his love in every way. Every little 
 event inspires a poem. Once he sees her about 
 to cross a stream and the removal of her white 
 shoes and red stockings leads to a sonnet. Her 
 
132 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 beauty is ever the thought in his mind : both in 
 
 Italian and Latin he tells us: 
 
 Una donna piii hella che 'I sole, 
 forman parent non ulla videbunt saecula — 
 
 " A woman lovelier than the sun, whose form 
 no century will ever see equalled." 
 And again of her gait and voice : 
 
 non era I'andar suo cosa mortale, 
 ma d'angelica forma e le parole 
 sonavan altro che pur voce umana — 
 
 "Her gait was not a mortal thing but of an 
 angelic form and her words sounded different 
 from any human voice:" 
 
 cuius nee vox nee oculorum vigor 
 nee incessus hominem repraesentat. 
 
 A few of the lovely passages — which alas! even 
 in a paraphrase must lose much of their charm — 
 must furnish a hint of the richness of this col- 
 lection of poems which Guiseppe Jacopo Fer- 
 razzi calls the bible of poets and which is by 
 most critics considered " the most perfect monu- 
 ment of love-poetry among modern nations." 
 
 Her name, he says in the fifth sonnet, which 
 is devoted to an elaborate pun upon it — Lau- 
 re-ta and Lau-re — was written on his heart by 
 love. He sends her some fruit in spring and 
 the thought that the sun has ripened it causes 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 133 
 
 him to call her " a sun among women" — tra 
 le donne un sole — which shedding the rays of her 
 bright eyes upon him wakes into life the thoughts, 
 acts and words of love. But he concludes sadly 
 that though spring may shine on earth again 
 there will never be spring again for him. Most 
 beautiful is the beginning of the second canzone 
 
 Verdi panni, sanguini, oscuri o persi — 
 
 excellently translated by Miss Louise Winslow 
 
 Kidder: 
 
 Green robes, blood-coloured, dark or reddish black 
 Or golden hair in shining tresses heaped. 
 Ne'er clothed a woman beautiful as she 
 Who robs me of my will, and with herself 
 Allures me from the path of liberty. 
 So that no other servitude less grave 
 Do I endure. 
 
 In this canzone there are eight stanzas of seven 
 lines each and a sort of coda of two lines, there 
 being only seven rhymes in the whole poem. 
 In the sestine are no rhymes, but each stanza 
 of six lines has the same word endings. In the 
 third canzone he speaks of her beautiful soft 
 eyes which carry the keys to his sweet thoughts: 
 
 Que' begli occhi soavi 
 Che portaron le chiavi 
 De' miei dolci pensier. 
 
 And further on he speaks of the golden tresses 
 
134 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 which should make the sun full of deep envy 
 and her beautiful calm look — bel guardo 
 sereno — where the rays of Love are so warm, 
 and still recalling her graces, her white delicate 
 hands and lovely arms — 
 
 le man bianchi sottili 
 e le braccia gentili. 
 
 All very well translated by Macgregor: 
 
 The soft hands, snowy charm. 
 
 The finely rounded arm, 
 
 The winning way, by turns, that quiet scorn. 
 
 He renders the lines 
 
 / dolci sdegni alteramente umili 
 e 7 bel giovenil petto 
 torre d'alto intelletto 
 
 Chaste anger, proud humility adorn 
 The fair young breast that shrined 
 Intellect pure and high. " 
 
 Wotton translates the lines: 
 
 L'oro e le perle e i fior vermigli e i bianchi 
 Che 'I verno devria far languidi e secchi: 
 
 Those golden tresses, teeth of pearly white. 
 Those cheeks' fair roses blooming to decay. 
 
 But it very well illustrates the danger one runs 
 
 in reading translations: the gold and pearls 
 
 and red and white flowers are the adornments 
 
 which Laura wears and which are reflected in the 
 
 mirror against which he complains because in 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 135 
 
 seeing herself reflected there she cares more 
 for herself than for him. 
 
 Particularly beautiful is the sonnet in which 
 he blesses all the circumstances of his passion: 
 
 Benedetto sia 'I giorno, e 'I mese e 'I anno 
 E la stagione e 't tempo e I 'ora e 7 punto 
 E 7 hel paese e 7 loco ov' to fui giunto 
 
 Da duo begli occhi. 
 
 This translated literally reads: 
 
 "Blest be the day and the month and the 
 year and the season and the time and the hour 
 and the instant and the fair country and the 
 place where I was captured by two lovely eyes 
 that enchained me fast." And the sonnet pro- 
 ceeds : "And blest be the first sweet inquietude 
 [affanno] that I felt at being joined with 
 love, and the bow and arrows whereby I was 
 wounded and the wounds that came into my 
 heart. Blest be the voices which calling out 
 the name of my lady, I scattered; and the sighs 
 and the desire; and blest be all the writings 
 whereby I won my fame and my thought which is 
 wholly of her, so that no other has a share in it." 
 
 After eleven years of perduti giorni, since that 
 "fierce passion's strong entanglement" (as 
 Dacre translates the line) he calls upon the 
 
136 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Father of Heaven to vouchsafe unto him power 
 to turn to a different life and to finer achievements 
 
 ad altra vita ed a pill belle imprese. 
 
 But still the charm holds: even if he would 
 
 forget her the sight of the green laurel-tree 
 
 brings her so vividly before him that amid the 
 
 oaks and pines on the shore of the Tuscan sea 
 
 where the waves broken by the winds complain, 
 
 he falls as it were dead; even after fourteen 
 
 years have passed he still sings her golden locks 
 
 flowing in mazy ringlets to the breeze — capelli 
 
 d'oro a I'aura sparsi. 
 
 Leigh Hunt has a good translation of the 
 
 canzone to the Fountain of Vaucluse beginning: 
 
 Chtare, fresche e dolci acque — 
 
 Clear, fresh and dulcet streams 
 
 Which the fair shape who seems 
 
 To me sole woman haunted at noon-tide. 
 
 Fair bough, so gently fit 
 
 (I sigh to think of it) 
 
 Which lent a pillar to her lovely side 
 
 And turf and flowers bright-eyed 
 
 O'er which her folded gown 
 
 Flowed like an angel's down. 
 
 Give ear, give ear with one consenting 
 
 To my last words, my last and my lamenting. 
 
 Of Petrarca's later Hfe there are a thousand 
 
 fascinating details to be found in his letters: 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 137 
 
 his travels, friendships, with all the great men 
 of his day, his relations with popes and prelates, 
 princes and emperors, his clever intrigues to 
 obtain the poet's laurel crown, his studies, his 
 efforts to collect the first private library of 
 modern times, his residences, as for instance 
 in the Magician's house at Selva Piana, or at 
 Venice at the house of Arrigo Molin, from one 
 of the turrets of which he used to watch the 
 ships, or again on the beautiful Euganean Hills. 
 
 Nor must we forget his cat which, as Tasoni 
 says, still unburied — un insepolta gatta — 
 "conquers in glory the tombs of haughty kings." 
 A whole chapter should be devoted to his beau- 
 tiful friendship with Boccaccio and how one of 
 his last works was to translate into Latin the 
 story of the Patient Griselda which Chaucer 
 put into verse. 
 
 A few cardinal dates will serve on which to 
 hang the more important events of the latter half 
 of his life: In 1339 he began his Latin poem 
 "Africa," the hero of which was Scipio: it waited 
 more than half a millennium to be published. 
 The next two years he was busy with his growing 
 glory and waiting to be crowned at the Capitol. 
 
 After several years' residence at Parma he 
 
138 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 was made canon and in 1348 while residing at 
 Verona came the sad news of Laura's death. 
 Henceforth his sonnets, though retrospective 
 and often inspired by memory of her beauty 
 become an ascending scale until in the "Trionfi" 
 they rival the more spiritualised poems of Dante, 
 Laura being personified as Chastity triumphant. 
 
 In 1350 he was appointed archdeacon of 
 Parma and the following year the Florentines 
 decreed the restoration of his property, but when 
 he refused to live there they confiscated it again. 
 In 1360 he was sent as an ambassador to King 
 Jean of France and then settled in Venice, where 
 he lived another decade and then retired to 
 Arqua among the Euganean Hills, where, in 
 1374, on the eighteenth of July, he was found 
 dead at his table. A magnificent funeral was 
 decreed in his honour as became so great an 
 ornament to Italy. In 1873 his tomb was 
 opened. His skull and bones were at first intact 
 but on exposure to the air speedily fell to dust. 
 
 This great man becomes even greater on 
 close study: he is chiefly known as the author 
 of love-poems which in a dissolute age are 
 absolutely pure and in such perfect Italian that 
 the taste of the most refined and exacting would 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 139 
 
 change scarcely a word. Although these grace- 
 ful lavorietti composed of equal parts of serenity, 
 brightness of touch and absolute perfection of 
 imagery, are so spontaneous in Italian and so 
 impossible to translate into English — wilting 
 (as has been well said by an Italian scholar) 
 when transferred into alien soil — yet all poets 
 who know Italian have tried their hand at them. 
 The latest attempt, by a California lady who 
 published her version* in London, is sheer para- 
 phrase: the simplicity and directness of the 
 original appear in an extraordinarily imagina- 
 tive overlaying of filagree and arabesque. A 
 word or a hint is enlarged to an elaborate com- 
 parison; a thousand poetic images and conceits 
 which Petrarca never dreamed of are ini;roduced, 
 and yet the work has been widely heralded as a 
 masterpiece of translation. It was certainly 
 inspired by Petrarca, but if one compares the 
 version with the original, the enormous gulf 
 between them will become at once apparent. 
 They were turned into Polish by Ian Grot- 
 kowski as early as 1465. Spanish, German and 
 French poets — all have drunk at the fountain 
 of this Parnassus. In 1520 there was a Petrarca 
 
 * "Madonna Laura." Agnes Tobin, 1907. 
 
140 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Academy at Venice. loost van Vondel, the 
 greatest of the classic Dutch poets and the 
 master of Milton, made a pilgrimage to Arqua 
 and set Petrarca above all other poets. Boccaccio 
 in 1374 two hundred years earlier had predicted 
 that Arqua, a village scarcely known even in 
 Padua, would rise famous in the whole world : 
 men in days to come would make pilgrimages 
 to it. His prediction was amply verified. 
 
 There are at least two score commentaries on 
 Petrarca 's Italian poems which he himself regret- 
 ted and repented having written. According to 
 Crescenbini there were more than six hundred son- 
 netteers in the sixteenth century all imitating Pet- 
 rarca: no less than twelve at once in Venice. Marco 
 Foscarini prepared for the press the Rime of sixty 
 Venetian gentlemen, all disciples of Laura's lover. 
 
 On the fifth centenary of his birth, prizes 
 being offered, more than six hundred responses 
 in French and Provencal were submitted. 
 
 But he was not merely a poet, he was also 
 great as an orator, as a scholar, as a philosopher. 
 The more we study his career the more we must 
 marvel at its richness in accomplishment. Ugo 
 Foscolo calls him the restorer of letters. He 
 was the promoter of classic literature. "For 
 
LYRIC POETRY AND PETRARCA 141 
 
 us and for all Europe," says Carducci, " Petrarca 
 was above all the recreator of glorious antiquity 
 and the leader who through the desert of the 
 Middle Ages freed our people from the slavery 
 of barbarous peoples." 
 
 Professor Domenico Berti calls him at once 
 poet, historian, philosopher, scholar and cul- 
 tivator of the fine arts and speaks of his fine, 
 exquisite, full, robust genius and his noble soul. 
 
 He was also the prophet of United Italy. 
 When Cola di Rienzi engaged in his great but 
 futile struggle to restore to Rome her ancient 
 liberty Petrarca actively sympathised with him 
 and wrote to him one of his noblest canzoni 
 beginning 
 
 Spirto gentil che quelli membra reggi, 
 
 and that which begms "Italia mia " praised by all 
 critics and commentators and called the Mar- 
 seillaise of Italy, as fresh and animated and full 
 of sparkling enthusiasm to-day as if written only 
 yesterday. It may be read in Lady Dacre's spir- 
 ited version. No wonder the Austrian authorities, 
 when they were making their desperate efforts to 
 keep Italy dismembered and enslaved, forbade 
 its use in the gymnasia, for it well might kindle 
 generous souls to patriotic hatred of tyranny. 
 
IV 
 
 BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 
 
 "VJOTHING can be more unsatisfactory as 
 a means of conversation than an afternoon 
 tea as it is usually disposed. Interruption 
 is the certain concomitant of every attempt to 
 carry on any serious train of thought. One's 
 best anecdote is broken off just as the point 
 begins to appear; the fuse of one's liveliest 
 epigram is nipped in the bud before it has an 
 opportunity to explode. The unnatural sound 
 of high-pitched voices commingling may indeed 
 remind the observer of nature — for there is a 
 curious and subtle relationship between this 
 most artificial and hot-house product of civilisa- 
 tion and that wild unchained creature of life 
 — a mountain-brook. As you stand at the 
 door of a modern drawing-room, you hear gur- 
 gles and musical intonations: shut your eyes 
 and you may transport yourself in imagination 
 to the mossy bank of your favourite stream. You 
 can see the foamy little cascades and the bell- 
 142 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 143 
 
 like voices of the waters as they hurry down 
 over glittering stones and fallen logs. Or stand 
 by that same brook and shut your eyes and you 
 can imagine yourself in the full swing of a well- 
 attended reception. But howtver much talk 
 there may be at such a function there is no con- 
 versation. That fine art has not died, but it is 
 rare to meet with it in these hurried days. Per- 
 haps enjoyment may be just as great, but it is 
 of a different kind. It is of a piece with pre- 
 digested foods and predigested journals and p re- 
 digested "libraries of literature." 
 
 The Italians of the fourteenth century had 
 a niore dignified mode of society entertainment. 
 The ladies and gentlemen that gathered in the 
 salon of the court or in the shady garden orga- 
 nised what they called una lieta brigata — a 
 happy jolly, merry, jocund band — and appointed 
 a captain or it might be, a queen who should give 
 them a theme and call upon one after another of 
 the company to illustrate it with stories. Such 
 themes as "The magnanimity of princes," "Con- 
 cerning those that have been fortunate in love," 
 "Sudden changes from prosperity to misfor- 
 tune," "The guiles that women have practised 
 on their husbands" and the like were common. 
 
144 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 This was the origin of the so-called novella. 
 Symonds says: 
 
 "The novella is invariably brief and sketchy. 
 It does not aim at presenting a detailed picture 
 of human life within certain artistically chosen 
 limitations, but confines itself to a striking 
 situation or tells an anecdote illustrative of some 
 moral quality." 
 
 He goes on to show how the fact that these 
 novelle were either read aloud or improvised 
 on the spur of the occasion "determined the 
 length and ruled the mechanism" of them. 
 "It was impossible," he says, "within the short 
 space of a spoken tale to attempt any minute 
 analysis of character or to weave the meshes of 
 a complicated plot. The narrator went straight 
 to his object, which was to arrest the attention, 
 gratify the sensual instincts or stir the tender 
 emotions of his audience by some fantastic, 
 extraordinary, voluptuous, comic or pathetic 
 incident. He sketches his personages with 
 a few swift touches, set forth with pungent 
 brevity and expends his force upon the painting 
 of their central motive." 
 
 All of this is set forth with much care in the 
 second chapter of his " Renaissance in Italy, " 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 145 
 
 where he explains further that the sole object 
 of the novella was entertainment and where he 
 illustrates how its success was obtained in new 
 strange incidents, in obscenity veiled or repul- 
 sively naked, in gross or graceful jests, in prac- 
 tical jokes and delicate pathos, often by "ela- 
 borate rhetorical development of the main 
 emotions, placing carefully studied speeches 
 in the mouth of heroine or hero and using every 
 artifice for appealing directly to the feelings of 
 his hearers." 
 
 Human nature seems not to have changed 
 since the first known calendar was computed, 
 that is to say in July 4241 b. c. The coarse 
 and animal, which is to a certain extent insepar- 
 able from man as a featherless biped, still has 
 its more or less powerful attraction. It is found 
 in all literatures and has to be reckoned with. 
 The tales of the Thousand and One Nights 
 have to be expurgated for ordinary reading and 
 there are few of the Cento Novelle that would 
 do now to present to a mixed company. In 
 studying any past literature we must expect 
 shocks to our conventionalities. Our great- 
 grandmothers were brought up on "The Pleas- 
 ing Instructor, " which admitted into its sup- 
 
146 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 posedly educational pages several stories that 
 Mr. Comstock would be likely to confiscate. 
 We are told that Queen Elizabeth's conversa- 
 tion was garnished with very round oaths and 
 glided over topics that would make her presence 
 in a .modern drawing-room a scandal and re- 
 proach. It is curious, however, that while the 
 English drama and novel of the two centuries 
 before our own era are quite too frank in 
 speech, our own laxity of spectacular perform- 
 ance would have been regarded with horror 
 by our worthy ancestors. 
 
 Human nature remains the same though con- 
 ventionalities change. And when we remember 
 the expurgations required in Dean Swift and 
 the Reverend Laurence Sterne, it may not seem 
 so strange to us to find Italian bishops in the 
 fourteenth century writing for the daughters 
 of princes novelle so salacious that not even 
 the subjects may be mentioned, or to read at the 
 beginning of these filthy records of monstrous 
 vice a prayer such as the following which occurs 
 at the beginning of one of Lasca's least pre- 
 sentable novelle: 
 
 "Before a beginning is made of the story- 
 telling of this evening I turn to Thee, Dio ottimo 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 147 
 
 e grandissimo, who alone knowest all things and 
 art all powerful, beseeching Thee with humble 
 devotion and from my heart, that by Thy infinite 
 goodness and mercy Thou wilt grant to me and 
 to all the others that shall follow me in speak- 
 ing as much of Thine aid and of Thy grace that 
 my tongue and theirs shall say nothing that shall 
 not redound to Thy praise and^their consolation." 
 
 Mixed companies of ladies and gentlemen, 
 married and single, listened without a blush 
 to inuendo and double entendre, to the frankest 
 exposition of unmentionable things. And, again, 
 it was in accordance with this queer quality of 
 convention that boys and girls used to be and 
 probably still are in many pious families set 
 to reading the whole Bible through in course, 
 though perhaps fortunately they do not always 
 grasp the intense meaning of some of Saint 
 Paul's savage jests or the subtleties of the Old 
 Testament which are rendered in such veiled 
 language that their full meaning is hidden from 
 the exoteric reader. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the Italian 
 novellieri always invented their stories. The 
 genealogy of popular fiction is as much a science 
 as heraldry. Just as all human beings have a 
 
148 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 certain set of features: a nose hawk-like or 
 straight or retrousse, between two eyes of some 
 colour, above a mouth large, small or medium 
 and established at some angle upon a head 
 crowned with red, black, brown or yellow hair, 
 or like Chaucer's monk whose " heed was balled 
 and schon Hke eny glasse," so there are features 
 common to all stories, whether they be traced 
 to Arabian, Indian, Scandinavian, Slavonic or 
 British sources. There are great families of 
 legends, such as those that cluster about the 
 person of King Arthur and his Table Round, 
 or those derived from the equally mythical 
 Charlemagne, or that have come down to us 
 from the indented shores of Hellas, or those that 
 arose in what the Germans poetically call the 
 Morning-land. 
 
 Many a story that now does service in the 
 nursery has a long and regal ancestry, perhaps 
 finding its origin in a sun-myth told and believed 
 in the misty ages thousands of years before Moses. 
 Often the character of the nation amongst 
 which such stories had their birth is plainly 
 stamped upon them. How many of the Ara- 
 bian Nights stories hint at the despotic govern- 
 ment that crushed the people! See how the 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 149 
 
 poetic and lofty nature of the Greeks is be- 
 trayed in their stories of Jason and Perseus and 
 Odysseus! Notice the masterful qualities of 
 the Romans in their popular tales, how feudal 
 chivalry decked the legends of Europe with 
 details of fire-breathing dragons and innocent 
 maidens rescued by gallant knights! All these 
 sources seem to contribute to the Nile stream 
 from which these novelists so plenteously drew. 
 
 One single genealogical tree will perhaps give 
 some idea of the distribution of these folk- 
 stories. It is taken from a chart in Dr Landau's 
 "Die Quellen des Dekameron." 
 
 Somewhere between 200 b. c. and 600 a. d. 
 there was composed in the Sanskrit tongue 
 a work probably consisting of thirteen books 
 or parts. The original title is lost and of 
 the work itself only five chapters, under the 
 title "Kalila we Dimna" or "Panchatantra," are 
 known. The first is called "The Gentle Art of 
 Making Enemies"; the second "The Acquisi- 
 tion of Friends"; the third "The War between 
 the Cranes and the Owls"; the fourth, "Loss 
 of Former Possessions ", and the fifth, "Action 
 without Careful Investigation." 
 
 The original work was written by Buddhists, 
 
150 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 but when Buddhism was expelled from India 
 all traces of Buddhistic influences were elimin- 
 ated. The Brahman revision remained as one 
 of the treasures of India for hundreds of years, 
 till it was discovered and published in Germany 
 in 1848 and translated into German by Benfly, 
 That is a direct short-cut from ancient times to 
 ours. But meantime the stream had been 
 coming in a more round about fashion. 
 
 The original work did not immediately perish. 
 About 600 A. D. the King of Persia, Khosru 
 Nu-shir-wan, caused his Court Physician 
 Berzujah to translate it into the polite language, 
 the Pahlavi. This version, like the original, 
 is supposed to have perished; but a translation 
 of it into Syrian was made at some time unknown 
 and was pubUshed with a German translation 
 under the title "Kalilag und Damnag," in 1876. 
 It was so called from the names of the two 
 jackals — Karataka and Damanaka — that play 
 a leading part in the story. 
 
 An Arab, by the name of Abd-allah ibn al 
 Mokaffa, who died in 762, after becoming a 
 convert to Islamism, translated the Persian 
 version into Arabic at the instigation of the 
 Khalif Al-Mansor. It is said to be less literal. 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 151 
 
 as the translator was influenced by his religious 
 beliefs; but the manuscripts are believed to be 
 more or less incorrect. The same Pahlavi, or 
 Persian, version vpas used about a hundred years 
 later by the son of the Khalif Mamun, and this 
 again was translated back into Persian by 
 Kiaja Belgemi at the command of the ruler of 
 Khorasan, Nasr ben Ahmed, and this one again 
 served as a basis for a poetical version by Rudegi, 
 in the tenth century. 
 
 There are a number of other Arabic transla- 
 tions; and when we remember the connection 
 that came about between the East and the West 
 by means of the Crusades, and, moreover, the 
 splendid civilisation that characterised Sicily 
 and Spain under Saracenic rule, it will not sur- 
 prise us to know how widely this Oriental wis- 
 dom and anecdote was spread through the 
 world. 
 
 From one Arabic version a Hebrew one was 
 made by the Rabbi Joel, supposedly before the 
 middle of the thirteenth century; from the 
 Hebrew Giovanni of Capua in the middle of the 
 thirteenth century made the Latin ti'anslation 
 printed in 1480 under the title Directorium 
 human<B vita; from this at second or third or 
 
152 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 even fourth hand are derived German, Danish, 
 Spanish, Italian, Bohemian, French and English 
 versions. From the Greek translation, entitled 
 "Stephanites kailchnalites," which dates from the 
 eleventh century and is believed to be the work 
 of a Greek physician, Symeon Seth, came two 
 more Latin versions, one in Germany, the other 
 in Rome, an old Slav version, and one in Italian. 
 
 There are other versions, dozens of them, 
 including a Spanish translation which goes back 
 to the thirteenth century: they are found in 
 Turkish and Hindustani — such was the vogue 
 of the so-called Fables of Bidpah or Pilpai.* 
 There is no known ItaUan version before 1548: 
 only one of the anecdotes of the Panchatantra 
 appears in Boccaccio, though there are three 
 others that bear certain resemblances, and it is 
 thought that these must have come to him by 
 oral tradition. 
 
 Another work of Oriental origin which was 
 very widely spread by means of translations and 
 leaking off into folk-stories was the "Book of the 
 
 ♦This is not a proper name but derives from an Arabic perrersion 
 of the Sanskrit vidya-pati, or master of sciences, which was applied to 
 the Brahman philosopher or pandit who is fabled to have brought back 
 to the paths of virture King Dabshelim, the ruler of the Panjab after 
 the fall of Alexander's governor in the third century, B. c. 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 153 
 
 Seven Wise Men," — a work which in popularity 
 and wide-reaching influence is thought to excel 
 anything that has come down to us from anti- 
 quity. Under the various titles: "The History 
 of the Forty Viziers "in Turkish, "Syntipas"in 
 Greet; "Sandabar" in Hebrew, "Sindibad 
 Nameh," in Persian, "Sindbar" in Syrian, 
 "Sindban or the Seven Mages," "The History 
 of the King, his Son, and the Seven Viziers " in 
 other translations, is found the same general 
 collection of tales and the same plot. 
 
 In this a king has a son, by a deceased wife, 
 educated away from the court. Just as the 
 young prince is about to return to his father 
 he is warned by his tutor that, according to the 
 stars, he will run great danger and must for a 
 time, say seven days, pretend that he is deaf 
 and dumb. He follows his tutor's advice and 
 various attempts are made to cure him of his 
 supposed affliction. The Queen, his step-mother, 
 falls in love with him, but when she fails, like 
 Potiphar's wife in the story of Joseph — also 
 a favorite story in the East — to draw him from 
 the path of virtue, she accuses him to the king, 
 who condemns him to death. Then appear 
 the prince's instructor and his seven other 
 
154 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 teachers — the seven Wise Men — who, by their 
 entertaining tales, manage to postpone the execu- 
 tion till the astrological time is fulfilled and then 
 the prince, breaking his silence, declares his 
 innocence and the wicked queen, being con- 
 victed of her own guilt, is punished. 
 
 A similar outline is found in the great col- 
 lection of the Thousand Nights and the One 
 Night, which, by the way, includes a variant of 
 the story of the Seven Wise Men. 
 
 Under the title "Historia Septem Sapientium 
 Romae" it was circulated in many editions in the 
 Middle Ages and was early translated into 
 ItaHan, both prose and poetic, with dozens of 
 different names for the Sages, with different 
 scenes of action: China, Persia, India, Con- 
 stantinople, Sicily, Rome. 
 
 The eighth Novel of the second Day of the 
 Decameron is a partial variation of this story, 
 but Boccaccio also makes use of several of the 
 stories told by the Wise Men. 
 
 The "Sukasaptati," or "Seventy Stories of a 
 Parrot," is another collection of Oriental origin, 
 where a parrot, in order to save his mistress from 
 punishment in consequence of the visits of her 
 lover during her husband's absence, tells this 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 155 
 
 string of stories. Echoes of these are found in 
 Chaucer as well as in Boccaccio. Who first 
 began to make collections of stories for the 
 amusement of the Italians it is impossible to 
 determine. There must have been many that 
 were never committed to writing. The repre- 
 sentative collection dating from the thirteenth 
 or fourteenth century is entitled, Libra di Novelle 
 e di hel parlar gentile: cento novelle antiche, or 
 summed up in one word, // Novellino. 
 
 Professor D'Ancona argues that this collection 
 was the work of one author who, he believes, was 
 a Florentine merchant, but the tradition at- 
 tributing it to several authors and collectors 
 seems to be still well grounded and sustained. 
 There is no manuscript of them in existence 
 and no author rises from the tomb to claim 
 them as his. Some of them have been ascribed 
 to Dante, others to Brunetto Latini, others to 
 Francesco Barberini.' They seem to belong to 
 different periods. The first edition that bore 
 the title of "The Hundred Ancient Novels" 
 was published in Bologna in 1525. It has been 
 a moot question whether an undated copy 
 which was sold some years ago for :^6o was an 
 example of this edition. It has been frequently 
 
156 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 printed since, and the best edition is that of 
 Biagi of 1880. 
 
 These novels throw a curious light on the 
 men and women and scholarship of the Italians 
 of the fourteenth century. Most of them are 
 cast in Italy, though in some the scenes are laid 
 in other parts of Europe, in the Orient, and the 
 semi-mythical realms of King Arthur and 
 Miliardus. 
 
 Antiquity plays a solemn part: Aristotle, 
 Cato, Diogenes, Seneca, King Priam and other 
 celebrities are introduced. In the fifty-eighth 
 Socrates appears as a Roman senator and is 
 shown in consultation with an embassy from 
 the Greek Sultan. The same curious disre- 
 gard of historical accuracy is found in the " Gesta 
 Romanorum." As in mediaeval paintings Bible 
 characters are represented as dressed in the 
 costume of the painter's epoch, so in these 
 stories all sorts of delightful anachronisms 
 occur. Greeks and Romans and Orientals are 
 alike seen deUneated in the fashion of feudal 
 knights. Many of them are so simple and 
 unsophisticated and childlike that they are as 
 delightful as a picture by Botticelli. Such for 
 instance is the story of the prince brought up in 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 157 
 
 absolute seclusion and ignorance of the world, 
 who is so charmed with the demons. He had 
 heard of demons but his guardian's description 
 of the inhabitants of the Pit did not seem to 
 tally with the beings that he saw so gaily dressed 
 in the street. 
 
 Boccaccio has the same idea in the intro- 
 duction to the Fourth Day. He tells of a fellow- 
 citizen named Felippo Balducci, gifted with 
 wealth and other good things, who, inconsolable 
 on the death of his buona donna, took his only 
 son and went with him to Monte Asinajo — the 
 Mountain of Pure Air* — to serve God and 
 bring the boy up to a similar pursuit. This 
 valente uomo used sometimes to go down to 
 Florence and when his son was eighteen and he 
 himself grown old the youth begged his father 
 to take him to the city. After some cavil the 
 old man accedes to his request. 
 
 Here the youth , seeing the palaces, the man- 
 sions, the churches, and all the other things of 
 which the whole city was so full, began to marvel 
 and many times asked his father what they were 
 and what they were called. The father told 
 
 ^The word Asinajo signifies an ass-driver, but is explained as a 
 perrersion of Asanaria, that is, satia aria; rather far-fetched it must 
 be confessed. 
 
