But the Poet had profoundly meditated, and deliberately resolved on his appeal to the Italian mind and heart. Yet even then he had to choose, to a certain extent to form, the pure, vigorous, picturesque, harmonious Italian which was to be intelligible, which was to become native and popular to the universal ear of Italy. He had to create; out of a chaos he had to summon light. Every kingdom, every province, every district, almost every city, had its dialect, peculiar, separate, distinct, rude in construction, harsh, in different degrees, in utterance. Dante in his book on Vulgar Eloquence ranges over the whole land, rapidly discusses the Sicilian and Apulian, son-in-law of Monti (in Monti, Proposta di Alcune Correzioni, &c. al Vocab. della Crusca, v. ii. pte. ii.). Perticari quotes the very curious letter of the Monk Ilario to Uguccione della Faggiuola. To this Monk the wandering Dante showed part of his great work. The Monk was astounded to see that it was written in the vulgar tongue. "Io mi stupiva ch' egli avesse cantato in quella lingua, perchè parea cosa difficile, anzi da non credere, chè quegli altissimi intendimenti si potessero significare par parole di vulgo; ne mi parea convenire chè una tanta e si degna scienza fosse vestita a quel modo cosi plebeo." Dante replied, that so he himself had originally thought. He had once begun his poem in Latin, and these were the lines Ultima regna canam, fluido contermina mundo, Spiritibus quæ lata patent, quæ præmia solvunt Pro meritis cuicunque suis." But he had thrown aside that lyre, "ed un altra ne temperai conveniente all' orecchio de' moderni." The Monk concludes" molte altre cose con sublimi affetti soggiunse " (p. 328). Perticari quotes another remonstrance addressed to the poet by Giovanni di Virgilio da Cesena, closing with these words: "Se ti giova la fama, non si contento a si brevi confini, nè all' esser fatto glorioso dal vil giudicio del volgo" (p. 330). Conceive the Divine Comedy stranded, with Petrarch's Africa, high on the barren and unapproachable shore of ecclesiastical Latin. e "Poscia nel libro ch' ei nomina della Vulgare Eloquenza, cominciò ad illustrare l'idioma poetico ch' egli creava." See the excellent observations on writing in a dead language, in Foscolo, Discorso sul Testo di Dante, p. 250. f I can have no doubt whatever of the authenticity of the De Vulgari Eloquentiâ; contested because Dante threw aside the vulgar Tuscan or Florentine as disdainfully as the rest, and even preferred the Bolognese. To a stranger it is extraordinary that such an Essay as that of Perticari should be necessary to vindicate Dante from the charge of ingratitude and want of patriotism, even of hatred of Florence the Roman and Spoletan, the Tuscan and Genoese, the Romagnole and the Lombard, the Trevisan and Venetian, the Istrian and Friulian; all are coarse, harsh, mutilated, defective. The least bad is the vulgar Bolognese. But high above all this discord he seems to discern, and to receive into his prophetic ears, a noble and pure language, common to all, peculiar to none, a language which he describes as Illustrious, Cardinal, Courtly, if we may use our phrase, Parliamentary, that is, of the palace, the courts of justice, and of public affairs. No doubt it sprung, though its affiliation is by no means clear, out of the universal degenerate Latin, the rustic tongue, common not in Italy alone, but in all the provinces of the Roman Empire. Its first domicile was the splendid Sicilian and Apulian Court of Frederick II., and of his accomplished son. It has been boldly said, that it was part of Frederick's magnificent design of universal empire: he would make Italy one (Florence which had exiled him), because Florentine vanity was wounded by what they conceived injustice to pure Tuscan. See also the Preface to the De Vulgari Eloquio in the excellent edition of the Opere Minori, by Fraticelli. Florence, 1833. "Itaque adepti quod quærebamus, dicimus, Illustre, Cardinale, Aulicum et Curiale Vulgare in Latio, quod omnis Latiæ civitatis est et nullius esse videtur, et quo municipia Vulgaria omnia Latinorum mensurantur, ponderantur et comparantur.”—Lib. i. cxvi. h Perticari has some ingenious observations on the German conquests, and the formation of Italian from the Latin. The German war-terms were alone admitted into the language. But his theory of the origin of the Romance h out of the ecclesiastical Latin, and still realm, under one king, and speaking one language. Dante does homage to the noble character of Frederick II. Sicily was the birthplace of Italian Poetry. The Sicilian Poems live to bear witness to the truth of Dante's assertion, which might rest on his irrefragable authority alone. The Poems, one even earlier than the Court of Frederick,m those of Frederick himself, of Pietro della Vigna," of King Enzio, of King Manfred, with some peculiarities in the formation, orthography, use "Federigo II. esperava a riunire | nunc personat tuba novissimi Fredel'Italia sotto un solo principe, una rici? quid tintinnabulum II. Caroli? sola forma di governo, e una sola lin- quid cornua Johannis et Azzonis Margua."