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DANTE




DANTE

_SIX SERMONS_

BY

PHILIP H. WICKSTEED

M.A.

[Illustration]

LONDON
C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1879


(_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved_)




_PREFACE._


The five Sermons which form the body of this little book on Dante were
delivered in the ordinary course of my ministry at Little Portland
Street Chapel, in the autumn of 1878, and subsequently at the Free
Christian Church, Croydon, in a slightly altered form.

They are now printed, at the request of many of my hearers, almost
exactly as delivered at Croydon.

The substance of a sixth Sermon has been thrown into an Appendix.

In allowing the publication of this little volume, my only thought is
to let it take its chance with other fugitive productions of the Pulpit
that appeal to the Press as a means of widening the possible area
rather than extending the period over which the preacher's voice may
extend; and my only justification is the hope that it may here and
there reach hands to which no more adequate treatment of the subject
was likely to find its way.

The translations I have given are sometimes paraphrastic, and virtually
contain glosses or interpretations which make it necessary to warn the
reader against regarding them as in every case Dante's _ipsissima
verba_. For the most part the renderings are substantially my own; but
I have freely availed myself of numerous translations, without special
acknowledgment, whenever they supplied me with suitable phrases.

I have only to add the acknowledgment of my obligations to Fraticelli's
edition of Dante's works (whose numbering of the minor poems and the
letters I have adopted for reference), to the same writer's 'Life of
Dante,' and to Mr. Symonds' 'Introduction to the Study of Dante.'

                                                    P. H. W.

_June 1879._




_CONTENTS._

                                              PAGE

I. DANTE: AS A CITIZEN OF FLORENCE               1

II. DANTE: IN EXILE                             29

III. HELL                                       59

IV. PURGATORY                                   89

V. HEAVEN                                      119

APPENDIX                                       145




I

DANTE'S LIFE AND PRINCIPLES

_I. AS A CITIZEN OF FLORENCE_


There are probably few competent judges who would hesitate to give
Dante a place of honour in the triad of the world's greatest poets; and
amongst these three Dante occupies a position wholly his own, peerless
and unapproached in history.

For Homer and Shakespeare reflect the ages in which they lived, in all
their fullness and variety of life and motive, largely sinking their
own individuality in the intensity and breadth of their sympathies.
They are great teachers doubtless, and fail not to lash what they
regard as the growing vices or follies of the day, and to impress upon
their hearers the solemn lessons of those inevitable facts of life
which they epitomise and vivify. But their teaching is chiefly
incidental or indirect, it is largely unconscious, and is often almost
as difficult to unravel from their works as it is from the life and
nature they so faithfully reflect.

With Dante it is far otherwise. Aglow with a prophet's passionate
conviction, an apostle's undying zeal, he is guided by a philosopher's
breadth and clearness of principle, a poet's unfailing sense of beauty
and command of emotions, to a social reformer's definite and practical
aims and a mystic's peace of religious communion. And though his works
abound in dramatic touches of startling power and variety, and
delineations of character unsurpassed in delicacy, yet with all the
depth and scope of his sympathies he never for a moment loses himself
or forgets his purpose.

As a philosopher and statesman, he had analysed with keen precision the
social institutions, the political forces, and the historical
antecedents by which he found his time and country dominated; as a
moralist, a theologian, and a man, he had grasped with a firmness that
nothing could relax the essential conditions of human blessedness here
and hereafter, and with an intensity and fixity of definite
self-conscious purpose almost without parallel he threw the passionate
energy of his nature into the task of preaching the eternal truth to
his countrymen, and through them to the world, and thwarting and
crushing the powers and institutions which he regarded as hostile to
the well-being of mankind. He strove to teach his brothers that their
true bliss lay in the exercise of virtue here, and the blessed vision
of God hereafter. And as a step towards this, and an essential part of
its realisation, he strove to make Italy one in heart and tongue, to
raise her out of the sea of petty jealousies and intrigues in which she
was plunged; in a word, to erect her into a free, united country, with
a noble mother tongue. These two purposes were one; and, supported and
supplemented by a never-dying zeal for truth, a never-failing sense of
beauty, they inspired the life and works of Dante Alighieri.

It is often held and taught, that a strong and definite didactic
purpose must inevitably be fatal to the highest forms of art, must clip
the wings of poetic imagination, distort the symmetry of poetic
sympathy, and substitute hard and angular contrasts for the melting
grace of those curved lines of beauty which pass one into the other.
Had Dante never lived, I know not where we should turn for the decisive
refutation of this thought; but in Dante it is the very combination
said to be impossible that inspires and enthrals us. A perfect artist,
guided in the exercise of his art by an unflagging intensity of moral
purpose; a prophet, submitting his inspirations to the keenest
philosophical analysis, pouring them into the most finished artistic
moulds, yet bringing them into ever fresher and fuller contact with
their living source; a moralist and philosopher whose thoughts are fed
by a prophet's directness of vision and a poet's tender grace of love,
a poet's might and subtlety of imagination--Philosopher, Prophet, Poet,
supreme as each, unique as a combination of them all--such was Dante
Alighieri! And his voice will never be drowned or forgotten as long as
man is dragged downward by passion and struggles upward towards God, as
long as he that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,
and he that sows to the spirit reaps of the spirit life everlasting, as
long as the heart of man can glow responsive to a holy indignation
with wrong, or can feel the sweetness of the harmonies of peace.

It is little that I can hope to do, and yet I would fain do something,
towards opening to one here and there some glimpse into that mighty
temple, instinct with the very presence of the Eternal, raised by the
master hand, nay rather wrought out of the mighty heart of Dante; but
before we can even attempt to gather up a few fragments of