Henry VII. came to Italy in 1310, was crowned at Milan as king of Lombardy, and the followlog year he besieged Cremona, Brescia, and other places. It sae about this time that Dante, impatient to see the emperor come into Tuscany to put down the Guelphs, addressed to him an epistle which begins thus :—'Sanctiseimo triumphatori ct domino singulari, domino Heurico, divine Providentia Roinanorum regi, semper Augusto, devotiseitni sui Dante. Aligherius Florentinua et exul iututeritus, no universaliter mimes Tusci qui pacem desiderant term, osculautur pedes: Ile thou entreats the emperor not to tarry any longer on the banks of the Po, but to advance south of the Apen nines and put down the spirit of Guelph sedition at Florence, against which he inveighs in no moderate terms, and which, be says, strives to predispose against him the mind of the sovereign pontiff He speaks of Florence as revolting unnaturally against her parent Rome, for Dante always affects to consider Rome as still the seat of the empire, and Rome and the empire are often employed by him as synonyms. This remarkable epistle, of which we had only an Italian version until the Latin text was discovered some thirty years since in the library of St. Mark, is dated from Tuscia, near the founts of Arno, April, 1311. e Dentin Allighieri, Epistolse quxe extant, cutu nods Caroli Witte,' Padua, 1827.) Henry came into Tuscany, threatened Florence, but without effect, was crowned at Rome, and on his return died sud denly at Buouconvento, near Siena, in August, 1313. This was a terrible blow to the hopes of the Ghibelines, and of Dante especially. He now took refuge at Verona, at the court of Cane della Scala, where he appears to have been before, between 1303 and ]310. Cane was hospitable and generous to the Ohibelino emigrants, but Dante, with his proud spirit and temper soured by adversity, could ill accommodate himself to the flattery of courts and the flippancy of courtiers, and he is said to have had some unpleasant bickeriugs with the people about Cane.
In a well-kuown passage of his poem lie feelingly deplores the lot of the exile who is constrained to eat the hitter bread of patronage :— With Cane himself however he seems to have continued on good terms; ho speaks very highly of his hospitality in a passage just preceding the above lines, and there is a cordial letter from him to Cane, written probably in the latter years of his life, in which ho dedicates to him his ' Paradise, the latter part of his great poem, and explains the object of it.. He says that ho styled it a Comedy, because, contrary to the style of tragedy, it begins with sorretv and ends with joy; he distinguishes betweeu the literal and the allegorical settee of his verses, and observes that his poem may be called polyseusuum, having many meanings. Ile tells Cane the title of his work : ' Ineipit Comeedia Dantis Alligherii, Florentini nation° non moribus.' But the title of the part which he sends to him with the letter is locipit Cautica tertia Colueedite Dantie qure dicitur Paradisue.' It is evident from this and other circumstances, that Cane had not seen the rest of the poem; indeed it is not likely that Dante ever commu nicated the whole of it to any one during his lifetime, as it would have made it impossible for him to have found refuge anywhere, as Foscolo closely argues in his very elaborate and very critical 'Discorso sul testo di Dante,' which is one of the most judicious and scholar-like commentaries on that poem.
Of Dante's' Commedia' wo cannot enter hero into any details, and wo must refer the reader to the numerous commentaries, illustrations, sod tmoslationa of it in every language of Europe. It is one of the few works of imagination which have stood the teat of ages, and which will pass down to the remotest generations. It resembles no other poem ; it is not an epic ; it consists of descriptions, dialogues, and didactic precepts. It is a vision of the realms of eternal puuishmeut, of expiation, and of bliss, in the invisible world besond death. Its beauties are scattered about with a lavish hand, in the form of episodes, similitudes, vivid descriptions, and above all, sketches of the deep workings of the human heart. It is especially in this last department of poetical painting that Dante excels. Whether ho describes the harrowed feelings of the wretched father in Ugolino, or the self-devotedness of the lover in Francesca, or the melting influeuco of the sound of the evening bell on the mariner and the pilgrim ; whether ho paints the despair of the reprobate souls gathered together on the banks of Acheron, cursing God and the authors of their being, or the milder sorrow of the repentant, chanting the miscrere ' along their wearisome way through the regions of purgatory,—he displays his mastery over the human feelings, and his knowledge of those chords that vibrato deepest in the heart of man. No other writer except Shakapere can be compared to Dante in this respect. His touches are few, but they all tell. Ilia power of invective is grand and terrific; witness his imprecations against Pisa, against Florence, against his enemies, his address to the German, Albert, representing to him the anarchy of Italy, and his repeated denunciations of the vices of tho court of Rome. Yet Dante wag a siucore Roman
