But he did not start from an abstraction. He believed that history attested the existence of such a monarchy. The prestige of the Roman empire was then strong. Europe still lingers on the idea, and cannot even yet bring itself to give up its part in that great monument of human power. But in the middle ages the Empire was still believed to exist. It was the last greatness which had been seen in the world, and the world would not believe that it was over. Above all, in Italy, a continuity of lineage, of language, of local names, and in part of civilisation and law, forbad the thought that the great Roman people had ceased to be. Florentines and Venetians boasted that they were Romans: the legends which the Florentine ladies told to their maidens at the loom were tales of their mother city, Rome. The Roman element, little understood, but profoundly reverenced and dearly cherished, was dominant; the conductor of civilisation, and enfolding the inheritance of all the wisdom, experience, feeling, art, of the past, it elevated, even while it overawed, oppressed, and enslaved. A deep belief in Providence added to the intrinsic grandeur of the empire a sacred character. The flight of the eagle has been often told and often sung; but neither in Livy or Virgil, Gibbon or Bossuet, with intenser sympathy or more kindred power, than in those rushing and unflagging verses in which the middle-age poet hears the imperial legislator relate the fated course of the "sacred sign," from the day when Pallas died for it, till it accomplished the vengeance of heaven in Judaea, and afterwards, under Charlemagne, smote down the enemies of the Church.[82]
[Footnote 82: _Parad._ c. 6.]
The following pa.s.sage, from the _De Monarchia_, will show the poet"s view of the Roman empire, and its office in the world:
To the reasons above alleged, a memorable experience brings confirmation: I mean that state of mankind which the Son of G.o.d, when He would for man"s salvation take man upon Him, either waited for, or ordered when so He willed. For if from the fall of our first parents, which was the starting-point of all our wanderings, we retrace the various dispositions of men and their times, we shall not find at any time, except under the divine monarch Augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, that the world was everywhere quiet. And that then mankind was happy in the tranquillity of universal peace, this all writers of history, this famous poets, this even the Scribe of the meekness of Christ has deigned to attest. And lastly, Paul has called that most blessed condition, the fulness of time. Truly time, and the things of time, were full, for no mystery of our felicity then lacked its minister. But how the world has gone on from the time when that seamless robe was first torn by the claws of covetousness, we may read, and would that we might not also see. O race of men, by how great storms and losses, by how great shipwrecks hast thou of necessity been vexed since, transformed into a beast of many heads, thou hast been struggling different ways, sick in understanding, equally sick in heart. The higher intellect, with its invincible reasons, thou reckest not of; nor of the inferior, with its eye of experience; nor of affection, with the sweetness of divine suasion, when the trumpet of the Holy Ghost sounds to thee--"Behold, how good is it, and how pleasant, brethren, to dwell together in unity."--_De Monarch._ lib. i. p. 54.
Yet this great Roman empire existed still unimpaired in name--not unimposing even in what really remained of it. Dante, to supply a want, turned it into a theory--a theory easy to smile at now, but which contained and was a beginning of unknown or unheeded truth. What he yearns after is the predominance of the principle of justice in civil society. That, if it is still imperfect, is no longer a dream in our day; but experience had never realised it to him, and he takes refuge in tentative and groping theory. The divinations of the greatest men have been vague and strange, and none have been stranger than those of the author of the _De Monarchia_. The second book, in which he establishes the t.i.tle of the Roman people to Universal Empire, is as startling a piece of mediaeval argument as it would be easy to find.
As when we cannot attain to look upon a cause, we commonly wonder at a new effect, so when we know the cause, we look down with a certain derision on those who remain in wonder.
