the greatest of all epics, but which his modesty called simply "a comedy," to which admiring posterity, retaining still his own designation, has added most worthily that title of "Divine." In the present day, it would be a work, if not of rashness, assuredly of supererogation, to enter into anything like a critical dissertation upon that mighty masterpiece of genius, the "Divina Commedia "of Daute. Its excellence is of that commanding character, that it commended itself to the world's admiration from its first appearance; and from that to the present from Boccaccio to Ugo Foscolo-it has been the subject of able and luminous comment both from the professor's chair and the critic's study. Though the worship of Dante was, like all human feeling, subject to the mutations of fashion. though it was the caprice of one age to go Dante-mad (Danteggiare), as of the succeeding one to be satisfied better with lighter food-yet at no time has the poet been without a large body of sincere and ardent admirers. We shall content ourselves with quoting the words of two critics, one of his own times, another of ours. Giovanni Villani the historian, who must have been acquainted with Dante, after noticing the defects of the poet, thus concludes his criticism-"Una vivacissima fantasia, un ingegno acuto, uno stile aquando aquando sublime, patetico, energetico, che ti solleva e rapisce, immagini pittoresche, fortissime invettivi, tratti teneri e passionati, ed altri somiglianti ornamenti onde è fregiato questo o poema, o, comunque vogliam chiamarlo, lavoro poetico, sono un ben abbondante compenso de' defetti e delle macchie che in esso s'incontrano."

Mr. Sismondi, who has so lately passed away from amongst us, gives us the following critical estimate of the "Divina Commedia ' "Without

a prototype in any existing language, equally novel in its various parts and in the combination of the whole, it stands alone as the first monument of modern genius the first great work which appeared in the reviving literature of Europe. In its composition it is strictly conformable to the essential and unvariable principles of the poetical art. It possesses unity of design and execution, and bears the visible impress of a mighty genius, capable of embracing at once the parts and the whole of its scheme; of employing

In perusing the immortal work of Dante, one, in truth, knows not what most to admire-the boldness and sublimity of his thoughts the splendour of his images the vastness of his knowledge; his pathos, his passion, his force the wonderful condensation of expression-the severe simplicity of language, that is rarely ornamentedthe classic purity of his style. In each and all of these Dante was a master. In each and all of these, the poets of his own country and those of modern Europe have drawn from his work as from a well of living water. Deriving comparatively little from his predecessors, who shall tell how much the poets who have succeeded him have drawn from his example and inspiration. Had Virgil never lived, Dante would, we believe, have written his "comedy;" but we may ask, with more hesitation, would Milton have produced the "Paradise Lost" had Dante never sung his divine mysteries? Indeed, there is a striking resemblance between the two great poems; and the fine criticism of Macaulay on Milton may be applied to Dante:"His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment; no sooner are they pronounced than the past is present, and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead."

There is one element essential to the Italian mind, and that of course we find present in Dante. The principle of love the mind-worship of the beautiful-awoke his earliest musings, and presided over his loftiest and his latest song. To those who have read the "Vita Nuova," or the "Divina Commedia," the name of Beatrice Portinari is as well known as that of her poet-lover. Boccaccio, in his life of Dante, has left us a touching and vivid description of the beautiful girl, and her first meeting with the poet. The passage is too long for quotation; but from it we learn, that at a Mayday fête, given by Folco Portinari,

Dante, then only nine years old, was amongst the juvenile guests. Beatrice, or Bice, the host's daughter, was a year younger-so graceful, so lovely, that many regarded her as an angel. Boy that he was, so deeply and so suddenly was her image engraven upon the heart of Dante, that from that day until life left him it was not obliterated.

The commentaries upon the "Divina Commedia" are almost beyond count. Not only the sources from which Dante derived his plot have been the subject of a variety of conjectures, but the political objects, as well as the moral bearings of the poem, have been diversely interpreted.

But perhaps we should seek in the poet's mind, and the circumstances of his life, for the moulds in which the "Divina Commedia" were cast. Many passages in the "Convito" of the poet may serve as a key to the plan of the "Divine Comedy," and ought to be studied by every admirer of that great poem. Writings," says Dante,

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"should be viewed in four different senses a literal sense, an allegorical sense, a moral sense, and a mystical (analogical) sense." All of which senses the poet proceeds in the same passage to explain and exemplify. With the exegetical light which these observations of the poet himself affords, one may advantageously examine the political as well as the moral and æsthetical bearings of the poem. Whatever be the true interpretation, one thing is certain, that the sensation created in Italy by the appearance of the "Divina Commedia ' was totally without example. It was in every man's mouth. In the public streets and squares of the very city whence its illustrious author had been banished, people might be heard repeating extracts from "il libro," as the work was emphatically denominated. Boccaccio, in his "Life of Dante," relates an incident, which forcibly illustrates the reverence, approaching to awe, in which the poet was held by the lower classes of his countrymen :—

