The curious First Book of the Convito[[587]] not merely contains the promise of the De Vulgari[[588]], but is a sort of pendent |The Convito.| to it, being an elaborate excuse for writing the book in the Vulgar tongue itself. Its expressions are not always in literal agreement with those of the other treatise; but these differences, even the exaltation of Latin as “nobler,”[[589]] in an apparent contradiction to the argument of the later book, are sufficiently accounted for by the difference of purpose and subject. But the elaborate apology for writing in the vernacular, and the elaborate arguments by which it is supported, have no small critical interest of their own; and the later chapters contain eager championship of Italian, if not against Latin, yet against Provençal, which it was the fashion to compare to it. It is scarcely necessary to go through this book in detail; but it contains some very interesting glimpses, and, as it were, vistas of critical truth. The two most noteworthy of these are the remarks about translation, and those about the respective advantages for showing a language of prose and verse.
Translation Dante condemns utterly. Nothing harmonised by the laws of the Muses can be changed from one tongue to |Dante on Translation.| another without destroying all its sweetness and harmony. This (which is arch-true) connects itself directly with Dante’s unerring direction towards the criticism of form. If “all depends on the subject,” translation can do no harm, for the subject can be maintained in exactly the same condition through more languages than Mezzofanti or Prince Lucien Bonaparte ever meddled with. But the form, the language, the charm of the verse, the music of the composition, they go utterly and inevitably; and even if the translator succeeds in putting something in their place, it is another, and not themselves.
Again, in the eloquent and admirable defence[[590]] of the tongue of Si against the Lingua d’Oco, he has this remarkable saying, |On language as shown in prose and verse.| that you cannot see its real excellence in rhymed pieces, for the accidental accompaniments (“accidental,” quoad language). So do the clothes and jewels of a beautiful woman distract the attention from her real beauty, as much as this is set forth by them. In prose the ease, propriety, and sweetness of the language itself can best be shown. Now, let it be observed that this is no exaltation of prose above poetry as such—Dante was far too good a critic, as well as far too great a poet, to make a blunder which has been made since, though hardly before. His argument is the perfectly sound, and, unless I mistake, almost wholly novel one—that the intrinsic powers (if they be doubted) of a language are best shown in prose. If it can do well there, a fortiori it can do better in poetry; but the “added sweetness” of rhythm, metre, rhyme, poetic diction, and the like may distract the attention from the mere and sheer merits of the language itself. And so once more we find Dante, in opposition to the Master, in opposition to all ancient critics except Longinus, and partly even to him, recognising the ultimate and real test of literary excellence as lying in the expression, not in the meaning.
This would in itself be a thing so great that no greater has met or will meet us throughout this history. Even yet the truth, which Longinus caught but as in a Pisgah-sight, which |Final remarks on his criticism.|Dante himself rather felt and illustrated throughout than consciously or deliberately championed in any particular place—the truth that the criticism of literature is first of all the criticism of expression as regards the writer, of impression as regards the reader—is far from being universally recognised, is far even from being a prevailing or a popular doctrine. By many it is regarded as an unquestionable heresy, by others as a questionable half-truth. But that Dante did feel, if he hardly saw, it, that he was penetrated by it, that his criticism in the De Vulgari Eloquio turns on it—for these things I hope to have shown some cause.
Not of course (it may, though it should not, be necessary to repeat this) that he was himself by any means indifferent to the “subject.” On the contrary, the great threefold division of the subjects of high poetry into Salus, Venus, Virtus—Arms, Love, and religiously guided Philosophy—is to this day the best that exists. And here too Dante has made a notable advance on the ancients, in admitting Love to equality in principle, to the primacy (I had almost said), in practice. We saw how the good Servius found it necessary to apologise for the fourth book of the Æneid, as dealing with the trifling subject of Love; we know how Greek criticism slighted Euripides, not, as it might have done, for his literary shortcomings, but because of his reliance on the tender passion; we know further how, except in mystical philosophisings of the Platonic kind, there is nothing satisfactory on the matter anywhere—that not merely Dionysius but Longinus, in the very act of preserving for us the two chief love-poems of the ancient world, can find nothing adequate to say about them, and that Aristotle leaves the subject severely alone.
Here also Dante knew better; here also he expressed consummately all the enormous gain of dream which the sleep of the Dark Ages had poured into the heart and the soul of the world. But here his service, though critical in category, was hardly critical in method; and, besides, he was only one of a myriad. From Brittany to Transylvania, and from Iceland to Provence, the whole thirteenth century, if not the whole twelfth also, had been “full of loves”—there had been no fear of “Venus” being forgotten. But all these thousand singers had simply sung because they must or would. They had had no critical thought of the manner of their singing. If they had written in Latin, it was because of custom, because they wanted learned appreciation, because they had been taught to write in Latin. If they had written in the vernacular, it was because it came naturally to them, and there was guerdon for it.
But this, as we have seen, was not possible to Dante. Ever a fighter, he was not content to serve the Illustrious Vernacular, to write in it, to advance its powers, without arguing for it as well, without giving it a critical title to place and eminence. Ever a thinker, too, he was not satisfied to write the best poetry, but must know how and in what the best poetry consisted, what made it best, what were its resources and stores of attack and of charm. Most fortunately, his conviction that vulgare and regulare were two very different things, and that the methods of treating them must be different also, led him, as it would seem, to abandon the devices of the regular Rhetoric, and to construct, half-consciously no doubt, a new and really Higher Rhetoric of the vulgar tongue itself.
This is what we have systematically, if incompletely, for Poetics in the De Vulgari Eloquio, while we have hints towards a prose Rhetoric in the first book of the Banquet[[591]]. And it cannot be too much insisted on that, in the former case definitely and systematically, in the latter by sample and suggestion rather than directly, a kind of criticism is disclosed of which we hardly find any trace in the ancients (Longinus partly excepted), though if Aristotle had worked out one side of his own doctrines, and had been less afraid of Art and its pleasure, we might have had it from him.
That the book itself remained so long unknown, and that even after its belated publication it attracted little attention, and has for the most part been misunderstood, or not understood at all, is no doubt in part connected with the fact of its extraordinary precocity. On the very threshold of modern literature, Dante anticipates and follows out methods which have not been reached by all, or by many, who have had the advantage of access to the mighty chambers whereof the house has since been built and is still a-building.
We shall see nothing like this in the rest of the present Book. Some useful work on Prosody, a little contribution of the usual Rhetoric, some interesting if indirect critical expression, will meet us. But no, or next to no, such criticism properly so called, no such exploration and exposition of the secrets of the literary craft, no such revelation of the character of the literary bewitchment.[[592]]