Signor Mari, conformably to his plan, has given of the

_Labyrinthus_[534] only the short section dealing actually with

[Sidenote: _The_ Labyrinthus.] rhythm: but the whole poem is of very

great interest and importance for us—indeed of more than any work known

to me between Isidore and Dante. The work, which is otherwise called _De

Miseriis Rectorum Scholarum_, is an elaborate treatise on pædagogics. In

the progress and details of this, the writer seems to forget the

lugubrious estimate of his profession with which he starts, and which

goes so far as to lay down that the future schoolmaster is cursed in his

mother’s womb. Very sound rules are however given for guiding the moral

nature and conduct of this unfortunate functionary; and then his various

businesses are systematically attacked in elegiacs, not at all

contemptible with due allowance. The second part deals with “themes,”

grammar, and, to some extent, composition in general, though the

examples, like the lecture, are in verse; the third with versification.

And here we get a really precious estimate of various authors,

ostensibly for their educational value, but, as in Quintilian’s case,

going a good deal further. Indeed, hardly since Quintilian’s own time

have we had such a critical summary. Cato, a special darling of the

Middle Age, is “a path of virtue and a rule of Morals,” [Sidenote:

_Critical review of poets contained in it._] “though the brevity of his

metre forbids him to polish his words.” Theodolus,[535] a tenth-century

writer of _Eclogæ_, who “champions” (is this the sense of _arcet_?) the

cause of truth against falsehood, “and in whose verse theology plays,”

comes next; and then the far better known Avianus, the instructive and

moral virtue of whose fables is acknowledged, though he is debited

_pauperiore stylo_. In one of the puns so dear to the sensible Middle

Ages, _Æsopus metrum non sopit_—_i.e._, writes no dull or sleepy

verse—and is otherwise highly praised. Maximianus[536] and Pamphilus

(the original of the _Celestina_) follow, and “Geta,”[537] and a punning

reference[538] to Claudian’s _Rape of Proserpine_. Statius, of course,

is praised, indeed twice over. The “pleasing” work of Ovid, the “satire

of the Venusian,” the “not juvenile but mature” ditto of Juvenal, which

“lays bare and never cloaks vice”; Persius of the lofty soul, who spares

no subtlety of mind though he is a lover of brevity, come next, while to

these great satirists of old, the _Architrenius_[539] of John of

Hauteville is yoked, with less injustice than may seem likely to

devotees of classic and scorners of mediæval literature. The inevitable

eccentricity (to _us_) of the mediæval estimate, and probably also the

perseverance of the wooden censorship of Servius, is shown by the fact

that only Virgil’s “themes,” not his treatment, are noticed, except

obliquely. The second notice of Statius for the _Thebaid_, as the first

had been for the _Achilleid_, is less reticent, praising him as _eloquii

jucundus melle_; and Lucan is said to sing _metro lucidiore_, while an

_Alexandreid_ (no doubt that of Gautier of Châtillon), though described

as “shining by Lucan’s light,” is extolled as a historical poem.

Claudian, again by allusion, receives praise for his praise of Stilicho,

and Dares (as we expect with resignation) for his “veracity”; indeed the

clerestories toward that south-north are quite as lustrous as ebony.

Still Homer is placed beside him without depreciation, unless the

mention of _Argolicum dolum_ is intended as a stigma. The couplet

following—

“Sidonii regis qui pingit prælia morem

Egregium calamus Sidonianus habet”—

is annotated by Leyser “Apollonius,” but there seems some difficulty in

this Apollonius. _Rhodius_ has nothing to do with Tyre or Sidon; and

Apollonius _of Tyre_ has very little to do with _prælia_. The poet

alluded to, whoever he is, possesses a pen with a noble manner. A

Salimarius or Solinarius, who sang of the crusades, may be any versifier

of William of Tyre: unless, indeed, the phrase _plenus amore crucis_

refers to one of the numerous poems on the Invention of the Cross.

Macer’s matter is praised, but not his verse, _non sapit ille metro_—a

true Quintilianian judgment. Petrus Riga (_petra cujus rigat Cristus_)

escapes better. Sedulius is noted for “sedulity” of metre, and Arator

“ploughs” the apostolic facts well, while Prudentius, of course, is

prudent.

Footnote 534:

Or _Laborintus_. The adoption of an “Eberhard of Bethune” as the

author is not universally granted, nor the dating at 1212. But the

exact authorship is not of the slightest importance to us, and the

exact date not of much. The whole poem is printed by Leyser, p. 795

_sq._

Footnote 535:

Or Theodulus: _v._ Leyser, _op. cit._, p. 825 _sq._

Footnote 536:

This barbarous, and to Mrs Grundy shocking, but by no means

uninteresting versifier, was a great favourite with the Middle Ages.

He may be found conveniently in Baehrens, _Poetæ Latini Minores_, v.

313 _sq._

Footnote 537:

Leyser oddly annotated _Geta gemens_ “titulus tragediæ,” but the

words—

“Quia captus Mercuriali

Arte Jovem lectus Amphitrionis habet”—

can only refer to an _Amphitryon_.

Footnote 538:

“Thesiphones raptum qui comptus carmine claudit

Arte nec ingenio claudicat ille suo.”

To abduct Tisiphone would be a feather in the cap of any Don Juan, for

audacity if not for taste; but the text is corrupt enough to make it

(as it is elsewhere) an easy _f.l._ for Persephone. The puns in

_claudit_ and _claudicat_, moreover, are practically decisive.

Footnote 539:

This remarkable twelfth-century poem—_v. infra_, note, p. 414, an

allegorical world-pilgrimage with special reference to student sojourn

at Paris—was first abstracted by Wright in his _Biographia Britannica

Literaria_, vol. ii., London, 1846, and afterwards published in full

by him (_Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century_, London,

1872). John of Hauteville or Anville is also credited with a MS.

treatise, _De Epistolarum Compositione_. I wish I had seen it.

Alanus (de Insulis: “Alanus who was very sage,” as Pierre de la Sippade,

the translator of _Paris and Vienne_ from Provençal into French says) is

cited for his dealing with the Seven Arts in the _Anti-Claudianus_; and

half-a-dozen lines of rather obscure allusiveness are devoted to

Matthias Vindocinensis on Tobit, Geoffrey of Vinsauf (_v. infra_), and

Alexander of Villedieu. Prosper _doctrinæ prosperitate sapit_; and the

list is closed by fresh praises of the above Matthias or Matthew, of

Martianus Capella and his “happy style,” of Boethius, Bernardus, the

_Physiologus_, Paraclitus (?), and Sidonius Apollinaris.[540]

Footnote 540:

_Physiologus_ is of course the famous piece of Thetbaldus, the

original—mediate or immediate—of all the vernacular _Bestiaries_.

“Paraclitus” Leyser prints in capitals, like the other titles of books

or authors:—

“Hortatur propria per scripta PARACLITUS omnes

Peccantes. Veniam gratia donat iis.”

I should myself have taken this for a reference to the Holy Spirit as

speaking through the moralities of the _Physiologus_. The false

quantity is, of course, no objection to this: the 3rd syllable is

short at pleasure from Prudentius onwards. For poems of Matthias

Vindocinensis see _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, ii. 257 _sq._ There is some

merit in them.

This catalogue, partly reasoned, is precious, as showing what the

“Thirty best books” of the age of Dante’s birth were. It is succeeded by

metrical and rhythmical directions, characterised by a good deal of

punning as above, but also by acuteness and knowledge.

The extract from the _Labyrinthus_ given by Signor Mari is followed in

his book by two other rhythmical tractates of [Sidenote: _Minor

rhythmical tractates._] small importance, one very short, from a MS. in

the Monaco library, and a longer one, but much later (it is probably as

late as 1400), by a certain Nicolo Tibino. This last is chiefly

noteworthy as giving fewer examples, but much exposition and discussion:

it is indeed, after the custom of these ancestors, a kind of commentary

on the _Labyrinthus_.

But, as it happens, the next piece to the _Labyrinthus_ in Leyser is a

treatise of interest as great as its own, if not greater, the _Poetria

Nova_ of Geoffrey de Vinsauf. Geoffrey, who, despite his French-sounding

name, was certainly a [Sidenote: _Geoffrey de Vinsauf: his_ Nova

Poetria.] countryman of ours, has been rather unkindly treated by us.

Chaucer bestowed upon him one of his most ingeniously humorous

gibes,[541] and Mr Wright (the most faithful and enthusiastic guardian

and restorer of our Latin poets, and usually as tolerant as any, this

side of mere critical omnivorousness) uses hard language of him in the

_Biographia Britannica Literaria_.[542] But he is too valuable to us to

be here abused: rather shall we be grateful to him exceedingly for

revealing the literary tastes and ideals of the age as they lived. The

_New Poetic_[543] begins by one of those mediæval gambades which,

themselves sometimes partaking of the not unamiably nonsensical, seem at

the present day to have a special gift of maddening those persons whose

imbecility is of a different complexion from theirs. Geoffrey dedicates

his poem to Pope Innocent III. (“stupor mundi”), and is at once in a

difficulty. It would not do to call the Pope _Nocens_; _Innocens_ is

simply impossible in a hexameter. So he plays about the subject for a

score or so of lines, adding eulogistic jocular remarks on other

Christian names, especially in relation to the Papacy. “Augustine may

hold his tongue: Leo be quiet: John leave off: Gregory halt,”[544] while

Innocent is comparable with Bartlemy in nobility, with Andrew in

mildness, with St John himself in precious youth, in faith with Peter,

in consummate scholarship with Paul. Then Rome is praised in comparison

with England, and the poet-professor-of-poetry plunges into his subject.

Footnote 541:

_Nun’s Priest’s Tale_, 527 _sq._

Footnote 542:

_Anglo-Norman Period_, vol. ii. p. 398 _sq._

Footnote 543:

Leyser, _op. cit._, pp. 855-986.

Footnote 544:

“Augustine tace. Leo papa quiesce. Johannes

Desine. Gregori subsiste.”

His value, even if it were more flawed and alloyed than it is, will

appear at once from the simple statement of the fact that, unlike the

great majority of mediæval writers (such as they are) on literature, he

does not confine himself to form on the one hand, and on the other does

not adopt, in handling his subject, the extreme cut-and-dried rhetorical

restrictions, though his own conception of the matter is more or less

regulated by them. I do not remember that he ever quotes Horace; but it

is pretty certain that he had the _Ars Poetica_ before him. He opens

with the most solemn and elaborate commands to the poet not to rush upon

his subject, to leave nothing to chance, but to form the conception of

the work carefully and completely beforehand. “A little gall embitters a

whole mass of honey, and one spot makes a whole face ugly.” In his

second chapter he becomes more closely rhetorical. The poet must first

choose and arrange his subject; then elaborate and amplify it; then

clothe it in “civil, not rustic” words; and lastly, study its proper

recitation or delivery. Under the first head the _mot d’ordre_ is order:

the very word _ordo_ occurs over and over again in the first dozen or

sixteen lines. The exordium must look straight to the end: and all the

other parts must follow according to the regular drill of a “theme.”

Special attention is given to the employment of Examples and Proverbs.

Under the head of treatment, Brevity, Amplification, and all the

scholastic tricks of style are inculcated again with plentiful examples,

these including that unlucky passage against Friday which tempted the

wicked wit of another Geoffrey. It is, however, fair to say that He of

the Sound Wine does not himself seem to have been by any means destitute

of a certain sense of humour, and demands ridicule of the ridiculous. If

by his precept, and still more by his examples, Geoffrey seems too much

to encourage word-play as a lighter, and bombast as a graver, ornament

of composition, it is well to remember that the fashions of every time

are not only liable to exaggeration, but nearly always exhibit it.

Professional students of literature have no difficulty in putting a name

to such exaggerations in the thirteenth, the sixteenth, or the

eighteenth century; nor will such students in the future have any more

in performing the same office for the literary fashions of the late

nineteenth. Nor are some of the prescriptions for figure, and fanciful

colour and conceit, by any means infelicitous—always supposing that such

things can be made the subject of regular prescription at all. On the

other hand, it must be admitted that Geoffrey is sometimes painfully

rudimentary. The budding poet who requires to be told that

“Aptantur bene dentes nix; labra flammæ;

Gustus mel; vultus rosa; frons lac; crines et aurum;”

and who then obediently “goes and does it,” is a person with whose works

reviewers (for their sins) are indeed still well acquainted, but to whom

no philanthropist would willingly give encouragement.

