all, even from her he loved so well He feigns a passion for another that he may put all observers off the track. He thus awakens the disdain of Beatrice, but it matters not. Or, rather, even though it matter so infinitely much, he seems powerless to do otherwise. The spell of his temperament holds him fast. The years go by; he makes no effort to win the object of his love; he sees her won by another, and still he makes no sign. It is only when the hand of death takes away her who had become a part of his very life, that his love reveals itself and finds outward expression. What a strange and morbid sensitiveness you say, and yet it is typical, interpretative of the experience of others beside Dante. The poetic or artistic temperament is at once a blessing and a curse. It is a bless

ing in that it makes its possessor a delicate instrument for receiving and recording the finer spiritual impressions; it is a curse in that it is often accompanied with an extreme and wayward sensitiveness that holds back its subject from the things most dear to him, that robs him of the joys which meaner natures can easily reach out after and possess. So it was with Dante. This, however, is but an incident. Happiness or unhappiness, as the world views them, what after all does it matter? The Vita Nuova interprets a far nobler thing than needless sorrows caused by temperament. It interprets the vision of Divine Love revealed through a human personality. That mystic glow which steals o'er all things, irradiating all nature with a new and wondrous light not born of earthly suns, filling the soul with a strange intenseness of delight, whence is it born, save from the very heart of Primal Love? It may bring with it suffering and grief and tears; such was the case with Dante. But if it be indeed the glow caught from the eternal altars, it will

so enlighten the eyes which behold it, that they shall see the ladder stretching up to Heaven, and the angels ascending and descending upon it. Dante saw that heavenly ladder, and so he closes his Vita Nuova with the resolve that he will write of her whom he has so loved, and will always love, that which has never yet been written of any woman.

Dante's youth and early manhood was given up to severe and protracted studies. He was not beguiled by the festivities of Florentine life, nor did he fritter away his time in social frivolities. He had that rare gift of complete absorption in a given subject. This is illustrated by a story

to the effect that on one of his visits to Siena, and while in the shop of an apothecary, there was brought to him. a famous book which he had long desired. No other place being at hand, he threw himself breast downwards upon a bench in front of the shop, and placed the book before him. It festival day, and soon gay scenes were being enacted close to him, such as dancing, games, and the But playing of musical instruments. he never once moved from his position or lifted his eyes from his book. He said afterwards, in response to a question, that he had heard nothing of what was going on about him.

was a

Devoted thus to study, his mind. given up to high contemplation, assiduous in the cultivation of the poetic art, yet torn and lacerated by the pangs of love and grief, these early years of Dante's manhood swiftly passed away. His friends seek to

console him in what seems to them his strange sorrow for the loss of Beatrice, she whom he had known so little and seen so seldom. They are the means of bringing about his marriage with Madonna Gemma, of the house of Donati. While Boccaccio would have us believe that this was an unhappy marriage, there is no rea

son for thinking this to be true. Dante's long years of separation of separation from his wife and family were the result of the stern and inexorable march of events. His silence concerning his wife is no evidence that their union was an unfortunate one. Indeed, we shall have occasion to see that the silences of Dante are often but the sign of feelings too intimate, too tender, too sacred to spread before the eyes of men. The wife of Dante deserves our high praise and gratitude. Upon his banishment and the confiscation of his goods, she saved, by means of a claim of dowerright, a portion of the property from the wreck. She kept the home together, and brought up his children, thus saving him from anxieties. which otherwise would have kept the Divine Commedia from ever being given to the world. She was helpful in the sending to the exiled poet those first seven cantos, the recovery of which gave the courage and inspiration to go on with the work. There is not the slightest evidence that she ever resented Dante's ideal and spiritual love for Beatrice, or that he ever cherished for his faithful wife other feelings than those of tenderness.

We must not think of Dante's early years of manhood as wholly given up to study, to poetry, and to the emotional excitements of a mystical love. He was no weakling. In 1289, at the age of 24, he bore a gallant part in the battle of Campaldino.

He en

tered actively into public life. No one could then hold office unless a recognized member of some trade association, and so he enrolls in the guild of apothecaries. He goes on embassies; he is a member of the city. councils that direct the affairs of Florence and plan for its remodelling. Finally, in the year 1300, he becomes one of the Priors of the city, and from thence, as he himself has told us, came all his woes. The city

was rent with factions; the main division being between the houses of Donati and Cerchi. Disorder and bloodshed are rampant. Dante seeks a solution by causing the leaders of both factions to be removed for a time from Florence. This action pleases no one, and the disorders continue. He goes to Rome on an embassy to the Pope, and in his absence, the decree of banishment and confiscation is rendered against him. He never saw Florence again. We cannot here follow his wanderings, his loneliness, his poverty. He had cause to remember the prophecy of Cacciaguida:

"Tu proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e coni duro calle Lo scendere e'l salir per l'altrui scale." (Par. xvii, 58-60.) "Thou shalt have proof how savoreth of salt

The bread of others, and how hard a road

The going down and up another's stairs."

