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Durante (a name afterwards called for shortness Dante) was born in Florence in the month of May, 1265, the son of Aldighiero Aldighieri and Bella, his wife. "Of his ancestors, this much is evident through the mists of a very nebulous antiquity," says Symonds, in his Introduction to the Study of Dante, "that they were well-placed among the citizens of Florence, and it seems that their primitive name was not Aldighieri, but Elisei. Tradition differs about the origin of the Elisei. Some of Dante's biographers trace them to Roman colonists of Florence in the time of Julius Cæsar. Others, and these are the majority, derive them from one Eliseo, of the noble Roman house of Frangipani, or bread-breakers—so called by reason of some eminent act of public charity—who is said to have settled at Florence in the days of Charlemagne, or soon after. In any case, the Elisei were honourable in Florence, possessing castles in the country round and towered houses in the city. They dwelt within the old Pomoerium, or primitive walled circuit, in the Via degli Speziali, near the Mercato Vecchio; this in itself was a sign of ancient blood. Dante prided himself upon his descent from the purest blood of Florentine citizens. The change in the name of Dante's family from Elisei to Aldighieri took place thus: Cacciaguida degli Elisei, who was born in 1106, married Aldighiera degli Aldigheri of Ferrara, and he had a son by her whom he called Aldighiero. This son gave his Christian name to his descendants, whilst a brother of Cacciaguida continued the line and name of the Elisei. Cacciaguida followed Conrad III to the Crusades in 1147, was knighted by him, and died, at the age of forty-two, in the Holy Land."

The poet introduces this ancestor in one of the finest passages of the Paradiso.

Dante was educated by Brunetto Latini, the author of a curious poem, entitled the Tesoro, in which the germ of many thoughts of the Divine Comedy may be traced. He was subsequently placed by his grateful pupil in the centre of Hell. Dante possessed a thorough knowledge of the science of his day, and we may give his instructor credit for having carefully developed the brilliant abilities of his pupil. He is said to have studied music and to have shown decided skill in painting.

His father died when he was nine or ten years of age. Shortly before his death, he introduced his son to Folco Portinari, a rich citizen of Florence, and to his daughter, Beatrice, who was his first, and probably his only, love. Although but a child, he was struck by her beauty. "Her dress on that day," he says, "was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned as best suited with her very tender age." Beatrice died when Dante was in his twenty-sixth year, and the blow was so great that it was long before he was comforted by philosophy and study. She became, in his mind, the personification of everything great and noble. In the Divine Comedy she appears as his guide from the summit of Purgatory to Paradise.

In 1292, he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had seven children. Thus, it can hardly have been an unhappy marriage; but as she did not follow him into exile, and as he never mentions her in any of his extant letters, we may suppose there was no very ardent affection on either side.

The latter part of Dante's life was destined to be marked with many sorrows and disasters. He was dragged into the vortex of faction and civil war, and was wrecked with many less noteworthy mariners.

He was made Prior of Florence in 1300, and so eminent was he that he was appointed one of the four ambassadors who were sent to Pope Boniface Viii to complain of the French intervention under Charles of Valois. Before they returned, Charles had entered Florence; Dante and his companions were outlawed, his property was confiscated, his house pillaged, and he never again was suffered to return to the city of his birth.

Tradition says, and I think it is supported by the internal evidence of the poem, that he wrote the first seven cantos of the Inferno in Florence before his exile, and that the beginning of the eighth canto:

"Io dico, seguitando,"

is a proof that the poem was continued after having been laid aside for a time, otherwise the word "seguitando" would be unnecessary to the sense, and it is not in Dante's style to admit unnecessary words into his lines. If this reasoning hold good, we can determine pretty accurately the date of the Divine Comedy. The poet feigns that he descended into the infernal regions on Good Friday of the year 1300; his exile began in 1301; therefore, the latter part of 1300 very probably saw him write the first seven cantos of the work. In the sixth canto there is an allusion to his exile, and to the defeat of his party; but that may have been inserted afterwards.

Cruel was the blow that fell upon him, doubly cruel after so many years of prosperity and honour. He had to consort with unworthy companions; he had to eat the bitter bread of dependence; he was severed from those whom he loved most dearly; and, as he makes Cacciaguida foretell in Paradise, "this was the first arrow with which the bow of exile struck him."