158 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 him and when he heard he was satisfied and 
 began to ask about something else. And as 
 thus the son was asking and the father was 
 replying, by chance they met a brigata of hand- 
 some young ladies beautifully dressed who 
 were returning from a wedding festival. And 
 when the young man saw them he demanded 
 of his father what manner of thing they were. 
 And the father rephed : 
 
 "My son, fix your eyes upon the ground; 
 look not upon them; they are evil things." 
 
 Then the son said: "But father, what are 
 they called ?" 
 
 The father not wishing to call them by their 
 real names, that is, women, said, "They are 
 called papere — green geese." 
 
 And wonderful to relate, he who had never 
 seen one before, not caring now for the palaces 
 or the oxen or the horses or the asses or the 
 monkeys or anything that he had seen, sud- 
 denly said : " My father, I beg you to give me 
 one of those green geese." 
 
 "Oimb — alas! my son," said the father, 
 "hush, they are evil — mala cosa!" 
 
 Whereupon the son asked, saying: "Are 
 evil things made ? " 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 159 
 
 "Yes," replied the father, and the lad rejoined : 
 
 " I don't know what you mean nor why they 
 are mala cosa; as for me, I never saw anything 
 so beautiful or so delightful, as they are. They 
 are more beautiful than the painted lambs that 
 you have sometimes showed me. Ah! If you 
 have any love for me, do let us take home with 
 us one of those green goslings and I will feed 
 it" — to le daro heccare. 
 
 And the father replied : " I will not; you do not 
 know what they put into their beaks." And he 
 repented that he had brought his son to Florence. 
 
 In the Novellino a maiden educated in a 
 convent, knowing nothing of the outside world 
 sees a goat cUmbing on the wall and asks a nun 
 what it is. "One of the women of the world," 
 she replies. "When they grow old they have 
 a beard and horns. " And the maiden is delighted 
 to have learned this much of the great world. 
 
 II 
 
 The author or authors of the Novellino are 
 hidden behind the veil of anonymity; but not 
 far distant from them in time stands a figure 
 
i6o A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 which is the type and representative of the gay, 
 pleasure-loving, pleasure-conferring novelltero of 
 the Renascence. Giovanni Boccaccio — John 
 Big-mouth — was born in the year 1313. His 
 father, Boccaccio di Chellino, of a plebeian 
 family of Certalda, a castello of the Val D'Elsa 
 was a merchant whose business apparently kept 
 him vibrating between Florence and Paris. 
 It is known that he was in Paris from 13 10 until 
 the year of his son's birth. There is a legend 
 to the effect that he was engaged in some service 
 under the King of France, Philip the Fair, and 
 that from his intimate relations with a young 
 lady of high rank, possibly a princess of the 
 blood, was born the illegitimate son. Korting 
 and some of the Italian biographers of Boccaccio 
 argue with considerable ingenuity that, as he 
 certainly inherited property from his father and 
 enjoyed the right of citizenship in Florence and 
 held public office, he must have been a legitimate 
 son and hence they do not hesitate to assert that 
 Boccaccio di Chellino married a French lady, 
 brought her to Florence and there the boy was 
 born. 
 
 Vencenzo Crescini combats this opinion and 
 to support his views, which coincide with the 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA i6i 
 
 legend, he adduces three of Boccaccio's novelle, 
 in which he finds autobiographical data veiled 
 under the disguise of fiction and anagram. 
 According to him Boccaccio's mother was a 
 Parisian lady, her name being Jeanne, the ana- 
 gram of which is Giannai. Boccaccio's father 
 abandoned the mother of his son and afterward 
 in Florence took to wife Margherita di Gian 
 Donato de' Martoli, whose name appears in one 
 of the novelle as Gharemita. 
 
 In the same way, reading between the lines, it 
 seems probable that his presence in the paternal 
 house was not grateful to the new Signora 
 Boccaccio and that he was therefore brought up 
 away from his home. His father destined him 
 for his own vocation and sent him to Naples, 
 probably when he was about sixteen years old. 
 
 He was evidently a boy of precocious intel- 
 lect and in Naples there was everything to stimu- 
 late his ambition. Under the patronage and 
 protection of King Roberto, who under Petrarca's 
 instruction had learned to like poetry, bards and 
 learned men found their works and studies 
 liberally rewarded. Villani, Boccaccio's earliest 
 biographer tells a pretty story of the youth : how 
 he stood at the entrance of the tomb of Vergil at 
 
1 62 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Posilipo and looking forth on one of the most 
 beautiful prospects in the whole wide world — 
 the sea lying at his feet like a vast living sapphire 
 set with diamonds, the vine-clad mountains and 
 the villa-dotted shores — then and there vowed 
 to devote himself to Poesy. 
 
 In his leisure moments he studied. Paolo 
 Perugino, King Robert's learned librarian, gave 
 him his first lessons in that classic mythology 
 which he introduces into his works with such 
 brilliant elFect. It is known that he learned 
 eagerly about the motions of the heavenly bodies 
 from the famous Genoese astronomer Andalone 
 del Negro, of whom he speaks with the greatest 
 reverence in his later works. In comparison 
 with such lofty themes' what a dry and tedious 
 drudgery was the study of mercantile law — 
 the Decretale — and how low and degrading 
 the details of trade! He begged his grudging 
 father to allow him to abandon the profession 
 which he so thoroughly detested. He studied 
 canonical law and other subjects then regarded 
 as essential to a liberal education but undoubt- 
 edly the Latin poets offered more attractions 
 to him than the dryer books of the Jurists. 
 The letters that he wrote at this time are couched 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 163 
 
 in very barbarous Latin and are sprinkled with 
 Greek terms just as a boy nowadays learning 
 French or German likes to show ofF his new 
 attainment by introducing it at every oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Probably Boccaccio then spent most of his 
 young-manhood at Naples : whether he had the 
 advantage of travel, as Villani asserts, is proble- 
 matical, but we have Boccaccio's own somewhat 
 allegorical description of the most important 
 episode of his life. Just as Dante worshipped 
 Beatrice, just as Petrarca made Laura the ideal 
 of his life, so Boccaccio found his inspiration in 
 a love that is hardly less celebrated. 
 
 On the Saturday preceding Easter, 1338, in 
 the church of San Lorenzo, Boccaccio saw for 
 the first time Madonna Maria, the natural 
 daughter of King Roberto. She was married 
 to a personage of high rank attached to her 
 father's court. She was a vision of radiant 
 beauty: bellissima nelV aspetto, graziosa e 
 leggtadra e di verdi vestimenti vestita, e ornata 
 secondo che la sua eta e I'antico costume della 
 citta richiedono. This lady whom he so beauti- 
 fully describes in her beauty and grace, in her 
 green gown as the fashion of the city prescribed, 
 
i64 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 kindled in Boccaccio's heart the flames of love, 
 and he celebrated his passion for her under the 
 name of Fiametta. 
 
 At first she welcomed the adoration of the 
 handsome young poet, who, like herself, had to 
 bear the bar sinister of illegitimate birth — a 
 disgrace perhaps, but not so seriously regarded 
 in those days of decaying feudal customs, espe- 
 cially where the one side or the other had royal 
 blood. She shared the common conception that 
 "a poet's worship is each woman's secret goal." 
 
 But to the joyous days of reciprocated pas- 
 sion succeeded, as usual in such cases, the dark 
 hours when it begins to dawn on the poet that 
 he is only a toy of the beautiful woman for 
 whom he would be willing to die. 
 
 He, then, like Petrarca, though even more 
 bitterly — because he had once tasted the en- 
 chanted Circean cup — bewails his wasted days 
 and his love-lorn case : but not in the form of a 
 canzoniero. Boccaccio, to be sure, wrote poetry, 
 but he is not remembered as a poet, rather as a 
 story-teller. Here and there in the course of 
 these multitudinous tales we may see the traces 
 of his once reciprocated but afterwards un- 
 requited devotion. 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 165 
 
 Through the influence of Fiametta he first 
 tried his hand at the art which he so perfected. 
 One time, while the sun of favour was shining 
 upon him, he and Fiametta were together at a 
 hrigata and when the conversation turned upon 
 the famous old French romance of Florio and 
 Blanchefleur, the fair lady bade her lover tell the 
 story in the Italian tongue. Instead of the 
 piccolo libretto which she expected he expanded 
 it into a long volume. Before it was finished 
 he had left Napoli and was at his father's house 
 at either Florence or Certalda. 
 
 As we have remarked before, the autobio- 
 graphy of his youth is to be discovered in the 
 various episodes of this first novello. It bears 
 the name of // Filocolo and in an aflFected and 
 prolix style relates how Lelio, a noble Roman 
 of the early Christian times, was with his wife 
 Giulia travelling to San Giacomo in Galicia when, 
 being attacked by Felice, King of Spain, he was 
 slain. Giulia fell into the hand of the Pagans 
 but was kindly received by the queen. The 
 queen bears a son named Florio and on the 
 same day to the captive woman is born a beauti- 
 ful daughter to whom is given the romantic name 
 of Biancofiore, or White Flower. The two 
 
i66 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 children are brought up together at Marmorina 
 and of course learn to love each other. When 
 the king learns of their passion he sends his 
 son to study at Montario. These are the high- 
 flown words with which the young prince takes 
 his leave, sugaring the bitterness of their sep- 
 aration: "The transparency [chiarita] of thy 
 visage surpasses the light of Apollo, nor can the 
 bellezza of Venus equal thine. And the sweetness 
 of thy voice would do better things than the 
 lyre of the Thracian or the Theban Amphion. 
 Wherefore the lofty Emperor of Rome, castigator 
 of the world, would be thy fittest consort or 
 rather, in my opinion, if 't were possible for 
 Juno to die, none would be more suitable to be 
 the consort of highest Jove." 
 
 As the separation proves unavailing the girl 
 is charged with plotting to poison the king. 
 She is condemned to be burned at the stake but 
 the gallant young lover rescues her just in time. 
 She is then sold as a slave to some merchants 
 who carry her off to Alexandria and dispose of 
 her to the admiral of that noble city. Florio 
 is informed that his White Flower is dead. 
 Just as he is on the point of shuffling off this mor- 
 tal coil in the dignified and leisurely way charac- 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 167 
 
 teristic of the ancients so as to join her in the 
 world of ghosts his mother tells him the truth, 
 and with a sigh of relief at being spared an 
 unpleasant duty he hastens off with renewed 
 ardour under the assumed name of Filocolo, 
 which Boccaccio — unwittingly betraying his 
 small knowledge of Greek — assures his readers 
 comes from two Greek words ph ilos, love, and 
 kolos, fatigue — whereby he means simply that 
 he would never rest till he should find his 
 lost love. 
 
 After various adventures he reaches Alex- 
 andria and makes his way to the tower where 
 Biancofiore is confined. Just as they are about 
 to escape, happy at being reunited, they are 
 caught again and condemned to be burned to 
 death. But a magic ring defends them from 
 the flames. Venus herself descends to liberate 
 them. Mars also takes their part and by put- 
 ting himself at the head of the young man's 
 followers routs their enemies. Finally the 
 admiral of Alexandria recognizes in Florio, alias 
 Filocolo his own nephew, and unites him to his 
 beloved Biancofiore. On their way home they 
 find in Rome the beautiful bride's most noble 
 relatives. Under the able instruction of Sant' 
 
1 68 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Ilario Florio becomes a convert to Christianity 
 and returning to Marmorina causes his parents 
 also to be baptised. 
 
 The principal charm of the work consists in 
 the epidodes. What to us mean such euphuisms 
 as to speak of morning as the getting up of the 
 Goddess Aurora or to speak of evening as the 
 time when the horses of Phoebus bathe in the 
 waves of the ocean ? These periphrases, as 
 one may easily see, are only the exaggerations 
 of the peculiar style at first affected by Dante 
 and based on the poetry of Vergil and Ovid. 
 They are the natural effects of a classical 
 education not as yet accommodating itself to 
 the genius of a man's own vernacular and time. 
 
 Florio on his way to Alexandria is driven by 
 a tempest to Naples and there, or at least just 
 outside the city, he meets — by a delightful 
 anachronism — a lieta brigata, with the beautiful 
 Fiametta as the lady of honour. He is received 
 most graciously and made umpire to decide thir- 
 teen subtle questions of love. These are excellent 
 samples of the absurd subtleties that exercised 
 those gay and fashionable ladies and cavaliers: 
 
 A girl wooed by two lovers at a festival takes 
 a garland from one of them and puts it on her 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 169 
 
 own head but at the same time she removes her 
 own garland and with it adorns the head of the 
 other. Which is the favoured suitor, which has 
 the preference ? 
 
 We might almost expect to meet the story of 
 the Lady or the Tiger. 
 
 Here is another: Which of two women is 
 the more unhappy: she that has a lover and 
 loses him or she that is hopeless of having one ? 
 
 Again: Which of three lovers deserves pref- 
 erence: the strongest, the most courteous or 
 the wisest ? Methinks we again go back to the 
 earliest times and witness the three goddesses 
 bringing their bribes to Paris, son of Priam — 
 whence the rape of Helen, the Trojan War, the 
 voyages of Odysseus and the splendid cycle of 
 hero-stories which grow like branches from a 
 cedar of Lebanon. 
 
 Still another of these problematical cases pro- 
 pounds whether it is better to love a maid, a 
 wife, or a widow; and illustrative of the tenzone 
 or discussion are stories which in several cases 
 are still further elaborated in the Decameron. 
 In the last book of "II Filocolo," which was writ- 
 ten after Fiametta had withdrawn her favour 
 from Boccaccio, occurs the episode wherein he 
 
170 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 apparently, under allegorical figures, depicts his 
 life and love. 
 
 Florio is represented as on his way back to 
 his father's palace with the bride whom he had 
 won in spite of all obstacles. But it pleases 
 him first to revisit Napoli and let his beloved 
 gaze at those enchanting landscapes. He takes 
 her to the tepid baths of Baja, to the time- 
 honoured tomb of Misenus, to the cave of 
 Cumae. They look down on the glittering 
 waves of the Myrtoan sea and the glories of 
 Pozzuoli. He enjoys the pleasures of fishing 
 and he hunts the red deer in the shady woods. 
 
 One day he hurls his javelin at a noble stag 
 but misses his aim and the weapon is imbedded 
 in the foot of a very lofty pine. After the ex- 
 ample of the story of Polydorus, in Vergil, a 
 stream of blood gushes forth from the spot 
 where the bark was torn and a dolorosa voce tells 
 the story of Idalagos. I will condense it : 
 
 In fruitful Italy, says the voice, lies a small 
 tract of land which the ancients called Tuscany 
 and in the midst of it rises a little hill (i. e., Cer- 
 taldo) whereon Eucomos (in other words 
 Boccaccio di Chellino) pastured his silly sheep, 
 nor was it far from those waves which the horses 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 171 
 
 of Phoebus, having passed the meridian circle, 
 eagerly yearn for, that they may quench their 
 burning thirst and find repose: and thither he 
 went and there the gentle flock of Franconarcos, 
 King of the White Country (that is, Philip IL) 
 found pasturage which he watched with the 
 greatest solicitude. 
 
 This king had a large flock of daughters with 
 beauty adorned and in splendid costumes and 
 one day, sent by their sire, they came with a 
 most notable array of companions, to ofi^er up 
 sweet-smelling incense in a sacred temple 
 dedicated to Minerva, which stood in an ancient 
 forest, still rich in store of beauteous leaves 
 and fruit. 
 
 Having accomplished their sacrifice and the 
 day being well spent, they began to indulge in 
 festal pleasures amid the delicious wood. 
 
 Near this forest Eucomos, above all shepherds 
 most crafty and endowed with wit, chanced to 
 be watching his flock and having with his own 
 hands made a sampogna, or rustic pipe, which 
 gave greater delight to those that heard it than 
 any other sound, unwitting that the daughters 
 of his lord had come, the sun at that time being 
 hotter than at any other period of the day, he 
 
172 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 had gathered his flock under the shade of a 
 lofty maple and leaning his arm on his mystic 
 crook was playing his sampogna to his own 
 exceeding joy. 
 
 This sound coming td the ears of the errant 
 maidens, they without delay drew near and after 
 they had listened with delight to the music and 
 had rejoiced to see the gambols of the silly 
 sheep, one of them, named Giannai, the most 
 beautiful of them all, called to Eucomos and 
 begged him to give them his music that they 
 might dance, and promised him a reward. He 
 complied. It pleased them and they came back 
 many times to hear him. Eucomos compelled 
 his genius to most noble sounds and tried his 
 best to delight Giannai, who, coming nearer 
 than any of the others, kept urging him to play 
 on. And her beauty ran to the eyes of Eucomos 
 with gracious delight. And to her also came 
 sweet thoughts. He in his own heart greatly 
 praised her beauty and felt that the man whom 
 the gods should deem worthy of possessing her 
 would be indeed blessed and he wished that it 
 were possible he might be the one. 
 
 And at these thoughts Cupid, the disturber of 
 unanchored minds, descended from Parnassus 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 173 
 
 and came to that place and furtively instilled 
 his poison into the rustic's veins, joining to 
 desire sudden hope. 
 
 Three days later it chanced by Fate, who is 
 the orderer of things mundane, conscious of the 
 future, that Giannai alone of the sisters came 
 with a small company of whom she felt no fear 
 and begged him to play to her, and he obeyed. 
 But soon he changed the sweet sounds of his 
 music into the sweeter sounds of flattery and 
 with deceitful promises he made her put full 
 faith in him. "She bore him two sons," con- 
 tinues the speaking pine, " of whom I was one, 
 and my name is Idalagos. But no long 
 time elapsed after our birth ere he abandoned 
 the silly maiden and returned with his flock to 
 his own pastures and transferred the troth which 
 he had pledged to Giannai to another called 
 Garamita by whom in short space he had new 
 ofi^spring." Idalagos, whom we must under- 
 stand to be the poet himself, says that he fol- 
 lowed his father's footsteps all the days of his 
 youth, but as the lofty qualities of his genius 
 which he had received from Nature kept in- 
 creasing, he turned his feet from the base of the 
 hill — that is to say he turned his back upon his 
 
174 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 father who was of lowly origin though probably 
 rich by reason of successful trade — and rested 
 his claims on admittance into the splendid 
 society of Naples on his mother's noble birth — 
 turned his feet from the basso colle and en- 
 deavoured by severer paths to attain to loftier 
 things. 
 
 He relates how one day when wishing to 
 enter the paternal roof two terrible and most 
 ferocious bears — orsi ferocissimi e terrthilt — 
 appeared before him with burning eyes, desirous 
 of his death, and how from that time forth he 
 abandoned the paternali campi and came to 
 these lovely woods near Naples where, dwelling 
 with Calmeta, pastor solennissimo, who knew 
 so much of all things, he was attaining the 
 summit of his desires. 
 
 There seems to be a certain similarity between 
 Dante prevented by the three wild beasts from 
 attaining the summit of his hill and Boccaccio 
 attacked by the terrible and ferocious bears 
 keeping him from his threshold. 
 
 He proceeds in his story: "One day as we 
 were resting with our flocks he began to tell with 
 his shepherd's pipes the new changes and the 
 unthinkable courses of the silvery moon and 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 175 
 
 what the reason might be that it should lose 
 and then gain its light and the like. 
 
 "These things I attended with the greatest 
 diligence and so much did they delight my 
 unpolished mind that I determined to know 
 them. . . . and having abandoned the 
 pastoral life, I disposed myself to follow Pallas 
 in all respects." 
 
 Here we have again thinly disguised under the 
 image of the two ferocious bears the guardians 
 of the home to which as a bastard child he was 
 not welcome and under the pseudonym of the 
 astronomical shepherd Calmeta the learned 
 Andalone del Negro whom he so often mentions 
 as his master; and finally his abandonment 
 of his trade. One more passage from this same 
 story will show, also in allegorical language, 
 how Boccaccio more than once loved before he 
 saw Maria di Aquino and how his love for the 
 young princess brought about his ruin : 
 
 "These woods," continues the tale, "seemed 
 favourable for the pursuits of Pallas, but at 
 certain seasons and especially when the Delphic 
 one reached Aries, they were often visited 
 by ladies who walked about with slow and 
 graceful steps and I slowly followed them 
 
176 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 so that though mine eyes were delighted with 
 their grace I continued to escape the darts of 
 Cupid, for I feared lest if I were wounded by 
 them, my days would increase to my hurt; and 
 being disposed to avoid them I gave myself up 
 first to the cittern of Orpheus and secondly to 
 being a good marksman." 
 
 And he goes on to tell how first of all from 
 among the ladies, all of whom he came to know, 
 a white dove led him through the young shrub- 
 bery, flitting on its quick wings while he fol- 
 lowed with his bow and arrows. And when he 
 was weary of this chase a nera merla — a black 
 blackbird with red beak and full of delightful 
 songs, occupied him; but in vain he sought to 
 plant his arrows in her heart. And then a 
 pappagallo — a parrot — still more enticingly 
 urged him to the zeal of conquest, as it flew 
 with its green winnowing wings through the 
 shrubbery that hid it ever and anon from his 
 eager eyes. 
 
 "But, " says he," the clever archer Amore, who, 
 by hidden ways makes entrance into guarded 
 hearts, now that the sweet time had come again, 
 when the meadows, the fields and the trees 
 bring forth, as the ladies were going to their 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 177 
 
 accustomed delight, caused from amongst their 
 delightsome choir — piacevole coro — a pheasant 
 to arise and as I followed it with my eyes, flying 
 over the tops of the highest trees the beauty 
 of its variegated plumage so distracted my mind 
 though bent on more useful things, that I made 
 ready to follow it, sparing neither art nor bow 
 nor genius to accomplish it. Feeling my heart 
 wholly contaminated by the poison of love so 
 long avoided, recognising that I was caught in 
 the very gin which I had hitherto escaped by 
 my great discretion, I turned about and beheld 
 the number of those beauteous ladies diminished 
 by one whom I had hitherto regarded as more 
 than any of the others beauteous. 
 
 "Then I recognised the deception practised 
 by Love, who, not being able to get me into his 
 power, like other men, had caught me by inter- 
 est in other forms, first disposing my heart by 
 various desires, to take to this and when, sighing, 
 I turned toward the pheasant, the lady who 
 had vanished from the midst of the others 
 changing back into her pristine shape appeared 
 before my eyes and thus spake: 'Why art thou 
 ready to flee from me ? None loves thee more 
 than I do.* 
 
178 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 "These words caused me more fear of de- 
 ception than hope of future gain and I doubted 
 because she was of a beauty far more splendid 
 than the others and her origin was of lofty descent 
 and she was full of the graces of Juno. Where- 
 fore I declared that it was impossible that she 
 should do aught else than make sport of me. 
 And if I had been able I should have drawn 
 back from what was begun. But the nobility 
 of my heart, derived not from my father the 
 shepherd but from my mother of royal birth, 
 caused me to burn and I said: 'I will follow 
 her and find out if she prove true in fact as she 
 has been forward in speaking.' " 
 
 He satisfies himself that she is telling the truth 
 and he says he took her as the loftiest treasure 
 of hi J heart, and, as she seemed to love him better 
 than any one else, he lived for some time content. 
 
 But the inconstant faith of woman's breast 
 which brings her lover ever more delight caused 
 her to prove false to him and she finally aban- 
 doned his miserable heart for another. 
 
 "To tell what was my anguish," he cries, "at 
 suddenly losing an object so much loved and so 
 far above all, when I with mine own eyes saw 
 it carried off elsewhere, would be a waste of 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 179 
 
 words, for I see you already know, but never- 
 theless the hope still remained that I might turn 
 her back and therefore I spared neither tears 
 nor entreaties nor fatigues. But she refused 
 to listen or heed, nor would she even look; 
 wherefore in desperation at my torment I 
 sought death but could not obtain it, not being 
 as yet at the fated end of my days." But Venus 
 had pity on him and changed him into a pine — 
 in other words he pined away. 
 
 In another of Boccaccio's stories, the "Ameto," 
 the same idea is repeated and the names of his 
 Neapolitan loves are. given as Pampinea and 
 Abrotonia. Who they were in reality probably 
 no one will ever know. But there can be no 
 doubt that under the image of the royal pheasant 
 with its briUiant plumage — he introduces the 
 same bird again in the fourth book — he means 
 Fiametta. Before Boccaccio finished "II Filocolo" 
 he wrote a long poem entitled "Filostrato" — 
 "The Lover Subjected." It is based upon 
 an episode of the Trojan war and it was com- 
 posed during Fiametta's absence, as is proved 
 by the dedicatory epistle. It is a story of in- 
 trigue, jealousy, deception; in spite of its classic 
 names and affectations of antiquity it really 
 
i8o A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 represents his own experiences in Naples. 
 Another poem written in similar circumstances 
 was "Teseide," also in octave like "Don Juan," 
 and these two poems are the earliest known 
 examples of that meter. 
 
 Dante wrote pastoral poetry in Latin, in 
 imitation of the ancients, and so did Petrarca. 
 Boccaccio had to follow their example. Petrarca's 
 "Bucolicum Carmen" is assigned to the year 
 1346. Boccaccio's third eclogue is known to have 
 been composed two years later and his sixteenth 
 about 1363, while his idyll, "Ninfale d'Admeto," 
 is thought to have been written in 1341 or 1342, 
 about the time when he was returning to his 
 father's house. 
 
 The story is in prose interspersed with sestine 
 and perfectly simple. Ameto (Greek, Ad- 
 metos), an uncouth and wandering huntsman, 
 falls in love with Lia, a most beautiful nymph, 
 and under the influence of the new passion he 
 abandons his savage life and becomes civilised. 
 On a day sacred to Venus he follows his fair 
 one to a beautiful shaded meadow and sits with 
 her by the side of a clear fountain. The 
 temple of Venus is not far away — between the 
 running waters of the Arno and the Mugnone — 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA i8i 
 
 whereby he is supposed to mean the church of 
 San Giovanni Battista. Six other nymphs, 
 Mopsa and Emilia, Adiona and Acrimonia, 
 Agapes and Fiametta come along, two and two, 
 and the usual lieta brigaia is formed. Shep- 
 herd songs and tenzoni are sung and then Lia 
 proposes that each one of them should narrate 
 the story of their loves : 
 
 "You are all young," she says, "and I and 
 our forms give no sign that we have lived or are 
 still living without having felt or even now feel- 
 ing the flames of that revered goddess whose 
 temples we have visited this day." 
 
 Under the allegory of the seven nymphs each 
 of whom at the end of her story sings a song in 
 triolets to her special goddess: Pallas, Pru- 
 dence; Diana, Justice; Pomona, Temperance; 
 Bellona, Bravery; Venus, Love; Vesta, Hope; 
 and Cebele, Faith, we have the four cardinal 
 virtues and the three theological virtues typified 
 both in idea and practice. 
 
 When the last of the nymphs has told her 
 story and sung her triolet-song, their attention 
 is attracted by a wonderful prodigy in the sky: 
 seven swans and seven storks engage in a battle 
 and the swans win the victory. Then suddenly 
 
i82 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 from on high flashes forth with dazzling bril- 
 liancy a pillar of fire like that which guided the 
 Hebrews through the desert and a sweet voice 
 is heard saying: 
 
 "I am the One and Triune Light of Heaven 
 Beginning and End of all things." 
 
 lo son luce del cielo unica e trina, 
 Principio e fine tti ciascuna cosa. 
 
 Ameto then learns that the Venus whom the 
 nymphs have been celebrating is not that lust- 
 ful goddess who inspires inordinate desires in 
 human beings but rather the divinity from 
 whom descend into men's hearts genuine, true 
 and holy passions — i vert e guisti e santi amort. 
 In other words, she is the Holy Trinity, the God 
 of Christianity. And when Ameto recovers his 
 eyesight and looks at the seven nymphs — 
 his seven Virtues, mind you — they appear to 
 him more beautiful than ever and as they gaze 
 up into the column of fire they also seem to be 
 ablaze and he trembles lest they should be con- 
 sumed — especially Agapes and Lia. And then 
 once more he raises his eyes to the clear light ; 
 as one sees the coal burning in the fire so in this 
 marvellous pillar of fire he perceives an effulgent 
 body overmastering all other brightness, as 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 183 
 
 molten steel taken from the furnace flashes forth 
 a multitude of sparks : but the form of the face 
 and of the eyes divine he cannot distinguish 
 and while he is still filled with wonder he again 
 hears the goddess speaking in terza rima — as 
 in the "Divina Commedia," which it is plain he 
 imitating in all the machinery of the scene — as 
 follows : 
 
 " Oh my dear sisters through whom are mani- 
 fest the roads that lead into my realms for those 
 that wish to mount and put on wings — your 
 good works just and upright, straightforward, 
 good, holy, and virtuous, worthy of praise, simple 
 and modest, open the dark and nebulous eyes of 
 Ameto that he may see the beauties of my joy." 
 
 Before the divine words are fully uttered the 
 nymphs run to Ameto; Lia frees him from his 
 soiled habiliments, dips him into the clear foun- 
 tain, just as Lucia baptises Dante in the waters 
 of the Lethe stream in the "Purgatory;" then 
 renders him purified into the hands of Fiametta. 
 Mopsa dries his eyes and removes the scales 
 that had blinded him; Emilia directs his gaze 
 to the visage of the goddess; Acrimonia increases 
 the strength of his eyes that they may endure the 
 supernal splendour; Adiona clothes him anew 
 
1 84 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 with most grateful raiment; Agapes, breathing 
 into his mouth, kindles within him the holy fire. 
 And Ameto, turning to the seraphic vision 
 begins a long address: 
 
 "0 Diva pegasea, alte Muse — O Pegasean 
 Goddess, O lofty Muses — rule my feeble mind 
 that it may endure such things and make my 
 genius subtle to contemplate them in order that 
 if it be possible for tongue of man to tell of the 
 beauty of things mine may succeed in telling 
 of them." 
 