And I indeed wondered once how the Roman people had, without any resistance, been set over the world; and looking at it superficially, I thought that they had obtained this by no right, but by mere force of arms. But when I fixed deeply the eyes of my mind on it, and by most effectual signs knew that Divine Providence had wrought this, wonder departed, and a certain scornful contempt came in its stead, when I perceived the nations raging against the pre-eminence of the Roman people:--when I see the people imagining a vain thing, as I once used to do; when, moreover, I grieve over kings and princes agreeing in this only, to be against their Lord and his anointed Roman Emperor. Wherefore in derision, not without a certain grief, I can cry out, for that glorious people and for Caesar, with him who cried in behalf of the Prince of Heaven, "Why did the nations rage, and the people imagine vain things; the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were joined in one against the Lord and his anointed." But (because natural love suffers not derision to be of long duration, but, like the summer sun, which, scattering the morning mists, irradiates the east with light, so prefers to pour forth the light of correction) therefore to break the bonds of the ignorance of such kings and rulers, to show that the human race is free from _their_ yoke, I will exhort myself, in company with the most holy Prophet, taking up his following words, "Let us break their bonds, and cast away from us their yoke."--_De Monarch._ lib. ii. p. 58.
And to prove this pre-eminence of right in the Roman people, and their heirs, the Emperors of Christendom, he appeals not merely to the course of Providence, to their high and n.o.ble ancestry, to the blessings of their just and considerate laws, to their unselfish guardianship of the world--"_Romanum imperium de fonte nascitur pietatis_;"--not merely to their n.o.ble examples of private virtue, self-devotion, and public spirit--"those most sacred victims of the Decian house, who laid down their lives for the public weal, as Livy--not as _they_ deserved, but as _he_ was able--tells to their glory; and that unspeakable sacrifice of freedom"s sternest guardians, the Catos;" not merely to the "judgment of G.o.d" in that great duel and wager of battle for empire, in which heaven declared against all other champions and "co-athletes"--Alexander, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and by all the formalities of judicial combat awarded the great prize to those who fought, not for love or hatred, but justice--"_Quis igitur nunc adeo obtusae mentis est, qui non videat, sub jure duelli gloriosum populum coronam totius...o...b..s esse lucratum?_"--not merely to arguments derived "from the principles of the Christian faith"--but to _miracles_. "The Roman empire," he says, "was, in order to its perfections, aided by the help of miracles; therefore it was willed by G.o.d; and, by consequence, both was, and is, of right." And these miracles, "proved by the testimony of ill.u.s.trious authorities," are the prodigies of Livy--the ancile of Numa, the geese of the Capitol, the escape of Clelia, the hail-storm which checked Hannibal.[83]
[Footnote 83: _De Monarch._ lib. ii. pp. 62, 66, 78, 82, 84, 108-114, 116, 72-76.]
The intellectual phenomenon is a strange one. It would be less strange if Dante were arguing in the schools, or pleading for a party. But even Henry of Luxemburg cared little for such a throne as the poet wanted him to fill, much less Can Grande and the Visconti. The idea, the theory, and the argument, are of the writer"s own solitary meditation. We may wonder. But there are few things more strange than the history of argument. How often has a cause or an idea turned out, in the eyes of posterity, so much better than its arguments. How often have we seen argument getting as it were into a groove, and unable to extricate itself, so as to do itself justice. The everyday cases of private experience, of men defending right conclusions on wrong or conventional grounds, or in a confused form, entangled with conclusions of a like yet different nature;--of arguments, theories, solutions, which once satisfied, satisfying us no longer on a question about which we hold the same belief--of one party unable to comprehend the arguments of another--of one section of the same side smiling at the defence of their common cause by another--are all reproduced on a grander scale in the history of society. There too, one age cannot comprehend another; there too it takes time to disengage, subordinate, eliminate. Truth of this sort is not the elaboration of one keen or strong mind, but of the secret experience of many; "_nihil sine aetate est, omnia tempus expectant_." But a counterpart to the _De Monarchia_ is not wanting in our own day; theory has not ceased to be mighty. In warmth and earnestness, in sense of historic grandeur, in its support of a great cause and a great idea, not less than in the thought of its motto, [Greek: heis koiranos esto], De Maistre"s volume _Du Pape_, recalls the antagonist _De Monarchia_; but it recalls it not less in its bold dealing with facts, and its bold a.s.sumption of principles, though the knowledge and debates of five more busy centuries, and the experience of modern courts and revolutions, might have guarded the Piedmontese n.o.bleman from the mistakes of the old Florentine.
