the establishment of the Inquisition, in an age when the mighty spirit of
Hildebrand was rising every day from his grave in more and more influential
and imposing shape,--this was to place one's self in a false position.
Dante, no doubt, felt all this to the core of his being. A poet by nature,
with that intense, morbid, proud, uncomfortable, alternately benevolent
and misanthropical temperament which occasionally accompanies the poetic
faculty, he had little in common with the bustling, vivacious character
of his fellow-townsmen. _Fiorentino di nascita, non di costumi_, as he
describes himself, he had slight sympathy with Blacks or Whites, Guelphs
or Ghibellines. A Guelph by birth, a Ghibelline by banishment, he was in
reality an absolutist in politics, and a bigot in religion. Had a hell
never been heard of, he would have invented one, for the mere comfort of
roasting his enemies in it, and his friends along with them,--the solitary
enjoyment of his lifetime. His part in public affairs has been much
magnified. He was prior in 1300; but almost any citizen of Florence might
be prior. He was once sent to Rome, on a diplomatic errand; but he was
only the envoy of a party, only one of a set of delegates appointed by
the Whites. He was banished for his political opinions, and afterwards
condemned to death; but even this was no distinction; for six hundred other
persons, most of them obscure men, were included in the same sentence,
for the same offence. They all happened, in short, to belong to the party
opposed to the one which was successful. His merits of style can hardly
be exaggerated. Alone of mankind he almost created a language. Imagine
the English, or the German, or the French poetry of the year 1300 flowing
musically and familiarly from the lips of 1857! The culture, too, of
his epoch might almost be measured by his personal accomplishments. The
Aristotle, the Bacon, the Humboldt of Florence was one of the world's
great poets into the bargain; but he was any thing but a statesman or a
politician.