This descent to even the lowest ranges of the particular is, however,

one of the most interesting points of the book. There are some two

thousand lines in all, and the whole, except the dedication and three

not very long epilogue-addresses to Pope, Emperor, and a certain

Archbishop William (who has not, I think, been identified), is strictly

devoted to business.

This poem is, on fair authority, assigned to the year 1216, the

_Labyrinthus_ being dated some four years earlier. And, without pinning

our faith to these dates and so running the danger of its unsettlement

should they be attacked, we may say quite boldly that the _Labyrinthus_

and the _Nova Poetria_[545] together give us a remarkable and nearly

complete conspectus of what the late twelfth and early thirteenth

century thought about literature, in what was still its almost

all-embracing form—poetry, in both its rhythmical and metrical

shapes—and in the only thoroughly acknowledged literary language of the

time. For although the vernaculars were already knocking at the door,

they were doing so as yet timidly and half consciously, while in so far

as they were deliberately practised, the principles of composition and

of taste which guided the practice cannot have been different. We find,

if not always with exactly the same _nuance_, terms of Dante’s critical

vocabulary (_e.g._, “pexa”) in the _Poetria Nova_. And though neither

Eberhard nor Geoffrey would in all probability have had anything but

scorn for the suggestion that “vulgar” could possibly equal “regular”

composition; though they were at best men of respectable talent; their

general critical estimate was probably not very different from that of

their great successor on the bridge of the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries. Of his eagle glance into the future of literature they were

entirely destitute, but he shared at least some of their confused vision

in reference to the past.[546]

Footnote 545:

Three other poems of the twelfth or early thirteenth century (referred

to above) are more original, two of them at least are more amusing,

and all have obtained more notice from general literary historians.

These are the _Speculum Stultorum_ or _Brunellus_ of Nigel Wireker,

the _Architrenius_ (see p. 410) of John of Hauteville, and the

_Anti-Claudianus_ of Alanus de Insulis. All three may be found most

conveniently in Wright’s above-cited work, _Anglo-Latin Satirical

Poets of the Twelfth Century_ (2 vols., Rolls Series, London, 1872).

They are by no means to be neglected by us, though their testimony is

mostly negative, and a slight reference to its nature will cover,

indirectly, the absence of reference in the text to such still more

generally famous authors as John of Salisbury and Walter Mapes

himself. It is probable that all five writers, as well as Godfrey of

Winchester (also in Wright, _op. cit._), who could write fair epigrams

in the more decent style of Martial, and others, were well acquainted

with no inconsiderable part of the classics. Upon satirists, moreover,

like Wireker and John of Hauteville, who were attacking the vanity of

monkish and clerical life, hopes, and ambitions, the labour-in-vain of

Universities, and the like, some such indirect but substantive

literary criticism as we find in their Roman originals would seem

almost imperative. But there is nothing of the kind, either in the

_Speculum_ or in the _Architrenius_. In the much duller

_Anti-Claudianus_, Rhetoric, like the other arts, appears, and she is

employed, consistently with her presentation in Martianus (though the

Rhetoric of Capella would perhaps have been too proud to do this

directly) to “paint and gild the pole” of the allegorical Chariot of

Prudence. But of criticism there is nothing, or so little as to be

nothing. Nor will much be found in the interesting notice of mediæval

notices of books and book collections which occurs in M. Cocheris’ ed.

of the _Philobiblon_ (_v. infra_, p. 455), pp. xxxiv-xlvii.

Footnote 546:

If to this peculiarity I seem to refer too often, let me close this

chapter with a sentence from one who loved the Middle Ages as well as

any man, and knew them far better than almost any. To them, says M.

Paulin Paris, “Les siècles passés ne semblaient former qu’une seule et

grande époque, où se réunissaient toutes les célébrités de

l’histoire.”—_Les Romans de la Table Ronde_, i. 169 (Paris: 1868-77).

CHAPTER II.

DANTE.

THE ‘DE VULGARI ELOQUIO’: ITS HISTORY AND AUTHENTICATION—ITS IMPORTANCE,

AND THE SCANTY RECOGNITION THEREOF—ABSTRACT OF ITS CONTENTS: THE

“VULGAR TONGUE” AND “GRAMMAR”—THE NATURE, ETC., OF THE GIFT OF

SPEECH—DIVISION OF CONTEMPORARY TONGUES, AND OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF

ROMANCE—THE ‘ITALIAN DIALECTS’: SOME REJECTED AT ONCE—OTHERS:

SICILIAN, APULIAN, TUSCAN, AND GENOESE—VENETIAN: SOME GOOD IN

BOLOGNESE—THE “ILLUSTRIOUS” LANGUAGE NONE OF THESE, BUT THEIR COMMON

MEASURE—ITS FOUR CHARACTERISTICS—THE SECOND BOOK: WHY DANTE DEALS

WITH POETRY ONLY—ALL GOOD POETRY SHOULD BE IN THE “ILLUSTRIOUS”—THE

SUBJECTS OF HIGH POETRY: WAR, LOVE, VIRTUE—ITS FORM:

CANZONI—DEFINITION OF POETRY—ITS STYLES, AND THE CONSTITUENTS OF THE

GRAND STYLE—“SUPERBIA CARMINUM”—“CONSTRUCTIONIS ELATIO”—“EXCELLENTIA

VERBORUM”—“PEXA ET HIRSUTA”—THE CANZONE—IMPORTANCE OF THIS

BOOK—INDEPENDENCE AND NOVELTY OF ITS METHOD—DANTE’S ATTENTION TO

FORM—HIS DISREGARD OF ORATORY—THE INFLUENCE ON HIM OF ROMANCE, AND

OF COMPARATIVE CRITICISM—THE POETICAL DIFFERENTIA ACCORDING TO

HIM—HIS ANTIDOTE TO THE WORDSWORTHIAN HERESY—HIS HANDLING OF

METRE—OF DICTION—HIS STANDARDS OF STYLE—THE “CHAPTER OF THE

SIEVE”—THE “PEXA”—THE “HIRSUTA”—OTHER CRITICAL “LOCI” IN DANTE: THE

EPISTLE TO CAN GRANDE—THE “CONVITO”—DANTE ON TRANSLATION—ON LANGUAGE

AS SHOWN IN PROSE AND VERSE—FINAL REMARKS ON HIS CRITICISM.

Many are the fortunes of books and the curiosities of them: but there

are few which exceed, in curiosity of many kinds, the history,

character, and fate of the treatise variously entitled _De Vulgari

Eloquentia_ and _De Vulgari Eloquio_, and attributed generally, if not

universally, to Dante Alighieri.[547] Its mere history is unusual. In

the fifth chapter of the first book of [Sidenote: _The_ De Vulgari

Eloquio. _Its history and authentication._] the _Convito_, Dante says

that he shall speak elsewhere more fully, on the subject of Latin and

the Vernacular, in a book which, D.V., he intends to write on _Volgare

Eloquenza_. Boccaccio further says that very near his death he did write

it, and the statement is confirmed by Villani. These mentions give it us

as written in Latin prose and in two books, but after them we hear

nothing about it. In 1529 the poet and dramatist Trissino printed at

Vicenza an Italian translation of it, not under his own name, but under

that of Giovan Battista Doria. No indication was given that this was not

the original, and for a time it was taken as such. But in 1577 Jacopo

Corbinelli published, at Paris, the Latin Text. The MS. which he used,

and which for centuries was supposed to be unique, appears to be that

rediscovered at Grenoble in 1840, and published in facsimile by MM.

Maignien and Prompt in 1892; but there are two other early MSS. One of

these, belonging to the Trivulzi, is taken to be as old, perhaps, as the

Grenoble, both not improbably being older than 1400. A third, at the

Vatican, is a century younger, but still some twenty years older than

the first printed (and translated) edition. The usual difficulties have

been started over these facts, and over some supposed contradictions

between the treatise and Dante’s more certain work. But these concern us

little, and may be sought, by those who want them, in the editions of

the book. It is sufficient to say that few books have a better external

testimony, and that the internal difficulties (some of which will be

referred to later) are quite insignificant.

Footnote 547:

The choice between _Eloquentia_ and _Eloquium_ lies with the taste and

fancy of the chooser. The first word occurs first in the treatise

itself. The second is in the title of the Grenoble MS. The texts which

I use are, for the Latin, Dr Prompt’s facsimile of this MS., Venice,

Olschki, 1892, and Dr Moore’s edition of the _Opere_ (Oxford, 1897),

with Mr Ferrers-Howell’s annotated English translation (London, 1890).

This latter is very good as a whole, though of course one may differ

as to the rendering of individual terms. The edition of the Società

Dantesca by Signor P. Rajna (Florence, 1896) is elaborated with all

the minute care by which scholarship in the looser modern vernaculars

endeavours to put itself on a level with that in the older and exacter

tongues. Unfortunately the emulation, here as elsewhere, is carried as

far as the old unworthy tricks of depreciation and abuse of

predecessors and rivals. The elaborate commentary is limited, with an

almost ferocious scrupulosity, to the barest letter of the text; but

another volume containing literary annotation is promised.

We may take it then on its own showing; and, without haggling about

dates, be reasonably confident that it was written [Sidenote: _Its

importance._] after Dante’s banishment, and of course before his

death—that is to say, in the opening years of the fourteenth century.

Forgery is practically out of the question, for, as has been said, the

oldest manuscripts are some century and a quarter older than Trissino’s

version, and there could be no conceivable reason why any one late in

the fourteenth century—even if he had the wits to forge such a thing,

which is begging a huge question—should have abstained from reaping the

sole advantage derivable from such a forgery by making it known as

Dante’s. We take it, then—and may take it with confidence very nearly if

not completely absolute—as in two different ways a document of the very

highest value, even before its intrinsic worth is considered at all. In

the first place, there is the importance of date, which gives us in it

the first critical treatise on the literary use of the vernacular, at

exactly the point when the various vernaculars of Europe had finished,

more or less, their first stage. Secondly, there is the importance of

authorship, in that we have, as is hardly anywhere else the case, the

greatest creative writer, not merely of one literature but of a whole

period of the European world, betaking himself to criticism. If

Shakespeare had written the _Discoveries_ instead of Ben Jonson, the

only possible analogue would have been supplied. Even Homer could not

have given us a third, for he could hardly have had the literature to

work upon.

As a matter of fact, however, the book, as I shall hope to show, would

be of almost the highest interest if it were anonymous. [Sidenote: _And

the scanty recognition thereof._] Its intrinsic value has been by no

means universally recognised: indeed I hardly know any editor or critic

of Dante who has put it in quite its right place. This is, I venture in

all humility to think, due mainly to the fact that the historic estimate

of criticism in general has hitherto been so rarely taken, and so

scantily based. But there are minor reasons. In the first place, the

book, except by professed Dantists, has been very little studied.[548]

And in the second, what I shall endeavour to prove to be its greatest

value may, in the curious critical prejudices which still prevail so

largely, have told positively against it. It has shocked people to find

the author of the _Commedia_ indulging in grammatical and prosodic

scholasticism; and the shocked ones either do not pause to ask, or

refuse to answer, the question whether the said scholasticism had not a

good deal to do with the quality of the _Commedia_.

Footnote 548:

Coleridge, I think, refers to it; but with no adequate recognition.

As in the case of other books of importance, we may give a pretty full

abstract of the book, which will be all the more desirable in that it

is, as has been said, far from well known. The Latin, though not very

crabbed, is sometimes peculiar, and some of the terms require careful

elucidation.

Dante begins by stating in due form his reasons for writing; the absence

of any treatise of the kind, the importance of the [Sidenote: _Abstract

of its contents: The “Vulgar Tongue” and “Grammar.”_] subject, and so

forth. He is going to write about the Vulgar Tongue, and this Vulgar

Tongue is that which we acquire, without any rule, by imitating our

nurses. But, he says, we also have another and secondary speech, which

the Romans called Grammar. The Greeks also have it, and other nations,

but not all, while comparatively few individuals possess it, because its

acquisition means time and trouble. And the Vulgar Tongue is nobler,

because it is more natural: so we shall treat of it.

Here a slight _crux_ arises as to what Dante meant by “Grammar”: at

least (for the first part of his observations is clear enough) what he

meant by saying that “the Greeks have it, and others but not all.”[549]

Are _Grammatica_ and “Latin” interchangeable terms? or does he mean that

there was a literary as well as a vernacular form of Greek, and literary

as well as vernacular forms of Hebrew, Arabic, &c.? The latter seems to

suit the argument best up to a certain point; but it is exposed to the

difficulty that, if so, Dante would be trying to make, out of the

Vulgars, a _Grammatica_ for Italian, which nowhere seems to have been

his intention. But it is no great matter.

