E. Aroux, who gravely assures us that, during the Middle Ages,
Tartar was only a cryptonym by which heretics knew each other, and
adds: _Il n'y a donc pas trop a s'etonner des noms bizarres de
Mastino et de Cane donnes a ces Della Scala_. (Dante, heretique,
revolutionnaire, et socialiste, Paris, 1854, pp. 118-120.)
[36] If no monument at all was built by Guido, as is asserted by
Balbo (Vita, I. Lib. II. Cap. XVII.), whom De Vericour copies without
question, we are at a loss to account for the preservation of the
original epitaph replaced by Cardinal Bembo when he built the new
tomb, in 1483. Bembo's own inscription implies an already existing
monument, and, if in disparaging terms, yet epitaphial Latin verses
are not to be taken too literally, considering the exigencies of that
branch of literary ingenuity. The doggerel Latin has been thought by
some unworthy of Dante, as Shakespeare's doggerel English epitaph has
been thought unworthy of him. In both cases the rudeness of the
verses seems to us a proof of authenticity. An enlightened posterity
with unlimited superlatives at command, and in an age when
stone-cutting was cheap, would have aimed at something more befitting
the occasion. It is certain, at least in Dante's case, that Cardinal
Bembo would never have inserted in the very first words an allusion
to the De Monarchia, a book long before condemned as heretical.
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