APPENDIX.

CENTENNIAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA.

The following interesting works in commemoration of the Ottavo Centenario dello Studio Bolognese were sent by the University of Bologna to Dr. Schaff, and deposited by him in the library of the University of the City of New York :— Statuti della Università e dei Collegi dello Studio Bolognese. Pubblicati da CARLO MALAGOLA: dottore collegiato onorario della facoltà giuridica della R. Università e direttore dell' archivio di stato di Bologna. Bologna, Nicola Zanichelli, MDCCCLXXXVIII. (524 pp. fol.)

Annuario della Regia Università di Bologna. Anno scolastico, 1887-'88. Bologna, premiato stab. tip. successori Monti, 1887. (pp. 349.)

Stabilimenti Scientifici della R. Università di Bologna in rapporto col Piano Regolatore della città secondo il progetto del Rettore G. CAPELLINI. Bologna, stab. tip. succ. Monti, 1888.

Orazione di LUIGI GALVANI, prof. di Anatomia nella Università di Bologna letta nel 25 Novembre, 1782, per la laurea del nipote GIOVANNI ALDINI edito per solennizzare il 1° centenario della scoperta fatta dal Galvani nel 26 Settembre, 1786. Bologna, premiato stab. tip. succ. Monti, 1888.

Bologna al tempo di LUIGI GALVANI nel suo governo civile ed ecclesiastico, nelle sue istituzioni di scienze, di arti e di pubblica beneficenza con miscellanea di notizie biografiche, artistiche, aneddotiche e di costumanze patrie particolari. Compilazione sopra autentici documenti raccolti ed ordinati dal DOTT. ALESSANDRO BACCHI. Bologna, tipografia gamberini e parmeggiani, 1887.

Conosci Te Stesso e L'Ambiente della tua Attività. Dialoghi per l'istruzione popolare di ANGELO MARESCOTTI, senatore del regno. Bologna, Nicola Zanichelli, 1888.

Guida del R. Istituto Geologico di Bologna. Bologna, tipografia Fava e Garagnani, 1888.

Universitati Litterarum et Artium Bononiensi ferias saeculares octavas pridie idus Iunias anno P. N. C. MDCCCLXXXVIII celebranti (Cantabrigiæ, typis academicis). A Greek Poem of Salutation, by Professor R. O. JEBB, of the University of Glasgow, beginning: “ Μῆτερ ἀρχαία σοφίας, ὅθεν Ευρώπη πάλαι.”

An Italian Translation, by G. PELLICCIONI, of Jebb's Poem of Salutation, entitled: Allo Studio Di Bologna festeggiante l'ottavo suo centenario il XII. Giugno MDCCCLXXXVIII.

FACCIOLI, Archiginnasio di Bologna.

Bologna, 1888.

A Bronze Medal of HUMBERTUS I. REX ITALIÆ, UNIVERSITATIS LITTERARUM ET ÅRTIUM BONONIENSIS PATRONUS.

DANTE ALIGHIERI.

DANTE, SHAKESPEARE, GOETHE.

Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe are the greatest poets of the Christian era; as the author of the Book of Job, Homer, and Virgil are the greatest of the era before Christ. They rise like pyramids in the history of literature. Their works have a universal and perennial interest.

Their theme is man as man. They sympathize with all that is human. They reproduce with the intuition of genius, in classical style, our common nature in all its phases from the lowest to the highest, from the worst to the best. Hence they interest all classes of men.

But while they agree in this general characteristic, they differ as widely as the nations and ages to which they belong, and as the languages in which they wrote. They are intensely human, and yet intensely national. Dante (1265-1321) could only have arisen in Italy, and in the thirteenth century; Shakespeare (1564-1616) only in England, and in the sixteenth; Goethe (1749-1832) only in Germany, and in the eighteenth century. Dante is the poet of the Middle Ages; Shakespeare is the poet of the transition period of the Renaissance and Reformation; Goethe is the poet of modern cosmopolitan culture.

It is impossible to say who is the greatest and the most universal of the three. Shakespeare is an unexplained literary miracle as to creative fertility of genius which "gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," and as to intuitive knowledge of human nature-English, old Roman, Italian, French, Scandinavian, Christian, Jewish, heathen, noble and wicked, angelic and Satanic. Goethe presents greater variety of poetic and literary composition, and excels equally in drama, epos, and song, in narrative prose and literary criticism. Dante is the most exalted and sublime of the three, as he follows men into the eternal world of bliss and woe.

Viewed in their relation to religion, Dante is the most reli

gious of the three. He is the Homer of medieval Christianity, and reflects the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. The divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, the Holy Trinity, the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the necessity of the atonement, conversion and sanctification, future rewards and punishments, were to him as certain truths as mathematical propositions, and heaven and hell as real facts as happiness and misery in this life. In this respect he resembles the singer of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and the singer of the Messiad much more than Shakespeare and Goethe; but the English Milton and the German Klopstock, with a purer and simpler faith, do not reach the height of the genius of the Tuscan poet.