 Then, after further prayers and promises and 
 after the apparition has returned to heaven, the 
 nymphs sing angelically in a circle round him. 
 And Ameto in joy lends his ear to their song and 
 his heart to sweet thoughts. His old life seemed 
 repulsive to him; hitherto he had mingled with 
 fauns and satyrs; his ears had been delighted 
 with only the primitive songs of the shepherds; 
 hitherto the nymphs had pleased his eye rather 
 than his intellect; now they appeal to his intel- 
 lect rather than to the sensual vision: in other 
 words, to sum up his long monologue, it seemed 
 to him that he had grown from a brute animal 
 into a man. Whereupon he sings a hymn to 
 the goddess: 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 185 
 
 "O divine Light which in three persons and 
 one essence governs the heavens and the earth 
 with justice and love and eternal reason." 
 
 diva luce quale in tre persone 
 
 Ed una essenza il del govarni e'l monio. 
 
 Con giusto amore ed eterna ragione. 
 
 And when it is finished, the hour being late, the 
 nymphs depart and Ameto returns to his home. 
 
 Most characteristic of the morals and notions 
 of the Renascence is this grotesque, poetic, alle- 
 gorical story of Boccaccio's spiritual regenera- 
 tion. The mixture of paganism and Chris- 
 tianity — ^just as in the "Divine Comedy" — seems 
 to us absurd and almost repulsive, and what 
 shall be said when we remember that each of 
 these seven nymphs representing the highest 
 virtues of the Church — in telling the story of 
 her love begins first by speaking of her husband 
 and then goes on to reveal a state of connubial 
 irregularity such as could only be rectified by a 
 Nebraska or Chicago divorce court! 
 
 In several of the narrations delivered by the 
 seven nymphs we might find the omnipresent 
 allegory of Boccaccio's own experiences. He 
 seemed never to tire of introducing it, and we 
 find it again in his greatest poem, the "Amorosa" 
 
iS6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 "Visione" and in the book of sonnets which so 
 closely follows in plan Petrarca's example. 
 The "Amorosa Visione" consists of fifty short 
 poems in the meter which Dante liked so well, 
 and one may get some idea of its artifice when 
 one realises that it forms one vast acrostic. 
 All the first verses of the terzine are joined 
 together to form two tailed sonnets and a double- 
 tailed sonnet which contains the dedication to 
 Fiametta. He himself acknowledged his in- 
 debtedness to Dante and bids his book follow 
 modestly the great Florentine poet, come piccolo 
 servidore — like a little servant. 
 
 The admiration which Boccaccio felt for 
 Dante was genuine and beautiful, but even in 
 his imitations the contrast between the two men 
 never fails to appear. We see Dante stern and 
 almost forbidding, a master aniong prophets, 
 striding along with bent head and gloomy brow, 
 viewing the earth as merely a halting-place of 
 trial and sorrow; consequently his ideal of 
 love is so lofty and distant from earth that it 
 narrowly escapes being an abstraction; on the 
 other hand, Boccaccio is filled with the worship 
 of earthly beauty. Beauty is his religion and, 
 consequently, love in his eyes in spite of his 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 187 
 
 endeavour to raise it to divine heights is ever clad 
 in seductive palpitating flesh and blood. Be- 
 tween the two stands Petrarca ! Is it not indeed 
 a wonderful trio to be living in one land at one 
 and the same time ? 
 
 But to understand the contrast between 
 Dante and Boccaccio one must understand the 
 spirit of the times. One extreme invariably 
 leads to another or even exists with it sim- 
 ultaneously. While we have on the one hand 
 the lofty mysticism of Dante and the bigotry 
 of Saint Francis and the extravagances of the 
 flagellants; on the other we have the new school 
 of Provencal poets who, even while taking part 
 in Crusades wrote the obscenest of poems; we 
 find the scandalous stories of Fra Salimbene. 
 Boccaccio, as the favourite of a corrupt court, 
 did not hesitate to be himself corrupt, even 
 while he was singing the praises of an incor- 
 ruptible Church! 
 
 It seems probable that Boccaccio's step- 
 mother had died and that the legitimate children 
 had also left the father desolate: he speaks of 
 the paternal mansion as being oscura, muta e 
 molta triste — dark, silent and very sad. While 
 Boccaccio di Chellino, now old cold, harsh. 
 
1 88 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 and avaracious, desired his presence he re- 
 turned to the home which he had so httle reason 
 to love and while dwelling with the father whom 
 he had also little reason to reverence, he seemed 
 to be in a melancholy prison made all the darker 
 by contrast with those joyous fortunate days at 
 Naples. 
 
 He found some consolation, however, in beau- 
 tiful Florence, and his ever susceptible heart 
 was soon on fire once more. He discovered a 
 young widow and began to pay court to her: 
 but while she pretended to accept his homage 
 she really made sport of him and showed his 
 letters to another of her lovers. Boccaccio 
 learned of this treachery and by way of revenge 
 wrote another allegoric vision entitled "Cor- 
 baccio" — "A Nasty Crow." He seemed to be 
 following a delicious pathway but it led him 
 into a savage mountainous forest and a shade 
 appears — just as Vergil appears to Dante — 
 ready to show him the way out. While Dante 
 in the selva oscura understands the present life, 
 to Boccaccio the ragged forest signifies love, 
 from which he is liberated by human reason. 
 But the apparition is not Vergil by any means : 
 it is the deceptive widow's dead husband, who 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 189 
 
 had been enjoying the torments of purgatory 
 as a penance for his avarice and also for his un- 
 becoming patience in enduring his wife's 
 wretched habits. Now he is dead and no longer 
 tormented by jealousy, he feels nothing but the 
 deepest pity for all those that fall into the toils 
 of her who had been for a time his earthly cross. 
 
 At the intercession of the Celestial Virgin, for 
 whom Messer Giovanni had always shown 
 unusual devotion, God had sent him to save the 
 poet and he accomplishes the grateful task by 
 saying all manner of evil of women in general 
 and of his own widow in particular. 
 
 The modern reader would not find great 
 edification in this somewhat irreverent allegory, 
 in this catalogue of woman's frailties. The 
 book would hardly be chosen as a text-book in a 
 young ladies' seminary. Many of the nettlish 
 stings are borrowed boldly from the satires of 
 Juvenal, but Boccaccio's own experience fur- 
 nished him with an abundant supply of new 
 ones. The most harmless are those in which 
 he depicts the vanity of women, as they practise 
 their graces before the mirror or in church; 
 while pretending to be counting their beads they 
 are casting furtive glances at the men. 
 
I90 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 III 
 
 This savage satire seems to put an end to the 
 most frivolous part of Boccaccio's life. His 
 father died in 1348 or 1349 and in spite of his 
 irregular birth he inherited a large share of the 
 old man's wealth. Shortly afterward he en- 
 tered into friendly relations with Petrarca and 
 this friendship lasted until Petrarca's death. 
 Indeed, in a letter to Francesco da Brossano he 
 claimed that he had belonged to him for forty 
 years. His first actual acquaintance with "the 
 greatest glory of Italy" began in 1350, when 
 Petrarca passed through Florence on his way to 
 receive the poet's crown at Rome. The fol- 
 lowing year Boccaccio was sent by the Com- 
 mune to Padua to invite him to take the direc- 
 tion of the new University. They spent several 
 days together in the famous garden in which 
 Petrarca so delighted and if only there could 
 have been present a shorthand reporter — a 
 chiel amang 'em takin' notes — what a precious 
 legacy it would have been! We can have it 
 only in the imaginative dialogue of Walter 
 Savage Landor. 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 191 
 
 In the spring of 1589 they spent a few days 
 together in Milan and from this time their 
 friendship became most intimate. Boccaccio 
 never let slip an occasion to praise and venerate 
 him whom he called praceptor tneus. Petrarca, 
 as might be imagined, exerted a highly moral, 
 influence upon him, though Boccaccio con- 
 fesses that it did not go to the extent of a com- 
 plete regeneration — amores meos, etsi non plene 
 satis tamen vertit in melius. So he confesses, 
 and he commemorates in his fifteenth eclogue 
 this exemplary influence where he describes the 
 shepherd Filostrafo as chiding Tiflo. 
 
 What bound the two men together was their 
 love for antiquity. Boccaccio knew some Greek 
 and at Petrarca's solicitation translated Homer 
 into Latin prose. That he did not succeed 
 better was due to the limited knowledge of his 
 teacher, the Calabrian Leonzio Pilato, who at 
 Boccaccio's invitation taught in the University 
 from 1360 until 1363. 
 
 Boccaccio, under the influence of the ideas 
 of his time, came to look upon Italian poetry as 
 a foolish juvenile occupation. Thenceforth his 
 later works, with a few exceptions, are written in 
 Latin. One, entitled "De Montibis, Sylvis," 
 
iga A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Lacubus, Fluminibus, Stagnis seu Paludibus, de 
 Nominibus Maris Liber," is regarded as the 
 first modern dictionary of geography. A grave 
 and almost ascetic book is his Latin treatise "De 
 Claris MuHeribus," " Concerning Famous Wo- 
 men" — and yet even in this he cannot refrain 
 from piquant stories which contrast so curiously 
 with the general spirit of the work. 
 
 Another, entitled "De Genealogiis Deorum 
 Gentilium," "Concerning the Genealogies of the 
 Heathen Gods" — is a vast compilation written 
 about 1366 at the suggestion of Ugo IV., King of 
 Cyprus and Jerusalem. Of course his knowl- 
 edge had its limitations and the critical spirit 
 was wanting; but such books, full of super- 
 stitions and fables, such quaint and curious 
 fallacious theories as they may be, were useful 
 in their day. 
 
 Boccaccio was greatly honoured in his own 
 city. Three times he was sent on important 
 embassies. In 1365 he was at Avignon charged 
 with the duty of calming the resentment of 
 Urban V. against Florence. Two years later 
 he bore to Rome the congratulations of the 
 Commune on the return of the Papal Court to 
 Italy. 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 193 
 
 At one time he almost became a citizen of 
 Naples again. Niccolo Acciaiuoli, a Florentine, 
 who had gone there many years before as a 
 merchant and had risen to be Grand Seneschal 
 to the Queen, made him splendid promises, and 
 feeling that he might have leisure for his be- 
 loved studies he decided to go. But though 
 he had dedicated his book "Concerning Fam- 
 ous Women" to Andrea, sister to Niccolo and 
 his flattering mention of the queen had pre- 
 ceded him, he found himself subjected to the 
 shabbiest treatment. The letter that describes 
 his experiences is still in existence. 
 
 In 1367 he visited Petrarca's daughter and 
 her husband Francesco de Brossano and for a 
 year or two he actually lived in Naples; Queen 
 Giovanna's third husband offered him gracious 
 protection; but the year of Petrarca's death the 
 city of Florence began a course of public lec- 
 tures on Dante's "Divina Commedia" and Boc- 
 caccio was invited to fill the chair. Boccaccio 
 was the first to write Dante's life and his com- 
 mentary on the works of the great poet, though 
 it was left unfinished, contains many explana- 
 tion which are invaluable. His salary was 100 
 golden florins. He began his lectures in the 
 
194 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 church of San Stefano on October i8, 1373, and 
 gave them every day until early in January, 
 1374, when an attack of scurvy, or possibly 
 leprosy, compelled him to resign. 
 
 One curious little episode in Boccaccio's life 
 seems to throw a light on his character. In 
 1362 a monk by the name of Gioacchino Ciani 
 came to see him in Florence and told him that 
 he was sent by a Saint Pietro Petroni, who on 
 his death-bed had seen a vision of Christ and 
 reading in his face the past, the present and the 
 future he had learned that unless Boccaccio 
 should change his scandalous mode of life he 
 would suffer eternal torment. Such a message 
 from an earnest though misguided "crank" 
 even now might well have an effect upon a man's 
 imagination. Boccaccio lived in a superstitious 
 age and his alarm was aroused. He was on 
 the point of following Ciani's advice to sell 
 his books, abandon his studies and burn his 
 Italian writings. Fortunately he consulted Pe- 
 trarca who wrote him that Ciani was probably 
 an impostor and that he had better change his 
 habits but not renounce his studies which had 
 been the consolation of his past life. He came 
 to his senses and kept on with his learned labours. 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 195 
 
 In the autumn of 1374 he returned to Cer- 
 taldo, broken in health, and here he remained 
 until his death December 21, 1375. His will 
 is preserved: in it he left his books to Padre 
 Era Martino da Signa; to the convent of 
 Santa Maria di San Sepolcro he bequeathed 
 many sacred relics and other objects which he 
 had picked up in the course of his life. 
 
 IV 
 
 Just as Petrarca is remembered chiefly by his 
 canzoniere, so Boccaccio stands as the represent- 
 ative of the story-teller of the Renascence. And 
 the "Decameron" is justly regarded as his master- 
 piece; though just as Petrarca repented having 
 written and published his sonnets so Boccaccio 
 declared in a letter written in 1373 that the 
 perusal of the book was perilous and unedifying, 
 especially for women. 
 
 Mention of this great work has been purposely 
 left to the last. In 1348 the plague was ravag- 
 ing Florence. Boccaccio's description of its 
 horrors at the beginning of the "Decameron" 
 stands in the same category of vivid narration 
 
196 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 as De Foe's word-picture of the great London 
 fire. The device employed for stringing the 
 stories together is, as we have shown, as old as 
 the hills. Seven young ladies and three young 
 men meet in the church of Santa Maria Novella 
 and agree to abandon the unfortunate city. They 
 shut themselves up in a beautiful villa and spend 
 their days in gay daUiance, singing, eating, 
 drinking. And when the sun shines too fiercely 
 they gather in the bosky shades of the garden 
 and day after day under the direction of their 
 duly chosen re or regina relate their gay, frivolous, 
 often indecent stories. 
 
 The name "Decameron," like that of the 
 "Divina Commedia," was a later invention. 
 Boccaccio at first entitled the work "L'Opera 
 di dieci giorni" but afterward in his quality as 
 a Greek scholar added the Greek title, which 
 means the same thing. 
 
 Boccaccio's originality in this work consisted 
 in its frame and in the manner in which he used 
 materials already extant. If there is any moral 
 in them, it is accidental; the value of true 
 friendship may be illustrated; the power of a 
 word rightly spoken is shown; it may teach 
 young women tp beware of the snares of men 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 197 
 
 and especially of scholars. But the sole object of 
 the stories is amusement and the remarkable vari- 
 ety of the incidents is all bent to this same focus. 
 
 In Motley's "Universal Library" are to be 
 found forty of these novelle. There is, therefore, 
 no need to go into any analysis of their style or 
 of their contents. They are like " the Widow 
 Cruse's oil jar"; poets, playwrights, novelists 
 for half a millennium have pillaged them and still 
 they are as fresh and full of life as ever. Chau- 
 cer's "Canterbury Tales" is the first contempo- 
 raneous imitation and there is certainly a great 
 resemblance between the two men and their 
 genius, though Chaucer is freer from the affecta- 
 tions of the pedant. 
 
 Of course, as the "Decameron" is not an orig- 
 inal invention with Boccaccio, we can hardly say 
 that all the collections of stories similarly con- 
 joined are imitations of his work; nor should we 
 have space to mention half of them. They 
 string along through the ages, from "II Pecorone" 
 of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, which was composed 
 three years after Boccaccio's death, in 1378, to 
 William Morris's "Earthly Paradise." Indeed, it 
 is a mooted question whether the famous mediae- 
 val collection made by some unknown monk and 
 
198 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 called the "Gesta Romanorum" was not subse- 
 quent to Boccaccio. 
 
 It may be interesting, however, to mention 
 briefly one way in which these old stories come 
 filtered down to us and it will be easily seen how 
 inexhaustible a field it offers for study and 
 research. Symonds says: 
 
 In their material the novelle embraced the whole of 
 Italian society, furnishing pictures of its life and manners 
 from the palaces of princes to the cottages of contadini. 
 Every class is represented — the man of books, the soldier, 
 the parish priest, the cardinal, the counter-jumper, the con- 
 fessor, the peasant, the duke, the merchant, the noble lady, 
 the village maiden, the serving man, the artisan, the actor, 
 the beggar, the courtesan, the cutthroat, the astrologer, the 
 lawyer, the physician, the midwife, the thief, the preacher, 
 the nun, the pander, the fop, the witch, the saint, the galley- 
 slave, the friar — they move before us in a motley multitude 
 like the masquerade figures of carnival time, jostling one 
 another in a whirl of merriment and passion, mixing together 
 in the frank democracy of vice. . . . It is only the sur- 
 face of existence that the novelliere touches. He leaves its 
 depths unanalysed except when he plunges a sinister glance 
 into some horrible abyssof cruelty or lust, or stirred by gent- 
 ler feeling paints an innocent, unhappy, youthful love. The 
 student of contemporary Italian customs will glean abundant 
 information from these pages; the student of human nature 
 gathers little except reflections on the morals of sixteenth cent- 
 ury society. It was perhaps this prodigal superfluity of strik- 
 ing incident in combination with poverty of intellectual con- 
 tent which made the novelle so precious to our playwrights. 
 
BOCCACCIO AND THE NOVELLA 199 
 
 To trace all the plots of the English stage 
 from Marlowe to Dryden, from Dryden to Sheri- 
 dan, one would have to read the stories of Ser- 
 cambi of Lucca and the 300 of Franco Sacchetti, 
 and a century later those of II Lasca and the 
 "Disporti" of Giralamo Parabosco and the 214 
 novelle of Matteo Bandello, and Giraldi's 
 " Hecatomithi, " or Hundred Tales, and Fran- 
 cesco Straparola's "Thirteen Pleasant Evenings'' 
 and thousands of others. 
 
 Just a few examples of the use that Shake- 
 speare alone made of these treasure-houses of 
 dramatic plots must suffice. 
 
 From the last-mentioned — "Le Tredici pia- 
 cevoli notti,"of Straparola — came several hints 
 utilized in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" — 
 the plurality of loves and the ladies contributing 
 to one another the addresses of the same gal- 
 lant. "Much Ado About Nothing" is largely 
 based on the twenty-second novella of Ban- 
 dello in which II Signore Scipione Attillano 
 narrates how II Signore de Cardona, being with 
 King Piero di Aragona in Messina, falls in love 
 with Fenicia Lionata. This was translated 
 into French and it is supposed that an English 
 version of Belleforest at one time existed. 
 
200 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 " Measure for Measure " has curious parallelisms 
 withCinthio's, the fifth no-y^/Za of "Hecatomithi." 
 
 "Romeo and Juliet" is partially based on a 
 novel by Arthur Broke translated from another 
 of Bandello's great store. "The Merchant of 
 Venice" is made up of several strands but that 
 which relates the story of the pound of flesh is 
 found in "IlPecorone/'thatisto say"The Dunce 
 or Blockhead, " being the adventures of Gianetto. 
 While the suggestion of the three caskets is 
 found in the "Gesta Romanorum," " CymbeUne " 
 is based upon Boccaccio's tale of "Bernabo da 
 Genova." 
 
 These are only hints. But they go to prove 
 the proposition so carefully elaborated by Count 
 Gozzi that there do not exist more than thirty- 
 six tragic situations, or the still more scientific 
 estimate of Signor Polti, who having analysed 
 and classified some eight hundred dramas and 
 two hundred novels, reduced them to the same, 
 which number may indeed be still further 
 reduced to the classic number seven. Prob- 
 ably all in last analysis go back to actual 
 occurrences or grew out of actual occurrences. 
 Truth is forever stranger than fiction. 
 
V 
 
 THE RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 
 
 "^JO SISTERS ever had a more dissimilar 
 education and fate than the four who 
 are poetically and metaphorically taken to 
 represent India, Persia, Greece and Rome. 
 Sprung from one common mother, they became 
 strangers and foes and apparently the only 
 common bond among them was a parcel of 
 linguistic roots so buried and hidden that they 
 themselves had no knowledge of their united 
 heritage nor was it suspected until within a few 
 generations. 
 
 Back of this family relationship is a deeper 
 reason why nations so widely remote from one 
 another should trace back their indigenous 
 drama to similar sources: that is the dramatic 
 instinct implanted in the human heart. It crops 
 out typically in young children who endue their 
 dolls or toys with life and delightfully alarm 
 themselves with their own imaginings. 
 
 Children vary greatly in imaginative power. 
 So it is not strange to find, by analogy, one 
 nation having vastly more dramatic or musical 
 
 20I 
 
202 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 genius than another. National gods are national 
 qualities personified: Kama-Deva, the Indian 
 god of love, at whose festivals, at summer's be- 
 ginning, scenic entertainments were early pop- 
 ular, conditioned the Hindu drama, of which 
 Sakuntala is the most perfect flower. Strictly 
 speaking, the Hindu drama had no tragedy, 
 because, as Professor Monier Williams says, al- 
 though joy and sorrow, happiness and misery, 
 are woven in a mingled web — good and evil, 
 right and wrong, truth and falsehood are 
 allowed to blend in the early acts of the drama, 
 yet " in the last act, harmony is always restored, 
 order succeeds to disorder, tranquillity to 
 agitation, and the mind of the spectator, no 
 longer perplexed by the apparent ascendency of 
 evil, is soothed and purified and made to 
 acquiesce in the moral lesson deducible from 
 the plot." 
 
 The magnificent flowering of the Greek drama 
 antedated by centuries the Hindu, though both 
 were religious in origin. This connection of the 
 drama with religion is universal. They may 
 be bitterly jealous of each other, but it is 
 the jealousy of husband and wife. The very 
 word pulpit means stage, and the first scene 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 203 
 
 was played in front of the flower-crowned altar 
 of Dionysos. 
 
 The Greeks, in spite of their petty internal 
 jealousies, were one people, worshipping the 
 same gods. Hence the task of tracing the rise 
 of the Hellenic drama, from the goat choruses 
 of the Dorians — the very word tragedy hiding 
 in it the nature myth of which the goat was 
 the symbol — to the lofty sacred dramas of 
 Aischylos is comparatively simple. 
 
 But the Italian peninsula was inhabited by 
 a wonderfully mixed population. Not to speak 
 of the pure Greek colonies of the southeastern 
 coast and of Sicily, we may feel certain that the 
 legends of JEnezs and his descendant Romulus 
 and of the Tarquins point to Greek origin. 
 But there were other prehistoric races inhabiting 
 the country, and many scholars believe that the 
 artistic Etruscans, whose language has longest 
 of any on earth resisted all keys and is still 
 a locked casket, were Kelts. Keltic Spain 
 contributed to the Roman drama its most famous 
 name. Wonderful that those dramatic character- 
 istics which make the Irish the most brilliant 
 actors should have held through all the centuries! 
 One might almost say that every one of the 
 
204 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 seven hills of Rome stood for a different 
 nationality — Etruscan, Sabine, Oscan, Sikulian 
 — whose mixture produced that world-con- 
 quering city. Even the Latin tongue, com- 
 pared with the Greek or Sanskrit, shows the 
 effect of violent friction and hard use, and 
 seems like an older and more wrinkled 
 daughter of the common mother-tongue. 
 
 We must not forget that in a certain sense 
 Rome was or became a great robber stronghold. 
 Much as we may admire the Roman sternness 
 and dignity, we must not forget that it was 
 wholly military and aggressive. Paulus iEmilius 
 ravaged sixty cities of Epeiros and carried one 
 hundred and fifty thousand Greeks into cap- 
 tivity; Metellus and Silvanus laid Macedonia 
 waste; Sulla plundered Athens and Delphi; 
 Pompey conquered fifteen kingdoms, eight 
 hundred cities and over one thousand fort- 
 resses; Crassus brought ten thousand talents 
 away from Jerusalem. Every town or province 
 which Rome laid hands upon became the legi- 
 timate spoil of a succession of irresponsible 
 and rapacious proconsuls. It is pathetic to 
 read in Roman history that Lucius Mummius 
 — most appropriate name — caused Greek actors 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 205 
 
 to produce a Greek drama in celebration of 
 his glory in sacking Corinth and waging suc- 
 cessful war in Greece. 
 
 "The dramatic muse," says J. L. Klein, 
 "was brought to Rome as a slave and a slave she 
 always remained." Consequently, Greek plays, 
 original or imitated, fill no small part of the 
 history of the Roman stage. The indigenous 
 Roman drama, though it did not reach sublime 
 heights commensurate with the power and ex- 
 tent of the Empire, had really a vastly impor- 
 tant influence through tradition. The Rom- 
 ans were men of action . They had no ideality, 
 no invention, they represented in themselves the 
 iron fate of the nations, "the barbaric zeal for con- 
 quest and enslaving of other peoples goes to 
 found a kingdom of darkness in contradistinction 
 to the creative light kingdom of energetic 
 poesy. The spirit of tragedy shuts out the Roman 
 spirit, just as the freedom idea is exclusive of the 
 military spirit destructive of nations." Klein, 
 whose words I have just paraphrased, goes on to 
 declare that the one God of Freedom must be 
 composed of pure philosophy; God's revelation 
 as spirit and self-conscious thought of pure 
 religion; God's revelation as harmony of beings 
 
2o6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 and souls, in other words love and of pure 
 art which in its highest manifestation is tragic 
 art. This trinity-unity was wholly lacking in 
 the typical Roman character. Utterly subver- 
 sive of true tragic art it must have been when the 
 Roman audience demanded realism for action: 
 when Muzio Scaevola was seen actually 
 burning off his hand and Hercules, wrapt in 
 the poisoned robe of Nessus mounted the pyre 
 and was consumed to ashes in the presence of 
 ten thousand spectators ; when death in its most 
 repulsive aspect was presented before the gaping 
 throng. In such a spirit Othello would really 
 murder Desdemona and Romeo really run 
 " Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris" 
 through the heart! 
 
 If the Greek drama began in graceful 
 hymns sung with choric dances to the beneficent 
 God of the Vine — Dionysos, with face equally 
 capable of joy and grief, symbol of life return- 
 ing from death, of resurrection after burial, of 
 sorrowfor past beauty and joy for recreated life — 
 the Roman drama, on the contrary, originated, 
 according to Livy, about four hundred years 
 after the founding of the city, in an an attempt 
 to put a stop to the plague that had been rag- 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 207 
 
 ing for two years. Livy says, "When the 
 violence of the disease was alleviated neither by 
 human measures nor by divine interference, their 
 minds being prone to superstition, among various 
 means of appeasing the wrath of the gods scenic 
 plays are said also to have been instituted — a 
 new thing to a warlike people who had hitherto 
 had only the spectacles of the circus. But the 
 affair was insignificant (as beginnings gener- 
 ally are) and moreover from a foreign source." 
 
 He goes on to tell how actors, or rather 
 dancers, were imported from Etruria, who 
 danced to the measures of a flute-player though 
 without song or pantomime, and how after- 
 wards the young Romans began to imitate these 
 and to add jocular verses, impromptu, with 
 gestures appropriate to the action. 
 
 The Etruscan word for actor was {h)ister and 
 these native performers were called histri- 
 onesj from which our word histrionic is 
 derived. 
 
 The medleys which they performed came to 
 be written in regular meter fitted to music and 
 provided with probably conventional gesticula- 
 tion. They were called satirce, or satires, from 
 a word meaning a full dish or a dish of mixed 
 
2o8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 ingredients. Some etymologists have connected 
 the word with the Greek satiric drama, which is 
 supposed to have been invented by Pratinas 
 about 500 B. c, and came to form the fourth 
 part of Tetralogy. 
 
 "Livius Andronicus," says Livy, "was the 
 first who ventured to substitute for the satire a 
 story with a regular plot, and when, from having 
 been too frequently called upon to sing his piece, 
 his voice was ruined, he is said to have obtained 
 permission to place a boy before the flute player 
 to sing and to have acted the song with con- 
 siderably more liveliness because the employ- 
 ment of the voice was no longer an impedi- 
 ment." His first play was produced in the 
 year 240 B.C. 
 
 After this the duties of the singers and the 
 actors were separated: the dialogue left to the 
 latter. By this arrangement the stage business 
 was raised from mere farce and gradually 
 became an art. 
 
 Livius Andronicus, it will be proper to men- 
 tion, was a Greek captured at the siege of Taren- 
 tum and brought to Rome as a prisoner of war. 
 Thus again Rome had to go abroad for her first 
 genuine drama; and this genuine drama, com- 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 209 
 
 posed of three elements, song with flute music, 
 dance with gestures, and dialogue, seems to be 
 the three-fold root from which we might derive 
 opera, pantomime and the play. Horace in his 
 noble epistle to Augustus (Lib. II., i) also 
 gives an account of the rise of the Latin drama. 
 He tells how the early farmers, happy in their 
 small estate, after their crops were gathered 
 in, sacrificed a pig to Tellus and poured out 
 milk to Silvanus, and offered flowers and wine 
 to their genius, and then with their helpmeets, 
 their children and their faithful wives, indulged 
 in the fescennina carmina, which were extem- 
 porised verses full of raillery and coarse humour, 
 of old jokes and obscene singing.* The Atillan 
 farces of Oscan origin were also transplanted 
 to Rome. Here was the germ of the native 
 comedy and it is far more interesting and im- 
 portant than the more dignified drama imported 
 with Greek statues and Greek rhetoric. 
 
 It would seem, then, as if the gift of impro- 
 
 * These arc not to be confounded with the Carmina ArvaJia sung at the 
 festival of the "Creative Goddess" with hymns to the Lares agrestes: only 
 one has come down to us: one example of this religious litany sung anti- 
 phonally — 
 
 EnoSf LaseSf iuvate, 
 calling upon Mars as Marmar and ending with a four-times repeated 
 triumphe: for these are hieratic and priestly; while the fescinnine im- 
 promptus were thoroughly popular. 
 
