Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/150

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. FEB. 24, 1900.

the brute-like state into which (2) ultimately de- velopes itself."

The Dean not only (as Dante) distorts the natural and logical gradation of Aristotle, but positively misleads in rendering (1) KO.KUI. "incontinence, i.e., want of self-control," which Scartazzini more happily accounts for as "il vizio, la quale consiste nel mal uso della ragione"; (2) aic/mo-ia, a "brute -like state." Grjptorr/s is the " brute-like state " to which the other two lead gradatim, "la quale," as Scartazzini again rightly says, " consiste nella soddisfazione di quelle voglie che non sono dilettevoli per se stesse ; cru- delta, antropofagia, peccati contro natura,"&c.

The concluding words of the Dean's note " Taught by him [Aristotle], he [Dante] learnt to distinguish between the sins of impulsive sense, of inveterate habit, and of embruted callousness " only make " confusion worse confounded," for while they correctly describe his own and Dante's sequence of the lines, they no less emphasize his distortion of both the order and meaning of Aristotle.

Dante's acquaintance with the writings of "il Maestro di color che sanno" was both extensive and accurate. Quotations from or references to them are, as we know, frequent in the * D. C.' and ' Convito,' no less than seventy citations being made in the latter. But whence came this acquaintance to him? Through a Greek, or Arabic, or Latin source? Presumably the last. For of Greek he probably knew less than Shakespeare, and nothing of Arabic. And this notwithstanding his allusion (' Inf.,' iv. 143) to "il gran commerito" of the Moorish Averrhoes. But a Latin version of the works of the Stagirite, either from the original or from the Arabic of Averrhoes, had been pre- sented to the University of Bologna by Frederick II., and it must have been from this (or replicas of it) that the poet drew his knowledge of the ' Maestro," whose com- mentary was, as Plumptre observes, " from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century the great text-book of all European universities."

Seventeen lines lower down Dante again, through the mouth of Virgil, refers to his favourite author :

E' se tu ben la tua Fisica note,

Tu troverai, non dopo molte carte, &c.

The reference is to the * Physics,' lib. ii. c. 2 :
 * H

Ars imitatur naturam in quantum potest. But in the

SI che vostr' arte a Dio quasi e nipote the Christian poet steps characteristically beyond his pagan master Art is the daughter

of Nature, which is the daughter of God, and, by similitude, grandchild of God.

It is worthy of a passing observation that what Aristotle was to Dante, Plato was to Petrarch, and Homer and Butler were to Gladstone. Great minds are no more exempt from hero worship than average mortals.

3. Ibid., xi. 113, 114 :

I Pesci guizzan su per 1' orizzonta E il Carro tutto sovra il Coro giace.

Some smile, others sneer, at this brief flourish of Dante's astronomical learning. But he sins in company with all poets worth a moment's perusal. If a poet have a know- ledge of botany, or geology, or astronomy, why should he not press it into the service of his art? A good scientist does not neces- sarily make a bad poet, else to go no further afield than our own literature Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Tennyson must be very indifferent poets. By "good " I do not mean an academic chair, but a general though accurate acquaintance with such matters outside his own pale. So much for the sneer. As for the smile, a charge of vanity is but ill-founded. Why should poets, in common with novelists, not be at liberty to air their acquisitions in the fields of fact equally with those gleaned in the realms of fancy ? The smile is about as unreasonable as the sneer. Of more practical bearing is the question raised by some, Is Dante's astronomy at fault here ? Englished, the two lines mean The Fishes above the horizon glide, The Wain full over the Caurus lies,

which further means that the zodiacal sign or constellation of the Fishes hung over the horizon 30 east from Aries, in which the sun then was, whilst the Wain, or Great Bear, lay in the direction of the north-west wind ; all which further means, in more prosy speech, the dawn of Easter Eve, A.D. 1300. Rather "a complicated way of describing daybreak," as Plumptre facetiously observes, but exact and poetically permissible all the same. The year-date, of course, is deducible from the

Mille dugento con sessantasei of xxi. 113 lower down, which determines the precise day and year of Dante's descent into hell on Good Priday, 1300. i.e., thirty-four years of Christ's life (according to medieval calculation) being added to the 1266. Into the involved question raised by the "luna tonda" of xx. 127, namely, as to whether Good Friday fell in 1300 on 8 April or 24 March, I do not propose to enter here, but will deal with it pro mribus in its proper place. Suffice it to repeat that the poet was