He tasted much of bitterness—but he wrought his work. We are dealing here with Dante as interpreter. and whatever further we shall have to say of the circumstances of his life. will be in connection with the interpretations we find in that Divine Comedy which was indeed his life.

Let us then approach the great poem itself; and with the very first lines, we pause to read their meaning. Dante tells us that midway upon the journey of life he found himself, or came to himself, in a dark forest. It makes one think of the words used in the parable of the Prodigal Son:"When he came to himself." Now here may be found a subtle interpretation of a large tract of life often passed through as if one were in a sleep or dream. Hardly did Dante know when he left the right path, so full was he of slumber at the moment when he abandoned the right way. When we try to estimate human per

sonality and responsibility, when we take up the study of Ethics and struggle with the problem of Free Will and Determinism, what are we to say of this tract of life, of this strange sleep, on awakening from which we find that we have wandered so far from the way, and into shades so dark and often

fearful, into shades where the panther and the lion and the wolf obstruct our journey toward the light we can yet behold shining on the shoulder of the beautiful mountain? We will not attempt to solve the psychology of this so frequent experience of life. Dante does not try to solve it; perhaps it cannot be solved. But at least Dante brings this phase of human life before our notice, and, as we study it, we see it is something that must be reckoned with.

But Dante was not left alone in the moment of his supreme peril in that dark forest. At the critical moment,

Virgil comes to his aid. This symbolizes the influence of the study of the classics in calming, and steadying. purifying, the mind; in expanding its vision, in leading it upwards to the higher reaches of thought and experience. Dante was not the only one who has been started on the right road through the stimulus and companionship of noble books. St. Augustine dates the beginning of his moral and spiritual regeneration from the reading of a work of Cicero. Most of us realize to some extent how much we owe to the help and companionship of books.

What brought Virgil to Dante's aid? It was Beatrice who left her high seat in heaven and descended into Limbo that she might send the Mantuan poet to rescue the one who had loved her so long and so faithfully. If this interprets the saving influence of a great affection it also suggests the view that those who have

loved us here on earth, still watch over us and act as ministering angels in our behalf. It is a view that few of us would wish to combat, and that in our heart of hearts we really cling to. Nowhere in literature can be found so noble an interpretation of this pleasing and satisfying hope, as the one given by Dante in making Beatrice move in his behalf at the moment which was to decide his fate, and, at last, act as his guide in the fairer regions above.

What shall we say of the Inferno as a whole, and what does it interpret to us? Its terrible pictures fasten themselves indelibly in our memory. Those who have been carried away by passion, are whirled and scourged by the infernal hurricane that sways them up and down, and sends them ever rushing on without rest. The avaricious and the spendthrifts are doomed to their eternal scuffle and recriminations. The morose are fixed in the mire. The suicides are changed into trees that are despoiled by the Harpies. The hypocrites have to wear their gilded cloaks that dazzle outwardly, but within are of ponderous lead. The schismatics and the sowers of discord are cleft in twain, and with tongues cut off within their throats. The arch-traitors, Judas Iscariot. Brutus and Cassius, are in the jaws of Lucifer himself, who is fixed in the eternal ice. As we read the weird pages, the figures come to life and we

can

see them before us. There is Charon, the old boatman of the Acheron, with his hair of heavy white, and with shaggy cheeks. Wheeling flames play around his eyes, and with his oar he strikes the spirits who lag behind. There is Minos, the Infernal Judge, horrible and snarling, who stands at the entrance of the second circle and girds himself with his tail as many times as is the grade to which the unhappy and self-confessed sinner is condemned. Geryon, the winger monster of Fraud, and Flegias, the surly

pilot of the Stygian Marsh, are vividly before us. There too is Cerberus, (the devourer), "fierce, cruel and strange," barking from his three-fold throat, and showing his horrible fangs. He is the terrible guardian

of the third circle where is that pitiless rain, "eternal, cold and heavy." He seizes the spirits and flays and quarters them.

"Eyes has he of vermillion, and the beard greasy and black, his belly large and clawed are his hands."

Most terrible of all the scenes of the Inferno is that in which a viper fastens itself upon an unhappy wretch and looks up in his eyes; when, lo! the human slowly takes on the form of the creeping thing, while the sersemblance of a man.

"The soul which to a reptile had been

poem.

What does Dante mean by all this? Manifold interpretations flash before us-The punishments that sin entails, the fitting of the punishment to the crime, the loss of personality through sin, the powerlessness of high rank or station to avert retribution, as shown by the lofty positions that many of these sufferers had occupied. while on earth-these are some of the things we see. But Dante's great underlying purpose was to accentuate the exceeding sinfulness of sin. He wished to make sin so ghastly and repulsive that men should flee from it. The whole object of his poem, as he himself tells us, was "to remove the living from a state of misery here in this life, and to lead them to a state of happiness." To this end his first aim was to so interpret sin that it should be robbed of the deceitful appearance that attracts. This he has