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labours of others in parts of the same field. It is eminently a case in which παντός έστι προσθεῖναι τὸ ἐλλείπον. However, starting from the above total as one likely to be approximately correct, or at least proportionately fair in relation to different authors, we may state the general result thus:-The Vulgate is quoted or referred to more than 500 times, Aristotle more than 300, Virgil about 200, Ovid about 100, Cicero and Lucan about fifty each, Statius and Boethius between thirty and forty each, Horace, Livy, and Orosius between ten and twenty each; with a few scattered references, probably not exceeding ten in the case of any one author, to Plato, Homer, Juvenal, Seneca, Ptolemy, Esop, and St. Augustine; if we may be allowed to extend the term Classical authors' so as to embrace all those mentioned. Further, we suspect on two or three occasions a possible knowledge of Valerius Maximus, though he is nowhere mentioned by Dante. It is to be again remembered that Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, and, above all, St. Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, to say nothing of Alfraganus, and possibly other Arabian astronomers, fall outside the limits above proposed, though if they were included the above total would be very largely increased.

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Probably, what will at once strike most readers with surprise in the above summary is the very small use made by Dante of Horace. And the surprise will be increased when we add that the quite certain quotations of Horace are only about seven in number, and that of these no less than six are from the Ars Poetica, the only one outside its limits being the passing expression, bovem ephippiatum' (which recalls Optat ephippia bos' of Epist. 1. xiv. 43), occurring in Vulg. Eloq. ii. 1. This is certainly not the general impression, as appears from the following statements of two recent, well-known, and generally, well-informed writers on Dante. 'Dante's prose works supply many 'quotations from Horace (Convito, passim).' And again, "From the frequent quotations in the Convito, it is evident that Dante had a special predilection for... the Ars 'Poetica of Horace.' The conclusion here is more correct than the premises, for there is only one definite quotation from Horace (Ars Poetica, it is true) in the whole of the Convito.*

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* There is also a passage (iv. 12) where Horace, together with 'Solomon and his father,' Seneca and Juvenal, are referred to in general terms as having proclaimed the deceitfulness of riches.'

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*

We may now compare with the results thus tabulated some passages in which Dante definitely expresses his admiration or preference for particular authors. The bestknown of these is undoubtedly that which contains the celebrated selection of the five great poets of antiquity,* viz. Homer (the 'poeta sovrano'), Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan; after which Dante, with a splendid audacity worthy of Aristotle's pɛyaλófvxos, ranks himself as the sixth 'tra 'cotanto senno.' It is worth noticing that in the Vita Nuova,† Dante's earliest work, he quotes illustrations of prosopopoeia, to justify his own practice, from just these five poets, the quotation of Homer being taken from his citation by Horace in Ars Poetica, 141.‡

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The next passage to be referred to is in Vulg. Eloq. ii. 6 fin., where Dante, having occasion to give a sort of rough list of authors to serve as models of style, mentions under the title of standard poets' (regulatos poetas) Virgil, Ovid (in Metamorphoseos '), Statius, and Lucan. It will be observed that Statius now takes the place of Horace, and that Homer, writing in an unknown tongue,' could not be quoted as a model of style. Dante then selects some prose authors, qui usi sunt altissimas prosas;' and these are Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Frontinus, and Orosius, et multos 'alios quos amica solitudo nos visitare invitat.' This is in some respects a curious selection, and Dante never, we believe, betrays any knowledge of either Pliny or Frontinus, nor does he ever again mention their names. The very noticeable omission of Tacitus (in whom Dante would have found, in some respects, a congenial spirit') is probably to be accounted for by the fact that his works were then almost, if not entirely, unknown, manuscripts of them being extremely rare.

A brief reference to one or two other passages will be sufficient. Near the end of the Epistle to Can Grande Dante refers some cavilling objectors to certain works of St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard of St. Victor.

+ c. xxv.

Inferno, iv. 88 seq. It is interesting to compare with Dante's selection of six poets that of Lord Macaulay, who had, no doubt, a wider area of choice. He held the six greatest poets of the world (in the order of merit) to be (1) Shakespeare, (2) Homer, (3) Dante, (4) Eschylus, (5) Milton, (6) Sophocles. When a plea was put in for Virgil, Macaulay not only refused to recognise it, but expressed the singular opinion that both Lucretius and Ariosto should come before him.

These, however, fall beyond the scope of our present subject. In Conv. ii. 13, he mentions his special study of Cicero de Amicitia' and Boethius' de Consolatione,' when weighed down with sorrow at the loss of Beatrice, and gratefully acknowledges the comfort which he derived from both of these works. The quotations from them in his own writings bear ample testimony to this statement. Lastly, we may refer to his own declaration of his thorough and complete knowledge of the Eneid, which he puts into the mouth of Virgil in Inf. xx. 112-14.

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'così il canta L'alta mia Tragedia in alcun loco: Ben lo sai tu, che la sai tutta quanta.'