Footnote 549:

_Hanc quidem secundariam Græci habent et alii sed non omnes._

He has so far cleared his ground very well; but, to his own orderly and

scholastically educated mind, he does not seem to [Sidenote: _The

nature, &c., of the gift of speech._] have done enough. He lays down in

chap. ii. that man alone has intercourse by speech. Angels and animals

do not want it, for angels communicate intuitively; devils have no need

of it;[550] to animals[551] it were useless: and if anybody urges the

serpent in Paradise, Balaam’s ass, Ovid in the _Metamorphoses_ about

magpies, these objections can be met in various ways. The real power of

speech has been given to man alone. He needed it (chap. iii.) because he

has both reason and senses, and therefore must have some medium which

will convey the discourse of the former in a manner acceptable to the

latter. It is probable (chap. v.) that man spoke before woman, though

the earliest recorded speech is assigned to Eve: for man is more

excellent. And it is probable that the first word he spoke was “El,”

“God,” and was addressed to God Himself in Paradise. No doubt (vi.) the

language was Hebrew. Foolish people may be driven (had Dante heard of

the Gaelic claim?) to believe that their own vernacular was that of

Adam. But he knows better. Though he drank of Arno before his teeth

appeared, and loves Florence so dearly that for the love he bore her is

he wrongfully suffering exile—though for the pleasure of his own senses

there exists no pleasanter place than Florence, yet he thinks that there

are places in the world nobler and more delightful than Tuscany and

Florence, and that many nations and races may use a pleasanter and

handier speech. The consideration of the Flood, Babel, and the

consequent division of speech (chap, vii.) saddens him very much; but

the facts are indisputable.

Footnote 550:

For the delightfully scholastic (and, like most scholastic things, by

no means inept) reasons, first, that as they set God at nought we need

take no count of them; secondly, that all they want to know of each

other, for their fiendish purposes, is their diabolic quality and

rank.

Footnote 551:

As being solely guided by instinct.

It is probable that these chapters, coming as they do at the very

outset, have, with hasty readers and thinkers, brought some discredit on

the book. They exhibit what it used to be, and still is to some extent,

the fashion to call the childish side of mediævalism and scholasticism.

Every age no doubt has its own childishnesses, and is profoundly

convinced that in holding them it has thoroughly put away childish

things. I do not myself know that, if it were possible to take a

simultaneous horizontal view of the ages, the nineteenth century would

be found so very much in advance of the thirteenth in this respect. But

putting this aside as matter of separable controversy, we may observe

that, in the main body of his argument, Dante is merely arguing, and

arguing very sensibly and closely, from premisses which no one educated

man in a thousand of his contemporaries would have disputed, and that at

the beginning and end there are very notable things. The notable thing

at the beginning is the separation of “Grammar” and the “Vulgar Tongue,”

and the, at that time, exceedingly bold ascription of greater “nobility”

to the latter.[552] The notable thing at the end is the unexpectedly

cosmopolitan character of Dante’s sentiments about the excellence of

various countries and their vernaculars. It is true that, for good as

well as for evil, there was about Europe then a certain solidarity which

has entirely disappeared; but local, as distinct from national,

patriotism was as strong, and occasionally as silly, as at any other

time. Dante’s own attitude puts us at once into a position for literary

criticism which neither Greek nor Roman had enjoyed—the Greek losing it

by his arrogant assumption of a solitary literary position for his own

tongue, and the Roman partly by his imitation of Greek, partly by the

lurking desire to make out that Latin was not so very inferior after

all.

Footnote 552:

As to the apparent contradiction with the _Convito_, _v. infra_.

At any rate, in the chapter (viii.) which follows, there is no

deficiency in what we are pleased to call the scientific spirit;

[Sidenote: _Division of contemporary tongues_.] on the contrary, any one

who knows the historical circumstances of the time can only be amazed at

the precision, the general justice, and, on the whole, the particular

exactness with which Dante, in full Middle Age, surveys the languages of

Europe. He is well aware of the threefold general division of

language—Teutonic-Slavonic, Turanian or Tartar, and Romance—and assigns

the boundaries quite correctly. He is further aware of the divisions of

Romance speech itself, and as he had adopted as his criterion of

Teutonic speech different forms of “yea” (“jo”) for the word of

affirmation, so he uses the same criterion in this case. Of

Romance-speaking nations he says, some say “oc,” some “oil,” and some

“si.” The first are “Spaniards,” the second Frenchmen, the third

Italians. The connection of “Spaniards” and “oc” need excite no

surprise. Castilian, though in existence, and already provided with the

noble _Poema del Cid_ and other documents, was as yet by no means the

dominant language of Spain. In particular, Aragon and Catalonia, which

spoke a Provençal dialect, had far more to do with Italy than Castile:

Galicia, which all Europe visited in pilgrimage to the shrine of

Santiago, also favoured the “oc,” and Provençal was actually later than

this the dialect of Portugal, if not of all Spain, for certain literary

purposes. And the Spanish kingdom of Aragon was infinitely the most

important country that spoke “oc.”

Proceeding, Dante illustrates the relationship of the three tongues by

observing that all call most important things (God, [Sidenote: _And of

the subdivisions of Romance._] heaven, earth, living, dying, loving—the

selection is not negligible) by forms of the same Latin originals. In

the next chapter he continues the stress on this point, producing

literary and poetical quotations, from Provençal (Giraut de Borneil),

French (Thibaut of Navarre), and Italian (Guido Guinicelli), of the word

_Amor_; and points out—thus ever drawing nearer, in true methodic way,

to his special subject—that the variations between the three great

Romance speeches are produced, in each language, by dialectic

differences. And he has, on the fact and on the consequent necessity of

establishing some common centrical form by Grammar[553], observations

which lack neither truth nor sense. Then, Which is the best of the three

Romance forms? He will not say, only timidly advancing for Italian that

_si_ is nearest _sic_. Otherwise, each has strong claims. _Oil_ is not

only easier and pleasanter,[554] but whatever has been composed or

translated in vernacular _prose_ belongs to it, the “most fair

intricacies of Arthur,”[555] those of Trojans and Romans, &c. _Oc_ was

first employed for poetry, being more finished and sweeter. Italian has

the sweetest and most refined poets[556] of all, and seems to be the

closest to “grammar.”[557]

Footnote 553:

It is desirable to note that the original confusion, or, to speak more

correctly, ambiguity of “Grammar” is curiously illustrated in this

close context. Here the first “grammar” seems to denote literary as

opposed to vernacular tongue: the second can only mean Latin.

Footnote 554:

_Facilior et delectabilior._

Footnote 555:

_Arturi regis ambages pulcerrimæ._ This observation is not quite

negligible in the endless debate about the priority of verse or prose

in these legends.

Footnote 556:

_Qui dulcius subtiliusque poetati vulgariter sunt._

Footnote 557:

Cf. note opposite.

He will not, however, attempt _componere lites_[558], but consider the

variations, &c., of the Vulgar Tongue itself—_i.e._, Italian—though,

[Sidenote: _The_ Italian Dialects: _Some rejected at once_.] as we shall

see, he does not hesitate to draw illustrations from the others. He

first takes the Apennines as his language-watershed, and allowing

fifteen main dialects, not a few of which are sub-divided, he proceeds

to examine their claims, clearing away the bad ones. As the Romans think

they ought to have precedence[559] (note the crisp touch of life in

this), let us give it them—by kicking their claims out of the way at

once.[560] The _alma sdegnosa_ gives something more than a hint of

itself in the description of Roman dialect as a “tristiloquy,” the

ugliest of all the vernacular dialects; which is no wonder, since they

stink worst of all in the deformity of their customs and morals. The

Marchers of Ancona and the Spoletans go next, each of the rejected ones

having a scornful tag of his own barbarism tied to his tail, as Dante

ejects him from the competition. And he tells us, as if it settled the

matter (for, as we shall see, the Canzone is rather a fetish with

Dante), “many Canzoni have been written in contempt of them.” The

Milanese, the Bergamasks, the Aquileans and Istrians follow, with all

the mountainous and country _patois_[561], and the Sardinians, who are

not Latins, though “to be joined with them,” and who only imitate Latin

as apes do men. After this rapid sifting (he uses the metaphor) a new

chapter is necessary.

Footnote 558:

_Judicium relinquentes_ is his own phrase.

Footnote 559:

_Se cunctis præponendos existimant._

Footnote 560:

_In hac eradicatione, sive discerptione non immerito eos aliis

præponamus._

Footnote 561:

_Montaninas et rusticanas loquelas._

Of those “kept in the sieve” Sicilian claims the first place. Indeed

Dante acknowledges that “whatsoever the Italians poetise is called

Sicilian.” He admits this, but says it is merely [Sidenote:

_Others—Sicilian, Apulian, Tuscan, and Genoese._] due to the fact that

Sicilian princes, or princes resident in Sicily, Frederick the Emperor

and his son Manfred, have been patrons of literature, and have thus

attached the best Italian genius to the Sicilian court. But he says

(after an indignant digressory denunciation of contemporary sovereigns)

that there is no special value in the common Sicilian dialect, which

indeed is seldom used for poetry at all, while of that which _is_ used,

more to follow. As for the Apulians, there have been some good writers

among them, but their ordinary speech is spoilt with barbarisms.[562]

But what of the Tuscans? Dante can only repeat that cosmopolitan

criticism, which, though it would be very illiberal to impute it wholly

to his exile, was no doubt assisted thereby. They may madly assert their

title to the possession of the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue, and even some

distinguished men may have condescended to the Tuscan vernacular. But

let us examine them town by town. Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Arezzo

are hit off each in a sentence expressing its boast, and, we may

suppose, expressing it with some provincialism. But Dante says, when men

really to be admired, Guido, Lapo, and “another”[563] of Florence, and

Cino da Pistoia, have written, it is in “curial,” not in the vulgar

Tuscan tongue.

Footnote 562:

_Turpiter barbarizant._

Footnote 563:

_Guidonem, Lapum et unum alium Florentinos._ It is needless to say who

is _unus alius_.

As for the Genoese, the annihilation of the letter Z would strike them

dumb, for they can say nothing without it.

Then he crosses the Apennines[564] and decides successively that

Romagnese, in its various divisions, and Venetian, are full of

[Sidenote: _Venetian: Some good in Bolognese._] drawbacks and

vulgarities.[565] After which a whole chapter (xv.) is given to the

dialect of Bologna. It is perhaps better than any other and why? Because

it borrows the best things _from_ the others, as, for instance, Sordello

the Mantuan borrowed from Cremona, Brescia, and Verona. On the other

hand, Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio are too Lombardic, and though they

have lent a touch of piquancy to Bolognese, cannot create a good

literary dialect for themselves. Still Bolognese, though better than

other individual dialects, because more composite, is not the

Illustrious Vulgar Tongue, for otherwise Guido Guinicelli and other

great Bolognese poets would not have departed from it. So down with the

sieve for, as for places like Trent and Turin, they are too near the

frontier, and if they were _pulcherrima_ as they are _turpissima_ they

would not be _vere Latinum_.

Footnote 564:

_Frondiferos humeros Apennini_—a more affectionate if less picturesque

touch than Mr Ruskin’s “angry Apennine” and Mr Browning’s “wind-swept

gash” thereof.

Footnote 565:

Hildebrand of Padua is excepted, as _Nitentem divertere a materno et

ad curiale vulgare intendere_. Two sonnets of his are said to be now

extant.

Having thus for fifteen chapters pursued a sort of “Rule of False” in

order to catch that panther[566], the Illustrious Vulgar [Sidenote: _The

“Illustrious” Language none of these, but their common measure._]

Tongue, by the _a posteriori_ method, Dante determines to track her _a

priori_. He calls Logic to his aid, and observes that every individual,

species, genus is subject to a common measure. The measure of individual

conduct is Virtue; of conduct between man and man, Law; in public

behaviour, national manners and customs. So too there must be some norm,

some common measure of all Italian tongues and dialects, and this,

perceptible in all, abiding in none, will be what is sought for. This is

the—

1. Illustre.

2. Cardinale.

3. Aulicum; et

4. Curiale vulgare in Latio.

Each of these epithets has then to be discussed.