210 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 visation were as indigenous to the climate of 
 Italy as the native olive-trees. It is an ex- 
 tremely interesting phenomenon as we see it 
 standing out in those dim far-off days, and with 
 no less distinction through the Middle Ages 
 down to our own time. The survival of char- 
 acteristics in nations is as wonderful as the 
 transmission of characteristics from generation 
 to generation of individuals and it is hardly 
 an exaggeration to say that the commedie im- 
 provise, or improvised farces, of the fifteenth 
 centuries were legitimate children of the com- 
 edies that were played in all parts of Italy . 
 even hundreds of years before Christ.* 
 
 The name fescennine is commonly derived 
 from a town, Fescennia, which the histories and 
 dictionaries call Etruscan but which was 
 really Faliscan; the derivation however is far 
 more significant. It comes from an ancient 
 Latin word, fascinum, from which is derived 
 our word fascination. It meant a charm 
 or amulet worn as a protection against the evil- 
 eye, the jettatura, so commonly believed in 
 even to the present day. It was a phallic 
 
 '*' The action of the Roman Cemunculus and almost his name are pre- 
 served in the Italian Arlequino, 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 211 
 
 symbol and as such goes back to the most pri- 
 mitive behef of the human race, in which all 
 nations, Greek and Italian, South Sea Island 
 and Central African, Indians and Eskimos, are 
 at one: it points to the great mystery of the 
 origin of life, and hence its appropriateness as 
 connected with primitive marriage institutions, 
 and hence also the conventional scurrilities 
 of the drama that thence arose, innuendoes but 
 perfectly free from malice. 
 
 The Atellan farces likewise were' so called 
 not because they originated in the Oscan 
 town of Atella near Naples, but simply because 
 these farces had what one might call convention- 
 alised fixed characters and a perennial scheme 
 of jokes and therefore needed a permanent and 
 established scene. So the ruined Oscan capital, 
 Atella, was chosen. There was no danger of 
 sectional jealousies in such a choice. 
 
 The principal characters presenting types 
 that became as familiar as Falstaff or Captain 
 Bobadill or Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek or Mas- 
 carille were Pappus or Casnar, the stupid vain 
 old man; Bucco, the fat, chattering glutton; 
 Maccus, the filthy, amorous fool, and Dossenus 
 the cunning sharper. 
 
212 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 The meter in which some of these were written 
 is called saturnine: it does not sound so por- 
 tentous when one remembers that it is the same 
 as we find in that delicious poem of our child- 
 hood days, 
 
 The Queen was in her parlour 
 Eating bread and honey: — 
 
 Dabant malum Metelli 
 Naevio poetae. 
 
 Naevius, whose plays held the boards till the 
 time of Horace, employed this meter: only a 
 few fragments have come down to us. 
 
 Sicily was an early home of the drama. 
 Epicharmos of Syracuse is credited with be- 
 ing the inventor, not only of character comedies, 
 but of the great type of the parasite. The Si- 
 cilian influence spread as easily to the north 
 as to the east. Three of Rome's earliest 
 dramatists, Livius, Naevius and Ennius, were 
 Greeks from the south and of course intro- 
 duced imitations of Greek plays. Ennius 
 pater, as Horace calls him, copied Epicharmos. 
 History is often reported as repeating herself. 
 She is the great plagiarist. The phenomena of 
 the Elizabethan age are found in Athens and in 
 Rome, Like causes produce like effects. 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 213 
 
 Greene, Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson, Shakespeare, 
 began as actors, revamped old plays, wrote 
 new ones; collaborated, invented — all to sup- 
 ply the incessant demand of the stage managers. 
 Going back two thousand years, we find almost 
 precisely the same conditions. 
 
 I should like to trace the curious analogy 
 between Plautus and Shakespeare. The humble 
 origin, the birth in the obscure country town, 
 the move to the capital; the menial employment 
 in or about the theatre; the wonderfully ab- 
 sorbed education, the fame, the wealth. 
 
 Titus Maccius (not M. Accius) Plautus 
 was born in a little Umbrian town under the 
 shadow of the Appennines about 250 B. c, and 
 died at the age of seventy. His flourishing 
 career was contemporary with the second Punic 
 war. In one of his plays he introduces a 
 Carthaginian slave, and the whole scene is in 
 the Carthaginian dialect. The name Plautus, 
 or Plotus, like the Greek Platus, signifies flat- 
 footed, and it is said that he was chosen on 
 account of this umbrian peculiarity to take the 
 part of the Planipedes in the Mimes. This is 
 absurd. No less so the name of Asinius into 
 which his ethnic name of Sarcinius, from his 
 
214 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 native town of Sarcina, was corrupted. If 
 he painted himself in his character o( Pseudolus, 
 as Lessing thinks, he had a swarthy complexion, 
 red hair, a protuberant abdomen, a huge head, 
 keen eyes and immensely fat legs. 
 
 If not a slave, he did the menial work of a 
 slave; but while turning the miller's wheel, he 
 was composing comedies, and at last he rose to 
 his natural level, as all talent, like water, must 
 rise. 
 
 Only Livius Andronicus and Gnaeus Naevius 
 of his contempories could rival him. But they 
 were mere imitators, Plautus also imitated 
 Menander and Diphilos and Philemon and 
 ApoUodoros, but he was more than an imitator. 
 He treated his prototypes as Shakespeare treated 
 them (in the " Comedy of Errors " for instance) 
 as Corneille treated Alarcon. 
 
 He kept what suited him and his environment, 
 and knowing Rome, he added those comic 
 creations which delighted Roman audiences for 
 almost five hundred years. 
 
 Among the curiosities at the museum at 
 Naples is a tessera, or theatre ticket, found at 
 Pompeii and containing besides the designation 
 of the seat the title of the play which was per- 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 215 
 
 formed in 63 b. c. and the name of the author, 
 Plautus's "Casina," which was still popular two 
 hundred and fifty years after his death. Like 
 Shakespeare, his popularity seems to have at one 
 time suffered an eclipse. Horace, who probably 
 preferred the pure Greek comedy (as England 
 till lately preferred French comedies), speaks 
 slightingly of him. 
 
 But Plautus is more real to America than the 
 Italian drama was before the coming of Salvini 
 and Signora Duse. In i8go the students of 
 St. Xavier's College, New York City, per- 
 formed his "Captivi," a play which some critics 
 consider the best in existence. These young 
 Jesuits repeated the play as a part of the 
 New York State educational exhibit during 
 the time of the Chicago Exposition with great 
 success. 
 
 Thus in a certain sense Plautus may be said 
 to belong to the modern drama. But even more 
 in the influence which he has exerted on all modern 
 playwrights. Rotrou, Camoens, Moliere and 
 Dryden copied his "Amphitruo." "L'Avare" is 
 a copy of his "Aulularia. " Regnard and Addison 
 imitated his "Mo Stella ria." "The Comedy of 
 Errors" is a variation of his "Menaechmi." 
 
2i6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Lessing's "Schatz" is an imitation of his 
 "Ti;inummus."* 
 
 Twenty years after Plautus* death arose 
 another comic writer whose influence on the 
 drama of Europe was destined to be even 
 greater than Plautus'. This was a slave whose 
 name is believed to have been Publipor. He 
 was born in Carthage and was brought to Rome 
 as the slave of a Roman senator named Publius 
 Terentius Lucanus, from whom he took his name 
 of Terence. As Rome and Carthage were then 
 at peace and as Terence had not the com- 
 plexion of a Phoenician, it is likely that he was 
 the son of some Celtiberian colonist who had 
 been transported to Africa. He did not know 
 Latin so perfectly as Plautus and it was charged 
 that Publius Scipio, who was his first bene- 
 factor, merely used him as a cat's paw — that 
 the comedies attributed to the slave were really 
 the general's! It is the Shakespeare-Bacon 
 controversy carried back two thousand years. 
 Undoubtedly he had help. 
 
 * "Casina," which in spite of its mutilated condition tells its ever fresh 
 and comic story, was imitated in the sixteenth century by Niccol6 Machia- 
 Telli in his CUzia, and by many other Italian dramatists. In the records 
 of the Italian Courts the Latin Comedies of Plautus are constantly men- 
 tioned as a part of the festal amusements. 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 217 
 
 Both Plautus and Terence wrote the commoe- 
 dia palliota; but whereas Plautus, though he 
 laid his scenes in Greece gave the local colour- 
 ing, the customs, the characters, the style all 
 Roman, Terence, catering to a more cultivated 
 audience, made his plays entirely Greek. He 
 had no invention but the most refined art. 
 Only six of his plays have come down to us and 
 these six have the same set of characters under 
 somewhat varying circumstances: the two fath- 
 ers who are brothers; the two sons and their 
 sweethearts, one of the girls marrying one 
 cousin, the other seduced by cunning or violence 
 remains as the mistress of the other cousin; 
 the indispensable servant helping the intrigue 
 with his cleverness and aptitude. 
 
 Terence had a wonderful gift for painting 
 character and morals; he had not Plautus' 
 abundant and overflowing wit. It is a question 
 whether Terence, with what has been called his 
 " pedagogic end,"really succeeded in the teach- 
 ing of morals so well as Plautus, who had no such 
 end in view. But Plautus, in the prologue to 
 the "Captivi," recognises the moral end of com- 
 edy. "It is not," he says, "a trite and elabor- 
 ated story, as many others be, nor are there in it 
 
2i8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 obscene verses unworthy of mention, nor per- 
 jured panderer, nor shameless jade, nor brag- 
 gart soldier." * 
 
 Mommsen, in his "History of Rome, " makes 
 a long and elaborate comparison between Plautus 
 and Terence. Many of his sentences are well 
 worth citing, but it deserves to be read as a whole 
 and not piecemeal. It is a masterpiece of liter- 
 ary balancing. 
 
 The legend runs that Terence perished 159 
 B. c. in a storm on the coast of Greece and 
 that with him were lost his translation of one 
 hundred and eight of the comedies of Menan- 
 der which he was carrying back to Rome with 
 him. He was only thirty-five years of age. 
 
 Terence undoubtedly had a greater influence 
 on after times than Plautus : Ariosto, Aretine, 
 Lodovico Dolce, Battista Porta, Machiavelli 
 and many other of the Italian dramatists were 
 directly indebted to him. 
 
 Moliere's"Ecole des Maris" isTerence: Shad- 
 well's "Squire of Alsatia" is Terence: Man- 
 love and Nightshade in Cumberland's "Chol- 
 
 * Nam periraclate jactast neque stem ut ceieratf neque spurcidici insunt 
 versus immemorahihs: hie neque periurus lenost nee meretrix mala neque 
 miles gloriosus. 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 219 
 
 eric Man " are modern representatives of Mic'io 
 and Demea, Knowell, in Jonson's " Every Man 
 in His Humour" is Micio, from the "Adelphi." 
 Sir Richard Steele's "Conscious Lovers" is 
 Andrea. MoHere's Scapin is Davus, the cur- 
 rens servus; Aretine's "LaTaIanta"and Sedley's 
 "Bellamira" are from the "Eunuchus." Mrs. 
 Inchbald's "Every One Has His Fault" is a vari- 
 ation of Terence's "Phormio." That wonderful 
 German nun, Hrothvita, whose piouS comedies 
 are one of the precious relics of the tenth cen- 
 tury, copied Terence. The tale is endless.* 
 
 Cicero placed neither Terence nor Plautus 
 at the head of the Latin comic poets. He says 
 Caius Caecilius Statius was perhaps the great- 
 est — fortasse summus poeta comicus. 
 
 He also was a slave; but of his forty or fifty 
 comedies nothing is left but a few fragments. If 
 only some dramatic Agassiz would arise, who 
 from these broken bones could reconstruct the 
 whole organism of the plays ! But they are lost 
 forever. Only three names are preserved, and 
 these point also to Menander and Greek origin. 
 
 =*= Nor must we forget that Terence also is to be represented in the mod- 
 ern stage in his original Latin: the students of Harvard have now enacted 
 the "Phormio" at Sanders Theater. 
 
220 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Of Latin tragedy only one name concerns us; 
 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who was born shortly 
 after the beginning of our era in the patrician 
 colony of Corduba, now Cordova, in Spain. 
 He was brought to Rome when a boy, was care- 
 fully educated, studied the Stoic philosophy, 
 enjoyed distinguished honours under the Em- 
 peror Claudius, fell in love with the Princess 
 Julia, and at the instigation of the jealous and 
 dangerous Messalina was banished to Corsica, 
 whence after eight years of exile he was recalled 
 to Rome by Agrippina, the mother of Nero. He 
 became praetor and consul and tutor to Nero;* 
 and being involved in the conspiracy of Piso, 
 he died the death of a double suicide by poison 
 and by bleeding in his bath, A. D. 65. 
 
 There is a question whether the tragedies 
 that bear the name of Seneca belong to the phil- 
 osopher or to another of the same name. Nor 
 does it make much difference except so far as it is 
 interesting that the only tragic poet whose works 
 have come down to us arose from Spain. Again we 
 have the Shakespeare-Bacon myth, like Proteus, 
 ever changing its form but the same at heart. 
 
 * He acquired the enormous wealth of 300,000,000 sesterces, and was 
 accused by jealous rivals of all manner of crimes. 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 221 
 
 There were tragic writers before Seneca. 
 Horace, in his "Ars Poetica" says : " Our poets 
 left naught untried nor was it their slightest 
 merit that they dared to desert Greek foot-marks 
 [or paths, vestigia] and to celebrate domestic 
 events. " Marcus Pacuvius, the learned nephew 
 of Ennius, a native of Brundusium, who flour- 
 ished about two hundred years before Seneca, 
 wrote a dozen tragedies. Lucius Attius or 
 Accius translated Aischylos' "Prometheus Des- 
 motes" and wrote a work on the drama called 
 "Pragmatica." Both Pacuvius and Attius wrote 
 praetextae, or tragedies, based on Roman his- 
 tory. Nothing is left of them. 
 
 Of Asinius Pollio, who, according to Vergil, 
 was worthy to be compared with Sophokles, not 
 a single line remains; all that is known of him 
 is that he sang the facta regum, the deeds of 
 the kings; we have only two half lines of Varius 
 Rufus, who received a million sesterces, or 
 five thousand dollars, for his "Thyestes" which 
 was played to celebrate the battle of Actium. 
 
 Only half a line remains of Pomponius Secun- 
 dus, whose erudition and elegance caused Quinc- 
 tilian to place him far ahead of all others. 
 And of the imperial dramatists, C. Octavius 
 
222 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Augustus and Julius Caesar himself, scarcely 
 a plaudite is left. Of all those scores of tra- 
 gedies not one has come down to us, a few 
 names, empty names — the story of the Eliza- 
 bethan drama anticipated. 
 
 Plautus and Terence, then, for comedy, 
 Seneca for tragedy,conditioned the classic drama 
 of Rome. And Seneca's six tragedies are 
 merely rhetorical; it is a question whether they 
 were ever performed on the stage. We have 
 the" Medea," far different from Euripides' great 
 tragedy; "The Trojan Women" ("Troades") 
 formed out of two of Euripides' weakest plays; 
 "Hippolytus," also from Euripides; "Phaedra"; 
 "Hercules Furens"; "Thebais" or the "Phoenis- 
 sae." These are the great names ; and they have 
 splendid scenes, dramatic situations, power- 
 ful lines. They are the great substructures 
 which no classic dramatist ever dared to ne- 
 glect. Yet it is strange that not a single one of 
 the praetextae, or togatae — ^the genuine Roman 
 plays — have been preserved. They were so 
 called from the conventional dress worn by 
 the actors. There were four or five other 
 technical sub-divisions, all named from the 
 dress, according as they depicted the manners 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 223 
 
 and customs of the various classes. Thus all 
 the comedies of Plautus and Terence were 
 called palUatae, because, being based on the 
 Greek new comedy, they were cast as if in Greek 
 cities and the actors wore the pallium or Greek 
 cloak.* Each different type wore its conven- 
 tional garb. The old man was dressed in 
 white. Slaves had a short, coarse mantle. 
 The three different kinds of parasites wound 
 the pallium round the body in a peculiar 
 manner. Thus Euclio, the miser, robbed, like 
 Shylock, of his treasure by his only daughter; 
 Tranio, the villainous servant; Grumio, the 
 trusty but awkward clown from the country; 
 Ergasilus, the parasite; and hosts of other 
 types passed across the stage and were projected 
 through the ages. 
 
 The verse of the Latin play was imitated 
 from the Greek trimeter, but had not the elas- 
 ticity or power of its prototype. It is generally 
 called the senarius, which simply means 
 six-footed. The curtain, aulaeum, was of tap- 
 estry woven with figures; it was let down at 
 
 * In the same way in Florence in the sixteenth century, besides the sacra 
 rappresentazione and the jarsa, they had the different types of comedy 
 called classical togata erudha, osservata. 
 
224 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 the beginning and raised at the end of the 
 play.* 
 
 In the early days of Rome, down till late 
 into the Republic, the people listened standing, 
 as they did in the tavern plays in England 
 when the auditorium was called the pit. It 
 would have been regarded as effeminate to sit. 
 The orchestra of the Greek theatre, as in the 
 Latin, was devoted to places for the senators. 
 Attempts to provide seats were forbidden by the 
 Senate. Nothing but temporary wooden theatres 
 with wooden seats were allowed till the middle 
 of the first century b. c. It did not necessarily 
 mean that the actors were also wooden. The 
 chorus was placed on the stage itself and its role 
 was degraded to merely statistical or narrative 
 recitation, with tiha accompaniment — some- 
 thing like the choruses in the early Italian opera 
 texts. In one cast of a play, entitled "Clytemnes- 
 tra," six hundred mules are said to have appeared 
 at once, which led a learned German to remark 
 that it was the strongest cast on record. 
 
 * The stage manager was called dux or dominus gregis; leader or lord 
 of the flock. There was a regularly organized claque called conquisitores: 
 an official called praeco compelled the audience to attention. Entrance 
 to all but slaves was free, but visitors had to show their tessera or 
 seat -check. 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 225 
 
 Scipio Nascica induced the Senate to pull 
 down a half finished stone theatre begun by 
 the Censor Caius Cassius Longinus 154 b. c, 
 and sell the materials. 
 
 Pompey the Great built the first permanent 
 stone theatre, about a hundred years later. Even 
 he had to make use of a pious fraud to cover 
 the real intention of the stone seats. The 
 enormous size of those early theatres rendered 
 accidents extremely frequent and the duration of 
 the custom of allowing only wooden ones is a 
 curious phenomenon. 
 
 Not until the time of Caligula were cushions 
 allowed. Catulus was the first to protect the 
 auditorium from the weather. Lentulus spread 
 awnings of fine Spanish flax,called corbasina vela. 
 
 The stage {pulpiturn) was lower than in 
 the Attic theatre. The scena was at first simple 
 and unadorned. Claudius Pulcher, whose very 
 name signifies the beautiful, first decorated 
 the stage with paintings; afterward enormous 
 amounts were expended for silver, gold, ivory 
 and precious marbles. Wealthy Romans who 
 did not dare to employ marble in their own 
 houses lavished it on temporary places of 
 amusement for the people, ^milius Scaurus 
 
226 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 built a theatre, the scena of which had three stor- 
 ies, the lowest decorated with marble monoliths 
 thirty-eight feet high; the second with mar- 
 vellous glass mosaics, glass being then more 
 precious than silver; the third with costly gilded 
 pillars. The cavea, or auditorium, held eighty 
 thousand spectators. When Scaurus' splendid 
 Tusculan villa was set on fire by his slaves the 
 temporary accessories taken to it from the 
 theatre — easel pictures, stage dresses, ornaments 
 — destroyed were reckoned at three hundred 
 millions sesterces or fifteen million dollars. 
 
 It was only a step from this temporary mag- 
 nificence to permanent splendour. The remains 
 of Pompey's theatre and porticos for centuries 
 fed the Roman lime-kilns; the fifty monolithic 
 columns of gray and red Egyptian granite from 
 it afterward adorned the basilica of San Lorenzo, 
 thus illustrating orice more the close connection 
 between Church and stage. They now form 
 the cortile of the splendid palace built by the 
 famous architect Bramonte, of Urbino, for 
 Cardinal Rafaelle Riario at the end of the 
 fifteenth century.* 
 
 * Cardinal Riario was a great patron of the drama and had Latin 
 plays performed in the great hall of his palace. 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 227 
 
 This utilisation of the glories of pagan Rome 
 seems to be typical : a few mutilated relics which 
 give a hint of what they might have been and 
 a whole world of fragments used over and over 
 again in church and palace and wall. So out 
 of the splendid drama of three or four hun- 
 dred years, in which a Roscius shone, scarce 
 three dozen mutilated plays are left, and those 
 appear again and again in every dramatic 
 literature of Europe. There is nothing new 
 under the sun. Horace in his day stood in 
 the forum and watched the marionettes, which 
 he speaks of as the mobile lignum with its 
 cords or strings pulled from behind — nervis 
 alienis. The Punch and Judy, as we call 
 it in its simpler English form is a survival 
 of religion and the devil of the miracle play 
 masquerades in the redoubtable Gigi. But 
 back of the mediaeval devil is the evil or mis- 
 chievous lar or genius which the Latin peasant 
 feared and worshipped. 
 
 Like trees that have their leafage, flowering 
 and harvest, and the fall and decay of the 
 fruit, are phases of literature. The Elizabethan 
 drama lasted only fifty years or so — Puritanism, 
 like a hoar frost, killed it. 
 
228 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 So the Latin drama came to its autumn. Sal- 
 vianus declared that Roman society <lied 
 laughing. Wealth brought universal corruption. 
 The Emperors, many of them parvenus and 
 sensitive to their imperfections of birth and 
 training, were suspicious. Caligula himself 
 touched the torch to the living pyre of a poet 
 declared guilty of offending the sacred majesty. 
 A strict censorship is like an atmosphere of 
 azote — it kills all living things. 
 
 The influx of foreigners into Rome was 
 corrupting the language. The ancient culture 
 and polish, Greek though it was, was growing 
 obscured by imported barbarism; the fine old 
 drama was rapidly degenerating into merely 
 spectacular pantomime. 
 
 When Christianity conquered Rome, or, ac- 
 cording to the quaint legend of the Italian 
 peasants, when St. Peter found that the keys 
 of heaven fitted the gates of Rome and took 
 possession in spite of the Podesta, the pre- 
 vailing corruption of the drama attracted the 
 reprobation of the Church Fathers. St. Clement 
 called the theatre the chair of pestilence; 
 to St. Gregory it was the school of impurity; 
 to St. Basil, the workshop of lasciviousness and 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 229 
 
 the cavern of the devil ; to St. Chrysostom, the 
 fountain of evil and the academy of incontinence. 
 While statues of saints decorated churches, the 
 pagan rites seemed to hold a spell over the 
 amusements of the people. Scenic games were 
 under the auspices of Bacchus, Mercury 
 governed the gymnasia, Venus the theatres, 
 Mars the arena, which led St. Augustine to 
 declare that the theatres were instituted by the 
 diabolical divinities of paganism. 
 
 By the end of the fourth century the African 
 Church called upon the Emperors Theodosius 
 and Valentinianus to inhibit games and spec- 
 tacles on Sundays and other feast days, be- 
 cause people would flock to the theatres rather 
 than to the divine services. 
 
 But then, as now, the attack of the Church 
 against the stage was idle, because it was an 
 attack upon one of the strongest demands of 
 human nature. The Church yielded and hence- 
 forth guided. Just as she took the heathen 
 festivals and baptised them and utilised their 
 observances, so the games and scenic repre- 
 sentations which celebrated the old Saturnalia, 
 were kept up in the carnival time which was 
 the Bacchic and Dionysiac festival Christianised. 
 
230 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 The priests found that they could reach the 
 masses through the eye more easily than through 
 the ear, and hence the churches or the plazas 
 in front of the churches were furnished with 
 extemporised stages, and dramas from the Old 
 Testaments, from the Gospels and from the 
 sacred legends of apostles, martyrs, founders 
 of the holy orders were represented there. 
 
 Some of them were written after the style of 
 the Greek drama with protagonist, deuter- 
 agonist, chorus, etc. These in Ignatius' 
 "Adam" of the ninth century were God and the 
 serpent. Such also was "Christus Patiens" 
 which had chorus, semi-chorus and pantomime. 
 Mary here appears with the characteristics of a 
 pagan woman and declaims, like Hecuba or 
 Medea. It is sacred only in argument. It is 
 said to contain 1263 lines stolen bravely from 
 Euripides. 
 
 The Italian sacred drama, or as it is called 
 sacra rappresentazione, precisely corresponded to 
 the miracles and moralities of other European 
 countries and the same subjects were chosen: 
 Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Abraham 
 and Hagar, Haman, Queen Esther, Moses, 
 Nebuchadnezzar, the Angel Raphael and 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 231 
 
 Tobias, Solomon, Samson, Saul, the Annuncia- 
 tion, the Nativity, the Presentation in the 
 Temple, St. John the Baptist, the Last Supper, 
 the Passion, the Resurrection. One finds pre- 
 cisely the same mixture of reverent and irreverent 
 treatment, the same comic element furnished 
 by the devil and the little devils. 
 
 I should not justify the amount of time al- 
 ready spent on the early Latin drama, if it 
 vsrere not evident that the Latin tongue and the 
 Latin poets, epic, lyric and dramatic were al- 
 ways regarded as national to Italy: as the 
 phenomena of an early period of their liter- 
 ature. 
 
 Just as in the days of Plautus, as in the 
 days of Cicero, pure Latin as we now know it, 
 flourished side by side with the lingua rusttca, 
 so up to the present — one might almost say — 
 Latin and the volgare illustre, as Dante calls 
 his vernacular, have flowed, like the Rhone 
 and the Saone, unmixed and unmingling. 
 
 After the seventh century Latin as a spoken 
 language among the people began to decline. 
 The oldest monument of Italian is said to be a 
 manuscript of the year 960, but there were 
 a number of dialects all more or less founded 
 
232 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 on the ancient lingua rustica.* It was the 
 boast of the Archbishop Christian of Mayence 
 that he could speak Latin, Roman, French, 
 Greek, Apulean, Lombard and Brabant as 
 perfectly as his mother tongue. It has been 
 remarked that the Italian has no traces of the 
 old languages — Sabellian, Volscian, Oscan, 
 Etruscan — ^while the various dialects abound in 
 Keltic, German, Greek, Arabian, French and 
 Spanish words. There is a philosophical 
 reason for this — geographical situation and 
 trade. The pure Italian sprang from the middle 
 provinces, which had least connection with 
 foreign countries. 
 
 Tuscany was a mountainous country and 
 isolated; it was the ancient source of art, and 
 here arose the mystic St. Francis da Assisi, 
 the spiritual Bonaventura, the fanatical Laudesi, 
 the wonderful Catarina da Siena, the artist 
 
 * As Latin declined the lingua rustica, a Gort of native Volap k spread 
 among all the former provinces of the Empire, beginning first at places 
 most remote from Rome : the Romanic language or Romance grew into 
 Provengal, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and finally Italian. The Pro- 
 vencal became the first of the Literary languages and its noble array 
 of Poets or Troubadours, as it were, laid down the laws for European lyric 
 poetry not only in France but in remote Iceland. The lyrical or epic in- 
 fluence of these writers was first felt in Florence, and Dante was its most 
 perfect Sower. Dante wrote no plays, but the influence of his verse is 
 frequently visible in the language and thought of the sacred dramas of 
 the Florentines. 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 233 
 
 Rafael, Giotto and others. And here was the 
 real home of the sacra rappresentazione in the 
 Italian tongue, in the noble Tuscan.* These 
 mysteries were composed by lords and ladies — 
 not the least celebrated was Lucrezia Torna- 
 buoni de' Medici, mother of Lorenzo, the 
 Magnificent. 
 
 The churchmen still clung to Latin. Car- 
 dinal Bembo advised Ariosto to write in Latin. 
 Dante used the volgare with some hesitation. 
 Petrarca composed his letters and many of 
 his poems in Latin. Cardinal Rafaello Riario 
 had Latin plays at his palace. Pomponio Leto 
 had a troupe of disciples called Pompomancii 
 who in the fifteenth century played the "Asinaria" 
 of Plautus and the " Hippolytus" of Seneca in 
 the Quirinal, and even in the Vatican. Car- 
 dinal Pietro Riario, in 1473, brought a troupe 
 of Florentine actors who played a Passion in 
 Latin hexameters. 
 
 It would be impossible to enumerate a tenth 
 of the Latin plays, ancient and mediaeval, that 
 
 * The sacra rappresentazione corresponds to the Miracle-plays in Eng- 
 land, to the Geistliche Schauspiele in Germany, to the Auto Sacramental 
 in Spain and to the Mysteries in France. One of the earliest known 
 was " la Rappresentazione di Nostro Signore Gesi Cristo," at Padua, 
 in 1242 or 1243. 
 
234 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 were given under the patronage of Sixtus IV,, 
 Alexander VI., Julius II., Leo X. and the other 
 art-loving Popes. It is sufficient for us to 
 remember that the spirit of the Renascence kept 
 the popular drama in the background for many 
 years. The Inquisition stood with drawn 
 sword, as it were, challenging everything that 
 was not provided with the countersign of classic 
 antiquity. 
 
 The history of the sacred drama (called in 
 Italy storia, festa, misterio, vangelo, figura, 
 esempio, esemplo, etc.) is not so tame and 
 monotonous as it might be thought. Besides 
 the various biblical or traditional characters 
 and the appropriate allowance of dignified 
 angels and comic devils, there were intro- 
 duced, according to circumstances, priests and 
 courtiers, royal counsellors and astrologers, 
 doctors and judges, bandits and cavaliers, mer- 
 chants and soldiers. 
 
 These characters inclined to assume a fixed 
 type. Thus the soldier was always represented 
 as boastful and vainglorious, given to wine and 
 gambling and every form of vice, quite like his 
 great prototype the miles gloriosus of Plautus. 
 
 In Florence, where literary Italian had Dante, 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 235 
 
 Petrarca and Boccaccio to condition its perfec- 
 tion, the sacra rappresentazione came nearest 
 to the drama of art. There were numerous 
 imitations, but Florence and "the small but 
 glorious Tuscan commune " best deserves study 
 and affords the richest store of materials. 
 
