be softened by prayers. Meanwhile the hopes of the Ghibelines were again raised, when Henry VII., who had been elected Emperor in 1308, entered Italy to regain the rights of sovereignty which his predecessors had lost. Elated by the better prospects which appeared to open, Dante became a strenuous advocate of the imperial cause. He composed a treatise on monarchy, in which he asserted the rights of the empire against the encroachments of the Court of Rome: he wrote a circular both to the Kings and Princes of Italy, and to the Senators of Rome, admonishing them to give an honourable reception to their Sovereign; and he sent a hortatory epistle to the Emperor himself, urging him to turn his arms against Florence, and to visit that refractory city with severe punishment. Henry did accordingly lay siege to Florence in September, 1312, but without success; and the hopes of the Ghibelines were finally extinguished in the following August, by his death, under strong suspicion of poison. Thus Dante, in consequence of his recent conduct, saw himself farther than ever from restoration to his beloved Florence. The unfortunate exile, now reduced to despair, resumed his wanderings, often returning to Verona, where the Scaligeri family always received him at their court with peculiar kindness. It has been asserted that his thirst for knowledge led him to Paris and Oxford. His journey to England is still involved in doubt; but it appears certain, that he visited Paris, where he is said to have acquired great fame, by holding public disputations on several questions of theology.
On his return to Italy, he at length found a permanent refuge at Ravenna, at the court of Guido da Polenta, the father of that ill-fated Francesca da Rimini, for whom the celebrated episode of Dante has engaged the sympathy of succeeding ages. The reception which he experienced from this Prince, who was a patron of learning and a poet, was marked by the reverence due to his character, no less than by the kindness excited by his misfortunes. In order to employ his diplomatic talents, and give him the pleasing consciousness of being useful to his host, Guido sent him as ambassador, to negotiate a peace with Venice. Dante, happy at having an opportunity of evincing his gratitude to his benefactor, proceeded on his mission with sanguine expectation of success. But being unable to obtain a public audience from the Venetians, he returned to Ravenna, so overwhelmed with fatigue and mortification, that he died shortly afterwards, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, A. D. 1321, receiving splendid obsequies from his disconsolate patron, who himself assumed the office of pronouncing a funeral oration on the dead body.
The portrait of Dante has been handed down to posterity, both by history and the arts. He is represented as a man of middle stature, with a pensive and melancholy expression of countenance. His face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes rather prominent, but full of fire, his cheek bones large, and his under lip projecting beyond the upper one; his complexion was dark, his hair and beard thick and curled. These features were so marked, that all his likenesses, whether on medals, or marble, or canvas, bear a striking resemblance to each other. Boccaccio describes him as grave and sedate in his manners, courteous and civil in his address, and extremely temperate in his way of living; whilst Villani asserts, that he was harsh, reserved, and disdainful in his deportment. But the latter writer must have painted Dante such as he was in his exile, when the bitter cup of sorrow had changed the gravity of his temper into austerity. He spoke seldom, but displayed a remarkable subtleness in his answers. The consciousness of worth had inspired him with a noble pride which spurned vice in all its aspects, and disdained condescending to any thing like flattery or dissimulation. Earnest in study, and attached to solitude, he was at times liable to fits of absence. The testimony of his contemporaries, and the still better evidence of his own works, prove that his hours of seclusion were heedfully employed. He was intimately conversant with several languages; extensively read in classical literature, and deeply versed in the staple learning of the age, scholastic theology, and the Aristotelian philosophy. He had acquired a considerable knowledge of geography, astronomy, and mathematics; had made himself thoroughly acquainted with mythology and history, both sacred and profane; nor had he neglected to adorn his mind with the more elegant accomplishments of the fine arts.
The mass of Dante’s writings, considering the unfavourable circumstances under which he laboured, is almost as wonderful as the extent of his attainments. The treatise ‘De Monarchia,’ which he composed on the arrival of Henry VII. in Italy, is one of the most ingenious productions that ever appeared, in refutation of the temporal pretensions of the Court of Rome. It was hailed with triumphant joy by the Ghibelines, and loaded with vituperation by the Guelfs. The succeeding emperor, Lewis of Bavaria, laid great stress on its arguments as supporting his claims against John XXII.; and on that account, the Pope had it burnt publicly by the Cardinal du Pujet, his legate in Lombardy, who would even have disinterred and burnt Dante’s body, and scattered his ashes to the wind, if some influential citizens had not interposed. Another Latin work, ‘De Vulgari Eloquentia,’ treats of the origin, history, and use of the genuine Italian tongue. It is full of interesting and curious research, and is still classed among the most judicious and philosophical works that Italy possesses on the subject. He meant to have comprised it in four books, but unfortunately only lived to complete two.
Of his Italian productions, the earliest was, perhaps, the ‘Vita Nuova,’ a mixture of mysterious poetry and prose, in which he gives a detailed account of his love for Beatrice. It is pervaded by a spirit of soft melancholy extremely touching; and it contains several passages having all the distinctness and individuality of truth; but, on the other hand, it is interspersed with visions and dreams, and metaphysical conceits, from which it receives all the appearance of an allegorical invention. He also composed about thirty sonnets, and nearly as many ‘Canzoni,’ or songs, both on love and morality. The sonnets, though not destitute of grace and ingenuity, are not distinguished by any particular excellence. The songs display a vigour of style, a sublimity of thought, a depth of feeling, and a richness of imagery not known before: they betoken the poet and the philosopher. On fourteen of these, he attempted in his old age to write a minute commentary, to which he gave the title of ‘Convito,’ or Banquet, as being intended “to administer the food of wisdom to the ignorant;” but he could only extend it to three. Thus he produced the first specimen of severe Italian prose; and if he indulged rather too much in fanciful allegories and scholastic subtleties, these blemishes are amply counterbalanced by a store of erudition, an elevation of sentiment, and a matchless eloquence, which it is difficult not to admire.
These works, omitting several others of inferior value, would have been more than sufficient to place Dante above all his contemporaries; yet, they stand at an immeasurable distance from the ‘Divina Commedia,’ the great poem by which he has recommended his name to the veneration of the remotest posterity. The Divine Comedy is the narrative of a mysterious journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise, which he supposes himself to have performed in the year 1300, during the passion week, having Virgil as his guide through the two regions of woe, and Beatrice through that of happiness. No creation of the human mind ever excelled this mighty vision in originality and vastness of design; nor did any one ever choose a more appropriate subject for the expression of all his thoughts and feelings. The mechanical construction of his spiritual world allowed him room for developing his geographical and astronomical knowledge: the punishments and rewards allotted to the characters introduced, gave him an excellent opportunity for a display of his theological and philosophical learning: the continual succession of innumerable spirits of different ages, nations, and conditions, enabled him to expatiate in the fields of ancient and modern history, and to expose thoroughly the degradation of Italian society in his own times; while the whole afforded him ample scope for a full exertion of his poetical endowments, and for the illustration of the moral lesson, which, whatever his real meaning may have been, is ostensibly the object of his poem. Neither were his powers of execution inferior to those of conception. Rising from the deepest abyss of torture and despair, through every degree of suffering and hope, up to the sublimest beatitude, he imparts the most vivid and intense dramatic interest to a wonderful variety of scenes which he brings before the reader. Awful, vehement, and terrific in hell, in proportion as he advances through purgatory and paradise, he contrives to modify his style in such a manner as to become more pleasing in his images, more easy in his expressions, more delicate in his sentiments, and more regular in his versification. His characters live and move; the objects which he depicts are clear and palpable; his similes are generally new and just; his reflections evince throughout the highest tone of morality; his
