to most in these days, the most interesting feature in the life of a poet is his relation to the sex that is commonly assumed, perhaps not quite correctly, to be the more romantic of the two. In comparing Dante and Milton in that respect one is struck at once by the fact that, while with Dante are not only associated, but inseparably interwoven, the name and person of Beatrice, so that the two seem in our minds but one, knit by a spiritual love stronger even than any bond sanctioned by domestic law for happiness and social stability, Milton[Pg 63] had no Beatrice. It would be idle to contend that the absence of such love has not detracted, and will not continue to detract, from the interest felt in Milton and his poetry, not perhaps by scholars, but by the world at large, and the average lover of poetry and poets. For just as women can do much, to use a phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, towards “making a poet out of a man,” so can they do even more, either by spiritual influence or by consummate self-sacrifice, to widen the field and deepen the intensity of his fame. No poet ever enjoyed this advantage so conspicuously as Dante. It will perhaps be said that this was effected more by himself than by her. Let us not be too sure of that. In Italy, far more than in northern climes, first avowals of love are made by the eyes rather than by the tongue, by tell-tale looks more than by explicit words. What says Shakespeare, who knew men and women equally well? [Pg 63] A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon Than love that would seem hid. Love’s night is noon. Dante’s own account of his first meeting with Beatrice confirms this surmise. This is what he himself says, after Beatrice, as Boccaccio relates, “very winning, very graceful, in aspect very beautiful,” had turned her gaze on Dante from time to time at their first meeting. “At that moment the spirit of life which abides in the most secret chamber of the heart began to tremble, and tremulously it spake these words, ‘Behold a god stronger than I, who cometh to lord it over me.’” These may perhaps seem strange words in which to record the first meeting of a boy of nine with a girl of eight. But, over and above the fact that they are the record, written several years later, of the feeling aroused by that first meeting,[Pg 64] allowance must be made for the proverbial precocity of genius, and also for that of southern over northern temperaments. Its genuineness is confirmed by the whole sequel, as testified by the Vita Nuova and the Divina Commedia; the presiding presence of Beatrice in both having long before been anticipated by the words, “If it shall please
Prev.
Back
Top