I have given this passage at length, because, for our purposes, it is by much the most important, not only in Dante, but in the whole circle of poetry. This lady, observe, stands on the opposite side of the little stream, which, presently, she explains to Dante is Lethe, having power to cause forgetfulness of all evil, and she stands just among the bent blades of grass at its edge. She is first seen gathering flower from flower, then "passing continually the multitudinous flowers through her hands," smiling at the same time so brightly, that her first address to Dante is to prevent him from wondering at her, saying, "if he will remember the verse of the ninetysecond Psalm, beginning Delectasti,' he will know why she is so happy." 6 And turning to the verse of the Psalm, we find it written, "Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works. I will triumph in the works of thy hands," or, in the very words in which Dante would read it, "Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua, Et in operibus manuum Tuarum exultabo." Now we could not for an instant have had any difficulty in understanding this, but that, some way farther on in the poem, this lady called Matilda, and it is with reason supposed by the commentators to be the great Countess Matilda of the eleventh century; notable equally for her ceaseless activity, her brilliant political genius, her perfect piety, and her deep reverence for the see of Rome. This Countess Matilda is therefore Dante's guide in the terrestrial paradise, as Beatrice is afterwards in the celestial; each of them having a spiritual and symbolic character in their glorified state, yet retaining their definite personality. The question is, then, what is the symbolic character of the Countess Matilda, as the guiding spirit of the terrestrial paradise? Before Dante had entered this paradise he had rested on a step of shelving rock, and as he watched the stars he slept, and dreamed, and thus tells us what he saw : "A lady, young and beautiful, I dreamed, A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply; This vision of Rachel and Leah has been always, and with unquestionable truth, received as a type of the Active and Contemplative life, and as an introduction to the two divisions of the Paradise which Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied spirit of the Countess Matilda is understood to represent the Active life, which forms the felicity of Earth; and the spirit of Beatrice the Contemplative life, which forms the felicity of Heaven. This interpretation appears at first straightforward and certain, but it has missed count of exactly the most important fact in the two passages which we have to explain. Observe: Leah gathers the flowers to decorate herself, and delights in Her Own Labor. Rachel sits silent, contemplating herself, and delights in Her Own Image. These are the types of the Unglorified Active and Contemplative powers of Man. But Beatrice and Matilda are the same powers, Glorified. And how are they Glorified? Leah took delight in her own labour; but Matilda" in operibus manuum Tuarum”—in God's labour;- Rachel in the sight of her own face; Beatrice in the sight of God's face. And thus, when afterwards Dante sees Beatrice on her throne, and prays her that, when he himself shall die, she would receive him with kindness, Beatrice merely looks down for an instant, and answers with a single smile, then "towards the eternal fountain turns." Therefore it is evident that Dante distinguishes in both cases, not between earth and heaven, but between perfect and imperfect happiness, whether in earth or heaven. The active life which has only the service of man for its end, and therefore gathers flowers, with Leah, for its own decoration, is indeed happy, but not perfectly so; it has only the happiness of the dream, belonging essentially to the dream of human life, and passing away with it. But the active life which labours for the more and more discovery of God's work, is perfectly happy, and is the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true foretaste of heaven, and beginning in earth, as heaven's vestibule. So also the contemplative life which is concerned with human feeling and thought and beauty--the life which is in earthly poetry and imagery of noble earthly emotion-is happy, but it is the happiness of the dream; the contemplative life which has God's person and love in Christ for its object, has the happiness of eternity. But because this higher happiness is also begun here on earth, Beatrice descends to earth; and when revealed to Dante first, he sees the image of the twofold personality of Christ reflected in her eyes; as the flowers, which are, to the me. diæval heart, the chief work of God, are for ever passing through Matilda's hands. was " 66 Now, therefore, we see that Dante, as the great prophetic exponent of the heart of the Middle Ages, has, by the lips of the spirit of Matilda, declared the medieval faith, that all perfect active life the expression of man's delight in God's work" and that all their political and warlike energy, as fully shown in the mortal life of Matilda, was yet inferior and impure, the energy of the dream, compared with that which on the opposite bank of Lethe stood choosing flower from flower." And what joy and peace there were in this work is marked by Matilda's being the person who draws Dante through the stream of Lethe, so as to make him forget all sin, and all sorrow: throwing her arms round him, she plunges his head under the waves of it; then draws him through, crying to him, "Hold hold me" (Tiemmi, tiemmi), and so presents him, thus bathed, free from all painful memory, at the feet of the spirit of the more heavenly contemplation. me, DANTE'S CREED. From the Foreign Quarterly Review, Another thought sustained him, and was the end towards which he directed all the energies which love had roused within him; and this must be specially insisted upon, because, wonderfully enough! even in the present day it is either misunderstood or lightly treated by all who busy themselves about Dante. This aim is the national aim, -the same desire that vibrates instinctively in the bosoms of twenty-two millions of men, and which is the secret of the immense popularity Dante has in Italy. This idea and the almost superhuman constancy with which he pursued it, render Dante the most complete individual incarnation of this aim that we know, and, notwithstanding, this is just the point upon which his biographers are the most uncertain. All It must be said and insisted upon, that this idea of national greatness is the