"Walking one day in the streets, Dante had to pass in front of a doorway, at which a group of women were assembled for a friendly gossip. On his approach, one of them put her finger on her lips, and exclaimed in a mysterious voice to her companions—

"Hush! that is the man who can

descend to the infernal regions when he likes, and then writes what he has seen l'

"True,' said another, it must be so; and that is why his face is so swarthy, and his beard so black and curly, from the heat and smoke he has had to go through.'

The feelings with which, at this day, we contemplate the great work of Dante, partake somewhat of the same sentiment of reverence. We look upon it as the traveller in the East looks upon the Pyramids. Its sublime aspect, its colossal proportions, its dignity, its symmetry, and its solemn beauty, place it as much beyond the structures of our own times, with all our advances of science and civilisation, as it stood in the days when it was first reared amid the punier works that have since perished around it.

A great poet of modern Italy has recorded his high estimate of Dante, and few poets of any age or country were better fitted to pronounce upon the merits of the illustrious Florentine. Alfieri undertook to extract from the "Divina Commedia" all the verses which were remarkable either for harmony, for expression, or for thought. These extracts, all made with his own hand, ran to two hundred pages in quarto, written in very small characters, and nevertheless unfinished, and were discontinued at the nineteenth canto of the Paradiso. M. Ginguené informs us that he saw this manuscript, and that he perceived at the top of the first these remarkable words, written by the poet himself in 1790:

"Se avessi il corragio di rifare questa fatica, tutto ricopierei, senza lasciarne un'iota, convinto per esperienza che più s'impara negli errori di questo che nelle bellezze degli altri,"

Before we pass from the consideration of the "Divina Commedia," we must not omit some mention of the peculiar measure in which it is written. The "terza rima," of which Dante was probably the inventor, is more suited to epic poetry than to any other species of composition; and, in our opinion, is more congenial to the muse of Italy than to that of any other country. Two of Dante's English translators have adopted this measure ; and Lord Byron, in his "Prophecy of Dante," has afforded perhaps the

best specimen of what can be achieved by it in our own tongue. It is, no doubt, true, as a modern critic has observed, that the position of the recurring rhymes keeps the attention alive, and admits of a regular flow of the narrative; but we think that this very continuity becomes at length wearisome, and holds the attention too long suspended, and even distracts it, and we look in vain for the relief which the pauses in the stanzas of the "ottava rima" afford us. This was, undoubtedly, the opinion of Boccaccio, who invented the latter measure, which

has displaced the former even in epic poetry. Indeed we rarely now find the "terza rima" used even by Italians, and more rarely still by the poets of other countries; while the "ottava rima," the sonnet, and the quatrains, have been freely adopted into the poetry of modern Europe.

Contemporaneous with, and immediately succeeding to Dante, many poets and some prose writers appeared in Italy; for the influence of his genius gave an onward impetus to literature. Few of them, however, attained to any great eminence in their own day, for "the leader of the Italian dialect" overshadowed and obscured them, and fewer still retain a place in the literature of our own times.

All that was mortal of the illustrious Florentine reposed within the tomb in the church of the Franciscans at

Ravenna, ere the next great poet of Italy arose. When, in 1302, Dante turned his steps towards Arezzo, banished from his native Florence, and doomed to be burned at the stake, one Petracco, or Petraccolo, a fellowcitizen, was his companion, and the sharer of his exile. This man was the father of Petrarch, who may thus be said to have drawn his first breath within the influence of "the great master," and to have inhaled the spirit of poesy during his earliest years. Between the two great poets there is, however, little in common. little in the structure of their minds, little in the character of their compositions. In Dante, all was gigantic, nervous, sublime; simple, stern-stern almost in his very tenderness his most touching passages owe less to the power of language than to the force of a true and simple nature. Who that peruses the exquisite episode of "Francesca di Rimini" can be insensible to this

fact? What can possibly surpass in pathos the simple line

"La bocea mi baciò tutto tremante ?"

What volumes could adequately fill the sad story, whose issue is left to the heart's imagining in words so delicately suggestive as

"Quel giorno pui non vi leggemmo avante "?

