have written monographs on Dante's use of particular authors, yet no complete and systematic collection or discussion of such passages has yet appeared. None, I mean (1) covering all the works of Dante; (2) including all the earlier authors thus used by him; (3) embracing not only direct citations, but also allusions and references, many of which allusions are equally certain and even obvious, though not introduced by any formal acknowledgement. Such a collection, so far as concerns Scripture and Classical authors, though not including the wide field of Scholastic theology and philosophy, I have now endeavoured to present in the Index which follows. These statistics being, however 'incomplete,' yet as far as they go 'systematic,' enable us to form a judgement as to the comparative amount of use made by Dante of particular writers a point on which some erroneous statements have before now been made-and also as to the extent or limits of his acquaintance with the writings of an individual author when these are many or various in character: the extent in some cases, and the limits in others, being alike remarkable. It may be convenient to summarize briefly here the general result. If we include (a) direct citations, (b) obvious references or imitations, (c) allusions and reminiscences, it will be seen that more than 1,500 passages may be found that fall under one or other of these heads. It is obviously impossible to fix precise limits to the class 'c,' partly from differences of opinion as to the certainty of an 'allusion,' and still more from the fallibility of the memory and the imperfect scope of the reading of any one student, even with all the help to be gained by modern appliances, and after all the labours of others in parts of the same field. It is eminently a case in which * παντός ἐστι προσθεῖναι τὸ ἐλλεῖπον. However, starting from the above total as one likely to be approximately correct, or at least proportionately fair in relation to different authors, we may analyse the result further thus:-The Vulgate is quoted or referred to more than 500 times, Aristotle more than 300, Virgil about 200, Ovid about 100, Cicero and Lucan about 50 each, Statius and Boethius between 30 and 40 each, Horace, Livy and Orosius between 10 and 20 each; with a few scattered references, probably not exceeding 10 in the case of any one author, to Plato, Homer, Juvenal, Seneca, Ptolemy, Aesop and St. Augustine, if we may be allowed to extend the term 'Classical authors' so as to embrace all those mentioned. Further, we suspect on two or three occasions a possible knowledge of Valerius Maximus, though he is nowhere mentioned by Dante. It is to be again remembered that Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, and, above all, St. Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, to say nothing of Alfraganus, and possibly other Arabian astronomers, fall outside the limits above proposed, though if they were included the above total would be very largely increased. Probably what will at once strike most readers with surprise in the above summary is the very small use made by Dante of Horace. And the surprise will be increased when we observe that the quite certain quotations of Horace are only about seven in number, and that of these no less than six are from the Ars Poetica, the only one outside its limits being the passing expression, 'bovem ephippiatum' (which recalls Optat ephippia bos' of Epist. I. xiv. 43), occurring in Vulg. Eloq. ii. 1. This is certainly not the general impression, as appears from the following statements of two recent, well-known, and generally well-informed writers on Dante. 'Dante's prose works supply many quotations from Horace (Convito, passim).' And again,' From the frequent quotations in the Convito, it is evident that Dante had a special predilection for . . . the Ars Poetica of Horace.' The conclusion here is more correct than the premises, for there is only one definite quotation from Horace (Ars Poetica, it is true) in the whole of the Convito 1. It is interesting to compare with the results thus tabulated some passages in which Dante definitely expresses his admiration or preference for particular authors. The best-known of There is also a passage (iv. 12) where Horace is referred to in general terms, together with 'Solomon and his father,' Seneca and Juvenal, as having proclaimed the deceitfulness of riches.' these is undoubtedly that which contains the celebrated selection of the five great poets of antiquity 1, viz. Homer (the 'poeta sovrano '), Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan; after which Dante, with a splendid audacity worthy of Aristotle's μeyadóvxos, ranks himself as the sixth 'tra cotanto senno.' It is worth noticing that in the Vita Nuova 2, Dante's earliest work, he quotes illustrations of prosopopoeia, to justify his own practice, from just these five poets, in the order, Virgil, Lucan, Horace, Homer, and Ovid; the quotation of Homer being taken from his citation by Horace in Ars Poetica, l. 141 3. 1 Inferno, iv. 88 seq. 9 § 25. 