The quotation last made suggests that we should say something as to the extent of the knowledge displayed by Dante with the works of the principal authors whom we have mentioned above. In the case of the Vulgate, we need hardly say it extends to the whole of it. Very few writers, mediæval or modern, knew their Bible' as well as Dante did. This intimate knowledge is shown, not only by direct citation, but by the frequent interweaving of Scriptural allusion and phraseology into the fabric of his diction. A similar generality of knowledge is found in the case of Aristotle, who, it is needless to observe, was only known to Dante through Latin translations. There is scarcely an important work of Aristotle which is not represented, and often very fully represented, in the pages of Dante. Especially well did he know the Ethics, Physics, Metaphysics, and De Anima. Only one remarkable exception occurs, in the case of the Poetics. This appears to have been wholly unknown to Dante, otherwise he could scarcely fail to have been struck with its bearing on many of the subjects discussed in Book II. of the Vulg. Eloq. In the case of Plato, no work of his is ever directly quoted, or even named, except the Timæus. The reason for this is found in the fact, that though that dialogue was translated by Chalcidius in about the fifth century, very long before a similar compliment was paid to any of the works of Aristotle, all the other writings of Plato remained in the obscurity of the original Greek till about the twelfth or thirteenth century. In the case of Horace (to whom we shall return later), we have seen that Dante shows no certain knowledge of anything but the Ars Poetica, with one or two possible references to the Epistles. The Eneid of Virgil (as Dante says himself) he knew thoroughly, and particularly, as

might be expected, Book VI. He also in one place (Purg xxii. 57) describes Virgil as

'il cantor de' bucolici carmi,'

and certainly imitates in his own Eclogues the form and phraseology of the Eclogues of Virgil; but he never quotes them (with the exception of the Fourth*) as if he were familiar with them in detail. Also, he shows little, if any, knowledge of the Georgics, except in one beautiful instance of reminiscence and imitation, which will be quoted later. In the case of Ovid, he knew well and used freely the Metamorphoses ('Ovidio Maggiore,' as, in common with other mediæval writers, he sometimes calls this work), but there is very slight evidence of his acquaintance with any other work of Ovid, except that he once quotes the second line of the Remedia Amoris, and that we suspect occasionally references to the Heroides. Finally, of Cicero he knew very well the De Officiis (especially Book I.), the De Senectute, and the De Amicitia. A few other works are once or twice quoted (the De Finibus about six times), but there is no evidence of any acquaintance with the speeches.†

The special character of the debt which Dante owed to the principal authors from whom he quotes may be briefly described as follows. His whole system of physics, physiology, and meteorology comes from Aristotle pure and simple, either directly from translations, or sometimes, probably, as reproduced by Albertus Magnus. On these, as on most other subjects, Aristotle's authority was for Dante sufficient and final. To take only one instance. In Conv. iii. 5, Dante declares that by that glorious Philosopher to whom Nature, 'above all others, disclosed her secrets, it has been proved, 'contrary to the false opinions of Plato and others, that the 'Earth stands fixed and immoveable to all eternity.' He adds that he will not repeat any of his arguments, because it is

It is to be noticed that this occurs in a dialogue with Statius, whom Dante feigns (a few lines before) to have been converted to Christianity by the study of the Fourth Eclogue.

† An interesting suggestion has been made that when Dante says of Cassius in Inf. xxxiv. 67, 'che par sì membruto,' he is confusing C. Cassius, who is twice described by Plutarch as thin,' a fact which Shakespeare has made familiar to us (Yond' Cassius hath a lean and hungry look'), with L. Cassius, the fellow-conspirator of Catiline, of whom Cicero speaks as L. Cassii adipis' in Cat. III. vii. § 16. If this should be so, it is, we believe, the only trace left of any knowledge of the Speeches of Cicero in the works of Dante.

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' enough for his readers to know, on the great authority of 'Aristotle, that this earth is fixed and does not revolve, and 'that it is the centre of the Universe.' This characteristic passage sufficiently explains Dante's attitude on the subjects which we have mentioned. It is almost needless to point out that a large amount of the machinery' (so to speak) of the Divina Commedia, the personages introduced, the scenery and incidents in detail, are taken from the Æneid of Virgil,* and especially from Book VI. For his mythology Dante is at least as much, perhaps even more, indebted to the Metamorphoses of Ovid; and in a much less, but still not inconsiderable, degree to Statius. His historical allusions come chiefly from Lucan in the Divina Commedia, and from Livy and Orosius in his prose works; though his references to Livy are often inaccurate, and we suspect that they belong rather to Orosius, or possibly even Florus, or were perhaps derived from some historical epitomes. To Cicero he owes, as we shall see later, one of the most fundamental principles of his classification of sins in the Inferno.

It would not, of course, be correct to infer that all the quotations and references in such a list as we have given above are proof of direct acquaintance on the part of Dante with the original passages. Allowance must no doubt be made, in the case at least of some authors, for (1) secondhand quotations, and (2) the use of Florilegia. We may briefly illustrate each of these. The most obvious instance of the former is to be found in Homeric quotations occurring in Dante. Homer was, we know, inaccessible to Dante in the original, and there was no Latin translation of him, as Dante informs us in Conv. i. 7, ad fin.; adding the interesting remark that a translation of Homer, or indeed of any other poet, is impossible, since the poetic element would be lost in the process. It could not be done senza rompere tutta *sua dolcezza e armonia.' What would be Dante's feelings if he could see the list of translations in a variety of languages of his own great work? His opinion of the futility of the process would certainly be confirmed by many if not most of them. Dante, however, three times quotes 11. xxiv, 259

οὐδὲ ἐῴκει

είδους σε θεητοῦ ταῖς ἔμμεναι, ἀλλὰ θεοῖο

#A, Cerberus, Charon, Minos, the Giants, the Harpies, the Furion, the story of Polydorus as adapted to Pier delle Vigne in Inf. 18, đồ, đa The beautiful scere of the Valley of the Kings in Purg. vit, is evidently suggested by En. vi. 679 seq.

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