The New Life and the Lyric Poems there is also a translation, by J. Wege (Leipzig, 1879, 16mo). The Lyric Poems and the Eclogues were translated by Karl Krafft (Regensburg, 1859, 16mo). The New Life was translated by Fr. Oeynhausen (Vienna, 1824, 8vo) and B. Jacobson (Halle, 1877, 16mo); and the De Monarchia, by O. Hubatsch (Berlin, 1872, 8vo).

2. French.

The Lyrics were translated into French by Zeloni (Paris, 1844, 18mo); by Delécluze (Paris, 1847); by Rhéal (Paris, 1852), and by F. Fertiault (Paris, 1854). Zeloni and Delécluze translated also The New Life; and Seb. Rhéal, The Feast (Paris, 1852), the De Vulgari Eloquentia, and the De Monarchia (Paris, 1856).

3. English.

The English have versions of the Lyrics, by Charles Lyell (London, 1835); of The New Life, by Joseph Garrow (Florence, 1846), by Charles Eliot Norton (Cambridge, 1859 [Boston, 1867, 4to]), by Theodore Martin (London, 1862, 4to), and by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London, 1861. New edition, London, 1874 [latest, 1886], 8vo); of The Feast, by Charles Lyell (London, 1842), [and of the De Monarchia, by F. J. Church, in Dante: An Essay. By R. W. Church, London, 1879, 12m0].

4. Hungarian and Spanish.

The New Life has been rendered into Hungarian by F. Császár (Pest, 1854), and into Spanish by "D. M. A." (Barcellona, 1870).

CHAPTER II.

THE LIFE IN THE WORKS.

§ 1. THE HISTORIC AND LITERARY TRILOGY. - The three phases in the development of the spirit, genius, and conception1 of Dante Alighieri are mirrored in his works, written at different periods of his life. In those of the first period, that is, in a certain number of the Lyric Poems and in The New Life, we see the man who, not yet having wandered from the true path, has not yet lost his innocence, but walks turned in the right way, led by a most chaste and pure love to love the Highest Good, "beyond which there is naught to aspire to." Heavenly peace, filial faith, hope, charity, and fair harmony breathe forth everywhere, both in his verse and in his prose. His songs are not only an allegory of simple trust in God, simple filial faith, untempered yet in the fire of doubt and internal struggle, of sure and serene hope, undimmed yet by the painful disappointments of life: they are rather the genuine and most living expression of faith, hope, and charity. Everywhere, even in the simplest and most natural things, and in the little occurrences which others would

[1 Concetto has no English equivalent. Germans say Weltanschauung.]

call casual, the Poet sees the finger of Him who rules and governs all things, the small as well as the great. At this stage, even gloomy death itself is merely a summons from the Lord of the Angels, calling to his glory,1 a departure to glory truly eternal. At a time when party strife is raging everywhere, and in a divided city, Dante has no enemy; nay, there burns in his heart a flame of holy charity, which makes him forgive whoever has offended him.2 The beauty and virtue of her whom he loves is to him a pledge of larger graces. He who has spoken to Beatrice can never come to an evil end, so great is the grace given to her by God.3

But the second part of The New Life begins to disclose to us another man. We find no longer simple faith, but despairing grief; no longer sweet peace and harmony, but struggle and internal conflicts both with grief and with temptation. And then we find him devoting himself to the study of human science, which completely absorbs him. And it is not alone philosophy, properly so-called, that attracts him. Being already proud on account of his knowledge, and thinking he now knows the causes of things, he looks down, with a certain superciliousness, upon those who still remain in mere wonderment. While admitting that formerly he saw only the surface of things, he now boasts that he has obtained a better insight into their

[1 New Life, Chap. XXIX.] [2 Ibid., Chap. XI.]
[3 Ibid., Chap. XIX, Ode I, stanza 3.]

inner nature. And so we all at once find him, in his treatise De Monarchia, examining and developing the whole question of the State and its relations to the Church; and, again, in his work De Vulgari Eloquentia, exerting himself in behalf of the language of the common people, "who wander, like blind creatures, through the streets, and often mistake the heads of things for their tails."1 And, looking back and thinking over again what he one day wrote, he is almost ashamed, fearing to be blamed by those who read his amorous ditties.2 So he seizes his pen to explain them allegorically, and writes The Love-Feast, the apotheosis of Philosophy.

In all these works of the second period, we find, not indeed an incredulous and unbelieving man, or a man devoid of faith and charity, but a searcher, involved in doubt and in the struggles that are inseparable from it, a man who pursues truth along the paths pointed out by human reason, having withdrawn himself from the guidance of divine Revelation, and otherwise disposed of himself.3

Finally, in The Comedy, the Epopea of Redemption and Faith, we see the man who has searched and found

[1 Qui tanquam caeci ambulant per plateas, plerumque anteriora posteriora putantes. - De Vulg. Eloq., Chap. I.]

[2 Temo la infamia di tanta passione avere seguita, quanta concepe chi legge le soprannominate Canzoni in me avere signoreggiato.-Love-Feast, I, 2, ad fin.]

[3 Questi si tolse a me e diessi altrui. — Purg., XXX, 126.]

-found, not by treading in the paths wherein men follow Philosophy, but by turning back and placing himself again on the true path, illuminated by the light of Revelation. At the same time, we see a man who gathers the fruits of his labors, who, with the materials which he has collected, constructs a sumptuous edifice, a lasting monument of unfailing glory. The man who wrote The Comedy has fought and won.

As in the life of Dante, so also in his works, we have a trilogy.1 In the Lyrics of The New Life, in the other Lyrics written at the same time, and in the first part of The New Life, we find pure, restful love, simplicity, innocence. In the philosophic Lyrics, in the last chapters of The New Life, in the De Vulgari Eloquentia, in The Feast, and in some of the Epistles, we find the struggle with doubt, the scientific enthusiasm which sets human knowledge above everything, the philosophic pride which flatters itself that it can see everything with the eyes of reason alone, and which looks down with contempt upon every one who has fallen behind in science. In The Comedy, we find peace regained, firmly based upon human science and the illumination that comes from above faith reaffirmed by science.

No one who carefully reads the whole of Dante's works, beginning with The New Life and ending with The Comedy,

[1 On this "Trilogy," see an admirable essay, Dante's Trilogie, in Karl Witte's Dante-Forschungen, Vol. I, pp. 141-182.]