of course, abound in Ovid. He has even been characterised by a recent writer (though, surely, most unjustly) as 'more of a rhetorician than a poet.' We will merely put down, without further comment, two illustrations of this. In the story of Niobe, which Dante evidently derived from Ovid, compare with 'Tra sette et sette tuoi figliuoli spenti' (Purg. xii. 39) 'Orba resedit Exanimes inter natosque natasque virumque' (Met. vi. 301–2); and in reference to the crime of Alemæon, compare with 'Per non perder pietà si fe' spietato' (Par. iv. 105) 'Ultusque parente parentem Natus erit facto pius et sceleratus eodem' (Met. ix. 407-8), where both the sentiment and the rhetorical form are reproduced, though the effect of the repeated words is differently arranged. But we must not omit to call attention to the beautiful and touching 'echo' of a quotation which Scartazzini has pointed out in the parting scene of Dante and Virgil in Purg. xxx. 49-51, as compared with that of Orpheus and Euridice in Georg. iv. 525-7. Compare with '(Volveret,) Euridicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua, 'Ma Virgilio n' avea lasciato scemi Di sè, Virgilio dolcissimo padre, The pathetic repetition of the beloved name in three successive lines, and in the corresponding position in each line, is very striking. We have already said that sometimes we may suspect (even as 'bonus dormitat Homerus') that Dante has fallen into an occasional lapse of memory in his quotations or references. One or two samples may perhaps be given of what seem to be imperfectly remembered passages. In Par. xx. 51, Dante describes Hezekiah as one who 'Morte indugiò per vera penitenza.' The very line before this passage-'Cognosco i segni dell' antica fiamma is a direct translation of En. iv. 23: Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ.' He seems to have confused two incidents-(1) his sickness, in which he pleads that he has walked in truth, and with a 'perfect heart, and has done that which is good in God's sight' (2 Kings xx. 3), and it is after this plea that his life was prolonged for fifteen years; and (2) his subsequent lapse into pride and boastfulness, for which his penitence is recorded, and, as a consequence, the threatened national calamities were delayed. Again, in Conv. iv. 23, Dante quotes St. Luke as saying that Christ died about the sixth hour in order to prove that He did so before the decline of the day, just as He died before the age of thirty-five in order that He might not enter on the descent of life's arch. But St. Luke clearly implies (xxiii. vv. 44-46) that He died about the ninth hour, as SS. Matthew and Mark expressly state. Virgil (Æn. i. 665) is very curiously misquoted, or rather mistranslated, by Dante in Conv. ii. 6. The words are: 'Nate, patris summi qui tela Typhoïa temnis.' Dante is aware that Venus is addressing Cupid, and yet he takes patris summi as the genitive after Nate, and not after tela, thus making Cupid the son of Jupiter! Further, he supposes tela Typhoïa to be the darts thrown by, and not at, Typhoeus. Again, we cannot but suspect some misunderstanding of the celebrated 'Auri sacra fames' passage, put into the mouth of Statius in Purg. xxii. 40. At any rate it is very difficult to explain as it stands. Finally, Dante's representation of Cacus as a Centaur in Inf. xxv. 17 seems to have resulted from a misunderstood or confused recollection of the expression in Virgil, 'Semihominis Caci facies.' We may now call attention to some cases in which Dante has directly borrowed or imitated the similes of earlier writers; such as, in Par. xxvi. 137, the fashion of the use of words changing like autumn leaves, from Horace, Ars Poetica, 60, 61, combined with 70, 71; in Inf. iii. 112 seq., the spirits in Charon's boat showering down like withered leaves, from Virgil, Æn. vi. 309-312; and in Inf. v. 82-85, Francesca and Paolo gliding through the air like doves returning home to their nest, also from Virgil, En. v. 213-17; the tree bent by the wind and recovering itself, in Par. xxvi. 8588, from Statius, Theb. vi. 854 seq.; and so on. But when Dante has thus borrowed from other poets, they may be said to receive their own with usury,' for it is interesting to observe the wonderful transformation that the material borrowed has sometimes undergone in his hands. As a distinguished writer observed many years ago in the pages of this Journal, also speaking of Dante: Reminiscences in Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto Now observe that Virgil uses these two comparisons of the falling leaves and the migrating birds for no other purpose than that of giving the idea of the vast numbers of the souls preparing to enter Charon's boat: Quam multa . . . folia' Quam multæ . . . aves.' In Dante this passes out of sight, and there are three other distinct and very beautiful points of resemblance indicated by the simile of the leaves. His words are: 'Come d'autunno si levan le foglie L'una appresso dell' altra, infin che il ramo Note here (1) The gentle fluttering down of the falling leaves as they are detached (si levan) from the branch in the 'calm decay' of autumn is compared to the feeble dropping off from the bank of these weary spirits (anime lasse, 1. 