leading thought in all that Dante did or wrote. Never man loved his country with a more exalted or fervent love; never had man such projects of magnificent and exalted destinies for her. who consider Dante as a Guelph or a Ghibelline grovel at the base of the monument which he desired to raise to Italy. We are not here required to give an opinion upon the degree of feasibility of Dante's ideas,--the future must decide this point. What we have to do is to show what Dante aimed at, in order that those who desire to come to a just estimate of his life may have sufficient grounds to judge him. This we shall do as rapidly as possible, relying upon passages in the Convito, and his little treatise De Monarchia, for our authority. The following, then, is a summary of what, in the thirteenth century, Dante believed. God is one, -the universe is one thought of God,--the universe therefore is one. All things come from God, -they all participate, more or less, in the Divine nature, according to the end for which they are created. They all float towards different points over the which the general inspiration of mankind ascends, thence to flow down again in the form of LAW,- -a power strong in unity, and in the supporting advice of the higher intellects naturally destined to rule, providing with calm wisdom for all the different functions which are to be fulfilled,- the distinct employments, — itself performing the part of pilot, of supreme chief, in order to bring to the highest perfection what Dante calls "the universal religion of human nature;" that is, empire, IMPERIUM. It will maintain concord amongst the rulers of states, and this peace will diffuse itself from thence into towns, from the towns among each cluster of habitations, into every house, into the bosom of each man. But where is the seat of this empire to be? great ocean of existence, but they are all moved by the same will. Flowers in the garden of God all merit our love according to the degree of excellence he has bestowed upon each; of these MAN is the most eminent. Upon him God has bestowed more of his own nature than upon any other creature. In the continuous scale of being, that man whose nature is the most degraded touches upon the animal; he whose nature is the most noble approaches that of the angel. Everything that comes from the hand of God tends towards the perfection of which it is susceptible, and man more fervently and more vigorously than all the rest. There is this difference between him and other creatures, that his perfectibility is what Dante calls possible, meaning indefinite. Coming from the bosom of God, the human soul in- At this question Dante quits all anacessantly aspires towards Him, and en-lytic argumentation, and takes up the deavours by holiness and knowledge to language of synthetical and absolute become reunited with Him. Now the affirmation, like a man in whom the life of the individual man is too short least expression of doubt excites astoand too weak to enable him to satisfy nishment. that yearning in this world; but around him, before him, stands the whole human race to which he is allied by his social nature, that never dies, but works through one generation of its members after another onwards, in the road to eternal truth. Mankind is one. God has made nothing in vain, and if there exists a multitude, a collective of men, it is because there is one aim for them all, -one work to be accomplished by them all. Whatever this aim may be, it does certainly exist, and we must endeavour to discover and attain it. Mankind, then, ought to work together, in order that all the intellectual powers that are bestowed amongst them may receive the highest possible development, whether in the sphere of thought or action. It is only by harmony, consequently by association, that this is possible. Mankind must be one, even as God is one;-one in organization, as it is already one in its principle. Unity is taught by the manifest design of God in the external world, and by the necessity of an aim. Now unity seeks for something by which it may be represented, and this is found in a unity of government. There must then of necessity be some centre to He is no longer a philosopher, he is a believer. He shows ROME, the HOLY CITY, as he calls her, ---the city whose very stones he declares to be worthy of reverence, "There is the seat of empire.' There never was, and there never will be, a people endowed with more gentleness for the exercise of command, with more vigour to maintain it, and more capacity to acquire it, than the Italian nation, and above all, the Holy Roman people, THE DIVINA COMMEDIA. From the German of Schelling. In the sanctuary where Religion "is married to immortal verse" stands Dante as high-priest, and consecrates all modern Art to its vocation. Not as a solitary poem, but representing the whole class of the New Poetry, and itself a separate class, stands the "Divine Comedy," so entirely unique, that any theory drawn from peculiar forms is quite inadequate to it; a world by itself, it demands its own peculiar theory. The predicate of Divine was given it by its author,* because it treats of theology and things divine; Comedy he called it, after the simplest notion of this and its opposite kind, on account of its fearful beginning and its happy ending, and because the mixed nature of the poem, whose material is now lofty and now lowly, rendered a mixed kind of style necessary. One readily perceives, however, that, according to the common notion, it cannot be called Dramatic, because it represents no circumscribed action. So far as Dante himself may be looked upon as the hero, who serves only as a thread for the measureless series of visions and pictures, and remains rather passive than active, the poem seems to approach nearer to a Romance; yet this definition does not completely exhaust it. Nor can we call it Epic, in the usual acceptation of the word, since there is no regular sequence in the events represented. To look upon it as a Didactic poem is likewise impossible, because it is written with a far less restricted form and aim than that of teaching. It belongs, therefore, to none of these classes in particular, nor is it merely a compound of them; but an entirely unique, and as it were organic, mixture of all their elements, not to be reproduced by any arbitrary rules of art,- -an absolute individuality, comparable with itself alone, and with naught else. The material of the poem is, in general terms, the express identity of the poet's age ;--the interpenetration of the events thereof with the ideas of Religion, Science, and Poetry in the loftiest genius of that century. Our intention is not to consider it in its immediate reference to its age; but rather in its universal application, and as the archetype of all modern Poetry. The necessary law of this poetry, down to the still indefinitely distant point where the great epic of modern times, which hitherto has announced itself only rhapsodically and in broken glimpses, shall present itself as a perfect whole, is this, that the individual gives shape and The title of "Divina" was not given to the poem till long after Dante's death. It first appears in the edition of 1516.