 St. John was the patron saint of Florence and 
 outof the celebrations of this munificent patron 
 grew the splendour of the theatrical pageants. 
 The beginning of it may be seen as far back 
 as 1283, when the chronicles relate how "the 
 city being in a good and happy state of repose 
 and tranquil and pacific and convenable for 
 merchants and artisans," a company and 
 brigade of one thousand men and more, under 
 a leader, called the signore delV amore, marched 
 through the city, all clad in white robes, 
 with trumpets and other musical instruments 
 and celebrated the day with dancing and 
 dinners and other entertainments. 
 
 Fifty years later, in 1333, the celebration 
 was still more briUiant. Two brigades of artists 
 {brigade d' artiste), one clad in white, the other 
 in yellow, solemnly celebrated the happy season. 
 The giuochi e sollazzi lasted a whole month. 
 
 The sacred drama, which, as I said, gradu- 
 
236 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 ally came to the level of dramma d'arte was per- 
 formed at first by private individuals. Thus 
 the morality entitled "Gelosia," by il Lasca, v^^as 
 put on the zafaldo, scaffold or stage, by a com- 
 pany of young nobles, who, if one can tell by 
 the prologue , were all friends or relatives of the 
 audience, all enamoured of beauty, of upright- 
 ness, of grace, of praiseworthy manners and 
 virtuous customs. Afterward regular com- 
 panies were formed, which took their names 
 from their saints or the churches under whose 
 auspices they acted. 
 
 The most famous was that called Del Vangelo, 
 or from their seal, an eagle, Aquilini, which 
 early in the fifteenth century recited or sang 
 the "San Giovanni e Paulo" of Lorenzo the 
 Magnificent and perpetuated itself to the end 
 of the last century. 
 
 In 1773 the Teatro del Vangelista was oc- 
 cupied by the Academici Aquiloni. It was 
 said of Lorenzo (by the way) that Terence 
 and Plautus poured their muses into his intel- 
 lect, as Neptune pours into the ground the rains 
 of spring and summer. 
 
 The sacred drama always began with an an- 
 nunziazione , or prologue, spoken by an angel, 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 237 
 
 and ended with a licenza, or epilogue, meant to 
 disarm malevolent criticism by acknowledging 
 all possible faults. 
 
 The actors at first were young boys, techni- 
 cally called voci or voices. Their director 
 was called festajolo. 
 
 It is a question whether women and girls were 
 at first privileged to be present as spectators. 
 The custom undoubtedly varied in different parts 
 of Italy. It was on the increase in the sixteenth 
 century as is proved by the addresses to the donne 
 in the prologues. The presence of actresses on 
 the stage also was allowed at very widely differ- 
 ent epochs. The names of La Flaminia, Polonia 
 Zuccati, Isabella Andreini and Maria Malloni 
 have come down from the Florence of the six- 
 teenth century. In Rome even at the end of 
 the last century the appearance of a woman on 
 the stage was regarded as scandalous. 
 
 In Sicily and Calabria and other remote 
 parts of Italy the sacred drama is still performed 
 on festival days; so that it may be said to 
 belong to the modern stage, like the Passion Play 
 of Oberammergau. A certain form of it only 
 recently ceased in Rome itself, in the chapel of 
 the cemetery of the hospital of San Giovanni 
 
238 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 for instance, in the Christmas and Epiphany 
 representations in the church of Sant' Andrea 
 della Valle. Now they appear only in a form 
 of plastic art, mute and painted. But there are 
 preserved examples of genuine dramatic art 
 composed by the Jesuits, called pastoraline or 
 rappresentazioni drammatiche boscherecc'te,Vf\\ere. 
 the different animals come to the manger of the 
 infant Jesus and praise Him; the Iambs and 
 sheep sing be'-be'-be', the colt whinnies hi-hi-hi, 
 il hel canino barks bau-bau-boo, the calf bel- 
 lows mu-mu-muha, the frog croaks quoa- 
 quoa-quoa, the cats mew and all the domes- 
 tic fowls and the birds of the forest express 
 themselves in the same graphic but ridiculous 
 way. To such a form did the sacred drama 
 sink while its best form was being gradually 
 usurped by the profane drama. 
 
 It has been well said that "the men of the 
 cinque cento found themselves in the person- 
 ages of the ancient comedy for the very reason 
 that Italian society had gone back to the 
 polished and splendid corruption of paganism 
 and the Empire." L'Ancona says, "In an age 
 that witnessed and supported with serious 
 scandal Alexander VI. and Lodovico il Moro, 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 239 
 
 that burnt Savanarola and deified Pietro Aretino, 
 the sacred spectacles of the Christian Liturgy 
 were no longer acceptable and therefore their 
 places were taken by such comedies as "La Man- 
 dragora" and "La Calandra," which by their 
 novelty and perfection corresponded to the 
 artistic exquisiteness of that century." 
 
 I have not attempted to go into all the 
 manifestations of the dramatic spirit nor men- 
 tioned every form even of the sacred drama. I 
 have not attempted to describe the farsi spiri- 
 tuali or the atti recitahili which were branches 
 of the sacra rappresentazione. It is enough for 
 the present to notice that there has hitherto 
 been a certain unity in all the diversity at which 
 I have attempted to hint. First the continuous 
 influence of the classic Latin drama which 
 caused the comedies of Terence and Plautus to 
 hold the stage down to the time of Machia- 
 velli; which, secondly, caused almost every 
 writer of plays, sacred and profane, to go back 
 for his models to these two dozen plays. "We 
 cannot do any beautiful work," says Ercole 
 Bentivoglio, in the prologue to "I Fantasmi," 
 "without taking antiquity for our mirror." 
 Church and fashion alike frowned on the less 
 
240 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 conventional but more promising popular drama 
 and kept it down for many lustrums. 
 
 But the change came — there were bril- 
 liant writers. Yet, who in the whole list of the 
 dramatic poets of the cinque cento had a talent 
 equal to Machiavelli, whose "Mandragora" 
 places him, in the eyes of the Italians, on a level 
 with Moliere and Aristophanes ? Not one. 
 
 It was impossible wholly to smother the 
 commedie dell' arte, as the popular comedy 
 was called. It was too deeply rooted in the 
 very nature of the people. It went back to the 
 Atellan comedy of the Romans — even the name 
 Zanni — our Zany — goes back to the typical 
 Sannio of the Latin popular comedy. The 
 deceived father, the rascally son, the clever, 
 tricky servant are all typical: the father came 
 to be a merchant of Venice; Pantaleone or a 
 doctor of Laws from Bologna; Gratiano, the 
 servant lads from Bergamo. These four per- 
 sons gave hints to Moliere and Shakespeare. 
 
 Fully to follow the rise of the modern drama 
 in Italy is an almost endless task. We stand 
 as it were in a great plaza to which we have 
 been led by one of the great Roman roads. 
 From this plaza open a dozen wider and ever 
 
RISE OF THE ITALIAN DRAMA 241 
 
 wider roads, each of which offers boundless 
 fields for study. 
 
 The breaking up of Italy into almost innum- 
 erable republics, dukedoms and principalities, 
 each with its, to a certain extent isolated, civi- 
 lisation, each with its own private history, its 
 own court and its own stage, renders the story 
 of Italian literature, and particularly of the 
 drama, most complicated. Florence alone 
 would fill a volume, for here was the great 
 centre of cultivation represented by the Medici. 
 Ferrara, Padua, Venice, Urbino, Naples, Milan 
 and a dozen other capitals have their own 
 history. Merely to read over the names of 
 the comedy writers of the sixteenth century — 
 Dovizio, known as Cardinal Bibbiena, Ariosto, 
 Bentivoglio, Alamanni, Benedetto Barchi, 
 Lorenzo II., Battista Gilli, representatives of 
 the comedia erudita; the Florentines Firenzuola, 
 Cecchi, Francesco D'Ambra, Niccolo Lecco, 
 Alessandro Piccolomini, Paraboscho — with- 
 out attempting to mention their plays or to 
 analyse them, is in itself tedious. 
 
 There are three centuries of pastoral dramas 
 — or the commedia rusticate — the influence of 
 which is seen in such undramatic writers as 
 
242 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, the brightest example of which 
 is the "Pastor Fido"ofGuarini. Then comes the 
 period of theatrical reform when the French 
 influence was paramount, at the beginning of 
 the last century; the name here arising to pro- 
 minence being that of Luigi Riccoboni, whose 
 "Moglie Gelosa," "The Jealous Wife," and 
 "La Sopresa d'Amore" were imitated from 
 Moliere. Girolomo Gigli followed in his foot- 
 steps, and we find him creating an Italianised 
 TartufFe. With Goldini, who banished harle- 
 quin or Leporello from his pieces, begins a new 
 era of the Italian stage. 
 
VI 
 
 GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 
 I 
 
 "DOCCACCIO and Petrarca almost imme- 
 diately became the joint arbiters and 
 emperors of Italian style. Any variation from 
 their methods was a sort of treason. Every 
 city and province in Italy had a dialect of its own 
 but the Tuscan became the literary language 
 par excellence. Dante stood a little too far aloof 
 in thought to be generally imitated and so we 
 find the novellieri of the sixteenth century imitat- 
 ing not only Boccaccio's language but also his 
 involved and complicated style and his methods 
 of thought — his cumbrous circumlocutions and 
 rhetorical flowers; while the poets in the same 
 way copied Petrarca's polished mannerisms, 
 inditing sonnets to their mistress's eyebrows 
 and exhaling more sighs than would fill a bal- 
 loon. While the Italians, and indeed the whole 
 cultured world, may well regret that an age 
 which produced such splendours of architecture 
 and painting should have restricted itself to 
 243 
 
244 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Petrarchian conventionalities of verse, it is 
 impossible not to feel even deeper regret that an 
 art so noble as the drama should have found 
 so little spontaneous expression for so many 
 years, should have followed antiquated models 
 and be dried up, as it were, in the hot press of 
 the classic style. 
 
 The Italians have always regarded the classic 
 Latin writers as their own particular glory. 
 This is a simple explanation of the phenomenon 
 that meets us all through the Middle Ages and 
 down into the sixteenth century — that every 
 great Italian laid more stress upon his works in 
 Latin than those in the vernacular. The great 
 Italian nobles and the princely prelates of the 
 Church had plays performed at their palaces, 
 but there was no call for original tragedies or 
 comedies. Indeed, original dramas in the ver- 
 nacular would have been frowned upon in those 
 courts. 
 
 It is remarkable to read in the records of the 
 different cities how many times the comedies 
 of Terence and Plautus were performed. In 
 this respect they may be said to be even more 
 modern than many that were written fifteen 
 hundred years later. And it is not strange that 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 245 
 
 just as Petrarca and Boccaccio stamped their 
 characteristics on lyric poetry and the novella, 
 so at the time of the Renascence, when there 
 was such a revival of classical learning, Plautus 
 and Terence should have become the models 
 of the comic drama. And the Miracle Play, or 
 as it was called in Italy, la sacra rappresen- 
 tazione, from which in other countries the na- 
 tional drania was logically derived, was kept so 
 long undeveloped. In this respect the Renas- 
 cence undoubtedly failed of its highest in- 
 fluence and effect. 
 
 At first the plays of la sacra rappresentazione, 
 corresponding loosely to the English Miracle 
 Plays and Moralities, were given in Latin and 
 as this was the language of the Church, it gave 
 a more solemn character to the action than 
 would be gathered from the contents. For in 
 Italy as elsewhere they were designed to afford 
 the people pleasure and amusement as well as 
 instruction: the comedy generally lay in the 
 antics and final discomfiture of the devils and of 
 the bad characters who fell into their clutches. 
 The very name harlequin seems to be derived 
 from a word signifying a little devil — hell-kin. 
 When the Latin was replaced by the volgare 
 
246 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 the jealousy of the Church authorities began to 
 be aroused and the buffooneries and the irrever- 
 ence caused by famihar treatment of Scripture 
 themes were exiled from the churches. When 
 this change took place it is difficult if not im- 
 possible to determine, but doubtless it varied in 
 different parts of Italy: the orange tree bears 
 blossoms and ripened fruit at the same time. 
 There are records of public festivals or ludi at 
 Padua early in the thirteenth century, between 
 1208 and 1243 ~~ ^"d ^^ Friuli about a hundred 
 years later — 1298-1313; but it is not known 
 whether they were in pantomimes or in dialogue 
 or in a mixture of both. The natural tendency 
 of the human mind explains the gradual intro- 
 duction of popular contemporary characters 
 into the sacre rappresentaziont, and most ter- 
 rible or comical anachronisms resulted. The 
 argot or slang of the people had an even more 
 comic effect than usual when contrasted with 
 the exaggerated solemnity of the Biblical char- 
 acters or the Virtues- personified. Strange as 
 it may seem, a powerful impulse toward a 
 popular drama in the language of the common 
 people is found in that terrible manifestation 
 of superstition which began in Perugia about 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 247 
 
 the middle of the thirteenth century and spread 
 all over Europe. It has been treated by pic- 
 torial art in an enormous painting where the 
 extravagances of the flagellants are shown in 
 vivid colours. These hysterical companies of 
 self-tormentors had their semi-dramatic and 
 lyrical songs, called lauda dramatica, and from 
 these Professor D'Ancona derives the so-called 
 Maggio of the Italian peasantry. 
 
 Feo Balcari, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Ber- 
 nardo Pulci and his wife, Antonia, contributed 
 to the sacra rappresentazione; great artists 
 like II Brunelleschi and Bernardo Buontalenti, 
 took charge of the scenic effects, which were 
 often magnificent. Florence especially excelled 
 in these semi-sacred entertainments and the 
 memory of those given in 147 1 by Galeazzo 
 Maria Duke of Milan, in 1494 by Charles VIII. 
 and in 1566 by Joanna of Austria is preserved 
 in contemporary chronicles. 
 
 The moral teaching easily escaped when 
 a corrupt, degenerate and luxurious class 
 found more to interest them in sinners than in 
 saints, when beauty ranked superior to virtue. 
 But this was the transition step to genuine 
 comedy. 
 
248 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 The Italians had a certain natural artistic 
 instinct. There was probably never played at 
 Florence or Venice a miracle play like that acted 
 at Bourges which occupied forty days and had 
 several hundred actors. The Italian trionfi 
 rarely exceeded one or two days; but astrologers, 
 heretical savants, physicians, courtiers, mer- 
 chants, counsellors, tavern-keepers, robbers, 
 soldiers, servants, peasants — indeed all the 
 types of the people — exaggerated and rendered 
 as comical as possible by personal defects, such 
 as humpbacks and lamenesses — were intro- 
 duced for the same purpose — to raise a laugh. 
 
 So it was only a step from this sacra rappre- 
 sentazione to a genuinely national comedy. 
 The revival of classical learning postponed that 
 step for centuries. The miracle play, shorn of 
 its worldly adornment, became a monk and 
 retired from the popular stage into the halls 
 of the monasteries, where it dragged out a miser- 
 able existence. A relic of it survived in the 
 pantomime and the exhibitions of Punch and 
 Judy. Even to this day the Italian puppet- 
 shows take on an importance which is to be met 
 with nowhere else. The courts of the great 
 Italian princes adopted as a sort of fad the com- 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 249 
 
 edies of the ancient Latins and from this arose the 
 so-called commedia erudita. What might not 
 such a genius as Boccaccio have done with all his 
 sense of humour had the spirit of his age turned 
 him to the stage instead of the boudoir! But 
 it was largely Boccaccio himself who brought 
 about the study and worship of classical models. 
 
 The direct influence of Plautus and Terence 
 is thought to be first discoverable by some in 
 the "Cassaria" and "I Suppositi" of Ariosto, by 
 others in the "Amicizia" of Jacopo Nardi, by 
 still others in the "Cassandra" of Cardinal Bib- 
 biena. It is probably impossible to determine 
 very definitely; possibly the lost comedy of 
 Petrarca — the "Philogia" — may have been in- 
 spired by the same models. There is nothing 
 more difficult than to award priority, especially 
 when several claim it and the new invention is 
 in the very air, 
 
 In Ariosto 's "Cassaria," which is still read as a 
 curiosity, if not for pleasure, there are eighteen 
 characters and all but four are representatives of 
 the common people — servants, ruffians, and two 
 women. It is in fact a sort of anticipation of 
 "La Dame aux CameUas." The action has some 
 life and the intrigues are developed with some 
 
250 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 artistic cleverness. Ariosto's masterpiece is "I 
 Suppositi," which was translated into English by 
 George Gascogne under the title "The Sup- 
 poses" and acted at Gray's Inn thirty-three 
 years after Ariosto's death in 1566 — the first 
 English prose drama. 
 
 A young man of noble birth desiring to make 
 his way into his lady-love's house assumes the 
 dress of his servant; the servant passes himself 
 off as the padrone and a fictitious father pretends 
 to arrange for a marriage. Unfortunately the 
 real father arrives upon the scene and the pro- 
 tests and counterclaims afford much amusement. 
 But at last all ends happily with marriage and the 
 recognition of a long lost son. Here though the 
 plot is not new there is some attempt to draw 
 the characters from real life : powers of observa- 
 tion are expended to some purpose: the senti- 
 mental young man, the faithful servant, the para- 
 site, that relic of Greek days, the lusty old doc- 
 tor, the good father and the enamoured maiden. 
 
 Few towns in Italy at that day had theatres but. 
 Pope Leo X. is said to have built one on the 
 capitol at Rome capable of holding ten thousand 
 people and such an audience saw "I Suppositi" 
 in 1513. The Pope sat at the entrance to the 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 251 
 
 gallery leading into the theatre and gave his 
 benediction to those whom he thought worthy 
 of listening to the polished obscenities of the 
 play. Rafael painted the scenery. The am- 
 bassadors of foreign countries were scandalised 
 at seeing the Pope seated eye-glass in hand 
 listening and laughing at the equivocal jests. 
 
 Ariosto, called the Divine, the popular poet 
 of the Orlando, wrote several other comedies 
 and left one unfinished — the "Scolastica," the 
 scene of which is laid in his own home-town, 
 Ferrara. The heroes, Claudio and Eurialo, 
 are young law-students who are in love and are 
 anxious to conceal that fact from their respective 
 sires. Eurialo 's innamorata, at the end proves 
 to be his father's lost ward: so his objection 
 vanishes and with good reason: through the 
 father's broken faith the girl had been reduced 
 to poverty and servitude and the son's disobe- 
 dience is a suitable punishment. This sounds 
 like a variation of one of the comedies of Ter- 
 ence. But here the characters are admirably 
 original and admirably contrasted: the best is 
 Bonifazio the lodging-house-keeper who de- 
 clares that he likes to help the young student, 
 is willing to tell a dozen lies to keep the lady on 
 
252 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 good terms with his father, " for verily to help a 
 poor lover doth not appear to me a servile task 
 but rather the duty of a gentle spirit." Nothing 
 gives a better idea of the need of the Reforma- 
 tion than the satiric element of this play: as for 
 example in the scene between the conscience- 
 burdened father, Bartolo, and the friar who tells 
 him that his sin can be commuted for some pious 
 work; there is no duty or law in the world so pow- 
 erful, he says, that it cannot be relaxed with alms. 
 
 Unfortunately for the dramatic art the cor- 
 ruption that reigned throughout Italy like a 
 growth of poisonous weeds in a tropical jungle 
 made itself especially felt in the domain of com- 
 edy. No situation was too gross, no dialogue too 
 unseemly for the taste of an aristocracy boast- 
 ing itself guilty of all the cardinal sins. Almost 
 the first of these comedies of mingled gold and 
 ordure is attributed to a cardinal of the Apostolic 
 Church. 
 
 Barnardo Dovizio — who had vice in his 
 very name — was born at Bibbiena in 1470. 
 He received the scarlet haretta of cardinal in 
 1513 from his master Giovanni de' Medici. 
 The "Calandria" was first performed about five 
 years before he became cardinal and its imme- 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 253 
 
 diate success was attributed to its ingenious 
 union of the humour of Boccaccio with the plot 
 of Plautus : in other words he adapted Boccaccio 
 to the classic stage. The title is derived from the 
 character Calandro, a simpleton, as the names 
 implies. It is a frank variation of the "Men- 
 aechmi." The "Menaechmi" itself was given in 
 Ferrara in i486 at a cost of 1,000 ducats; two 
 years later it was performed at Florence by the 
 pupils of Paolo Comparini, who wrote a pro- 
 logue to it, and again, in 1502, on the occasion of 
 Lucrezia Borgia's espousal to the Duke of 
 Ferrara. The prose prologue, while confessing 
 the plagiarism, defends it. "If any one should 
 say the author is a great robber of Plautus, let 
 us assert on the other hand that Plautus well 
 deserves being robbed, for being such a block- 
 head [moccicone] as to leave his things unlocked 
 and unguarded in the world." 
 
 Plautus, as we well know, was equally un- 
 scrupulous in despoiling the Greek Menander, 
 and we do not think the less of Shakespeare 
 because he despoiled the unknown author of the 
 " Comedy of Errors, " which is based upon the 
 same original. 
 
 Cardinal Bibbiena at least gave new names 
 
254 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 to old types, and the contrast between the astute 
 Fessenio and the numbskull Calandro is ex- 
 tremely comical, especially where Calandro is 
 persuaded to get into the coffer and when after- 
 ward the sbirri — the constables — shut up the 
 coffer and Calandro perceives that they are going 
 to fling him into the river. The comic element 
 furnished by Lidio and Santilla, the twins so 
 alike that the servant cannot tell which is the 
 real lover of her mistress, is of course familiar 
 to us both on the stage and also, we might say, in 
 real life. This play was performed with great 
 splendour of scenery and costume at Urbino: 
 with masques, morris-dances, and conceits of 
 stringed instruments. Leo X. in 1514, produced 
 it on his private stage at the Vatican to enter- 
 tain the Marchioness Isabella of Mantua. 
 
 The name of Machiavelli is better known in 
 politics than in literature, and owing to his 
 advocacy of unscrupulous methods has assumed 
 a sinister meaning. As Voltaire put it, a man 
 who would ruin a neighbour lest he himself 
 should be ruined and assassinate a friend lest the 
 friend should grow strong enough to kill him 
 would be said to be carried away by the grand 
 principles of Machiavellianism. 
 
GOLDINI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 255 
 
 But Machiavelli exerted a great influence 
 as a playwright. Four comedies are attributed 
 to him. Two of these are regarded as doubtful, 
 the other two are the "Clizia," which is partially 
 imitated from the "Casina" of Plautus and the 
 "Mandragora" or "Mandrago la," " Mandrake," 
 so called from the drug, mandrake, which plays 
 such an important function in the play. Both 
 of them were written in the full maturity of 
 Machiavelli's powers but after he had fallen 
 from his high estate. They are the work of a 
 disappointed man and if they stood alone it 
 might be reasonably conjectured that they mis- 
 represented the condition of the society which 
 they depict and satirise. But the fact remains 
 that the horrible pictures of depravity which 
 these plays present and which render it impos- 
 sible to analyse them are only an echo of a state 
 of morals constantly growing more and more 
 corrupt and rotten. 
 
 The courts of the princes and of the Popes 
 being utterly demoralised, the clergy con- 
 taminated with the worst vices, family life 
 vitiated by the influence of the nobles and the 
 priests, naturally enough the stream could not 
 go above its source : there was no general public 
 
256 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 to demand great things of those that purveyed 
 their amusement. Consequently we find these 
 horribly immoral plays of Bibbiena and Ma- 
 chiavelli, sparkling as they are with the keenest 
 wit, constructed with abundant skill, presenting 
 wonderfully vivid types of a society happily 
 now no more (we should hope!) and echoed 
 for a century literally by thousands, built on the 
 same models, illustrating countless phases of 
 real life, furnishing the playwrights of France 
 and England with multitudes of brilliant scenes, 
 borrowed and stolen and now buried and mostly 
 forgotten. 
 
 Nothing in the world is sadder than to con- 
 template a civilisation, brilliant and capable of 
 splendid works of art going to decay. Italy dis- 
 membered, robbed of the heritage of its freedom, 
 crushed by the Inquisition, lay like a goddess 
 blinded and flung upon a filthy dungheap. 
 Even when the road seemed open to great things 
 there was no leader to bring the art to triumph. 
 
 Had Aretino possessed the genius he might 
 possibly have entirely freed the Italian stage 
 from the so-called Latinising tendencies. He 
 took bold steps in this direction. The tradi- 
 tions of the classic drama forbade more than 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 257 
 
 a certain number of characters on the stage at 
 the same time, nor allowed the same person to 
 enter more than a certain number of times in 
 one piece.* He says in his prologue to "La Cor- 
 tigiana," " If you behold the personages come 
 upon the scene more than five times, do not 
 laugh;" and in still another prologue, that to 
 "Orazia," he refuses to copy the style of Petrarca 
 and Boccaccio — not through ignorance, he 
 says, because he knows what they are. "I 
 laugh at the pedants," he adds, "who conceive 
 that learning consists in the Greek language, 
 placing all their repute in the bus and the has 
 of the grammar." If he had been a Shakespeare 
 or even a Machiavelli he might have taken the 
 Italian farsa, and lifted it to the level of a 
 national drama. 
 
 Gianmaria Cecchi, the most prolific of the 
 writers of the sixteenth century says in his pro- 
 logue to his "Romanesca" that the farsa stands 
 between tragedy and comedy, enjoying the 
 liberties of both and shunning their limitations, 
 for it receives into its ample boundaries great 
 
 * "Mandragora" has only eight dramajis persona, "La Cortigiana" has 
 twenty-four. His Ipocrito anticipates Moliere's Tartaffe: chi non sa 
 fingere non sa vivere. 
 
258 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 lords and princes, which comedy does not, and, 
 like a hospital or inn, welcomes the vilest and the 
 most plebeian of the people to whom Dame 
 Tragedy has never deigned to stoop. It accepts 
 all subjects — grave and gay, profane and 
 sacred, urbane and rude, sad and pleasant. The 
 scene may be laid in a church or a public square, 
 wherever you please; and if one day is not long 
 enough, two or three may be employed. This 
 modern mistress of the stage is the most amus- 
 ing, the most appropriate, the sweetest, prettiest 
 country lass — foresozza — to be found on earth. 
 It will be noticed that he calls the farsa the 
 modern mistress of the stage. If modern she 
 had a long ancestry and if not so distinguished 
 as that of the commedia erudita, it probably 
 went even farther back, into the most ancient 
 times. For, as one must constantly remember, 
 the Latin stage as represented by Seneca, Plau- 
 tus and Terence, was only a variation of the 
 Greek originals, while the genuine Latin plays 
 of native origin, whether tragic or historic or 
 comic, were largely improvisations and there- 
 fore perished utterly. Only their spirit re- 
 mained and informed the sacra rappre- 
 sentazione. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 259 
 
 Cecchi did away with the unities and the old 
 traditions that a comedy must be in five acts; 
 he freely introduced the dialect speech of the 
 common people and both in his dialogue and in 
 his rapidity of composition he seems to have 
 been very much like Goldoni. He declared in 
 the prologue to "Le Maschere" that he never spent 
 more than ten days on any one of his comedies. 
 
 Unfortunately for Italy there was no demand 
 for the elaboration of the farsa and so she had 
 to wait for two hundred years before she was 
 emancipated from the tyranny of the unities. 
 Symonds says : " Society was in dissolution and 
 men lived for the moment careless of conse- 
 quences. The immorality of the theatre was at 
 once a sign and a source of this corruption." 
 
 "Oh times! Oh manners!" exclaims LeHus 
 Giraldus, "the obscenities of the stage return in 
 all their foulness. Plays are acted in every city 
 which the common consent of Christendom had 
 banned because of their depravity. Now the 
 very prelates of the Faith, our nobles, our 
 princes, bring them back again among us and 
 cause them to be publicly presented. Nay, 
 priests themselves are eagerly ambitious of the 
 infamous title of actors, in order to bring them- 
 
26o A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 selves into notoriety and to enrich themselves 
 w^ith benefices." 
 
 One more paragraph from Symonds is apro- 
 pos: "It must not be supposed that the im- 
 morality of the comic stage consists in the 
 licence of language, incident or plot. Had 
 this been all, we should hardly be justified in 
 drawing a distinction between the Italians of 
 the Renascence and our own Elizabethan play- 
 wrights. It lies far deeper — in the vicious 
 philosophy of life, paraded by the authors in the 
 absence of any didactic or satirical aim. Moliere, 
 while exposing evil, teaches by example. A 
 canon of goodness is implied, from which the 
 deformity of sin and folly are deflections. But 
 Machiavelli and Aretino paint humanity as 
 simply bad. The palm of success is awarded 
 to unscrupulous villainy. An incapacity for 
 understanding the immutable power of moral 
 beauty was the main disease of Italy. If we 
 seek the cause of this internal cancer, we must 
 trace the history of Italian thought and feeling 
 back to the age of Boccaccio; and we shall 
 probably form an opinion that misdirected 
 humanism blinded with the impieties of a 
 secularised papacy, the self-indulgence of the 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 261 
 
 despots and the coarse tastes of the bourgeoisie 
 had sapped the conscience of society." 
 
 I ought to mention with a word the comedies 
 of Anton Francesco Grazzini. He was generally 
 called // Lasca, the roach, referring to the fish of 
 the Cyprinidae or carp family, which has en- 
 riched the language with the saying "sound as 
 a roach." He was born in Florence in 1503 
 and had a varied career as druggist, philosopher 
 astronomer, philologist, novelliero, improvvisa- 
 tore, humourist and playwright. He belonged 
 to the Academies of Gli Umidi and la Crusca 
 but quarreled with them both. He died at the age 
 of eighty. He detested pedants, priests, Petrar- 
 chisti a.nd Boccaccevoli and was always ready to 
 turn anything and everything into ridicule. He 
 had little invention, but the Florentines of his day 
 were pleased with practical jokes, and so his nov- 
 els and comedies alike turn on heffe and burle. 
 He himself calls them — "Comedies cheap, small, 
 and here and there filled out with plagiarisms 
 [Commedie stiracchiate, grette e ruhacchiate qua e 
 la\ — and worse than all mixing together the old 
 and the new,the ancient and the modern and mak- 
 ing un guazzabuglio — a hodgepodge — and med- 
 ley that has no method or turn or head or tail." 
 