But the idea of the _De Monarchia_ is no key to the _Commedia_. The direct and primary purpose of the _Commedia_ is surely its obvious one. It is to stamp a deep impression on the mind, of the issues of good and ill doing here--of the real worlds of pain and joy. To do this forcibly, it is done in detail--of course it can only be done in figure. Punishment, purification, or the fulness of consolation are, as he would think, at this very moment, the lot of all the numberless spirits who have ever lived here--spirits still living and sentient as himself: parallel with our life, they too are suffering or are at rest. Without pause or interval, in all its parts simultaneously, this awful scene is going on--the judgments of G.o.d are being fulfilled--could we but see it. It exists, it might be seen, at each instant of time, by a soul whose eyes were opened, which was carried through it. And this he imagines. It had been imagined before; it is the working out, which is peculiar to him. It is not a barren vision.
His subject is, besides the eternal world, the soul which contemplates it; by sight, according to his figures--in reality, by faith. As he is led on from woe to deeper woe, then through the tempered chastis.e.m.e.nts and resignation of Purgatory to the beatific vision, he is tracing the course of the soul on earth, realising sin and weaning itself from it--of its purification and preparation for its high lot, by converse with the good and wise, by the remedies of grace, by efforts of will and love, perhaps by the dominant guidance of some single pure and holy influence, whether of person, or inst.i.tution, or thought. Nor will we say but that beyond this earthly probation, he is not also striving to grasp and imagine to himself something of that awful process and training, by which, whether in or out of the flesh, the spirit is made fit to meet its Maker, its Judge, and its Chief Good.
Thus it seems that even in its main design, the poem has more than one aspect; it is a picture, a figure, partially a history, perhaps an antic.i.p.ation. And this is confirmed, by what the poet has himself distinctly stated, of his ideas of poetic composition. His view is expressed generally in his philosophical treatise, the _Convito_; but it is applied directly to the _Commedia_, in a letter, which, if in its present form, of doubtful authenticity, without any question represents his sentiments, and the substance of which is incorporated in one of the earliest writings on the poem, Boccaccio"s commentary.
The following is his account of the subject of the poem:
For the evidence of what is to be said, it is to be noted, that this work is not of one single meaning only, but may be said to have many meanings ("_polysensuum_"). For the first meaning is that of the letter--another is that of things signified by the letter; the first of these is called the literal sense, the second, the allegorical or moral. This mode of treating a subject may for clearness" sake be considered in those verses of the Psalm, "_In exitu Israel_." "When Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from the strange people, Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion." For if we look at the _letter_ only, there is here signified, the going out of the children of Israel in the time of Moses--if at the _allegory_ there is signified our redemption through Christ--if at the _moral_ sense there is signified to us the conversion of the soul from the mourning and misery of sin to the state of grace--if at the _anagogic_ sense,[84] there is signified the pa.s.sing out of the holy soul from the bondage of this corruption to the liberty of everlasting glory. And these mystical meanings, though called by different names, may all be called _allegorical_ as distinguished from the literal or historical sense.... This being considered, it is plain that there ought to be a twofold subject, concerning which the two corresponding meanings may proceed. Therefore we must consider first concerning the subject of this work as it is to be understood literally, then as it is to be considered allegorically. The subject then of the whole work, taken literally only, is the state of souls after death considered in itself. For about this, and on this, the whole work turns. But if the work be taken allegorically, its subject is man, as, by his freedom of choice deserving well or ill, he is subject to the justice which rewards and punishes.[85]
[Footnote 84:
_Litera_ gesta refert, quid credas _allegoria_, _Moralis_ quid agas, quid speres _anagogia_.
De Witte"s note from _Buti_.]
[Footnote 85: Ep. ad _Kan Grand._ -- 6, 7.]
