voice of many silent centuries I only touch, for it would require a
volume to elucidate its many-sided significance. It is not one thing,
but many things. In one aspect it is an autobiography as faithful as
those of St. Augustine or of Rousseau, though transcendently purer
and greater. It is a vision, like the "Pilgrim's Progress" of John
Bunyan, but written with incomparably wider knowledge and keener
insight. It is a soul's history, like Goethe's "Faust," but attaining
to a far loftier level of faith and thoughtfulness and moral
elevation. It is a divine poem, like Milton's "Paradise Lost,"
dealing, as Milton does, with God and Satan, and heaven and hell, but
of wider range and intenser utterance. With the plays of Shakespeare,
in their oceanic and myriad-minded variety, it can hardly be compared,
because it originated under conditions so widely different, and was
developed in an environment so strangely dissimilar. It is, moreover,
one poem, while they form a multitude of dramas. But few would
hesitate to admit that in reading Dante we are face to face with a
soul, if less gifted yet less earthly than that of Shakespeare; a soul
which "was like a star and dwelt apart"--
"Soul awful, if this world has ever held
An awful soul."
I would urge all who are unacquainted with Dante to read, or rather to
study, him at once. They could study no more ennobling teacher. If
they are unfamiliar with Italian, they may read the faithful prose
version of the "Inferno" by John Carlyle, of the "Purgatorio" and
"Paradiso," by A. J. Butler, or the translations by Cary in blank
verse, and the Dean of Wells in _terza rima_. If they desire to begin
with some general introduction, they may read the fine essays by Dean
Church and Mr. Lowell (in "Among my Books") and the excellent "Shadow
of Dante," by Maria Rosetti. To such books, or to those of Mrs.
Oliphant and others, I must refer the reader for all details
respecting the structure of the poem which he called the "Divine
Comedy." The name "Comedy" must not mislead any one. The poem is far
too stately, intense, and terrible for humor of any kind. It was only
called "Commedia" partly because it ends happily, and partly because
it is written in a simple style and in the vernacular Italian, not, as
was then the almost universal custom for serious works, in Latin. The
name "Divina" is meant to indicate its solemnity and sacredness.
Many are unable to apprehend the greatness of the "Divine Comedy."
Voltaire called the "Inferno" revolting, the "Purgatorio" dull, and
the "Paradiso" unreadable. The reason is because they are not rightly
attuned for the acceptance of the great truths which the poem teaches,
and because they look at it from a wholly mistaken standpoint. If
anyone supposes that the "Inferno," for instance, is meant for a
burning torture-chamber of endless torments and horrible vivisection,
he entirely misses the central meaning of the poem as Dante himself
explained it. For he said that it was not so much meant to foreshadow
the state of souls after death--although on that subject he accepted,
without attempting wholly to shake them off, the horrors which, in
theory, formed part of mediaeval Catholicism--but rather "man as
rendering himself liable by the exercise of free-will to the rewards
and punishments of justice." The hell of Dante is the hell of self;
the hell of a soul which has not God in all its thoughts; the hell of
final impenitence, of sin cursed by the exclusive possession of sin.
It is a hell which exists no less in this world than in the next;
just as his purgatory reflects the mingled joy and anguish of true
repentance, and his heaven is the eternal peace of God, which men can
possess here and now, and which the world can neither give nor take
away. In other words, hell is not an obscure and material
slaughter-house, but the Gehenna of evil deliberately chosen; and
heaven is not a pagoda of jewels, but the presence and the light of
God. Hence the "Divine Comedy" belongs to all time and to all place.
While it supremely sums up the particular form assumed by the religion
of the Middle Ages, it contains the eternal elements of all true
religion in the life history of a soul, redeemed from sin and error,
from lust and wrath and greed, and restored to the right path by the
reason and the grace which enable it to see the things that are, and
to see them as they are. The "Inferno," as has been said elsewhere, is
the history of a soul descending through lower and lower stages of
self-will till it sinks at last into those icy depths of Cocytus,
wherein the soul is utterly emptied of God, and utterly filled with
the loathly emptiness of self; the "Purgatory" is the history of the
soul as it is gradually purged from sin and self, by effort and
penitence and hope; the "Paradise" is the soul entirely filled with
the fulness of God.
