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CONTENTS. Page CHAPTER XXV. Was the Sectarian Language known to the Papal Court and the Inquisition ? ........................................ 139 CHAPTER );XI-I. Confirmation of various Opicions advanced in the course of the \Irork .............................................. 165 CHAPTER XXYII. On the Five Epochs of the Sect ............................ 185 Letter to Charles Lyell, Esqs .............................245. CHAPTER XVII. DAXTE FIGURED IN ADAM. ALLthe figurative tales which relate the history of Dante's sectarian life, agree in the fact of his being the introducer of tlie new style of allegory. Some call him the creator of the language in which he wrote; and that he mas the author of the great change which took place in it, no one, I u.110 has exanlined his uritings, can doubt for a moment. I \Vhe11 we gii e the interpretation of the Vita Nuova, and h of that palt of the Convito which is connected with ~t, I" opinion mill be strengthened into certainty. In tlie mean- ' while, his own words will be our best authorities. We have long since heard him declare, that he Ivaq forced to leave off writing of Love; because the counte- nance of his lady appeared changed. He repeats the same thing at the beginning of his new profession of sec- talian faith, which is com~nonlycalled the Creed. " Ko lonyer will I write of this frrlsr love : I will now discourse on God as u Chrzstzan." This accords with his determination to throw hlmself into tlie arms of Pzety, his enemy, as a means of conc111- ating all parties. In the treatise of the Vulg. Eloq., called by hiin New Latin, he explains more fully the necessity which induced him to adopt the new style. ili~)~,he 1 says, have need of a form of language wherein to express their ideas, but not dev~ls:in which name he nlcludes iiot 1 only papal~sts,but also those apostate sectarians who had 1 revealed the first jargon, and who, in fact, had no occasloil VOL. 11. B 2 DANTE FIGURED IN ADAM. to resort to subterfuges to make known their opinions. " If we consider what is our purpose in speaking, we can come but to one conclusion. Our intention is to make known to others what is passing in our own minds. TO those who bring against this argument the case of the spirits who fell from heaven, we say that that case can never be applied to us justly; for they refused to wait for the divine aid. Those demons, when they want to confer together in their wickedness, have occasion for nothing except a knowledge of one another, &c., which they already have ; for they were all well known to each other before their fall."-(B. 1. ch. 2.) He proceeds afterwards to deplore the calamities which1 were brought on by the confusion of tongues in the Tower of Babel, which mas raised by the advice of the Giant ; and he lays so much more stress upon that than he does upon the original sin, which he only touches on carelessly, that we may believe it to have been a woe of his own time, instead of an event over which five thousand years had rolled. It is curious to hear him declare, that he blushed for the dis- grace of mankind. " I blush at the thought of calling to remembrance the disgrace of mankind ; and my heart revolts from the iclea of it. Still the subject must be dwelt on; and I may not be silent. 0 Nature ! how prone art thou to sin, and how wedded to thy original micked- ness ! Was it not enough for thee to be banished for thy first fault from the garden of life and joy? ' Behold reader, the folly of man ! Forgetfnl of his former punish- ments, or ridiculing them, and reckless of the evils in store for him, he rebelled a third time, sinning in the pride of foolishness ; and, led on by the iniquitous per- suasions of the giant, he made an attempt to overcome not nature only, but nature's author, God ; and began to build a tower in Sennaar, which was called Babel, signi- fying confusion; intending to climb into heaven, and " From the Earthly Paradise, the figure of a perfect Empire. DANTE FIGURED IN ADABI. 3 there equal or vanquish his Maker.* 0 boundless lnercy of heaven's Emperor! What father would pardon suc!~ insults from a son ?"