The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-11-17


turn away from such follies and breathe the pure
air OF the great and immortal poet.
OF the worlds three poets-Kschylus, Dante
and Milton-Dante. he said, was the greatest
Some might wonder why he did not class Shak-
speare with the three, but that ocean-minded
man had not the pure spirituality which dstin-
gulshed Dante and gave to him everywhere that
royal priesthood and immortal dignity OF man
made in the image of Christ The poet lived
yet in his works, and there was no function the
poet could fulfil so great as to enrich the blood
and elevate the tone of the present society. Ma
tons that had such poets as Dante and Milton
need never degenerate The poem was one OF
the landmarks of history-a rare monument
marking the height of human intellect The
great man who was England's Premier, and who
may again be her Premier, Gladstone lapplause.
drew sustenauce and faith and power from these
poems.
The life of Dante, he said, had four epochs
love, philosophy politics and exile. The first
epoch, when he was ruled by an overmastering
affection for Beatrice, to whom he wrote sonnets
full of the finest aroma of chivalrous devotion,
was described until it ended with the death of
Beatrice. The second epoch was when Dante
devoted himself to the pleasures and solace of
philosophy, until recalled by vision OF the fair
Beatrice at a time when his intellectual desires
for the good ran along by the side of his volun-
tary actions Of evil" Then Dante became inter
ested in politics through his love for his native
city, and at the age of thirtyfve had risen to
the magistracy of Florence. But through the
he was convicted of malversation and embeZzle-
ment and sentenced to Punishment from the
city, with penalty of being burned to death if
he returned Thus overmastered, it only re-
NAMED for him to hand up his broken sword to
fate, as many another man has DONE with
calm and heroic heart Dante had loved Bea-
trice, and she had died; he had loved philosophy
and it had broken as bruised reed; he had loved
Florence and she had flung him out of her
bosom with an implacable fury and resentment
"a hn nnn hoI honn n rIant
and what the cage is to the mountain eagle such
was the dangling dependence about the courts of
petty men to the free spirit of Dante. When he
was offered an opportunity to return to his ma
tive city he answered: "If I cannot return with
perfect honor l will never return at ALL"
he was doomed, in nineteen years of hopeless
wandering and CALLING dependence, to learn how
hard pace it is to tread patrons stair Cut
Oft from returning to Florence, he died at Ra-
VIENNA, at the age of ffty-six, of a broken heart.
century later Florence, with remorse too
late, begged that the remains of Dante might be
restored to her, but though that request re-
newed at a later period by two persons no less
than Leo X. and Michael Angelo, it was justly
refused. There in Ravenna the dust of Dante
sleeps until the judgment day. Those pine
woods were green then, though blighted now;
and Dantes life, though blighted then, has put
forth the brightest leaves for u.s. What he
learned in suffering he taught in song. But for
that despair of heart he might have been
graceful love poet scholastic philosopher; but
he never would have written the divine comedy.
God dipped his morsel in vinegar and gave him
to drink. But his loss is our gain AS in the
case of many other poets, the gold was purged
through affection of all its dross and nodded into
forms of eternal loneliness.
The name Divine" was given to the poem,
the Archdeacon said, after Dante's death, and
was called by the poet comedy only because it
had a pleasant ending. Except perhaps, the
plays of Shakespeare in their oceanic myriad
minded variety, it is the supremest, the most
cred thing which the unaded intellect of man
has ever produced. But in reading Dante we
must not suppose we shall be able at once to
grasp and understand him. Great poems re-
quire noble and eminent minds to comprehend
them. Dante never desired other than fit audi
ence, though few. You vii kad abundance in
his poems which will scarify feeble conven
tionality He himself warned off all base and
feeble readers. What we learn from his great
poem is its intense moral purpose, and those
who do not care for moral purposes do not care
for Dante. He wishes US to feel the same ha-
tired and fierce scorn Of sin wherewith God had
inspired him, whether it takes the form of av-
arlce, fraud or lust. He sets sin before us both
in its nature and punishment, now melting us
with pity, now freezing with horror, now in
flaming US with indignation, but always placing
before US this lesson that it is sin which is hell
Speaking of the weird horror which Dante
threw over the Internal regions. the lecturer
said that the sacred name of Christ was not
mentioned in the poem, and mo angel can for a
phere of hell" He commented also upon the
revolving, shudder causing monster" which
Dante makes Lucifer, compared with the ''splen-
did, naughty but unfortunate fallen angel" of
Milton, and the ''gbng, philosophic, gentleman
ly Mephistopheles" of Goethe. In Dantes hell
the souls were tormented only for one sin they
had committed, but this, he said, was the epit-
ONE of a life's sinful thoughts and misdoings as
the flower of the aloe issues from the sap which
has been flowing in the veins for a hundred
years.
In speaking of the purgatorio, the lecturer
asked us vice in this nineteenth century dead,
that you can afford to despise the lessons which
would set it before you in it's true nature2 Is
any of that pitch on our hands9 Are any of
our tongues tipped with that envenomed fame9
Are none of us tempted like those wretches in
the vestibule of hell, to stand leisurely neutral
in the great conflict between good and evil9 If
any of us have followed the example of those
whom Dante saw in that place. then
Dante has the same strong and significant
lessons for this century that he had for
the days in which he lived. You have all
read the Book of Wisdom, and you know the
lesson of the last chapters of that remark
ably eloquent book is this: That wherewthal
man sinneth by the same also shall he be
punished. 1t is always one sin. and that ia
vorite one, by which souls are destroyed Some
times in single line Dante infuses moral les
son which is a moral gain for life. One lesson
he teaches is that the forgiveness of sin is one
thing and the remission of sin another. The
spirits in purgatory do not feel worthy to see
God until the angels have brushed from their
foreheads the seven letters that stand for the
seven SINS That punishment is the easiest to
bear which follows soonest on the sin. Another
truth which Dante points out is the absolute me-
cessity for repentance. He means to teach us,
too that there is danger in contact with evil
He feels the faint of the vices he looks on He
feels that he becomes base as he listens to the
revilings of the base and false when he listens
to treachery.
Paradise the Archdeacon said, is the least
read by the multitude of the three poems, but to
the student it is the dearest of all IL one would