Dante and Shakespeare [pp. 468-469]

468 DANTE AND SHAKESPEABE. [APRIL 27,
quired for the propagation of this wave of
flame from the base to the termination of the
image was between two and three seconds;"
and, in describing some of these shadowforms, Lockyer writes: "Here, one is reminded, by the fleecy, infinitely - delicate
cloud-films, of an English hedge-row with luxuriant elms; here, of a densely-intertwined
tropical forest, the intimately - interwoven
branches threading in all directions, the
prominences generally expanding as they
mount upward, and changing slowly, indeed
almost imperceptibly.... As a rule, the attachment to the chromosphere is narrow, aid
is not often single; higher up, the stems, so
to speak, intertwine, and the prominence expands and soars upward until it is lost in
delicate filaments, which are carried away in
floating masses."
Professor Respighi, of the University Observatory of Rome, has made it his daily task
since October, 1869, to observe the entire
limb of the sun when the weather was favorable, including the chromosphere and prominences, and to mark upon a straight line, representing the circumference of the sun, the
position, height, and form of the prominences for each day. He has concluded that
they are of the nature of eruptions out of the
chromosphere, which often spread out of the
higher regions, and take the form of bouquets
of flowers, some being bent over on one side
and some on the other, and which fall again
on to the surface of the chromosphere as rapidly as they rose from it.
It also appears that eruptions of hydrogen
take place from the interior of the sun. Their
form and the extreme rapidity of their motion
necessitate the hypothesis of a repulsivepower
at work either at the surface or in the mass
of the sun, which Respighi attributes to electricity, but Faye simply to the action of the
intense heat of the photosphere.
But the discoveries of the spectroscope
are not limited to the solar system. Diving
into space, it announces to us the composition
of the fixed stars, suggests the probable causes
of their exquisite colors, and even determines
the rate of their motion toward or from the
earth. Turned toward the unresolved nebulae, it settles the long-disputed question of
their composition. That which was beyond
the power of the most gigantic telescopes has
been accomplished by that apparently insignificant but almost itfinitely sensitive instrument-the spectroscope; we are indebted to
it for being able to say with certainty that
luminous nebule actually exist as isolated
bodies in space, and that these bodies are
luminous masses of gas. Comets and meteors, too, are daily disclosing new secrets
to us.
In conclusion, we may remark that it is
quite impossible to foresee what limits can
be placed to this astonishing method of research. Dr. Schellen's excellent work will
familiarize a large circle of readers with the
fairy tales of this branch of science; and it
is the only treatise upon the subject in the
English language that is at all complete. The
edition issued by the Appletons is in every
respect equal to the English, of which in
fact it is an exact reprint, and is sold at half
the price.
DANTE AND SHAKESPEARE.
ANTE was born in the thirteenth cen tury, and died in exile in the twentyfirst year of the fourteenth century. He took
a leading part in the chief civil and religious
struggles of his fellow-citizens of Florence.
He was a disappointed lover, a baffled patriot
and citizen. He went to France, returned to
Italy, and ate the bread of charity during
the last years of his life. He had held the
chief civil office in the gift of the Florentines;
he had been a successful political envoy in
affairs of importance; he had been a soldier;
he had cultivated music and painting; he had
mustered all that was known of theology,
philosophy, and science, in his day, and he
died at Ravenna, leaving his immortal poem
of "Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise," and those
examples of elaborate self-questioning and
ideal worship, his sonnets, called "The New
Life."
Shakespeare was born in the sixteenth
century, and died in the sixteenth year of the
seventeenth century. He seems not to have
mingled with the political and religious life
of his day; but, like a listener, like an observer, like a great receptive mind, not urged
into adventure, not participating bodily in
any of the voyages that lured the most active
and imaginative Englishmen from home, lived
as a contemplator of human life, free from
political and religious predilections and passions, and died in the prime of manhood, in
consequence of too convivial habits, in his
native town, leaving us his plays and poems.