262 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 "Comedies," he says in another place, "must 
 be jolly, capricious, witty, absurd \ridtcola\ 
 fine \balla\ and well recited." 
 
 But he also lacked the genius to put comedy 
 on the right track and his best known play, 
 "Gelosia," has little originality but only practical 
 jokes in the farcical style so familiar. There 
 is some fun in his posthumous comedy," Arzigo- 
 golo," "Sly Fellow," where an old manisrepre- 
 sented as willing to give his soul to become young 
 again and when he actually attains his wishes 
 by means of his hard cash, he is so maltreated 
 by his lady-love that he is glad to pay a still 
 larger sum to change back to an old man. 
 
 It is curious to see how the old types appear 
 in many of these comedies. Thus the miles 
 gloriosus, the braggart coward, turns up under 
 different names — Bisilisco, Gorgoleone, Frasi- 
 logo. Parabola, Martibellonio, Dragoleone,Trasi- 
 maco. So also the parasite, that type so loved 
 by the ancients, masquerades as Lupo, Panvinio, 
 Leccardo, Polifago, Mastica, Ventraccio, Mor- 
 feo, Lardone, Panfago, Fagone, Gulone — the 
 different names, as in the Greek and Latin pro- 
 totypes, nearly all having a slant at the crea- 
 ture's unlimited appetite. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 263 
 
 Camerini sees in the Neapolitan G. B. Porta, 
 who died at the age of seventy-seven, in 1615, 
 one of the predecessors of Goldoni. One of 
 his comedies, "La Chiappenaria," presents the 
 great captain Gorgoleone, conqueror of lions and 
 giants, but though a terrible boaster, at heart, 
 like all his breed, an arrant coward. To hear 
 him tell his feats one gets a vision of arms, legs, 
 heads and other fragments of people flying through 
 the air; but, like the prowess of the immortal 
 Tartarin of Tarascon,it is only words: if a case 
 of real danger should occur, he would be the 
 first to take to his heels, followed by his squire, 
 Rompiguerra. 
 
 The squire is a distant congener of Sancho 
 Panza and while he flatters his patron he makes 
 sport of him. Old Cogliandro, the father of the 
 heroine Drusilla, into whose house the lover, 
 Albinio, penetrates disguised under a bear-skin — 
 whence the name of the play is derived — is 
 the familiar type of the old fool, deceived by 
 every one. Here, as usual, enters the parasite 
 Panvinio, whose very name, derived from pan 
 and vino, signifies that he thinks of nothing but 
 bread and wine. The cant-term Scanna-min- 
 istre is applied to him in honour of his digestive 
 
264 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 powers: he would devour not only everything 
 on the map but also the map itself. In his zeal 
 for the pleasures of the palate he calls a hand- 
 some capon the Padre abate del Cappone and 
 describes an olla podrida in Spanish style with 
 all the flowery diction that a critic would apply 
 to the Last Judgment of Michelangelo. His 
 terms of endearment are all derived from the 
 pantry. He helps to introduce Alberino into 
 Cogliandro's house. "Soldiers," he says," go 
 to war for three ducats a month amid musket 
 balls and cannon balls and shall I fear death 
 when I have a chance to eat and drink well and 
 sleep better ? " He becomes the leader in the 
 formidable undertaking and his superior genius 
 is recognisied by the servant TrufFa whom he 
 wheedles. 
 
 What a picture Porta gives of the astuteness 
 of the enamoured Drusilla, who, when her father 
 has detected her furtively embracing her lover 
 Albinio, proves to his satisfaction that he had 
 not seen correctly, that he was suffering from 
 obliquity of vision and as an additional proof 
 she threatens to go to a monastery — the monas- 
 tery being Albinio's house — and then she 
 heaps on her lover all manner of insults! He 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 265 
 
 loves her more and more : — "a thousand 
 years with her would seem to me a moment; 
 the more I see her the more beautiful she 
 seems." 
 
 Porta's dialogue has been compared by the 
 Italians, in its freshness and brilliancy, to the 
 sky of Naples. His comedies, says Ferdinando 
 Galanti, "are pearls fallen into the mire, but 
 they are still pearls." 
 
 II 
 
 The next two centuries are a barren waste in 
 the history of the Italian stage. Not even the 
 colossal genius of Michelangelo in his "Fiera," 
 that great trilogy of twenty-five acts, succeeded 
 in communicating any life to an art that was 
 hopelessly set, like plaster-of-jjaris or putty. 
 
 The only originality that seemed to show 
 itself in that long age of decadence was in the 
 so-called favola pastorale — the pastoral drama 
 — which is the grandmother of Italian opera. 
 The commedia delV arte was also a dramatic 
 phase characteristic of Italy and traced its 
 ancestry and origin back to almost prehistoric 
 
266 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 times. Nothing is more certain than that im- 
 provisation was indigenous to Italy and the 
 commedia dell' arte depended for its success 
 upon the quick wit of the actors who, under 
 certain conditions, within certain fixed limits, 
 made up on the spur of the moment the dialogue 
 and evolved the action. 
 
 A number of the skeletons of these impro- 
 vised comedies have come down to us and have 
 been recently published. Salvator Rosa as 
 well as Cecchi planned them. Naturally carica- 
 ture and broad farce and grotesque antics, 
 adapted solely to raise a laugh, characterised 
 these improvisations. Often in more formal 
 comedies whole scenes were left to be filled in 
 by the actors and this was doubtless the 
 case in other parts of Europe; certainly it was 
 true of the later Italian stage. There were 
 certain jests and songs, stories and prayers, 
 oaths and dialogues, sentences and proverbs 
 which undoubtedly became the special property 
 of the actor. Such especially were the lazzi,or 
 jests, which Riccoboni called the inutilities that 
 interrupted the dialogue and had nothing to do 
 with the subject. 
 
 Harlequin had an imprescriptible right to a 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 267 
 
 large share of these absurdities; especially the 
 pulcinello of the Neapolitan comedy, who was 
 always full of amusing remarks. The topical 
 song of the modern operetta, having abso- 
 lutely no relevancy to the action but introduced 
 as a way of conveying flat and often coarse jests 
 at the expense of local celebrities or current 
 "fads," perhaps as well as anything illustrates 
 the effect of these lazzi which then, as now, 
 made the judicious mourn. 
 
 Many actors won great fame in this art and 
 it would evidently require invention, a quick 
 and ready memory, a fiery dash, readiness of 
 repartee and more or less grace. Sometimes 
 women excelled in it: for example Vincenza 
 Armani, a Venetian, who also wrote poems and 
 was called the Queen of the Art. 
 
 There is one thing that strikes one in study- 
 ing the Italian drama, and that is the perman- 
 ence of types. The four most famous are Arle- 
 cchino, Brighella, Pantaleone and the Doctor. 
 The harlequin is evidently derived from the 
 ancient mimi, and may be detected in the old 
 Greek comedy where the actor wore a goat or 
 tiger skin with a white cap on his head, a black 
 mask over his face and carried a stick in his 
 
268 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 hand. Michelangelo is said to have furnished 
 the Harlequin of his day with the mask; Dom- 
 enico Biancoletti, in the seventeenth century, 
 added the finishing touches. A whole book 
 might be written about these four characters — 
 yes, on Harlequin alone. In how many hun- 
 dred plays he appears with his lady-love Colom- 
 bina, his parti-coloured raiment and his cap 
 ornamented with the tail of a hare or a cony — 
 significant of his hare-brained or cowardly 
 nature — and acted by famous actors who were 
 rewarded by kings! 
 
 Possibly the real ancestor of the harlequin is 
 the Maccus of the celebrated Atillan games or 
 luJi. His mask was long and sharp; he had a 
 hunchback, a protruberant belly, long legs and 
 a most strident voice : as he imitated the sounds 
 of various voices and especially the sharp crow- 
 ing of the cock to which he bore a certain re- 
 semblance, he was called pullus gallinaceus, 
 whence by an easy transition we derive pul- 
 licenus, Pulicinella, Pulcinella, Punchinello and 
 our own Punch. So when we see the Punch 
 and Judy show in the public square we ought 
 to look at it with some reverence: it has a most 
 noble and legitimate genealo^; its beginnings 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 269 
 
 are in the misty times when the Oscans and 
 Umbrians worshipped their nature gods under 
 the glorious sky of Italy. Perhaps it is only 
 safe to admit with conservative caution that 
 there are other derivations of the word Punch, 
 Three can be found in Littre; and Skeat has 
 still another. The last great Italian Pulcinella, 
 Petito, King of San Carlino, died in March, 1876, 
 on the stage dressed in his white array. 
 
 Brighella is the type of the insolent servant, 
 chattering, cheating, malicious, quarrelsome, 
 but easily bought. The garb which he wore 
 also became typical: the white tunic hemmed 
 with green, the wide-brimmed conical hat with 
 its black plume or in later times somewhat 
 modified; with wide trousers and a jacket 
 trimmed with green and the white berettone or 
 cap and the half-mask displaying the little 
 moustache and the shaven chin. He has many 
 aliases : Pedrolino, Beltrame, Bagolino, Fantino, 
 Finocchio, Traccagnino, Frontino, Sganarello, 
 Mascarillo and Figaro. 
 
 Pantaleone, who derived his name from 
 Venice, whose lions were supposed to be every- 
 where planted by Venetian conquest — our 
 tabooed pants only worn by gents recalls it — 
 
^^o A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 represents the old father, generally rich, jovial, 
 rather reticent, but fond of proverbs, a man of 
 the world, with a daughter the very apple of 
 his eye. His costume is properly that of a 
 Venetian merchant, originally a red gown but 
 after the Republic lost Negroponte a black one 
 was substituted, a slouching baretta of wool, 
 short clothes, stockings, red slippers and a black 
 semi-mask. 
 
 Such an one is Shakespeare's Antonio, with his 
 pretensions of being a magnifico, with his houses 
 and villas and his fleets on all the seas. Being 
 rhore closely drawn from the life he may be 
 found in the drama of other countries. His 
 dignified flowing beard is symbolical of the 
 greatness of Venice when Milan alone paid over 
 as a balance of trade nearly seven hundred 
 thousand zecchins a year. There are many 
 famous names of actors who took this typical 
 part with distinction — a part found in more 
 comedies than one would care to name. Garelli, 
 known as il eloquente; Antonio Mattiuzzi, as 
 famous in Paris as in Venice and commemorated 
 by Goldoni : a man who not only acted but also 
 wrote comedies: his own "Tre Fratelli Venez- 
 iani" was declared incomparable. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 271 
 
 The Doctor is the type of the semi-serious 
 maschera: the caricature of the learned man who 
 is always citing famous authors and wise saws 
 in a most authoritative tone of voice. Just as 
 Harlequin came from Bergamo and Pantaleone 
 from Venice came the Doctor from Bologna. 
 Pietro Verri traces this character back only as 
 far as the twelfth century, when the new school 
 of jurisprudence was opened at Bologna and 
 two celebrated doctors, Bulgaro and Martino, 
 disputed publicly whether the whole world was 
 a titled property or only a lease: hence the al- 
 leged appropriateness of the black nose, the 
 blackened forehead and the red cheeks. The 
 Doctor's name is generally Graziano, which has 
 a familiar sound to readers of Shakespeare. 
 He is dressed in a black robe, with a mask 
 stained with wine-spots. Goldoni relates that 
 this spot of wine transmits to posterity the 
 memory of a Bolognese giureconsulto whose face 
 was disfigured with a red spot: but it also hints 
 at the convivial habits of doctors, especially the 
 humbugs among doctors. 
 
 There are still other types of the masked 
 comedian; one of the most famous was Scara- 
 muccia the boastful, a cousin or even a nearer 
 
272 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 relation of the miles gloriosus. Tiberio Fiorilli 
 the favourite of Louis XIV. and no less famous 
 as Capitan Spavento and Capitan Matamoros 
 and also as Pulcinella, created this part. It was 
 said of him, as the heaven has only one sun so 
 the earth has only one Scaramouche. He finds 
 his echo in Moliere. 
 
 Scapino of Bologna, the astute rascally little 
 cicerone di piazza — who now-a-days would 
 ride round in a motor-vehicle and point out 
 celebrities and notable buildings with a sten- 
 torian voice multiplied by a megaphone, finds 
 his double in Moliere 's "Fouberies de Scapin." 
 
 Nearly every city of Italy had its own favourite 
 type of the buffoon: Modena its Sandron; 
 Calabria its Coviello with his mandolin — all 
 speaking their own peculiar dialects and dressed 
 in the typical costume. What the tourist will 
 see even now at Venice during Carnival time 
 was probably a more common and every-day 
 entertainment in the time of its glory, when, as 
 has been well said by Galanti, the city had a gay 
 population that in itself was like a spectacle: 
 Armenians, Turks, Hebrews, Germans, Span- 
 iards mingling in the streets and on the Rialto 
 with polenta-pedlars and merchants of higher 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 273 
 
 degree. The chronicles of Venice are full of 
 descriptions of brilliant festivals which left their 
 impress on the memory of the people. Venice 
 was the last of the Italian republics to fall and 
 one can hardly get an idea of the environment 
 of Carlo Goldoni unless one remembers some- 
 thing of the history of the proud city of the 
 Doges. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It must be made perfectly plain that the set 
 forms to which the Italian stage was committed 
 put a bar on any great display of originality. 
 The upper classes who alone had any influence 
 were content with ocular magnificence and the 
 conventional imitative plot, provided there were 
 vivacity of dialogue. Innovation was frowned 
 upon just as it was in music a century later in 
 Germany. What and who should bring about 
 a reform ? 
 
 It was a Venetian — it was Carlo Goldoni, 
 whom Robert Browning calls "Dear King of 
 Comedy — good gay sunniest of souls." 
 
 There is no need of saying much of his life. 
 
274 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 When he was an old man, over eighty, he wrote 
 his memoirs in French and they are accessible 
 in an English translation with an Introduction 
 by Mr. Howells; a selection of four of his plays 
 with a brief biographical sketch by Helen Zim- 
 mern, compiled from the memoirs, was pub- 
 lished a few years ago. 
 
 He was born February 25, 1707, in a large and 
 beautiful mansion between the Bridge dei Nom- 
 boli and that of Donna Onesta, at the corner of 
 the Ca Cent' Anni. A Latin inscription com- 
 memorates the fact that he was born there 
 plaudentibus Musis. His grandfather, who held 
 a position in the Venetian Chamber of Com- 
 merce, married a lady of Modena. When she 
 died, leaving one son, he married a widow named 
 Salvioni, who was already the mother of two 
 daughters. The son, who became a doctor, 
 married Margarita the elder of the stepdaughters, 
 and the future playwright, Carlo, was thus 
 doubly his grandparents' grandchild. 
 
 In command of large means, the grandfather 
 expended them recklessly. Above all things he 
 liked theatrical and musical entertainments, and 
 he hired all the best actors and singers of his day 
 to perform for him. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 275 
 
 "I was born in that whirl [questo strepito] 
 amid that abundance," wrote Goldoni, "could 
 I despise stage shows, could I help loving 
 gaiety?" He declares that he came into the 
 world without crying! When he was four years 
 old he began to delight in the comedies that he 
 saw acted ; at eight or nine or ten — according 
 to different accounts — he made a little play 
 which greatly pleased and flattered his father, 
 who said : " If nine years produce four carats of 
 wit, eighteen ought to give twelve and by arith- 
 metical progression he might thus reach per- 
 fection." 
 
 When Goldoni's grandfather died and the 
 estate was settled, the usual results of extrava- 
 gance were bequeathed to the family; but his 
 father, Giuho, rose to the occasion: he went to 
 Perugia and there practised medicine and 
 achieved success. One of the boy's first ques- 
 tions on reaching his new home was whether he 
 should find there a theatre or hall for comedy. 
 His parents favoured him in these tastes and when 
 they got up some private theatricals for him he 
 took the part of the leading lady, but afterward 
 admitted that he would never have made a good 
 actor, whether in male or female parts. 
 
276 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 He was destined to be a physician, so he was 
 sent to the Dominican school at Rimini, but he 
 took no interest in the logic of the celebrated 
 Candini: Plautus, Terence, Aristophanes and 
 the fragments of Menander were far more to his 
 taste. 
 
 A company of Venetian actors happened to be 
 at Rimini. Goldoni was not long in scraping 
 acquaintance with them and found their teach- 
 ing of philosophy far more entertaining than 
 what the Jesuits had to give him. When they 
 were on the eve of leaving Rimini he determined 
 to go with them. He took two shirts and a 
 night-cap, gave away the rest of his wardrobe, 
 as if he were bound for the other world (says 
 one of his biographers) and hid in the barge 
 which the company had hired for their journey. 
 After it was well under way he suddenly ap- 
 peared among them. What with the actors 
 and prompter and costumer, and children of 
 every age, and dogs, cats, monkeys, pigeons 
 and a lamb, it reminded him of Noah's Ark. 
 
 They were three days on the way and the 
 young man was then landed at Chioggia, where 
 his parents were at that time living. They 
 readily forgave him his escapade and Dr. Giulio 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 277 
 
 determined to have him study under his own 
 eye; but the practice of medicine evidently 
 VFore on his nerves; he became moody and 
 melancholy and so he was allowed to give up the 
 detested career and was sent to an uncle living 
 at Venice to study law. As there were seven 
 theatres in full blast there and Metastasio's 
 operas were attracting great attention, it was not 
 strange that he got more pleasure than law. A 
 place was obtained for him in the Collegio 
 Ghislieri at Pa via, but as it was a Papal institute 
 he had to submit to the tonsure and to 
 other conventionalities. While waiting for their 
 termination he read the dramatic library belong- 
 ing to one of the professors: this gave him a 
 great stimulus to become a dramatic author — 
 he came to the conclusion that while one might 
 imitate the ancients in their plots, in their style 
 and in their precision, still it would be requisite 
 to impart greater interest, introduce more expres- 
 sive characters, cultivate a higher comic art and 
 a more felicitous disentanglement. 
 
 Every century has its dominant genius, he 
 said, and every region its characteristic taste. 
 He felt that while the Greeks and Romans had 
 known nature and followed it closely, there had 
 
278 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 still been little illusion and craft. They had 
 pictured it with too much realism but with too 
 little movement, without enough plot — intriccio, 
 intrigue — without enough balance and con- 
 trast of characters. 
 
 When he found the plays of English, French 
 and Spanish authors and only here and there 
 one by Italians, when he noticed that no real 
 collection, no theatre, did honour to Italy, his 
 ambition awoke and he felt in his heart that he 
 might some day create such a teatro Italiano with 
 original and veracious and vivacious action and 
 characters copied from life. 
 
 But meantime he had becopie a student of the 
 Papal College and found himself masked, as it 
 were, in the college costume, tonsured like a 
 priest, in a gown like a sleeveless nightgown, 
 with a velvet stole fastened to his left shoulder 
 by a gold and silver pin in the shape of the 
 Ghislieri arms surmounted by a pontifical tiara 
 and Saint Peter's keys. And his gaiety and 
 natural good temper made him a leader in all 
 the mischief that went on under the pious wings 
 of that institution. He learned something of 
 life here and the fascinations of gambling and 
 worse vices were not concealed from his eyes. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 279 
 
 At Chioggia , during his vacation, a priest lent him 
 Machiavelli's "Mandragora" not dreaming that 
 it was unsuitable reading for a youth. Goldoni 
 read it a dozen times, not for its indecency, but 
 because he was carried away by the great 
 statesman's satiric and comic genius. From 
 that moment he learned to watch and study 
 men and to find delight in the analysis of 
 human passions. 
 
 On his return to Pavia he wrote a kind of 
 farce entitled "II Co losso" which made all manner 
 of sport of the Pavians. He was punished for 
 it by expulsion — for that and other pranks. 
 He schemed to go to Rome and become the 
 pupil of Gravina, then regarded as the most 
 learned in the dramatic art and famed as the 
 instructor of Metastasio. "Have I not, per- 
 chance, also the disposition, talent, genius ? To 
 Rome, then, to Rome." But he had no money. 
 So he returned to his home, was forgiven and 
 started off on a journey with his father. Every- 
 where he went he gathered new ideas and ex- 
 periences which he afterward embodied in his 
 plays — as for example a little love-episode with 
 a young maid at Friuli, who appears as Corallina 
 and as the soubrette in "La Cameriera Astuta." 
 
28o A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 At Modena he saw a priest or abbe condemned 
 to the pillory, and this spectacle filled his mind 
 with a disgust of the world : he visited churches, 
 muttered prayers, and resolved to become a 
 Capuchin. His father consented, gave him his 
 blessing and took him to Venice, there to fulfil 
 his vows. But it required only about a fort- 
 night of dinners, suppers, theatres and other 
 dissipations with relatives and friends to make 
 him forget the cloisters. 
 
 The theatre had given him back his life and 
 his individuality. He tells us in his Memoirs 
 how his mind found no other resource than the 
 dramatic art, which he ever loved and to which 
 he would have dedicated himself had he been 
 master of his will. 
 
 He was twenty-one and through the good 
 offices of friends he was appointed aggiunto 
 coadjuiore in the Criminal Chancelry, a position 
 which gave him a great opportunity to study 
 types and forms. It was not a very burdensome 
 office and assured him good pay. At Chioggia 
 he studied the comic types that came under his 
 observation and were afterward immortalised 
 by his satiric pen. At Feltre, whither his duties 
 called him, he became acquainted with a young 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 281 
 
 lady boarding in a convent and he was just on 
 the point of marrying her when his faithless, 
 fickle fair one jilted him to marry an old man. 
 Whereupon he expressed the hope that the old 
 spouse would soon die so that he might marry the 
 rich young vedovella. Many years afterward 
 he utilised his experiences in one of his best- 
 known comedies,"Le Barufe Chiozzote," in which 
 Isidoro is supposed to be a picture of himself. 
 This incident has within a few years been 
 commemorated in a comedy entitled "Un 
 Amoretto del Goldoni a Feltre." 
 
 At Feltre he made the acquaintance of a troupe 
 of actors under Carlo Veronese, whom Goldoni, 
 after a lapse of thirty years, met again in Paris 
 when he was acting the part of Pantaleone. 
 Florindo de' Maccheroni, whom he had known 
 at Rimini, was also there, but he had grown old 
 and Goldoni says he was then playing only the 
 king in tragedy and the noble father in comedy. 
 Again his susceptible heart was ensnared by a 
 hella Angelica; she was so jealous of the actresses 
 whom Goldoni was training in the "Didone" and 
 "Serse"ofMetastasio that she wept when she 
 ought to have laughed, but Goldoni says the 
 poor girl loved him tenderly and with perfect 
 
282 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 fidelity. "I loved her too with my whole soul 
 and I may say that she was the first person whom 
 I ever truly loved." 
 
 He was on the point of marrying her, but it 
 suddenly occurred to him that her beauty was 
 too delicate in character to last and so he aban- 
 doned the dehcious dream. "To be sure," he 
 says, this was reasoning too much for a lover 
 but either through virtue or weakness or incon- 
 stancy, I left Feltre and did not marry her." 
 
 In 1731 he lost his father, and as he was now 
 the head of the family economical considerations 
 compelled him to devote himself seriously to the 
 law. He went to Padua and studied earnestly, 
 for still Padua boasted its learned Bellario. 
 Nevertheless, he spent the whole night before 
 the examination for his degree at the card table 
 and lost all his money — one of his companions 
 was a law professor. The day began to dawn; 
 the university bell rang: he hurriedly put on 
 his gown and rushed to the examination, which 
 he passed brilliantly and was proclaimed dottore. 
 
 The day came when he should be presented 
 at the Palazzo : he tells how he stood for an hour 
 and a half at the foot of the Scala Jet Giganti 
 making so many bows and contortions that his 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 283 
 
 back was broken and his wig was like a lion's 
 mane. The fruit of these days was, as might 
 be expected — not a rush of chents, but his 
 "Avvocato Veneziano." 
 
 Another of his numerous love adventures here 
 occurred. A mysterious woman known as 
 Barabba, who was always looking out for the 
 interests of young lawyers, came to him one day 
 and engaged him in a long conversation, which 
 he must have found very amusing; but Goldoni 
 retained his dignity and the unknown departed 
 saying, "Addio, signore, be ever wise, be 
 ever honourable and you will be happy." In- 
 stead of occupying himself with profitable law- 
 cases he whiled away his time in composing an 
 almanac entitled "The Experience of the Past; 
 the Astrologof the Future, Almanacco Criticoiot 
 the year 1732." The work was full of prophe- 
 cies written in terza rima. He also composed 
 a lyric tragedy entitled "L'Amalasunta." Still 
 another love affair from which there was no 
 other exit than flight brought him to Vicenza, 
 where Count Parmenio Trissino, a descendant 
 of the author of "Sofonisba," condescended to cast 
 his critical eye on his latest production. He 
 gave him no encouragement but advised him to 
 
284 A TEACHAR OF DANTE 
 
 devote himself to comedy. At Brescia he read 
 the tragedy to a hrigata, but it met with more 
 criticism than praise. 
 
 At Bergamo, the home of Harlequin, he 
 was warmly received, his name as an astrol- 
 oger having preceded him: his almanacco 
 had won him friends. Then he proceeded to 
 Milan. It was carnival time and opera was in 
 full swing. CafFariello, the director and com- 
 poser, and his wife, the prima ballerina, received 
 him cordially. At their home he began to read 
 his great tragedy, but CafFariello laughed at the 
 Queen of the Goths; one of the singers inter- 
 rupted him by practising his part at the cembalo; 
 the reading was suspended and only Count 
 Prata, one of the directors of the theatre , had 
 the patience ultimately to hear it to the end 
 and the grace to give the author some wise 
 advice, which he recognised as true and , accept- 
 ing, went home to carry out. First, however, 
 he had a fire built and as before a sacred altar 
 he read the precious play from beginning to end 
 and though still thinking it good, nevertheless, 
 while cursing the rules, the actors, the com- 
 posers, the scene-painters and the critics, he 
 burnt it from title to epilogue. Then he or- 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 285 
 
 dered dinner, drank enough wine to cheer his 
 heart and forgot his disappointment and humil- 
 iation in sleep. 
 
 The Venetian ambassador gave him a sine- 
 cure office as chamberlain and while enjoying its 
 emoluments and plenty of time, he made the 
 acquaintance of a quack by the name of Buona- 
 fede Vitali, called Anonimo, a Jesuit, doctor, 
 professor, orator, encyclopedist, who as a means 
 of attracting customers acted a sort of farce in 
 pubhc and kept a company of comedians in 
 his service. 
 
 Owing to the unexpected failure of certain 
 comedians to keep their engagement for the 
 Easter season, a vacancy occurred at the Milan 
 theatre and Anonimo proposed that his company 
 should fill the bill. Goldoni supported his 
 proposition; Rubini, a famous Pantaleone, was 
 engaged and Goldoni wrote an intermezzo for 
 two voices, entitled "II Gondolier Veneziano." 
 It made a hit. This then was his first work to be 
 performed and it was afterward pubHshed in the 
 fourth volume of the Pasquali edition of Venice. 
 
 Shortly after this a play called "Belisario" 
 was performed in Milan, in which the blinded 
 hero was led on the stage by Arlecchino who to 
 
286 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 show his compassion kept beating him with his 
 stick. The whole affair was perfectly farcical 
 yet it was received by the public quite seriously. 
 Goldoni asked the chief actor what he thought 
 of it. The man replied that that sort of thing 
 would go on until the stage was reformed. 
 
 Goldoni was moved to write a play in which 
 this subject should be. treated worthily. He 
 got one act completed, but the war of Don 
 Carlos broke out (in 1733). Goldoni had to leave 
 Milan; at Crema several scrapes into which he 
 was led lost him his patron's confidence and 
 his position. But he finished "Belisario" and 
 after some delay it was produced at Verona with 
 great success. He wrote: 
 
 My heroes were men and not demigods ; their passions 
 were proportioned to their positions, showing them to be 
 human, and not carrying their vices and virtues to an imag- 
 inary excess. My style was not elegant and my versification 
 never touched the sublime: and that is precisely why it 
 was needed to bring to reason a public accustomed to 
 hyperbole, to antitheses, and to the absurdity of the gigan- 
 tic and of the romances. 
 
 In 1 736 Goldoni married Nicoletta Conio, who, 
 he declared, indemnified him for all that he ever 
 suffered from the evil done him by women and 
 reconciled him to the fair sex. She was a true 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 287 
 
 companion to him all the days of his life, his 
 inspiration and his comfort, unspoiled by suc- 
 cess and serene in adversity, free from jealousy 
 — the ideal wife for such a man, keeping him to 
 high purposes and restraining his lower im- 
 pulses. He often declared that in his wife he 
 was the most contented, the happiest man in 
 the world. 
 
 The story of the steps by which he was led 
 to abandon the composition of conventional 
 tragedies, intermezzi, cantahili and Metastasian 
 opera librettos is fully rehearsed in his Memoirs 
 as likewise his entertaining adventures in the 
 various cities to which his nomadic instincts led 
 him. Indeed the Memoirs of his are justly 
 regarded as amusing as any of his comedies*. 
 
 Garrulous, simple-hearted, confiding, if he 
 had only written them in Italian instead of 
 French, they would have perhaps excelled any 
 autobiography in existence. 
 
 After he had written a number of comedies 
 in accord with the ancient fashion, all more or 
 less successful in their way but not satisfying to 
 
 * There are thirty or more titles of his early tragedies, tragi- 
 comedies, drammi per musica, comedies of semi<aratttre and masked 
 subject-comedies. 
 
288 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 his artistic instincts, he began his first reform 
 by trying to abolish the masks that were one of 
 the conventions of the Itahan stage. At Pisa, 
 at Mantua, at Modena and finally at Venice 
 (in July, 1747), with the aid of Medebac, leader 
 of a troupe of comedians, of which Medebac's 
 beautiful wife, and the famous Darbes were 
 important members, he began to introduce his 
 new ideas. Venice especially was the home of 
 the Italian theatre and here he saw a suitable 
 place to build his new edifice. " I had no rivals 
 to combat," he said, "but only to overcome 
 prejudices." 
 