Footnote 566:

This beast is of course not here referred to, as in the well-known

passage at the beginning of the _Inferno_, as a type of vice, but, as

in _Inf._, xvi. 106, as a desirable prey. The beauty of the panther’s

skin, the sweet breath fabulously attributed to it, and so forth,

sometimes gave it a wholly favourable place in mediæval fantasy, as in

one of the prettiest fragments of Anglo-Saxon verse, the “Panther” of

the Exeter Book, where it is a type of Christ.

So we have the substance, the underlying and fashioning unity, of

Italian defined as a tongue possessing a quadripartite [Sidenote: _Its

four characteristics._] differentia, and so it becomes necessary to

explain the four parts. _Illustrious_, as the seventeenth chapter,

devoted to it, explains, is something that “shines forth,” _illuminans

et illuminatum_. Men are so called who, having been well trained, are

great trainers, like Numa Pompilius and Seneca. This is what the

Illustrious Vulgar Tongue of Italy is. It has cleared off much rubbish,

as in Cino da Pistoia. It attracts even the unwilling. It exalts those

who practise it. They surpass kings, marquises, counts. It gives a glory

which even we, exiles as we are, acknowledge as sweetening the

bitterness of our exile. Therefore it is Illustrious.

The three other epithets enjoy but a chapter between them. It is

_Cardinal_, for as a door turns on a hinge, so all the throng of

dialects turns on it. It is _Aulic_, because, if we Italians had a

Court, it would be spoken there, and because, as a matter of fact, all

those who enjoy courtly frequentation speak it. It is _Curial_ because,

though as in the Aulic case the conditions are wanting, it would be

spoken in the great Law Courts of Italy if they existed, and it presents

the action of a great Court of Law in trying and sifting cases. This is

the proper Italian language, common to all, aimed at (if unconsciously)

by all, giving the real key to all.

And so the first book ends, with the establishment on logical bases

(none the weaker because the struts and props of them are sometimes

decorated with a bygone ornamentation) at once of the necessity and the

fact of a literary language for Italy, a language combining the merits,

and purified from the defects, of the various local kinds of speech.

The First Book of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_ has been chiefly concerned

with language, though—as it is of the very highest [Sidenote: _The

Second Book—Why Dante deals with poetry only._] importance to

observe—always with a side-glance at literature. The Second passes to

literature itself, at least to that part of literature which was almost

the only serious part to the earlier Middle Ages—namely, poetry. If we

wanted anything to show us what a man of letters Dante was, it would be

found in the apology which he makes at the beginning of this book for

not dealing with Rhetoric at large, but only with Poetic. It is simply

that “prosaicants” usually get their language from “inventors,” and

“invention” remains a solid example to them, not _vice versa_. This,

perhaps, with some exceptions (the chief among them he has himself

referred to in citing the French Arthurian legend), was true in his

time, though it was ceasing to be true; and a certain amount of truth

remains still, greatly as the circumstances have changed. There is, he

goes on to say, a kind of primacy about verse; so let us deal with it

_secundum quod metricum est_.

Now, ought writers in verse to write _vulgariter_? Yes, he thought. The

best things require the best language, and that, [Sidenote: _All good

poetry should be in the Illustrious._] as we have seen, is the

Illustrious Vernacular. Things not so good will be improved by the best

expression. So all verse-writers should use it, at least at first sight,

though we must alter this conception on further thought. The Illustrious

language demands illustrious writers (_alma sdegnosa_ again!), and not

only that, but the best thoughts or subjects. Very inferior persons

writing on very inferior subjects had better _not_ use the Illustrious,

for an ugly woman never looks uglier than when dressed in gold and silk.

Now what subjects are good enough for the Illustrious Vernacular? Only

Three: _Salus_, _Venus_, _Virtus_—in other words, [Sidenote: _The

subjects of High Poetry—War, Love, Virtue._] War, Love, and Moral

Beauty, which means philosophy _plus_ religion. Dante reaches this

conclusion in the queer-looking but perhaps not easily improvable manner

usual with him, by the _prior_ and the _posterior_ roads alike. These

subjects are, first, the three things of most importance to a

Vegetable-Animal-Rational-creature like man, and they are also those

discussed by the best writers in the Vulgar Tongue, Bertran de Born,

Arnaut Daniel, Cino da Pistoia, &c. But he does not find that any

Italian has written on the subject of _Salus_ or Arms. (An ominous

fact!)

So much for subject; now for form. What forms are there of Illustrious

Vulgar Verse? Some have written Canzoni, some [Sidenote: _Its form:

Canzoni._] Ballades, some Sonnets, some other and irregular forms. The

best of these are Canzoni, for a wilderness of reasons, good, not very

good, indifferent, and bad, the strongest of which, though not

expressed, evidently is that Dante likes Canzoni best and knows he

writes them well. They unite, he says, all the best points of art; the

works of the best poets are found in them. So let us write of Canzoni,

putting off Ballades, &c., to the Fourth Book—which, alas! we have not.

What is Poetry? It is _fictio rhetorica in musica posita_. [Sidenote:

_Definition of Poetry._] This is so important that no passing criticism

of it will do, and we must postpone the discussion.

But here comes in the curious mediæval humility which made a poet like

Dante regard himself as inferior to Ovid, and [Sidenote: _Its styles and

the constituents of the grand style._] Lucan, and Statius. Our poets

differ from the “great” poets, the “regular” ones; but they ought to

approach them as nearly as possible, and, as _Magister noster Horatius_

teaches, take a suitable subject. And then they must decide what style

to write in. If in the Tragic or Higher style, the Illustrious

Vernacular will be suitable; if in the comic, a mixed or intermediate

style; if in Elegy, the lower. But these two latter are again relegated

to the lost, or never written, Fourth Book. Canzoni must be written in

the Tragic style, and the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue. This is to be

attained when, with the gravity of the meaning, not merely the pride of

the verse, but the loftiness of the phrasing and the excellence of the

words, agrees. It is no light matter to compose in this way; the most

strenuous efforts are necessary. And, therefore, let the folly of those

be confessed who, guiltless of art and science, and trusting to their

wits alone, break out into the highest song on the highest subjects.

So the considerations are marked out, the Gravitas Sententiæ having been

already distributed between War, Love, and Virtue.

1. Superbia Carminum.

2. Constructionis elatio.

3. Excellentia vocabulorum.

Beginning with metric, Dante, like a sensible man, confines himself here

to the teachings of experience, eschewing all [Sidenote: Superbia

Carminum.] argument in the vague. What lines have actually given the

best results in the Illustrious Vernacular? He looks them over, and

finds that lines have varied from three syllables to eleven, that those

of five, seven, and eleven are best of all, and that that of eleven (in

which he rightly includes the French decasyllable with its weak ending)

is the best of these best. Seven comes next; then five, then three. Nine

is not good, because divisible into three threes. Even lines are “rude,”

by which he means (as is undoubtedly true) that they do not suit the

structure of Italian. The hendecasyllable is that _superbissimum carmen_

that we sought.

Next for the phrase or construction. Here Dante becomes a little

difficult, chiefly because he uses peculiar words, which have [Sidenote:

Constructionis elatio.] not been always judiciously translated. He says

that there is first the “insipid” style, that without flavour (_sapor_)

or individual character, which merely states a fact, his example being

_Petrus amat multum dominam Bertam_.

Next there is the purely “sapid” or tasteful, described oddly as that of

“rigid scholars or masters”; the _sapidus et venustus_, which is of

those who have drunk superficial draughts of rhetoric; and the sapid,

venust, and also lofty, which is the best of all. The examples of these

shall be given below[567], but they are hard to follow in detail, though

the classes are clear enough, corresponding to (1) sheer prose, (2)

efforts at style, (3) ornate prose without much distinction, (4) style

achieved.

Footnote 567:

Sapid pure: _Piget me cunctis, sed pietatem majorem illorum habeo,

quicunque in exilio tabescentes, patriam tantum somniando revisunt_.

Sapid and venust: _Laudabilis discretio Marchionis Estensis et sua

magnificentia præparata cunctis illum facit esse dilectum_.

Sapid, venust, and excelse: _Ejecta maxima parte florum de sinu tuo,

Florentia, nequicquam Trinacriam Totila serus adivit_.

This last, of course, is what the poet must aim at, and again examples

of hitting it are given. But the chapter ends with a valuable catalogue

of the “great,” the “regular” poets: Virgil, Ovid in the

_Metamorphoses_, Statius, and Lucan, with, in prose, Cicero, Livy,

Pliny, Frontinus, and (O ye groves of Blarney!) Paulus Orosius. Let

people read these, and not talk about Guido of Arezzo.

Lastly the words.

[Sidenote: Excellentia Verborum.]

Here the subdivision is again of great importance and some difficulty.

Dante distinguishes a sort of tree—

Puerilia ── Muliebria ── Virilia.

│

┌───────────┴───────────┐

│ │

Silvestria. Urbana.

│

┌───────────────────────────────┤

│ │

Pexa et hirsuta. Lubrica et reburra.

All these words (save perhaps _reburra_, which, however, a remembrance

of the French _à rebours_ will clear up at once) are easy to understand,

if sometimes rather hard of application.

Now, according to Dante, _Pexa et Hirsuta_ are _grandiosa_, while

_lubrica et reburra in superfluum sonant_. And it will be most specially

important to use the “sieve,” for, looking to the poets who have

succeeded in the Illustrious Vernacular, _sola vocabula nobilissima_ are

to be left therein. “Childish”[568] words must be left out altogether:

“feminine”[569] words are too soft, “silvan”[570] words too rough, nor

will _lubrica_ nor _reburra_[571], though _urbana_, do. So _pexa_[572]

_et hirsuta_[573] alone are left.

Footnote 568:

As _mamma_ and _babbo_.

Footnote 569:

As _dolciada_ and _piacevole_.

Footnote 570:

As _gregia_.

Footnote 571:

As _femina_ and _corpo_.

Footnote 572:

As _amore_, _donna_, _virtute_.

Footnote 573:

As _terra_, _onore_, _speranza_, _gravitate_, and on to

_sovramagnificentissimamente_.

All this terminology is, of course, more than a little obscure, and the

explanation of the obscurities rather concerns a commentator [Sidenote:

Pexa et hirsuta.] on Dante than a historian of literary criticism. But

the explanation, given by the critic-poet himself, of _pexa et hirsuta_

does concern us, and is interesting. The former, it seems, are words

which are trisyllabic, or “neighbours to trisyllabity,” without an

aspirate, without an acute or circumflexed accent, without double _x_’s

or _z_’s, without the conjunction of two liquids, or the placing of them

after a mute, which freedoms give a certain sweetness. _Hirsuta_, on the

other hand, are all others which, like the monosyllabic pronouns and

articles, cannot be dispensed with, or which, though the above

uglinesses have not been “combed out” of them, still, when mixed with

combed-out words, are ornamental. He includes in this last class

_sovramagnificentissimamente_, a hendecasyllabic in itself. He would not

even mind _onorificabilitudinitate_, which has thirteen syllables in two

of its Latin cases, if it were not by its length excluded from Italian

verse.

So having got the sticks of words for our faggot the canzone, and the

cords of construction and classification to bind them [Sidenote: _The

Canzone._] up[574], let us set to work to the actual binding and

faggoting, before which something more must be said about the faggot

itself, the Canzone. The Canzone (_cantio_) is the action or passion of

singing, just as a “reading” or book (_lectio_) is the action or passion

of reading. A little metaphysic follows on _actio_ and _passio_, and the

fact that the _cantio_ is _actio_ when composed, _passio_ when sung or

acted. But is the _cantio_ the words or the tune? Surely the words;

nobody calls the tune _canzone_. In fact, all words written for music

may in a sense be called _canzoni_, even ballads, even sonnets, even

poems in Latin (_regulariter_). But _we_ are speaking of the supreme

canzone, like Dante’s _Donne ch’ avete_. It is “a tragic composition” of

equal stanzas, without _responsorium_ (dialogue or antiphon). The last

six chapters concern us less, because they are wholly occupied with the

particular rhyming, lining, and stanza-fashion of the canzone itself,

and, interesting as they are, overflow our limits, except as a

particular example of the general kind of criticism which has been so

laboriously built up.

Footnote 574:

_Fustibus et torquibus ad fascem._

With the conclusion of this the tractate stops abruptly, nor have we any

indication of what the Third Book was to consist of, though the Fourth,

as we have seen above, is more than once referred to. The loss of both

must be regarded as one of the most serious that the history of

criticism has suffered.

