Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/dantegiovannidelOOdantuoft DANTE AND GIOVANNI DEL VIEGILIO. W^ Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio Including a Critical Edition of the text of Dante's " Eclogae Latinae " and of the poetic remains of Giovanni del Virgilio By Philip H. Wicksteed, M.A. and Edmund G. Gardner, M.A. Solatur maesti nunc mea fata senis Westminster Archibald Constable & Company, Ltd. 1902 GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BV ROBERT MACLEHOSB AND CO. TO FRANCIS HENRY JONES AND FRANCIS URQUHART. PREFACE. Our original intention was merely to furnish a critical edition, with a translation and commentary, of the poetical correspondence between Dante and Del Virgilio. But a close study of Del Virgilio's poem addressed to Mussato, with a view to the discovery of matter illustrative of his correspondence with Dante, convinced us that Dante students would be glad to be able to read it in its entirety. And when we found ourselves thus including the greater part of Del Virgilio's extant work in our book, the pious act of collecting the rest of his poetic remains naturally sug- gested itself; and so our project took the shape of an edition of Dante's Latin Eclogues and of the poetic remains of Del Virgilio, The inclusion in our work of the Epistle to Mussato made some introductory account of the Paduan poet necessary ; and his striking personality, together with the many resemblances and contrasts between his lot and that of Dante, encouraged us to think that such an account would be acceptable to our readers. The Prolegomena and Introduction, therefore, are grouped round the personalities of Mussato, Dante, and Del Virgilio, while certain matters less closely connected with our ; viu PREFACE. main subject, or at any rate more capable of isolation, have been thrown into the form of appendices. We had originally intended to treat in detail the ques- tion of the authenticity of Dante's Eclogues, which has so often been challenged or denied ; but when we came to work through our whole material, this latter task appeared to us quite superfluous. The historical com- mentary and the explanation of the interlinear scholia found in the Laurentian MS., xxix. 8, are the all-sufficient proof of the genuineness of the poems. Anyone who, after working closely on the text, should regard the poems as forgeries, must, as it seems to us, start from critical and historical axioms which differ from our own and, contra negantem principia non est disputandum. We have therefore omitted all express treatment of this sub- ject. The remarks in our Introduction to Carmen iv. will show, however, that we are here using the word " authentic " in the large sense that designates a lona-Jlde contemporary document. This does not necessarily involve, in the case of the second Dantesque Eclogue, a literal authorship by Dante to which the poem itself makes no claim. For the actual examination of the manuscripts, the establishment of the text, and the translation, the senior editor is responsible. The rest of the work has been executed in strict collaboration, but in the commentary the senior editor is, as a rule, primarily responsible for the philological, and the junior editor for the historical, matter. In the Prolegomena, the senior editor is primarily responsible for the greater part of the matter on Mussato, and the junior editor for that on Dante. Owing to a variety of circumstances which it is not PREFACE. ix necessary to detail, the completion of our work has been delayed for more than a year from the period when the first portions of it were put into type. The result has been that during its progress several works, with the existence of which we were acquainted but to which we had not access, have come within our reach. Others we have only come to know of in the course of our labours, and yet others have appeared while our work was in progress. Thus it will be found that the notices of Orelli's, Belloni's, and some of Novati's con- tributions to various branches of our subject have frequently been introduced in the form of supplementary remarks following the exposition of our own views. Cloetta's conscientious treatment of Mussato's life, and examination of the Ecerinis, especially from the technical point of view,^ was (to our shame we confess it) unknown to us till our work was completed. It contains nothing bearing upon our treatment of the subject which is not to be found in our other authorities, but on several disputed points we could have cited it in support of our views had we known it. Vandelli's valuable researches appeared too late to permit of our making use of them. We have great pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of the librarians of the Laurentian Library in Florence, the Communal Library at San Gemignano, the Library of the Gerolamini in Naples, the Estensian Library at Modena, and the Hofbibliothek at Vienna, most of whom have kindly answered subsequent inquiries in addition to giving every facility for the examination of the MSS. We have ^ In his Beitrdge zur Litteraturgeschichte des Mittdcdtera und der JRenais- sance. I. Komodie und Tragodie im Mittdcdter. Halle. 