The remains of the illustrious poet were buried with a splendour honourable to his name and worthy of his patron, who himself pronounced the funeral eulogium of his departed guest. His own countrymen, who had hardened their hearts against justice and humanity, in resistance of his return amongst them while living, soon after his death became sensible of their folly, and too late repented it. Embassy on embassy, during the two succeeding centuries, failed to recover the bones of their outcast fellow-citizen from his hospitable entertainers; and Florence has less to boast of in having given him birth, than Ravenna for having given him burial. One of those fruitless negotiations was conducted under the auspices of Leo X., and more illustriously sanctioned by Michael Angelo, an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, who offered to adorn the shrine, had the desired relics been obtained. The mighty sculptor,—himself the Dante of marble, simple, severe, sublime in style, and preternatural almost from the fulness of reality condensed in his ideal forms,—in many of his works, both of the chisel and the pencil, introduced figures suggested by images of the poet, or directly embodying such. Most conspicuous among these were the statues of Leah and Rachel, from the twenty-seventh canto of the "Purgatorio," on the monument of pope Julius II. His own copy of the "Divina Commedia" was embellished down the margin with sketches from the subjects of the text; and, had it been preserved, would surely have been classed with the most precious of those books for which collectors are eager to give ten times or more their weight in gold. The fate of this volume was not less singular than its good fortune; after having been made inestimable by the hand of Michael Angelo, it was lost at sea, and thus added to the treasures of darkness one of the richest spoils that ever went down from the light.
It was the purpose of Guido da Polenta to erect a gorgeous sepulchre over the ashes of the poet; but he neither reigned nor lived to accomplish this, being soon afterwards driven from his dominions, and dying himself a banished man at Bologna. More than a hundred and fifty years later, Bernardo Bembo, father of the famous cardinal, completed Polenta's design, though upon an inferior scale; and three centuries more had elapsed, when cardinal Gonzaga raised a second and far more sumptuous monument in the same place,—Ravenna; while in Florence, to this day, there is none worthy of itself or the poet, who had been in turn "its glory and its shame." The greatest honours conferred on his memory by his native city were, the restoration to his family of his confiscated property, after a lapse of forty years, the erection of a bust crowned with laurel, at the public expense, a present from the state of ten golden florins to his daughter by the hands of Boccaccio, and the appointment of a public lecturer to expound the mysteries of the "Divina Commedia." Boccaccio was the first professor who filled this chair of poetry, philosophy, and theology. He commenced his dissertations on a Sunday, in the church of St. Stephen, but died at the end of two years, having proceeded no further than the seventeenth Canto of the "Inferno." Similar institutions were adopted in Bologna, Pisa, Venice, and other Italian towns; so that the renown of the man who had lived by sufferance, died an outlaw, and been indebted to strangers for a grave, exceeded, within two centuries, that of all his countrymen who in polite literature had gone before him, and became the load-star of all who, in any age, should follow. At Rome only the memory of the Ghibelline bard was execrated, and his writings were proscribed. His book "De Monarchia" was publicly burnt there, by order of pope John XXII., who also sent a cardinal to the successor of Guido da Polenta, to demand his bones, that they might be dealt with as those of an heretic, and the ashes scattered on the wind. How impotent is the vengeance of the great after the death of the object of their displeasure! What a refuge, especially to fame, is the grave; a sanctuary which can never be violated; for all human passions die on its threshold!
Boccaccio, the earliest of his biographers, though not the most authentic, says, that in person Dante was of middle stature; that he stooped a little from the shoulders, and was remarkable for his firm and graceful gait. He always dressed in a manner peculiarly becoming his rank and years. His visage was long, with an aquiline nose, and eyes rather full than small; his cheek-bones large, and his upper lip projecting beyond the under; his complexion was dark; his hair and beard black, thick and curled; and his countenance exhibited a confirmed expression of melancholy and thoughtfulness. Hence one day, at Verona, as he passed a gateway, where several ladies were seated, one of them exclaimed, "There goes the man who can take a walk to hell, and back again, whenever he pleases, and bring us news of every thing that is doing there." On which another, with equal sagacity, added, "That must be true; for don't you see how his beard is frizzled, and his face browned, with the heat and the smoke below!" The words, whether spoken in sport or silliness, were overheard by the poet, who, as the fair slanderers meant no malice, was quite willing that they should please themselves with their own fancies. Towards the opening of the "Purgatorio" there is an allusion to the soil which his face had contracted on his journey with Virgil through the nether world:—
"High morn had triumph'd o'er the glimmering dawn
Which fled before her, so that I discern'd
The tremble of the ocean from afar:
We walk'd along the solitary plain,
Like men retracing their erratic steps,
Who think all lost till they regain the path.
Arriving where the dew-drops with the sun
Contended, and lay thick beneath the shade,
Both hands my master delicately spread
Upon the grass:—aware of his intent,
I turn'd to him my tearful countenance,
And thence he wiped away the dusky hue,
With which the infernal air had sullied it."[17]
In his studies, Dante was so eager, earnest, and indefatigable, that his wife and family often complained of his unsocial habits. Boccaccio mentions, that once, when he was at Siena, having unexpectedly found at a shop window a book which he had not seen, but had long coveted, he placed himself on a bench before the door, at nine o'clock in the morning, and never lifted up his eyes from the volume till vespers, when he had run through the whole contents with such intense application, as to have totally disregarded the festivities of processions and music which had been passing through the streets the greater part of the day; and when questioned about what had happened even in his presence, he denied having had knowledge of any thing but what he was reading. As might be expected from his other habits, he rarely spoke, except when personally addressed, or strongly moved, and then his words were few, well chosen, weighty, and expressed in tones of voice accommodated to the subject. Yet when it was required, his eloquence brake forth with spontaneous felicity, splendour, and exuberance of diction, imagery, and thought.
Dante delighted in music. The most natural and touching incident in his "Purgatorio" is the interview between himself and his friend Casella; an eminent singer in his day, who must, notwithstanding, have been forgotten within his century, but for the extraordinary good fortune which has befallen him, to be celebrated by two of the greatest poets of their respective countries, (Dante and Milton) from whose pages his name cannot soon perish.
Choosing to excel in all the elegancies of life, as well as in gentlemanly exercises and intellectual prowess, Dante attached himself to painting not less than to music, and practised it with the pencil (not, indeed, so triumphantly as with the pen, his picture-poetry being unrivalled,) with sufficient facility and grace to make it a favourite amusement in private; and none can believe that he could amuse himself with what was worthless. His four celebrated contemporaries, Cimabue, Odorigi, Franco Bolognese, and Giotto, are all honourably mentioned by him in the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio."
There is an interesting allusion to the employment which he loved in the "Vita Nuova:—On the day that completed the year after this lady (Beatrice) had been received among the denizens of eternal life, while I was sitting alone, and recalling her form to my remembrance, I drew an angel on a certain tablet," &c. It may be incidentally observed, that Dante's angels are often painted with unsurpassable beauty as well as inexhaustible variety of delineation throughout his poem, especially in canto IX. of the "Inferno," and cantos II. VIII. XII. XV. XVII. XXIV. of the "Purgatorio." Take six lines of one of these portraits; though the inimitable original must consume the unequal version.
"A noi venia la creatura bella,
Bianco vestita, e nella faccia, quale
Par, tremolando, mattutina stella:
Le braccia aperse, e indi aperse l'ale;
Disse; 'Venite; qui son presso i gradi,
E agevolmente ornai si sale.'"