Yet the possession of what we have is no mean consolation, and I must be

excused for repeating an expression of the [Sidenote: _Importance of the

book._] extremest surprise at the comparatively small attention which

the book has received, and at the slighting fashion in which it has been

treated by some of those who have paid attention to it. For myself, I am

prepared to claim for it, not merely the position of the most important

critical document between Longinus and the seventeenth century at least,

but one of intrinsic importance on a line with that of the very greatest

critical documents of all history. There is no need at all to lay much

stress on the mere external attractiveness, unusual as that may be, of

the combination in one person of the greatest poet and the first, if not

the sole, great critic of the Middle Ages. The tub can stand on its own

bottom.

In the first place, it only requires acquaintance with that previous

history of the subject, which we have here endeavoured to unfold, to see

that we have the inestimable advantage of a quite new and independent

treatment of that subject. There is [Sidenote: _Independence and novelty

of its method._] no direct evidence that Dante knew the _Poetics_[575]:

we see that he cites Horace and cites him _magnificentissime_. But the

Epistle to the Pisos might never have been written, for any sign there

is of direct influence from it on Dante’s method. So, too, singular as

is the resemblance between the spirit of him and the spirit of Longinus;

remarkable as is the coincidence between the words of both about words;

and possible as the John of Sicily[576] reference makes it that Dante

might have known the Great Unknown of Criticism—yet there is not the

faintest evidence that he _did_ know him, and an almost overwhelming

probability that he did not. To the method of no classical predecessor

in pure criticism does his method bear the smallest resemblance, even if

faint resemblances might be pointed out in phrase.

But it is still more remarkable that, steeped to the lips as he is in

scholastic lore—though _trivium_ and _quadrivium_ must have been at his

fingers’ ends—the _De Vulgari Eloquio_, even in mentioning Rhetoric

itself, shows not the faintest tincture of that scholastic rhetoric

which we have noticed. There is not so much as an allusion to the

Figures: they have been, for Dante on this occasion, as completely

banished from _rerum natura_ as poor Albucius feared they would be, if

his judges disallowed his pleading.[577] The familiar Arts of

Composition make no appearance: Beginning, Middle, and End are with the

Figures. If we did not know that these things must have been as familiar

to Dante as the alphabet or the multiplication-table to any modern

child, we might think, from this treatise, that he had never heard of

them.

Footnote 575:

It is thought that Petrarch may have known the German

thirteenth-century version in Latin.

Footnote 576:

_V. supra_, p. 187.

Footnote 577:

_V. supra_, p. 238.

It would seem, indeed, without too much guess-work, that, despite his

attempts to assimilate writing _vulgariter et regulariter_, Dante had an

unconscious and an infinitely salutary instinct, telling him that

_regulariter_ and _vulgariter_ were _not_ the same thing. He may have

sometimes thought that the former was the nobler; even in his disdainful

soul, the touching humility of the Middle Ages existed, as we know, to

such an extent that he could put Virgil, who may be worthy to unloose

his shoe-latchet, in a position above himself. But something must have

warned him to keep the two apart, to approach the criticism of the

illustrious Vernacular literature by a path _nullius ante trita solo_.

That path, as has been pointed out, is in fact a double approach: we

might almost say that the restless manymindedness [Sidenote: _Dante’s

attention to Form._] of Dante attacks the hill on half-a-dozen different

sides at once. We have a chain of mainly _a priori_ argument, reaching

from the origin and nature of language to the completely built and

fitted-out _canzone_. We have careful surveys of existing language and

literature, with the keenest observation bent upon what is the actual

state of each, on what each has actually achieved. But besides these two

ways of approach, neither of which is at all like those of the ancient

critics, there is a third difference which is more striking still: and

that is that the critic’s attention is evidently from the first fixed,

not exclusively, but, from the point of view of his business, mainly, on

questions of form, expression, result, rather than on questions of

matter, conception, plan. Not exclusively—let that be emphatically

repeated: but still mainly.

Again we see, incidentally, but none the less to an important effect,

that he has, no doubt by the mere operation of the lapse [Sidenote: _His

disregard of Oratory._] of ages in part, in part by the activity of his

own intellect, and the character of the matter presented to it, got rid

of divers prejudices which weighed upon the ancients. It is not a just

retort, when it is said that he has completely got rid of the oratorical

preoccupation, to say that he is only dealing with Poetics. For the

ancients themselves this preoccupation was constant, even when they

dealt with Poetics; and Dante does, as a matter of fact, make references

to prose which show that he did not dream (as how indeed should he?) of

oratory having any pre-eminence. And at the same time that the fruitful

modern literatures helped him to get rid of this, the greatest drawback

or interfering flaw of ancient criticism, they helped him to get rid of

another, the ignorance of prose fiction. True, he may in his quaint low

Latin use _inventor_ for _poeta_; but the simple reference to the prose

Arthurian, Trojan, and Roman legends shows that the gap, which led

Aristotle and all the rest astray, had been filled up.

Yet again, the character of the Romance poetry which he chiefly had

before him, as well as (if he knew anything of them, [Sidenote: _The

influence on him of Romance._] which is quite possible) that of the

German _minnesingers_, was such as to require positively, from any

vigorous and subtle intellect, a quite different treatment from that

appropriate to most ancient poetry. The war-songs might stand on no very

different footing; but, as he admits, there were no war-songs in

Italian. The mystical passion and the mystical religion of the other two

divisions are like nothing in ancient poetry, except scraps and flashes

of things which must have been mostly unknown to Dante,—the choruses of

the Greek Poets, Catullus, Lucretius, and some things in the Greek

Anthology. There was in most cases no action at all; the subject, though

varying and twisting in facet and form, like a mountain mist, was always

more or less the same; the expression of the poet’s passionate intense

individual feeling and thought was all, and of this no _general_

criticism was possible. The forms, on the other hand, the language, the

arrangements, these were matters of intense, novel, and pressing

interest. The ancient critic, at the very earliest date at which we have

any utterances of his _in extenso_, had a sort of catholic faith already

provided for him on these points. Tragedy, Comedy, Oratory, History,

Lyric, &c., were established forms. Rhetoric, though interesting, was

almost as scientific as arithmetic or geometry. As for language, you

imitated the best models, and did not play personal tricks. Besides, it

was quite a minor matter.

Lastly, we see that (again half, or more than half, unconsciously and

instinctively) Dante has been brought by the "forward [Sidenote: _And of

comparative criticism._] flowing tide of time" to a more advanced

position in respect of comparative criticism. No ancient critic could

have made such a survey as he makes of the different languages of

Europe; no ancient critic did make such a survey of the dialects of

Greek as he makes of the dialects of Italian. That curious spirit of

routine which (valuable as it was in the time and in the circumstances)

mars ancient literature to some extent, shows itself nowhere more oddly

than here. You used Æolic dialect for lyric poetry, because Sappho and

Alcæus were Æolians; Doric for pastorals, because Theocritus and the

others were Dorians. You might use Ionic in history because Herodotus

was a Halicarnassian; and Homer preserved a special dialect for you in

epic likewise. But otherwise you wrote in Attic, not because Attic was

the Illustrious Vulgar Tongue of Greece (as it very nearly if not quite

was), but because an enormous proportion of the best writers in most

departments were Athenians. So in Latin you might—almost must—use loose

verse, and familiar or abstruse phrase, in satire, but not elsewhere.

Of this there is no trace in Dante, though he may allot his Illustrious

tongue to one kind, his Intermediate and Lower to others. He may indeed

cite, as a subsidiary argument, the fact that such and such a one has

used such and such a dialect or form, but it is only subsidiary. He is,

in effect, looking about to see, partly how the reason of things will

go, partly what has actually had the best effect. He, groping dimly in

the benighted, the shackled Middle Ages, actually attains to a freer and

more enlightened kind of criticism than the Greeks, with all their “play

of mind,” all their “lucidity,” had reached.

And his bent towards formal criticism—towards those considerations of

prosody, of harmony, of vocabulary, of structure, which, when they are

considered to-day, even now send some critics into (as the poet says)

“A beastly froth of rage”

against those who so consider them—is all the more important, because

not the most impudent accuser of the brethren can [Sidenote: _The

poetical differentia according to him._] bring against Dante the charge

of being a mere formalist, of being indifferent to meaning, of having no

“criticism of life” in him, of lacking “high seriousness,” attention to

conduct, care for meaning and substance. On the contrary, there is not a

poet in the whole vast range of poetry, not the Greek tragedians at

their gravest and highest chorus-pitch, not Lucretius in his fervour of

Idealist Materialism, not Shakespeare in the profoundest moments of

Macbeth, or Prospero, or Hamlet, not Milton, not Wordsworth, who is more

passionately ideal, “thoughtful,” penetrated and intoxicated with the

“subject,” than Dante is. But he, thanks very mainly to the logical

training of the despised scholasticism, thanks partly to the mere

progress of time, the refreshing of the human mind after its season of

sleep—most of all no doubt to his own intense and magnificent poetical

genius—had completely separated and recognised the differentia of

poetry, its presentation of the subject in metrical form with musical

accompaniment, whether of word or of actual music.[578] He knows—he

actually says in effect—that prosemen may have the treatment of the same

subjects; but he knows that the poet’s treatment is different, and he

goes straight for the difference.

Footnote 578:

Some have assumed that Dante thinks all high poetry must be “set” in

the common sense. He does not say so, and every consideration is

against it. The “rhetorical fiction set in music” is obviously the

opposition of poetry to _prose_, and nothing more.

And where does he find it? Exactly where Wordsworth five hundred years

later refused to find it, in Poetic Diction and [Sidenote: _His antidote

to the Wordsworthian heresy._] in Metre. The contrast of the _De Vulgari

Eloquio_ and of the _Preface_ to _Lyrical Ballads_ is so remarkable that

it may be doubted whether there is any more remarkable thing of the kind

in literature. Whether Wordsworth was acquainted with the treatise it is

impossible to say. (Coleridge certainly knew of it, though it is not

quite clear whether he had read it.) But it is improbable, for

Wordsworth was not a wide reader. And, moreover, though in tendency the

two tractates are diametrically opposed, he nowhere answers Dante; but,

on the contrary, is answered by Dante, with an almost uncanny

anticipation of the privilege of the last word, in a word five hundred

years earlier.

We shall have to return to this matter in dealing with Wordsworth

himself. But for the present let us confine ourselves to Dante.

The details of his metrical part need the lesser notice because they are

of the more limited and particular application. [Sidenote: _His handling

of metre._] Had Dante completed his book, it would still have had the

limitation of dealing solely with Romance, if not exclusively with

Italian, poetry. And with particular episodes we shall only meddle when

they are closely connected with general critical quarrels. But his

method is worth a word or two, because it is again, precisely, that

apparently loose but really unerring mixture of general reasoning and

particular observation which the critic requires, which prevents him

from being ever exactly scientific, but which gives to his craft the

dignity, the difficulty, the versatile charm of art. His recognition of

the hendecasyllable, not merely as the line preferred by the best

writers in Italian, but as the longest line really manageable in

Italian, would be sufficient proof of this.

But he is considerably more interesting on diction, because here his

observations (_mutatis mutandis_, and that in extremely [Sidenote: _Of

diction._] few cases and unimportant measure) are of universal

application. The theory of Poetic Diction, the twin pillar of the temple

of Poetry, had been put by Longinus in one flashing axiom, true, sound,

illuminative for ever and ever. But he had not elaborated this; he had

even, in some cases, as in his remarks on the Εἰς ἐρωμέναν, given

occasion to those who blaspheme the doctrine. Dante, with no such single

phrase (which indeed the odd mongrel speech he uses denied him),

expresses the doctrine far more fully, elaborates it, establishes it

soundly, and, moreover, is never in the very least inconsistent with

himself about it. Even Aristotle himself would have joined no direct

issue with the quadripartite division of the necessities of serious

poetry as _gravitas sententiæ_ and _superbia carminum_, _constructionis

elatio_ and _excellentia verborum_; but he would have given the first

preponderance over all the others, and would have laid descending stress

on the rest. It may almost be said that Dante exactly reverses the

order. The _gravitas sententiæ_ is not denied, but assumed as a thing of

course, common to all good matter in verse and prose alike. The

_superbia carminum_ is a matter of investigation; but when you have got

your form of _cantio_, &c., settled, that _is_ settled. It is upon the

third and the fourth, which are, briefly, Style and Diction, that he

bends his whole strength, and that he exhibits his most novel, most

important, most eternally valid criticism.

