CHAPTER XV.

[71]The peculiar dislike felt by the mediævals for thesea, is so interesting a subject of inquiry, that I have reserved it for separate discussion in another work, in present preparation, "Harbors of England."[72]Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in 1352. She died in 1394.[73]"Three times the length of a human body."—Purg. x. 24.[74]Purg. xii. 102.[75]"Come unto theseyellowsands."[76]"And thou art long, and lank, andbrown,As is the ribbed sea sand."[77]Compare parallel passage, making Dante hard or changeless in good Purg. viii. 114.[78]So also in Isa. xxxv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and peace over all evil is thus foretold:"In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall begrass, withreedsandrushes."CHAPTER XV.OF MEDIÆVAL LANDSCAPE:—SECONDLY, THE ROCKS.§ 1. I closed the last chapter, not because our subject was exhausted, but to give the reader breathing time, and because I supposed he would hardly care to turn back suddenly from the subjects of thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters of inquiry connected with mediæval landscape. Nor was the pause mistimed even as respects the order of our subjects; for hitherto we have been arrested chiefly by the beauty of the pastures and fields, and have followed the mediæval mind in its fond regard of leaf and flower. But now we have some hard hill-climbing to do; and the remainder of our investigation must be carried on, for the most part, on hands and knees, so that it is not ill done of us first to take breath.§ 2. It will be remembered that in the last chapter, § 14., we supposed it probable that there would be considerable inaccuracies in the mediæval mode of regarding nature. Hitherto, however, we have found none; but, on the contrary, intense accuracy, precision, and affection. The reason of this is, that all floral and foliaged beauty might be perfectly represented, as far as its form went, in the sculpture and ornamental painting of the period; hence the attention of men was thoroughly awakened to that beauty. But as mountains and clouds and large features of natural scenery could not be accurately represented, we must be prepared to find them not so carefully contemplated,— more carefully, indeed, than by the Greeks, but still in no wise as the things themselves deserve.§ 3. It was besides noticed that mountains, though regarded with reverence by the mediæval, were also the subjects of a certain dislike and dread. And we have seen already that in fact the place of the soul's purification, though a mountain, is yet by Dante subdued, whenever there is any pleasantness to befound upon it, from all mountainous character into grassy recesses, or slopes to rushy shore; and, in his general conception of it, resembles much more a castle mound, surrounded by terraced walks,—in the manner, for instance, of one of Turner's favorite scenes, the bank under Richmond Castle (Yorkshire); or, still more, one of the hill slopes divided by terraces, above the Rhine, in which the picturesqueness of the ground has been reduced to the form best calculated for the growing of costly wine, than any scene to which we moderns should naturally attach the term "Mountainous." On the other hand, although the Inferno is just as accurately measured and divided as the Purgatory, it is nevertheless cleft into rocky chasms which possess something of true mountain nature—nature which we moderns of the north should most of us seek with delight, but which, to the great Florentine, appeared adapted only for the punishment of lost spirits, and which, on the mind of nearly all his countrymen, would to this day produce a very closely correspondent effect; so that their graceful language, dying away on the north side of the Alps, gives its departing accents to proclaim its detestation of hardness and ruggedness; and is heard for the last time, as it bestows on the noblest defile in all the Grisons, if not in all the Alpine chain, the name of the "evilway"—"la Via Mala."§ 4. This "evil way," though much deeper and more sublime, corresponds closely in general character to Dante's "Evil-pits," just as the banks of Richmond do to his mountain of Purgatory; and it is notable that Turner has been led to illustrate, with his whole strength, the character of both; having founded, as it seems to me, his early dreams of mountain form altogether on the sweet banks of the Yorkshire streams, and rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the rugged clefts of the Via Mala.§ 5. Nor of the Via Mala only: a correspondent defile on the St. Gothard,—so terrible in one part of it, that it can, indeed, suggest no ideas but those of horror to minds either of northern or southern temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to rock over a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless as any into which Dante gazed from the arches of Malebolge, has been, therefore, ascribed both by northern and southern lips to themaster-building of the great spirit of evil—supplied to Turner the element of his most terrible thoughts in mountain vision, even to the close of his life. The noblest plate in the series of the Liber Studiorum,[79]one engraved by his own hand, is of that bridge; the last mountain journey he ever took was up the defile; and a rocky bank and arch, in the last mountain drawing which he ever executed with his perfect power, are remembrances of the path by which he had traversed in his youth this Malebolge of the St. Gothard.§ 6. It is therefore with peculiar interest, as bearing on our own proper subject, that we must examine Dante's conception of the rocks of the eighth circle. And first, as to general tone of color: from what we have seen of the love of the mediæval for bright and variegated color, we might guess that his chief cause of dislike to rocks would be, in Italy, their comparative colorlessness. With hardly an exception, the range of the Apennines is composed of a stone of which some special account is given hereafter in the chapters on Materials of Mountains, and of which one peculiarity, there noticed, is its monotony of hue. Our slates and granites are often of very lovely colors; but the Apennine limestone is so grey and toneless, that I know not any mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded. Now, as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his poem, nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. He had journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to Trent, and that along the Corniche, both of which are either upon those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any color till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever seen rocky scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the Alpine mosses: I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno, xvi. 99.), but every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain size, he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,—the one clearly chosen only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make a sound as of cracking ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the stanza,—and the other is an Apennine near Lucca.§ 7. His idea, therefore, of rock color, founded on these experiences, is that of a dull or ashen grey, more or less stained by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as the Apennine limestones nearly always are; the grey being peculiarly cold and disagreeable. As we go down the very hill which stretches out from Pietra-pana towards Lucca, the stones laid by the road-side to mend it are of this ashen grey, with efflorescences of manganese and iron in the fissures. The whole of Malebolge is made of this rock, "All wrought in stone of iron-colored grain."[80]Perhaps the iron color may be meant to predominate in Evil-pits; but the definite grey limestone color is stated higher up, the river Styx flowing at the base of "malignantgreycliffs"[81](the word malignant being given to the iron-colored Malebolge also); and the same whitish-grey idea is given again definitely in describing the robe of the purgatorial or penance angel, which is "of the color of ashes, or earth dug dry." Ashes necessarily meanwood-ashes in an Italian mind, so that we get the tone very pale; and there can be no doubt whatever about the hue meant, because it is constantly seen on the sunny sides of the Italian hills, produced by the scorching of the ground, a dusty and lifeless whitish grey, utterly painful and oppressive; and I have no doubt that this color, assumed eminently also by limestone crags in the sun, is the quality which Homer means to express by a term he applies often to bare rocks, and which is usually translated "craggy," or "rocky." Now Homer is indeed quite capable of talking of "rocky rocks," just as he talks sometimes of "wet water;" but I think he means more by this word: it sounds as if it were derived from another, meaning "meal," or "flour," and I have little doubt it means "mealy white;" the Greek limestones being for the most part brighter in effect than the Apennine ones.§ 8. And the fact is, that the great and preeminent fault of southern, as compared with northern scenery, is this rock-whiteness, which gives to distant mountain ranges, lighted by the sun, sometimes a faint and monotonous glow, hardly detaching itself from the whiter parts of the sky, and sometimes a speckled confusion of white light with blue shadow, breaking up the whole mass of the hills, and making them look near and small; the whiteness being still distinct at the distance of twenty or twenty-five miles. The inferiority and meagreness of such effects of hill, compared with the massive purple and blue of our own heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn grass-green and pine-purples of the Alps, have always struck me most painfully; and they have rendered it impossible for any poet or painter studying in the south, to enter with joy into hill scenery. Imagine the difference to Walter Scott, if instead of the single lovely color which, named by itself alone, was enough to describe his hills,—"Their southern rapine to renew,Far in the distant Cheviot'sblue,"—a dusty whiteness had been the image that first associated itself with a hill range, and he had been obliged, instead of "blue" Cheviots, to say, "barley-meal-colored" Cheviots.