ished whole, which has taken up into itself the poet's real mind. Nowhere else in poetry of equal power is there the same balanced view of what man is, and may be; nowhere so wide a grasp shown of his various capacities, so strong a desire to find a due place and function for all his various dispositions. Where he stands contrasted in his idea of human life with other poets, who have been more powerful exponents of its separate sides, is in his large and truthful comprehensiveness. Fresh from the thought of man's condition as a whole, fresh from the thought of his goodness, his greatness, his power, as well as of his evil, his mind is equally in tune when rejoicing over his restoration, as when contemplating the ruins of his fall. He never lets go the recollection that human life, if it grovels at one end in corruption and sin, and has to pass through the sweat and dust and disfigurement of earthly toil, has throughout compensations, remedies, functions, spheres innumerable of profitable activity, sources inexhaustible of delight and consolation, and at the other end a perfection which cannot be named. No one ever measured the greatness of man in all its forms with so true and yet with so admiring an eye, and with such glowing hope, as he who has also portrayed so awfully man's littleness and vileness. And he went farther, no one who could understand and do homage to greatness in man, ever drew the line. so strongly between greatness and goodness, and so unhesitatingly placed the hero of this world only – placed him in all his magnificence, honored with no timid or dissembling reverence at the distance of worlds below the place of the lowest saint.

Those who know the Divina Commedia best, will

best know how hard it is to be the interpreter of such a mind; but they will sympathize with the wish to call attention to it. They know, and would wish others also to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of that wonderful poem. They know its austere yet subduing beauty; they know what force there is in its free and earnest and solemn verse, to strengthen, to tranquillize, to console. It is a small thing that it has the secret of Nature and Man; that a few keen words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them recognize, in distinct image or thought, fugitive feelings, or their unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or motion; that it has enriched the public and collective memory of society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feeling and fortune; has charmed ear and mind by the music of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its plan. But, besides this, they know how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faint-heartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truths. They know how often they have found, in times of trouble, if not light, at least that deep sense of reality, permanent, though unseen, which is more than light can always give in the view which it has suggested to them of the judgments and the love of God.

II

THE POETRY OF THE INFERNO

BY ADOLF GASPARY.1

DANTE's poem describes to us a spiritual journey. It passes from place to place, continually changing the scenery and the characters of the drama; one single person always remains, Dante, the traveler himself. In the Commedia the greatest subjectivity rules supreme: the poet himself never leaves the scene of action, he is the hero of the action, the most interesting figure in it, and all that he sees and learns awakens a living echo in his emotional soul. He speaks with the sinners, the penitents, and saints, and in these conversations he paints himself. But for a journey on so grand a scale every conceivable space must needs be limited, even that of the longest poem. An enormous number of persons appears and disappears in this poem. The reader is continually hurried onwards from one to the other: there is little time for each, and a few traits must suffice to sketch his portrait. The great scenes are developed almost casually, or, rather, there is no space for their development, so rapidly does the narrative progress. In this way Dante's Inferno,

1 The History of Early Italian Literature to the Death of Dante, Adolf Gaspary, trans. by Herman Oelsner, M. A., Ph. D. George Bell & Sons, London. The extracts from this valuable book are made through the courteous permission of the translator, Dr. Oelsner.

especially, is a very whirlwind of emotions, passions, and events. If it had not been a Dante that was creating them, the poetical situation would have been destroyed and the figures stifled, the work becoming dry and empty owing to the superabundance of the subject-matter. But Dante possesses the art of drawing his figures even in a limited space. At times they remain sketches, though sketches by a master hand; but frequently the few traits suffice to bring before our mind the entire and complete picture, with all its details. Dante is the great master of poetic expression : with his energetic style, he is able to condense a world of ideas and feelings in a single word, in an image that carries us away and places us in the midst of the situation.

At the very beginning of the Commedia, in the midst of the thorny allegories, the reader is fascinated by the sympathetic figure of Virgil, and by the gentle opening conversation between him and his charge. The fourth canto describes the privileged sojourn of the great heathens in Limbo, and expresses in a most fascinating manner Dante's deep reverence for antiquity, and, at the same time, the consciousness he has of his own merit, when he tells how he was himself introduced by Virgil into the circle of the five great poets as a sixth. He felt that he was destined to revive an art that had been so long lost, and just pride such as this pleases us in the case of a man of genius. The general impression of this situation is vivid, the noble gathering, all the heroes and sages, and, in their midst, their great admirer and disciple. But the individual figures are not yet clearly distinguished; the poet gives little more than a number

of names, rarely adding an epithet or a circumstance that might characterize the man. It is a kind of catalogue, and not even the usual et cetera of such enumerations is missing (iv. 145):

Io non posso ritrar di tutti appieno.

This same method, which is, as it were, an abbreviated form of true poetic exposition, is continued in the following canto. Here the poet has reached the second circle, that of the carnal sinners, who are driven to and fro by a raging tempest. Among them he sees Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris, Tristan, e più di mille. But these enumerations of Dante's are merely introductory: from the bands of spirits, forming the general background, single ones detach themselves. Among these souls, two that are borne along together by the wind specially attract his attention. They are Francesca of Rimini and her Paolo, who, burning for each other with sinful love, were slain by Gianciotto Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, Francesca's husband, and the brother of Paolo. Dante does not know them, but the pair, united even in the torments of Hell, arouse his sympathy; he would fain speak with them, and obtains his guide's permission. This is one of the passages in which the special character of Dante's poetry is best revealed. Many persons, nowadays, who have heard the famous Francesca da Rimini so much discussed, may perhaps feel somewhat disappointed when they open the book. There are scarcely seventy verses, which are quickly read, and which leave but little impression on the ordinary and superficial reader. A sensitive mind is needed for the appreciation of Dante's