It has been said that the examples, both Latin and Italian, produced in

the chapter on Style (that is to say, the construction [Sidenote: _His

standards of style._] or arrangement of selected phrase as opposed to

selection of the component words) are not free from difficulty. But if

we examine them all carefully together, something will emerge from the

comparison. In the four Latin sentences[579] (for translations here are

totally useless) we observe that the first[580] is a mere statement of

fact, possessing, indeed, that complete expression of the meaning which

Coleridge so oddly postulates as the differentia of style, but

possessing nothing more—nourishing, in short, but not “sapid.” The

next[581] is carefully (“tastefully”) arranged according to the

scholastic rules—verb at the end, important words at end or beginning of

clause, &c., but nothing more. The charm (_venustas_) of the third[582]

is more difficult to identify; but it would seem to consist in a sort of

superficially rhetorical declamation. But there is no difficulty in

discovering in what the fourth sentence[583] differs from the rest.

There is the conceit of the “casting out of the flowers” with the

interwoven play of _florum_ and _Florentia_, the apostrophe to the town,

the double alliteration of _florum_, _Florentia_, _Trinacriam_,

_Totila_, with the reverse order of length in the words, and their vowel

arrangement. And in almost all the verse vernacular examples, though it

may not always be easy to discern their exact attraction for Dante, we

shall find the same alliteration—

“Sols sui qui sai lo sobrafan, que me sortz;”

the same vowel-music—

“Dreit Amor qu’ en mon cor repaire;”

or a combination of this music with careful mounting and falling rhythm,

as in

“Si com l’ arbres, que per sobrecarcar.”

In other words, we shall find, in all, devices for making the common

uncommon, for giving the poetic strangeness, unexpectedness, charm,—by

mere arrangement, by arrangement _plus_ music, and so forth.

Footnote 579:

_V. supra_, p. 429, and note.

Footnote 580:

_Petrus amat_, &c.

Footnote 581:

_Piget me cunctis_, &c.

Footnote 582:

_Laudabilis discretio_, &c.

Footnote 583:

_Ejecta maxima_, &c.

The contempt of style as something “vulgar,” which had beset all

antiquity (save always Longinus), would have alone prevented the

ancients from criticising in this way, even if the lack of various

language had not done so.

And so we find, on the threshold, or hardly even on the threshold, of

what is commonly called modern literature, an anticipation, and more

than an anticipation, of what is really modern criticism. Of course this

is a disputable even more than a disputed statement. Of course there are

many respectable authorities who will not hear of it, who will accuse

those who make it of mere will-worship, perhaps even of gross error, for

assuming any such thing. Yet it may be said in all humility, but after a

very considerable number of years of study of a subject to which little

general attention has been given, that there _is_ this difference

between ancient and modern criticism, and that it appears in the _De

Vulgari Eloquio_. I shall be content, I shall even be much obliged, if

any one will point out to me, in the authors who have been hitherto

considered, or in any who may have been overlooked, a passage like this.

I can only say that, in my reading, I have found none.

But the chapter of words—the Chapter of the Sieve, as we may call it—is

that which contains the real heart and kernel [Sidenote: _The "Chapter

of the Sieve."_] of Dante’s criticism. For, dwell as much as he may on

the importance of arrangement and phrase, it is impossible that these

should be beautiful without beautiful words to make them of. And his

system of “sifting,” quaint as its phraseology may seem at first sight,

arbitrary as some of its divisions may appear, and here and there

difficult as it may be exactly to follow him, is a perfectly sound

scheme, and only requires working out at greater length. The objection

to _puerilia_, though it may be too sweepingly expressed, is absolutely

just, and cuts away Wordsworth’s childishnesses by anticipation. That to

“effeminate” words, “silvan” words, words too “slippery” and too much

“brushed the wrong way,” is, in its actual form, perhaps somewhat too

closely connected with the peculiarities of the Italian language. We can

understand that the snarling sound of the _r_ in _gregia_ and

_corpo_—the _silvestre_ and the _reburrum_—may have offended the

delicate Italian musical ear; and it is perfectly easy for a pretty

well-educated English one to perceive that _donna_, with the ring of the

_n_’s and the sudden descent—the falcon drop—to _a_, is a far more

poetical word than _femina_, where, except the termination, there is no

hold for the voice at all; it merely “slips over” the “lubric” syllables

_fe_ and _mi_. But it is much more difficult to understand the objection

to _dolciada_ and _piacevole_ as too effeminate. Not only is _dolciada_

itself a very charming word to _us_, but it is impossible to see

anything more effeminate in it than in many of those which Dante admits

and admires. These things, however, will always happen.

The metaphor of the _pexa_ and _hirsuta_, odd as it seems, is not

difficult to work out when we have once accepted the [Sidenote: _The_

pexa.] analogy of hair, for which in itself it would not be difficult to

find a more or less fanciful justification. The merely “glossy”—smooth,

soft, insufficient—will not do, and those “brushed the wrong way” still

less. What is wanted is _natural_ curl and wave—with light and colour in

them, of course, though not mere gloss. This may be either the result of

careful “combing out” of all tangle and disorder, or it may be wilder

grace, the _hirsutum_, the “floating hair” of _our_ poet. Dante’s rigid

orthodoxy makes him assign very strict qualification to the _pexa_. They

are to be trisyllabic or _vicinissima_ to this—that is to say, they are

either to be amphibrachs complete—_amore_, _difesa_, _salute_—or words

like _donna_, on the one hand, or _letizia_[584] on the other, which, by

a slight rest of the voice or a little slur of it, can be made

amphibrachic in character. And why? Because these amphibrachic words

help, as no others can do, to give that trochaic swing, with little

intervals between, which supplies the favourite rhythm of Italian

poetry, as in the very instance given a little later by Dante from his

own poetry—

“Donne _ch_‘ _a_vete _inte_lletto _d_’ _a_more”—

where the rhythm (as opposed to the actual scansion) of the line is

represented by almost sinking the italicised syllables, and leaving the

four main trochees to carry the rock of the verse on their backs. The

dislike to aspirates, to double _x_’s and _z_’s, to certain collocations

of consonants, &c., is again purely Italian, though it would not be

difficult to assign somewhat similar qualifications to the _pexa_ of

other languages.

Footnote 584:

This word is most unluckily misprinted “l_i_ti_r_ia” in Mr

Ferrers-Howell’s version.

But Dante is far too free and far too opulent a poet to confine himself,

or recommend others to confine themselves, to a mere [Sidenote: _The_

hirsuta.] “prunes and prism”—to simple prettiness of precious words. The

_hirsuta_, the more careless ordered vocabulary, must be had too

sometimes, because you cannot do without them, as in the case of the

monosyllabic particles, copulatives, and what not, sometimes as

dissyllables, and polysyllables, which will make an ornamental effect by

combination and contrast with the _pexa_. Here, yet once more, there may

be difficulties with the individual cases; it is indeed hard to see the

possibility of beauty, even in the most combed-out company, of such a

word as _disavventuratissimamente_: but the principle is clear and

sound. What that principle is we may [Sidenote: _Other critical_ loci

_in Dante_.] shortly state when we have given a glance at Dante’s other

and much less important critical utterances, contained in the

undoubtedly genuine _Convito_, and in the sometimes, but perhaps

captiously, disputed _Letter to Can Grande_.

This last[585], which, as is well known, sets itself forth as a

dedication of the _Paradiso_ to the Lord of Verona, contains a kind of

[Sidenote: _The Epistle to Can Grande._] expository criticism by the

author of the _Commedia_ itself. There is nothing in it inconsistent

with the _De Vulgari_, but the method is very much more scholastic and

jejune. There are six things to be inquired about in any serious

matter—the subject, the agent, the form, the end, the title, the kind of

philosophy.

Footnote 585:

Original, tenth and last of Latin _Epistles_, ed. Moore, p. 414. Those

who wish for an English translation will find one in the Appendix to

Miss Katharine Hillard’s translation of the _Convito_ (p. 390, London

1889).

The _Paradiso_ is different from the other two _cantiche_ in subject,

form, and title, not in author, end, and philosophic tone. The meaning

or subject is partly literary, partly allegorical; the form is

duplex—the external by _cantiche_, cantos, verses; while the method or

internal form is poetic, figurative, &c. The title is, “Here beginneth

the Comedy of D. A., Florentine by birth not disposition.” Comedy comes

from, &c., tragedy from, &c. As Comedy begins ill and ends well, we call

this a comedy. It is in the vulgar tongue: its end is evangelic, its

philosophy ethical and practical.

There is little to notice here except the poet’s comparative

depreciation of the Vulgar Tongue as “humble and weak,”[586] but this of

course is only said rhetorically.

Footnote 586:

§ 10. _Remissus est modus et humilis quia loquutio vulgaris in qua et

mulierculæ communicant._

The curious First Book of the _Convito_[587] not merely contains the

promise of the _De Vulgari_[588], but is a sort of pendent [Sidenote:

_The_ Convito.] to it, being an elaborate excuse for writing the book in

the Vulgar tongue itself. Its expressions are not always in literal

agreement with those of the other treatise; but these differences, even

the exaltation of Latin as “nobler,”[589] in an apparent contradiction

to the argument of the later book, are sufficiently accounted for by the

difference of purpose and subject. But the elaborate apology for writing

in the vernacular, and the elaborate arguments by which it is supported,

have no small critical interest of their own; and the later chapters

contain eager championship of Italian, if not against Latin, yet against

Provençal, which it was the fashion to compare to it. It is scarcely

necessary to go through this book in detail; but it contains some very

interesting glimpses, and, as it were, _vistas_ of critical truth. The

two most noteworthy of these are the remarks about translation, and

those about the respective advantages for showing a language of prose

and verse.

Footnote 587:

Italian, ed. Moore, p. 235 _sq._ English, Miss Hillard, as above.

There is the usual fighting about its date.

Footnote 588:

I. v. 3, at end.

Footnote 589:

Ibid., at beginning. The ground of exaltation is that same notion of

the greater _stability_ of Latin, of its being unlikely to “play the

bankrupt with books,” which subsisted till the time of Bacon and

Hobbes, if not of Johnson, though without the apparent justification

it had in the Middle Ages.

Translation Dante condemns utterly. Nothing harmonised by the laws of

the Muses can be changed from one tongue to [Sidenote: _Dante on

Translation._] another without destroying all its sweetness and harmony.

This (which is arch-true) connects itself directly with Dante’s unerring

direction towards the criticism of form. If “all depends on the

subject,” translation can do no harm, for the subject can be maintained

in exactly the same condition through more languages than Mezzofanti or

Prince Lucien Bonaparte ever meddled with. But the form, the language,

the charm of the verse, the music of the composition, _they_ go utterly

and inevitably; and even if the translator succeeds in putting something

in their place, it is another, and not themselves.

Again, in the eloquent and admirable defence[590] of the tongue of _Si_

against the _Lingua d’Oco_, he has this remarkable saying, [Sidenote:

_On language as shown in prose and verse._] that you cannot see its real

excellence in rhymed pieces, for the accidental accompaniments

(“accidental,” _quoad_ language). So do the clothes and jewels of a

beautiful woman distract the attention from her real beauty, as much as

this is set forth by them. In prose the ease, propriety, and sweetness

of the language itself can best be shown. Now, let it be observed that

this is no exaltation of prose above poetry as such—Dante was far too

good a critic, as well as far too great a poet, to make a blunder which

has been made since, though hardly before. His argument is the perfectly

sound, and, unless I mistake, almost wholly novel one—that the

_intrinsic_ powers (if they be doubted) of a language are best shown in

prose. If it can do well there, _a fortiori_ it can do better in poetry;

but the “added sweetness” of rhythm, metre, rhyme, poetic diction, and

the like may distract the attention from the mere and sheer merits of

the language itself. And so once more we find Dante, in opposition to

the Master, in opposition to all ancient critics except Longinus, and

partly even to him, recognising the ultimate and real test of literary

excellence as lying in the expression, not in the meaning.

Footnote 590:

I. x. 5.

This would in itself be a thing so great that no greater has met or will

meet us throughout this history. Even yet the truth, which Longinus

caught but as in a Pisgah-sight, which [Sidenote: _Final remarks on his

criticism._]Dante himself rather felt and illustrated throughout than

consciously or deliberately championed in any particular place—the truth

that the criticism of literature is first of all the criticism of

expression as regards the writer, of impression as regards the reader—is

far from being universally recognised, is far even from being a

prevailing or a popular doctrine. By many it is regarded as an

unquestionable heresy, by others as a questionable half-truth. But that

Dante did feel, if he hardly saw, it, that he was penetrated by it, that

his criticism in the _De Vulgari Eloquio_ turns on it—for these things I

hope to have shown some cause.