§ 9. But although this would cause a somewhat painful shock even to a modern mind, it would be as nothing when compared with the pain occasioned by absence of color to a mediæval one. We have been trained, by our ingenious principles of Renaissance architecture, to think that meal-color and ash-color are the properest colors of all; and that the most aristocratic harmonies are to be deduced out of grey mortar and creamy stucco. Any of our modern classical architects would delightedly "face" a heathery hill with Roman cement; and any Italian sacristan would, but for the cost of it, at once whitewash the Cheviots. But the mediævals had not arrived at these abstract principles of taste. They liked fresco better than whitewash; and, on the whole, thought that Nature was in the right in painting her flowers yellow, pink, and blue;—not grey. Accordingly, this absence of color from rocks, as compared with meadows and trees, was in their eyes an unredeemable defect; nor did it matter to them whether its place was supplied by the grey neutral tint, or the iron-colored stain;for both colors, grey and brown, were, to them, hues of distress, despair, and mortification, hence adopted always for the dresses of monks; only the word "brown" bore, in their color vocabulary, a still gloomier sense than with us. I was for some time embarrassed by Dante's use of it with respect to dark skies and water. Thus, in describing a simple twilight—not a Hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening—(Inf. ii. 1.) he says, the "brown" air took the animals of earth away from their fatigues;—the waves under Charon's boat are "brown" (Inf. iii. 117.); and Lethe, which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as with oblivion, is "bruna-bruna," "brown,exceedingbrown." Now, clearly in all these cases nowarmthis meant to be mingled in the color. Dante had never seen one of our bog-streams, with its porter-colored foam; and there can be no doubt that, in calling Lethe brown, he means that it was dark slate grey, inclining to black; as, for instance, our clear Cumberland lakes, which, looked straight down upon where they are deep, seem to be lakes of ink. I am sure this is the color he means; because no clear stream or lake on the Continent ever looks brown, but blue or green; and Dante, by merely taking away the pleasant color, would get at once to this idea of grave clear grey. So, when he was talking of twilight, his eye for color was far too good to let him call itbrownin our sense. Twilight is not brown, but purple, golden, or dark grey; and this last was what Dante meant. Farther, I find that this negation of color is always the means by which Dante subdues his tones. Thus the fatal inscription on the Hades gate is written in "obscure color," and the air which torments the passionate spirits is "aer nero"blackair (Inf. v. 51.), called presently afterwards (line 81.) malignant air, just as the grey cliffs are called malignant cliffs.§ 10. I was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what Dante meant by the word; but I was at a loss to account for his not, as it seemed, acknowledging the existence of the color ofbrownat all; for if he called dark neutral tint "brown," it remained a question what term he would use for things of the color of burnt umber. But, one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colorists, watching him at his work, when he said,suddenly, and by mere accident, after we had been talking of other things, "Do you know I have found that there is nobrownin Nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast."§ 11. It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue;—how far, on the other hand, it cuts into the heart of the old umber idolatries of Sir George Beaumont and his colleagues, the "where do you put yourbrowntree" system; the code of Cremona-violin-colored foregrounds, of brown varnish and asphaltum; and all the old night-owl science, which, like Young's pencil of sorrow,"In melancholy dipped,embrownsthe whole."Nay, I do Young an injustice by associating his words with the asphalt schools; for his eye for color was true, and like Dante's; and I doubt not that he means dark grey, as Byron purple-grey in that night piece in the Siege of Corinth, beginning"'Tis midnight; on the mountainsbrownThe cold, round moon looks deeply down;"and, by the way, Byron's best piece of evening color farther certifies the hues of Dante's twilight,—it"Dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away—The last still loveliest; till 'tis gone, and all isgrey."§ 12. Let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown, as an expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means ofgetting other tints. Brown is often an admirable ground, just because it is the only tint which isnotto be in the finished picture, and because it is the best basis of many silver greys and purples, utterly opposite to it in their nature. But there is infinite difference between laying a brown ground as a representation of shadow,—and as a base for light; and also an infinite difference between using brown shadows, associated with colored lights—always the characteristic of false schools of color—and using brown as a warm neutral tint for general study. I shall have to pursue this subject farther hereafter, in noticing howbrown is used by great colorists in their studies, not as color, but as the pleasantest negation of color, possessing more transparency than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while, as he advanced in color science, he gradually introduced, in the place of brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself, founded, apparently, on Indian red and vermilion, and passing into various tones of russet and orange.[82]But, in the meantime, we must go back to Dante and his mountains.§ 13. We find, then, that his general type of rock color was meant, whether pale or dark, to be a colorless grey—the most melancholy hue which he supposed to exist in Nature (hence the synonym for it, subsisting even till late times, in mediæval appellatives of dress, "sad-colored")—with some rusty stain from iron; or perhaps the "color ferrigno" of the Inferno does not involve even so much of orange, but ought to be translated "iron grey."This being his idea of the color of rocks, we have next to observe his conception of their substance. And I believe it will be found that the character on which he fixes first in them isfrangibility—breakableness to bits, as opposed to wood, which can be sawn or rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to metal, which is tough and malleable.Thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle, appointed for the "violent," or souls who had done evil by force, we are told, first, that the edge of it was composed of "great broken stones in a circle;" then, that the place was "Alpine;" and, becoming hereupon attentive, in order to hear what an Alpine place is like, we find that it was "like the place beyond Trent, where the rock, either by earthquake, or failure of support, has broken down to the plain, so that it gives any one at the top some means of getting down to the bottom." This is not a very elevated or enthusiastic description of an Alpine scene;and it is far from mended by the following verses, in which we are told that Dante "began to go down by this greatunloadingof stones," and that they moved often under his feet by reason of the new weight. The fact is that Dante, by many expressions throughout the poem, shows himself to have been a notably bad climber; and being fond of sitting in the sun, looking at his fair Baptistery, or walking in a dignified manner on flat pavement in a long robe, it puts him seriously out of his way when he has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet; so that the first strong impression made upon him by any Alpine scene whatever, is, clearly, that it is bad walking. When he is in a fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go down, Virgil has to carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage him, again and again, when they have a steep slope to go up,—the first ascent of the purgatorial mountain. The similes by which he illustrates the steepness of that ascent are all taken from the Riviera of Genoa, now traversed by a good carriage road under the name of the Corniche; but as this road did not exist in Dante's time, and the steep precipices and promontories were then probably traversed by footpaths, which, as they necessarily passed in many places over crumbling and slippery limestone, were doubtless not a little dangerous, and as in the manner they commanded the bays of sea below, and lay exposed to the full blaze of the south-eastern sun, they corresponded precisely to the situation of the path by which he ascends above the purgatorial sea, the image could not possibly have been taken from a better source for the fully conveying his idea to the reader: nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, inthisplace, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he has taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably more than forty-five. Now a continuous mountain slope of forty-five degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent, except by zigzag paths; and a greater slope than this could not be climbed, straightforward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock, and great physical exertion besides.