of astronomy prevailed; and the astronomy of the age was astrology, as the chemistry was alchemy. According to their lights, however, the men of the thirteenth century were deeply learned. Dante, with his powers of concentration, his close observation of men and nature, and ultimately his wide experience with life in various parts of Italy and possibly in such distant centers as Paris and Oxford, absorbed and made use of all the wisdom of his age. His is the great medieval mind. His works display familiarity with all the Latin writers of consequence, especially Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius, and with the Greek writers at second hand. He probably knew Hebrew and Arabic to some extent. His Biblical and theological learning was profound. Well-nigh fifteen hundred names of persons in history, literature, and mythology, of geographical locations, and other references appear in the "Divine Comedy" alone.

The outward events of Dante's life may be soon told. Two years after the death of Beatrice he married Gemma Donati, a Florentine woman of good family. He had a distinguished public career, participated in a military campaign, and held a civic office. While he was on a mission to Rome, the civil dissensions in Florence came to a head. His house was pillaged, his property was confiscated, and a sentence of banishment (never repealed) was passed upon him. This was in 1302. From that time until his death in 1321 Dante lived the life of an exile. He never reëntered Florence nor saw again his wife and children. It was his fate to wander from place to place in poverty and loneliness. "Since it was the pleasure," he writes in the "Convito," "of the citizens of the most beauteous and the most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me forth from her most sweet bosom .., through well-nigh all the regions whereto this tongue extends, a wanderer, almost a beggar, have I paced. . . . Verily have I been a ship without sail and without rudder, drifted upon ports and straits and shores by the dry wind that grievous poverty exhales." In this rigorous school of adversity Dante's character became finely tempered and noble. Sorely tried as he was, his faith in a divine order of things and in the ultimate justice of God was triumphant. He died at the age of fifty-six in the old city of Ravenna, and there he lies buried, though the city of

his birth has vainly sought the honor of harboring the remains of her son, the greatest of the Italian race.

Carlyle's impression of the portrait of Dante, which he attributed, incorrectly, to Giotto, is ever memorable:

"To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also deathless ;-significant of the whole history of Dante! I think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain."

Dante's writings are inseparably connected with his life. The autobiographical character of the "New Life" has already been mentioned. All his writings are autobiographies. "Il Convito," or "The Banquet," begun as early as 1300, is the natural successor to the "New Life." As planned it was to contain fourteen sections, each introduced by a canzone and followed by prose comment or explanation. Love and virtue were the themes, and the interpretation was philosophical. Dante tells us that in "The Banquet" he is to serve to us the crumbs of learning he has picked up. The work was also intended to clear his name from certain imputations which had arisen because of his earlier writing. "The Banquet," like the "New Life," is in Italian. Only four sections were produced, and these were completed in 1306 or 1308. His next writing was a Latin treatise, "De Vulgari Eloquentia." In this Dante explains that the Italian language is splendidly adapted to prose and poetry alike and well suited to the worthiest subjects. He also gives a minute description of the Italian poetic forms. This treatise, begun in 1304, was never finished. "De Monarchia," also in Latin, written between 1310 and 1314, expresses Dante's political faith. He was an idealist in politics, as in love. The Empire was to him a power supreme over the earthly interests of mankind, in the same manner as the Church was supreme in the field of the spirit. He explains in "De Monarchia" that universal empire is necessary,

that it was by God's will that the Romans secured their authority, and that this authority is in fact derived from God himself.

The "Divine Comedy" was the central interest of Dante's life. He fortunately lived to complete it. The Middle Ages stand revealed in this magnificent work. Dante called it a comedy because of its fortunate ending; the world has called it divine because of its spiritual theme. The journey so marvelously described by Dante was taken, as he tells us, when he had reached "the summit of the arch of life,”—namely, during his thirty-fifth year,—and an even more definite reference places its beginning on the night before Good Friday of the year 1300. The three divisions, or canticles, refer to the poet's experiences in three worlds-Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. About five days are consumed in the entire journey. Each canticle ends with the words "the stars" and each contains thirty-three divisions, or cantos, with an introductory canto preceding the poem. Thus the cantos total one hundred, which is regarded as a perfect number. The cantos are of almost uniform length— about one hundred and forty verses each. The whole is written in terza rima, a poetic form consisting of iambic verses generally eleven syllables long, with a fixed riming scheme: aba, bcb, cdc, ded, etc., the middle line of each three-line set riming with the first and third of the one following.1

Back of Dante were Homer and Virgil, both of whom had dealt with the spirit world. Odysseus travels beyond the Ocean-stream and there on a rough shore finds Hades. He does not enter, but he converses with the spirits of the dead and returns as he came. Hades itself is only vaguely described, but at the entrance four rivers and other natural features are mentioned, including Tartarus, a gloomy gulf. It is the abode of all the dead and is not, properly speaking, a place of positive suffering, but more like the Hebrew underworld, Sheol. Virgil makes Æneas enter the underworld through a huge cave near Lake Avernus and return by the ivory gate of dreams. His description is particular: a gloomy wood at the entrance, peopled by monsters; a neutral region across a stream; beyond this, Tartarus, Pluto's palace, and Elysium. There is a care

1 Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind” is a good example of this poetic form.

ful classification of the spirits. In the neutral zone we encounter no suffering. The punishment in the region beyond is not endless, but is designed to cleanse the soul and to prepare it for Elysium.

PARNASSUS"

What is Dante's conception? The earth is a sphere at the center of the entire universe. The northern hemisphere is inhabited, and the center of this is the city of Jerusalem, midway between the