[171] _Sub Julio_: Julius was not even consul when Virgil was born. But
Dante reckoned Julius as the founder of the Empire, and therefore makes
the time in which he flourished his. Virgil was only twenty-five years
of age when Cæsar was slain; and thus it was under Augustus that his
maturer life was spent.
[172] _Author_: Dante defines an author as 'one worthy to be believed
and obeyed' (_Convito_ iv. 6). For a guide and companion on his great
pilgrimage he chooses Virgil, not only because of his fame as a poet,
but also because he had himself described a descent to the Shades--had
been already there. The vulgar conception of Virgil was that of a
virtuous great magician.
[173] _The style, etc._: Some at least of Dante's minor works had been
given to the world before 1300, certainly the _Vita Nuova_ and others of
his poems. To his study of Virgil he may have felt himself indebted for
the purity of taste that kept him superior to the frigid and artificial
style of his contemporaries, He prided himself on suiting his language
to his theme, as well as on writing straight from the heart.
[174] _Many a creature, etc._: Great men and states, infected with
avarice in its extended sense of encroachment on the rights of others.
[175] _Feltro and Feltro, etc._: Who the deliverer was that Dante
prophesies the coming of is not known, and perhaps never can be. Against
the claims of Can Grande of Verona the objection is that, at any date
which can reasonably be assigned for the publication of the _Inferno_,
he had done nothing to justify such bright hopes of his future career.
There seems proof, too, that till the _Paradiso_ was written Dante
entertained no great respect for the Scala family (_Purg._ xvi. 118,
xviii. 121). Neither is Verona, or the widest territory over which Can
Grande ever ruled, at all described by saying it lay between Feltro and
Feltro.--I have preferred to translate _nazi-one_ as birth rather than
as nation or people. 'The birth of the deliverer will be found to have
been between feltro and feltro.' Feltro, as Dante wrote it, would have
no capital letter; and according to an old gloss the deliverer is to be
of humble birth; _feltro_ being the name of a poor sort of cloth. This
interpretation I give as a curiosity more than anything else; for the
most competent critics have decided against it, or ignored it.--Henry of
Luxemburg, chosen Emperor in November 1308, is an old claimant for the
post of the allegorical _veltro_ or greyhound. On him Dante's hopes were
long set as the man who should 'save Italy;' and it seems not out of
place to draw attention to what is said of him by John Villani, the
contemporary and fellow-townsman of Dante: 'He was of a magnanimous
nature, though, as regarded his family, of poor extraction' (_Cronica_,
ix. 1). Whatever may be made of the Feltros, the description in the text
of the deliverer as one superior to all personal ambition certainly