Petrarch's mind was more on a level with the mass of mankind-distinguished from them in degree rather than in kind. He possessed a fine genius, an ardent thirst for knowledge, an indefatigable industry in the acquisition of it, a noble aspiration after all that was great, and an ardent love for all that was good. It strikes us that nothing could be more opportune for the cause of literature and the advancement of the Italian language, than that a mind of the elegance and delicacy of Petrarch's should have succeeded a soul of such power, vigour, and originality as that of Dante. While the latter, by the energy of his genius, seized upon the materials of the nascent tongue, and reared up a fabric grand and permanent, the former, by his taste and classic polish, added a thousand florid graces and lighter ornaments, that beautified the solemn structure; till, from the united skill of both, the mass stood forth in all the perfection and polish in which we still behold it like to those noble

piles of medieval days, where we see all the massive grandeur of its simpler elements relieved by the beautiful tracery of elaborate sculpture, by the ornaments of rose, and trefoil, and zigzag, upon Gothic shaft and but

tress.

While the fame of Dante rests today on the same basis that it rested upon a few short years after ungrateful Florence

"Proscribed the bard, whose name for evermore Their children's children would in vain adore, With the remorse of ages,"

namely, upon the "Divina Commedia," it is one of the strangest examples of the mutations of earthly fame, and the most emphatic lesson of the unerring criticism of posterity, that the productions which formed the glory of Petrarch in his own eyes, and in those of his contemporaries, are now rarely spoken of, and still more rarely perused; while the occupations of his amatory muse, the sacrifices of his

heart to that love (which, though ever present, never engrossed his spirit so as to withdraw him from the higher duties of patriotism or of literature) still flourish fresh and charming, transmitting the name and fame of the poet from age to age. Strange fortune! The laboured and unfinished Latin epic, which placed the laureate's crown on his brow, has withered away like the material leaves of which that crown was composed, while the Italian odes and sonnets of the lover to his Laura have woven round his head a wreath of laurel (in the figurative language of his own conceit), still bright and unfading

"Watering the tree which bears his lady's name

With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame."

As Dante was the great epic poet of the fourteenth century, so Petrarch may be well considered as the father of Italian lyric poetry. Deeply imbued with a knowledge and the spirit of the great Latin masters, with a keen sense of the elegant and the ornate (which exhibited itself as well in the productions of his pen as the adornment of his person), a fine perception of the harmonious in sound and nun. bers, a quick fancy, a subtle wit, and, in fine, influenced by a love whose nature and extent it is not easy to define, Petrarch gave to the world a body of lyrics, odes, canzone, and sonnets, that have ever been considered models to his countrymen for perfection of harmony, richness of colouring, elegance of thought, purity of style, and polish of language. Yet, with all these, it is impossible not to be sensible of much that detracts from the value of these lyrics. As amatory productions, which is their prominent character, the reader constantly feels that there is a want of reality and truth in them that weakens their power. Much of this may have its origin in the nature of his love for Laura. Were it mere idealworship, as some suppose, then we have at once the clue to its solution. As the passion cannot be forced, neither can it be simulated successfully. If Petrarch's love was platonic, and nothing more, we will not be disposed to wonder much that the poet who during his mistress's life was able, for twenty years, to sustain such a passion in unabated ardour (notwithstanding the consolations which he found elsewhere), and to live on the recollec

tion of that love for so many years after her death, often fails to touch the heart, while he charms the ear. That his intercourse with the wife of Hugo de Sade was of this latter character we are disposed to believe; and though there are passages in Petrarch's writ ings that suggest one less culpable, we incline to range ourselves on the side of the learned Abbe de Sade, notwithstanding the clever and sarcastic strictures in the notes to the fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Be this as it may, there is frequently a frigidity and affectation in the sonnets that mar their effect. Often, too, there is an exaggeration of sentiment, an exuberance of imagination, that suggests to the mind that the poet was making love "by the book," rendering "his wellsung woes" the vehicle rather of his own elegant composition than the involuntary outbursts of his passion. The subtlety of his intellect leads him to refine where others would only feel; be abounds in "concetti" and paltry plays upon words; we become wearied with the recurring confusion between "L'Aura" and "Laura ;" and, as Sismondi remarks, "throughout Petrarch's whole life, we are in doubt whether it is of Laura or of the laurel that he is enamoured." Petrarch's praise of Laura, like Waller's of Saccharissa, betrays the poet more than the lover. To the former may be applied the fine image which the latter, improving upon Ovid, applied to himself that as Apollo, in pursuit_of Daphne, caught but the laurel, so Petrarch, in seeking his "laurel, filled his arms with bays”—

"Elapsa reperit Daphne sua laurea Phœbus."

