It is, however, to his immortal work that we must have recourse, if we would understand the nature of Dante, for here, as has been remarked, he has portrayed his character for all posterity. From this work Hettinger has deduced the following excellent summary, set forth in his commentary on the "Divine Commedia : " "He is bold, but restrained by duty; proud but frank, and without dissimulation; passionate and implacable in his hatred of evil, but scorning all mean revenge; in his speech thoughtful, convincing, and truthful. Although he smiles at the follies of mankind, yet he mourns over the sufferings which they entail. He respects all authority, and is full of reverence for the Church. He craves pardon for the boldness of his speech, although its sole aim is the public good. Flattery he abhors, and admires constancy in suffering, even when found among the lost souls. Unwearied in study, he despises riches, and, whilst ambitious of fame, is ever ready to acknowledge his faults. Despising the caprices of fortune, he is calm amid adversity. He delights in enlarging his knowledge of men and things, although he values old friends beyond all others. Everywhere he searches out all that is great and elevated in human nature, and does it homage; he fears nothing so much as the censure of noble minds. He esteems a dignified demeanor in voice, look, and manner. his native city he clings with an unchanging affection which no wrongs can efface; to his friends he is bound by faithful love, to his benefactors by undying gratitude. As a pious Catholic he constantly meditates on death; he is fervent in prayer, and is devout to the ever-blessed Virgin, St. Lucy, and the saints." To These sober and well-considered statements are here quoted, not only because they seem to the present writer to embody the results of deep and careful study and meditation on the "Commedia » in a thoroughly trustworthy, if not in a very attractive, form, but also because we have pleasure in recommending Doctor Het tinger as generally a safe guide through the mazes of this frequently perplexing poem. Moreover, there can be no doubt in the writer's mind, that Hettinger is right in his view of Dante's relation to the Church, and that Rossetti was wrong when he represented Dante as an unbeliever in the ecclesiastical order of his time. Dante, when attacking one of the popes, makes a clear distinction between the chair and its occupant. The great event in Dante's early life, perhaps in his whole life, was his meeting with Beatrice Portinari, first in his ninth year, when she was eight years old, and again when she was eighteen, when she seems to have been the wife of Simon de' Bardi. She died at the age of twenty-four (1290). But this subject will be considered more at length under the "Vita Nuova." Between 1291 and 1296 Dante married Gemma Donati, who belonged to a powerful family of the Guelf faction. They had several children, some say five, some seven, and there is documentary evidence of two sons and two daughters. Many stories have been told of the relations subsisting between Dante and his family. All that is actually known may be stated in a few words. His wife remained at Florence after Dante's banishment, and it is uncertain if he ever met her again. We do not find that Dante ever refers to her. Two of his sons were with him, in his later days, at Ravenna. All beyond these ascertained facts would seem to be of the nature of guesses or inferences. Dante's civic life began in 1295. Being required by law to belong to one of the professions (arte) he chose that of physician or apothecary. In 1300 he was elected one of the six priors of the city, who were chosen every two months. He belonged to a Guelf or papal family, and this party was generally dominant in Florence. But the violence of the Guelfs and their opposition to what he regarded as the legitimate authority of the Emperor drove the poet into the ranks of the Ghibellines, which led to his banishment from Florence. Many stories are told of his life in Florence, but they are destitute of authority; and although some of them confirm the view we have taken of his character, they add very little to our estimate of his life or work. As regards his expulsion from the city of his birth and his affections, it is the old story of Athens over again. He was accused of various offences for which there seems to have been no foundation whatever. As a result he was fined 500,000 small florins, with the condition that if the fine were not paid in three days, his goods would be confiscated. If it were paid, he was to remain for two years outside Tuscany, and henceforth be disqualified for any office in the Republic. Not paying, he was, forty days afterwards, pronounced guilty of contumacy, and condemned to be burnt alive, if he came back. II. SECOND PERIOD, 1302-1313 Dante tells us in the "Convito" (1., 3) how bitterly he resented the injustice of his. countrymen. "When," he says, "it was the pleasure of the citizens of Florence, that fairest and most favored daughter of Rome, to cast me out from her most sweet bosom, in which I had been born and brought up to the prime of life, and in which, with her good peace, I desire with all my heart to rest my weary soul and to finish the time allotted to