Among My Books, Second Series | Page 7

disdainful, and like a
philosopher almost ungracious, knew not well how to deal with
unlettered folk." Benvenuto da Imola tells us that he was very
abstracted, as we may well believe of a man who carried the Commedia
in his brain. Boccaccio paints him in this wise: "Our poet was of middle
height; his face was long, his nose aquiline, his jaw large, and the lower
lip protruding somewhat beyond the upper; a little stooping in the
shoulders; his eyes rather large than small; dark of complexion; his hair
and beard thick, crisp, and black; and his countenance always sad and
thoughtful. His garments were always dignified; the style such as suited
ripeness of years; his gait was grave and gentlemanlike; and his bearing,
whether public or private, wonderfully composed and polished. In meat
and drink he was most temperate, nor was ever any more zealous in
study or whatever other pursuit. Seldom spake he, save when spoken to,
though a most eloquent person. In his youth he delighted especially in
music and singing, and was intimate with almost all the singers and
musicians of his day. He was much inclined to solitude, and familiar
with few, and most assiduous in study as far as he could find time for it.
Dante was also of marvellous capacity and the most tenacious
memory." Various anecdotes of him are related by Boccaccio, Sacchetti,
and others, none of them verisimilar, and some of them at least fifteen
centuries old when revamped. Most of them are neither veri nor ben
trovati. One clear glimpse we get of him from the Ottimo Comento, the
author of which says:[38] "I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a
rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and

oft (_molte e spesse volte_) he had made words say for him what they
were not wont to express for other poets." That is the only sincere
glimpse we get of the living, breathing, word-compelling Dante.
Looked at outwardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter and
disastrous failure. What its inward satisfactions must have been, we,
with the Paradiso open before us, can form some faint conception. To
him, longing with an intensity which only the word Dantesque will
express to realize an ideal upon earth, and continually baffled and
misunderstood, the far greater part of his mature life must have been
labor and sorrow. We can see how essential all that sad experience was
to him, can understand why all the fairy stories hide the luck in the ugly
black casket; but to him, then and there, how seemed it?
Thou shalt relinquish everything of thee, Beloved most dearly; this that
arrow is Shot from the bow of exile first of all; And thou shalt prove
how salt a savor hath The bread of others, and how hard a path To
climb and to descend the stranger's stairs![39]
_Come sa di sale!_ Who never wet his bread with tears, says Goethe,
knows ye not, ye heavenly powers! Our nineteenth century made an
idol of the noble lord who broke his heart in verse once every six
months, but the fourteenth was lucky enough to produce and not to
make an idol of that rarest earthly phenomenon, a man of genius who
could hold heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and would not let
himself die till he had done his task. At the end of the Vita Nuova, his
first work, Dante wrote down that remarkable aspiration that God
would take him to himself after he had written of Beatrice such things
as were never yet written of woman. It was literally fulfilled when the
Commedia was finished twenty-five years later. Scarce was Dante at
rest in his grave when Italy felt instinctively that this was her great man.
Boccaccio tells us that in 1329[40] Cardinal Poggetto (du Poiet) caused
Dante's treatise _De Monarchiâ_, to be publicly burned at Bologna, and
proposed further to dig up and burn the bones of the poet at Ravenna,
as having been a heretic; but so much opposition was roused that he
thought better of it. Yet this was during the pontificate of the
Frenchman, John XXII., the reproof of whose simony Dante puts in the
mouth of St. Peter, who declares his seat vacant,[41] whose damnation
the poet himself seems to prophesy,[42] and against whose election he
had endeavored to persuade the cardinals, in a vehement letter. In 1350

the republic of Florence voted the sum of ten golden florins to be paid
by the hands of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio to Dante's daughter
Beatrice, a nun in the convent of Santa Chiara at Ravenna. In 1396
Florence voted a monument, and begged in vain for the metaphorical
ashes of the man of