Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/117

 9th s. xii. AUG. s, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

109

to Walker's great work, but he is noticed on p. 400. How did Royston manage to print such a pamphlet and to sell it at so troublous a time ? RICHARD H. THORNTON.

DANTE PORTRAIT. (9 th S. xi. 388, 510.)

THE question raised by MESSRS. WHITEHOUSE & JAMES is fraught with interest. I think there is no accepted portrait of Dante which represents him with a beard, and I have in mind those in the frescoes at Assisi ; the one in the Strozzi Chapel of Sta. Maria Novella at Florence ; that on the wall of the Bargello ; a cast from the mask taken after death ; two differing cuts affixed to editions of 'L' Amoroso Convivio' in 1521 and 1529 ; and a painting by if I mistake not Giorgione which I saw, years ago, in the collection of Mr. J. Morris-Moore. It is strange that there should be no pencil to perpetuate the poet's maschili penne. There is a passage in the * Purgatorio ' which might be cited as some evidence that he had a beard, though it could not be taken as conclusive, for who in his circumstances could have remained clean-shaven 1

Even as children silent in their shame Stand listening with their eyes upon the ground, And conscious of their fault, and penitent ;

So was I standing ; and she said : " If thou In hearing sufferest pain, lift up thy beard And thou shalt feel a greater pain in seeing."

With less resistance is a robust holm Uprooted, either by a native wind Or else by that from regions of larbas,

Than I upraised at her command my chin ; And when she by the beard the face demanded, Well I perceived the venom of her meaning.

Canto xxxi. 64-75 (Longfellow).

I have a photograph by Lombardi of a cartoon to be seen in the museum connected with the Duomo at Siena, which illustrates the subject of the blind leading the blind. Here the leader, who, staff in hand, conducts another sightless being by means of a crooked branch, which either holds in his left hand, is strikingly like Dante, and is again smooth- chinned. I have wondered if this were the way in which some patriotic artist of the place avenged himself on the poet who wrote so scornfully of the people of Siena, e,g. :

Or fu giammai

Gente si vana come la Sanese? Certo non la Francesca si d' assai.

' Inf.,' xxix. 121. Tra quella gente vana Che spera in Talamone, e perderagli Piu di speranza, che a trovar la Diana.

'Purg.,'xiii. 151.

But as far as I remember the cartoon was of the fifteenth century, and perhaps the smart had died away before then. It is not a little curious that the great Florentine had recorded of his fellow-citizens

Vecchia fama nel mondo li chiama orbi

(' Inf.,' xv. 67)

this, it is supposed, being a reference to some story of their being taken in by the Pisans, and an unfriendly reader might be excused for including him in the same con- demnation.

When shall we have a Dante Society by which the whole of our nation may profit 1 There is the nucleus of one in London to which, if you like, you may pay an annual guinea in order that people may assemble to hear orations on Leopard i and what not ; but if you are a student yourself, and you live at Bullock-Smithy, and have an idea that Dante- lovers in the metropolitan area should be able to do without your alms, you will spend your one pound one on helpful books and remain outside the Society. If, however, the papers and speeches were fully reported and published for the benefit of members, I should not expect anything more of co-opera- tion : I should regard with strictly Christian envy dwellers within reach of Harley Street, but gain maybe as much by reading as they can get by listening. ST. SWITHIN.

MARAT IN LONDON (9 th S. xii. 7)." Where Marat lived in Church Street, Soho, in January, 1776," is obviously not easy to answer. A careful perusal of the title deeds of every house there in 1775 and 1776 is still possible, might be successful, but probably not. Your querist relies on Marat's relation " that he resided in London ten years, and in Dublin one." But Marat's auto- biographical fragments and especially this one, penned 4 March, 1793, when he was a notorious revolutionary leader though effu- sively paraded by all his devotees, are very doubtful documents. It is, hbwever, true that, excepting his visits to Edinburgh (1769) and Amsterdam and the north of England (1774), Marat was probably hiding in London as a quack " Gleets and Eyes " doctor from 1765 to June, 1775, when his worthless St. Andrews degree removed his medical disqualification (vide a note in his * Gleets ' tract of November, 1775, his 'Chains of Slavery ' letter in Paris, 1793, and his admis- sion of "ten years' practice" in his 'Gleets' tract). But there is no evidence that he was ever in Dublin before 1776. He was there- after, between March and September, 1776 in a very different capacity. Of that there