"Let, let the Ghibellines ply their handicraft
Beneath some other standard; for this ever
Ill follows he who it and justice parts,"
he makes Justinian say, speaking of the Roman eagle.[99] His
Ghibellinism, though undoubtedly the result of what he had seen of
Italian misgovernment, embraced in its theoretical application the
civilized world. His political system was one which his reason adopted,
not for any temporary expediency, but because it conduced to justice,
peace, and civilization,--the three conditions on which alone freedom was
possible in any sense which made it worth having. Dante was intensely
Italian, nay, intensely Florentine, but on all great questions he was, by
the logical structure of his mind and its philosophic impartiality,
incapable of intellectual provincialism.[100] If the circle of his
affections, as with persistent natures commonly, was narrow, his thought
swept a broad horizon from that tower of absolute self which he had
reared for its speculation. Even upon the principles of poetry,
mechanical and other,[101] he had reflected more profoundly than most of
those who criticise his work, and it was not by chance that he discovered
the secret of that magical word too few, which not only distinguishes his
verse from all other, but so strikingly from his own prose.
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