The pa.s.sage in the _Convito_ is to the same effect; but his remarks on the _moral_ and _anagogic_ meaning may be quoted:
The third sense is called _moral_; that it is which readers ought to go on noting carefully in writings, for their own profit and that of their disciples: as in the Gospel it may be noted, when Christ went up to the mountain to be transfigured, that of the twelve Apostles, he took with him only three; in which morally we may understand, that in the most secret things we ought to have but few companions. The fourth sort of meaning is called _anagogic_, that is, above our sense; and this is when we spiritually interpret a pa.s.sage, which even in its literal meaning, by means of the things signified, expresses the heavenly things of everlasting glory: as may be seen in that song of the Prophet, which says, that in the coming out of the people of Israel from Egypt, Judah was made holy and free; which although it is manifestly true according to the letter, is not less true as spiritually understood; that is, that when the soul comes out of sin, it is made holy and free, in its own power.[86]
[Footnote 86: _Convito_, Tr. 2, c. 1.]
With this pa.s.sage before us there can be no doubt of the meaning, however veiled, of those beautiful lines, already referred to, in which Virgil, after having conducted the poet up the steeps of Purgatory, where his sins have been one by one cancelled by the ministering angels, finally takes leave of him, and bids him wait for Beatrice, on the skirts of the earthly Paradise:
Come la scala tutta sotto noi Fu corsa e fummo in su "l grado superno, In me ficc Virgilio gli occhi suoi, E disse: "Il temporal fuoco, e l"eterno Veduto hai, figlio, e se" venuto in parte Ov"io per me piu oltre non discerno.
Tratto t"ho qui con ingegno e con arte: Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; Fuor se" dell"erte vie, fuor se" dell"arte.
Vedi il sole che "n fronte ti riluce: Vedi l"erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli Che quella terra sol da se produce.
Mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli Che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno, Seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli.
Non aspettar mio dir piu ne mio cenno: Libero, dritto, sano e tuo arbitrio, E fallo fora non fare a suo senno:-- Perch"io te sopra te corono e mitrio."[87]
[Footnote 87:
When we had run O"er all the ladder to its topmost round, As there we stood, on me the Mantuan fix"d His eyes, and thus he spake: "Both fires, my son, The temporal and the eternal, thou hast seen: And art arrived, where of itself my ken No further reaches. I with skill and art, Thus far have drawn thee. Now thy pleasure take For guide. Thou hast o"ercome the steeper way, O"ercome the straiter. Lo! the sun, that darts His beam upon thy forehead: lo! the herb, The arborets and flowers, which of itself This land pours forth profuse. Till those bright eyes With gladness come, which, weeping, made me haste To succour thee, thou mayest or seat thee down, Or wander where thou wilt. Expect no more Sanction of warning voice or sign from me, Free of thine own arbitrement to choose, Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense Were henceforth error. I invest thee then With crown and mitre, sovereign o"er thyself."
_Purg._ c. 27--CARY.]
The general meaning of the _Commedia_ is clear enough. But it certainly does appear to refuse to be fitted into a connected formal scheme of interpretation. It is not a h.o.m.ogeneous, consistent allegory, like the _Pilgrim"s Progress_ and the _Fairy Queen_. The allegory continually breaks off, shifts its ground, gives place to other elements, or mingles with them--like a stream which suddenly sinks into the earth, and after pa.s.sing under plains and mountains, reappears in a distant point, and in different scenery. We can, indeed, imagine its strange author commenting on it, and finding or marking out its prosaic substratum, with the cold-blooded precision and scholastic distinctions of the _Convito_. However, he has not done so. And of the many enigmas which present themselves, either in its structure or separate parts, the key seems hopelessly lost. The early commentators are very ingenious, but very unsatisfactory; they see where we can see, but beyond that they are as full of uncertainty as ourselves. It is in character with that solitary and haughty spirit, while touching universal sympathies, appalling and charming all hearts, to have delighted in his own dark sayings, which had meaning only to himself. It is true that, whether in irony, or from that quaint studious care for the appearance of literal truth, which makes him apologise for the wonders which he relates, and confirm them by an oath, "on the words of his poem,"[88] he provokes and challenges us; bids us admire "doctrine hidden under strange verses;"[89] bids us strain our eyes, for the veil is thin:
Aguzza, qui, lettor, ben l"occhi al vero: Che il velo e ora ben tanto sottile, Certo, che il trapa.s.sar dentro e leggiero.--_Purg._ c. 8.