"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta

Più caramente; e questo è quello strale

Che l'arco dell esilio pria saetta."

The reader may peruse in the seventeenth canto of the Paradiso, his concise and pathetic account of the sorrows of his later years. Clad in the form of prophecy, it constitutes one of the grandest passages in the whole poem. Some letters, written during his exile, are still extant and breathe a spirit so lofty that versification alone is wanting to equal them to his sublimest inspirations. Amid all the troubles of his eventful life, he still found leisure to study, meditate, and write, and when he died in Ravenna in 1321, the first great poem of modern times was completed.

"Many volumes have been written," says Carlyle, "by way of commentary on Dante and his book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering, sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived; and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The Book, and one might add, that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also deathless; significant of the whole history of Dante. I think it is the mournfullest face that ever was painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud, hopeless pain. A soft, ethereal soul, looking out so stern, implacable, grim, trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice. Withal it is a silent pain, too, a silent, scornful one; the lip is curled in a kind of god-like disdain of the thing that is eating out his heart, as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle, were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle against the world. Affection all converted into indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god. The eye, too, it looks out as in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry, why the world was of such a sort? This is Dante, so he looks, this 'voice of ten silent centuries,' and sing us his 'mystic, unfathomable song.'"

Dante is one of those authors who concentrate all their greatness in one stupendous work. The Vita Nuova has many beauties, the Convito deserves to be read, the Latin Treatises offer numerous points of interest, but it is only in the Divina Commedia that he rises to the height of his sublimity. He was singularly judicious, both in the choice of his subject and in the form of his verse. The Terza Rima carries the reader onwards in its progress, calmly, nobly, irresistibly. Had the work been written in prose, it would not have commanded the attention of future ages, so great is the embalming power of verse. A fine prose work may be neglected in the course of ages; a fine poetical work, never. Had the work been written in Latin verse, as indeed it was begun, it would only be a study for the curious and not a possession for all humanity.

The vivid power of Dante's imagination, the intense and rugged strength of his thoughts, and the graphic realism with which he presents the scenes of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven to his readers, are above praise and can find no parallel in the works of other poets. Milton surpasses him in sustained grandeur, but in picturesqueness the English poet does not attempt to rival the Florentine.

Dante's Poem is so well known that it is needless to insist upon particular beauties. All cultivated readers are familiar with them, if not in the original, at least in translations. If any fault is to be found in the poem, it is that it somewhat falls off; the Purgatorio is not quite so fine as the Inferno; the Paradiso, not quite so fine as the Purgatorio. The poet sometimes has an unfortunate tendency only to hint at the histories of the spirits he meets, so that we are indebted to his commentators rather than to himself for stories worthy to be chronicled in immortal verse. His style is not always free from coarseness on the one hand, and from obscurity on the other. But in so noble an achievement it would be mean to dwell on occasional blemishes, instead of being grateful to the poet who has presented us with a work, perhaps in many respects, the noblest production of the human mind.

As a specimen of Dante's Poem, I quote the last canto of the Inferno, in Cary's translation. The reader will notice the curious passage that seems to prove that Dante was aware, four hundred years before Newton, of the law of gravitation:

CANTO XXXIV.

"The banners of Hell's Monarch do come forth

Towards us; therefore look," so spake my guide,

"If thou discern him." As when breathes a cloud

Heavy and dense, or when the shades of night

Fall on our hemisphere, seems view'd from far

A windmill, which the blast stirs briskly round,

Such was the fabric then methought I saw.

To shield me from the wind, forthwith I drew

Behind my guide: no covert else was there.

Now came I (and with fear I bid my strain

Record the marvel) where the souls were all

Whelmed underneath, transparent, as through glass

Pellucid the frail stem. Some prone were laid,

Others stood upright, this upon the soles,

That on his head, a third with face to feet

Arched like a bow. When to the point we came

Whereat my guide was pleas'd that I should see

The creature eminent in beauty once,

He from before me stepp'd and made me pause.

"Lo!" he exclaimed, "lo Dis! and lo the place

Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with

strength."

How frozen and how faint I then became,

Ask me not, reader! for I write it not,

Since words would fail to tell thee of my state.