During his life Puritanism was held to be
high-treason. The gathering political and
religious storm that cost Charles I. his head,
and developed the full power of the Commons, and gave Cromwell his opportunity,
was as foreign to Shakespeare, and probably
as distasteful also, as abolitionism was to
Hawthorne, at a time not wholly unlike the
adventurous and prosperous epoch of Shakespeare's life.
The question arises, why the most variously endowed and also the most learned
Italian of the fourteenth century plunged into
the political contests of his time, and embittered
his life with unyielding oppositions, while the
most variously-endowed Englishman of the
sixteenth century kept apart from every thing
like the political and religious agitations which
were teasing Elizabeth, consolidating the gentry and people against the great lords and the
throne-kept even more apart from them than
our own great New-England romancer kept
from the political discussions that preceded
the revolt of the South against the Union.
The difference in the actual life of two
such superior types of men as Dante and
Shakespeare is not explained alone by the
more republican and democratic constitution
of life in Florence than in London; it is not
explained by the fact that Shakespeare was
in a country that did not honor the artist,
and despised, although it let itself be amused
by, a play-actor. The difference is not explained by the circumstance that Shakespeare
was not a learned man in the sense that Bacon and Ben Jonson were learned men; while
Dante was learned, and had all the prestige
that attends great erudition in a scholastic
age. The difference is not explained by any
thing in the social and political environment
of these two supreme men; the difference is
explained only by the very diverse mental,
yet more by the very diverse physical, organization of the two men.
Now, look at the external indications that
guide us in this little study. First, here is the
firm face of the grim Dante; over the brow
the forms are full and projecting; while immediately above these the forms are smaller,
thus showing the perceptive faculties slightly
in excess of the reflective faculties. The jaw,
chin, and mouth, are large and strong in form;
the eye small, the nose large. This is the
head and face of a thinker and a man of action-the most intense type that, save Ignatius Loyola, has come to us.
Now look at the general form of Shakespeare's head. Instead of the troubled and
somewhat receding brow of the proud and
scornful Dante, we see a broad, full, symmetrical, dome-like, serene forehead; the forms
indicative of the reflective and perceptive
faculties in just proportion and in ample development; the mouth and jaw easy in form,
even expressive of generosity and self-indulgence; the nose is less like a beak than
Dante's; the whole visage is suggestive of a
less tenacious and haughty disposition.
Dante, in Shakespeare's time, probably
would have been embroiled in politics and
religion, and possibly the Puritans of a later
day would have counted him as, after the
broad genius of Cromwell, the chiefest of their
leaders.
As for Shakespeare in Dante's time, it is
difficult to'imagine him as capable of even
reaching maturity in it. His self-indulgent
and placid disposition, his reflecting, unlocal
mind, would have been smothered or paralyzed by the stress of awful life in that time
of self-sacrifice, of violence, of incessant
struggle, of appalling civil strife, of rampant
and intense local pride. It is difficult to imagine a Shakespeare even possible in such an
age of tenacious beliefs, of moral and physical endurance, of superstition and force, of
passionate devotions and unrelenting hatreds,
as Dante's age was. The Shakespeare type
was not possible in Italy between the eighth
and the fifteenth centuries. Only in the sixteenth century, and in the luxurious, aristocratic, sheltered, and splendid life of Venice,
was there an approximation even to the
Shakespeare type. I refer to Titian and Veronese, who alone, of all great Italians, and
at the only moral and political period of
Italy possible for the development of the
Shakespeare type, can be cited as sufficiently
urbane, sufficiently free from fanaticismeither political or religious-sufficiently hospitable-ins a word, sufficiently civilized-to
manifest the tolerance and serenity and prodigious abundance of Art and Nature, which
constitute the immortal glory of Shakespeare,
the Sweet Will of Ben Jonson's loving tribute.
The question rises, Is the Shakespeare
type-possible only in a time of material prosperity and domestic peace-superior to the
Dante type, in which are embodied all the
protestations of violated beliefs, all the tenacity and hardness of the fighter, of the sol
I
I
468
.DANVTE AN2) S~iTA ESPEARE.
[APRr 27,