3 It is also interesting to compare with Dante's selection of six poets that of Lord Macaulay, who had of course a wider area of choice. He held the six greatest poets of the world (in the order of merit) to be (1) Shakespeare, (2) Homer, (3) Dante, (4) Aeschylus, (5) Milton, (6) Sophocles. When a plea was put in for Virgil, Macaulay not only refused to recognize it, but expressed the singular opinion that both Lucretius and Ariosto should come before him. With this again we might compare the advice given to a young friend by Erasmus, to avoid inferior literature and to stick to Virgil, Lucan, Cicero, Lactantius, Jerome, Sallust, and Livy' (Froude's Erasmus, p. 26. Also G. Villani, viii. 36, says that he was fired to undertake his History when he was at Rome for the jubilee in 1300 by the example of the works of Virgil, Sallust, Lucan, Livy, Valerius, and Orosius. Chaucer is probably thinking of Dante's list when in Troilus and Criseyde (II. 1791, 2) he writes: And kis the steppes, wher-as thou seest pace Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan and Stace.' Here Statius takes the place of Horace as in the passage above quoted from Vulg. Eloq. It is a curious coincidence that in a passage which I lately came across in Rabanus Maurus (d. 856) the same five poets are selected for preeminence, but with a ludicrously different object. In a passage which is probably the most grotesque piece of fulsome flattery to be found in all literature, the author compliments an anonymous poetaster (whose works, it is needless to say, are not enrolled in the book of fame) by proclaiming his superiority to all those 'che anticamente poetaro,' and in particular just these five poets are singled out for unfavourable comparison with this new light. The whole passage is so curious that it is worth transcribing : Carmina nempe tua dico meliora Maronis Odis quae cecinit Flaccus, verbosus Homerus (!), Corduba, quem genuit, Africa quem tenuit. (Lucan?) Hi quia protulerunt pomposis falsa Camenis Rite tabescentes morsibus invidiae : Tu devota piis connectis vincula verbis,' &c., &c. (Ed. Migne, iii. p. 1588.) 6 The next passage to be referred to is in Vulg. Eloq. ii. 6 fin., where Dante, having occasion to give a sort of rough list of authors to serve as models of style, mentions under the title of standard poets' (regulatos poetas) Virgil, Ovid in Metamorphoseos,' Statius, and Lucan. (It will be observed that Statius now takes the place of Horace, and that Homer, writing in an 'unknown tongue,' could not be quoted as a model of style.) Dante then selects some prose authors, 'qui usi sunt altissimas prosas'; and these are Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Frontinus, and Orosius, 'et multos alios quos amica solitudo nos visitare invitat.' This is in some respects a curious selection, and Dante never, I believe, betrays any knowledge of either Pliny or Frontinus, nor does he ever again mention their names. The very noticeable omission of Tacitus (in whom Dante would have found in some respects a congenial spirit) is probably to be accounted for by the fact that his works were then almost, if not entirely, unknown, manuscripts of them being extremely rare1. One or two other passages may be briefly noticed. Near the end of the Epistle to Can Grande, Dante refers to certain works of St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard of St. Victor, in order to defend himself against some adverse criticism of his statement that much of his Vision of Paradise involved mysteries beyond the reach of human language or even of human intelligence. These authors, however, except possibly St. Augustine, fall beyond the scope of our present subject. In Conv. II. xiii. he mentions his special study of Cicero, De Amicitia, and Boethius, De Consolatione, when weighed down with sorrow at the loss of Beatrice, and gratefully acknowledges the comfort which he derived from both of these works. The quotations from them in his own writings bear ample testimony to this statement. Lastly, we may refer 1 The following statement of Boccaccio, Vita Dantis, § 2, amounts to no more apparently than a generalization made from the works of Dante, but the omission of Lucan is curious:- Familiarissimo divenne di Virgilio, d' Orazio, d' Ovidio, di Stazio e di ciascun altro poeta famoso, non solamente avendo caro il conoscerli, ma ancora altamente cantando, s' ingegnò d'imitarli, come le sue opere mostraro. to his own declaration of his thorough and complete knowledge of the Aeneid, which he puts into the mouth of Virgil in Inf. XX. 112-114: 'così il canta L'alta mia Tragedía in alcun loco: The quotation last made suggests that we should say something as to the extent of the knowledge displayed by Dante with the works of the principal authors who have been mentioned. In the case of the Vulgate, it extends to the whole of it. Very few writers, mediaeval or modern, 'know their Bible' as well as Dante did. This intimate knowledge is shown, not only by direct citation, put by the frequent interweaving of Scriptural allusion and phraseology into the fabric of his diction. A similar generality of knowledge is found in the case of Aristotle, who, it is needless to observe, was only known to Dante through Latin translations. There is scarcely an important work of Aristotle which is not represented, and often very fully represented, in the pages of Dante. Especially well did he know the Ethics, Physics, Metaphysics, and De Anima. Only one remarkable exception occurs, in the case of the Poetics. This appears to have been wholly unknown to Dante, otherwise he could scarcely fail to have been struck with its bearing on many of the subjects discussed in Book II. of the Vulg. Eloq. In the case of Plato, no work of his is ever directly quoted, or even named, except the Timaeus. The reason for this is found in the fact, that though that dialogue was translated by Chalcidius in about the fifth century, very long before a similar compliment was paid to any of the works of Aristotle, all the other writings of Plato remained in the obscurity of the original Greek till about the twelfth or thirteenth century. In the case of Horace (to whom we shall return later), we have seen that Dante shows no certain knowledge of anything but the Ars Poetica, with one or two possible references to the Epistles. The Aeneid of Virgil (as Dante says himself) he knew thoroughly, and particularly, as might be expected, |