Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-08-03

to one OF the great rings and goes off on
lark. II seems very real to US looking
across at the gloomy palace and its torch
| rings, and / sympathiZe with lippo
Lippi for wanting to escape from il.
Florence il still lively, busy place,
the little narrow sidewalks on the princi-
pal streets are always thronging, and
always the men stand calmly converSing
before shop windows and let the ladies
STEP OFF INTO THE STREET
TO get around them. There are always
hovdes of Italian officers. l am convinced
that the Italian army is like the company
commanded by Artemus Ward, which
consisted exclusively of colonies. These
Italian officers have hard life, for they
are never off duty. have seen an OFF,
Ger stationed just outside the door OF q
restaurant on the Via CalZaioli for a
whole day, and not once was he relieved
from his exhaustive duties of staring at
the ladies and drinking winel It may
have been q different officer l saw each
time l passed, for they are all just so tall
and just SO handsome and just so tightly
booted and trousered and impudent and
conceited. l love not the italian officers,
and much prefer to keep off the prInoi-
pal streets where doubtless their bar
racks are, and walk along the narrow
little stone lanes that suggest old , repub-
lican Florence, with its wise merchants,
its fighting mobiles, its humanists and ar
lists, and all those wise old folks. How
Dante would have scourged these dandy
soldiers with q stroke of his pen! l have
been reading about Dante. 1 don't
wonder they Dauished him from Florunce.
Tight blue trousers and a sword never
IL s0I;o rro,o INI taI
as Dante was, and the Florentines would
have shown themselves
LACKING IN LF-REsPECT
If they had not gotten rid of him in some
way. Mrs. Oliphant is an enthusiastic
admirer of anybody she Is writing about,
and calls the poets Gony profile ''beau-
tlful, ;" but even she thinks his conduct
rather eccentric. There he was moping
around for years about Beatrice! He
made not the slightest effort to meet her
or know her; the egotist only wanted to
see himself in love, and then write about
himself. She dies, and he swears with
more poetic raptures that he will keep
her memory sacred-then he Immediately
goes and gets married. Politics Is his
next hobby, and he makes enemies right
aud left with his sour and bitter temper.
When 1t comes to the discussion of whom
shall be sent on a certain embassy, the
great poet speaks: 'If go who will stay,
and II stay who will go, as if there
were no one but Dante in the place.
When the high spirited rulers heard
that, I imagine they said to themselves:
"Young man you shall go, and yon shall
stay to find out that there is somebody
left in Florence. - He did go, but be-
fore his sentence of Punishment was
passed he forgot all about politics, about
his wife and children, about Florence;
and mooned around Rome one whole
year nobody knows why. [ am sure no.
body wanted TO see his sour face in
Florence! No sooner did his sentence of
Punishment reach him than he was
WILD, DISTRACTED, CRAZY,
to get back into the city, and he showed
his pure and unselfisb devotion for his
beloved Florence By uniting with his own
political enemies and attacking her like
brigand. For years he worked like a
tiend melting the worst enemies of Flor
ence; he would have put her in bonds to
any foreign power, would have torn her
all to pieces so that he might crafty his
mean personal spirit of revenge on those
who had banished him. Yet people talk
about the high souled Dante, and de-
fIOT6uC6! uO uOL LudL
the city refused absolutely to re-admit
him within her walls. What did she
care about his poetry? She wanted
peaceable citizens, and if Dante was
banished undeseryedly, he amply proved
that he was worthy of that sentence by
his conduct after it had been pronounced.
Then when worn out by his own mad &C.
tons, he fell TO burning up and
torturing his enemies in an
imaginary purgatory on paperl
1t was very nice of him to write an epic
poem and establish the Italian language
and all that, and he was grand genius,
etc. and l feel sorry for those last sad
years of his spent in straining his eyes
toward Florence, still privately sympa-
thize with his native city that probably
knew his
PERSONAL TRAITS
better than any other, in wishing to keep
Dante on the further side of her walls.
Let us sympathize with the great poet all
we want to, and bemoan his mistortuues
if we feel inclined, but surely an uufor-
tunate man never lived whose misfor-
tunes could be more directly traced to
his own conduct. And it is too bad to
berate the city of whose very strength |
and freedom, and -mindedness,
too, he was the product, for hosting him |
out when he became too disagreeable.
JESSIE CHAMBERLIN. |
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