-(Ch. vii.) But enough of Dante's prolix lamentations on the con- fusion of tongues ; their design is what we have under- taken to explain, and it was this : He intended to convey the information tliat, when the sectarian world arose to a new life, he was the Adam who fixed tlie value of each word in the reformed language ; and, as usual, his mean- ing is shown mysteriously. The title to the 6th chap. of book 1. bears a double sense. '' In what language man first spoke, and how he was the author of this work." Out~vurdlythese words mean how he was tlie author of this work on VuIg. Eloq. ; and inwardly they signify how he was the author of the new language. In order to pro- tract the equivoque, he winds about the paths of his argument like a serpent. " We must try to discover in what language that man spoke who n7as torn without a mother ; and who never passed througll infancy nor youth. In this, as in many other things, Pietramala is a very populous city, and it is the country of the greatest number of the sons of Adam." Does the Bible tell us that Adam formed tlie primitive language in the city of Pietramala ? or that his children inhabited such a city ' If so, in what page ? Dante makes a circuit of the globe. from pole to pole, and then tells us that he was born in Florence. And Florence was the Pietramala vihere the Adam, who was the author of this work, was born cillego- rically without any mother ; the originator, the creator of the new sectarian tongue. I am aware that there i.; a village of that name in Tuscany ; but I am also aware that the exiled Florentines were accustomed to apply it in contempt to their capital city. Daute hints, but mhe- ther truly we know not, tliat he was engaged, with the Emperor Henry, in the composition of the nerx- language See the 14th chapter of Isaiah. B 2 4 DAKTE FIGURED IN ADASf. before those troubles broke out which the Pope so mate- rially fomented; and hence, after speaking of his own birth-place, Florence, he adds : " To return, then, to our subject; we say that the first soul was created by God with a certain form of language; and this language would have been always spoken, had not the arrogance of men caused the confusion of tongues. In this form, spoke Adam and all his posterity, until the building of the Tower of Babel, or confusion ; and, after the confusion, the children of Heber, who were called Hebrews, were the sole inheritors of the language; in order that our Re­ deemer, nl~owas born of their race in his human nature, might speak in the language of grace, and not in that of confusion. Therefore Hebrew was the language created by the first speaker," (that is, by the Adam of Pietra- mala).-Ch. vi. After dwelling at some length on the crime of Nimrod, and the consequent confusion, he says: " Those who inherited the holy language nere not present at the impious attempt, nor did they approve of it; on the con- trary, they abhorred its presumption, and ridiculed the folly of the wicked builders; but, in point of numbers, they nere in the minority."-(B. 1. c. vii.) He writes, in chapter v., that Adam first spoke in the place where he was created. If that was out of the Earthly Paradise, there he spoke ; but if within it, within he spoke ; and we know right well what place he figured by the Earthly Paradise. When Henry of Luxembourg entered Italy, Dante went to meet him; and, as he writes, his lips paid him their debt. Wllat was tliis debt? We shall hear his own words to co~lvinceus. He is not only clever enough to find out that Adam was the first man who spoke, but to guess at the very first word which he uttered. " We believe, therefore, that Adam allowed by his Creator to be the first to speak ; and all of sound intellect will readily divine what was tl~efirst word 11e uttered : that word was God; that is to say, El; DANTE FIGURED IX ADABI. 5 and he spoke it, whether as a question, or in answer to a question. In fact, it would be equally absurd and unrea- sonable to suppose that man would give a name to any thing before he had first pronounced the name of God, by whom and for whom he was himself created."-(Ch. iv.) But, then, these questions present themselves naturally to our minds : Why did he mention that some language of correspondence was necessary for men, but not for devils? Why recall the subject of the confusion of tongues, or talk of Adam, or of the first language, and first word El? The answer is this: He did it that he might pave the may for the introduction of the subject of the language of Italy, called by him the new Latin, and the lnltguage of the Ceurt ;* over which presided the Lord of Courtesy, the head of the Latin empire, Enrico Lucemburghese, (El,)Henry of Luxembourg, to whom he wrote : " I, who write for others, as well as for rnj~self, as becomes me towards your Imperial Majesty, saw yon in your goodness, and heard you in your mercy, w!len my hands touched your feet, and my ITS paid their debt, and my spirit exulted within me."-(My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.-St.

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