 The rivals however were not slow to appear. 
 He entirely abandoned his law business, which 
 was always rather a form than a chosen pro- 
 fession. His first new comedy, "Tognetto," made 
 a fiasco. He thought the matter ended and 
 came to the conclusion that the public was right 
 in condemning it. He wrote another, "L'Uomo 
 Prudente," in which the Pantaleone appears at 
 first in a mask and then removes it. Though 
 very faulty the play was successful and he was 
 soon ready with a third, "Due Gemelli Venezi- 
 ani" especially adapted for displaying the genius 
 of Darbes who took the part of the twin brothers. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 289 
 
 But these were only tentative. Not until 1 748, 
 when his "Vedova Scaltra," "The Crafty- 
 Widow, " was represented at Venice may he be 
 said to have definitely abandoned himself to the 
 " Comedy of Character ," in which he was thought 
 to rival Moliere. In "La Vedova Scaltra" he in- 
 troduces Milord Rosenif, an Englishman; Cheva- 
 lier Le Bleau, a Frenchman; Don Alvaro, a 
 proud Spaniard; il Conte di Borco, an Italian; 
 and the liberal, elegant, noble, love-compelling 
 heroine Rosaura, who receives with perfect 
 impartiality a diamond from the Englishman, 
 a picture from the Frenchman, a genealogical 
 tree from the Don and a sentimental letter from 
 the Italian. It was represented thirty times. 
 Another of his comedies, "La Erede Fortunata," 
 having, as he thought, been unjustly condemned 
 during the carnival of 1749, he vowed to write 
 sixteen the next year and he accomplished his 
 purpose — a literary feat never since exceeded 
 even by Mr. Clyde Fitch! Among the number 
 were "Pamela," a dramatisation of Richardson's 
 novel, then all the rage in Italy, and the "Bottega 
 del Caffe." 
 
 The use of the comedy as a censor of morals 
 is proved by the fact that Goldoni's satire put an 
 
290 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 end to the state-protected gambling that was 
 the bane of Venice in that day as it is at Monaco 
 in ours. The institution of the cavalere ser- 
 vente, or Cicisbeo, the secondary unlegalised 
 husband or protected lover, which had been the 
 curse of Italian family life for many generations, 
 as a sort of consolation for the mariage de 
 convenance, also slunk away under the keen 
 shafts of Goldoni's ridicule; just as chivalry 
 itself, from which it was derived, perished from 
 romance at the castigation of Cervantes. "II 
 Cavalarie e la Dama," "The Lord and the 
 Lady, " was the title of the death-dealing 
 comedy. He wrote that he had regarded for 
 a long time with amazement these singular 
 creatures, these martyrs of gallantry, slaves of 
 the fair sex. This play, which depicted them 
 to the life, was represented fifteen consecutive 
 evenings. Goldoni, as may be suspected, wrote 
 his plays with the greatest possible facility. 
 Thus, when it was almost time for the last of 
 them to be put on the stage, the carnival was 
 nearing its finale. He had not even decided on 
 a subject. One day, in Saint Mark's, he saw 
 an old Armenian, a seller of dried fruits, ragged 
 and derided. He rushed home and wrote, "I 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 291 
 
 Pettegolezzi," "Billingsgate Gossips," a light com- 
 edy, which had the most extraordinary success. 
 
 But in the midst of the radiant happiness that 
 surrounded him at this period arose dis- 
 cordant notes. Medebac, whose pockets he had 
 filled, was close and grasping. He argued 
 that Goldoni had fame, applause, immortality, 
 that ought to suffice him; what more could he 
 want ? He would add to his fame and his own 
 wealth by publishing the comedies. A quarrel 
 ensued. In 1752 Goldoni parted company 
 with Medebac and joined the troupe of a Vene- 
 tian named Vendramin, who owned the theatre 
 San Luca, and for him he wrote "La Locandiera," 
 which is justly regarded as one of his best 
 comedies, with its charming type in the far- 
 sighted Mirandolina. He had already written 
 upward of ninety pieces for the stage and 
 now he took hold with fresh zeal to com- 
 pose for his new patron. For him he laboured 
 ten years. 
 
 One of the first plays that he wrote for San 
 Luca was "L'Avaro Geloso,"in which, as in Plau- 
 tus' "Aulularia," and Moliere's "L'Avare," the 
 type illustratedis the miser; but Groldoni did not 
 copy his predecessors, he drew from life; but 
 
292 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 more than in the majority of his comedies the 
 success depended on the actor. 
 
 During these ten years his fecundity was 
 amazing. No less than sixty came in quick 
 succession. Merely to mention his master- 
 pieces, much more to analyse them, would be 
 out of the question within reasonable limits. 
 Moreover, they scarcely need analysis. Goldoni's 
 plays are usually so simple in construction that 
 the plot is of little consequence : the display of 
 contrasted character, the cleverness of the 
 dialogue give them their charm. The story of 
 his successes and failures, of his encounters with 
 rivals, especially with the Count Rozzi, is all 
 told with unfailing humour in his Memoirs. 
 
 In 1760 came his great play / Rusteghi, in 
 which with wonderful skill he takes four similar 
 characters — compared to the same person 
 photographed in four different poses — to prove, 
 as he said — that human characters are 
 inexhaustible. The three wives make a suf- 
 ficient contrast and the action is full of life and 
 the dialogue of humour. 
 
 In Venice Goldoni's chief enemy and rival 
 was Count Gozzi, who also published an auto- 
 biography which has been translated by J. A. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 293 
 
 Symonds. Gozzi's family having been ruined, 
 he became an adventurer and at last drifted back 
 to Venice where he produced ridiculously stilted 
 fantastic dramas and fiabe for the company of 
 Sacchi. Such plays as "La Donna Serpente," "II 
 Mostro Turchino," "L' Augellin," "Bel Verde" 
 and "II Re dei Genii" pleased the public and 
 Goldoni was consequently neglected. The petty 
 quarrels that agitated Venice at that time are in 
 themselves comedies but they were not conducive 
 to happiness among those that took part in them. 
 For instance, Gozzi was called by some of his 
 adversaries Bad Count, mal cavaliere, unworthy 
 impostor, liar, false philosopher: and he retorted 
 by a shower-bath of insults in which he used 
 such epithets as proud, impudent, of viperous 
 humour, vindictive, blind, haughty, impostor, 
 mad, petulant, timid, vile, pedant, dwarf-pedant 
 and dozens of others. This strange, selfish, 
 misanthropic free thinker was a sturdy fighter. 
 He died in 1806 at the, age of eighty-six. 
 
 The history of Venice in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury would not be complete without notice of 
 Carlo Gozzi. 
 
 In 1 761 Goldoni was invited to Paris for two 
 years. One of his majt/j^r^, " Harlequin's Son 
 
294 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Lost and Found," had been performed there 
 and with great success. He made an effort to 
 secure a promised living in Venice. It was not 
 granted to him and so he left never to return. 
 Among his last works written for Italian 
 audiences was "Sior Todero Brontolon," which is 
 regarded as only second to the "Rusteghi." It 
 also satirises the miser who is a tyrant in his 
 own family. His farewell comedy was entitled 
 "Una delleUltime SerediCarnevale," "The Last 
 Carnival Evening," in which he himself as 
 Anzoleto assures his auditors that he shall ever 
 remember his adoratissima patria, his beloved 
 friends. "I confess and swear on my honour," 
 says the leading character, "that I depart 
 with anguished heart [col cuor j/razzo], that no 
 allurement, no good fortune whatever shall 
 compensate me for the sorrow [// despiaser] of 
 being far from those that wish me well." 
 
 Goldoni,with his wife and nephew, left Venice 
 in April, 1 762 — not the preceding year as he 
 says in his Memoirs — and did not reach Paris 
 until near the end of August. Paris enchanted 
 him but he did not find all easy sailing. There, as 
 in Italy, he was obliged to conquer the pre- 
 judices and instruct the ignorance of the 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 295 
 
 Italian actors. The first two years of his en- 
 gagement produced twenty-four works, eight 
 of which kept the stage : in the others, and to a 
 certain extent in all, there was a certain retro- 
 gression, since he had aimed rather at winning the 
 applause of ignorance than of satisfying himself. 
 
 His Memoirs, and especially his letters, give 
 interesting details of his life and experiences in 
 Paris. Instead of staying there two years and 
 then going to Portugal, as he had planned, he 
 stayed on for thirty years. The court made 
 him independent of the Italian company; he 
 was appointed Italian master to the Royal 
 children. After he had been in Paris nine years 
 he wrote his first French comedy, "Le Bourru 
 Bienfaisant," "The Kind Churl," which was 
 played in November, i77i,for twelve evenings. 
 It has been translated into English. He wrote 
 one other in French, "L'Avare Fastueux," which, 
 though full of comic situations, by a mere acci- 
 dent failed to please. 
 
 With characteristic obliviousness of political 
 events he was serene even when the volcano of 
 the French Revolution was threatening to pour 
 forth its destruction. The report was carried 
 to Italy in 1792 that Goldoni had been guillo- 
 
296 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 tined. He escaped but he was reduced to poverty 
 His last letter, written four months and a few 
 days before his death , declared that he had un 
 stomaco valoroso ed un cuore sensihile. 
 
 He died February 6, 1793. On the day fol- 
 lowing the poet Chenier introduced into the 
 National Convention a bill to continue Goldoni's 
 salary. When it was learned that it was too 
 late, the Convention granted his widow a pen- 
 sion of 1,200 francs. Whether the pension was 
 paid may well be doubted. 
 
 Goldoni must have been a most entertaining 
 and fascinating person. Everything testifies 
 to his sunny, gay and amusing character. Even 
 his peculiarities were piquant and original. 
 Unfortunately for foreign readers some of his 
 best comedies were written in the Venetian 
 dialect which he loved and which he was en- 
 gaged in his later days in disposing into a dic- 
 tionary. It may be interesting to get a glimpse 
 of some of his principles of composition. I will 
 therefore translate a few of his epigrammatic 
 sayings : 
 
 A writer who writes for the theatre writes for the people. 
 Whatever is represented on the stage ought always to 
 be a copy of what happens in the world. 
 
GOLDONI AND ITALIAN COMEDY 297 
 
 One must prefer a disagreeable truth to a delicious im- 
 agination. 
 
 When I set out to write a comedy I do not avail my- 
 self of the stories or the works of others ; I search in Nature 
 and according as it is natural and life-like in the type so is 
 it in the character. 
 
 The simple and natural far more than the marvellous 
 control the heart of man. 
 
 Spectacular comedies are not true comedies, and if I 
 have written such it was through complacency. 
 
 On the stage the moral that comes from the most com- 
 monly approved practices should prevail. 
 
 Comedy being an image of common life, its end and 
 aim ought to be to display on the stage the faults of pri- 
 vate individuals in order to cure the faults of the public. 
 
 My whole aim has not been to satirize and punish vice 
 but my principal object [principalissimo scopo\ has ever 
 been to keep virtue in sight, to reward it, to fill the spectators 
 with love of it and to give it greater success when confronted 
 with vices and their worst causes. 
 
 The unity of the action is an indispensable precept 
 to be observed in dramas when the argument concerns 
 one principal person. But when the collective title concerns 
 more persons unity itself is found in the multiplicity of 
 actions. It is not true that the characters ought to be 
 indispensable according as the comedy could not be carried 
 on without them. All that is required is that they work 
 together well and in harmony, increasing the beauty and 
 the intrigue. 
 
 Double eniendres are tolerable in comedies when it can 
 be believed that the least malicious can interpret them in 
 a good sense ; but God defend me from scandalising the 
 innocent. I have worked and ever shall work in the sweat of 
 
298 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 my face for this end : to free our stage from obscenity and 
 vice [malizta] and if ever the comic spirit seduces me I 
 am glad to be corrected. 
 
 Characters are not infinite in kind but in species ; 
 while every virtue, every vice, varies according to circum- 
 stances. 
 
VIII 
 
 ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 
 
 "n ANIERI DE' CASALBIGI, in a long letter 
 criticising Alfieri's first four printed 
 tragedies, begins with the statement that the 
 Italians had been hitherto shamefully poor in 
 tragedy, vergognasamente poveri nella tragedia, 
 and after making some very reasonable criticisms 
 on the unnaturalness of the complications, the 
 absurdity or puerility of the conceptions, the 
 languidness of the verse, the inharmoniousness 
 of the poetry of the Tragic Muse of Italy, he 
 proceeds to suggest the reasons why there was 
 such a dearth of masterpieces. 
 
 This letter was written more than a century 
 ago, and from his standpoint is quite satisfactory: 
 but we now know far more thoroughly and 
 understand better the social and political con- 
 ditions of the past two centuries. I need only 
 hint at the reasons: the spread of humanism 
 which made men contented with imitation of 
 the models left by Seneca; the lack of theatres 
 and consequently of adequate professional 
 299 
 
300 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 actors; the division o^ Italy into a dozen little 
 independent provinces, with no central capital as 
 heart or head — no literary language universally 
 understood; the jealousy of church and princes, 
 many of whom were themselves engaged in tra- 
 gedies of real life and would therefore not relish 
 seeing their counterpart represented on the stage. 
 
 De' Casalbigi looked forward to the time when 
 there should be a continuous and permanent 
 theatre in which the best actors should be engag- 
 ed at liberal salaries, where women freed from the 
 prejudices that attached to the profession, should 
 have equal chances, and where original or trans- 
 lated dramas, comic and tragic, should be con- 
 stantly on the stage, giving to the young poet prac- 
 tical lessons in the management of the passions 
 and of character, in the treatment of plot and all 
 the details so indispensable to an art so exacting. 
 
 We have seen how the influence of Plautus 
 and Terence conditioned the Italian comedy 
 down to the time when Goldoni brought about 
 a revolution and replaced the comedy of masks 
 by something approaching the comedy of 
 character. In tragedy the Latin influence was 
 still more stilted and unfortunate: the only 
 Latin model of consequence was the semi- 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 301 
 
 mythical Seneca, whose dramas were rhetorical 
 exercises meant to be declaimed and not acted. 
 The revival of the study of Greek might have 
 given a better stimulus but the idea generally 
 prevalent was that Seneca was superior to any 
 of the great Athenian triumvirate. 
 
 The one thing that occupied the Italian* 
 dramatists from Trissino whose "Sofonisba" is 
 generally regarded as the first tragedy, down to 
 Goldoni, was the observance of the unities. 
 
 The three unities are like the three Gray 
 Sisters: two are mortal, one is immortal. The 
 unity of action is in its broadest signification 
 absolutely essential: episodes however beautiful 
 and effective only detract from the onflowing 
 of the current that brings the fatal climax. 
 And undoubtedly unity of time and space also 
 greatly concentrate the interest when it can be 
 arranged naturally. But the power of the imag- 
 ination is not regarded, and the efforts of the 
 classic dramatists to accomplish impossibilities 
 brought about most ridiculous absurdities. 
 
 * L'Anguillara partially translated the "Oidipous" of Sopbokles, sup- 
 plying some of the scenes by passages from Seneca. This was published 
 in 1565 in Venice. In 1574 Tasso's"Tomsmondo" was brought out. This 
 is written' in the same meter as Alfieri's Tragedies and the poetry, as 
 might be imagined, is more imaginative than dramatic. 
 
302 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 We have seen how Goldoni was born, and 
 educated by nature for the work of reform which 
 he succeeded in inaugurating, his observant 
 genius and his nomad life which brought him 
 into contact with every variety of character, 
 enabling him to people his stage with a vast 
 variety of natural personages. 
 
 The destined reformer of the tragic drama 
 had a life scarcely less nomadic, and only in its 
 individuality less amusing. Goldoni did not 
 hesitate to represent himself in his own comedies; 
 we learn to know the man thoroughly from such 
 plays as "The Honoured Adventurer" or "The 
 Last Evening. " Especially in his " Memoirs " 
 his enthusiasm, his frankness, his gaiety, his 
 shallowness, his lack of knowledge, his bon- 
 homie, are all amply manifest. But in Alfieri's 
 nineteen tragedies and six comedies, and even 
 in his Autobiography (which like Goldoni's has 
 been published with an introduction by Mr. 
 Ho wells), can not be seen a trace of the fiery, 
 moody, ill-disciplined, restless, proud nature of 
 Count Vittorio Alfieri. He strips himself of 
 all his characteristics: his plays are so classic 
 in form as to be lacking in every poetic grace; 
 he tells the extraordinary story of his life as if 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 303 
 
 he were a critical outsider who felt no interest 
 in the matter except as it was not a bad idea to 
 have a correct impression of his life. 
 
 " If I may perchance lack the courage or the 
 indiscretion to tell the whole truth about myself," 
 he says, "I certainly shall not be cowardly 
 enough to tell anything that is not true. " 
 
 He regarded the fact of his being the child 
 of noble, opulent and honourable parents as 
 trebly important in his development: he was 
 enabled to attack the vices and foibles of the 
 nobility without suspicion of envy, while the 
 utile e Sana influenza of high birth kept him 
 from ever contaminating the nobility of the art 
 which he professed; freedom from sordid cares 
 left him libero e puro — independent and un- 
 tempted to serve anything but the truth; while 
 the uprightness, purity and generosity of his 
 mother and stepfather made him glad that he 
 also was born a noble. 
 
 His father was Count Antonio Alfieri: his 
 mother Monica Maillard de Tournon, the 
 widow of the Marchese di Cacherano. Vittorio 
 was born on the 17th of January, 1749, at 
 Asti in Piedmont; less than a year afterward 
 his father died at the age of sixty. His mother 
 
304 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 being still a young woman took for her third 
 husband the Cavaliere Giacinto Alfieri di 
 Maghano. This union proved to be heatis- 
 sima ed esemplare. He especially eulogises 
 his ottima madre stimabilissima, her ardentis- 
 sima eroica pieta, her absolute consecration to 
 the relief of the destitute, her strong and sublime 
 character. 
 
 His early years he calls stupida vegetazione 
 and among his earliest remembrances was his 
 grief at being deprived of his only sister Giulia, 
 who was put into the Convent at Asti where 
 he could see her only once a week. He him- 
 self was confided to a good priest named Don 
 Ivaldi whom he calls ignorantuccio: but it was 
 not then considered necessary for a Signore 
 to be as learned as a Dottore. 
 
 At the Chiesa del Carmine next his step- 
 father's house he was in the habit of attending 
 various ceremonials and the sight of the Car- 
 melite novices in their white surplices and with 
 their boyish faces which seemed to remind him 
 of his sister, filled his tender, impressionable 
 heart with a vague longing and melancholy. 
 He did not then know that it was love thus 
 early manifesting itself. Byron was equally 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 305 
 
 precocious in this flowering of the heart: but 
 he had at least a definite object in his pretty 
 cousin while Alfieri's passion was exhaled in 
 distant contemplation of what seemed to him 
 angels with their serene faces, their censers and 
 candles, their genuflections and their penetrat- 
 ing songs. 
 
 He neglected alike his studies and his friends, 
 and under the burden of a morbid melancholy, 
 tried to commit suicide, by devouring hand- 
 fuls of weeds, hoping that among them might 
 be that called hemlock. He only succeeded 
 in making himself sick at the stomach and as 
 his red and swollen eyes and lack of appetite 
 betrayed him, he was finally compelled to con- 
 fess the truth, whereupon his mother with 
 strange lack of wisdom made his malady worse 
 by confining him to his chamber for several days. 
 A still more absurd attempt to regulate his 
 moodiness was made when he was sent to mass 
 with a netted nightcap on. Not heeding his 
 shrieks and screams, his tutor, the priest, dragged 
 him along by the arm, while a servant pushed 
 him from behind and thus he was conducted to 
 the distant church of San Martino and brought 
 home again with death in his heart as he says. 
 
3o6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 and feeling himself forever dishonoured. His 
 agony resulted in an illness and the nightcap 
 punishment was never tried again. 
 
 Even more unwise was his preparation for his 
 first spiritual confession. The good priest Don 
 Ivaldi had this duty in charge and he suggested 
 to the boy every imaginable sin, most of which 
 he did not even know by name. And when he 
 went to Padre Angelo, his mother's confessor 
 he was absolved on condition that he should 
 kneel down at his mother's feet at the dinner- 
 table and in presence of all ask her pardon for 
 all his past failings. This had been arranged 
 in concert with his mother and one may imagine 
 the torment that it caused his sensitive nature 
 when at dinner-time his mother looked sternly 
 at him and demanded if he had done his whole 
 duty and if he had a right to sit down vpith the 
 rest. He was then less than eight years old. 
 
 Alfieri's autobiography is divided into four 
 epochs. The second entitled " Adolescenza " 
 has a significant subtitle : — "Embraces eight 
 years of uneducation" — abhraccia otto anni 
 d'ineducazione. A childhood so ill-regulated 
 was followed by a training not less injudi- 
 cious. Its dangers may be imagined when we 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 307 
 
 read that at nine years and a half of age he was 
 as it were dumped into the Academy of Turin 
 and left to his own guidance; his only safe- 
 guard being a domestic named Andrea or 
 Alessandrino who was so far superior to his class 
 that he knew how to read and write. Of the 
 school itself he says " no moral maxim was ever 
 given, no vital teaching, and who would have 
 given it when the teachers themselves knew 
 the world neither by theory nor by practice?" 
 
 His picture of the school is pathetic. While 
 the boys had no supervision they were confronted 
 constantly by the spectacle of the older students 
 and the king's pages, twenty or twenty-five of 
 them, indulging in every kind of dissipation, 
 being subject to no kind of restraint provided 
 they were in by midnight. He expresses his 
 disgust vigorously when he compares him- 
 self to an ass among asses kept by an ass, asino 
 fra asini e sotto un asino. 
 
 In spite of all these drawbacks he made some 
 advancement or at least was promoted at the 
 end of the first year to the Umanita, where for 
 still another year his habits he declares were 
 innocenti e puriss'imi: his only dissipation being 
 th& perusal of four volumes of Ariosto which he 
 
3o8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 acquired volume by volume by exchanging his 
 half of the chicken allowed each student every 
 Sunday. Lack of food and sleep stunted his 
 growth and debilitated his health, so that he com- 
 pared himself to a thin pale wax candle — candel- 
 otto di cero soitilissimo e pallidissimo, and he 
 broke out with sores so disgusting that his com- 
 panions called him Carogna and Fradicia : rotten, 
 carrion. His copy of Ariosto having been dis- 
 covered it was taken away by the subprior but 
 the loss was not so serious to him because he could 
 not understand it. The following year he man- 
 aged to abstract the volumes from the subprior's 
 library while the worthy father was watching a 
 game of pallone from his window: this was all 
 that he knew of Italian literature except a few 
 of Metastasio's opera librettos and some of 
 Goldoni's comedies. 
 
 " The genius for things dramatic, the germ of 
 which was possibly implanted in me, was likely 
 soon to be hidden or extinguished for lack of 
 sustenance, of encouragement, and everything 
 else. And in very fact my ignorance and that 
 of those who were educating me and the negli- 
 gence of all in everything could not have been 
 more complete." 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 309 
 
 One bright spot in his life was the transfer of 
 his sister to a convent in Turin where he was 
 enabled to see her two or three times a week. 
 His uncle who had been absent from the city 
 as governor of Cuneo, discovered his wretched 
 condition and brought about some alleviation; 
 and another relative, his father's cousin — 
 semi-zto — Count Benedetto Alfieri, first archi- 
 tect to the king, began to take some notice of 
 him though the fact that he spoke pure Tuscan 
 — suo henedetto parlar Toscano — which was 
 contraband in that amphibious city — was a 
 drawback to their intercourse. After he had, 
 like a parrot, mastered the pedantic and insipid 
 philosophy and the even more useless mathema- 
 tics of the Academy and had been passed on to 
 the University he was treated a little more like 
 a human being: one night he was allowed to 
 stay at the house of his relative, the architect, 
 and it was an occasion to be marked with a 
 white stone, for he was taken to the theatre of 
 Carignano where he saw an opera bouffe, "II 
 Mercato di Malmantile," sung by the best 
 comic singers of Italy. 
 
 The verve and variety of that divine music 
 made a very deep impression on him — to use 
 
3IO A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 his own phrase, " left a furrow of harmony in 
 his ears and in his imagination"; so that for 
 a week he was immersed in an extraordinary 
 but not unpleasing melancholy which disgusted 
 him more than ever with his ordinary pursuits, 
 and filled his mind with a most singular ebulli- 
 tion of ideas which would have expressed itself in 
 verse if he had only known how. From that 
 time forth he always found music — and espe- 
 cially the voices of women — the most powerful 
 and indomitable stimulant of his mind, heart 
 and intellect : nothing, he says, ever caused such 
 varied and terrible effects. And he adds: 
 "almost all of my tragedies have been conceived 
 either while hearing music or shortly after." 
 
 In August 1762, his uncle Pellegrino allowed 
 him to visit him in Cuneo and the journey in the 
 open air through the beautiful plains of Piedmont 
 was very beneficial to his health but the slow 
 rate of travel — quella tgnobile e gelid a tardezza 
 del pazzo d'asino — mortified him so that he 
 shut his eyes so as not to see; nor till his dying 
 day could he decide whether his passion for 
 swift motion was the product of a generous and 
 lofty spirit or of one light and vainglorious. 
 
 At Cuneo he wrote his first sonnet, which he 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 311 
 
 confesses was a hodgepodge made up of 
 Metastasio and Ariosto but without correctness 
 of rhyme or meter for though he had been taught 
 Latin hexameters and pentameters, he knew 
 nothing about the rules of ItaHan verse. It was 
 in homage of a lady whom his uncle was courting. 
 The lady praised it and the lad felt that he was 
 a poet, but his uncle, a severe military martinet, 
 cared nothing about the nine Muses and made 
 all manner of sport of what he calls his sonnet- 
 taccio primogenito, wretched little first born 
 sonnet, and so dried up his poetic vein that he 
 did not again desire to versify till he was five 
 and twenty. During the year 1763 — he being 
 then fourteen — his afternoons were devoted 
 to the lessons in ethics, and his mornings to 
 physics under the famous Padre Beccaria. 
 He always regretted that his wretched prepara- 
 tion in mathematics prevented him from ap- 
 preciating the lectures on electricity, so rich in 
 fascinating discoveries. This year his uncle was 
 made Viceroy of Sardinia and on his departure en- 
 trusted Alfieri's property to a gentleman who was 
 wise enough to give him a small monthly allow- 
 ance. His uncle had always refused to do so. 
 Shortly after, the troublesome eruptive dis- 
 
312 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 ease of his scalp returned, and he was obhged to 
 sacrifice his long red hair and wear a wig. The 
 wig was a source of immense amusement to 
 Alfieri's companions, but he quickly discovered 
 that the way to avoid such persecution was to 
 participate in making a football of the wig: 
 you must always seem to give spontaneously 
 what you can not prevent being taken from you ! 
 He had lessons in geography and enjoyed 
 them, especially as his tutor taught him in 
 French and lent him many French books — 
 " Gil Bias" — and such novels as "Les Memoires 
 d'un Homme de Qualite" which he read through 
 at least ten times. He had piano lessons but 
 in spite of a quick ear and a natural gift, he made 
 little progress. He attributed this to the lessons 
 coming immediately after dinner when his 
 mind was unfitted for any exercise. For 
 fencing he was quite too feeble and he detested 
 dancing, largely because the dancing-master 
 was a Frenchman newly arrived from Paris 
 with a politely impertinent air and an eternal 
 caricature in his actions and words. He 
 attributed to this puppet his life-long dislike of 
 the French and their affairs which, says he, "are 
 nothing but a perpetual minuet badly danced!" 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 313 
 
 He had other reasons for his dislike, however, 
 and one was that when a very small boy he had 
 seen the Duchess of Parma and her French 
 suite, all painted I and powdered. Another 
 still more deeply seated was that the French 
 had once been masters of his native town and 
 had been captured six or seven thousand strong 
 and were therefore in his idea cowards. 
 
 His uncle, six months after going to Sardinia, 
 died, leaving his property to him, and by the 
 laws of Piedmont he was his own master, having 
 now reached the age of fourteen. His curatore 
 or guardian had authority only to keep him 
 from alienating his real estate. 
 
 He was at the same time delivered from the 
 tyranny of his valet Andrea who when drunk 
 beat him, and when sober locked him in his 
 room for hours at a time. In spite of this 
 atrocious treatment Alfieri was exceedingly 
 fond of the fellow and for weeks after his dis- 
 missal went to visit him and from time to time 
 gave him all the pocket money he had. 
 
 The prior of the Academy knowing how 
 anxious he was to enter the riding-school, gave 
 him permission, providing he would obtain 
 from the University the first grade of the docto- 
 
314 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 rate called il Magistero. He went through a 
 regular system of cramming and in less than a 
 month he had passed the necessary examination : 
 and soon was possessor of a horse. To the 
 exercise of horsemanship which he calls piace- 
 vole e nobilissimo, he considered that he owed 
 all the health and robustness to which he 
 rapidly attained and which made a new man 
 of him. 
 
 Under his new sense of freedom he declares 
 it was incredible how his crest was elevated. He 
 informed the prior and his curatore that the 
 study of the law bored him to death and was a 
 waste of time. So he was transferred to the 
 first apartment where he says he had a splen- 
 did table regally served, much dissipation, very 
 little study, much sleeping, riding horseback 
 every day and almost absolute liberty of action. 
 
 Most of his companions were foreigners and 
 as he "conversed with them in French or Latin 
 and spent no small part of his time reading 
 French romances, he actually forgot what he 
 calls quel poco di triste Toscano he had managed 
 to pick up during three years of burlesque 
 studies of the humanities and asinine rhetorical 
 branches. 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 315 
 
 How ill-directed his efforts were may be 
 judged from the fact that he read the thirty-six 
 volumes of Fleury's "Histoire Ecclesiastique " 
 and made abstracts of eighteen volumes of it. 
 The sole value of this enormous labour was that 
 he was wakened to a distrust of priests and their 
 doings — le loro cose. Remember he was only a 
 boy of less than fifteen ! 
 
