The visit of Dante to England was supposed by Tiraboschi to stand merely upon the dictum of Giovanni di Serravalle, an early writer of the fourteenth century, who affirms that the Poet had studied "Padua, Bononiæ, demum Oxoniis, et Parisiis;" but the fact rests, it appears, upon still earlier and more venerable authority, that of Boccaccio. See his Latin letter to Petrarch, which accompanied a copy of the Comedy transcribed by Boccaccio himself: he imagines Dante led by Apollo per celsa nivosi Julia, Parisios dudum extremosque Britannos."* The enigma of the wood at the beginning of the "Inferno," so fruitful a source of controversy, has been treated by Fraticelli, in a dissertation which appears in the complete edition of Dante recently published at Florence, so as to reconcile many of the views of previous writers. Babylon. Guelfism. PRINCIPAL ALLEGORY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY. The "gajetta pelle," to which Dante alludes in the First Canto * Dante, Opere, Fir. tom. V. p. 133, 1830-1841. of the "Inferno," as inspiring him with hope, the celebrated linguist, now the Cardinal Mezzofanti, has, I believe, referred not to the "Lonza," or Panther, which had opposed his further progress, but to the Ram, the constellation visible in Spring. The four stars seen by the Poet in the First Canto of the "Purgatorio" have, notwithstanding the contrary interpretation of Streckfuss, been understood by Humboldt and others to have a real meaning, and to denote "la croix du Sud," or constellation visible at the South Pole. "The philosophical and religious mysticism," says Humboldt, "which pervades and vivifies the immense composition of Dante, assigns to all objects not only an ideal but a real and material existence, which constitute with him two different worlds as it were, reciprocally reflecting each other." The four stars were similarly understood by the celebrated navigator Amerigo Vespucci. It is observable that Dante, in his different works, has cited not merely Ptolemy and Aristotle, the principal authorities on astronomy in his age, but Arabian writers also, from whom he may have learnt the existence of the cross of the South. The roundness of the earth and Antipodes were, as we learn from M. Libri,* facts also generally admitted at the commencement of the 14th century. Missirini, the friend of Canova, has directed his attention to the restoration of monuments illustrative of Dante; and with some appearance of probability, claims for an ancient picture of the 14th century, now in his possession, the lineaments of Beatrice, nay, even the design of Dante himself. A portrait of Dante by Giotto, whose existence had been indicated by Vasari, was discovered on the 21st of July, 1840, in the ancient chapel of the Palazzo del Potestà at Florence. The Poet is placed near Pope Clement IV., Brunetto Latini, and Corso Donati. The painter Giotto was following his profession at Rome in 1298, according to an authentic account for which we are indebted to Baldinucci, previously to which he had painted the pictures in the Church del Carmine, and in the Palazzo del Potestà; and as Brunetto Latini died in 1294, it is probable that the work was executed previously,-it may be about the date when Dante became connected, by marriage, with the family of Donati. It is certain that the portrait must have been painted before 1300, since in that year the Poet left Florence, never to return. The countenance is that of a young man. These portraits were soon after plastered over by the enemies of the Poet. Various attempts were made from time to time to restore them, it being well known that they existed. They were at last re * Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques, tom. II. p. 197, note I. covered, mainly, we believe, through the perseverance and enthusiasm of Signor Bezzi. Another very interesting likeness of Dante is in the possession of the Marchese Torrigiani; it is a cast generally believed to have been taken shortly after death. The minor poems, the foundation of the fame of Dante, have at length received the attention which they so much needed. It is a long, and a difficult, and in some instances impossible, task to assign the date of those productions, or even to fix with any degree of certainty what was composed prior to 1297, in which year appears the earliest record of his poetical reputation, when he was matriculated in the Art or Company of Physicians, as "Dante Aldighiero degl' Aldighieri, Poeta Fiorentino." He was then 32 years of age. From Fraticelli,* a writer who has followed up the design, indicated and left incomplete by Trivulzio and Monti, it appears that Mr. Lyell has too hastily received many canzoni and sonnets as genuine, which rest upon little or no proof. Witte has also occupied himself with the same subject, and has published several unedited sonnets from MSS. in libraries at Venice and Milan; 145 lyrical pieces (Canzoni, Sestine, Ballate, Sonnets, Madrigals, or Fragments) have been already published as the compositions of Dante Alighieri,—of which number, according to Fraticelli, only 78 can be positively affirmed to be his. The same meritorious writer has carefully classified the genuine, doubtful, and spurious poems.