The contempt of style as something “vulgar,” which had beset all antiquity (save always Longinus), would have alone prevented the ancients from criticising in this way, even if the lack of various language had not done so.
And so we find, on the threshold, or hardly even on the threshold, of what is commonly called modern literature, an anticipation, and more than an anticipation, of what is really modern criticism. Of course this is a disputable even more than a disputed statement. Of course there are many respectable authorities who will not hear of it, who will accuse those who make it of mere will-worship, perhaps even of gross error, for assuming any such thing. Yet it may be said in all humility, but after a very considerable number of years of study of a subject to which little general attention has been given, that there is this difference between ancient and modern criticism, and that it appears in the De Vulgari Eloquio. I shall be content, I shall even be much obliged, if any one will point out to me, in the authors who have been hitherto considered, or in any who may have been overlooked, a passage like this. I can only say that, in my reading, I have found none.
But the chapter of words—the Chapter of the Sieve, as we may call it—is that which contains the real heart and kernel |The "Chapter of the Sieve."| of Dante’s criticism. For, dwell as much as he may on the importance of arrangement and phrase, it is impossible that these should be beautiful without beautiful words to make them of. And his system of “sifting,” quaint as its phraseology may seem at first sight, arbitrary as some of its divisions may appear, and here and there difficult as it may be exactly to follow him, is a perfectly sound scheme, and only requires working out at greater length. The objection to puerilia, though it may be too sweepingly expressed, is absolutely just, and cuts away Wordsworth’s childishnesses by anticipation. That to “effeminate” words, “silvan” words, words too “slippery” and too much “brushed the wrong way,” is, in its actual form, perhaps somewhat too closely connected with the peculiarities of the Italian language. We can understand that the snarling sound of the r in gregia and corpo—the silvestre and the reburrum—may have offended the delicate Italian musical ear; and it is perfectly easy for a pretty well-educated English one to perceive that donna, with the ring of the n’s and the sudden descent—the falcon drop—to a, is a far more poetical word than femina, where, except the termination, there is no hold for the voice at all; it merely “slips over” the “lubric” syllables fe and mi. But it is much more difficult to understand the objection to dolciada and piacevole as too effeminate. Not only is dolciada itself a very charming word to us, but it is impossible to see anything more effeminate in it than in many of those which Dante admits and admires. These things, however, will always happen.
The metaphor of the pexa and hirsuta, odd as it seems, is not difficult to work out when we have once accepted the |The pexa.| analogy of hair, for which in itself it would not be difficult to find a more or less fanciful justification. The merely “glossy”—smooth, soft, insufficient—will not do, and those “brushed the wrong way” still less. What is wanted is natural curl and wave—with light and colour in them, of course, though not mere gloss. This may be either the result of careful “combing out” of all tangle and disorder, or it may be wilder grace, the hirsutum, the “floating hair” of our poet. Dante’s rigid orthodoxy makes him assign very strict qualification to the pexa. They are to be trisyllabic or vicinissima to this—that is to say, they are either to be amphibrachs complete—amore, difesa, salute—or words like donna, on the one hand, or letizia[[584]] on the other, which, by a slight rest of the voice or a little slur of it, can be made amphibrachic in character. And why? Because these amphibrachic words help, as no others can do, to give that trochaic swing, with little intervals between, which supplies the favourite rhythm of Italian poetry, as in the very instance given a little later by Dante from his own poetry—
“Donne ch‘ avete intelletto d’ amore”—
where the rhythm (as opposed to the actual scansion) of the line is represented by almost sinking the italicised syllables, and leaving the four main trochees to carry the rock of the verse on their backs. The dislike to aspirates, to double x’s and z’s, to certain collocations of consonants, &c., is again purely Italian, though it would not be difficult to assign somewhat similar qualifications to the pexa of other languages.
But Dante is far too free and far too opulent a poet to confine himself, or recommend others to confine themselves, to a mere |The hirsuta.| “prunes and prism”—to simple prettiness of precious words. The hirsuta, the more careless ordered vocabulary, must be had too sometimes, because you cannot do without them, as in the case of the monosyllabic particles, copulatives, and what not, sometimes as dissyllables, and polysyllables, which will make an ornamental effect by combination and contrast with the pexa. Here, yet once more, there may be difficulties with the individual cases; it is indeed hard to see the possibility of beauty, even in the most combed-out company, of such a word as disavventuratissimamente: but the principle is clear and sound. What that principle is we may |Other critical loci in Dante.| shortly state when we have given a glance at Dante’s other and much less important critical utterances, contained in the undoubtedly genuine Convito, and in the sometimes, but perhaps captiously, disputed Letter to Can Grande.
This last[[585]], which, as is well known, sets itself forth as a dedication of the Paradiso to the Lord of Verona, contains a kind of |The Epistle to Can Grande.| expository criticism by the author of the Commedia itself. There is nothing in it inconsistent with the De Vulgari, but the method is very much more scholastic and jejune. There are six things to be inquired about in any serious matter—the subject, the agent, the form, the end, the title, the kind of philosophy.
The Paradiso is different from the other two cantiche in subject, form, and title, not in author, end, and philosophic tone. The meaning or subject is partly literary, partly allegorical; the form is duplex—the external by cantiche, cantos, verses; while the method or internal form is poetic, figurative, &c. The title is, “Here beginneth the Comedy of D. A., Florentine by birth not disposition.” Comedy comes from, &c., tragedy from, &c. As Comedy begins ill and ends well, we call this a comedy. It is in the vulgar tongue: its end is evangelic, its philosophy ethical and practical.
There is little to notice here except the poet’s comparative depreciation of the Vulgar Tongue as “humble and weak,”[[586]] but this of course is only said rhetorically.