Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/87

12 s. rx. JULY 23, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 65 princes of his time, but to explain in the most poetical form possible the sublime and hidden elements in revealed theology and scholastic

the comparison, with Milton, there is little advance on the Renaissance criticism of Mazzoni, and an almost entire lack of

philosophy, using as a basis the monarchic system * ***. ail ^. " 1V ^ U . ww ??, " and grading penalties and rewards due to vice appreciation of the poetical spirit becomes and virtue according to the principles of that ! evident, that appreciation which vibrates system. I believe that he derived the spirit i n Borghini, in Orsi even, and in Gravina. and form of his poetry from the Books of Scripture, With Conti we touch on a uew attitude I Awards Dante, a neglect of the Italian we examine carefully hr Comedy ' we do not find any comparison in the Greeks or Latins, either in time, place or in the action imitated. Its scene is no less than all creation and the entire system of the world: he travels by stages from the ^^ aud the R - omantics does the. Divina poem for foreign works, and the English influence had the" one evil consequence of diverting the attention of Italian critics centre of the earth to the planets and from these to the stars and beyond. To give unity Commedia ' receive the worship accorded to to the scene a fact hitherto unnoticed by com- it by Gravina, and between the latter and the Romantics no real Dante enthusiast, mentators he makes Lucifer of a definite stature, like Milton who provides him with a shield equal to the disc of the moon, increasing so much the bulk of his body that, falling head downwards, he displaces so much earth from the uninhabited with the possible exception of Bianchini, Becelli and Gozzi, appears. The cult of Dante in the early Settecento zone that he throws up the mountain of Purga- coincided with the desire to construct a tory which links up with the planets. The torrid j definite and modern poetical theory zone, believed to be uninhabited in Dante's i .-, -,- % % time increases the effect of the poetic image ; whl j e - the diversion of criticism of poetry to dramatic criticism tended to concentrate attention on the drama of French pseudo- classicism, on the work of and the gradation of the scales of the mountain of Purgatory is not less wonderful than that of the days and bolge of the ' Inferno ' where every- _ _ __ __ tt*3M S^ 6 ^?^!^^ s^e'T ^*L'S the poetical content and adheres to the ! weakening are already evident in Conti. geometrical, allegorical, didactic explana- |. Italian cnticism enters on a new phase, tion of the poem, disdaining Mazzoni's j Ration and adaptation of foreign models theory of an ecslatic dream. Poetry, ! -^ eighteenth-century literary cosmo- moral philosophy, revealed theology are ; POUtaniam. HUGH QUIGLEY. personified in Virgil, Cato and Beatrice: the ' Divina Commedia " is " the most sub- i lime example of poetry and allegorical; TFTTl TN creation known to the human mind." The d OM.bbDAY AND iJi, Gi^LD 1JN- comparison with Milton is developed ' QUESTS : VILLEINS ON THE COMITAL further:- MANORS. Addison praises the ' Paradise Lost ' of Milton ! as an incomparable poem which does not yield ; IN the Geld Inquests preserved for the five in beauty to the ' ^Eneid,' in greatness to the - A - 1 --- - -- J ^-- -- i--u--- ' Iliad,' in novelty to the ' Metamorphoses,' the finest poems of antiquity. That may be true but Milton has based his poem on histories and traditions where Dante has derived every- thing from his own idea, creating time, place and action. In reading Milton, all wonder ends with reading, since all is limited to the knowledge of Scriptural fact ; in Dante, on the contrary, the more we strive to penetrate to the meaning of the ' Comedy ' the more numerous the mean ings appear. western shires, we find the villein holdings on comital manors in the King's hand con- stantly returned as not paying geld. But though this is the result, the ways in which it is stated vary considerably. The writers on Domesday seem generally to have accepted the conclusion that the villeins were merely in arrear with their payments. But it is impossible to believe In a sense Conti rounds off and completes ! must have been exerted most directly, could the work of Gravina, who subjected the I have been universally withholding payment. ' Divina Commedia ' to a critical examination ! Vinogradoff ('English Society,' p. 194) in the * Ragione Poetica ' by this insistence ! speaks of them as " peasants who were remiss on the architecture and theological -allego- in paying." Eyton constantly refers to rical inspiration of the poem, but, apart from i them as "insolvent.' 1 Ballard seems to
 * that these men, on whom the royal authority