advancing mysticism under the disguise of passion. Boccaccio rendered it still more attractive, by investing it with a romantic costume; that his romance had a burgher and civic air, was a popular element, which served to carry on the movement in a descending direction, into the middle and lower ranks of society. What Petrarca had concealed in learned Latin, Boccaccio told the people in their own familiar dialect. Dante could not, and did not, fail to see that the language of the Apocalypse was (whatever larger and deeper interpretation it might bear) at least applicable, as Mr. Lyell remarks,

"To the Pope and his adherents, that Babylon was Rome, and that Lucifer of the Inferno was declared by Dante himself to be Antichrist, and the Pope the chief of the Guelfs; and that it was scarcely less palpable that the antagonist of Lucifer in the Comedia was the Emperor, the chief of the Ghibellines, generally figured in lyrical poetry by the divinity Love. In the figurative language of the Apocalypse, life is virtue, death is vice; hence in that of the Ghibelline Dante, life is Ghibellinism, death is Guelfism. This signification of love and hate, life and death, led Professor Rossetti to remark that other terms expressive of opposite qualities, good and evil, were applied to the two rival parties; and by collecting these, he has formed his vocabulary of a sectarian antipapal language which in his hands is the master-key that unlocks many mysteries, and seemingly inexplicable poetic enigmas, of the latter part of the dark ages. It has all the merit of a discovery, though he has shown that it is in fact only the revival and publication of knowledge which the older commentators dared not openly to disclose. The ingenuity of his interpretations is universally acknowledged, but their novelty, and opposition to strong-rooted impressions, has provoked several critics in this country to express distrust and even disbelief of them. In my own opinion, the principle upon which they are founded is true and unquestionable; in its application we must occasionally expect error, and in those instances should give the interpreter the indulgence we so readily concede to Landino, whose comment on the Comedia of Dante is the only one in point of boldness and originality which can contend with that of Professor Rossetti."

Stern and severe as was Dante, proud and invincible in virtue and moral discipline, strictly logical in his mental processes, and ratiocinative to the very height of the philosophy available to him and his times, yet was his soul as tender, and his heart as erotic, as the heart and soul of Petrarca himself. Many parts of his divine comedy testify to this; but his lyric poems glow throughout with the flames of love, and are lit up, by its permeating influence, with beauty and colour. The love, however, thus expressed is of a peculiar and significant character at once Platonic and Christian.

"The philosophy and poetry of Paganism," says Mr. Lyell, "supply the form and outline; the expression and colouring are given by the Catholic worship of the Virgin and the spirit of chivalry. From this association arise its principal peculiarities; the deification of Love, the planetary influence of the Third Heaven, the pre-eminence assigned to intellectual beauty, the high veneration of the female character, and the refined nature of the passion; in which purity, gentleness, and dignified humility constitute the brightest graces in the beloved; and loyalty, constancy, and devoted attachment to a single mistress, the noblest virtues in the lover.

Hence also proceeds the poet's distinguished and never-ending praise of the eyes, the smile, and lips of his mistress; the eyes giving the promptest indication

of an intelligent mind, the smile bespeaking goodness of heart, and the lips being the vehicle through which every generous sentiment is conveyed. In the extravagance of figurative language, even the golden tresses of the fair one are the symbol of her mind; each individual hair becomes a thought; every beautiful feature the representation of an intellectual charm; and Love, the all-powerful deity, proclains himself the offspring of celestial Venus.

The stream from this pure allegorical fountain divided itself into a variety of branches, amatory, moral, and even political. For at a period when the jealous eye of the Inquisition made it dangerous for Philosophy to walk abroad without a veil, it did not escape the philanthropist that he might conceal his aspirations after any particular good, whether civil or religious, under the symbol of the passion of Love; and equally conceal the powerful agency, whether individual or collective, through which he might hope to effect his purpose, under the symbol of the most beneficent of the heathen deities.

His

"Another feature in this portraiture of Love which deserves notice is the frequent consideration of the passion as a spiritual regeneration; a death to vice and every ignoble sentiment, and a new life to all that is virtuous and generous. The Vita Nuova of Dante is the most memorable example. Another, which is afforded by Lorenzo de' Medici, is made remarkable by his own comment upon it. first sonnets commemorate a young lady to whom he ascribes precisely the same attractions as are given by Dante to Beatrice, and who had died in the month of April, when Nature revives aud clothes herself anew in the garment of spring. Upon this he observes, It will be thought strange by some that I should seem to pervert the common order of nature, in making death, which is the end of all human things, the first subject of my poetry. But Aristotle observes that deprivation is the commencement of all created things; and he who subtilely examines the matter, will find that the life of love proceeds from death, for he who loves dies first to every other thing; and if love contains in itself all the perfections we have described, it is impossible to arrive at such perfection without first dying, even as to what is most perfect. Homer sends Ulysses to the Infernal regions, Virgil sends Æneas, and Dante explores Hell in his own person, to show that this is the road by which to arrive at perfection. It is also intended to be shown, that when the knowledge of imperfect things is obtained, it is necessary, as far as regards them, to die; therefore, after Æneas has visited the Elysian fields, and Dante has been conducted to Paradise, Hell is for ever forgotten. Orpheus would have recovered his lost Eurydice and replaced her among the living, if he had not looked back on Hell. By which is to be understood, that Orpheus had not entirely died, and therefore he failed to attain the perfection of happiness, the regaining of his beloved Eurydice.'

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In poetry of such a cast, where the sacred and profane, the reasonable and romantic, the classical and gothic, are mingled together, we must expect, as in the imposing Italian architecture of the middle ages, that parts of the fabric will offend, though the effect of the whole is productive of delight; and in order to excuse the poet occasionally for an apparent abuse of the thoughts and language of Scripture, it is necessary to call to mind the taste of the age, and the habits induced by the ceremonies and practice of the Catholic Church.”

One of Dante's fine lyrical poems we presented to our readers in our first Number-a poem which altogether breathes a Protestant character. We may be sure that a poet who valued neither riches nor ancestry as sources of nobility, would not have conceded to historical succession and dominion the sole proof of apostolicity. He would not have denied all to individual virtue and genius, and conceded all to an abused though highly privileged order, the members of which had proved themselves to be carnal, extortionate, diabolical. Another Ode of Dante we now beg to present, with Mr. Lyell's version ::

The analysis of the "Vita Nuova" details some of the most interesting facts of Dante's life :

The Vita Nuova is a short narrative in prose, serving chiefly as a comment on the poems with which it is interspersed. It commences thus: In that part of the book of my memory, before which there is little which could be read, stands a rubric which

says, Incipit Vita Nuova. Under that rubric I find the incidents recorded which it is my intention to string together in the following book.

"Dante then proceeds to relate his first meeting with Beatrice, when both were about the age of nine; her appearance; its extraordinary effect upon all his faculties, especially upon three of them; and the lasting impression left by her charms. Nine years after this interview, at the beginning of the last nine hours of night, he has the dream related in the following interrogatory sonnet; upon which he observes, that at that time its true meaning was not seen by any one, but that afterwards it became evident to the most simple understanding.”

The friendship with the distinguished poet, Guido Cavalcanti, whom Dante calls the first of his friends, commenced with Guido's reading the above sonnet. Guido answered it with another. Here it is :