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Dante, in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, informs us concerning the structure of this musical setting: it might be continuous without repetition or division; or it might be in two parts, one repeating the other, in which case the stanza was also divided into two parts, the division being termed by Dante the diesis or volta; of these two parts one might be subdivided into two or even more parts, which parts, in the stanza, corresponded both in rimes and in the arrangement of the lines.
Nor would it here be right to omit some notice of the essay 'De Vulgari Eloquio, which, considering the date of its appearance, is no less original and indicative of a new spirit in the world than the treatise 'De Monarchiâ. It is an attempt to write the history of Italian as a member of the Romance Languages, to discuss the qualities of its several dialects, and to prove the advantages to be gained by the formation of a common literary tongue for Italy.
In his treatise "De Vulgari Eloquentia" he talks with satisfaction of what he has done for Italian literature, of the purity and correctness of his style. Considering the difficulties with which Dante had to struggle, we may perhaps be more inclined than the French critic to allow him this praise. Still it is by no means his highest or most peculiar title to applause.
Of his own theoretical view of the sonnet, we are unfortunately ignorant, since the last books of his work, 'De vulgari eloquentia, in which he proposed to treat of ballads and sonnets, either remained unwritten or have been lost. But, as a matter of fact, he has left us in his Sonnets and 'Canzoni' a treasure of inward experience. And in what a framework he has set them!
De Vulgari Eloquio, Lib. II. cap. i. ad finem. I quote this treatise as Dante's, because the thoughts seem manifestly his; though I believe that in its present form it is an abridgment by some transcriber, who sometimes copies textually, and sometimes substitutes his own language for that of the original. Vol. III. p. 348, note.
In the second place, MSS. of even greater literary importance disappeared in the course of the fourteenth century, to be reproduced when their subjects again excited interest in the literary world. The history of Dante's treatise De Vulgari Eloquio is a case in point. With regard to style, no foreigner can pretend to be a competent judge.
As regarded the strictures of his correspondent, his triumphant answer in the shape of the Paradiso lay yet unfinished, so the author of the De Vulgari Eloquio trifled with the charge and purported to compose the present poem in earnest of reform. There is a tone of not unkindly irony about the whole. Was it an elaborate jest at the expense of Giovanni, the writer of Vergilian verse?
When Dante wrote his "De Vulgari Eloquio," he reckoned nearly a thousand distinct dialects in the Italian peninsula, and, after more than five hundred years, it is said that by far the greater part survive. In England, eighty years ago, the county of every member of Parliament was to be known by his speech; but in "both Englands," as they used to be called, the tendency is toward uniformity.
It is quite unproved then that Dante lectured in Ravenna as a professor of Civil Law. It might seem equally certain that he did lecture upon Poetry and the vulgar tongue, and it seems likely that we have the text of his lectures in the latter if not in the earlier part of the De Vulgari Eloquentia "in which in masterly and polished Latin he reproves all the vulgar dialects of Italy."
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