But eyes are still strained in conjecture and doubt.
[Footnote 88:
Sempre a quel ver, ch"ha faccia di menzogna, De" l"uom chiuder le labbra, quanto puote, Per che senza colpa fa vergogna.
Ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note Di questa _Commedia_, lettor, ti giuro S"elle non sien di lunga grazia vote, &c.--_Inf._ 16.]
[Footnote 89: _Inf._ 9.]
Yet the most certain and detailed commentary, one which a.s.signed the exact reason for every image or allegory, and its place and connexion in a general scheme, would add but little to the charm or to the use of the poem. It is not so obscure but that every man"s experience who has thought over and felt the mystery of our present life, may supply the commentary--the more ample, the wider and more various has been his experience, the deeper and keener his feeling. Details and links of connexion may be matter of controversy. Whether the three beasts of the forest mean definitely the vices of the time, or of Florence specially, or of the poet himself--"the wickedness of his heels, compa.s.sing him round about"--may still exercise critics and antiquaries; but that they carry with them distinct and special impressions of evil, and that they are the hindrances of man"s salvation, is not doubtful. And our knowledge of the key of the allegory, where we possess it, contributes but little to the effect.
We may infer from the _Convito_[90] that the eyes of Beatrice stand definitely for the _demonstrations_, and her smiles for the _persuasions_ of wisdom; but the poetry of the Paradiso is not about demonstrations and persuasions, but about looks and smiles; and the ineffable and holy calm--"_serenitatis et aeternitatis afflatus_"--which pervades it, comes from the sacred truths, and holy persons, and that deep spirit of high-raised yet composed devotion, which it requires no interpreter to show us.
[Footnote 90: _Convito_, Tr. 3, c. 15.]
Figure and symbol, then, are doubtless the law of composition in the _Commedia_; but this law discloses itself very variously, and with different degrees of strictness. In its primary and most general form, it is palpable, consistent, pervading. There can be no doubt that the poem is meant to be understood figuratively--no doubt of what in general it is meant to shadow forth--no doubt as to the general meaning of its parts, their connexion with each other. But in its secondary and subordinate applications, the law works--to our eye at least--irregularly, unequally, and fitfully. There can be no question that Virgil, the poet"s guide, represents the purely human element in the training of the soul and of society, as Beatrice does the divine.
But neither represent the whole; he does not sum up all appliances of wisdom in Virgil, nor all teachings and influences of grace in Beatrice; these have their separate figures. And both represent successively several distinct forms of their general ant.i.types. They have various degrees of abstractness, and narrow down, according to that order of things to which they refer and correspond, into the special and the personal. In the general economy of the poem, Virgil stands for human wisdom in its widest sense; but he also stands for it in its various shapes, in the different parts. He is the type of human philosophy and science.[91] He is, again, more definitely, that spirit of imagination and poetry, which opens men"s eyes to the glory of the visible, and the truth of the invisible; and to Italians, he is a definite embodiment of it, their own great poet, "_vates, poeta noster_."[92] In the Christian order, he is human wisdom, dimly mindful of its heavenly origin--presaging dimly its return to G.o.d--sheltering in heathen times that "vague and unconnected family of religious truths, originally from G.o.d, but sojourning without the sanction of miracle or visible home, as pilgrims up and down the world."[93] In the political order, he is the guide of law-givers, wisdom fashioning the impulses and instincts of men into the harmony of society, contriving stability and peace, guarding justice; fit part for the poet to fill, who had sung the origin of Rome, and the justice and peace of Augustus. In the order of individual life, and the progress of the individual soul, he is the human conscience witnessing to duty, its discipline and its hopes, and with yet more certain and fearful presage, to its vindication; the human conscience seeing and acknowledging the law, but unable to confer power to fulfil it--wakened by grace from among the dead, leading the living man up to it, and waiting for its light and strength. But he is more than a figure. To the poet himself, who blends with his high argument his whole life, Virgil had been the utmost that mind can be to mind--teacher, quickener and revealer of power, source of thought, exemplar and model, never disappointing, never attained to, observed with "long study and great love:"
Tu duca, tu signor, e tu maestro.--_Inf._ 2.