The influence of Dante was too recent not to tincture, in some degree, the writings of Petrarch. Accordingly, his "Trionfi" are throughout allegorical, with visions like those in the "Divina Commedia," and, like it, constructed in the terza rima, with similar divisions into cantos. The "Africa," the Latin epic written for the poet's crown, has, fortunately for posterity, never been finished. The masterpiece of his own day has not a solitary eulogist in ours. The few who look into it become soon weary of its inflated style and its want of interest, and mankind is contented to believe, as a matter of tradition, that it is exceedingly dull, and exceedingly unreadable.

Over some of his other Latin compositions we plead guilty ourselves to have occasionally spent an hour, and we confess we are not disposed to pronounce so unfavourable an opinion as most of the commentators on Petrarch have done and his treatise, “De remediis utriusque fortunæ," is replete with true philosophy. While, however, Petrarch deservedly ranks next to Dante in the annals of Italian literature, "it is not," to use the words of a recent writer, "as the lover of Laura, as the elegant and tender poet, but as one who devoted his time to deep researches and investigations for the improvement of the language of his country, that such a claim can be advanced in his behalf. Laura was the source of those tender lays that thrilled throughout Italy, and vibrated throughout Europe; but Italy, a nobler mistress, exercised power over his thoughts which brought into play the machinery of a mind rarely equalled. As by the touch of a magic wand, the effeminate and voluptuous language of the lovesick poet was exchanged for the manly tones of the orator and the patriot. We behold him, with the language of a Demosthenes or a Cicero, exhorting the princes of Italy to bid a truce to their private feuds, and to unite their forces against a common enemy."

"He arose to raise a language." An orator, a philosopher, a geographer, an historian, and an antiquary, as well as a poet, Petrarch was the greatest man of his own day. Ilis influence upon his contemporaries was vast. His epistolary correspondence (chiefly in Latin) with popes, princes, literary men, senators, and republics is enormous. They were regarded as masterpieces of eloquence and correct style; they passed from hand to hand, and were copied and carefully preserved.

M. Ginguené, in his eloquent and just criticism of Petrarch, after observing upon some of the defects of the poet, and especially upon his fatal taste for plays upon words and antitheses in expressions, thus concludes:—

"Mais si ces défauts se font trop sentir dans Pétrarque, par combien de beautés ne sont-ils pas rachetés? Avec quelque rigueur que l'on veuille juger les uns, de quelle trempe ne doivent pas etrê les autres pour que, ni le temps, ni les variations du goût et des mœurs ne leur aient rien ôté de leur prix? La rouille de la barbarie couvrait

encore une partie de l'Europe; l'Italie même s'en dégageait à peine. Dante avait paru; mais il était loin de la célébrité qu'l acquit ensuite l'imprimerie manquait encore à la publication rapide et générale d'un poëme aussi long que le sien. Nous avons vu que Pétrarque ne le connaissait pas dans sa jeunesse. Ce fut de son propre génie qu'il tira toutes ses forces, et l'on pourrait dire qu'il vint le second presque sans avoir de premier. Il prit et garda le premier rang parmi les poètes lyriques Il parla, disons mieux, il créa, dans le quatorzième siècle, un idiome poétique et une langue du cœur qu'on n'a pu surpasser depuis, et qui ont conservé jusqu'à nos jours tout leur éclat et tout leur charme."

In the hands of Petrarch the sonnet, already improved by Guittone d'Arezzo, may be said to have acquired its perfection; and as we have already ventured a few remarks on the terza rima, we hope we shall be pardoned a word or two on the sonnet. An able critic says it has had a fatal influence on the poetry of Italy. We doubt this. If the sonnets of Petrarch alone will not disprove the assertion, we may call those of Monti, Zappi, Filicaja, and a host of others to his aid. It is true the sonnet has the disadvantages of circumscribing the writer to a given length and a complex rhyme; but those disadvantages are, we think, overrated, especially in the case of Italians. Though the length is prescribed, there is no necessity that the subject should be concluded in one sonnet, any more than in one stanza of ottava rima. In point of fact, we find the Italians have often continued the theme through two or more sonnets, and our own Shakspeare has written a long poem in them. The difficulty arising from the rhyme is, from the nature of their language, inconsiderable, nor have we ourselves found it very formidable. But the sonnet has great merit. It is essentially harmonious. The structure of its rhythm, and the order of its recurring rhymes, render it the perfection of melody, closing with the charming cadence of its tercetti; and it induces a careful composition, as is particularly observable in poets who wrote much in it. The Italian scholar will surely agree with us, and we can refer with confidence to Bowles and Byron, and above all, to Wordsworth, to prove how well the sonnet has borne transplantation into British soil.