§ 14. Throughout these passages, however, Dante's thoughts are clearly fixed altogether on the question of mere accessibility or inaccessibility. He does not show the smallest interest in the rocks, except as things to be conquered; and his description oftheir appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other epithets than "erto" (steep or upright), Inf. xix. 131., Purg. iii. 48. &c.; "sconcio" (monstrous), Inf. xix. 131.; "stagliata" (cut), Inf. xvii. 134.; "maligno" (malignant), Inf. vii. 108; "duro" (hard), xx. 25.; with "large" and "broken" (rotto) in various places. No idea of roundness, massiveness, or pleasant form of any kind appears for a moment to enter his mind; and the different names which are given to the rocks in various places seem merely to refer to variations in size: thus a "rocco" is a part of a "scoglio," Inf. xx. 25. and xxvi. 27.; a "scheggio" (xxi. 69. and xxvi. 17.) is a less fragment yet; a "petrone," or "sasso," is a large stone or boulder (Purg. iv. 101. 104.), and "pietra," a less stone,—both of these last terms, especially "sasso," being used for any large mountainous mass, as in Purg. xxi. 106.; and the vagueness of the word "monte" itself, like that of the French "montagne," applicable either to a hill on a post-road requiring the drag to be put on,—or to the Mont Blanc, marks a peculiar carelessness in both nations, at the time of the formation of their languages, as to the sublimity of the higher hills; so that the effect produced on an English ear by the word "mountain," signifying always a mass of a certain large size, cannot be conveyed either in French or Italian.§ 15. In all these modes of regarding rocks we find (rocks being in themselves, as we shall see presently, by no means monstrous or frightful things) exactly that inaccuracy in the mediæval mind which we had been led to expect, in its bearings on things contrary to the spirit of that symmetrical and perfect humanity which had formed its ideal; and it is very curious to observe how closely in the terms he uses, and the feelings they indicate, Dante here agrees with Homer. For the word stagliata (cut) corresponds very nearly to a favorite term of Homer's respecting rocks "sculptured," used by him also of ships' sides; and the frescoes and illuminations of the Middle Ages enable us to ascertain exactly what this idea of "cut" rock was.§ 16. In Plate 10. I have assembled some examples, which will give the reader a sufficient knowledge of mediæval rock-drawing, by men whose names are known. They are chiefly taken from engravings, with which the reader has it in hispower to compare them,[83]and if, therefore, any injustice is done to the original paintings the fault is not mine; but the general impression conveyed is quite accurate, and it would not have been worth while, where work is so deficient in first conception, to lose time in insuring accuracy of facsimile. Some of the crags may be taller here, or broader there, than in the original paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly preserved, and that is all with which we are at present concerned.PLATE 1010. Geology of the Middle Ages.Figs. 1. and 5. are by Ghirlandajo; 2. by Filippo Pesellino; 4. by Leonardo da Vinci; and 6. by Andrea del Castagno. All these are indeed workmen of a much later period than Dante, but the system of rock-drawing remains entirely unchanged from Giotto's time to Ghirlandajo's;—is then altered only by an introduction of stratification indicative of a little closer observance of nature, and so remains until Titian's time. Fig 1. is exactly representative of one of Giotto's rocks, though actually by Ghirlandajo; and Fig. 2. is rather less skilful than Giotto's ordinary work. Both these figures indicate precisely what Homer and Dante meant by "cut" rocks. They had observed the concave smoothness of certain rock fractures as eminently distinctive of rock from earth, and use the term "cut" or "sculptured" to distinguish the smooth surface from the knotty or sandy one, having observed nothing more respecting its real contours than is represented in Figs. 1. and 2., which look as if they had been hewn out with an adze. Lorenzo Ghiberti preserves the same type, even in his finest work.Fig. 3., from an interesting sixteenth century MS. in the British Museum (Cotton, Augustus,A.5.), is characteristic of the best later illuminators' work; and Fig. 5., from Ghirlandajo, is pretty illustrative of Dante's idea of terraces on the purgatorial mountain. It is the road by which the Magi descend in his picture of their Adoration, in the Academy of Florence. Of the other examples I shall have more to say in the chapter on Precipices; meanwhile we have to return to the landscape of the poem.§ 17. Inaccurate as this conception of rock was, it seems to have been the only one which, in mediæval art had place as representative of mountain scenery. To Dante, mountains are inconceivable except as great broken stones or crags; all their broad contours and undulations seem to have escaped his eye. It is, indeed, with his usual undertone of symbolic meaning that he describes the great broken stones, and the fall of the shattered mountain, as the entrance to the circle appointed for the punishment of the violent; meaning that the violent and cruel, notwithstanding all their iron hardness of heart, have no true strength, but, either by earthquake, or want of support, fall at last into desolate ruin, naked, loose, and shaking under the tread. But in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence that Dante cared to look at them. From that hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so well, the eye commands, at the farther extremity of the Val d'Arno, the whole purple range of the mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that rule the scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante seems to have been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's mention of Aruns at Luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara hills in the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to them, he speaks of their white marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has evidently no regard for the hills themselves. There is not a single phrase or syllable throughout the poem which indicates such a regard. Ugolino, in his dream, seemed to himself to be in the mountains, "by cause of which the Pisan cannot see Lucca;" and it is impossible to look up from Pisa to that hoary slope without remembering the awe that there is in the passage; nevertheless, it was as a hunting-ground only that he remembered those hills. Adam of Brescia, tormented with eternal thirst, remembers the hills of Romena, but only for the sake of their sweet waters:"The rills that glitter down the grassy slopesOf Casentino, making fresh and softThe banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,Stand ever in my view."And, whenever hills are spoken of as having any influence on character, the repugnance to them is still manifest; they are always causes of rudeness or cruelty:"But that ungrateful and malignant race,Who in old times came down from Fesole,Ay, and still smack of their rough mountain flint,Will, for thy good deeds, show thee enmity.Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways."So again—"As onemountain-bred,Rugged, and clownish, if some city's wallsHe chance to enter, round him stares agape."§ 18. Finally, although the Carrara mountains are named as having command of the stars and sea, theAlpsare never specially mentioned but in bad weather, or snow. On the sand of the circle of the blasphemers—"Fell slowly wafting downDilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snowOn Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed."So the Paduans have to defend their town and castles against inundation,"Ere the genial warmth be felt,On Chiarentana's top."The clouds of anger, in Purgatory, can only be figured to the reader who has"On an Alpine height been ta'en by cloud,Through which thou sawest no better than the moleDoth through opacous membrane."And in approaching the second branch of Lethe, the seven ladies pause,—"Arriving at the vergeOf a dim umbrage hoar, such as is seenBeneath green leaves and gloomy branches oftTo overbrow a bleak and Alpine cliff."§ 19. Truly, it is unfair of Dante, that when he is going to use snow for a lovely image, and speak of it as melting away under heavenly sunshine, he must needs put it on the Apennines, not on the Alps:"As snow that liesAmidst the living rafters, on the backOf Italy, congealed, when drifted highAnd closely piled by rough Sclavonian blasts,Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls,And straightway melting, it distils away,Like a fire-washed taper; thus was I,Without a sigh, or tear, consumed in heart."The reader will thank me for reminding him, though out of its proper order, of the exquisite passage of Scott which we have to compare with this:"As snow upon the mountain's breastSlides from the rock that gave it rest,Sweet Ellen glided from her stay,And at the monarch's feet she lay."Examine the context of this last passage, and its beauty is quite beyond praise; but note the northern love of rocks in the very first words I have to quote from Scott, "The rocks that gave it rest." Dante could not have thought of his "cut rocks" as giving rest even to snow. He must put it on the pine branches, if it is to be at peace.