100), νεκρῶν ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα, as Homer would call them. On this Ruskin remarks: When Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron as dead leaves from a bough, he 'gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair.' (2) The continuous shower of leaves, leaf following leaf till the branch is left quite bare, gives a vivid picture of the spirits casting themselves down in quick succession, one 6 after the other, into the boat below, till all have disappeared from the bank. Note L'una appresso dell altra' in 1. 113, and then 'Similemente il mal seme d' Adamo Gittansi di quel lito ad una, ad una.' (3) Finally, the pathetic touch in the words next following— 'infin che il ramo Vede alla terra tutte le sue spoglie,' the bare branch looking as it were wistfully at all its own foliage strewed upon the ground beneath, is all Dante's own. The pathos of this may well be compared with that of the beautiful lines of Keble :— 'See the calm leaves float, Each to his rest beneath their parent shade. Even so (11. 118-120) the lately crowded but now (though for a brief space) deserted bank looks down upon the crowded spirits floating away on the dusky stream below. There is one line which we have not yet noticed (1. 117) 'Per cenni, come augel per suo richiamo.' Virgil, it will be remembered, also refers to birds in his simile, and this probably suggested 'augelli' to Dante; but if so, what infinitely more effective use he makes of the idea thus 'echoed!' He does not merely duplicate the former simile, as Virgil does, but brings in an entirely new and very beautiful thought. He compares the spirits, passively and as by some resistless impulse following the beck of Charon as he summons them one by one, to a bird that cannot but obey its master's call, though it may do so disdegnoso e 'fello,' as he says elsewhere (Inf. xvii. 132), in another of the numerous passages in which he has drawn his metaphors from falconry. Even thus do these spirits blindly and unresistingly abandon themselves to their fate, Divine justice so spurring them on that they come to desire that which they fear 'Sì che la tema si volge in desio' (l. 126). Thus Dante has borrowed the mere germ, so to speak, of a somewhat commonplace simile, and transformed it into one of the most graphic and beautiful comparisons to be found in all poetry. If any one will compare the simile of the doves in Inf. v. 82-85 with Virgil, En. v. 213-17 (adding, perhaps, vi. 190-92 and 202, 203), he will find clear indications that Dante had the model of Virgil before him, but no less clear evidence that in this as in other similar cases 'Dante 'imitando creò.' Dante has a curious habit, which may be briefly noticed here, of placing side by side quotations from Scripture and so-called profane authors, balancing one against the other, as though they had something like co-ordinate authority; which certainly Dante would not for a moment have admitted, though his language occasionally about Aristotle seems to come very near to this. In the same way, the most casual reader cannot fail to have noticed in all the three parts of the Divina Commedia, but especially in the Purgatorio, how habitually the examples of vice or virtue are taken alternately, or in alternate groups, from Scripture or profane literature; e.g. Potiphar's wife and Sinon (Inf. xxx. 97, 98), Nimrod and Briareus Antæus, &c. (Inf. xxxi. 77 seq.), Jephthah and Agamemnon (Par. v. 66-70), Goliath and Antæus in De Mon. ii. 10; while in the numerous examples for warning and imitation in the seven Cornici of 'Purgatory' there is not a single exception to this symmetrical arrangement. The same tendency is sometimes shown in grouping ancient and modern instances, as Jason and Caccianimico (Inf. xviii. 50, 56), Mirra and Gianni Schicchi (Inf. xxx. 32– 39), Thais and Interminei in Inf. xviii. 122, 133, and many others; or, again, ecclesiastical and secular instances, as St. Laurence and Mucius (Par. iv. 83, 84), or Sabellius and Arius on the one hand, grouped with Parmenides, Melissus, and Bryson on the other, as instances of heretics, theological and philosophical respectively (Par. xiii. 124-27). One of the most singular examples of this tendency in the case of quotations is found in the pair of passages by which the triumphant advent of Beatrice is heralded in Purg. xxx. 19-21. 'Tutti dicean: Benedictus qui venis, So in Vulg. Eloq. i. 2, the difficulties arising out of the use of speech implied in the scriptural narration of Balaam's ass, and in Ovid's account of the transformation of the magpies, are gravely discussed together. The Convito also affords many examples of this practice. Dante was, no doubt, familiar with St. Thomas's defence (in the beginning of the Summa') of this alliance of theology with secular knowledge as not implying any slight on the supremacy of Scripture. Indeed, we might well apply to Dante himself the language quoted by Aquinas from St. Jerome in reference |