I was not dead nor living. Think thyself,

If quick conception work in thee at all,

How I did feel. That Emperor who sways

The Realm of Sorrow, at mid breast from th' ice

Stood forth; and I in stature am more like

A giant, than the giants are his arms.

Mark now how great that whole must be, which suits

With such a part. If he were beautiful

As he is hideous now, and yet did dare

To scowl upon his Maker, well from him

May all our misery flow. Oh what a sight!

How passing strange it seem'd when I did spy

Upon his head three faces: one in front

Of hue vermilion, th' other two with this

Midway each shoulder join'd and at the crest;

The right 'twixt wan and yellow seem'd: the left

To look on, such as come from whence old Nile

Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth

Two mighty wings, enormous as became

A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw

Outstretch'd on the wide sea. No plumes had they,

But were in texture like a bat, and these

He flapp'd i' th' air, that from him issued still

Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth

Was frozen. At six eyes he wept; the tears

Adown three chins distill'd with bloody foam.

At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ'd

Bruis'd as with pond'rous engine, so that three

Were in this guise tormented. But far more

Than from that gnawing, was the foremost pang'd

By the fierce rending, whence ofttimes the back

Was stript of all its skin. "That upper spirit,

Who hath worse punishment," so spake my guide,

"Is Judas, he that hath his head within

And plies the feet without. Of th' other two,

Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw

Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe

And speaks not! Th' other Cassius, that appears

So large of limb. But night now re-ascends,

And it is time for parting. All is seen."

I clipp'd him round the neck, for so he bade;

And noting time and place, he, when the wings

Enough were op'd, caught fast the shaggy sides,

And down from pile to pile descending stept

Between the thick fell and the jagged ice.

Soon as he reached the point whereat the thigh

Upon the swelling of the haunches turns,

My leader there with pain and struggling hard

Turn'd round his head, where his feet stood before,

And grappled at the fell, as one who mounts,

That into hell methought we turned again.

"Expect that by such stairs as these," thus spake

The teacher, panting like a man forespent,

"We must depart from evil so extreme."

Then at a rocky opening issued forth,

And placed me on a brink to sit, next join'd

With wary step my side. I raised mine eyes,

Believing that I Lucifer should see

Where he was lately left, but saw him now

With legs held upward. Let the grosser sort,

Who see not what the point was I had pass'd,

Bethink them if sore toil oppress'd me then.

"Arise," my master cried, "upon thy feet.

The way is long, and much uncouth the road;

And now within one hour and half of noon

The sun returns." It was no palace hall

Lofty and luminous wherein we stood.

But natural dungeon where ill footing was

And scant supply of light. "Ere from th' abyss

I sep'rate," thus when risen I began,

"My guide! vouchsafe few words to set me free

From error's thraldom. Where is now the ice?

How standeth he in posture thus reversed?

And how from eve to morn in space so brief

Hath the sun made his transit?" He in few

Thus answering spake: "Thou deemest thou art still

On th' other side the centre, where I grasp'd

Th' abhorred worm, that boreth through the world.

Thou wast on th' other side so long as I

Descended; when I turn'd, thou didst o'erpass

That point, to which from every part is dragg'd

All heavy substance. Thou art now arriv'd

Under the hemisphere opposed to that,

Which the great continent doth overspread,

And underneath whose canopy expir'd

The Man, that was born sinless, and so liv'd.

Thy feet are planted on the smallest sphere,

Whose other aspect is Judecca. Morn

Here rises, when there evening sets: and he,

Whose shaggy pile was scal'd, yet standeth fix'd,

As at the first. On this part he fell down

From heav'n; and th' earth, here prominent before,

Through fear of him did veil her with the sea,

And to our hemisphere retir'd. Perchance

To shun him was the vacant space left here

By what of firm land on this side appears,

That sprang aloof." There is a place beneath,

From Belzebub as distant, as extends

The vaulted tomb, discover'd not by sight,

But by the sound of brooklet, that descends

This way along the hollow of a rock,

Which, as it winds with no impetuous course,

The wave hath eaten. By that hidden way

My guide and I did enter, to return

To the fair world: and heedless of repose We climb'd, he first, I following his steps, Till on our view the beauteous lights of heav'n Dawn'd through a circular opening in the cave. Thence issuing we again beheld the stars.