Not of course (it may, though it should not, be necessary to repeat

this) that he was himself by any means indifferent to the “subject.” On

the contrary, the great threefold division of the subjects of high

poetry into _Salus_, _Venus_, _Virtus_—Arms, Love, and religiously

guided Philosophy—is to this day the best that exists. And here too

Dante has made a notable advance on the ancients, in admitting Love to

equality in principle, to the primacy (I had almost said), in practice.

We saw how the good Servius found it necessary to apologise for the

fourth book of the Æneid, as dealing with the trifling subject of Love;

we know how Greek criticism slighted Euripides, not, as it might have

done, for his literary shortcomings, but because of his reliance on the

tender passion; we know further how, except in mystical philosophisings

of the Platonic kind, there is nothing satisfactory on the matter

anywhere—that not merely Dionysius but Longinus, in the very act of

preserving for us the two chief love-poems of the ancient world, can

find nothing adequate to say about them, and that Aristotle leaves the

subject severely alone.

Here also Dante knew better; here also he expressed consummately all the

enormous gain of dream which the sleep of the Dark Ages had poured into

the heart and the soul of the world. But here his service, though

critical in category, was hardly critical in method; and, besides, he

was only one of a myriad. From Brittany to Transylvania, and from

Iceland to Provence, the whole thirteenth century, if not the whole

twelfth also, had been “full of loves”—there had been no fear of “Venus”

being forgotten. But all these thousand singers had simply sung because

they must or would. They had had no critical thought of the manner of

their singing. If they had written in Latin, it was because of custom,

because they wanted learned appreciation, because they had been taught

to write in Latin. If they had written in the vernacular, it was because

it came naturally to them, and there was guerdon for it.

But this, as we have seen, was not possible to Dante. Ever a fighter, he

was not content to serve the Illustrious Vernacular, to write in it, to

advance its powers, without arguing for it as well, without giving it a

critical title to place and eminence. Ever a thinker, too, he was not

satisfied to write the best poetry, but must know how and in what the

best poetry consisted, what made it best, what were its resources and

stores of attack and of charm. Most fortunately, his conviction that

_vulgare_ and _regulare_ were two very different things, and that the

methods of treating them must be different also, led him, as it would

seem, to abandon the devices of the regular Rhetoric, and to construct,

half-consciously no doubt, a new and really Higher Rhetoric of the

vulgar tongue itself.

This is what we have systematically, if incompletely, for Poetics in the

_De Vulgari Eloquio_, while we have hints towards a prose Rhetoric in

the first book of the _Banquet_[591]. And it cannot be too much insisted

on that, in the former case definitely and systematically, in the latter

by sample and suggestion rather than directly, a kind of criticism is

disclosed of which we hardly find any trace in the ancients (Longinus

partly excepted), though if Aristotle had worked out one side of his own

doctrines, and had been less afraid of Art and its pleasure, we might

have had it from him.

Footnote 591:

It is not quite trivial that, as in the other case there is the

dispute between _Eloquium_ and _Eloquentia_, so there is here between

_Convito_ and _Convivio_.

That the book itself remained so long unknown, and that even after its

belated publication it attracted little attention, and has for the most

part been misunderstood, or not understood at all, is no doubt in part

connected with the fact of its extraordinary precocity. On the very

threshold of modern literature, Dante anticipates and follows out

methods which have not been reached by all, or by many, who have had the

advantage of access to the mighty chambers whereof the house has since

been built and is still a-building.

We shall see nothing like this in the rest of the present Book. Some

useful work on Prosody, a little contribution of the usual Rhetoric,

some interesting if indirect critical expression, will meet us. But no,

or next to no, such criticism properly so called, no such exploration

and exposition of the secrets of the literary craft, no such revelation

of the character of the literary bewitchment.[592]

Footnote 592:

I have not thought it necessary to devote any space to the

consideration of the relations of Scholastic Philosophy to Criticism.

To search the whole literature of Scholasticism for these would be an

enormous labour; and some slight knowledge of the subject (to which I

once hoped to devote much of the time and energy actually, but

involuntarily, spent on things less worthy and less interesting) leads

me to believe that it would be an almost wholly fruitless one. In

Dante and in Boccaccio (_v. infra_) we have interesting examples of

the bent which scholastic education gave to critics. Lully, or “Lull,”

as they call him now (though he by no means rhymes to “dull”), shows

(_v._ note, p. 371) how criticism afar off might strike a schoolman.

But all the men of the schools abode in mere Rhetoric, and even that

they mostly despised.

CHAPTER III.

THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.

LIMITATIONS OF THIS CHAPTER—THE MATERIAL IT OFFERS—THE FORMAL ARTS OF

RHETORIC AND OF POETRY—EXAMPLES OF INDIRECT CRITICISM: CHAUCER—‘SIR

THOPAS’—FROISSART—RICHARD OF BURY—PETRARCH—BOCCACCIO—HIS WORK ON

DANTE—THE ‘TRATTATELLO’—THE ‘COMENTO’—THE ‘DE GENEALOGIA

DEORUM’—GAVIN DOUGLAS—FURTHER EXAMPLES UNNECESSARY.

The contents of the two foregoing chapters should have in some sort

prepared the reader for the character and limitations of the [Sidenote:

_Limitations of this chapter._] third. If it were not part of the scheme

of this work to leave no period of literary history unnoticed in

relation to criticism, a straight stride might almost be taken from the

_De Vulgari Eloquio_ to the earliest of the momentous and (from some

points of view) rather unfortunate attempts which the Italian critics of

the Renaissance made to bring about an _eirenicon_ between Plato and

Aristotle, by sacrificing the whole direct product, and the whole

indirect lesson, of the Middle Ages. Between Dante and this group of his

compatriots two hundred years later, it is scarcely too much to say that

there is not a single critic or criticism, either in Italy or in any

other European language, possessing substantive importance. But this

book endeavours to be a history, not merely of explicit literary

criticism, but of implicit literary taste; and no period—not the dimmest

gloom of the Dark Ages nor the most glaring blaze of the _Aufklärung_—is

profitless as a subject for inquiry in that respect, even if the result

be little more than the old stage-direction—_même jeu_.

In _Arts of Rhetoric_, with or without special or partial reference to

Poetry, the two centuries, especially the fifteenth, are [Sidenote: _The

material it offers._] indeed fairly prolific. Nothing could be more

significant for the subjective side of Critical History than that

gradual and at last undisguised identification of “Rhetoric” with

“Poetry” itself, which is notorious alike in the hackneyed title of

_grands rhétoriqueurs_ for the French poets of the fifteenth century,

and the continual praise of Chaucer’s “rhetoric” by the English and

Scottish writers of the same time. The _sacra fames_[593] of the whole

two hundred years for Allegory—a hunger which was not in the least

checked by the Renaissance, though the sauce of what it glutted itself

on was somewhat altered—is another capital fact of the same kind; the

renewed passion for changed kinds of Romance another; the

ever-increasing interest in drama yet another still. These are the real

materials for the student of criticism and taste at this time, and they

are identical with the materials, for this period, of the student of

literary history generally. In the strictly proper matter of our

particular province we not merely may, but had best, confine ourselves

to some short notice of the formal writings of the period, and some,

rather fuller, of the literary opinions expressed by characteristic

exponents of it, whether their claim to represent be derived from

eminence, or from merely average, and therefore tell-tale, quality.

Footnote 593:

The “cursed appreciation,” as a modern wit has translated the phrase

in its most famous context.

Into the first it will not be necessary to enter at any length. The

formal Latin Arts of Rhetoric of the fourteenth and fifteenth [Sidenote:

_The Formal Arts of Rhetoric._]centuries exhibit nothing new, but

observe with a touching fidelity the lines of Martianus, or Aphthonius,

or Hermogenes, as the case may be. Moreover, such notice of them as is

at all necessary will be better given in the next Book and volume, in

connection with their immediate successors of the undoubted Renaissance.

The chain of merely formal Rhetoric is unbroken till much later; as it

had been little affected by the change from “Classical” to “Mediæval,”

so it was not sensibly changed till “Renaissance” had definitely given

way to “Modern.” The vernacular _Arts of Poetry_ are, in English of this

period, non-existent; and, considering all things, they are heartily to

be congratulated on their wisdom and foresight in not existing. In Italy

they are of little moment, since Italian poetry had to a great extent

taken its line once for all. In French and in German they both exist,

and exhibit considerable individual quality. But that quality is

emphatically for an age, and not of all time. The growth of the

exquisitely graceful but dangerously artificial French poetry of

_Ballade_ and _Chant Royal_, of _rondeau_ and _triolet_; the growth of

the artificial, but rarely in the very least graceful, form-torturing of

the _meister-singers_ were both accompanied and followed, as was natural

and indeed inevitable, by abundance of formal directions for executing

the fashionable intricacies. Some of the more noteworthy of these may be

indicated in a note but—as has not always been, and will not always be

the case with similar things—they require little or no discussion in the

text. For the developments to which they related were not merely a

little artificial in the bad sense, but they were also purely episodic

and of the nature of curiosities. They had not, as even the most

apparently preposterous acrobatics of the Latin rhythmic had, the

priceless [Sidenote: _And of Poetry._] merit of serving as gymnastic to

the new vernaculars—at best they only continued this gymnastic in the

case of languages that were “grown up.” That they—at least the French

division of them—furnished some exquisite moulds, into which the purest

poetry could be thrown, is perfectly true. But Jehannot de Lescurel, and

Charles d’Orléans, and Villon most of all, could have, and doubtless

would have, produced that poetry in any form that happened to be popular

at their time. Nay, as has been abundantly shown in France and England

during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and a little earlier,

the forms themselves will fit any poetry of any time. The ancient names,

and the mediæval trimmings, and the modern sentiment of the _Dames du

Temps Jadis_, are all equally at home in its consummate but artificial

form; and that form is equally suitable to the _Voyage à Cythère_ and

the aspiration for a grave on the breast of the Windburg. Defect there

is none in this accommodating character: rather there is a great

quality. But, in the special kind of merit, there is a differentiation

from such things as the Greek chorus, the Latin elegiac, the Mediæval

rhythmus, the mono-rhymed or single-assonanced _tirade_, the Spenserian,

even the eighteenth-century, couplet, which carry their atmosphere and

their time inseparably with them. And so we may turn to our testings of

writers in whom the criticism “is not so expressed,” but who are not the

less valuable to us for that.

Are we to regret, or not, that Chaucer did not leave us an _Art of

Rhetoric_ instead of a _Treatise on the Astrolabe_? Probably not.

[Sidenote: _Examples of Indirect Criticism: Chaucer._] He would hardly

have felt what is called in religious slang “freedom” to say what he

undoubtedly might have said on Applied Rhetoric and on Pure Rhetoric,

though it would have been very agreeable to hear him. He would probably

not have told us anything new. In any kind of formal writing he would

probably have displayed that not in the least irrational orthodoxy which

he displays on most subjects. But there is perhaps no writer—at least no

writer of anything approaching his greatness—who, abstaining from

deliberate and expressed critical work, has left us such acute and

unmistakable critical byplay, such escapes of the critical spirit. If

the sly hit at his namesake of Vinsauf, which has been already glanced

at[594], stood alone, it would show us “what a _critic_ was in Chaucer

lost”—at least to the extent of lying _perdu_ for the most part. But

this is not the only example of the kind by any means, even in apparent

chance-medleys: while in the _Rhyme of Sir Thopas_[595] we have what is

almost a criticism in form, and what certainly displays more critical

power than ninety-nine out of a hundred criticisms in fact.

Footnote 594:

_V. supra_, p. 412.

Footnote 595:

I must apologise to those who hold that Chaucer never rhymed -_y_ and

-_ye_ for ascribing _Sir Thopas_ to him. But I really cannot give it

up as Chaucerian.

That this celebrated and agreeable fantasy-piece is in any sense an

onslaught on Romance, as Romance, is so fond a thing that it is

sufficient to discredit the imaginations, or the intelligence, of those

who entertain it. Dulness never will understand, either that those who

are not dull can laugh at what they love, or that it is possible for a

man to see faults, and even serious faults, in writers and writings on

whom and on which, as wholes, he bestows the heartiest admiration. From

the outset of his career the critic has to make up his mind to be

charged with “ungenerous,” or “grudging,” or “not cordial” treatment of

those whom he loves with a love that twenty thousand of his accusers

could not by clubbing together equal, and understands with an

understanding of which—not of course by their own fault but by that of

Providence—they are simply incapable.