The moral truths in which the great poem abounds are numberless and of
infinite interest. On these I cannot dwell, for to him who penetrates
to the inner meaning of the allegory they are found on every page. But
I may point out one or two supreme lessons which run throughout the
teaching.
One is the lesson that like makes like--the lesson of modification by
environment. We know how in Norfolk Island the convicts often
degenerated almost into fiends because they associated with natures
which had made themselves fiend-like, and were cut off from gentle,
wholesome, and inspiring influences.
So it is in Dante's "Inferno." His evil men and seducers wax ever
worse and worse because they have none around them save souls lost
like their own. There is no brightening touch in the "Inferno." The
name of Christ is never mentioned in its polluted air. The only angel
who appears in it is not one of the radiant Sympathies, with fair
golden heads and dazzling faces and wings and robes of tender green,
of the "Purgatory," not one of the living topazes or golden splendors
of the "Paradise"; but is stern, disdainful, silent, waving from
before his face all contact with the filthy gloom. His Lucifer is no
flickering, gentlemanly, philosophic man of the world like Goethe's
Mephistopheles, nor like Milton's Fallen Cherub, whose
"Form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, or excess
Of glory obscured;"
but is a three-headed monster of loathly ugliness, with faces yellow
with envy, crimson with rage, and black with ignorance; not haughty,
splendid, defiant, but foul and loathly as sin itself.
PETRARCH
By ALICE KING
(1304-1374)
[Illustration: Petrarch.]
It was in the days of civil strife in Florence. The Republic, like the
fickle mistress that she was, was stripping and turning out of doors
her best servants, and was petting and clothing with honor her worst
ones. Among those who, driven by the decree of banishment, hurried out
of the city's southern gate were the parents of Francesco Petrarch.
They retired to the little town of Arezzo, and there he was born in
1304, soon after their banishment. As she looked at her boy, his
mother, Eletta, very likely mourned to think that he would not be able
in after life to boast of being a native of fair Florence. She did not
know that in future ages Florence was to count it among her highest
distinctions that this child was of Florentine race.
Francesco was hardly freed from his swaddling-clothes when his father,
with that restlessness peculiar to exiles, removed the whole family
from Arezzo to Pisa. There they stayed for about two years; and the
little fellow's first tottering, baby footsteps were traced on the
banks of the Arno. When he was three the decree of banishment was,
through the influence of friends in Florence, revoked toward the
Petrarch family, as far as Eletta and her son were concerned--and a
part of their property was restored to them. The father was glad to
secure to his dear ones a safer and more comfortable home than he
could find for them in his wanderings; and Eletta, though she wept at
parting from her husband, smiled again when relations and old familiar
companions crowded round her to admire her gallant boy.
She did not, however, stay long in the town. She withdrew to Ancisa, a
village about fourteen miles from Florence, and settled there on a
small estate belonging to her husband. This she did partly, perhaps,
to keep down her expenses, and partly, perhaps, to devote herself more
entirely to her son. Here his mother, who must have been a clever
woman in her way, breathed into the boy Petrarch that high religious
feeling which strengthened his whole life, and led him up the first
steps of the ladder of knowledge; and here he acquired that taste for
the sights and sounds of the country, and that love of its quiet which
clung to him till the end of his days. The song of the nightingale,
the whisper of the wind, the murmur of the stream, all re-echo
constantly through his verse; and even when he is most rapturous
about Laura's beauty, he will often pause to tell of the grass and
flowers on which she treads.
No doubt, also, it was through the healthy out-door life which he led
as a child at Ancisa that he gained the physical strength which
afterward enabled him to become one of the best horsemen and swordsmen
of that day of bold riding and hard fighting. Eletta at that time
worked well and wisely for both the body and mind of the future poet.
But the mother and son were not to stay always in that quiet retreat.
After some time the elder Petrarch, finding that he could not get
permission to return to Florence, sent for his wife and boy, and they
went all together to Avignon, where they settled.
Proud of his son's talents, the elder Petrarch chalked out for him a
grand career as an advocate, which was to end in the judge's ermine.
