two different ways a document of the very highest value, even before its intrinsic worth is considered at all. In the first place, there is the importance of date, which gives us in it the first critical treatise on the literary use of the vernacular, at exactly the point when the various vernaculars of Europe had finished, more or less, their first stage. Secondly, there is the importance of authorship, in that we have, as is hardly anywhere else the case, the greatest creative writer, not merely of one literature but of a whole period of the European world, betaking himself to criticism. If Shakespeare had written the Discoveries instead of Ben Jonson, the only possible analogue would have been supplied. Even Homer could not have given us a third, for he could hardly have had the literature to work upon. I am prepared to claim for it, not merely the position of the most important critical document between Longinus and the seventeenth century at least, but one of intrinsic importance on a line with that of the very greatest critical documents of all history. That the book has remained so long unknown, and that even after its belated publication it attracted little attention, and has for the most part been misunderstood, or not understood at all, is no doubt in part connected with the fact of its extraordinary precocity. On the very threshold of modern literature, Dante anticipates and follows out methods which have not been reached by all, or by many, who have had the advantage of access to the mighty chambers whereof the house has since been built and is still a-building."

Its Nature.1

What Dante did in order to acquire for the Italian tongue a position superior to the Latin, with which it was struggling for literary priority, is one of his finest and most brilliant achievements. How true his instinct was in this may be seen from the example of Petrarca, who, coming later, gave the preference again to the Latin, and of whom nothing has survived save what was written in Italian. For the matter of that, Dante himself only gradually shook off the prejudice of his age in favor of Latin, nor did he ever free himself from it entirely. The Vita Nuova was apparently, according to the statement in cap. 31, written in Italian at the instigation of Guido Cavalcanti, to whom the book is dedicated; but in cap. 25 we still find the opinion expressed that only love matters should be treated in the volgare, that being done solely in order that women might understand them. In the Convivio more nobility is granted to the Latin, because it is "permanent and incorruptible" (while the volgare is "not stable and corruptible"), because it is more beautiful, because it follows art (and the volgare only custom), and because it is always able to express things for which the volgare does not suffice. One of the reasons given for the employment of allegory in the first canzone is that no poem in the volgare appeared worthy to extol philosophy, unless some veil were used. Nevertheless, Dante already at that time composed his canzoni on virtue in Italian; he writes on the highest questions of philosophy in the volgare,

1 Gaspary's History of Early Italian Literature, trans. by H. Oelsner, pp. 253-259. (By permission.)

which he defends and extols in words that come from the heart. The development of his ideas was therefore notable. The little book De Eloquentia Vulgari adopts practically the same standpoint; in addition to love, arms and virtue are designated as proper subjects for treatment in the Italian language. The volgare is here called more noble even than Latin, in direct contradiction to the Convivio. At the same time, as D'Ovidio rightly remarked, so vague an expression as nobile must not be interpreted in too pedantic a spirit: according to the author's particular object or point of view, his opinion might lean one way or the other. The Latin poets, called magni et regulares, are, in this treatise, still invariably distinguished from those that write in the volgare, because the former proceed according to art, the latter according to chance. That Dante composed this very book on the Italian language in Latin may be due to the fact that in it he addressed those that despised the volgare, who only read Latin works, and to whom he had, therefore, to speak in this language, so as to be able to refute their opinions. This book, too, belongs to the period of exile, to which it contains an allusion (i. 6). The Convivio mentions it only as a projected work (i. 5): "This will be treated more fully in another place, in a book which, with God's help, I mean to write concerning the vulgar speech." The treatise, however, contains an historical allusion (i. 12) which assigns it a date prior to the year 1305, namely, the mention of John of Montferrat (who died in January, 1305) as a living man. And so the words in the Convivio probably mean that the book, as such, did not exist, that is to say, it was not yet completed

and published, which does not exclude the possibility of its having been partially finished. That is the explanation of D'Ovidio and Fraticelli.

But this work of Dante's also remained unfinished, the reason being unknown. It was intended to comprise at least four books, as the fourth is several times referred to in advance (ii. 4, 8), but it breaks off in the middle of the fourteenth chapter of the second book. The original title is De Eloquentia Vulgari, this being Dante's own designation in the text of the treatise itself (at the beginning and end of i. 1) and in the Convivio. Later it was called De Vulgari Eloquio, by Giovanni Villani, for example. But this did not show any misunderstanding of the author's plan; for Dante really intended to treat of the vulgar tongue, and not merely of the poetic style, as has often been assumed. Only the fact of the non-completion of the work might produce the impression that it was meant to be nothing more than a Poetica; but the author says expressly at the beginning that the eloquenția vulgaris was necessary for all, and that not only men, but women and children also strove to attain it, and at the end of the first book he says that he proposes treating the other vulgaria after the vulgare illustre, descending down to the speech that is proper to one family only. Accordingly, the precepts concerning poetic style and form constituted only a subdivision of the entire work, and Dante's eloquentia stands for language, or at the outside for eloquence in general.1

1 In the same way Pietro Allighieri, in the Commentarium, edited by Nannucci, p. 84, employs eloquentia in the sense of "speech": Rhadamanthus vero iudicat de eloquentia, utrum sit vera, ficta vel otiosa; unde Rhadamanthus,' id est iudicans verba.'"

46

Following the custom of his time, Dante begins with the origin of language itself, and answers the questions why it was given to man and to man alone, and not to the angels and animals; he also discusses which was the language of Adam, and decides in favor of Hebrew. Then he comes to speak of the confusion of Babel and of the origin of the various languages and families of languages, of which he distinguishes three in Europe. One of them is that of the Romance idioms, the common basis and original unity of which he therefore recognizes, though he does not explain correctly. According to Dante there are three Romance languages, too, which he distinguishes in the manner that has become so usual, according to their affirmative particle, into the languages of oc, oïl, and sì. Are we to assume that Spanish and Portuguese were really unknown to him, or was it again his predilection for the symbolical number three asserting itself? He puts the Hispani down as representatives of the lingua d'oc, whereas, of course, only their two northeastern provinces belong to this domain. The separate languages are again subdivided; people speak differently in the various districts, in the various towns, at times even in the various quarters of the same town. The cause of this is, as Dante thought, the change to which all human things are subjected, and which is, in the case of language, effected variously in the various localities. And so men no longer understand one another, and no longer understand what their ancestors spoke, and the need arises for a universal language, uninfluenced by remoteness of time or place. As such a language the Grammatica, that is, Latin, was invented, which is unchangeable be