§ 20. There is only one more point to be noticed in the Dantesque landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet towards the sky. And the love of mountains is so closely connected with the love of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much on their association, that having found Dante regardless of the Carrara mountains as seen from San Miniato, we may well expect to find him equally regardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind them. Accordingly, we find that his only pleasure in the sky depends on its "white clearness,"—that turning into "bianca aspette di celestro" which is so peculiarly characteristic of fine days in Italy. His pieces of pure pale light are always exquisite. In the dawn on the purgatorial mountain, first, in its pale white, he sees the "tremola della marina"—trembling of the sea; then it becomes vermilion; and at last, near sunrise, orange. These are precisely the changes of a calm and perfect dawn. The scenery of Paradise begins with "Day added to day," the light of the sun so flooding the heavens, that "never rain nor river made lake so wide;" and throughout the Paradise all the beauty depends on spheres of light, or stars, never on clouds. But the pit of the Infernois at first sight obscure, deep, and socloudythat at its bottom nothing could be seen. When Dante and Virgil reach the marsh in which the souls of those who have been angry and sad in their lives are for ever plunged, they find it covered with thick fog; and the condemned souls say to them,—"We once were sad,In thesweet air, made gladsome by the sun.Now in these murky settlings are we sad."Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by this bitter marsh smoke, "fummo acerbo," and continually sweeps it with his hand from before his face.Anger, on the purgatorial mountain, is in like manner imaged, because of its blindness and wildness, by the Alpine clouds. As they emerge from its mist they see the white light radiated through the fading folds of it; and, except this appointed cloud, no other can touch the mountain of purification."Tempest none, shower, hail, or snow,Hoar-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls,Than that brief scale of threefold steps. Thick clouds,Nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glanceNe'er lightens, nor Thaumantian iris gleams."Dwell for a little while on this intense love of Dante for light,—taught, as he is at last by Beatrice, to gaze on the sun itself like an eagle,—and endeavor to enter into his equally intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain; and then consider with what kind of temper he would have regarded a landscape of Copley Fielding's or passed a day in the Highlands. He has, in fact, assigned to the souls of the gluttonous no other punishment in the Inferno than perpetuity of Highland weather:"ShowersCeaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchangedFor ever, both in kind and in degree,—Large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw,Through the dim midnight air streamed down amain."§ 21. However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, Dante goes somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. For although the calm sky was alone loved, and storm and rain weredreaded by all men, yet the white horizontal clouds of serene summer were regarded with great affection by all early painters, and considered as one of the accompaniments of the manifestation of spiritual power; sometimes, for theological reasons which we shall soon have to examine, being received, even without any other sign, as the types of blessing or Divine acceptance: and in almost every representation of the heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by the early painters for its floor, or for thrones of its angels; whereas Dante retains steadily, through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and concludes his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the purgatorial mountain, with the image of shadowless morning:"I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seenThe horizon's eastern quarter to excel,So likewise, that pacific OriflambGlowed in the midmost, and toward every part,With like gradation paled away its flame."But the best way of regarding this feeling of Dante's is as the ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light, color, and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the mediæval from the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently see, distinguished him from the modern on the other. For it is evident that precisely in the degree in which the Greek was agriculturally inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would become to him more acceptable than to the mediæval knight, who only looked for the fine afternoons in which he might gather the flowers in his garden, and in no wise shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his gardener. Thus, when we find Ulysses comforted about Ithaca, by being told it had "plenty of rain," and the maids of Colonos boasting of their country for the same reason, we may be sure that they had some regard for clouds; and accordingly, except Aristophanes, of whom more presently, all the Greek poets speak fondly of the clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places of the gods; including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin clear cirrus, but the rolling and changing volume of the thunder-cloud; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind cloud of the earth, as in that noble chapter of Herodotus which tells us ofthe cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the dust of Eleusis, and went down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of course regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and southern nations—Jews and Egyptians; and it is only among the northern mediævals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged as to occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom the clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came, that the love of serene light assumes its intense character, and the fear of tempest is gloomiest; so that the powers of the clouds which to the Greek foretold his conquest at Salamis, and with whom he fought in alliance, side by side with their lightnings, under the crest of Parnassus, seemed, in the heart of the Middle Ages, to be only under the dominion of the spirit of evil. I have reserved, for our last example of the landscape of Dante, the passage in which this conviction is expressed; a passage not less notable for its close description of what the writer feared and disliked, than for the ineffable tenderness, in which Dante is always raised as much above all other poets, as in softness the rose above all other flowers. It is the spirit of Buonconte da Montefeltro who speaks:"Then said another: 'Ah, so may thy wish,That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled,As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine!Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I:Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me;Sorrowing with these I therefore go.' I thus:From Campaldino's field what force or chanceDrew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?''Oh!' answered he, 'at Casentino's footA stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprungIn Apennine, above the hermit's seat.E'en where its name is cancelled, there came I,Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot,And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speechfailed me; and finishing with Mary's name,I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained....That evil will, which in his intellectStill follows evil, came;... the valley, soonAs day was spent,he covered o'er with cloud.From Pratomagno to the mountain range,And stretched the sky above; so that the air,Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain;And to the fosses came all that the landContained not; and as mightiest streams are wont.To the great river, with such headlong sweep,Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame,Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found,And dashed it into Arno; from my breastLoosening the cross, that of myself I madeWhen overcome with pain. He hurled me on,Along the banks and bottom of his course;Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'"Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast, pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. His body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under the influence of the evil demon,unlooses this cross, dashing the body supinely away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. And how desolate is it all! The lonely flight,—the grisly wound, "pierced in the throat,"—the death, without help or pity,—only the name of Mary on the lips,-and the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage of the demon and the river,—the noteless grave,—and, at last, even she who had been most trusted forgetting him,—"Giovanna, none else have care for me."There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish ballad, "The Twa Corbies."Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into the nature of the mediæval landscape; not but that many details yet require to be worked out; but these will be best observed by recurrence to them, for comparison with similar details in modern landscape,—our principal purpose, the getting at the governing tones and temper of conception, being, I believe, now sufficiently accomplished. And I think that our subject may be best pursued by immediately turning from the mediæval to the perfectly modern landscape; for although I have much to say respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I believe the transitions may be more easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes; and that by getting perfect and separate hold of the three great phases of art,—Greek, mediæval, and modern,—we shall be enabled to trace, with least chance of error, those curious vacillations which brought us to the modern temper while vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the Greek. I propose, therefore, in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of modern landscape, as seen generally in modern painting, and especially in the poetry of Scott.

