FOOTNOTES:
[2] The other prose Italian writings of approximate date are for the most part either translations from the Latin, which do not enter into the plan of this work, or novelettes, which will be more advantageously considered along with other works of their class. The origin of Italian prose would have to be carried considerably farther back if theCarte di Arborea in the public library of Cagliari were genuine, but they are unquestionably forgeries.
Gin my seven sons were seven rats,
Rinning over the castle wa’,
And I mysel’ were the auld grey cat,
Full soon would I worry them a’!
—OLD BALLAD.
CHAPTER III
DANTE’S LIFE AND MINOR WRITINGS
Creditable as were their essays in the new literary instrument of thought, Dante’s predecessors can be regarded as his forerunners only in so far as they had helped to create an intellectual atmosphere congenial to the special bent of his genius. The general character of this may be defined as an alliance of the chivalrous and impassioned sentiment which had come down from the troubadours with the science of Aristotle and the thought of Aquinas. Guido Cavalcanti had shown how these might be combined, and Dante followed in his steps without, perhaps, any clear consciousness of his own infinite superiority; of which, however, a well-known passage in theInferno seems to intimate that he eventually came to entertain a sufficient notion.
DANTE (DURANTE) ALIGHIERI was born at Florence in 1265, in the later part of May. The origin of his family is variously attributed to Rome, Ferrara, Parma, and Verona. The first of his ancestors whom he mentions, Cacciaguida degli Elisei, a crusader in 1147, had bestowed his wife’s surname of Alighieri upon his son, and it had continued in the family. Dante’s relatives belonged to the Guelf party, and had had their share in the turmoils which for half a century had distracted Florence no less than most other Italian cities. Of his boyhood we know nothing, except that he lost his mother at an early age, and that he profited by the instructions of the most learned of the Florentines, Brunetto Latini. He appears to have taken part in several military expeditions in his youth, and the glimpses of his personal circumstances which he allows us in theVita Nuova exhibit him as a man of means, mingling on equal terms with the wealthy and polished society of prosperous Florence.
If our knowledge of Dante’s outer life at this period of his history is imperfect, it is otherwise with his spiritual life, which he has revealed as no other could, in the above-mentionedVita Nuova, written probably about 1292. This alone would have immortalised him as the author of the earliest modern book of its class—though it had a prototype in theConfessions of Saint Augustine—and of the first book of genius, or indeed of any real importance, written in Italian prose. Nothing can more forcibly proclaim the superiority of Dante’s mind than the uniqueness of his first production, unless it be the fact that, high as is its place in literature, its chief interest for us is its concern with the man. It is simply the record of his attachment to a young lady whom he calls Beatrice, and whom Boccaccio enables us to identify with one whom we know from other sources to have actually existed, Beatrice de’ Portinari. The notion that Beatrice is but an abstraction is utterly refuted, to adduce no other testimony, by Cino’s consolatory poem on her death, quoted in the preceding chapter, and can only be entertained by those who know little of love, or are entirely possessed by the passion for allegorising. If ever intense affection was conveyed in intense language it is here, while at the same time the passion is purely Platonic, and there is no proof that it was in any degree shared by its object, who appears to have been already married.