He therefore sent Francesco to study law, first at Montpellier, and
then at Bologna.
When Petrarch was twenty-two both his parents died. Soon after that he
joyfully threw away his law-books, and resolved to live for
literature, and literature alone. He went back to Avignon. But the
ways of the town were not much to his taste, and its whirl and noise
distracted his mind. He therefore spent part of the fortune inherited
from his father in buying a small estate at Val Chiusa, a pretty,
quiet nook some miles from Avignon. Thither he retired, and spent his
time with his pen and his books, only now and then seeing a few
friends who came out from the town to visit him.
The young man was not, however, always satisfied with this monotonous
way of life. About this period he took a long journey, in which he saw
many of the European capitals, and formed, among the learned of
foreign lands, friendships which he afterward kept up through constant
correspondence. The world already began to speak of Petrarch as a
rising man of letters.
One Good Friday he was in the Church of Santa Chiara, at Avignon.
There he saw a face which made him forget his prayers; a face from
which the dark eyes of the South looked forth, though the bright hair
of the North waved around it; a face which somehow exactly fitted into
the niche of his ideal; a face which was to stamp itself upon his
verse for all ages and for all lands, Petrarch had fixed his first
look on Laura.
Afterward he got to know her personally, and they often met in
society. Of Laura herself nothing certain is known, except that her
maiden name was Noves and she lived in Avignon. Some writers say that
she always remained single, in her father's house, and some that she
married and had many children. There are a few pictures of her, for
the authenticity of which it is impossible to answer. They are all
handsome, and remarkable for an almost nun-like shyness and sweetness
of expression. She was certainly a woman of refined taste and
cultivated mind, and at a time when female modesty was the only rare
adornment of the fair sex in Avignon, her character was as stainless
as the first snow-flake which fell on the summit of the Estrelles. The
connection between Petrarch and Laura seems to our modern ideas a very
singular one.
To explain the position in which they stood to each other, we must
turn to the manners and customs of their age and country. Partly,
perhaps, through the great reverence paid in the Roman Catholic Church
to the Virgin Mary and other female saints, a sort of woman worship
had, in the thirteenth century, spread through the south of
Christendom. It was no unusual thing for a knight or a troubadour to
select a certain lady, celebrate her in his songs, call on her name in
the hour of danger, and wear her color in battle. The adored or the
adorer might be either of them married--that made no difference; and
the tender litany would sometimes run on for years, long after the
idol's hair was silvered and her form more remarkable for plumpness
than grace.
Homage of this sort did not at all hurt the reputation of her to whom
it was paid; not even her husband and children respected her the less
for it. Some distinguished ladies had many devotees of this kind. On
her side, the woman professed herself to have for her worshipper an
equable, cordial feeling, which never went beyond sisterly friendship.
Whether these platonic attachments ever slid into something warmer we
cannot say. The history of the time gives us no examples of such being
the case.
As for Petrarch, Laura's beauty and the graces of her mind first awoke
within him a romantic sentiment, which, according to the fashion of
his brethren the troubadours, he at once begun publicly to proclaim in
his verse.
By degrees, through his thoughts constantly dwelling on her, his
glorious genius created out of Laura Noves an ideal being who was
woven into his deepest feelings, and his most aerial fancies, and his
highest aspirations. What mattered it to him that the real Laura as
years went on grew middle-aged and changed? His own Laura was gifted
with immortal youth. Even after her death his imagination was still
filled with her; and the sweet cadences in which he mourns her, and
the more exalted strains in which he follows her to her home above,
will always be regarded by his readers as some of the most precious
gems he has left them.
But Laura was not the poet's only theme. Love of his country was
probably Petrarch's strangest passion. Italy was then a complete
patchwork of small states, and it was the dream of Petrarch's whole
life to see the Peninsula united from the Alps to Spartivento. In
words burning as the summer suns which shine upon his native land, and
powerful as the sudden storms which sometimes sweep over her shores,
he spoke out this great longing of his life. He was also the author of
many Latin poems, which were held in even higher honor than his
writings in Italian. One of these Latin poems--that on Scipio
Africanus--was a great favorite among his contemporaries, but to us it
is the coldest and stiffest of his works.
