Among the letters which pass under Dante's name, there is one in which the author gives an account of a case in which he fell violently in love. This letter being a stupid imposture, we throw it out of evidence. But even those who consider it authentic must interpret it altogether allegorically, unless they wish to place the Poet in a ridiculous position, and make him guilty of incomprehensible self-contradictions. For it would certainly be, in the highest degree, ridiculous, that a man of forty, a husband and a father, at a time when epistolary correspondence was no over-easy matter, should have written a letter to the Marquis Morovello Malaspina, for no other purpose than to tell him the great and important news, that he had fallen in love with a woman! Besides, about the same time when this letter is supposed to have been written to the Marquis Malaspina, Dante wrote in The Feast (I, 2): "I dread the disfame of having nurtured so great a passion as all who read the abovenamed odes conceive to have ruled within me. This disfame now ceases, through the present candid speaking with regard to myself; [for this shows that not passion but virtue was the moving cause]." How, in all the world, is it possible that a man, who did not wish to have an amorous passion attributed to him, should, at the same time, have written a letter to the Marquis Malaspina, to inform him that he had been violently seized with an amorous passion? And how brazen-faced must have been the man who wrote such words, if, as is said, he was known to his contemporaries, to his pupils, and to his own son, to be a luxurious man and an adulterous husband?1

[1 The letter in question, which most great Dante-scholars consider genuine, and which, indeed, bears considerable internal evidence of being so, is, after all, nothing so very compromising. Moreover, it shows two things: (1) that Dante was aware that he bore a reputation for amorousness; (2) that he had made long and honest efforts not to deserve that reputation. The letter runs as follows:

Dante protests in express terms, that after the death of Beatrice, he loved no other lady than Philosophy. In The Feast (II, 16) he writes: "I declare and affirm that the lady

"In order that my Lord may not be in ignorance respecting the shackles of his servant, who is ruled by feelings of gratitude, and lest some garbled account, calculated, as is not unfrequently the case, to sow the seeds of misconceptions, should seek to convince you that I have been made a prisoner through carelessness, I have thought it well to address the following brief words of self-defence to Your Magnificence.

"After my departure, then, from the Court for which I have since frequently longed, and in which, as you often saw with amazement, I was permitted to exercise the functions of freedom, I had hardly planted my feet by the streams of Arno, when, suddenly, alas! there appeared, descending like a thunderbolt, I know not how, a woman suited in all respects to my principles, my character, and my fortune. O with what astonished admiration did I behold her! But amazement soon gave place to the terror of the thunder that followed it. For, just as the lightnings from heaven are followed instantaneously by thunder, so, no sooner had I beheld the flash of her beauty than an awful and imperious love for her took possession of me. And this Love, like a prince banished from his country and restored after a long exile, either slew, or cast forth, or bound in fetters whatever within me was contrary to him. He therefore slew that laudable resolution of mine, whereby I held aloof from women and from songs about women; nay, he ruthlessly banished, as something traitorous, those assiduous meditations, in which I gazed upon things both celestial and terrestrial; and, finally, lest my soul should any longer rebel against him, he bound my free choice in fetters, so that I am obliged to turn, not where I wish, but where he wishes. So, Love rules in me without resistance from any power; in what manner he rules me, you will discover from the accompanying composition."

If this letter be a forgery, it is certainly a very clever one. In any case it cannot be called either frivolous, compromising, or unworthy of Dante. It contains no evidence of sensual love. The "accompanying" composition appears to have been the ode beginning, "Amor, dacchè convien pur ch' io mi doglia," which contains many expressions similar to those occurring in this letter. That Dante was very sensitive to the charms of women, is beyond any question.]

of whom I became enamored, after the first love, was the most beautiful and most virtuous daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name of Philosophy.1 Therefore, either the pretended loves of Dante occurred after these words were written, that is to say, the Poet began to abandon himself to the passion of love when he was almost fifty years old; or else they occurred before, in which case Dante has lied impudently. For those who will not desist from accusing Dante of luxury and adultery, there is no third alternate. We, on the contrary, say, Dante's protest is true, and the loves attributed to him are fables.

Dionisi, Gian Giacopo: Preparazione Istorica e Critica, II, pp. 29-110.

:

Veratti, Bart. Gli Amori di Dante, in Opuscoli Religiosi e Morali di Modena, 1865–66. Vol. V, pp. 246 sqq.; Vol. VI, pp. 42 sqq., 244 sqq.

Minich, Raf.: Degli Amori di Dante veri e supposti. Memoir. Padua, 1871, 8vo.

Scartazzini, G. A.: Dante in Germania [see p. 15]. Appendix, § v.

[1 And yet our author elsewhere devotes page after page to proving that Dante did love another woman shortly after Beatrice's death (see PP. 55 sqq.).]

[2 It is needless to say that this conclusion is utterly illogical, unfair, and at variance with facts.]

CHAPTER III.

THE MINOR WORKS.

§ 1. THE BOOK OF LYRIC POEMS. At the age of eighteen, Dante, who "had already seen the art of saying words in rhyme," having had a marvellous vision, proposed to make a sonnet, in which he should salute all the "faithful of Love," and, with the request that they would expound his vision, he wrote to them what he had seen in his sleep.1 This sonnet, written in 1283, is the earliest poetical attempt of Dante's that has come down to us. After this, he continued to write sonnets, odes, and other poetical compositions, both during the life of Beatrice and after her death. At first, he imitated the Provençal troubadours and the first love-poets that wrote in the vulgar tongue. Afterwards, freeing himself from the shackles of these, and turning his back upon the poetical rules of a conventional love, he began to poetize according to the dictates of his heart, and drew forth new rhymes, that is, a new species of poetry and a new poetic style, far superior to those of the poets who had preceded him. The numerous lyrics composed by him at different times generally treat of one and the same

[1 New Life, Chap. III.]

subject, namely, Love; because, according to the theories which he adopted, it was not allowed to write poetry upon any other subject. But, just as his different lyrics were written at two different periods of his inner life, so they belong to two very distinct cycles. One part belongs to the cycle of the The New Life; the other, to the cycle of The Love-Feast.

In the lyrics which belong to the cycle of The New Life, a part of which were collected, arranged, and commented on by the Poet in that youthful work, Dante depicts his life of love during the life of Beatrice and the time immediately following her death. The beauties, external and internal, of the beloved lady; the joys and hopes of the lover, to whom the celestial beauty was revealed in the terrestrial; the sufferings of a heart that loves with the utmost tenderness and beats only for the beloved object; the painful presentiment that ruthless death was about to put a period to the delights and hopes of love; the unfathomable and almost desperate grief caused by the loss of the loved one, - such are the subjects of these poems, through which passes a breath of the deepest affection, laden with airs from the abysses of medieval mysticism. The subject of the lyrics belonging to the cycle of The Love-Feast is likewise Love. But, whereas the former depict a mystical love, the latter depict a philosophical one. The character, as well as the object, of the love differs in the two cycles. In the second, we no longer find a love, self-forgetful, all pure, and, therefore, all serene; but a