1890. ; X PREFACE. further to offer our very special thanks to Mrs. Oscara Sydow Steffen, without whose unfailing readiness to collate the Florentine mss. on special points which arose from time to time, this work would have been far more imperfect than it is. The Rev. James Edwin Odgers has kindly looked through the text and translation of the poems and has detected some errors and made many valuable suggestions and Mr. Theodore Wesley Koch has been good enough to look through some of the proofs. Lastly, we have to state that, owing to the deficiencies of the British Museum in Mussato literature (now, happily, for the most part made good), we should have had difficulty in performing some parts of our task in any but a per- functory manner, had it not been for the able and skilful assistance given us by Messrs. David Nutt & Co. in obtain- ing books that are out of print and difficult to hear of We have further to express our sense of obligation to Messrs. Constable for the patience and generosity with which they have complied with all our demands, and enabled us in particular to give our readers a faithful reproduction of the Laurentian MS. of the four chief poems. — TABLE OF CONTENTS. Prousgomena— PAGE Albertino Mussato, 3 Dante Alighieri, 59 Introductiok, 119 Critical Text and Translation, 146 Commentary, 207 Editions and Manuscripts— Editions, Translations, and Essays, 263 Description of MSS., 268 Texts and Scholia from the MSS. Litteratim reproduction of Carmina i.-iv. from the Medicjean MS., 287 Remaining Titles and Scholia, 305 Appendices— Del Virgilio on Ovid's Metamorphoses, .... 314 Lovato, 322 The Letter of Frate Ilario, 326 The Houses of Polenta and Malatesta, .... 335 Index of Persons, 337 Table showing Typical Variants from the MSS., Facing 282 PROLEGOMENA. ALBEETINO MUSSATO. DANTE ALIGHIERL mortalium singulare desiderium, libertas, mvltia semper qv/xsita periculis I — ALBERTINO MUSSATO. Lihertatis amor justiqite ignita cupido. I. In the following pages we hope to inspire our readers with a certain interest in Giovanni del Virgilio for his own sake. But even the most partial of editors must be aware that the main significance of a work that deals with this for- gotten poet must be derived from his connection with Dante. Moreover, Dante's Latin Eclogues—those interesting and neglected poems which throw such a vivid light on his character and on the surroundings of his closing years are, strictly speaking, the main subject of our volume, though they occupy a relatively small space in it ; and the editing or publishing of Del Virgilio's poetic remains may be regarded as little more than incidental to the full elucidation of Dante's poems. It will, therefore, seem natural that we should introduce the poetic texts by an adequate study of Dante's closing years, and the political conditions by which they were surrounded and to which such abundant references are made in the poems themselves. But this is not all. For 4 PROLEGOMENA. a full appreciation of Dante's Eclogues, and for any appreciation at all of Del Virgilio's most important poem {Carmen VI. of the present edition), it is necessary that we should turn our thoughts not only to Eavenna, but to Padua ; for Padua was the city of Albertino Mussato, who shared with Dante Del Virgilio's poetic homage. To the modem Englishman (though not to the Italian man of letters) the very collocation of these two names will seem strange and startling ; for nothing is more difficult than to recover the perspective of a past age, and we can hardly realize that to the men of their own day Mussato was beyond comparison a more commanding figure than Dante. There is matter enough here for reflection on the mutability of fame ; but far from taxing Del Virgilio with blindness for placing Mussato on as high a pedestal as that on which he placed Dante, we should rather give him credit for rare qualities both of heart and head for placing Dante as high as he placed Mussato. In order, then, to reach a position of sympathetic comprehension of Del Virgilio's work, we must make some effort to redress for Mussato " the ravage of six long sad hundred years," and to give our readers a suffi- ciently clear picture of his political and literary activity to enable them to see him, in some degree, as he was seen by his contemporaries.