Petrarch's fame went on steadily increasing, until at thirty-seven he
was universally acknowledged as the first poet of the period. When he
had reached that age, there came to his quiet little home at Val
Chiusa two messengers from two great European cities--namely, Rome and
Paris--each of which begged him to accept the laureate's crown within
its walls. The true Italian could not long doubt which offer he
should choose. The Paris invitation was courteously but immediately
refused, and proudly and gratefully Petrarch hastened to Rome.
The act of receiving the crown of a poet laureate was, in those days
of magnificent ceremonials, attended with much really regal pomp.
Dressed in a robe of purple velvet glittering with jewels, such as
suited the taste for splendor of the time, and such as in truth well
befitted a literary prince, Petrarch was conducted with much public
state through Rome to the Capitol, where he was thrice crowned: once
with laurel, once with ivy and once with myrtle. The laurel meant
glory; the ivy signified the lasting fame which should attend his
work; the myrtle was the lawful right of Laura's poet.
The Italian princes vied with each other in trying to get Petrarch to
their courts, and in heaping favors upon him. He visited nearly all of
them in turn. The life of a palace was perhaps not much more to
Petrarch's taste than the life of a great city. But he was too much a
man of the world not to be gratified by these honors, and besides,
through the intimacy which he thus gained with the chief men of his
country, he was able to work better toward his darling object, the
unity of Italy. Many remarkable persons are briefly mixed up with the
story of the poet in these days of his wanderings from city to city.
We catch a glimpse of him being introduced by the pope to the German
emperor Charles IV. at Avignon. We also see him grasping for a moment
the hand of a man who, although no royal blood runs in his veins,
looks in truth like a king among his fellows--Rienzi, the tribune.
The middle of Petrarch's life was darkened by the loss of many
friends. Laura died, struck down by the plague which raged in Avignon,
and Petrarch, who, without counting all the ideal romance with which
he had surrounded her, had for her a strong, warm friendship, mourned
her very deeply. Several other friends of his youth at this time also
passed away from the earth. The heart of the poet was cruelly wounded
by these losses, but he sought comfort in work and study, and devoted
himself more entirely to the interests of his country.
As years went on the poet's love of a country life revived. He had
done his utmost for Italy, but the result of that utmost had been
nothing. The rest of his days should be given alone to literature. He
therefore gave up frequenting courts, and bought a little estate at
Arqua, a village among the Lombard hills, whither he retired. We like
to fancy him in this pleasant home of his age, with his tall, lithe
figure still unbent, his face, though careworn, still shining with
intellectual light, his hand busy with the pen. Petrarch always loved
the little elegancies of life, and no doubt, even in this country
retreat, we should have seen him (unlike most of the literary
brotherhood, whose very livery is untidiness) neatly dressed, and
surrounded by as many pretty knick-knacks as the fourteenth century
could afford. We should not ever have found his table very splendidly
spread. Eletta's son kept the simple tastes acquired at Ancisa at her
side, and liked best a diet of fruit and vegetables.
[Illustration: Petrarch and Laura introduced to the Emperor at
Avignon.]
Once the call of friendship drew him out of his solitude; Carrara, the
Prince of Padua, who had been for many years the poet's friend and
patron, had got into a mess with the Venetian Republic, and sent
for Petrarch to get him out of it. This the poet's skill and eloquence
very soon did, and then he went back to Arqua.
Florence the Fair had a peculiar way of her own of doing tardy justice
to her children. She wept over Dante's grave, and after many years she
begged Petrarch to come and live in the home of his fathers, within
her walls. But the poet did not go. He had grown to think all Italy
his country, rather than one city. Besides, a brighter home was
beginning to open on the old man's view. Eletta and Laura and many
other dear ones waited for him there, and when he had been seventy
years upon earth God called him to join them.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
By ALICE KING
(1328-1400)
[Illustration: Geoffrey Chaucer.]
It is very difficult to get even a correct outline of the figure of
Geoffrey Chaucer. We think we have a perfect view of him; we
congratulate ourselves upon knowing the man just as he moved and spoke
among his contemporaries; when suddenly we discover that we are
looking at a puppet cunningly dressed up by some imaginative
biographer. We believe that we have got him into a good historical
light, when all at once a doubt whether he was or was not an actor in
such and such events throws him again into shadow. We try to conjure
him up, but he comes in so many forms that we grow utterly bewildered.
