Chapter XIX

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[682] _Ante_, pp. 98-100.

[683] The coarseness of _Inf._ xxi. 137-139 is of a piece with the way of mediaeval art in making demons horrible through a grotesquely indecent rendering of their persons.

[684] e.g. _Inf._ xviii. 100 _sqq._; and _Inf._ xxviii. and xxix.

[685] _Inf._ viii. 37 _sqq._; xxxii. 97 _sqq._; xxxiii. 116 and 149.

[686] Cf. Moore, _Dante Studies_, vol. ii. pp. 266-267.

[687] Any one who looks through the first volume of Tiraboschi’s great _Storia della letteratura italiana_, written in the early part of the nineteenth century, will find a generous acceptance of myth as fact; just as he would find the same in the _Histoire ancienne_ of the good Rollin, written a century or more before.

[688] Dante has frequently been spoken of as the “first scholar” of his time. I do not myself know enough regarding the scholarship of every scholar in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to confirm or deny this. Personally, I do not regard him as a Titanic scholar, like Albertus Magnus for example. He studied all the classic Latin authors available. Doubtless he had a memory corresponding to his other extraordinary powers. His also was the intellectual point of view, and the intellectual interest in knowledge and its deductions. His view of life was as intellectual as that of Aquinas. But as Dante’s powers of plastic visualization were unequalled, so also, it seems to me, were his faculties of using as a poet what he had acquired as a scholar. Regarding the extent of Dante’s use and reading of the Classics, nothing could be added to Dr. Moore’s _Studies in Dante_, First Series; though I think what Dr. Moore has to say of “Dante and Aristotle” would have cast a more direct light upon the matter, had he cited as far as possible from the Latin translation probably used by Dante, instead of from the original Greek.

[689] _Inf._ iv. 88. Cf. Moore, _Studies in Dante_, i. p. 6. The application of the term _satirist_ to Horace is peculiarly mediaeval.

[690] _Inf._ iv. 131.

[691] _Inf._ ii. 20.

[692] _Par._ xx. 68.

[693] _Purg._ xxv. 22.

[694] _Inf._ xviii. 83 _sqq._

[695] _Inf._ xxvi. 88 _sqq._

[696] _Purg._ xii.

[697] _Purg._ xv.

[698] According to Dr. Moore, Dante quotes or refers to the “Vulgate more than 500 times, to Aristotle more than 300, Virgil about 200, Ovid about 100, Cicero and Lucan about 50 each, Statius and Boëthius between 30 and 40 each, Horace, Livy, and Orosius between 10 and 20 each,”--and other scattering references.

[699] _Inf._ xxxiii. 4; _Aen._ ii. 3.

[700] _Par._ ii. 16.

[701] _Aen._ vi. 309; _Inf._ iii. 112.

[702] _Aen._ vi. 700; _Purg._ ii. 80.

[703] _Purg._ i. 135; cf. _Aen._ vi. 143 “Primo avulso non deficit alter, etc.”

[704] See _Inf._ xxxi.; _Purg._ xii. 25 _sqq._

[705] _Purg._ vi. 118: “O highest Jove that wast on earth crucified for us.”

[706] _Par._ i. 13 _sqq._; _Par._ ii. 8.

[707] The _provenance_, etc., of Dante’s classification of sins in the _Inferno_, like everything else in Dante, has been interminably discussed. The reference to the _De officiis_ of Cicero is due to Dr. Moore. See “Classification of Sins in the _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_,” _Studies in Dante_, 2nd Series. Also cf. Hettinger, _Die göttliche Kömödie_, pp. 159-162, and notes 6 and 23 on p. 204 and 207 (2nd ed., Freiburg in Breisgau, 1889). Dante’s main statement is in _Inf._ xi.

[708] In whom does not the awful anguish of the suicides (_Inf._ xiii.) arouse grief and horror?

[709] _Inf._ xvi. 59. They are more respectable than the blessed denizens of the Heaven of Venus, _Par._ ix.

[710] _Inf._ xix.

[711] _Inf._ vi. 103 _sqq._

[712] The intellectual temperament finds voice in many great expressions, which are very Dante and also very Thomas, as _Par._ xxviii. 106-114; xxix. 17; xxx. 40-42.

[713] _Inf._ iii. 18.

[714] Hettinger, _o.c._ p. 254.

[715] _Aeneid_ vi. 327 _sqq._; Hettinger, _o.c._ p. 226.

[716] See Taylor, _Classical Heritage_, p. 162.

[717] These are pointed out in the Commentaries (_e.g._ Scartazzini’s) and in many monographs. Hettinger’s _Göttliche Kömödie_ is serviceable: also Moore’s _Studies in Dante_ and Toynbee’s _Dante Studies_.

[718] _Purg._ i. 71; John viii. 36.

[719] _Purg._ i. 89.

[720] _Purg._ iii. 34 _sqq._

[721] _Purg._ iv. 4 _sqq._

[722] _Purg._ v. 105 _sqq._

[723] _Purg._ vii. 54; iv. 133-135.

[724] Cf. _e.g._ _Purg._ xii. 109.

[725] _Purg._ xv. 40 _sqq._

[726] _Purg._ xvi. 64 _sqq._

[727] _Purg._ xvii. 85 _sqq._, and xviii.; Hettinger, _o.c._ p. 235 _sqq._, and pp. 261-264.

[728] _Purg._ xxiii. 72; xxvi. 14.

[729] _Purg._ xxv. The notes in Hettinger, _o.c._, are quite full in citations of passages from Thomas and other scholastics.

[730] Thomas, _Summa_, iii. Qu. 89, Art. 5.

[731] As it is rather in _Par._ xxvii. 76 _sqq._

[732] _Par._ iii. 52, 64, 89.

[733] _Par._ iv.

[734] _Par._ xi. 1 _sqq._

[735] _Par._ xiv.

[736] _Par._ xv. 10.

[737] _Par._ xix. 40 _sqq._

[738] _Par._ xx.

[739] _Par._ xxiv.-xxvi.

[740] Typified in St. Bernard, _Par._ xxxi. and following. Suitable reasons for this choice may be suggested by the extracts from Bernard’s _De deligendo Deo_ and _Sermons on Canticles_, _ante_,