Among My Books, Second Series | Page 9

virile of poets cannot be adequately rendered in
the most feminine of languages. Yet in the works of Fauriel, Ozanam,
Ampère, and Villemain, France has given a greater impulse to the study
of Dante than any other country except Germany. Into Germany the
Commedia penetrated later. How utterly Dante was unknown there in
the sixteenth century is plain from a passage in the "Vanity of the Arts
and Sciences" of Cornelius Agrippa, where he is spoken of among the
authors of lascivious stories: "There have been many of these historical
pandars, of which some of obscure fame, as Aeneas Sylvius, Dantes,
and Petrarch, Boccace, Pontanus," etc.[51] The first German translation
was that of Kannegiesser (1809). Versions by Streckfuss, Kopisch, and
Prince John (late king) of Saxony followed. Goethe seems never to
have given that attention to Dante which his ever-alert intelligence
might have been expected to bestow on so imposing a moral and
aesthetic phenomenon. Unless the conclusion of the second part of
"Faust" be an inspiration of the Paradiso, we remember no adequate
word from him on this theme. His remarks on one of the German
translations are brief, dry, and without that breadth which comes only
of thorough knowledge and sympathy. But German scholarship and
constructive criticism, through Witte, Kopisch, Wegele, Ruth, and
others, have been of pre-eminent service in deepening the
understanding and facilitating the study of the poet. In England the first
recognition of Dante is by Chaucer in the "Hugelin of Pisa" of the
"Monkes Tale,"[52] and an imitation of the opening verses of the third
canto of the Inferno ("Assembly of Foules"). In 1417 Giovanni da
Serravalle, bishop of Fermo, completed a Latin prose translation of the
Commedia, a copy of which, as he made it at the request of two English
bishops whom he met at the council of Constance, was doubtless sent
to England. Later we find Dante now and then mentioned, but evidently
from hearsay only,[53] till the time of Spenser, who, like Milton fifty
years later, shows that he had read his works closely. Thenceforward
for more than a century Dante became a mere name, used without
meaning by literary sciolists. Lord Chesterfield echoes Voltaire, and Dr.
Drake in his "Literary Hours"[54] could speak of Darwin's "Botanic
Garden" as showing the "wild and terrible sublimity of Dante"! The
first complete English translation was by Boyd,--of the Inferno in 1785,
of the whole poem in 1802. There have been eight other complete

translations, beginning with Cary's in 1814, six since 1850, beside
several of the Inferno singly. Of these that of Longfellow is the best. It
is only within the last twenty years, however, that the study of Dante, in
any true sense, became at all general. Even Coleridge seems to have
been familiar only with the Inferno. In America Professor Ticknor was
the first to devote a special course of illustrative lectures to Dante; he
was followed by Longfellow, whose lectures, illustrated by admirable
translations, are remembered with grateful pleasure by many who were
thus led to learn the full significance of the great Christian poet. A
translation of the Inferno into quatrains by T.W. Parsons ranks with the
best for spirit, faithfulness, and elegance. In Denmark and Russia
translations of the Inferno have been published, beside separate
volumes of comment and illustration. We have thus sketched the steady
growth of Dante's fame and influence to a universality unparalleled
except in the case of Shakespeare, perhaps more remarkable if we
consider the abstruse and mystical nature of his poetry. It is to be noted
as characteristic that the veneration of Dantophilists for their master is
that of disciples for their saint. Perhaps no other man could have called
forth such an expression as that of Ruskin, that "the central man of all
the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral,
and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante."
The first remark to be made upon the writings of Dante is that they are
all (with the possible exception of the treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_)
autobiographic, and that all of them, including that, are parts of a
mutually related system, of which the central point is the individuality
and experience of the poet. In the Vita Nuova he recounts the story of
his love for Beatrice Portinari, showing how his grief for her loss
turned his thoughts first inward upon his own consciousness, and,
failing all help there, gradually upward through philosophy to religion,
and so from a world of shadows to one of eternal substances. It traces
with exquisite unconsciousness the gradual but certain steps by which
memory and imagination transubstantiated the woman of flesh and
blood into a holy ideal, combining in one radiant symbol of sorrow and
hope that faith which is the instinctive refuge of