One other class of the compositions of the middle ages may be alluded to, their monkish hymns, written in Latin, that is to say, the bastard Latin of the period, and generally in rhyme. They cannot indeed be praised for their novelty of thought, or high imagination; but their earnestness of purpose, whether in describing ideas of terror or pity, and which was the expression of one belief and one heart pervading many nations, give them a considerable hold over the mind. No one can be insensible to the awful grandeur of the Dies ira, dies illa, which Roscommon, who translated it into English, is said to have died repeating; or the simple pathos of the Stabat mater dolorosa, which, even divested of the charms of Pergolesi's music, speaks to the heart. Of nearly equal beauty are the Jam mœsta quiesce querela of Prudentius; and the Ave Maris Stella, being an invocation to the Virgin, which may still be traced in the songs of the boatmen of the Mediterranean. The forcible impression made by these simple sacred hymns on the mind of Dante is obvious, from the manner in which lines or portions of lines from them are here and there woven into the terza rima of his great poem.

It cannot therefore be said that the middle ages were an unpoetical period. On the contrary, there was then a very general diffusion of poetic feeling. But the poetry to which it gave rise was not marked by any of those works of excellence rising conspicuously above the rest, which attract attention to the names of the authors. Its productions are chiefly anonymous; its poets have died and made no sign. A great genius was still wanting to form an epoch in the annals of poetry; but that genius was found in Dante, about a century after the Tuscan dialect had assumed a predominance over the other dialects of Italy.

ITALIAN POETRY.

THE Divine Comedy of Dante (born 1265, died 1321) is the first work of distinguished and original genius which graces the literature of modern Europe; and it is in many respects a most striking and remarkable production. It is not, as the name would import, a drama; as little does it resemble an epic poem ; it is an allegorical pilgrimage through heaven, hell, and paradise, which the poet has peopled with human shapes, human passions and crimes. He has made his poem an instrument through which he vents his political loves and hatreds, his vast and undigested learning, his scholastic acuteness, his mystical philosophy, his reverence for the ancients, his sympathy with the spirit of freedom, the enterprise, the enthusiasm of the moderns. It resembles, in fact, the Homeric poems in its encyclopædiac character. The poet stands, as it were, on an isthmus, from which he can cast back his glances across the tumultuous and still heaving chaos of the middle ages, into the serener regions of the past, and forward into a futurity of which he foresees and foretells the coming glories. Many, no doubt, had been the allegorical compositions which went before him; the Roman de la Rose, indeed, still survives, in the translation of which Chaucer wasted so much of his earlier powers; but all have been thrown into shade, and it may

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be said effaced, by the grasp, magnificence, and sombre power, combined with deep human feeling, of the great allegorical pageant of Dante. For in this last quality, quite as much as in the attributes of sublimity and grandeur, which are universally conceded to him, lies the secret of that perennial charm of freshness which still gives interest to the Divina Commedia, Amidst the darkest scenes of infernal punishment some soothing objects or images are constantly introduced to lighten our pilgrimage, and flowers are made to spring up beneath our feet, as if to freshen the path over the burning marle." His wearisome metaphysics have long ceased to please; his mystic raptures, his pictures of the celestial occupations of the saints, appear almost ludicrous; his demons and his Satan grotesque rather than impressive: but the deep pathos of the story of Francesca of Rimini ; the thrilling scenes in the town of Hunger; the few simple lines which tell the story of Madonna della Pia, imbibing a slow but certain death among the swamps of the Maremma, to which she is consigned by a jealous husband; the sweet apostrophe to evening, and the fireside recollections which the sound of the vesper-bell brings along with it: these and such episodes are the passages which linger in the memories of all, and give to the poem. of Dante its main hold over the heart.

The imagination, on the other hand, is singularly roused by the scenes of torture and bliss through which we are led, the burning tombs, and cities alive with flame, and valleys of the shadow of death, where serpents torture their victims, and the ever-deepening descent through the circles of hell, contrasted with the cheering light which begins to break upon us in the ascending circles of purgatory, and the refulgence of the visions which greet the

wanderer on his entrance into paradise, when he exchanges the guidance of Virgil for that of Beatrice.

Distinct as the imagery in the foreground is, the prospect fades away on all sides into the illimitable, and the imagination has full room to expand itself in the sphere of the mysterious and indefinite. Dante's poem may, indeed, be well compared to that "wild and hoary wood" in which he describes himself as losing his way in the outset, with here and there a path cut through the trees, where the sunshine pours in and shows spots of verdure or still waters, but backed on all sides by dusky labyrinths, inhabited by beasts of prey, into the gloom of which the eye can hardly pierce, and the immemorial stillness of which the sound of human footsteps has never broken.

The style of Dante's poem is scarcely less remarkable than its spirit. Obscure and unyielding, as might be expected, in some parts, it has, nevertheless, a picturesqueness without parallel in modern literature. It makes every object palpable or sensible; flashing images upon the mind with the rapidity and the splendour of lightning. "They are," says Ugo Foscolo, "the bold and prominent figures of an alto-relievo, which, it seems, we might almost touch, and of which the imagination readily supplies those parts that are hidden from the view." It fixed the Italian language, so that at this moment it remains less changed since the time of Dante than any other European tongue.

As Dante is the head of the Italian allegorical poetry, so Petrarch may be regarded as the founder of the lyrical; borrowing indeed his manner, and not a little of his matter also, from the Provençals, but by a refined taste acquired from the deepest study of the classic poetry, and a sensibility, the liveliness of which was quickened by a real passion,

investing their strains with a character of tenderness and perfect finish, which really appear to confer on them a different character. The monotony disappears of which we are conscious in reading the compositions of the Troubadours and Minnesingers, "qui toujours d'un même ton semblent salmodier ;" and a wonderful variety of emotions are seen to arise out of a theme which, in their hands, had appeared limited and barren. No one has ever drawn a finer poetical ideal of female loveliness, purity, and worth, than Petrarch has done in Laura. "Every lover," says Herder," will find his Laura in that of Petrarch; he will find his own heart, with all its weakness, and that beneficent influence which the female character in its purity can erect over the disposition of the youth and the man." The verbal subtilties and plays on words which disfigure, many of the lyrics of Petrarch no doubt detract from their effect, and excite surprise that one whose taste was in general so pure should have given admittance to such conceits; but, like the puns and equivoques of Shakspeare's time, they were part of the fashion of the day. Petrarch found them imbedded, as it were, in the Provençal poetry from which he drew, and he yielded, like Shakspeare, to the evil influence of the time. Upon the whole, however, the services rendered by him as an Italian poet (for we need not here allude to his great and most beneficial influence on the taste of Europe, by his exertions on behalf of classical literature) have been very great; he sensibly added to the polish, grace, and pliancy, of the Italian tongue; and of the Platonic poetry of love, a love existing rather as a lambent glow than as a flame, and living on as a sentiment after it has ceased to be a passion, Petrarch still remains the purest and the most charming re