-TR. unity to that portion of the world which is revealed to him, and out of the mate rials of his time, its history, and its science, creates his own mythology. For as the ancient world is, in general, the world of classes, so the modern is that of individuals. In the former, the Universal is in truth the Particular, the race acts as an individual; in the latter, the Individual is the point of departure, and becomes the Universal. For this reason, in the former all things are permanent and imperishable: number likewise is of no account, since the Universal idea coincides with that of the Individual;— in the latter constant mutation is the fixed law; no narrow circle limits its ends, but one which through Individu ality widens itself to infinitude. since Universality belongs to the essence of poetry, it is a necessary condition that the Individual through the highest pecu liarity should again become Universal, and by his complete speciality become again absolute. Thus, through the perfect individuality and uniqueness of his poem, Dante is the creator of modern art, which without this arbitrary necessity, and necessary arbitrariness, cannot be imagined. And From the very beginning of Greek Poetry, we see it clearly separated from Science and Philosophy, as in Homer ; and this process of separation continued until the poets and the philosophers became the antipodes of each other. They in vain, by allegorical interpretations of the Homeric poems, sought artificially to create a harmony between the two.. In modern times Science has preceded Poetry and Mythology, which cannot be Mythology without being universal, and drawing into its circle all the elements of the then existing culture, Science, Religion, and even Art, and joining in a perfect unity the material not only of the present but of the past. Into this strug gle (since Art demands something definite and limited, while the spirit of the world rushes towards the unlimited, and with ceaseless power sweeps down all barriers) must the Individual enter, but with absolute freedom seek to rescue perma nent shapes from the fluctuations of time, and within arbitrarily assumed forms to give to the structure of his poem, by its absolute peculiarity, internal necessity and external universality. poet has to do, in order to embody into a poetic whole the entire history and culture of his age, the only mythological material which lies before him. He must, from absolute arbitrariness, join together the allegorical and historical: he must be allegorical, (and he is so, too, against his will,) because he cannot be symbolical; and he must be historical, because he wishes to be poetical. In this respect his invention is always peculiar, a world by itself, and altogether characteristic. This Dante has done. He had before him, as material, the history of the present as well as of the past. He could not elaborate this into a pure Epos, partly on account of its nature, partly because, in doing this, he would have excluded other elements of the culture of his time. To its completeness belonged also the astronomy, the theology, and the philosophy of the time. To these he could not give expression in a didactic poem, for by so doing he would The only German poem of universal again have limited himself. Conse-plan unites together in a similar manner quently, in order to make his poem the outermost extremes in the aspirauniversal, he was obliged to make it tions of the times, by a very peculiar historical. An invention entirely un- invention of a subordinate mythology, controlled, and proceeding from his own in the character of Faust; although, in individuality, was necessary to unite the Aristophanic meaning of the word, these materials, and form them into an it may far better be called a Comedy, organic whole. To represent the ideas and in another and more poetic sense of Philosophy and Theology in symbols Divine, than the poem of Dante. was impossible, for there then existed no symbolic Mythology. He could quite as little make his poem purely allegorical, for then, again, it could not be historical. It was necessary, therefore, to make it an entirely unique mixture of Allegory and History. In the emblematic poetry of the ancients no clue of this kind was possible. The Individual only could lay hold of it, and only an uncontrolled invention follow it. The poem of Dante is not allegorical in the sense that its figures only signified something else, without having any separate existence independent of the thing signified. On the other hand, none of them is independent of the thing signified in such a way as to be at once the idea itself and more than an allegory of it. There is therefore in The energy with which the individual embodies the singular mixture of the materials which lie before him in his age and his life, determines the measure in which he possesses mythological power. Dante's personages possess a kind of eternity from the position in which he places them, and which is eternal; but not only the actual which he draws from his own time, as the story of Ugolino and the like, but also what is pure invention, as the death of Ulysses and his companions, has in the connection of his poem a real mythological truth. It would be of but subordinate interest to represent by itself the Philosophy, Physics, and Astronomy of Dante, since his true peculiarity lies, only in his manner of fusing them with his poetry. The Ptolemaic system, which to a certain degree is the foundation of his poetic structure, has already in itself a mythological colouring. If, however, his philosophy is to be characterized in general as Aristotelian, we must not understand by this the pure Peripatetic philosophy, but a peculiar union of the same with the ideas of the Platonic then entertained, as may be proved by many passages of his poem. We will not dwell upon the power In this respect Dante is archetypal, and solidity of separate passages, the since he has proclaimed what the modern | simplicity and endless naïveté of separate |