[72]Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in 1352. She died in 1394.

[73]"Three times the length of a human body."—Purg. x. 24.

[74]Purg. xii. 102.

[75]"Come unto theseyellowsands."

[76]"And thou art long, and lank, andbrown,As is the ribbed sea sand."

[76]

"And thou art long, and lank, andbrown,As is the ribbed sea sand."

[77]Compare parallel passage, making Dante hard or changeless in good Purg. viii. 114.

[78]So also in Isa. xxxv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and peace over all evil is thus foretold:"In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall begrass, withreedsandrushes."

[78]So also in Isa. xxxv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and peace over all evil is thus foretold:

"In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall begrass, withreedsandrushes."

§ 1. I closed the last chapter, not because our subject was exhausted, but to give the reader breathing time, and because I supposed he would hardly care to turn back suddenly from the subjects of thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters of inquiry connected with mediæval landscape. Nor was the pause mistimed even as respects the order of our subjects; for hitherto we have been arrested chiefly by the beauty of the pastures and fields, and have followed the mediæval mind in its fond regard of leaf and flower. But now we have some hard hill-climbing to do; and the remainder of our investigation must be carried on, for the most part, on hands and knees, so that it is not ill done of us first to take breath.

§ 2. It will be remembered that in the last chapter, § 14., we supposed it probable that there would be considerable inaccuracies in the mediæval mode of regarding nature. Hitherto, however, we have found none; but, on the contrary, intense accuracy, precision, and affection. The reason of this is, that all floral and foliaged beauty might be perfectly represented, as far as its form went, in the sculpture and ornamental painting of the period; hence the attention of men was thoroughly awakened to that beauty. But as mountains and clouds and large features of natural scenery could not be accurately represented, we must be prepared to find them not so carefully contemplated,— more carefully, indeed, than by the Greeks, but still in no wise as the things themselves deserve.

§ 3. It was besides noticed that mountains, though regarded with reverence by the mediæval, were also the subjects of a certain dislike and dread. And we have seen already that in fact the place of the soul's purification, though a mountain, is yet by Dante subdued, whenever there is any pleasantness to befound upon it, from all mountainous character into grassy recesses, or slopes to rushy shore; and, in his general conception of it, resembles much more a castle mound, surrounded by terraced walks,—in the manner, for instance, of one of Turner's favorite scenes, the bank under Richmond Castle (Yorkshire); or, still more, one of the hill slopes divided by terraces, above the Rhine, in which the picturesqueness of the ground has been reduced to the form best calculated for the growing of costly wine, than any scene to which we moderns should naturally attach the term "Mountainous." On the other hand, although the Inferno is just as accurately measured and divided as the Purgatory, it is nevertheless cleft into rocky chasms which possess something of true mountain nature—nature which we moderns of the north should most of us seek with delight, but which, to the great Florentine, appeared adapted only for the punishment of lost spirits, and which, on the mind of nearly all his countrymen, would to this day produce a very closely correspondent effect; so that their graceful language, dying away on the north side of the Alps, gives its departing accents to proclaim its detestation of hardness and ruggedness; and is heard for the last time, as it bestows on the noblest defile in all the Grisons, if not in all the Alpine chain, the name of the "evilway"—"la Via Mala."

§ 4. This "evil way," though much deeper and more sublime, corresponds closely in general character to Dante's "Evil-pits," just as the banks of Richmond do to his mountain of Purgatory; and it is notable that Turner has been led to illustrate, with his whole strength, the character of both; having founded, as it seems to me, his early dreams of mountain form altogether on the sweet banks of the Yorkshire streams, and rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the rugged clefts of the Via Mala.

§ 5. Nor of the Via Mala only: a correspondent defile on the St. Gothard,—so terrible in one part of it, that it can, indeed, suggest no ideas but those of horror to minds either of northern or southern temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to rock over a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless as any into which Dante gazed from the arches of Malebolge, has been, therefore, ascribed both by northern and southern lips to themaster-building of the great spirit of evil—supplied to Turner the element of his most terrible thoughts in mountain vision, even to the close of his life. The noblest plate in the series of the Liber Studiorum,[79]one engraved by his own hand, is of that bridge; the last mountain journey he ever took was up the defile; and a rocky bank and arch, in the last mountain drawing which he ever executed with his perfect power, are remembrances of the path by which he had traversed in his youth this Malebolge of the St. Gothard.

§ 6. It is therefore with peculiar interest, as bearing on our own proper subject, that we must examine Dante's conception of the rocks of the eighth circle. And first, as to general tone of color: from what we have seen of the love of the mediæval for bright and variegated color, we might guess that his chief cause of dislike to rocks would be, in Italy, their comparative colorlessness. With hardly an exception, the range of the Apennines is composed of a stone of which some special account is given hereafter in the chapters on Materials of Mountains, and of which one peculiarity, there noticed, is its monotony of hue. Our slates and granites are often of very lovely colors; but the Apennine limestone is so grey and toneless, that I know not any mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded. Now, as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his poem, nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. He had journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to Trent, and that along the Corniche, both of which are either upon those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any color till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever seen rocky scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the Alpine mosses: I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno, xvi. 99.), but every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain size, he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,—the one clearly chosen only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make a sound as of cracking ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the stanza,—and the other is an Apennine near Lucca.

§ 7. His idea, therefore, of rock color, founded on these experiences, is that of a dull or ashen grey, more or less stained by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as the Apennine limestones nearly always are; the grey being peculiarly cold and disagreeable. As we go down the very hill which stretches out from Pietra-pana towards Lucca, the stones laid by the road-side to mend it are of this ashen grey, with efflorescences of manganese and iron in the fissures. The whole of Malebolge is made of this rock, "All wrought in stone of iron-colored grain."[80]

Perhaps the iron color may be meant to predominate in Evil-pits; but the definite grey limestone color is stated higher up, the river Styx flowing at the base of "malignantgreycliffs"[81](the word malignant being given to the iron-colored Malebolge also); and the same whitish-grey idea is given again definitely in describing the robe of the purgatorial or penance angel, which is "of the color of ashes, or earth dug dry." Ashes necessarily meanwood-ashes in an Italian mind, so that we get the tone very pale; and there can be no doubt whatever about the hue meant, because it is constantly seen on the sunny sides of the Italian hills, produced by the scorching of the ground, a dusty and lifeless whitish grey, utterly painful and oppressive; and I have no doubt that this color, assumed eminently also by limestone crags in the sun, is the quality which Homer means to express by a term he applies often to bare rocks, and which is usually translated "craggy," or "rocky." Now Homer is indeed quite capable of talking of "rocky rocks," just as he talks sometimes of "wet water;" but I think he means more by this word: it sounds as if it were derived from another, meaning "meal," or "flour," and I have little doubt it means "mealy white;" the Greek limestones being for the most part brighter in effect than the Apennine ones.