 His servitor was required to go with him 
 wherever he went but though a good natured 
 fellow and easily bribed, Alfieri objected to even 
 this semblance of restriction, as he was the only 
 one in the first apartment burdened with such a 
 monitor. So he began to go out alone without 
 him. But when he was detected several times 
 after admonition, he was put under house arrest 
 and finally kept in his room more than three 
 months. The coldness and self restraint of his 
 autobiography may be seen in the few lines 
 which he devotes to this barbarous treatment. 
 
 I persisted in my unwillingness to ask to be released: 
 and thus in my fury and my obstinacy I believe that I 
 would have rotted but never have yielded. I used to sleep 
 almost all day, then toward night get up and, dragging a 
 mattress close to the grate, stretch myself on the floor and, 
 as I was unwilling to receive the ordinary dinner of the 
 Academy which they brought to my room, I used to cook 
 
3i6 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 polenta and such things by the fire. My hair was not 
 combed, nor did I put on my clothes and I grew to be 
 like a savage. I was forbidden to leave my room but my 
 outside friends, the faithful companions of our heroic 
 escapades, were allowed to visit me. But I would lie deaf 
 and dumb and like an inanimate corpse, making no reply 
 to anything that was said to me. And thus I continued 
 whole hours with my eyes, full of unshed tears, fastened on 
 the ground. 
 
 Not a comment! Not a complaint! Not a 
 flourish! Not an extra word! 
 
 He goes on to tell how the marriage of his 
 sister to Count Giacinto di Cumiana released 
 him from this hfe of a truly brute beast — 
 questa vita di vero hruto bestia. He was put 
 on an equality with the other young men and his 
 guardian was compelled to give him a larger 
 allowance. He spent it on horses, acquiring 
 eight in a single year, and in magnificent clothing, 
 out of rivalry with some young Englishmen who 
 were in the University. He tells how after 
 dining with his comrades in the Academy he 
 would change his splendid clothes for much 
 simpler ones so as not to hurt the feelings of his 
 poorer friends in the city, and this he did, he 
 says, out of a natural and invincible repugnance 
 to seeming to outshine anyone whom he 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 317 
 
 knew or felt to be inferior to him in physical 
 powers, talent, generosity, disposition or purse. 
 He also had an elegant carriage built for him, 
 though he confessed that it was a most useless 
 absurdity for un ragazzaccio of sixteen in a city 
 so microscopic as Turin, but he never rode out 
 in it for the same laudable reasons but always 
 went a sante gambe — which may mean on horse- 
 back or on foot. 
 
 He ends the chapter in which he gives these 
 details with the observation that amid the many 
 perversities of a tumultuous, idle, untrained and 
 ill-regulated life, he could discern in himself 
 a natural incHnation toward justice, equality 
 and 'generosity of spirit. A ten days' trip to 
 Genoa where he first saw the sea had a great 
 effect on his imagination. And again he was 
 tempted to write verses, but how could he when 
 for almost two years he had scarcely opened 
 a book except some of Voltaire's prose works and 
 a few French novels ? Neither did his first real 
 passion for the sister-in-law of two of his com- 
 rades elicit a single sonnet though he felt all 
 the symptoms "so learnedly and pathetically 
 imaged by our divine master of that divine 
 passion, il Petrarca." 
 
3i8 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 His journey to Genoa awoke in him an 
 immense desire to travel. 
 
 After a farcical service in the army, he 
 succeeded in extorting from his guardian and 
 from the jealous king permission to be gone for 
 a year. He left Turin in October 1766. 
 
 And here begins the third epoch of his life, 
 comprising eight years of travels and dissolutezze. 
 
 In the Ambrosian Library at Milan an auto- 
 graph MS. of Petrarca was shown him, but it 
 did not interest him ! His sole idea of travel was 
 to fly from place to place with all conceivable 
 swiftness, not stopping for either paintings or 
 sculpture or even architecture. At Florence, 
 instead of making the most of his opportunities 
 to practise the divine language, he took lessons 
 in English. A day in Lucca seemed to him a 
 century. 
 
 Obtaining permission to extend his travels, 
 he went to Paris, being principally attracted by 
 the hope of enjoying the theatre. But neither at 
 this time nor when he had seen in Turin a com- 
 pany of French actors, nor for some years later, 
 had the thought ever arisen in his mind that he 
 might some day write theatrical compositions. 
 And he says that though he knew the principal 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 319 
 
 French comedies and tragedies, and always 
 listened with attention, still it was without the 
 slightest thought or impulse toward creation. 
 And at this time comedy pleased him more 
 than tragedy though he was more inclined to 
 tears than to mirth. He explains his indif- 
 ference to French tragedy by the fact that whole 
 scenes and even acts were devoted to dialogues 
 between secondary characters, thus lengthening 
 the action and dissipating the effect. He 
 was also disagreeably impressed by the monot- 
 ony and sing-song of the French verse and the 
 unpleasing nasal tones. 
 
 He spent some time in Marseilles where he got 
 great enjoyment from sea-bathing, going quite 
 a distance from the port and sitting with his 
 back against a high rock, so that he had only 
 the vast immensities of sea and sky before him, 
 while his soul was rapt within him at sight 
 of the setting sun, and he would fain have com- 
 posed many poems had he only known how to 
 write in rhyme or in prose in any language. 
 
 Yet when he became tired of Marseilles, he 
 says he went more like a fugitive than a traveller, 
 night and day, pausing not at Aix with its lovely 
 smiling landscape, nor at Avignon where was 
 
320 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Laura's tomb, nor at Vaucluse so long the home 
 of our divine Petrarca; only at Lyons was he 
 compelled by sheer weariness to pause and rest. 
 From there he flew to Paris as an arrow is sent 
 from a bow. Paris then was very different from 
 the clean, magnificent city of to-day. And the 
 contrast between the smiling landscapes of Prov- 
 ence and the wretched suburb of Saint Marcel, 
 the foul-smelling, muddy* Faubourg Saint Ger- 
 main, the tasteless architecture of the houses, the 
 ridiculous pretensions of the palaces, the Gothic 
 taste displayed in the churches, and the vandal- 
 like structure of the theatres, and the pessima- 
 mente architettate facce impiastrate of the women, 
 all seen under the gloom of a misty sky, entirely 
 disenchanted him; though he liked the beau- 
 tiful gardens and the thronged boulevards and 
 the handsome coaches and the splendid fafade 
 of the Louvre and the innumerable shows. 
 
 But the general impression of disgust with 
 Paris, where for two weeks he did not once see 
 the sun, never faded from his mind: it was just 
 as vivid twenty-three years later. But he was 
 delighted with London and England and would 
 
 * It seems strange to think of the Roya! Coach being embourbie 
 — stuck in the mud — between Versailles and Paris. 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 321 
 
 gladly have lived there all his days; the beauty 
 of the country, the unaffected customs, the 
 fair and modest women and girls and the just 
 government and liberty engendered therefrom 
 made him almost forget the wretched climate, 
 the melancholy ever present and the ruinous 
 cost of living there. 
 
 In Holland he had his first serious love- 
 affair and while he was languishing in the 
 net, the Portuguese Minister to The Hague, a 
 man of great talent and originality, of con- 
 siderable culture, warm-hearted and high- 
 spirited quite won his sympathy and confidence. 
 He tells how he used to speak Jell' amata all' 
 amico e dell' am'ico all' amata. This worthy 
 friend gave him excellent counsel, which made 
 him ashamed of his stupid lazy life, never open- 
 ing a book, of his ignorance and especially his 
 neglect of the Italian poets and philosophers. 
 
 Among other writers he mentioned Ma- 
 chiavelli whom Alfieri knew only by name 
 and, as it were, obscured by prejudices. He 
 for the first time noticed what often afterwards 
 occurred to his observation that only while he was 
 deeply in love did he feel a passion for study 
 and an impetus and effervescence of creative 
 
322 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 ideas. The husband of the fair Dutch dame 
 kept flying about the country: he was not at 
 all jealous and after them flew poor Alfieri 
 like the tail of a kite. 
 
 When the time came, however, for the 
 Baroness to say a final adieu to her fiery lover, 
 she left him a little note and the young man was 
 so desperate that he tried to commit suicide by 
 bleeding to death. He hired a doctor to bleed 
 him and when the doctor was gone he tore off^ 
 the bandage but his faithful servant discovered 
 his condition and brought him to his senses. 
 
 Soon after this he returned to Italy travelling 
 with his usual rapidity, seeing nothing of Nancy, 
 Strasbourg, Basle, or Geneva except their walls; 
 nor speaking a word during the twenty days of the 
 journey, while Elia humouring his whim, used 
 signs as if he had been deaf and dumb. While 
 wearing ofi^ the melancholy effects of this ridi- 
 culous love affair he varied his solitude by read- 
 ing Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire and other 
 French works. Plutarch also came into his 
 hands and the stories of the great men of the 
 past kindled in his mind the love for glory and 
 virtue and what he calls the soddisfacentissima 
 arte del rendere bene per male — the all satisfying 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 323 
 
 art of rendering good for evil. This was to him 
 the book of books and he tells how when he 
 came across certain passages he would spring to 
 his feet in the keenest agitation, quite beside him- 
 self, while tears of grief and rage poured down 
 his cheeks at the thought that he had been born 
 in Piedmont, at a time and under a king when 
 there was no chance for either action or speech. 
 
 He gives a most naive and amusing account of 
 a plan to marry him to a very beautiful black- 
 eyed young lady with large possessions and a 
 title; but his reputation for eccentricity and 
 lack of good manners caused the negotiations to 
 fall through. His good fortune, he says, saved 
 him from this marriage to which he was in- 
 clined. The girl, he adds, acted most wisely for 
 her- well-being, for she spent a happy life 
 in the home of the young gentleman whom she 
 married and the result was that Alfieri was 
 reserved for the service of the Muses. 
 
 The plans for his diplomatic career, as well as 
 the plans matrimonial, all went up in smoke. 
 He was free to travel and so with an increased 
 allowance of spending money — 2,500 zechins ■ 
 equal to about ;?6,ooo a year — he started off 
 through Germany, Hungary, Denmark and 
 
324 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 Sweden. Montaigne was now his daily com- 
 panion, but the Latin quotations were an almost 
 insuperable obstacle and the occasional pas- 
 sages from the early Italian poets were beyond 
 his comprehension. "Such," says he, "was the 
 primitive ignorance in me and my lack of prac- 
 tice in that divine language which every day I 
 was more and more losing the use of." 
 
 At Vienna where he might have met'Metas- 
 tasio he declined the introduction, feeling that 
 the society which met at his house was only 
 una hrigata di pedanti. Besides he had ac- 
 tually seen the poet on his knees kissing Maria 
 Teresa's hand with a face expressive of such ser- 
 vile delight and obsequiousness that in his 
 newly acquired Plutarchian spirit of democracy 
 he felt that he could never shake hands with a 
 Muse sold to a despot so warmly abhorred. 
 
 At Berlin the military spirit also disgusted 
 him, but he was presented to Frederick the Great. 
 At seeing him he confessed to no feeling either 
 of wonder or of respect, but rather of indigna- 
 tion and fury. He even refused to wear the 
 Court uniform, and when the King's minister 
 asked him his reason he replied that it seemed 
 to him there were plenty of them. The King, 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 325 
 
 he says, uttered the usual meaningless formali- 
 ties. "I studied him deeply, respectfully look- 
 ing into his face and I thanked heaven that I 
 was not born his slave." 
 
 At Copenhagen, which especially delighted 
 him because it was not Prussia or Berlin, he had 
 a chance to practise, or at least to hear, pure 
 Tuscan spokeri by the Neapolitan minister to 
 Denmark. Under this influence he even read 
 the Dialogues of Aretino, the originality, variety 
 and correctness of which delighted him. 
 
 Sweden gave him a practical acquaintance 
 with Ossian before he had ever read any of that 
 humbugging bard's rhapsodies. The sudden 
 appearance of spring in that far northern climate 
 again made him feel like tuning his harp but 
 alas! he knew not how to play. 
 
 He had a great desire to visit Russia, having 
 heard his Russian schoolmates at the Academy 
 boast of their land. After a most exciting and 
 dangerous voyage from Stockholm to Abo and 
 from Abo to Petersburg, he was once more 
 bitterly disappointed. The great barrack-like 
 palaces of that Asiatic encampment, as he called 
 it, seemed laughable. He refused to be pre- 
 sented to la Clitenestra filosofessa, the Semiramis 
 
326 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 of the North, Catherine the Second, and he 
 accounts for his " uselessly barbarian behaviour" 
 by attributing it to his inflexible intolerance, his 
 utmost hatred of tyranny in the abstract, and 
 more especially because she was guilty of having 
 poisoned her husband. 
 
 Alfieri's second visit to London, in 1 771, was 
 rendered notable by a love aff^air with a vis- 
 countess. The whole story reads like one of 
 Cardinal Bibbiena's comedies nor do I know 
 anything more ludicrous in the modern system 
 of duelling as practised by French deputies and 
 novelists than Alfieri's sword battle with the 
 injured husband. Driven out of his senses by 
 his passion for the fair lady he spent the time 
 away from her presence in galloping about on a 
 very fiery and impetuous steed. In trying to 
 clear a gate the horse fell with him, breaking 
 his collar-bone and dislocating his shoulder. It 
 was some time before he began to feel the pain. 
 The surgeon set the bones and ordered him to 
 stay in bed, but not he. He was bound to keep an 
 appointment with her ladyship who was staying 
 at a villa about sixteen miles from London. 
 
 When he got back after all manner of adven- 
 tures his bandages were out of place and his 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 327 
 
 shoulder in a terrible state. The surgeon 
 pulled him together again, but the following 
 evening he insisted on going to the opera. 
 While apparently listening to the music, his 
 face like marble, betraying no emotion while 
 mille tempeste terribili were agitating his heart, 
 he was called out and there stood the viscount. 
 The conversation was short and to the point — 
 to the point of the sword. They adjourned to 
 Green Park and had their duel, Alfieri apparently 
 trying to provoke his adversary to kill him and 
 
 the Lord L as obstinately refusing to take 
 
 any such advantage from a man who had his 
 arm in a sling. They fought for ten minutes, 
 and then Alfieri received a slight scratch in his 
 arm, and the militant husband declared his 
 honour was satisfied. Alfieri tied up his little 
 wound with his teeth, and finding it not painful 
 returned to the box where he had been sitting 
 and heard the rest of the opera. 
 
 After it was over he went to the house of a 
 lady who knew Lady L . There tohis amaze- 
 ment he found la stessa stessissima donna mia — 
 her ladyship herselfmost. He soon found that 
 she was a most contemptible character, and 
 only that discovery prevented him from 
 
328 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 doing exactly what Lord Byron a generation 
 later proposed to do with the Countess Guiccioli 
 — namely to fly to America — " the world 
 forgetting by the world forgot." There is a 
 very curious analogy between Lord Byron's 
 career and Alfieri's: the neglected childhood, 
 the erratic youth, the early susceptibility, the 
 long journeys, the numberless intrigues and 
 finally the irregular relationship which lasted 
 through the last part of their lives. 
 
 The finale of Alfieri's adventure was just as 
 ridiculous as any other part of it, but as Lord 
 
 L did not see fit to sue him for alienating 
 
 his wife's affections, the impetuous poet left 
 England and soon found himself in Paris again, 
 where out of mere whim he refused to meet 
 Rousseau, though he felt the highest esteem for 
 his pure and lofty character and his sublime and 
 independent conduct. 
 
 He atoned for this by making the acquain- 
 tance of seven or eight of the first men of Italy 
 and of the world: Dante, Petrarca, Ariosto, 
 Tasso, Boccaccio and Machiavelli. In other 
 words, he bought 36 volumes of prose and poetry 
 and he says that these illustrious masters hence- 
 forth accompanied him wherever he went. He 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 329 
 
 had left all his English horses in England, 
 selling all but one; now he went to Spain and as 
 usual paid no attention to the lovely landscapes 
 on the way. But to atone he bought two Span- 
 ish horses of noble pedigree, one a golden chest- 
 nut Andalusian — un stupendo animale, castagno 
 d'oro. And in Barcelona he actually had the 
 enterprise to read " Don Quixote " with the aid 
 of a grammar and dictionary. 
 
 He crossed the wide desert plains of Arragon 
 rather slowly with his beautiful horse trotting 
 by him like a faithful dog, while behind him 
 came all his servants and mules and other live 
 stock. He was uncertain whether it was good 
 fortune or ill fortune that he had no means of 
 expressing himself at that time in verse; for he 
 would have poured forth a perfect flood of 
 rhymes expressive of the melancholy and moral 
 thoughts and varying images called up by those 
 wide solitudes and the constant motion. 
 
 At Madrid his servant Elia while arranging 
 his hair accidentally pulled it, and Alfieri in 
 ungovernable rage hurled the candle at him 
 and narrowly escaped killing him on the spot. 
 It struck his temple and caused the blood to 
 spurt forth, and the valet being hot tempered 
 
330 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 would in turn have killed Alfieri had not the 
 other servants interfered to stop a quarrel which 
 he calls tragicomica e scandalosissima. But that 
 night Alfieri slept with his door open next 
 Elia's room and offered him free chance for 
 vengeance. Elia was too much of a hero to 
 avail himself of it, and contented himself with 
 keeping the two handkerchiefs which bound 
 up his bleeding temple, and occasionally showing 
 them to his master. 
 
 At Madrid he visited neither the Escorial nor 
 the Aranjuez nor the King's palace, and the 
 only acquaintance that he made was that of a 
 poor watchmaker. 
 
 At Lisbon he was more fortunate: the Abate 
 Tommaso di Caluso, brother of the Piedmontese 
 Minister to Portugal, conceived a great friend- 
 ship for him and with equal tact and kindness 
 tried to turn his mind to the noble things of 
 literature. He insisted that Alfieri was born 
 to be a poet and that it was not too late for him, 
 by study, to become one equal to the greatest.* 
 
 * His Andalusian steed he presented to a banker to whom he applied 
 for a letter of credit in exchange for 300 Spanish doubloons. The 
 banker showed his gratitude by cheating him and this confirmed him 
 in his opinion of that class of people, who, he says, had always seemed 
 to him one of the vilest and worst — in the social world — the more 
 when they affect being gentlemenl 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 331 
 
 After three years' absence he reached Turin in 
 May, 1772, and soon after took a magnificent 
 house luxuriously furnished, and as he was 
 unmarried and quite free, he used twice a week 
 to assemble in his salon a brigata of young men 
 whose sole object was amusement Among their 
 amusements was the reading of compositions 
 which were handed in anonymously. Alfieri 
 himself wrote several in very mediocre French : 
 one was a scene representing the last judgment 
 when God demanded of various souls a short 
 account of their actions : he introduced several 
 well-known characters and the wit and satire 
 caused much amusement. His natural inclina- 
 tion was to satire and the ridiculous, but thought 
 and reflection caused him even then to recognise 
 that it was the fruit of malignity and natural 
 envy and therefore not worthy to be cultivated. 
 
 Having been caught, as he expresses it, in a 
 third net of love, he made his first attempt at 
 a tragedy. The lady whom he was serving 
 was of high rank, older than he and bore a not 
 very savoury reputation in society. Once when 
 she fell dangerously ill and he had been sitting 
 in perfect silence from morning to night at the 
 foot of her bed, he beguiled the tedium by writing 
 
332 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 a dramatic piece (whether tragedy or comedy 
 in one, five or ten acts, he could not say) but in 
 the form of a dialogue between Photinus, 
 Cleopatra and a female whom he called Lachesi, 
 forgetting that Lachesis was one of the three 
 Fates. 
 
 In his autobiography Alfieri gives some speci- 
 mens of this precious composition that the 
 reader might judge for himself of the leanness 
 of his poetic patrimony at that time. The 
 verses rhyme irregularly: some lines are too 
 long and some are too short; bad grammar and 
 erratic punctuation are everywhere in evidence 
 against his training, but he persevered till he got 
 half through the first scene of the third act, 
 when the lady saw fit to get well. 
 
 His attempts to free himself from this un- 
 worthy servitude were as abortive as his rhymed 
 dialogue but vastly funnier. If he had only had 
 the comic vein of Goldoni ! He tells in the story 
 which he sent to a friend how he once started 
 off to be gone a year but was back within 
 eighteen days, unable to endure separation ; how, 
 when once more he resolved to break the yoke, 
 he cropped his long red hair — lunga e ricca treccia 
 dei miei rosissimt capelli — (for only peasants 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 333 
 
 and sailors wore their hair short) and stayed 
 in the house for five or six days, seeing his 
 Calypso going in and out of her house, which 
 faced his and even hearing her voice; and how 
 like another Ulysses fearing lest her siren-song 
 should be too much for him he obliged Elia 
 to tie him into his chair lest he should escape 
 and become a slave again. The cord was con- 
 cealed under a large cloak, but his hands were 
 left free for writing or reading and no one see- 
 ing him would suspect that he was fastened! 
 
 Thus struggling with his fate, he read, but 
 often he understood not a word of what he had 
 been reading and he wrote his first sonnet, which 
 runs as follows : 
 
 At last I have won the day, unless I am deceived, the day 
 I have won; quenched is the flame which burnt voraciously 
 this poor heart of mine caught by unworthy snares: whose 
 motions blind Love controlled. 
 
 Before I loved thee, O Lady, I knew well, that such a 
 fire (of passion) was wrong and a thousand times I have 
 avoided it and conquered love a thousand times so that it 
 was not alive nor yet extinct. 
 
 The long pain and the grievous tears, the keen torments 
 and the cruel bitter doubt ('whereby the life of lovers is 
 entwined') I behold with eyes not abstinent of weeping 
 [avari di pianto]. Fool, what do I say? Virtue, Courage 
 among so many cares, it is alone whose thoughts are dear. 
 
334 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 This piccolo saggio he showed to the learned 
 Padre Paciandi who replied in a gracious letter: 
 
 Messer Francesco was kindled with love for Monna 
 Laura and thus unpassioned himself \si diiinnamoro] 
 and sang his repentance. Then again he loved his Diva 
 and ended his days loving her not indeed philosophically 
 but as all other men have been wont to do. You, mio 
 gentilissimo Signor Conte,h2ive taken up poetising: You will 
 only imitate that father of Italian rhymsters in this 
 amorous occupation. If your escape from its chains has 
 been by force of courage [virtu] as you write, we must 
 hope that you will not fall a victim again. 
 
 However it be, the sonnet is good, sententious, vibrato 
 and quite correct. I have happy auguries for you in the 
 poetic career and for our Piedmontese Parnassus which 
 needs just such men as you to rise above the vulgar herd. 
 
 Alfieri, however, knew well enough that the 
 worthy abate was flattering him and that the 
 sonnet was bad. But the cacoethes scribendi had 
 seized him. He had been prudent enough to 
 rescue his half-finished "Cleopatra" and the 
 fit came upon him to revise that with the aid of 
 some of his friends. He turned his house into 
 a semi-accademia di literati. While this was going 
 on he was taken with the whim of going out 
 during the last days of the Carnival of 1775 
 masked as Apollo with his lyre, and at the 
 theatre he sang some verses composed by him- 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 335 
 
 self — the whole episode most contrary to his 
 natural disposition. 
 
 In the first of these colascionate* he makes 
 the statement that the man who really loves is 
 most unfortunate; the false-hearted is only 
 happy in love; he who doth not deceive is 
 himself deceived; and he comes to the con- 
 clusion that r innamorato fa trista figura. Every- 
 one laughs at him and rightly too. L' innamorato 
 is always a great beccone — he-goat. And he 
 ends by saying that he has made his dear 
 friends laugh, and he himself laughs at women, 
 at his friends and at himself. There were three 
 of these poems which he calls ridiculous and 
 foolish, and he transcribes them to let the world 
 see them as "an authentic monument of his lack 
 of skill in everything that was becoming and 
 decent. " 
 
 Next he revised his "Cleopatra Tragedia" and 
 sent the first act to the benignant Padre Paciandi 
 to taste of it. The worthy priest thought the 
 play showed genius, fecund imagination, and 
 judgment in its plan, but he had to find fault with 
 the poetry: the lines he wrote were not well 
 
 *From Colascion, the two-stringed Italian lute; hence a poem sung to 
 music. 
 
336 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 turned and failed of the giro Italiano — Italian 
 swing or order. His spelling was vicious, 
 and he suggested several text-books to read 
 on grammar and orthography. Some of the 
 marginal notes greatly amused Alfieri, as for 
 instance in the 184th line where he had spoken 
 of // latrato del cor — the barking of the horn — 
 and the priest suggested that the metaphor was 
 exceedingly canine. 
 
 He wrote the "Cleopatra" a third time and had 
 it performed in the theatre at Turin in June 
 1775. He transcribes also parts of this version 
 as a proof of his asininity. After the tragedy 
 a short piece in prose entitled " I Poeti " written 
 by Alfieri made satiric sport of the Cleopatrassa. 
 He himself was represented as Zeusippo, but 
 he also satirised other playwrights, whose 
 tragedies he says were the mature fruit of 
 learned incapacity, while his was the prema- 
 ture offspring of a capable ignorance. 
 
 Both of them were applauded but he soon 
 withdrew them. His heart was filled with the 
 keenest ambition to win some day a true theatric 
 palm. With this absurd and feeble manner he 
 made his first appearance before the public. 
 
 He was now twenty-seven and with resolute, 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 337 
 
 obstinate and indomitable courage, with a 
 strange mixture of fire and of gentleness, with 
 the intensest hatred of tyranny he began to 
 prepare himself for his career. He had prac- 
 tically to begin at the very beginning and acquire 
 his native language. Indeed his first serious 
 attempts had been in French. He translated 
 them into Italian, but he found they lost the 
 little power they had.* He studied Tasso, 
 Ariosto, then Dante. After spending six months 
 in learning Italian he began to relearn Latin, 
 and in three months became a fair scholar. 
 But largely through the encouragement of his 
 friends Paciandi and Count Tana he kept up 
 the feroce continua battaglia and says "If 
 I become a poet I ought to sign myself one 
 by Grace of God and of Paciandi and of 
 Tana." 
 
 Paciandi sent him the "Galateo" of Casa to 
 study, but when he opened it and came across the 
 first portentous conjunction — conciossiacosache, 
 inasmuch as — introducinga long pompous phrase, 
 he was so angry that he flung the book out of 
 
 * He says his tragedies were amphibious things swimming between 
 French and Italian without being either, and again he compares them 
 to the brown color — che non i nero ancora, t il bianco muore — mentioned 
 by Dante. 
 
338 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 the window, with a howl of rage at its pedantry. 
 And he says he did not take up "II Galateo" 
 for many years until his shoulders and his 
 neck were calloused in enduring the grammatic 
 yoke. 
 
 His first labours were in translation, and I 
 need not mention all the works which he put 
 into his best Italian: they included Horace and 
 Seneca and Racine. But when he began to 
 compose his own tragedies he found himself too 
 much influenced by the authors he had read, and 
 for that reason he gave up reading Shakespeare 
 — Shakespeare, however, not in English, 
 but the wretched French version of the last 
 century. 
 
 We have followed his career so far perhaps 
 rather too closely, but it seems to me a most 
 valuable and stimulating history: to see the 
 evolution of this wonderful man and his 
 strenuous endeavours to undo the errors of a 
 false education. 
 
 The fourth epoch of his life is devoted 
 mainly to his studies and his literary composi- 
 tions. But it also iiicludes the story of his 
 expatriation for liberty's sake, his sacrifice of 
 large means that he might be free to live and 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 339 
 
 write. It also includes that long and strange 
 attachment to the Countess of Albany, first when 
 she was the wife and then the widow of Charles 
 Edward Stuart the Pretender, who h^d very 
 much the same good influence upon his literary 
 work that la Guiccioli had upon Byron. It is 
 not known whether he ever married her: if so, 
 the ceremony was absolutely private. His 
 description of his first impression of this lady 
 is very charming. And there are other passages 
 that well merit consideration: but it has been 
 my intention to give chiefly the history of his 
 literary education and therefore I must pass 
 over all account of his various compositions; his 
 "Polinices and Virginia," his "Agamemnon 
 and Orestes," " his Congiura de' Pazzi," his 
 "Garzia" and "Timoleone." By 1782 he 
 had fourteen tragedies completed, seven of 
 which were the product of about ten months' 
 work. 
 
 Nor need I speak of his further travels or of 
 his wonderful passage of the Alps with his 
 English horses, his escape from Paris at the 
 time of the Revolution, or of his final days in 
 Florence or of his wonderful acquisition of 
 Greek, his translations of Greek and Latin 
 
340 A TEACHER OF DANTE 
 
 authors, his order of Homer, his six extrava- 
 gant and Aristophanean Comedies, or even of 
 his strange and haughty seclusion which he 
 allowed to be broken neither by letters nor 
 visits. Profound melancholy and moody iras- 
 cibility marked his genius. He finished his 
 memoirs in May 1803 and, passed away on the 
 eighth of October of the same year. He lies under 
 a costly mausoleum design by Canova, erected 
 in the church of Santa Croce to his memory 
 by the Countess of Albany who lies buried with 
 him. 
 
 Most of the subjects of his tragedies were taken 
 from antiquity, either classic or biblical. Such 
 tragic episodes as the assassination of Agamem- 
 non, the murder of Abel, the madness of King 
 Saul, or in more modern times the pathetic career 
 of Mary Queen of Scots appealed to him. He 
 was able to depict to the life the gloomy, morbid 
 nature of Philip H. His" tendency was to 
 follow the classic models and to dress his few 
 characters, as it were, in the simple draperies of 
 the antique. He permitted few ornaments. His 
 lines therefore seem rather bare, and this aus- 
 terity is intensified by his somewhat limited 
 vocabulary, his habit of using the same gloomy 
 
ALFIERI AND TRAGEDY 341 
 
 and terrible words again and again; but 
 when it conies to action the simplicity of the 
 plays unites itself to power, and therefore his 
 works have held their own upon the stage and 
 have found worthy interpreters in such con- 
 summate actors as Salvini and Ristori. 
 
 FINIS