Among My Books, Second Series | Page 6

recalled a portion of the exiles, excepting Dante, however, among
others, by name.[31] The undertaking of Henry, after an ill-directed
dawdling of two years, at last ended in his death at Buonconvento
(August 24, 1313; Carlyle says wrongly September); poisoned, it was
said, in the sacramental bread, by a Dominican friar, bribed thereto by
Florence.[32] The story is doubtful, the more as Dante nowhere alludes
to it, as he certainly would have done had he heard of it. According to
Balbo, Dante spent the time from August, 1313, to November, 1314, in
Pisa and Lucca, and then took refuge at Verona, with Can Grande della
Scala (whom Voltaire calls, drolly enough, _le grand can de Vérone_,
as if he had been a Tartar), where he remained till 1318. Foscolo with
equal positiveness sends him, immediately after the death of Henry, to
Guido da Polenta[33] at Ravenna, and makes him join Can Grande only
after the latter became captain of the Ghibelline league in December,
1318. In 1316 the government of Florence set forth a new decree
allowing the exiles to return on conditions of fine and penance. Dante
rejected the offer (by accepting which his guilt would have been
admitted), in a letter still hot, after these five centuries, with indignant
scorn. "Is this then the glorious return of Dante Alighieri to his country
after nearly three lustres of suffering and exile? Did an innocence,
patent to all, merit this?--this, the perpetual sweat and toil of study? Far
from a man, the housemate of philosophy, be so rash and earthen

hearted a humility as to allow himself to be offered up bound like a
school-boy or a criminal! Far from a man, the preacher of justice, to
pay those who have done him wrong as for a favor! This is not the way
of retaining to my country; but if another can be found that shall not
derogate from the fame and honor of Dante, that I will enter on with no
lagging steps. For if by none such Florence may be entered, by me then
never! Can I not everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars?
speculate on sweetest truths under any sky without first giving myself
up inglorious, nay, ignominious, to the populace and city of Florence?
Nor shall I want for bread." Dionisi puts the date of this letter in
1315.[34] He is certainly wrong, for the decree is dated December 11,
1316. Foscolo places it in 1316, Troya early in 1317, and both may be
right, as the year began March 25. Whatever the date of Dante's visit to
Voltaire's great Khan[35] of Verona, or the length of his stay with him,
may have been, it is certain that he was in Ravenna in 1320, and that,
on his return thither from an embassy to Venice (concerning which a
curious letter, forged probably by Doni, is extant), he died on
September 14, 1321 (13th, according to others). He was buried at
Ravenna under a monument built by his friend, Guido Novello.[36]
Dante is said to have dictated the following inscription for it on his
death-bed:--
JVRA MONARCHIAE SVPEROS PHLEGETHONTA LACVSQVE
LVSTRANDO CECINI VOLVERVNT FATA QVOVSQVE SED
QVIA PARS CESSIT MELIORIBVS HOSPITA CASTRIS
AVCTOREMQVE SVVM PETIIT FELICIOR ASTRIS HIC
CLAVDOR DANTES PATRIIS EXTORRIS AB ORIS QVEM
GENVIT PARVI FLORENTIA MATER AMORIS.
Of which this rude paraphrase may serve as a translation:--
The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the Stream of Fire, the Pit, In
vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit; But since my soul,
an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars, And, happier now, hath gone
to seek its Maker 'mid the stars, Here am I Dante shut, exiled from the
ancestral shore, Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother,
bore.[37]
If these be not the words of Dante, what is internal evidence worth?
The indomitably self-reliant man, loyal first of all to his most
unpopular convictions (his very host, Guido, being a Guelph), puts his

Ghibellinism (_jura monarchiae_) in the front. The man whose whole
life, like that of selected souls always, had been a war fare, calls heaven
another camp,--a better one, thank God! The wanderer of so many
years speaks of his soul as a guest,--glad to be gone, doubtless. The
exile, whose sharpest reproaches of Florence are always those of an
outraged lover, finds it bitter that even his unconscious bones should lie
in alien soil.
Giovanni Villani, the earliest authority, and a contemporary, thus
sketches him: "This man was a great scholar in almost every science,
though a layman; was a most excellent poet, philosopher, and
rhetorician; perfect, as well in composing and versifying as in
haranguing; a most noble speaker.... This Dante, on account of his
learning, was a little haughty, and shy, and