The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Volume 14

This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
and David Widger
There is a beautiful and singular passage in Dante (which has not perhaps attracted the attention it deserves), wherein the stern Florentine defends Fortune from the popular accusations against her. According to him she is an angelic power appointed by the Supreme Being to direct and order the course of human splendors; she obeys the will of God; she is blessed; and hearing not those who blaspheme her, calm and aloft amongst the other angelic powers, revolves her spheral course and rejoices in her beatitude. (1)
This is a conception very different from the popular notion which Aristophanes, in his true instinct of things popular, expresses by the sullen lips of his Plutus. That deity accounts for his blindness by saying that when a boy he had indiscreetly promised to visit only the good; and Jupiter was so envious of the good that be blinded the poor money-god. Whereon Chremylus asks him whether, if he recovered his sight, he would frequent the company of the good. Certainly, quoth Plutus; for I have not seen them ever so long. Nor I either, rejoins Chremylus, pithily, for all I can see out of both eyes.
But that misanthropical answer of Chremylus is neither here nor there, and only diverts us from the real question, and that is, Whether Fortune be a heavenly, Christian angel, or a blind, blundering, old heathen deity? For my part, I hold with Dante; for which, if I were so pleased, or if at this period of my memoirs I had half a dozen pages to spare, I could give many good reasons. One thing, however, is quite clear, that whether Fortune be more like Plutus or an angel, it is no use abusing her,—one may as well throw stones at a star. And I think, if one looked narrowly at her operations, one might perceive that she gives every man a chance at least once in his life if he take and make the best of it, she will renew her visits; if not, itur ad astra! And therewith I am reminded of an incident quaintly narrated by Mariana in his History of Spain, how the army of the Spanish kings got out of a sad hobble among the mountains at the Pass of Losa by the help of a shepherd who showed them the way. But, saith Mariana, parenthetically, some do say the shepherd was an angel; for after he had shown the way, he was never seen more. That is, the angelic nature of the guide was proved by being only once seen, and after having got the army out of the hobble, leaving it to fight or run away, as it had most mind to. Now, I look upon that shepherd, or angel, as a very good type of my fortune at least. The apparition showed me my way in the rocks to the great Battle of Life; after that—hold fast and strike hard!