From this time forth the life of the poet becomes semi-mythical. We find some traces of him first at Arezzo, then at Siena, then at Verona. He himself says, "Through almost all parts where this language (the Italian) is spoken, a wanderer, well nigh a beggar, I have traveled, showing against my will the wounds of fortune.'" His sympathies now lay entirely with the Ghibelline party. The expedition of the emperor, Henry VII, into Italy (1310) roused the hopes of Dante to the highest pitch. He wrote the emperor that famous letter advising him first of all to crush the hydra, Florence, as being the cause of all the misfortunes of Italy. Henry, however, spent his time in foolish in activity till his death in 1313. Shortly after this event Dante is said to have visited Paris; but according to Balbo he spent the year 1313 14 in Pisa and Lucca and then took refuge with Can Grande della Scala at Verona, where he remained till 1318. In 1316 Florence sent forth a decree permitting the exiles to return on con ditions of fine and penance, which Dante indig nantly refused. In 1320 we find him at Raven na staying with his friend Guido Novello da Polenta. In the following year, on his return from an embassy to Venice, his wanderings and sufferings were ended by death. He was buried in the church of the Minorites, under a monument built by his friend Guido Novello, on which' was an epitaph written by Dante himself. Such, imperfectly sketched, was the career of the great poet; by it he gained a sense of the nothingness of earthly honors and pros perity possible only to the rich, and a knowl edge of man possible only to the poor. In his youth living amid the excitement of the tented field and penning sonnets to his adored Bea trice; in his old age compelled to climb the stranger's toilsome stairs and eat the bitter bread of others.* Out of his misfortunes the world found her rich account; the apocalypse of the Middle Ages, the 'Divina Commedia,' was begun and finished in his year of exile. Of this grand poem we can give only a very brief analysis. It is divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Each part is subdi vided into 33 cantos, in allusion to the years of our Saviour's life, the extra canto in the first part being introductory. Dante dreams that he had °reached the half-way point in his path of life, at the entrance of an obscure forest." He would advance, but three horrible beasts bar the way; then the shade of Virgil appears and offers itself as his guide. Dante accepts and then takes place that wondrous journey in the "world of Virgil tells him he can only accompany him through hell and Purgatory; but that Beatrice shall conduct him through those happy spheres, the portals of which a pagan may not enter. Now begin the peregri nations of the Florentine through the regions of the damned, over the entrance of which is written the awful words hope abandon ye who enter here." This is the most impress ive and best-known part of the poem; the sin gular diversity of the chastisements; the ra pidity with which Dante passes in review the great criminals of history; the intensity with which he paints, at a single dash, so to speak, their distorted features; the grace of certain episodes (the adventure of Francesca da Rimini, the death of Ugolino and that of Manfred), attest the vigor of imagination never surpassed, if ever equaled. From Hell (which the poet places in the centre of the earth) he ascends to Purgatory, a solitary mountain rising from the ocean on the side of the globe opposite to us. This mountain is divided into terraces and its top is the terrestrial paradise, the first abode of man. In Purgatory there are still scenes of pain and suffering; but these punishments are only temporary. The poet hesitates when he comes to a path filled with a sheet of flame; but Virgil speaks: 'Between Beatrice and thee there is but that Dante at once plunges into the heart of the flames. The two poets have now reached the earthly paradise and be hold Beatrice surrounded by a scene of surpass ing magnificence; noble forests, whose trees are gently moved by celestial zephyrs; the melo dious songs of birds to which the murmuring of the sacred woods and streams give harmoni ous reply; meadows of the freshest green and groves of deepest shade. From this en chanting region Dante ascends faster than tongue or pen can tell, into the celestial para dise. This realm consists of 10 heavens or cir cles. Dante roams at first over the seven plan ets, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; then he enters the eighth sphere, and at last into the empyrean. Each of these globes has its inhabitants, who are souls or spirits. Arrived at the eighth sphere, he looks down upon our globe; but the earth ap pears so abject that he smiles with pity upon it. Beatrice calls his attention to a nobler scene. the glorious company which surrounds the triumphant Redeemer." The eyes of the poet cannot sustain the splendor of the view. In the ninth sphere Dante feels himself in the presence of the Divine essence, hid from his sight by three hierarchies of angels. He sees
the souls of the blessed on thrones in a vast amphitheatre. whose steos and circles widen into infinity. Beatrice takes her place upon her throne of glory; from that sublime height she smiles benignantly down upon the poet; then turns toward him who is the source of life and light Thus ends the Divine trilogy, the noblest effort of the Middle Ages.
The name is derived from Dante's idea concerning the forms of eloquence, which were in his opinion tragic, comic and elegiac, as he relates in his work 'De vulgari Eloquio,) which was first written in Latin. What he called tragedy was a piece commencing with happy and peaceful scenes, and ending with events of a painful and terrible character, and what he called comedy was a piece which, be ginning unpleasantly, terminated happily. The qualifying word divina was, however, added by others. We may mention the opinion maintained in 1753, by Bottari, that Dante made use of the 'Vision of Alberico) a monk who lived in the 12th cetury, in a monastery on •Monte Cassino, in Naples. There have been mangy such visions from the earliest ages of Christianity; as, for instance, the 'Vision of an English Monk,' which Matthew Paris mentions in his 'History of England) (in the year 1196), and which re sembled Dante's poem much more than the 'Vision of Alberico) published by Cancellieri in 1814 at Rome, with observations ('Osser vazioni intorno alla Questione sopra la Orig inalita della Divina Commedia di Dante)). It is possible that Dante here and there may have borrowed a thought or image from those vi sions; but this is no fault: the recollections of great men are sparks which serve to kindle mighty flames.
There is no poet who bears so distinctly the impress of his age, and yet rises so high above it, as Dante. The Italians justly regard hun as the creator of their poetical language, and the father of their poetry, which, regulated and con trolled by his genius, at once assumed a purer and far nobler form than it had previously worn. The terzina first reached its perfection in the time of Dante, on which account he has been erroneously regarded as the inventor of it.
Florence soon recognized that she had lost her noblest son. In 1350 a sum of 10 golden florins was ordered to be paid by the hands of Giovanni Boccaccio to Dante's daughter, Bea trice, a nun in the convent of Santa Chiara at Ravenna. In 1373 an annual sum was granted for public lectures, to explain the Com edy) in the churches, and Boccaccio was one of the first lecturers. A monument was voted for if Ravenna would give up the now sacred remains, which that city refused, and has re peatedly refused to do. In May 1865 all Italy assembled at Florence to render homage to the seer who prophesied so confidently her unity; and the following year a colossal statue of the poet was erected on the Piazza della Croce.
The best editions of the 'Divina Commedia' are those of Lombardi (1791), frequently re printed with valuable improvements, of Vivian' (1823), of Bianchi (5th ed., Florence 1857), of Karl Witte (Berlin 1862), etc. In 1821 Luigi Fantoni published an edition of the 'Divina Commedia,) stated to have been printed from a manuscript in the handwriting of Boccaccio. In 1869 the 'Vernon
was published in London by Lord Vernon in three large volumes folio. It contains the text of the
and, in Italian, an explanation of everything in the text regarding which any reader might have the least difficulty, together with an immense mass of information — biographical, topographi cal, historical, etc., relating to the life and times of Dante, and a large number of maps, plans and illustrative plates. Dante's complete works appeared at Venice in 1757-58, published by Zatta (in 5 vols. 4to). His lyric poems, sonnets and canzonets, of which some are beautiful, others dull and heavy, were written at different periods of his life. We have yet to mention his