Of this touch of foolish nature the inference from _Sir Thopas_ that

Chaucer disliked, or despised, or failed to sympathise with, [Sidenote:

Sir Thopas.] Romance, is one of the capital instances. To remember that

the author of the _Rhyme_ was also the author of the _Knight’s Tale_,

and the _Squire’s Tale_, and _Troilus_, that he was the translator of

the _Romance of the Rose_, might of itself suffice to keep the wayfaring

man straight in this matter; but those who can understand what they read

have not the slightest need of such a memory. There have been

parodies[596] of Romance which incurred the curse of blasphemy: there is

one in particular, not very many years old, which, in the energetic and

accurate language of Mr Philip Pirrip, “must excite Loathing in every

respectable mind.” But _Sir Thopas_, even to those who have not read

many of its originals and victims, much more to those who are well

acquainted with them, and who rejoice in them exceedingly and

unceasingly, can never put on any such complexion. The intense

good-humour and the absolutely unruffled play of intelligence, the

complete freedom from (what appears for instance capitally in the

example just glanced at) political, national, social _animus_, and the

almost miraculous fashion in which the caricature strikes at the

corruptions, but never at the essential character, of the thing

caricatured, settle this once for all.

Footnote 596:

Not _Rebecca and Rowena_. I think it barely desirable to insert this

note because quite recently a person, not demonstrably insane, called

that exquisite piece of Romantic humour “distressing,” or some such

word.

If we knew (as unluckily we do _not_ know) whether the Host and the

company stopped _Sir Thopas_ because they disliked the type, or because

the example was a parody, it would be a great help to us; but it is

scarcely a less help to perceive clearly that its critical character

would have been enough to put them out of conceit with it. Few people

really do like criticism; fewer still like real criticism. And the

criticism of _Sir Thopas_, though disguised, is very real. Everybody,

whether he knows the metrical romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries or not, can see the joke of the seemly nose; the far country

of Flanders; the rebuke to the maidens, who had much better have been

sleeping quietly than fussing about the beautiful knight; the calm

decision of that knight that an elf-queen—nobody less—must be the object

of his affections; the terrible wilderness, where buck and hare ramp and

roar, and seek whom they may devour; the extraordinarily heroic

exertions, which consist merely in pumping the unhappy steed; the fair

bearing, which consists in running away with celerity and success. But

nobody who does not know the romances themselves in their weakest

examples, such as _Sir Eglamour_ or _Torrent of Portugal_, can fully

appreciate the manner in which the parody is adjusted to the original.

Not the deftest and most disinterested critic of any day could single

out, by explicit criticism, the faults “before the Eternal” of the

feebler and more cut-and-dried romance, more clearly or more accurately

than Chaucer has, by example, in this tale. The stock epithet and

phrase; the stock comparison; the catalogue (he had himself indulged

pretty freely in the catalogue); the pound of description to an ounce of

incident; the mixture of the hackneyed and the ineffective in the

incident itself,—all these things this mercilessly candid friend, this

maliciously expert practitioner, exposes with the precision of an

Aristotle and the zest of a Lucian.

Yet the whole is done by implication and unexpounded example, not in the

very least by direct criticism. Had it occurred to him, or pleased him,

he could no doubt have censured all these faults in as businesslike and

direct a manner as his Parson (or rather his Parson’s original) censures

the moral, social, and fashionable shortcomings of the age. But he

certainly did not do this, and probably he never thought of doing it.

Cross the Channel (though indeed it was not always necessary to do this)

and take Chaucer’s greatest contemporary among French [Sidenote:

_Froissart._] writing men. It has been said, by that very agreeable

biographer of Froissart whom England (mindful of his early loyalty, and

characteristically neglectful of his later infidelity) lent to France,

that he “was not a man of letters.”[597] It may be so: but if it be, he

was certainly one of the most literary not-men-of-letters that the world

has ever seen. Not only is he admittedly one of that world’s most

charming prose-writers, but it has long been known that the notion of

him (if it ever existed among the intelligent) as of a good garrulous

old person who wrote as the birds sing, is utterly erroneous. At one

time he could make a mosaic of borrowed and original writing—the

borrowings often in the very words of the original, the original

adjusted to them with an art that nobody but Malory has ever approached,

and that even Malory shows rather in general management than in style.

At another, and at another again, he could, whether with or against the

grain, laboriously recast this mosaic into the most widely different

forms. His very desultoriness is calculated; he is criticising the

romances by imitation when he makes a _chassé-croisé_ to the story of

Orthon from the victory of Aljubarrota, from the battle of Otterburn to

the evil receipt for a green wound adopted by Geoffrey Tête-Noire, and

the remarkably sensible, just, kindly, and gentlemanly remarks of that

dying brigand to his fellow-outlaws.

Footnote 597:

_Froissart._ Par Mary Darmesteter (Paris, 1894), p. 19.

But he is not a man of prose letters only. He is a poet, to the tune of

some thirty thousand verses in the long-lost and late-won _Méliador_

alone, to the tune of, I suppose, about as many more in his familiar, or

at least long accessible, minor poems. He is deft at all the intricate

popular forms of the day—at _pastourelles_ as at _chansons royaux_, at

_virelais_ as at _rondelets_. He possesses its learning; and can not

only appeal to the common tales of Troy and Thebes and Alexander, not

only refer to ancient mythology with the semi-pagan docility which long

puzzled students, and seems to puzzle some still, but be even at home

with Enclimpostair, and Pynoteus, and Neptisphelè. In a certain sense he

is a man of letters, a man of books, all his life, and very much more

than Chaucer is. With all his patronisings by great people and his

sojourns among them, he is nothing like the man of affairs that Master

Geoffrey was.

And yet, in a sense also, Madame Darmesteter’s phrase is intelligible

and almost justifiable. It is indeed hardly fair to base this

construction on his scanty and not in the least literary reference to

Chaucer, whom he does not even, like Eustache Deschamps[598], call a

great translator. In Froissart’s happy early English time Chaucer had

done probably little work, and certainly none of his best: in that

melancholy revisiting, no more of the blaze of the sun of Cressy and

Poitiers, but of the glimpses of the moon that was to set in blood at

Pontefract, he was probably too old and too disgusted to make inquiries

about such matters. But the absence of the strictly literary interest in

one who not merely had so much literary genius, but was so constantly

reading and writing, is pervading and incessant. This interest is absent

not merely where it might well have been present, but where its presence

seems almost indispensable. Froissart’s style of poetry invites the

widest, and (except that it is rather too methodical, not to say

mechanical) the wildest, liberty of divagation, of dragging in anything

that really interested him. In the most recondite allegorising of the

_Prison Amoureuse_ he expostulates[599] with Desire for not coming to

his aid, and giving him the victory, by the same sort of clever

outflanking attack as that which Chandos executed at the Battle of

Auray, and of which he kindly gives some details. He names books in the

usual manner of Romance; he will go so far as to praise them; but he

never discusses them. In the well-known passage[600] of the _Espinette

Amoureuse_, when he asks his beloved the name of the romance she is

reading, she does indeed tell him that it is _Cléomadès_ (Did he mention

the same to Chaucer?), with the commendation that it is “well made and

dittied amorously,” and she asks him to lend her another (it is the

_Bailiff of Love_[601] that he hits upon),

“Car lire est un douls mestiers.”

But, though the comparing of critical opinions on literature has been

not unknown as one of the primrose paths of the garden of Flirtation,

they seem to have trodden it no farther.

Footnote 598:

Deschamps, a far more _exclusively_ bookish person than Froissart, and

one who has even left us, in his elaborate _Art de Dittier_, not the

least remarkable of the formal “Poetics” referred to above, is no more

of a critic in any true sense than Froissart himself—not nearly so

much as Sidonius or Eberhard.

Footnote 599:

_Œuvres de Froissart (Poésies)_, par A. Scheler, 3 vols. (Bruxelles,

1870), i. 303.

Footnote 600:

Ibid., p. 107 _sq._

Footnote 601:

_Cléomadès_ (which is possibly not unconnected with Chaucer’s

_Squire’s Tale_) whoso will may know and (if he be of my mind) rejoice

in (ed. Van Hasselt, Bruxelles, 1865). But, alas! we have not the

_Bailiff of Love_.

So in his prose. The _satura_ of the _Chroniques_ admits anything that

interested either Froissart or the men of his time. In those strange

midnight sessions of the Italianate Gascon Count of Foix—the lettered

tyrant-sorcerer who would have been even more at home in Ferrara or

Rimini than in Béarn—books were in great request; but nobody seems to

have talked criticism. “So much the better for the Bearnese,” the reader

may say; and he is welcome to an opinion which, at times, if not always,

most people must have shared. But that is not the question. The question

is, “Was this a critical age?” and the answer is, “If it had been, a man

could not have been so bookish as Froissart was and yet be not critical

in the least.” Nor could he, even if some private idiosyncrasy had

accounted for his own attitude, have failed to reveal the presence of a

different one in the time which he has drawn for us, more poetically no

doubt than Boswell or Pepys, but with not a little of their

unpremeditated, their even unconscious, fidelity.

The lesson taught by the two men, who occupy the summits of European

literature at the very midmost of the period of this [Sidenote: _Richard

of Bury._] chapter, will be confirmed whether we look earlier or later.

It might seem almost impossible that the somewhat famous

_Philobiblon_[602] of Richard of Bury (or Aungervyle), who made one of

the greatest collections of books in the early part of the fourteenth

century, and celebrated it in this little tract just before his own

death and shortly after Chaucer’s probable birth, should not contribute

something—improbable that it should not contribute very much—to our

subject. As a matter of fact it contributes nothing at all. Almost the

oldest Sacred Book (as distinguished from “sacred passages” in Cicero

and others) of Bibliophily, it remains entirely outside of literary

criticism. The good Bishop of Durham, indeed, does not devour all books

with indiscriminating voracity. He is true to his order in candidly

avowing no high opinion of law-books; but his reason—that they belong

rather to Will than to Wit—shows us his point of view. From that point

of view one book may be preferable to another, as being more useful, as

dealing with a nobler subject, as boasting a more venerable authorship,

as being perhaps rarer, more beautifully written or bound, older, newer,

in better condition, but not, I think, at all as being better

literature. The pleasant garrulity of the tractate; its agreeable

onslaught upon woman, the natural enemy of books; its anecdotage; its

keen sympathy with the Book as almost a living thing, and certainly one

exposed to almost all the dangers of life, have made it, and will long

make it, a favourite. It is sweet and pleasant: but it is not criticism.

Footnote 602:

Often printed: the best edition of the original Latin is, I believe,

that (with French version) of M. Cocheris (Paris, 1856). The late

Professor H. Morley gave one of the wide biographical excursus of his

_English Writers_ (iv. 38-58) to Bishop Richard, and included in it a

pretty full abstract of the _Philobiblon_ (or “Philobibl_i_on”).

The author of the _Philobiblon_ was a friend of Petrarch’s, and it may

at first sight seem strange that Petrarch himself should [Sidenote:

_Petrarch._] not be—should not indeed have been at the very beginning or

this chapter—summoned to give evidence likewise. But the fact is that

Petrarch has nothing to tell us in our context. He has indeed, as has

been pretty universally recognised, nothing to do with the Middle Ages.

Not only in his heart and desires, but in his nature, he is a man of the

early—if of the earliest—Renaissance. Even in the vernacular he rings

false as an exponent of anything mediæval. Timotheus, not St Cecily, has

taught his strains. And in his “regular” writing he is severely, almost

ludicrously, a classicaster. We may return to him as the earliest

distinguished example of the Renaissance attitude; here he cannot even,

as others have done, help us by his silence.

It is otherwise with his great contemporary, and at the last friend,

Boccaccio. Boccaccio likewise has been claimed as a prophet of the

Renaissance, as one of the first of the [Sidenote: _Boccaccio._] moderns

and the like; nor would it skill to deny that there is much both of the

Renaissance and of the modern spirit in him. But he has not broken with

the immediate past; he is only tinging it, and blending it a little,

with the farther past and the future. If something of the magical charm

of the mediæval prose story is gone from the _Decameron_, the learned

voluptuousness of the Renaissance _conte_ is not yet there. The

_Filostrato_, and the _Filocopo_[603], and the _Teseide_, are still

romances. And in the _De Genealogia Deorum_, if there is much of that

non-mediæval spirit which was always in Italy, and not a little of the

Renaissance proper, there is enough of the Middle Age itself to give it

a _locus standi_ here.

Footnote 603:

Without prejudice to _Filocolo_. We attempt not to decide such

quarrels.