ment is not for long. Those few who argue for a mere allegorical Beatrice begin with the 'Commedia' and work backwards; those who worship the historical Beatrice begin with the 'Vita Nuova' and work onwards. Those who begin with the 'Commedia,' and first meet the "gloriosa donna" on her pinnacle, are so dazzled that they cannot recognize her in the fair child of earth of that Florence May-day meeting. They know her first in the radiance of the supernal blaze in which Dante enveloped her in the apotheosis of her idealization, and they deprive themselves, and would deprive the world, of all that is most human, most endearing, most practical in Dante's writings, namely, the pathway he traces for the exaltation of the lowliness of the earth-maiden.
Those who begin with the 'Vita Nuova' begin where Dante himself began. They study it as the first book he wrote. Not written all at once, but noted down sonnet by sonnet with all the freshness of his ever-fresh impressions of his love, and then collected under the fostering influence of the friend to whom he addressed his inmost heart's confession. That the spark which ultimately expanded into a flame which illumined the whole world should have been kindled by the flash of flint and steel when the eyes of youth and maiden met is prodigious, undoubtedly; the effect was beyond everything that has happened before or since. But it is altogether consonant with the order of human life. It is the highest reach of human ways, but it contains nothing outside the mode of human ways.
But that a boy of nine should suddenly, without any reason (for, mind, if there is no historic Beatrice there was no May-day communion of glances), have become enamoured of "Theology," of "Divine Wisdom," of "Political Economy," according to the three erratic opinions on the subject, would have been rather monstrous than admirable. And, still more, that this boy of nine should have been so abnormally theology-stricken at the date of 1274 and yet not have gone into the priesthood or the cloister, but continued in secular life, writing what for all the world read like love-sonnets, is absolutely incredible. My mind refuses to think of Dante—Dante, who in every page speaks of woman as never man spake—in the shape of such an abnormal animal.
How different is the result of the other mode of procedure. We begin by enjoying the delicious confidences of his early passion. We see this passion mature under the influence of invincible constancy. We watch this "true love" running its proverbially unsmooth course. We see it stand proof under every ordeal to which love can be put. We see it endure beyond the power of even death. And we thus find ourselves led up insensibly to that rapturous outburst of love triumphant which PROF. TOMLINSON quotes, and which I requote for the sake of two slight differences of translation:—
"After [the events of, or after writing] this sonnet there appeared to me a vision of marvellous things, which made me resolve to sing no more of this blessed one until such time as I could treat of her in an altogether more worthy manner."[1]
We here learn plainly how that it was in the lonely, silent hours of bereavement—desiring, straining after her whom he might no more see in the flesh—that he was, through his pure and chastened affection, brought to the consoling realization of her glorified state. This dazzling realization he calls "a vision of marvellous things," and it so awes, while it inspires him that before he trusts himself to tell it in rima he resolves to ponder it in his heart until he shall arrive at a command of language to write it down in the way worthiest of her who indwelt it. Now that he has seen her in her high estate, he is no more content to sing of her "in sonnets," he must set his whole being to invent another strain. He is satisfied she will not in the mean time be displeased with him for his silence, for he realizes her invisible presence abiding with him so surely that he knows she is very well aware of his studious preparation for the task ("si com' ella sa veracemente").
That this serenity was in its early days traversed by many paroxysms of yearning grief he has told us in the 'Convito'; and the crushing of these more commonplace regrets was the task of preparation with which the greater production was to be approached. But if any can doubt that the 'Commedia' is the work which in this place he says he was going to set himself to write in Beatrice's honour, and that thus Beatrice—i.e., the Florentine maiden Beatrice was the original inspirer of the sublime poem, then for those persons language can have no value; for it would have been impossible for Dante to have told these facts in plainer words.
As he thought of her more and more as his radiant ideal in bliss, and less and less as his white-robed spotless maiden of the sunny streets of Florence, it is clear that his admiration proportionately expanded her perfections. She had from the first been the guiding-star gradually leading him to the
- ↑ One or two words in translating may make a vast difference. I have not the least idea of imputing an intentional alteration to Prof. Tomlinson; but I think the absolutely literal rendering I give of the passage brings out more clearly the true purport of the author. First, the mention of the sonnet at the beginning has an importance which I am ready to believe escaped Prof. Tomlinson when he omitted it. And, secondly, though "più degnamente trattare di lei" sounds very like "till I could treat of her in a manner more suited to her dignity," and the latter in any indifferent passage would be a fair rendering of the former, the arbitrary introduction of the expression "her dignity" might make a vast difference to the question at issue; for it suggests the stateliness of Theology or Divine Wisdom. I might as fairly expand my translation into "till I could treat of my fair maid in a more worthy manner."
