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Dominic against that of him who made Virgil wonder to gaze upon him, "disteso, tanto vilmente, nell' eterno esilio;" or of him whom Dante stood beside, "come 'l frate che confessa lo perfido assassin?" Shakespeare and Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I presume! They were both in the midst of the main struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers. They had an opinion, we may guess.
These works were drawn according to the account in verse which Dante Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell and Purgatory and Paradise, whither by the singular great merits of his lady, he was able to make his way alive.
"It seems to be all the same face," continued the child, her eyes on the picture. "That," said Mr. Strachey, with extreme deliberation: "that is the portrait, by a great painter, of a great poet Dante Alighieri." "Oh, Dante, is it?" said Laura showily she had once heard the name. "Oh, yes, of course, I know now. He wrote a book, didn't he, called FAUST? I saw it over there by the door.
The old painter answered trembling, that he had never seen him with his eyes, never having gone down alive into Hell, like Messer Dante Alighieri; but that, in depicting him as he had done, he was for expressing in visible lines and colours the hideousness of sin. Lucifer shrugged his shoulders, and the hill of San Gemignano seemed of a sudden to heave and stagger.
Francis of Assisi dreamed his whole life long of the resurrection of love among men, and in the valleys of Umbria went about like a second Jesus doing good, with an immense love in his heart singing his Laudes Creaturarum by the wayside; Dante Alighieri, the greatest poet of his country, might almost seem to have been overwhelmed with hatred, a hatred which is perhaps but the terrible reverse of an intolerable love, but which is an impeachment, nevertheless, not only of his own time, of the cities of his country, but of himself too, for while he thus sums up the Middle Age and judges it, he is himself its most marvellous child, losing himself at last in one of its ideals.
Alban's let us not forget that a Savonarola and a Cranmer recanted under torment, and that the anguish of exile drew even from the starry and imperial spirit of Dante Alighieri words and sentiments for which in his noblest moments he might have blushed. Of the last five years of Seneca's weary exile no trace has been preserved to us.
It was October 25th, 1268, Dante Alighieri then a little boy at Florence, not three years old; gazing with strange eyes as the elders talked of such a performance by Christ's Vicar on Earth. A very tragic performance indeed, which brought on the Sicilian Vespers by and by; for the Heavens never fail to pay debts, your Holiness!
The Portinari celebrated May royally in 1275, inviting all their friends to a blithe gathering. At this festa Dante Alighieri met Beatrice, the little daughter of his host, and the long dream of his life began, for he idealized her loveliness from that first youthful meeting.
I am inclined to call yonder speck Dante Dante Alighieri, of whom we do know that he received during his exile much hospitality from many hosts and repaid them by writing how bitter was the bread in their houses, and how steep the stairs were.
Of the exile's family, three sons died young; the daughter went into a nunnery; and the two remaining brothers, who ultimately joined their father in his banishment, became respectable men of letters, and left families in Ravenna; where the race, though extinct in the male line, still survives through a daughter, in the noble house of Serego Alighieri.
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