[Footnote 91: "O tu ch"onori ogni scienza ed arte."--_Inf._ 4. "Quel savio gentil che tutto seppe."--_Inf._ 7. "Il mar di tutto "l senno."--_Inf._ 8.]
[Footnote 92: _De Monarchia._]
[Footnote 93: Newman"s _Arians_.]
And towards this great master, the poet"s whole soul is poured forth in reverence and affection. To Dante he is no figure, but a person--with feelings and weaknesses--overcome by the vexation, kindling into the wrath, carried away by the tenderness, of the moment. He reads his scholar"s heart, takes him by the hand in danger, carries him in his arms and in his bosom, "like a son more than a companion," rebukes his unworthy curiosity, kisses him when he shows a n.o.ble spirit, asks pardon for his own mistakes. Never were the kind, yet severe ways of a master, or the disciple"s diffidence and open-heartedness, drawn with greater force, or less effort; and he seems to have been reflecting on his own affection to Virgil, when he makes Statius forget that they were both but shades:
Or puoi la quant.i.tate Comprender dell"amor ch"a te mi scalda, Quando _dismento la nostra vanitate Trattando l"ombre come cosa salda_.--_Purg._ 21.
And so with the poet"s second guide. The great idea which Beatrice figures, though always present, is seldom rendered artificially prominent, and is often entirely hidden beneath the rush of real recollections, and the creations of dramatic power. Abstractions venture and trust themselves among realities, and for the time are forgotten. A name, a real person, a historic pa.s.sage, a lament or denunciation, a tragedy of actual life, a legend of cla.s.sic times, the fortunes of friends--the story of Francesca or Ugolino, the fate of Buonconte"s corpse, the apology of Pier delle Vigne, the epitaph of Madonna Pia, Ulysses" western voyage, the march of Roman history--appear and absorb for themselves all interest: or else it is a philosophical speculation, or a theory of morality, or a case of conscience--not indeed alien from the main subject, yet independent of the allegory, and not translateable into any new meaning--standing on their own ground, worked out each according to its own law; but they do not disturb the main course of the poet"s thought, who grasps and paints each detail of human life in its own peculiarity, while he sees in each a significance and interest beyond itself. He does not stop in each case to tell us so, but he makes it felt. The tale ends, the individual disappears, and the great allegory resumes its course. It is like one of those great musical compositions which alone seem capable of adequately expressing, in a limited time, a course of unfolding and change, in an idea, a career, a life, a society--where one great thought predominates, recurs, gives colour and meaning, and forms the unity of the whole, yet pa.s.ses through many shades and transitions; is at one time definite, at another suggestive and mysterious; incorporating and giving free place and play to airs and melodies even of an alien cast; striking off abruptly from its expected road, but without ever losing itself, without breaking its true continuity, or failing of its completeness.
This then seems to us the end and purpose of the _Commedia_;--to produce on the mind a sense of the judgments of G.o.d, a.n.a.logous to that produced by Scripture itself. They are presented to us in the Bible in shapes which address themselves primarily to the heart and conscience, and seek not carefully to explain themselves. They are likened to the "great deep," to the "strong mountains"--vast and awful, but abrupt and incomplete, as the huge, broken, rugged piles and chains of mountains. And we see them through cloud and mist, in shapes only approximating to the true ones. Still they impress us deeply and truly, often the more deeply because unconsciously. A character, an event, a word, isolated and unexplained, stamps its meaning ineffaceably, though ever a matter of question and wonder; it may be dark to the intellect, yet the conscience understands it, often but too well. In such suggestive ways is the Divine government for the most part put before us in the Bible--ways which do not satisfy the understanding, but which fill us with a sense of reality. And it seems to have been by meditating on them, which he certainly did, much and thoughtfully--and on the infinite variety of similar ways in which the strongest impressions are conveyed to us in ordinary life, by means short of clear and distinct explanation--by looks, by images, by sounds, by motions, by remote allusion and broken words, that Dante was led to choose so new and remarkable a mode of conveying to his countrymen his thoughts and feelings and presentiments about the mystery of G.o.d"s counsel. The Bible teaches us by means of real history, traced so far as is necessary along its real course. The poet expresses his view of the world also in real history, but carried on into figure.