me, I have wandered through almost all the parts to which this language extends, a wanderer, almost a beggar, showing against my will the stroke of fortune which is often wont to be imputed unjustly to the stricken. Truly I have been a vessel without sails and without rudder, borne to different harbors and gulfs and shores by the dry wind which sorrowful poverty exhales; and I have seemed vile in the eyes of many who, perhaps, from what they had heard, had pictured me in a different guise; in the sight of whom not only was my person brought into contempt, but all work of mine was depreciated, whether that which was already done, or that which had hereafter to be done." These words are of special interest as showing the poet's care for his country, for the personal estimation in which he might be held, and his regard for his poetical reputation in the future. The love of Florence and the desire to return were abiding sentiments with him from the time of his exile (1302), when he was thirty-seven years of age, to the day of his death. Once (1304) he sought restoration to Florence by arms, but in vain. The party to which he belonged split into factions, and, finally, he found himself unable to act with it. How hard was the poet's life of exile, poverty, and partial dependence we may judge from hints in the "Commedia." For example (« Paradiso," XVII., 58):— "Tu proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e com' è duro calle Lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale." "Thou shalt prove How salt the savour is of other's bread; Under this head he cannot refrain from quoting the beautiful words in which Mrs. Browning commemorates the sorrow of Dante in her "Casa Guidi Windows." She is describing the gathering of the Florentines in 1848 (the year of revolution) to demand liberty of the Grand Duke Leopold: "Whom chose they then; where met they? On the stone Called Dante's - a plain, flat stone scarce discerned From others in the pavement, - whereupon It is very difficult to trace the steps of his pilgrimage during the next few years, yet some points are tolerably clear. From time to time he visited the Della Scala (or Scaliger). family at Verona. There were three brothers who ruled in succession, Bartolommeo the eldest, the second Alboni, or Alboino, and the third Cane, known as Can Grande. The first and third were noble and generous. The second made the poet feel the misery and something of the degradation of dependence. During this period he studied at several universities, among them Bologna and Paris, at which, doubtless, he obtained his mastery of theology. In *We give here, generally, the excellent rendering of Cary, of whom Macaulay remarks that never was a writer so much indebted to a translator. Longfellow's translation is more literal and exact; and his notes are a great deal fuller and more satisfactory; but Cary's translation conveys not merely the meaning, but, in the opinion of the present writer, much more of the spirit of the original than any other. + Was Brunelleschi's Church built before Dante's banishment? 1306 he was at Padua, in 1307 at Lunigiana. In 1310, when Dante would seem to have been in Paris, occurred the descent of the Emperor Henry VII., into Italy. From this event Dante entertained great hopes of the emancipation of the Italian cities from the demagogues. Henry received the iron crown of Lombardy at Milan in 1311, and soon afterwards he was crowned Emperor in the Lateran palace at Rome. When the people of Florence resisted the imperial authority, Dante wrote to the "most wicked Florentines" reproaching them bitterly with their rebellion against the authority of Cæsar, and prophesying their just chastisement and inevitable ruin. He also wrote to the Emperor, exhorting him to bring the Florentines to submission, as being the authors of all the rebellion and insubordination in Italy. The death of Henry in 1313, not without the suspicion of poison, put an end to the poet's expectations in this direction. III. THIRD PERIOD, 1313-1321 Along with the external events in the life of the poet, a spiritual process had been going on which it is even more difficult to trace in detail. But, although we are unable to assign the experiences of Dante's inner life to definite periods of time, the general outline is not doubtful; and herein we note three successive phases of spiritual experience. In the first place there is a period of doubt and difficulty, partly brought on by adversity, leading to something like rebellion. This is followed by another period, not cut off sharply from the first- a period of wrath and indignation, which never came entirely to an end, yet was merged in the third and last phase of experience, the period of mature faith and inner harmony. All this is represented in the "Commedia," which begins with the state of sin and rises by the way of purification to the life of trust and fellowship. In forming an estimate of Dante's life and character, we must remember that, like Bunyan, he speaks very frankly of his sins, so much so that we almost inevitably get an exaggerated idea of whatever was wrong or imperfect in his life. Dante could never have been a licentious man; but he confesses to "luxury," and even to envy and the misuse of gifts, through