-Foscolo sulla lingua Italiana, chionum potentum? quid aliorum p. 159. This essay, printed (1850) Magnatum tibia? nisi Venite carniin the fourth volume of my poor fices! Venite altriplices! Venite avafriend's Works, has only just reached ritiæ sectatores. Sed præstat ad propositum repedare quam frustra loqui." me. There is a splendid translation of this passage in Dantesque Italian by Foscolo, Discorso, p. 255. m See the Rosa fresca olentissima, Foscolo, della Lingua, p. 150. n "Cosi ne' versi seguenti non v'e un unico sgrammaticamento de sintassi, nè un modo d' esprimersi inelegante, nè un solo vocabolo che possa parere troppo antico. "Non dico ch' alla vostra gran bellezza k 66 Quicquid poetantur Itali Sicili--De Vulgar. Eloquio, i. xii. p. 46. anum vocatur . . . . Sed hæc fama Trinacriæ terræ, si recte signum ad quod tendit inspiciamus, videtur tantum in opprobrium Italorum Principum remansisse qui non heroico more, sed plebeo sequuntur superbiam. Siquidem illustres heroes Fredericus Cæsar, et bene genitus ejus Manfredus, nobilitatem ac rectitudinem suæ formæ pandentes, donec fortuna permansit, humana secuti sunt, brutalia dedignantes, propter quod corde nobiles atque gratiarum dotati inhærere tantorum principum majestati conati sunt: ita quod eorum tempore quicquid excellentes Latinorum nitebantur, primitus in tantorum Coronatorum aulâ prodibat. Et quia regale solium erat Sicilia, factum est quicquid nostri prædecessores vulgariter protulerunt, Sicilianum vocatur. Quod quidem retinemus et nos, nec posteri nostri permutare valebunt, Racha! Racha! Quid Orgoglio non convegna e stiavi bene, Che a bella donna orgoglio ben convene, Che la mantene in pregio ed in grandezza; Troppo alterezza e quella che sconvene. Di grande orgoglio mai ben non avvene." Poeti del 1mo Sec. i. p. 195. See Foscolo, p. 166. Peter della Vigna (Peter de Vinca) did not write Sicilian from want of command of Latin; his letters, including many of the State Papers of his master Frederick II., are of much higher Latinity than most of his time. and sounds of words, are intelligible from one end of the Peninsula to the other. The language was echoed and perpetuated, or rather resounded spontaneously, among poets in other districts. This courtly, aristocratical, universal Italian, Dante heard as the conventional dialect in the Courts of the Cæsars, in the republics, in the principalities throughout Italy.a Perhaps Dante, the Italian, the Ghibelline, the assertor of the universal temporal monarchy, dwelt not less fondly in his imagination on this universal and noble Italian language, because it would supersede the Papal and hierarchical Latin; the Latin with the Pope himself, would withdraw into the sanctuary, into the service of the Church, into affairs purely spiritual. However this might be, to this vehicle of his noble thoughts Dante fearlessly entrusted his poetic immortality, which no poet anticipated with more confident security. While the scholar Petrarch condescended to the vulgar tongue in his amatory poems, which he had still a lurking fear might be but ephemeral, in his • See the passages from Frederick II. | Amalfi has been recently discovered, and King Enzio, Foscolo, p. 165. in Italian perfectly intelligible in the present day. I owe this information to my accomplished friend Sign1. Lacaita. P See, among other instances, the pure Italian quoted from Angelati by Perticari, written at Milan the year before the birth of Dante. Perticari's "La lingua ch' ei nomina cortegraceful essay, as far as the earlier | giana, e della quale ei disputa tuttavia, Italian poetry may be compared with la sua fantasia vedevala nascere ed amthat of Foscolo, sulla Lingua; the pliarsi per la perpetua residenza de' other poets Cino da Pistoia, the Guidos Cesari in Roma, e frà le republiche e (Foscolo ranks Guido Cavalcanti, le tirannidi, tutte confuse in un solo Dante's best friend, very high) may reame. Di questo ei ti pare certissimo be read in a collection printed at Flo- come di legge preordinata dalla Provirence, referred to in a former volume. denza e connessa al sistema del' UniNor must the prose be forgotten; the verso."-Compare quotations, Foscolo, history of Matteo Spinelli is good uni- Discorso, p. 254. versal Italian. The maritime code of Africa and in his Latin verses he laid up, as he fondly thought, an imperishable treasure of fame.' Even Boccaccio, happily for his own glory, followed the example of Dante, in, as he probably supposed, his least enduring work, his gay Decamerone. Yet Boccaccio doubted, towards the close of his life, whether the Divine Comedy had not been more sublime, and therefore destined to a more secure eternity in Latin.s Thus in Italy, with the Italian language, of which, if he was not absolutely the creator, he was the first who gave it permanent and vital being, arose one of the great poets of the world. There is a vast chasm between the close of Roman and the dawn of Italian letters, between the period at which appeared the last creative work written by transcendent human genius in the Roman language, while yet in its consummate strength and perfection, and the first, in which Italian Poetry and the Italian tongue came forth in their majesty; between the history of Tacitus and the Divina Comedia. No one can appreciate more highly than myself (if I may venture to speak of myself), the great works of ecclesiastical Latin, the Vulgate, parts of the Ritual, St. Augustine: yet who can deny that there is |