§ 8. And the fact is, that the great and preeminent fault of southern, as compared with northern scenery, is this rock-whiteness, which gives to distant mountain ranges, lighted by the sun, sometimes a faint and monotonous glow, hardly detaching itself from the whiter parts of the sky, and sometimes a speckled confusion of white light with blue shadow, breaking up the whole mass of the hills, and making them look near and small; the whiteness being still distinct at the distance of twenty or twenty-five miles. The inferiority and meagreness of such effects of hill, compared with the massive purple and blue of our own heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn grass-green and pine-purples of the Alps, have always struck me most painfully; and they have rendered it impossible for any poet or painter studying in the south, to enter with joy into hill scenery. Imagine the difference to Walter Scott, if instead of the single lovely color which, named by itself alone, was enough to describe his hills,—

"Their southern rapine to renew,Far in the distant Cheviot'sblue,"—

a dusty whiteness had been the image that first associated itself with a hill range, and he had been obliged, instead of "blue" Cheviots, to say, "barley-meal-colored" Cheviots.

§ 9. But although this would cause a somewhat painful shock even to a modern mind, it would be as nothing when compared with the pain occasioned by absence of color to a mediæval one. We have been trained, by our ingenious principles of Renaissance architecture, to think that meal-color and ash-color are the properest colors of all; and that the most aristocratic harmonies are to be deduced out of grey mortar and creamy stucco. Any of our modern classical architects would delightedly "face" a heathery hill with Roman cement; and any Italian sacristan would, but for the cost of it, at once whitewash the Cheviots. But the mediævals had not arrived at these abstract principles of taste. They liked fresco better than whitewash; and, on the whole, thought that Nature was in the right in painting her flowers yellow, pink, and blue;—not grey. Accordingly, this absence of color from rocks, as compared with meadows and trees, was in their eyes an unredeemable defect; nor did it matter to them whether its place was supplied by the grey neutral tint, or the iron-colored stain;for both colors, grey and brown, were, to them, hues of distress, despair, and mortification, hence adopted always for the dresses of monks; only the word "brown" bore, in their color vocabulary, a still gloomier sense than with us. I was for some time embarrassed by Dante's use of it with respect to dark skies and water. Thus, in describing a simple twilight—not a Hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening—(Inf. ii. 1.) he says, the "brown" air took the animals of earth away from their fatigues;—the waves under Charon's boat are "brown" (Inf. iii. 117.); and Lethe, which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as with oblivion, is "bruna-bruna," "brown,exceedingbrown." Now, clearly in all these cases nowarmthis meant to be mingled in the color. Dante had never seen one of our bog-streams, with its porter-colored foam; and there can be no doubt that, in calling Lethe brown, he means that it was dark slate grey, inclining to black; as, for instance, our clear Cumberland lakes, which, looked straight down upon where they are deep, seem to be lakes of ink. I am sure this is the color he means; because no clear stream or lake on the Continent ever looks brown, but blue or green; and Dante, by merely taking away the pleasant color, would get at once to this idea of grave clear grey. So, when he was talking of twilight, his eye for color was far too good to let him call itbrownin our sense. Twilight is not brown, but purple, golden, or dark grey; and this last was what Dante meant. Farther, I find that this negation of color is always the means by which Dante subdues his tones. Thus the fatal inscription on the Hades gate is written in "obscure color," and the air which torments the passionate spirits is "aer nero"blackair (Inf. v. 51.), called presently afterwards (line 81.) malignant air, just as the grey cliffs are called malignant cliffs.

§ 10. I was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what Dante meant by the word; but I was at a loss to account for his not, as it seemed, acknowledging the existence of the color ofbrownat all; for if he called dark neutral tint "brown," it remained a question what term he would use for things of the color of burnt umber. But, one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colorists, watching him at his work, when he said,suddenly, and by mere accident, after we had been talking of other things, "Do you know I have found that there is nobrownin Nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast."

§ 11. It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue;—how far, on the other hand, it cuts into the heart of the old umber idolatries of Sir George Beaumont and his colleagues, the "where do you put yourbrowntree" system; the code of Cremona-violin-colored foregrounds, of brown varnish and asphaltum; and all the old night-owl science, which, like Young's pencil of sorrow,

"In melancholy dipped,embrownsthe whole."

Nay, I do Young an injustice by associating his words with the asphalt schools; for his eye for color was true, and like Dante's; and I doubt not that he means dark grey, as Byron purple-grey in that night piece in the Siege of Corinth, beginning

"'Tis midnight; on the mountainsbrownThe cold, round moon looks deeply down;"

and, by the way, Byron's best piece of evening color farther certifies the hues of Dante's twilight,—it

"Dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away—The last still loveliest; till 'tis gone, and all isgrey."

§ 12. Let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown, as an expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means ofgetting other tints. Brown is often an admirable ground, just because it is the only tint which isnotto be in the finished picture, and because it is the best basis of many silver greys and purples, utterly opposite to it in their nature. But there is infinite difference between laying a brown ground as a representation of shadow,—and as a base for light; and also an infinite difference between using brown shadows, associated with colored lights—always the characteristic of false schools of color—and using brown as a warm neutral tint for general study. I shall have to pursue this subject farther hereafter, in noticing howbrown is used by great colorists in their studies, not as color, but as the pleasantest negation of color, possessing more transparency than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while, as he advanced in color science, he gradually introduced, in the place of brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself, founded, apparently, on Indian red and vermilion, and passing into various tones of russet and orange.[82]But, in the meantime, we must go back to Dante and his mountains.

§ 13. We find, then, that his general type of rock color was meant, whether pale or dark, to be a colorless grey—the most melancholy hue which he supposed to exist in Nature (hence the synonym for it, subsisting even till late times, in mediæval appellatives of dress, "sad-colored")—with some rusty stain from iron; or perhaps the "color ferrigno" of the Inferno does not involve even so much of orange, but ought to be translated "iron grey."

This being his idea of the color of rocks, we have next to observe his conception of their substance. And I believe it will be found that the character on which he fixes first in them isfrangibility—breakableness to bits, as opposed to wood, which can be sawn or rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to metal, which is tough and malleable.

Thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle, appointed for the "violent," or souls who had done evil by force, we are told, first, that the edge of it was composed of "great broken stones in a circle;" then, that the place was "Alpine;" and, becoming hereupon attentive, in order to hear what an Alpine place is like, we find that it was "like the place beyond Trent, where the rock, either by earthquake, or failure of support, has broken down to the plain, so that it gives any one at the top some means of getting down to the bottom." This is not a very elevated or enthusiastic description of an Alpine scene;and it is far from mended by the following verses, in which we are told that Dante "began to go down by this greatunloadingof stones," and that they moved often under his feet by reason of the new weight. The fact is that Dante, by many expressions throughout the poem, shows himself to have been a notably bad climber; and being fond of sitting in the sun, looking at his fair Baptistery, or walking in a dignified manner on flat pavement in a long robe, it puts him seriously out of his way when he has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet; so that the first strong impression made upon him by any Alpine scene whatever, is, clearly, that it is bad walking. When he is in a fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go down, Virgil has to carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage him, again and again, when they have a steep slope to go up,—the first ascent of the purgatorial mountain. The similes by which he illustrates the steepness of that ascent are all taken from the Riviera of Genoa, now traversed by a good carriage road under the name of the Corniche; but as this road did not exist in Dante's time, and the steep precipices and promontories were then probably traversed by footpaths, which, as they necessarily passed in many places over crumbling and slippery limestone, were doubtless not a little dangerous, and as in the manner they commanded the bays of sea below, and lay exposed to the full blaze of the south-eastern sun, they corresponded precisely to the situation of the path by which he ascends above the purgatorial sea, the image could not possibly have been taken from a better source for the fully conveying his idea to the reader: nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, inthisplace, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he has taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably more than forty-five. Now a continuous mountain slope of forty-five degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent, except by zigzag paths; and a greater slope than this could not be climbed, straightforward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock, and great physical exertion besides.

