Dante, more than any other man of his time, exhibited in himself the general zeal for knowledge. His genius had two distinct and yet often intermingling parts-the poetic and the scientific. No learning came amiss to him. He was born a student, as he was born a poet, and had he never written a single poem, he would still have been famous as the most profound scholar of his times. Far as he surpassed his contemporaries in poetry, he was no less their superior in the depth and the extent of his knowledge. And this double nature of his genius is plainly shown in many parts of "The New Life." A youthful incapacity to draw clearly the line between the part of the student and the part of the poet is manifest in it. The display of his acquisitions is curiously mingled with the narrative of his emotions. This is not to be charged against him as pedantry. His love of learning partook of the nature of passion; his judgment was not yet able, if indeed it ever became able, to establish the division between the abstractions of the intellect and the affections of the heart. And more than this, his early claim of honor as a poet was to be justified by his possession and exhibition of the fruits of study. Moreover, the mind of Dante was of a quality which led him to unite learning with poetry in a manner peculiar to himself. He was essentially a mystic. The dark and hidden side of things was not less present to his imagination than the visible and plain. The range of human capacity in the comprehension of the spiritual world was not then marked by as numerous boundary-stones of failure as now define the way. Impossibilities were sought for with the same confident hope as realities. The alchemists and the astrologers believed in the attainment of results as tangible and real as the gains which travellers brought back from the marvellous and still unachieved East. The mystical properties of numbers, the influence of the stars, the powers of cordials and elixirs, the virtues of precious stones, were received as established facts, and opened long vistas of discovery before the student's eyes. A ring of mystery surrounded the familiar world, and outside the known lands of the earth lay a region unknown except to the fancy, from which strange gales blew and strange clouds floated up. Curiosity and inquiry were stimulated and made earnest by wonder. Wild, imaginative speculations formed the basis of serious and patient studies. Dante, partaking to the full in the eager spirit of the times, sharing all the ardor of the pursuit of knowledge, and with a spiritual insight which led him into regions of mystery where no others ventured, naturally associated the knowledge which opened the way for him with the poetic imagination which cast light upon it. To him science was but another name for poetry. Much learning has been expended in the attempt to show that the doctrine of Love, which is displayed in "The New Life," is derived, more or less directly, from the philosophy of Plato. It has been supposed that this little autobiographic story, full of the most intimate personal revelations, and glowing with a sincere passion, was deliberately written in accordance with a preconceived theory. A certain Platonic form of expression, often covering ideas very far removed from those of Plato, was common to the earlier, colder, and less truthful poets. Some strains of such Platonism, derived from the poems of his predecessors, are perhaps to be found in this first book of Dante's. But there is nothing to show that he had intentionally adopted the teachings of the ancient philosopher. It may well, indeed, be doubted if, at the time of its composition, he had read any of Plato's works. Such Platonism as exists in "The New Life" was of that unconscious kind which is shared by every youth of thoughtful nature and sensitive temperament, who makes of his beloved a type and image of divine beauty, and who through the loveliness of the creature is led up to the perfection of the Creator. The essential qualities of the Vita Nuova, those which afford direct illustration of Dante's character, as distinguished from such as may be called youthful, or merely literary, or biographical, correspond in striking measure with those of the Divina Commedia. The earthly Beatrice is exalted to the heavenly in the later poems; but the entire purity and intensity of feeling with which she is reverently regarded in the Divina Commedia are scarcely less characteristic of the earlier work. The imagination which makes the unseen seen, and the unreal real, belongs alike to the one and to the other. The Vita Nuova is chiefly occupied with a series of visions; the Divina Commedia is one long vision. The sympathy with the spirit and impulses of the time, which in the first reveals the youthful impressibility of the poet, in the last discloses itself in maturer forms, in more personal expressions. In the Vita Nuova it is a sympathy mastering the natural spirit; in the Divina Commedia the sympathy is controlled by the force of established character. The change is that from him who follows to him who commands. It is the privilege of men of genius, not only to give more than others to the world, but also to receive more from it. Sympathy, in its full comprehensiveness, is the proof of the strongest individuality. By as much as Dante or Shakespeare learnt of and entered into the hearts of men, by so much was his own nature strengthened and made peculiarly his own. "The New Life" shows the first stages of that genius, the first proofs of that comprehensive sympathy, which at length find their full manifestation in the "Divine Comedy." It is like the first blade of spring grass, rich with the promise of the golden harvest. William Haines Lytle. BORN in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1826. FELL at the Battle of Chickamauga, Tenn., 1863. ANTONY TO CLEOPATRA. [The Poets and Poetry of the West. Edited by William T. Coggeshall. 1860.] AM dying, Egypt, dying! Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast, Thou, and thou alone, must hear. Though my scarred and veteran legions I must perish like a Roman Die the great Triumvir still. Let not Cæsar's servile minions Mock the lion thus laid low; 'Twas no foeman's hand that felled him, His who, pillowed on thy bosom, Should the base plebeian rabble And for thee, star-eyed Egyptian- I can scorn the senate's triumphs, I am dying, Egypt, dying! Hark! the insulting foeman's cry; Shall my heart exulting swell; JACQUELINE. ALMOND-EYED Jacqueline beckoned to me, As our troop rode home from mounting guard, And I saw Gil Perez's brow grow dark, While his face seemed longer by half a yard. What care I for the Spaniard's ire, His haughty lip and glance of fire; What so fit for these Southern lords As the tempered edges of freemen's swords? Say, shall an Alva's merciless bands Their hands in our noblest blood imbrue, Hail to him who for freedom strikes! Up with your banners and down with the dykes! Than live like cowards the lives of slaves. Haughty Gil Perez may then beware, For we love our blue-eyed Leyden girls, With flaunting of banner and rolling of drum, A Lewis Wallace. BORN in Brookville, Franklin Co., Ind., 1827. THE CHARIOT RACE. [Ben-Hur. A Tale of the Christ. 1880.] T length the recess came to an end. The trumpeters blew a call at which the absentees rushed back to their places. At the same time, some attendants appeared in the arena, and, climbing upon the division wall, went to an entablature near the second goal at the west end, and placed upon it seven wooden balls; then returning to the first goal, upon an entablature there they set up seven other pieces of wood hewn to represent dolphins. "What shall they do with the balls and fishes, O sheik?" asked Balthasar. "Hast thou never attended a race?" "Never before; and hardly know I why I am here." "Well, they are to keep the count. At the end of each round run thou shalt see one ball and one fish taken down." The preparations were now complete, and presently a trumpeter in gaudy uniform arose by the editor, ready to blow the signal of commencement promptly at his order. Straightway the stir of the people and the hum of their conversation died away. Every face near by, and every face in the lessening perspective, turned to the east, as all eyes settled upon the gates of the six stalls which shut in the competitors. The unusual flush upon his face gave proof that even Simonides had caught the universal excitement. Ilderim pulled his beard fast and furious. "Look now for the Roman," said the fair Egyptian to Esther, who did not hear her, for, with close-drawn veil and beating heart, she sat watching for Ben-Hur. The structure containing the stalls, it should be observed, was in form of the segment of a circle, retired on the right so that its central point was projected forward, and midway the course, on the starting side of the first goal. Every stall, consequently, was equally distant from the starting-line or chalked rope above mentioned. The trumpet sounded short and sharp; whereupon the starters, one for each chariot, leaped down from behind the pillars of the goal, ready to give assistance if any of the fours proved unmanageable. Again the trumpet blew, and simultaneously the gate-keepers threw the stalls open. |