This in Dante is either

the colour it assumes is a lurid red. roggio or rovente, both of which terms he applies to the glowing city of Dis (Inf. ix. 36, xi. 73). So, too, when at the foot of the mount of Purgatory the sun, but lately risen from the sea, and not clear of mists, behind his back fiammeggiava roggio (Purg. iii. 16). He is of opinion that if a shadow be cast from without on flames, it will have the same effect, as if some opaque substance intervened between them and the person regarding them, for when he stood between the sun and the fire in which the spirits guilty of lust were purified, the flames seem to him to be made thereby piu rovente. Both words are used to imply a dusky lurid red, but roggio is also applied to clear red light, for when the poet rises into the sphere of Mars (Par. xiv. 87), the planet seemed to him more ruddy than its wont.' He is speaking of Mars in all its ethereal splendour as seen in heaven, and not the planet as seen from earth, as it sets in mist before the dawn of day (Purg. ii. 14), so there can be no idea of murkiness, but a kindly red glow is meant, such as was shed by the sparks that rose from the mysterious river (Par. xxx. 66), 'like rubies set in gold.' The commonest word in the Commedia for red is vermiglio, a mixture of scarlet and crimson. There can be no doubt about the colour, for when he would define the time of year as early summer, he says, 'what time the mulberry became vermillion' (Purg. xxix. 148). Vermillion mingled with white is the tint of healthy flesh (Purg. xxix. 114), especially of the cheeks. These in England are so often connected with the idea of apple blossoms that one might have expected Dante to have chosen this same combination of colours to describe the blossoms on the mystic apple tree (Purg. xxxii. 58), but he says that they 'disclosed a hue less than of the rose but more than violet's.' This at first is puzzling, but he is not thinking of the rich-scented deepcoloured flower that grows in such profusion in the gardens of the Villa Borghesi, but of the delicate gray violet, which with the anemone and cyclamen, stud the coppices on the uplands round San Geminano, and a blending of this with rose gives him, 'as closely as language can carry him,' an exact descrip

tion of the blossom of the apple.* Unmixed vermillion we find frequently used in the earlier Italian paintings as a suitable colour for demons, and as such Dante selects it for one of the faces of the 'Great Worm' (Inf. xxxiv. 39), and it suggests itself to him as fitly representing the bloodshot glare of the eyes of Cerberus (Inf. vi. 16).

When yellow is mixed with red two tones of colour are produced, the one pleasing and the other not. If the yellow be ochrous, ferrigno, a dull rusty red is the result. This is applied to the rocks of Malebolge (Inf. xviii. 2) an idea of colouring, as Ruskin † points out, taken from the loveless ashen grey rocks of the Apennines 'more or less stained by the brown of iron ochre.' If it be a bright clear yellow that mingles with the red, the product is runcio, orange of such colour is the gold on the outside of the leaden 'cloaks of the hypocrites' (Purg. xxxiii. 100). The pure gold of St. Peter's Key, however, is giallo, a term he applies merely to gold or to flowers (Par. vi. 100. Purg. xxviii. 55, etc.).

As is natural, verde occurs frequently in an undefined sense, of leaves, pastures, hills, and of the smalto or enamel, the poor substitute for grass, over which the great spirits of Heathendom move in the Limbo of the Inferno, but in some passages it is more accurately defined. Often in his wanderings through Italy must Dante have surprised the common grass snake, which in the South of Europe assumes a much brighter hue than its cousin in England, and so, in speaking of the snakes with which the furies were girt, he tells us they were verdissime, brilliant green (Inf. ix. 40), and in the lengthened simile, in which he compares reputation to the grass that perisheth, he speaks of it as acerba (Purg. xi. 117) when first risen from the ground-a crude green, the equivalent of Shakespeare's 'green sour' which in The Tempest' he applies to the tendrils which the elves make to grow at night. But of all the shades of green there is none which in delicacy approaches the 'sky-tinctured grain' in the garment of the

# Ruskin, Modern Painters, iii., 226. Tempest,' v. 1.

+ Ibid., iii. 237.

apart from words, and capable, like music, of definite character, of endless variety and infinite meanings.' The whole poem

*

is written by one who sat in darkness, and had seen a great light. And if we read it through from the moment that we are free from the 'dead air which saddened both eye and breast' when the first note of hope is struck by the pure light of early dawn at the beginning of the Purgatorio, till we fall dazed before the beatific vision in the highest heaven, we feel it to describe one great crescendo of light throbbing through sphere on sphere, that works upon our feelings in the same way as the motive with which Haydn introduces the creation of the first day in his oratorio.

This is the general effect, but when we try to deal with his conception of light in the Paradiso, we find it very hard. Dante has become transcendental. The literal becomes more and more lost in the allegorical. The Beatrice of the Vita

Nuova and of the earlier part of the Commedia-the Beatrice of his earthly love-changes into the impersonation of Divine Philosophy, who leads him on to the light of true religion as embodied in St. John and in Christ. Thus as we mount from heaven to heaven, the light that is shed around us is no more to be measured by the waves of science-Dante no longer attempts to give us his scientific explanations of it—but treats it in an allegorical and anagogic sense. † He tells us (Par. xxx. 37)' we have issued from the greatest body-the circle of the Primum Mobile-into the heaven that is pure light, light intellectual replete with love.'

But yet throughout the Paradiso the literal does not entirely die away, and we may try and trace the method by which he would impress upon us the idea of that ever-increasing light. In the first canto he is in the heaven of the moon, the heaven 'that most receives its light' (Par. i. 4), as being furthest away from the empyrean, and already he finds that words fail him to tell of the light that his imagination saw. But Beatrice is his guide, and by looking on her face he may become accustomed to the light reflected in it, and so be able to endure the

* Dean Church Dante, p. 152.

+ Ep. ad-kan Grand, pp. 6-7.

very light itself, even as the men from Plato's cave were to practise their eyes by looking at reflections before they ventured to gaze on the ideal light. Even the glory of Beatrice's face is at times more than he can endure, and when they rise into the heaven of Saturn, Beatrice dare not smile (Par. xxi. 7) as she says

'Because my beauty that along the stairs

Of the eternal palace more enkindles,
As thou hast seen the further we ascend,
If it were tempered not, is so resplendent
That all thy mortal power in its effulgence

Would seem a leaflet that the thunder crushes.'

Many a time Dante professes himself too dazzled to behold the light (ii. 127, xxx. 49, etc), but as he rises from sphere to sphere he goes from strength to strength, and when he reaches the Empyrean can gaze upon the effulgence of St. John (xxv. 135), which is so great that Beatrice, who is standing close to him, is as invisible as the flame of a candle held up to the sun. Once more he acquires new power of vision, so that no light was so pure but that his eyes were fortified against it; and with these fresh powers he leads us on to gaze at the vision beatific, wherein the mystery of the Trinity is revealed to him in terms of light (xxxiii. 115).

'Within the deep and luminous existence

Of the high light appeared to me three circles
Of threefold colour, and of one dimension,
And by the second seemed the first reflected

As Iris is by Iris, and the third

Seemed fire that equally from both was breathed.'

Here we may withdraw our dazzled eyes and let them rest for a while on light more sober, for we cannot turn from Dante, without pausing for a moment on those liquid hues of coloured light he so loves to describe. For these he mostly appeals to the rainbow or to the precious stones. Sapphire and emerald, topaz, ruby, and orieut pearl, present to us the colours of the sky or of those bright effulgences he met in the realms above. With his ardent love of nature he could not fail to describe to us the phenomena of the sky, and he paints them in the clear calm hues of Pinturicchio and of Perugino,