§ 14. Throughout these passages, however, Dante's thoughts are clearly fixed altogether on the question of mere accessibility or inaccessibility. He does not show the smallest interest in the rocks, except as things to be conquered; and his description oftheir appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other epithets than "erto" (steep or upright), Inf. xix. 131., Purg. iii. 48. &c.; "sconcio" (monstrous), Inf. xix. 131.; "stagliata" (cut), Inf. xvii. 134.; "maligno" (malignant), Inf. vii. 108; "duro" (hard), xx. 25.; with "large" and "broken" (rotto) in various places. No idea of roundness, massiveness, or pleasant form of any kind appears for a moment to enter his mind; and the different names which are given to the rocks in various places seem merely to refer to variations in size: thus a "rocco" is a part of a "scoglio," Inf. xx. 25. and xxvi. 27.; a "scheggio" (xxi. 69. and xxvi. 17.) is a less fragment yet; a "petrone," or "sasso," is a large stone or boulder (Purg. iv. 101. 104.), and "pietra," a less stone,—both of these last terms, especially "sasso," being used for any large mountainous mass, as in Purg. xxi. 106.; and the vagueness of the word "monte" itself, like that of the French "montagne," applicable either to a hill on a post-road requiring the drag to be put on,—or to the Mont Blanc, marks a peculiar carelessness in both nations, at the time of the formation of their languages, as to the sublimity of the higher hills; so that the effect produced on an English ear by the word "mountain," signifying always a mass of a certain large size, cannot be conveyed either in French or Italian.

§ 15. In all these modes of regarding rocks we find (rocks being in themselves, as we shall see presently, by no means monstrous or frightful things) exactly that inaccuracy in the mediæval mind which we had been led to expect, in its bearings on things contrary to the spirit of that symmetrical and perfect humanity which had formed its ideal; and it is very curious to observe how closely in the terms he uses, and the feelings they indicate, Dante here agrees with Homer. For the word stagliata (cut) corresponds very nearly to a favorite term of Homer's respecting rocks "sculptured," used by him also of ships' sides; and the frescoes and illuminations of the Middle Ages enable us to ascertain exactly what this idea of "cut" rock was.

§ 16. In Plate 10. I have assembled some examples, which will give the reader a sufficient knowledge of mediæval rock-drawing, by men whose names are known. They are chiefly taken from engravings, with which the reader has it in hispower to compare them,[83]and if, therefore, any injustice is done to the original paintings the fault is not mine; but the general impression conveyed is quite accurate, and it would not have been worth while, where work is so deficient in first conception, to lose time in insuring accuracy of facsimile. Some of the crags may be taller here, or broader there, than in the original paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly preserved, and that is all with which we are at present concerned.

PLATE 1010. Geology of the Middle Ages.

Figs. 1. and 5. are by Ghirlandajo; 2. by Filippo Pesellino; 4. by Leonardo da Vinci; and 6. by Andrea del Castagno. All these are indeed workmen of a much later period than Dante, but the system of rock-drawing remains entirely unchanged from Giotto's time to Ghirlandajo's;—is then altered only by an introduction of stratification indicative of a little closer observance of nature, and so remains until Titian's time. Fig 1. is exactly representative of one of Giotto's rocks, though actually by Ghirlandajo; and Fig. 2. is rather less skilful than Giotto's ordinary work. Both these figures indicate precisely what Homer and Dante meant by "cut" rocks. They had observed the concave smoothness of certain rock fractures as eminently distinctive of rock from earth, and use the term "cut" or "sculptured" to distinguish the smooth surface from the knotty or sandy one, having observed nothing more respecting its real contours than is represented in Figs. 1. and 2., which look as if they had been hewn out with an adze. Lorenzo Ghiberti preserves the same type, even in his finest work.

Fig. 3., from an interesting sixteenth century MS. in the British Museum (Cotton, Augustus,A.5.), is characteristic of the best later illuminators' work; and Fig. 5., from Ghirlandajo, is pretty illustrative of Dante's idea of terraces on the purgatorial mountain. It is the road by which the Magi descend in his picture of their Adoration, in the Academy of Florence. Of the other examples I shall have more to say in the chapter on Precipices; meanwhile we have to return to the landscape of the poem.

§ 17. Inaccurate as this conception of rock was, it seems to have been the only one which, in mediæval art had place as representative of mountain scenery. To Dante, mountains are inconceivable except as great broken stones or crags; all their broad contours and undulations seem to have escaped his eye. It is, indeed, with his usual undertone of symbolic meaning that he describes the great broken stones, and the fall of the shattered mountain, as the entrance to the circle appointed for the punishment of the violent; meaning that the violent and cruel, notwithstanding all their iron hardness of heart, have no true strength, but, either by earthquake, or want of support, fall at last into desolate ruin, naked, loose, and shaking under the tread. But in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence that Dante cared to look at them. From that hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so well, the eye commands, at the farther extremity of the Val d'Arno, the whole purple range of the mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that rule the scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante seems to have been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's mention of Aruns at Luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara hills in the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to them, he speaks of their white marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has evidently no regard for the hills themselves. There is not a single phrase or syllable throughout the poem which indicates such a regard. Ugolino, in his dream, seemed to himself to be in the mountains, "by cause of which the Pisan cannot see Lucca;" and it is impossible to look up from Pisa to that hoary slope without remembering the awe that there is in the passage; nevertheless, it was as a hunting-ground only that he remembered those hills. Adam of Brescia, tormented with eternal thirst, remembers the hills of Romena, but only for the sake of their sweet waters:

"The rills that glitter down the grassy slopesOf Casentino, making fresh and softThe banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,Stand ever in my view."

And, whenever hills are spoken of as having any influence on character, the repugnance to them is still manifest; they are always causes of rudeness or cruelty:

"But that ungrateful and malignant race,Who in old times came down from Fesole,Ay, and still smack of their rough mountain flint,Will, for thy good deeds, show thee enmity.Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways."

So again—

"As onemountain-bred,Rugged, and clownish, if some city's wallsHe chance to enter, round him stares agape."

§ 18. Finally, although the Carrara mountains are named as having command of the stars and sea, theAlpsare never specially mentioned but in bad weather, or snow. On the sand of the circle of the blasphemers—

"Fell slowly wafting downDilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snowOn Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed."

So the Paduans have to defend their town and castles against inundation,

"Ere the genial warmth be felt,On Chiarentana's top."

The clouds of anger, in Purgatory, can only be figured to the reader who has

"On an Alpine height been ta'en by cloud,Through which thou sawest no better than the moleDoth through opacous membrane."

And in approaching the second branch of Lethe, the seven ladies pause,—

"Arriving at the vergeOf a dim umbrage hoar, such as is seenBeneath green leaves and gloomy branches oftTo overbrow a bleak and Alpine cliff."

§ 19. Truly, it is unfair of Dante, that when he is going to use snow for a lovely image, and speak of it as melting away under heavenly sunshine, he must needs put it on the Apennines, not on the Alps:

"As snow that liesAmidst the living rafters, on the backOf Italy, congealed, when drifted highAnd closely piled by rough Sclavonian blasts,Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls,And straightway melting, it distils away,Like a fire-washed taper; thus was I,Without a sigh, or tear, consumed in heart."