The poetry with which the Christian Church had been instinct from the beginning, converges and is gathered up in the _Commedia_. The faith had early shown its poetical aspect. It is superfluous to dwell on this, for it is the charge against ancient teaching that it was too large and imaginative. It soon began to try rude essays in sculpture and mosaic: expressed its feeling of nature in verse and prose, rudely also, but often with originality and force; and opened a new vein of poetry in the thoughts, hopes, and aspirations of regenerate man.
Modern poetry must go back, for many of its deepest and most powerful sources, to the writings of the Fathers, and their followers of the School. The Church further had a poetry of its own, besides the poetry of literature; it had the poetry of devotion--the Psalter chanted daily, in a new language and a new meaning; and that wonderful body of hymns, to which age after age had contributed its offering, from the Ambrosian hymns to the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_ of a king of France, the _Pange lingua_ of Thomas Aquinas, the _Dies irae_, and _Stabat Mater_, of the two Franciscan brethren, Thomas of Celano, and Jacopone.[94] The elements and fragments of poetry were everywhere in the Church--in her ideas of life, in her rules and inst.i.tutions for pa.s.sing through it, in her preparation for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, commercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings and ends she had given them, the religious seriousness with which the forms of each were dignified--in her doctrine, and her dogmatic system--her dependence on the unseen world--her Bible. From each and all of these, and from that public feeling, which, if it expressed itself but abruptly and incoherently, was quite alive to the poetry which surrounded it, the poet received due impressions of greatness and beauty, of joy and dread. Then the poetry of Christian religion and Christian temper, hitherto dispersed, or manifested in act only, found its full and distinct utterance, not unworthy to rank in grandeur, in music, in sustained strength, with the last n.o.ble voices from expiring Heathenism.
[Footnote 94: Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, 1849.]
But a long interval had pa.s.sed since then. The _Commedia_ first disclosed to Christian and modern Europe that it was to have a literature of its own, great and admirable, though in its own language and embodying its own ideas. "It was as if, at some of the ancient games, a stranger had appeared upon the plain, and thrown his quoit among the marks of former casts, which tradition had ascribed to the demi-G.o.ds."[95] We are so accustomed to the excellent and varied literature of modern times, so original, so perfect in form and rich in thought, so expressive of all our sentiments, meeting so completely our wants, fulfilling our ideas, that we can scarcely imagine the time when this condition was new--when society was beholden to a foreign language for the exponents of its highest thoughts and feelings. But so it was when Dante wrote. The great poets, historians, philosophers of his day, the last great works of intellect, belonged to old Rome, and the Latin language. So wonderful and prolonged was the fascination of Rome. Men still lived under its influence; believed that the Latin language was the perfect and permanent instrument of thought in its highest forms, the only expression of refinement and civilisation; and had not conceived the hope that their own dialects could ever rise to such heights of dignity and power. Latin, which had enchased and preserved such precious remains of ancient wisdom, was now shackling the living mind in its efforts. Men imagined that they were still using it naturally on all high themes and solemn business; but though they used it with facility, it was no longer natural; it had lost the elasticity of life, and had become in their hands a stiffened and distorted, though still powerful, instrument. The very use of the word _latino_ in the writers of this period, to express what is clear and philosophical in language,[96] while it shows their deep reverence for it, shows how Latin civilisation was no longer their own, how it had insensibly become an external and foreign element. But they found it very hard to resign their claim to a share in its glories; with nothing of their own to match against it, they still delighted to speak of it as "our language," or its writers as "our poets," "our historians."[97]
[Footnote 95: Hallam"s _Middle Ages_, c. ix. vol. iii. p. 563.]