Yet, notwithstanding all this, we reverence him so deeply and love him
so dearly, that we cannot help striving to gain some idea of what he
was like.
The dates given of Chaucer's birth are very varied, and range from
1328 to 1348. Probably some year midway between these two may be the
right one. The accounts of his parentage are just as uncertain. Some
give him a vintner for a father, some a merchant, and some a knight.
In our opinion the former of these is the most likely origin for
Geoffrey Chaucer. His rich but broad humor seems as if it must have
sprung from the merry, vigorous heart of the common people, and the
variety of characters depicted in the "Canterbury Tales" proves that
he must have mixed with all sorts of men and women, both high and low.
In after-life he was familiar with courts, and knights and ladies; but
we fancy that in his youth he must have known intimately the cook, the
wife of Bath, and the yeoman.
Whoever Chaucer's father may have been, he certainly gave him a very
liberal education. His writings show that Chaucer was a good scholar,
both in the classics and in divinity, and that, according to the ideas
of the fourteenth century, he was far advanced in astronomy and the
other sciences. Tradition says that he studied at both Cambridge and
Oxford. This is not at all unlikely, for we find that reading young
men of that day did sometimes really go from one university to the
other. When he had finished his education in England, Chaucer went to
Paris. There he may have gained that grace of carriage and manner for
which he is said to have been always so remarkable.
We can picture to ourselves the handsome, free-spirited young fellow,
with his ruddy Saxon face and ready Saxon wit, in the joyous capital
of fair France; now whispering pretty nothings into the dainty ear of
some dark-eyed grisette, now going home through the streets at
daybreak, with a band of merry companions, shouting out in
questionable French a jolly chorus; and now riding gayly forth to see
how in a foreign land they understood the art of woodcraft. No doubt
he sowed at this period a tolerable crop of wild oats, but at the same
time he began to plant his laurels. He wrote very early his first long
poem, "The Court of Love." This, like most of his earlier writings, is
full of allegory and imagery. Though very gorgeous in coloring, and
often literally overflowing with rich fancy, these first poems are
rather wanting in the human interest of the "Canterbury Tales."
On his return to England Chaucer for a little while studied law. To
judge by the only incident related of his legal life, he by no means
entirely buried himself among musty old documents and ponderous
volumes.
One afternoon, as young Chaucer was passing through the Temple with
his temper made a little more irritable than usual, it may be by the
heat of the sun, it may be by an additional cup of sack, it may be by
the thought of an especially stiff piece of reading which was before
him--it may be all three together--he met a friar. The priest came
along with easy step and shining, rosy face, rejoicing at once in the
odor of sanctity and of a good dinner. The sight of this placidly lazy
and provokingly comfortable churchman had upon the man of law the same
effect that the sight of a sleek tabby has upon a terrier. In two
minutes Master Geoffrey has jostled against the friar and contrived to
pick a quarrel with him. Hereupon followed a lively game at
single-stick, in which, no doubt, Chaucer's fellow-students backed
loudly the law against the church. At first the friar showed himself
no mean hand with the quarter-staff. But by degrees he began to give
way before his more active antagonist, and when the fray was over the
churchman had learned in good earnest what was meant by the strong arm
of the law; young Chaucer was, however, afterward punished for his
misdeed, by being brought before a magistrate, reprimanded, and fined
as a breaker of the peace; all of which could not exactly have added
to the respectability of the legal brotherhood. Soon after this
Chaucer gave up the law, which was, in truth, entirely unsuited to
him.
By some means, perhaps through the good offices of a friend, he now
contrived to get introduced at Court, where his winning face and
tongue quickly brought him into favor with the royal family. John of
Gaunt, King Edward's third son, who was then not the "time-honored
Lancaster" of after-days, but a gay young prince, took a special fancy
to Chaucer. Prince and subject were, without doubt, well agreed in the
way they liked to amuse themselves, and probably they carried on many
a wild frolic together. This early intimacy ripened into a solid
friendship, which lasted throughout their lives.