Catholic,; in his poem he places the heretics iu and Dominic in Paradise; and manifestly shows everywhere his belief in the dogmas of the Roman church, but he attacks its discipline, or rather the relaxation of its discipline. Ile urges, like l'etrarch and other Catholic writers of that and the following ages, the necessity of a reform ; and, above all, of a total separation of the spiritual from the temporal authority, things generally confounded by the Roman canonists. That many parts of his poem are allegorical is evident, but that the whole poem is an allegory, a political mystification, as some have pretended, scams a far-fetched hypothesis, an ingenious paradox. Dante was a declared enemy to the Guelphs of Florence and their allies, the papal court and the king of France ; and he poetically represents these three at the beginning of his poem by the emblems of the panther, the wolf, and the lion; but soon after he drops all metaphor, and inveighs against all three in the plainest and the bitterest terms, which he would not have done had he meant to be understood only by the adepts of a secret sect. In canto xix. of the 'Paradino ' he passes in review all the kings of his time, and spares none of them in hie reproof; in another piece he has some thing to say against almost every one of the Italian cities and populations. In fact Dante never published his whole poem in his lifetime, for he had spoken in it too plainly to be able to publish it in safety. He wrote it out of the fullness of his heart, in detached parts, end at different periods, and his strains were influenced by the various political vicissitudes of the times, and by his own alternate hopes and despondency. About the year 1316 he had still a chance of his recall to Florence. It was suggested to him by a friend whom Dante in his reply calls father, probably because ho was a clergyman, that he might return, provided he acknowledged his guilt and asked absolution. His answer was characteristic of his mind: "No, father, this is not the way that shall lead me back to my couutry. But I shall returu with hasty steps If you or any other can open me a way that shall not derogate from the fame and honour of Dante; but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then to Florence I shall never return. Shall I not everywhere enjoy the sight of the auu and stars/ May I not seek and contemplate truth anywhere under heaven without rendering myself inglorious, nay infamous, to the people and commonwealth of Florence ? Bread, I hope, will not fail me." (See text and translation of this letter in Foecolo's ' Essays on Petrareh aud Dante,' 8vo., 1823, with a sketch of Dante's character.) In 1317.18 Dante appears to have been still wandering about Italy. In 1319 he repaired to Guido da Polenta. lord of Ravenna, where he was hospitably received, and where he appears to have remained till his death, which happened in September 1321. He was buried in the church of the Minorites, under a plain monumeut. Bernardo Bembo, senator of Venice and podesta of Ravenna, raised to him a mausoleum in 1483, which was afterwards repaired in 1692 by Cardinal Corsi, of Florence, and lastly in 1780 reconstructed altogether in its present form by Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga, legate of pope Pius VI. The reproof " Vegrateful Florence: Dante sleeps afar," was at last felt by the Florentines; a subscription was made and a monument was raised to the memory of Dante in the church of Santa Croce, which was opened to public view with great solemnity ou the 24th of March 1830. (Missirioi, 'Della Memorie di Dante in Firenze, 1830.) Of the manner in which the whole manuscript of Dante's poem was found, collected, transcribed, and published after his death by his sons Jacopo and Piero, the early commentaries on the poem, its early printed editions, and the whole bibliographic history of the work, the reader will find ample information in Foscolo'a Dineoreo sul testo di Dante,' London. 1825; and also in Missirini, 'Rivista dello vane Lezioni della Divina Commedia, e Catalog() delle piu importanti Edizioni,' Padova,1832. Among the moet:complete editions of Dante's poems are: that of Venice, 5 vols. 4to, 1757-58, with ample notes, and including Dante's Life, by Pelli, and his minor poems and prose works; Lombardia edition, Rome, 3 vols. 4to, 1791; and that of Florence, with illustrative plates, 1819, 4 vols. fol. Among the host of commentaries the one called `l'Anoeimo; and also ' l'Ottimo; written by a contemporary of Dante, who was evidently familiar with the poet, has been published for the first time at Leghorn in 3 vols. 8vo, 1827.
Among the numerous translations of the 'Divine Commcdia,' io almost every language of Europe, that in English blank verse by Cary, and the English prose version by Dr. J. A. Carlyle, deserve to be mentioned with especial praise. An Italian translation of Dante's philological treatise, 'De Valgari Eloquio,' was published by Trissino in 1529; and the Latin text in 1577: this work has occasioned a very animated controversy between Italian philologists in our days.