† If we add the discovery of an ancient commentary upon the "Inferno," by Guiniforte delli Bargiggi, at Marseilles, where it published, A.D. 1838, with an extraordinary dedication to the present Pope, by a French advocate, certainly not in communion with the church of Rome, we believe that we have enumerated the principal recent publications illustrative of the life and writings of Dante. We think that enough has been said to render the fact intelligible, why the interest excited by the subject upon the Continent has not been less intense than that occasioned by the recovery of the treatise "de Republicâ” of the Roman Orator. * Opere Minori, tom. I. c. 3. Fir. 1835-1840. † P. 341. 41 ART. II.-1. Il Conte Ugolino della Gherardesca, e I Ghibellini di Pisa, Romanzo Storico di Giovanni Rosini. 3 vols. 8vo. Milan. Aug. 1843. 2. Torriani e Visconti dell' Autore della Sibilla Odaleta. 2 vols. 8vo. Milan. 1839. 3. Antoniolo de' Landriani Capitano di Ventura, Scene Storiche del Secolo XIV. Milan. 1842. 1 vol. 4. Nicolò de' Lapi, ovvero I Palleschi e I Piagnoni di Massimo d'Azeglio. I vol. Milan. 1841. 5. Intorno a Nicolò de' Lapi, ovvero I Palleschi e I Piagnoni di Massimo d'Azeglio, Ragionamento di Felice Turotti, con Illustrazioni Storiche. 1 vol. Milan. 1842. 6. Frammento di Lettera sull' Assedio di Firenze (signed) Giuseppe Mazzini. Paris. 1843, &c. &c. &c. "IL faut des Spectacles dans les grandes villes, il faut des Romans dans les provinces." This truism, prefixed by Rousseau to his "Nouvelle Heloïse," accounts for the predilection of our countryloving people for romantic narrative, and it also explains why Romance is still, in Italy, comparatively barren, and chiefly of foreign importation. No one in Italy, who can help it, resides in the country; and the short and merry season of villeggiatura, conveying for a few weeks all the luxuries of the city to some favourite spot on the Apennines, or by the sea-side, or on the shores of the Lario, is not calculated to inspire the light-hearted people of the South with that taste for retirement, and for those intellectual enjoyments, which alone can embellish a secluded country life. Readers of all classes are therefore to be found exclusively in town; and there it is but natural that the prestige of scenic decoration, of music, and general conversation, should incline a sensual, and essentially sociable population, to prefer the social enjoyment of the drama, or even the opera, to the cold perusal of a quiet novel at home. Not that we would by any means imply that the Italians are not a reading people (though when and where they find leisure for literary pursuits, may be a mystery to us); for, on the contrary, few towns out of Germany may be said to print, publish, and sell a larger quantity of books, than Milan and Turin have done ever since 1830; and it would be absurd to presume, that out of so many thousand volumes, none that are purchased are read. But a very wide majority of those publications consists of works of science and erudition, cyclopædias, universal histories, geographical and biographical dictionaries, annals of statistics, of political economy, of education, republications of old chronicles and musty parchments, antiquarian researches-huge folios and quartos formidable to look upon. Under the weight of all this learned lumber, the vein of spontaneous Italian genius runs scanty and slow. The Italians have become most determined utilitarians in literature. Their publishers seem to have constituted themselves into a vast society for the diffusion of useful knowledge. Every line they print is meant for an instrument of popular improvement; and for such a purpose, they think, literature can never assume too positive a character-no book can ever be found prosy and dull. If the people are to read at all, it must be with a view to become better men; and whenever they are in want of intellectual relaxation, let them repair to the theatre. Should the Italian Literati ever succeed in rendering their historical pursuits palatable to their readers, in preference to works of fiction, we should look upon them with wonder and reverence. We labour in England under an opposite complaint. Novels and romances are rapidly invading the whole republic of letters; scarcely one sterling work of history can live, whilst thousands of tales of all shapes and colours find favour in the eyes of a public, which reads more than it thinks. We must be allowed to doubt, whether Italy, with her threescore novels, so many and no more have hitherto found their way to the shelves of Rolandi's Italian Library in London,-have reason to envy us our astonishing fecundity in that style of writing. We love-and who does not ?-we love the works of imagination; we revere the privileged man upon whose mind God has bestowed so keen and active a sense of the beautiful, that its contemplation will harass and fatigue him-will haunt him-granting no rest till he has bodied it forth in his own imperishable reproductions;-till he has, Prometheus-like, encroached upon the prerogatives of the Divinity, and tasted the ineffable joy of creation. We delight in romance, as we love to look on painting and sculpture; but we pity the man, whose senses have been so miserably palled and blunted by long indulgence in the vapid and morbid extravagances of modern fiction, as to have lost all relish for the bare charms of historical narrative; just as we would commiserate him, who had doted so long on the gaudy beauties of a painted Venus, as to have no eyes left for the living countenance of a lovely woman in flesh and blood. "Truth is strange, Stranger than fiction," |