forgetfulness of the Giver, whilst the greatest of all his sins, he says, was pride. Thus, when among the envious in the "Purgatorio," he says: "Mine eyes, said I, May yet be here ta'en from me; but not long One of the principal evils arising from pride was his preferring human learning to divine teaching; and in Dante's eyes it was a greater sin than luxury, envy, and even pride, inasmuch as it became the seed of heresy. In time he came out into the liberty of faith, leaving the bondage of doubt and error. He makes it quite clear that it was this liberty he was in search of, and that at last he found it. Thus at the beginning of the "Purgatorio" (i. 71) it is declared: "In the search eberty he journeys," and at the end of the "Pa so" (xxxi. 80) he says to Beatrice (representir, Divine Grace): — "O Lady, For all mine eyes have seen, I to thy power The change thus wrought in Dante is conspicuous in his later writing, although he never quite parted with his bitterness of feeling towards Florence. It was about the year 1316 when Dante took up his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna; and here he had his regular place of abode during the last five years of his life, although from time to time he seems to have paid visits to his friend Cane, youngest and noblest of the Della Scala of Verona. Both of these men were worthy of the poet's friendship and expected nothing unworthy of him. All this we learn from the account given by Boccaccio who says that Count Guido was versed in liberal studies and greatly honored men of ability, and especially those who excelled in learning; and that hearing of Dante's sad case, and having a great esteem for his works, he resolved to do him all possible honor. And "with liberal spirit, considering how hard it is for men of worth to make requests, he took the initiative in making offers to him, asking as a special favor of Dante, what he knew Dante might rather have asked of him, namely, that he * Pride. would be pleased to come and live with him." This arrangement, which continued to the end of the poet's life, seems to have been in all ways satisfactory. About the same time, also in the year 1316, and probably before Count Guido's invitation, Dante and some other exiles were offered the opportunity of returning to Florence, but on terms so disgraceful that they were indignantly rejected. The conditions imposed were: 1. That he should pay a certain sum of money; 2. That he should walk in procession with downcast countenance and a paper cap on his head, behind the chariot of the mint, to St. John's Church, and there make an offering to the Saint in atonement for crimes committed—a species of humiliation inflicted on pardoned malefactors. Dante's reply is given in a letter to a friend in Florence. "Is this," he writes, "the glorious manner in which Dante Alighieri is recalled to his country, after having endured exile for well-nigh fifteen years? Is this the reward of an innocence manifest to all, of labor and toil in unceasing study? Far from one who is of the household of philosophy, be the illadvised humiliation of an earthly heart, that he, like some infamous miscreant . should make such an offering of himself as to acknowledge his guilt! No, my father, this is not my way of returning to my country; but if any other can be discovered, by you or by anyone else, which does not derogate from Dante's reputation and honor, I will with no lingering steps accept it. But if by no such course an entrance into Florence can be found for me, then Florence I will never enter. What! can I not in every place behold the sun and the stars? Can I not everywhere under heaven contemplate the truths which are most sweet and precious without first submitting myself to the people and the commonwealth of Florence, stripped of my honor and clothed in ignominy?» Ravenna, as has been said, was the regular abode of Dante during the closing years of his life, and it was at Ravenna that his great work was brought to completion in sorrow and suffering. But he was probably often the guest of Can Grande at Verona. To him he dedicated the "Divine Comedy." He was at Verona in 1320, and, according to Boccaccio, it was there that the remark was made of his appearance corresponding with his work. As he passed along, we are told, one woman whispered to another, "Eccovi l'nom ch'è stato all' Inferno" -"There is the man who has been in hell." The great poem, as he tells us at the beginning of the "Inferno," was begun at least in conception when he was thirty-five; it was completed just before his death. He was sent in 1321 on an embassy to Venice. No particulars are known, although it is said that he was refused an audience. On his return to Ravenna he was seized with a grave malady. Boccaccio tells us that, "after having humbly and devoutly received all the last holy sacraments according to the rites of the Church, and having made his peace with God, he gave back his weary spirit to his Creator on the 14th day of September, to the great grief of Guido and the people of Ravenna, being fifty-six years of age." Dante's was not a successful life in the ordinary sense of the word. Measured by a worldly standard, he had failed in almost everything, but he had not been untrue to himself, and his