Dante and Milton have several points in common: both are intensely religious, one as a Catholic, the other as a Puritan; both stood at the height of learning and culture, the one of the thirteenth, the other of the seventeenth century; both were champions of freedom against despotism; both engaged in party politics, and failed; both ended their life in unhappy isolation; but both rose in sublime heroism above personal misfortune, and produced in sorrow and disappointment their greatest works, full of inspiring thoughts for future generations.

Shakespeare is a secular poet, and professes no religion at all, whether Catholic or Protestant; he is hid behind his characters. But he always speaks respectfully of religion; he makes virtue lovely and vice hateful; he punishes sin and crime, and his tragedies have the moral effect of powerful sermons. He is full of reminiscences of, and allusions to, the Bible.' He passed through the great convulsion of the Reformation without losing his faith. There can be no doubt that he reverently bowed before Him whose "Blessed feet were nailed

1 Bishop Charles Wordsworth, of St. Andrews, has written a book of 420 pages on Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible (London, third ed., 1880), in which he traces over 400 passages of the Bible quoted or referred to by Shakespeare. As he wrote most of his works before 1611, when the Authorized Version appeared, he used earlier translations. Wordsworth asserts (p. 9) that King James' translators owed more to Shakespeare than he to them.

2 Henry IV., P. I., Act I., Sc. 1.

And we look in vain in all literature, outside of the New Testament, for a more eloquent and truly Christian description of mercy than that given by "gentle William ":"

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.
Upon the place beneath. It is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the fear and dread of kings;
But
mercy
is above this sceptred sway :

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself,

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice."

Goethe is likewise a worldly poet, and touches religion only incidentally and casually as one of the essential elements of human life; as for instance in the confessions of a beautiful soul (Fräulein von Klettenberg, a pious Moravian lady and friend of his mother), inserted among the mixed theatrical company of Wilhelm Meister. He characterized himself as a liberal and impartial outsider,2 and as a child of the world between two prophets. He had a Pelagian or Unitarian view of the way of salvation, and expressed it in the Second Part of Faust, which has been called the tragedy of the modern age of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Faust is saved, not in the evangelical way by free grace through repentance and faith in Christ, but by his own constant endeavor and self-culture, aided by divine love, and by Mary and Gretchen drawing him heavenward. Angels bear Faust's immortal part and sing

1 Merchant of Venice, Act IV., Sc. 1.

2"Ich bin kein Unchrist, kein Widerchrist, doch ein decidirter Nichtchrist." Letter to the pious Lavater, the friend of his youth, 1782.

"Gerettet ist das edle Glied

Der Geisterwelt vom Bösen :
Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.

"Und hat an ihm die Liebe gar
Von oben teilgenommen,

Begegnet ihm die sel ge Schaar

Mit herzlichem Willkommen." 1

We need not wonder that Goethe had the highest admiration for Shakespeare, but disliked Dante, and called his Inferno "abominable;" his Purgatorio "ambiguous" and his Paradiso "tiresome" (May, 1787). In showing a bust of Dante to Eckermann, he said: "He looks as if he came out of hell." The contrast between the two men is almost as great as the contrast between Gretchen and Beatrice. And yet the First Part of the tragedy of Faust furnishes a striking parallel to the Inferno of the Divine Comedy, and contains some of the profoundest Christian ideas, expressed in the purest language. Think of the prelude in heaven, imitated from the Book of Job, the sublime songs of the three archangels, the triumphant Easter hymn, which prevents Faust from committing suicide, the solemn cathedral scene, the judgment trumpet of the Dies Ira, the terrors of a guilty conscience, and the downward progress of sin begetting new sin and leading step by step to insanity, prison and death. The description of Mephistopheles is far more true to the character of the sneering, scoffing, hideous arch-fiend of the human race than Dante's horrid monster at the bottom of the Inferno. The concluding act before the day of execution, the salvation of the innocently guilty and penitent Gretchen,

1 The emphasis lies on the third and fourth lines, the earnest and constant endeavor of man, as the chief condition of salvation, to which is added divine love as a help from above. Goethe himself declared to Eckermann (June 6, 1831) that in these verses lies the key for the redemption of Faust. "In Faust selber eine immer höhere und reinere Thätigkeit bis an's Ende, und von oben die ihm zu Hülfe kommende ewige Liebe. Es steht dies mit unserer religiösen Vorstellung durchaus in Harmonie, nach welcher wir nicht bloss durch eigene Kraft selig werden, sondern durch die hinzukommende göttliche Gnade.” This reverses the evangelical order, which puts Divine grace first and human endeavor second, and puts both in the relation of cause and effect.