[433] [Compare "Lines on the Bust of Helen by Canova," which were sent in a letter to Murray, November 25, 1816—
"In this beloved marble view,
Above the works and thoughts of man,
What nature could, but would not, do,
And Beauty and Canova can."
In Beppo (stanza xlvi.), which was written in October, 1817, there is a further allusion to the genius of Canova.]
[mx] [{371}] Their great Contemporary——.—[MS. M. erased.]
[434] [Dante died at Ravenna, September 14, 1321, and was buried in the Church of S. Francesco. His remains were afterwards transferred to a mausoleum in the friars' cemetery, on the north side of the church, which was raised to his memory by his friend and patron, Guido da Polenta. The mausoleum was restored more than once, and rebuilt in its present form in 1780, at the cost of Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. On the occasion of Dante's sexcentenary, in 1865, it was discovered that at some unknown period the skeleton, with the exception of a few small bones which remained in an urn which formed part of Gonzaga's structure, had been placed for safety in a wooden box, and enclosed in a wall of the old Braccioforte Chapel, which lies outside the church towards the Piazza. "The bones found in the wooden box were placed in the mausoleum with great pomp and exultation, the poet being now considered the symbol of a united Italy. The wooden box itself has been removed to the public library."—Handbook far Northern Italy, p. 539, note.
The house which Byron occupied during his first visit to Ravenna—June 8 to August 9, 1819—is close to the Cappella Braccioforte. In January, 1820, when he wrote the Fourth Canto of Don Juan ("I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid," stanza civ.), he was occupying a suite of apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli, No. 328 in the Via di Porta Adriana. Compare Rogers's Italy, "Bologna," Poems, ii. 118—
"Ravenna! where from Dante's sacred tomb
He had so oft, as many a verse declares,
Drawn inspiration.">[
[435] [The story is told in Livy, lib. xxxviii. cap. 53. "Thenceforth no more was heard of Africanus. He passed his days at Liternum [on the shore of Campania], without thought or regret of Rome. Folk say that when he came to die he gave orders that he should be buried on the spot, and that there, and not at Rome, a monument should be raised over his sepulchre. His country had been ungrateful—no Roman funeral for him." It is said that his sepulchre bore the inscription: "Ingrata patria, cineres meos non habebis." According to another tradition, he was buried with his family at the Porta Capena, by the Cælian Hill.]
[436] [Compare Lucan, Pharsalia, i. I—"Bella per Emathios plusquam civilia campos.">[
[437] [Petrarch's Africa brought him on the same day (August 23, 1340) offers of the laurel wreath of poetry from the University of Paris and from the Senate of Rome. He chose in favour of Rome, and was crowned on the Capitol, Easter Day, April 8, 1341. "The poet appeared in a royal mantle ... preceded by twelve noble Roman youths clad in scarlet, and the heralds and trumpeters of the Roman Senate."—Petrarch, by Henry Reeve, p. 92.]