immortal poem is the expression of the experience of his true and noble life. Dante was buried at Ravenna, near the Church of San Francesco (then called San Pietro Maggiore). The sentiment of his life he leaves on his tomb: "Hic claudor Dante patriis extorris ab oris." He was borne to his grave by the noblest of Ravenna. Guido Novello caused the body to be placed in a stone sarcophagus in which it still reposes. Count Guido delivered a funeral oration, after the funeral, in the house in which Dante had lived, and proposed to erect a monument worthy of the poet's fame; but this design was frustrated by his banishment from Ravenna in the following year. place of his burial was forgotten, but some time ago was again discovered, when the Florentines, repenting too late, implored the citizens of Ravenna to give up his remains, which they refused, so that he is still an exile from his native shores. The No writer has ever received homage more sincere and more profound from other literary men. "Christendom," says Dean Milman, "owes to Dante the creation of Italian, of Christian poetry." "The Divina Commedia," says Dean Church, "is one of the landmarks of history. More than a magnificent poem, more than the beginning of a language and the opening of a national literature, more than the inspirer of art and the glory of a great people, it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the mind's power which measure and test what it can reach to, which rise up ineffaceably and forever as time goes on, marking out its advance by grander divisions than its centuries, and adopted as epochs by the consent of all who come after. It stands with the "Iliad » and Shakespeare's plays, with the writings of Aristotle and Plato, with the "Novum Organum" and the "Principia," with Justinian's Code, with the Parthenon and St. Peter's." Mr. Gladstone, writing to Signor Giuliani, says: "You have been good enough to call that 'supreme poet' a 'solemn master' for me. These are not empty words. The reading of Dante is not merely a pleasure, a tour de force, or a lesson: it is a vigorous discipline for the heart, the intellect, the whole man. In the school of Dante I have learnt a great N part of that mental provision (however insignificant it be) which has served me to make the journey of life up to the term of nearly seventy-three years. And I should like to extend your excellent phrase, and to say that he who labors for Dante labors to serve Italy, Christianity, the world." Perhaps to none other could the words of Tennyson apply with stronger emphasis: "The Poet in a golden age was born With golden stars above, Dowered with the hate of hates, the scorn of scorns The love of love." It would be easy to add to these testimonies, but it is not necessary. No one can study what Dante has written without becoming wiser and better. No one will regret the time expended upon his pages. WILLIAM CLARK, D. C. L. OUR NATION'S MORAL RESPONSIBILITY ATIONS, as well as individuals, have moral obligations resting upon them. Some of these obligations are self-imposed and some are laid upon them by the law of nations. Whether voluntarily assumed or whether brought about through international relationship, no country may honorably violate in any degree the pledges it has made. After days of the most earnest deliberation, the Congress of the United States, on the 19th day of April, 1898, passed a joint resolution, giving to the world our reasons for entering upon war with Spain. This resolution after setting forth the abhorrent conditions which had existed in the island of Cuba for more than three years, and directing the President to summon into actual service the land and naval forces of the United States for the purpose of compelling Spain to relinquish its hold upon that island, concluded with the following high disclaimer: "The United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intent to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people." While it is true that at the time of mak ing this solemn declaration no mention was made of any other possession of the Spanish government, still it was not difficult to foresee that a war with Spain would involve all such possessions; and it was again and again announced by those in authority at Washington that it was not the design of the United States to appropriate any territory whatever, but that this was to be a war waged solely in behalf of humanity. This was a grand position for our country to take. The world recognized it to be a broad-minded policy and applauded it accordingly. Now, just what did the clause which we have quoted mean? Is there a man anywhere who would for a moment contend that when Congress passed this resolution we meant just what we said, but that conditions, then hidden by the future, have since arisen which make it imperative that the United States should enter upon a career of territorial acquisition? Will any one urge that it is not practical nor for the best interests of this country that we should stand by that declaration of disinterested devotion to the cause of civilization? Will the most ambitious citizen of this republic hold that, in the light of present conditions our duty to the islands now dominated by Spain is to make them a part of the territory |