The reader will thank me for reminding him, though out of its proper order, of the exquisite passage of Scott which we have to compare with this:

"As snow upon the mountain's breastSlides from the rock that gave it rest,Sweet Ellen glided from her stay,And at the monarch's feet she lay."

Examine the context of this last passage, and its beauty is quite beyond praise; but note the northern love of rocks in the very first words I have to quote from Scott, "The rocks that gave it rest." Dante could not have thought of his "cut rocks" as giving rest even to snow. He must put it on the pine branches, if it is to be at peace.

§ 20. There is only one more point to be noticed in the Dantesque landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet towards the sky. And the love of mountains is so closely connected with the love of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much on their association, that having found Dante regardless of the Carrara mountains as seen from San Miniato, we may well expect to find him equally regardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind them. Accordingly, we find that his only pleasure in the sky depends on its "white clearness,"—that turning into "bianca aspette di celestro" which is so peculiarly characteristic of fine days in Italy. His pieces of pure pale light are always exquisite. In the dawn on the purgatorial mountain, first, in its pale white, he sees the "tremola della marina"—trembling of the sea; then it becomes vermilion; and at last, near sunrise, orange. These are precisely the changes of a calm and perfect dawn. The scenery of Paradise begins with "Day added to day," the light of the sun so flooding the heavens, that "never rain nor river made lake so wide;" and throughout the Paradise all the beauty depends on spheres of light, or stars, never on clouds. But the pit of the Infernois at first sight obscure, deep, and socloudythat at its bottom nothing could be seen. When Dante and Virgil reach the marsh in which the souls of those who have been angry and sad in their lives are for ever plunged, they find it covered with thick fog; and the condemned souls say to them,—

"We once were sad,In thesweet air, made gladsome by the sun.Now in these murky settlings are we sad."

Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by this bitter marsh smoke, "fummo acerbo," and continually sweeps it with his hand from before his face.

Anger, on the purgatorial mountain, is in like manner imaged, because of its blindness and wildness, by the Alpine clouds. As they emerge from its mist they see the white light radiated through the fading folds of it; and, except this appointed cloud, no other can touch the mountain of purification.

"Tempest none, shower, hail, or snow,Hoar-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls,Than that brief scale of threefold steps. Thick clouds,Nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glanceNe'er lightens, nor Thaumantian iris gleams."

Dwell for a little while on this intense love of Dante for light,—taught, as he is at last by Beatrice, to gaze on the sun itself like an eagle,—and endeavor to enter into his equally intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain; and then consider with what kind of temper he would have regarded a landscape of Copley Fielding's or passed a day in the Highlands. He has, in fact, assigned to the souls of the gluttonous no other punishment in the Inferno than perpetuity of Highland weather:

"ShowersCeaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchangedFor ever, both in kind and in degree,—Large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw,Through the dim midnight air streamed down amain."

§ 21. However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, Dante goes somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. For although the calm sky was alone loved, and storm and rain weredreaded by all men, yet the white horizontal clouds of serene summer were regarded with great affection by all early painters, and considered as one of the accompaniments of the manifestation of spiritual power; sometimes, for theological reasons which we shall soon have to examine, being received, even without any other sign, as the types of blessing or Divine acceptance: and in almost every representation of the heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by the early painters for its floor, or for thrones of its angels; whereas Dante retains steadily, through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and concludes his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the purgatorial mountain, with the image of shadowless morning:

"I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seenThe horizon's eastern quarter to excel,So likewise, that pacific OriflambGlowed in the midmost, and toward every part,With like gradation paled away its flame."

But the best way of regarding this feeling of Dante's is as the ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light, color, and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the mediæval from the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently see, distinguished him from the modern on the other. For it is evident that precisely in the degree in which the Greek was agriculturally inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would become to him more acceptable than to the mediæval knight, who only looked for the fine afternoons in which he might gather the flowers in his garden, and in no wise shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his gardener. Thus, when we find Ulysses comforted about Ithaca, by being told it had "plenty of rain," and the maids of Colonos boasting of their country for the same reason, we may be sure that they had some regard for clouds; and accordingly, except Aristophanes, of whom more presently, all the Greek poets speak fondly of the clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places of the gods; including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin clear cirrus, but the rolling and changing volume of the thunder-cloud; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind cloud of the earth, as in that noble chapter of Herodotus which tells us ofthe cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the dust of Eleusis, and went down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of course regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and southern nations—Jews and Egyptians; and it is only among the northern mediævals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged as to occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom the clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came, that the love of serene light assumes its intense character, and the fear of tempest is gloomiest; so that the powers of the clouds which to the Greek foretold his conquest at Salamis, and with whom he fought in alliance, side by side with their lightnings, under the crest of Parnassus, seemed, in the heart of the Middle Ages, to be only under the dominion of the spirit of evil. I have reserved, for our last example of the landscape of Dante, the passage in which this conviction is expressed; a passage not less notable for its close description of what the writer feared and disliked, than for the ineffable tenderness, in which Dante is always raised as much above all other poets, as in softness the rose above all other flowers. It is the spirit of Buonconte da Montefeltro who speaks:

"Then said another: 'Ah, so may thy wish,That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled,As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine!Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I:Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me;Sorrowing with these I therefore go.' I thus:From Campaldino's field what force or chanceDrew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?''Oh!' answered he, 'at Casentino's footA stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprungIn Apennine, above the hermit's seat.E'en where its name is cancelled, there came I,Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot,And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speechfailed me; and finishing with Mary's name,I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained....That evil will, which in his intellectStill follows evil, came;... the valley, soonAs day was spent,he covered o'er with cloud.From Pratomagno to the mountain range,And stretched the sky above; so that the air,Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain;And to the fosses came all that the landContained not; and as mightiest streams are wont.To the great river, with such headlong sweep,Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame,Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found,And dashed it into Arno; from my breastLoosening the cross, that of myself I madeWhen overcome with pain. He hurled me on,Along the banks and bottom of his course;Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'"

Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast, pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. His body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under the influence of the evil demon,unlooses this cross, dashing the body supinely away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. And how desolate is it all! The lonely flight,—the grisly wound, "pierced in the throat,"—the death, without help or pity,—only the name of Mary on the lips,-and the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage of the demon and the river,—the noteless grave,—and, at last, even she who had been most trusted forgetting him,—

"Giovanna, none else have care for me."

There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish ballad, "The Twa Corbies."

Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into the nature of the mediæval landscape; not but that many details yet require to be worked out; but these will be best observed by recurrence to them, for comparison with similar details in modern landscape,—our principal purpose, the getting at the governing tones and temper of conception, being, I believe, now sufficiently accomplished. And I think that our subject may be best pursued by immediately turning from the mediæval to the perfectly modern landscape; for although I have much to say respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I believe the transitions may be more easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes; and that by getting perfect and separate hold of the three great phases of art,—Greek, mediæval, and modern,—we shall be enabled to trace, with least chance of error, those curious vacillations which brought us to the modern temper while vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the Greek. I propose, therefore, in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of modern landscape, as seen generally in modern painting, and especially in the poetry of Scott.

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