But it wuzn’t on the piazza of a house, it wuz out-doors, and the pedestal wuz over twenty feet high, all covered with carvin’s of seens took from his “Divinia Commedia,” and some lions, and the arms of Italy, and things. It wuz a good-lookin’ statute, better lookin’ as fur as beauty goes than Dante himself; he wuz kinder humbly I always thought, but then, I spoze, he didn’t always wear that wreath on his head; mebby he looked better in a beaver hat or a fur cap. ’Tennyrate, Thomas J. always sot store by him. It wuz a noble statute, 352 more’n fifty feet high, I presoom, with two figures standin’ on each side and one on top. The one on the left seemed to have her hand outstretched telling to all the world just how Dante wuz used whilst he wuz alive, and the one on the right had just throwed herself down and wuz cryin’ about it, and Dante, settin’ on top, wuz leanin’ his hand on his head and meditatin’. What his meditations wuz, I don’t know, nor Josiah don’t. Mebby he wuz thinkin’ of Beatrice.
Thomas J. had read Dante’s books a sight to his pa and me. “The Divine Comedy,” “The Inferno,” “Bernadiso,” “New Life,” etc., etc. Thomas Jefferson thought “The Divine Comedy” a powerful work, showing the story of how a man wuz tempted, and how sorrow lifts up the soul to new hites.
I never approved of his praisin’ up Beatrice quite so much under the circumstances, and I dare presoom to say that he and Gemma (his pardner) had words about it. But then I couldn’t hender it, it havin’ all took place five or six hundred years before I wuz born.
Robert Strong said that his writings wuz full of eloquence, wit and pathos. His native land sets great store by his memory, though they acted in the usual genteel and fashionable way, and banished and persecuted him during his life. One thing he said I always liked. He wuz told he might return to his country under certain pains and penalties, but he refused and said:
“Far from a preacher of justice to pay those who have done him wrong as a favor. Can I not everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars? Speculate on sweetest truths under any sky.”
Robert Strong said his poetry wuz far finer in the original.
And I said, “Yes, he wuz very original, for Thomas Jefferson always said so.”
He is buried in Ravenna, and the Florentines have begged for his ashes to rest in Florence. If when they burnt 353 up some of his books to show their contempt of him they had done as they wanted to, dug up his body and burnt it, there wouldn’t have been any ashes to quarrel about, for of course scornin’ him so they would have cast his ashes to the winds. But now they worship him when his ear is dead to their praise, the great heart silent that their love would have made beat with ecstasy. Well, such is life. They treated Tasso just about the same who writ “Jerusalem Delivered,” they imprisoned him for a lunatic, and now how much store they set by him.
And I had these same thoughts, only more extreme ones, as we stood in the cell of that noble preacher of righteousness and denouncer of sin, Savonarola. He wuz so adored by the populace, and so great a crowd pressed to see him to kiss his robe and applaud him, that he had to have a guard. And then this same adoring crowd turned against him, imprisoned him for heresy, tortured him, burnt him to the stake. And when he stood on the fagots, which wuz to be his funeral bed of flame, and the bishop said to him:
“I excommunicate you from the church militant,” he answered: “Thou canst not separate me from the Church Triumphant.”