Turning to Bk. II we find the same Azzo ironically praised in Chapter vi., in a “copy-book phrase” of which the incidental introduction gives point to the satire: “Laudabilis discretio marchionis Estensis et sua magnificentia preparata cunctis, cunctis illum facit esse dilectum.”
More delightful still is a sentence which closely follows, quoted solemnly like the former merely as an example of good phraseology appropriate to a lofty subject, in which Charles of Valois plays the rôle of a “second Totila,” and his calamitous dealings with Florence (including, presumably, Dante’s own banishment) are adduced as a fitting prelude to his futile descent upon Sicily. “Ejecta maxima parte florum de sinu tuo, Florentia, nequicquam Trinacriam Totila secundus adivit.”[157]
Earlier in the book there is another humorous touch with which we may conclude our list, at the risk, perchance, of an anti-climax. A passage near the end of Chapter i. recalls, in a curious way, a line from the Epistles of Horace.
Dante, having premised that every one should adorn (exornare) his verses as far as possible, goes on to point out that there are limits beyond which adornment becomes incongruous and absurd. “We do not speak of an ox caparisoned like a horse or a belted pig as ornatus; we laugh at them, and would rather apply the word deturpatus.” This bos ephippiatus most aptly typifies incongruity of adornment. In Horace’s well-known line—
Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus,[158]
the point of the satire is different. It is the Roman poet’s favourite theme of universal discontent—each envying another’s lot.
In Dante’s phrase we may perhaps detect an unconscious or semi-conscious adoption or adaptation of a classical image: parallel, in a humble way, with those splendid thefts from Virgil and Ovid with which he has enriched the Divina Commedia: conceptions too unquestionably original in their new form to be classed as mere plagiarisms.
“Cicero hath observed,” says the Spectator of Nov. 5, 1714,[159] “that a jest is never uttered with a better grace than when it is accompanied with a serious countenance.”
If this be true, our quest may perhaps modestly congratulate itself on the avoidance of undue levity. Nor need we take it seriously to heart if we have failed to vindicate for Dante the character of a humorist in the modern sense, and of the American type. The most that our investigation can be said to have proved is that Dante, embittered as he was by his exile, and emaciated by long and serious study, was not devoid of that sense of humour whereby man is able to wring matter for cheerfulness and mirth out of the most unlikely material, and, going through this vale of misery—“questo aspro disorto”—to “use it for a well.” But neither is he the cold abstraction, both less and more than human, which tradition, of a sort, has handed down to us. His works display, for those who care to look for them, a breadth of sympathy, a capacity for observation and discernment, a keenness of interest, an eye for the incongruous, a richness and sureness of self-expression that are guarantees of the possession of the sense of humour.[160] The manifold play of the forces of one of the most picturesque ages of human history found a sympathetic response in Dante’s genius, though the sublimity and the restraint of his work has obscured this. This side of his genius is well summed up by Sannia.[161]