Be well assured that, shouldst thou here abide
Within this womb of flame a thousand year,

No loss of e'en one hair should thee betide."-Purg. xxvii. 20-27.

That assurance, however, fails to give him the courage which he needs. In vain he is told that the flame will purify, but not destroy.

"Now lay aside, now lay aside all dread,

Turn thee to it, and enter free from care.'
And I stood still, and conscience disobeyed,
And when he saw me fixed and hard stand there,

A little vexed he said, 'Now look, my son,

This wall parts thee from Beatricé fair!''

That name at last prevails over all coward fear, all human weakness

"So then, my hardness melted, did I stir

Myself to my wise leader at the name

Which ever in my mind wells full and clear."

And so he plunges in-comfort mingling with the pain,

"When I reached it, I could myself have cast

In molten glass to cool mine agony,

The fire was there so measureless and vast.
Then my sweet Father, as to comfort me

Went on, of Beatricé speaking still,

Saying' E'en now I seem her eyes to see.'"-Purg. xxvii. 49–54.

And when he has passed through that wall of fire, we again trace the memories of the anthems of past years.

"For guide we had a voice whose song did thrill

From thence, and we on it alone intent

Caine forth where rose the steep side of the hill.

Venite, benedicti Patris,' sent

That voice from out a light so dazzling clear

That I, o'ercome, could no more gaze attent."-Purg. xxvii. 55-60.

And so he enters on the earthly Paradise, where even by night the stars are larger than their wont; and where, when the day dawns, he sees the stream, at once dark and crystal clear, and the fair lady whom he identified with the Countess Matilda as the great representative type of active holiness in the history of the mediaæval Church. Her hands are full of flowers and her eyes are bright with the brightness of a benign and sympathizing love. That he may understand what he sees, she bids him remember the psalm, of which he gives but the opening word (xxviii. 80), but of which at least the first two verses must have been present to his thoughts. "Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua, Et in operibus manuum Tuarum exultavi.'

Here was the supreme sanction for man's delight in the work of God, for the witness borne by all forms of visible beauty to that which is invisible and eternal. It is significant that she reveals, after she has told of the mystic rivers which he still has to pass, the secret of this full capacity for joy,

Singing like lady fair whom love doth sway,

She carried on the close of her discourse,

Quarum peccata tecta, blest are they."-Purg. xxix. 1-3.

I pass over the mystic vision that follows, as being more deliberately symbolic, and therefore showing more the skill of the apocalyptic artist than the personality of the man: but the immediate prelude to the revelation of the glorified Beatrice as the impersonation of the eternal Wisdom is again distinctly personal as blending together the two influences of natural beauty and of sacred song, of which I have already spoken. In that vision, apparently from the lips of the Seer of Patmos, he hears a voice of power

"And one of them as if by Heaven sent there,
Sang 'Veni Sponsa, come from Lebanon,'
Three times, and all the rest took up the air,
As at the last call, every blessed one

Shall rise full quick from out his caverned bourne.
AndAlleluias' sing with voice rewon.

So where the heavenly chariot on was borne,
A hundred rose ad vocem tanti senis,

Angels and heralds of the life eterne,

And all said Benedictus es qui venis,

And scattering flowers above them and around,

'Manibus O date lilia plenis.'-Purg. xxx. 10-21.

These herald songs that meet the ear have their counterpart in what meets the eye :

"Oft have I seen how all the East was crowned

Just at the break of day, with roseate hue,

And all the sky beyond serener found,

And the sun's face o'erclouded came in view,

The vapours so attempering its power

That the eye gazed long while nor weary grew."-Purg. xxx. 22–27.

And then there comes the final revelation of Beatrice, Madonnalike in her beauty, and arrayed in the symbolic colours with which early Italian art clothed their ideal of that Madonna :

"And so enveloped in a cloud of flowers

Which leapt up, scattered by angelic hands,

And part within, and part without sent showers,
And in white veil with olive-wreathed bands,
'Neath mantle green a lady came in sight,

:

And clad in garb all red as burning brands."-Purg. xxx. 28-33.

Of that meeting as far as it belonged to Dante's confessions, I have already spoken fully. It remains, however, to note the significance of the place which it occupies in the long process of purification. It is not till the soul has been cleansed from its last baseness and conquered the last besetting sin, and passed through the agonizing fire, that it learns to comprehend fully the root-evil of which the seven deadly sins were but the manifold outgrowth. Then at last it sees that there had been from the first an unfaithfulness to the truth of God. Disloyalty to her who had first wakened in him the sense of a higher life, of an eternal good, had been disloyalty to Him, who through her had sought to lead him to Himself. When that confession has been made, and not till then, the time has come for the baptism of a new regeneration.

"Then when my heart new outward strength did gain,
The lady fair whom I had found alone,

Near me I saw, saying, Hold me, hold,' again.
Up to the throat, within the river thrown,
She drew me on behind her, while she went,
As though a shuttle o'er the stream had flown,
And as my way to that blest shore I bent,

Asperges me I heard so sweetly sung,

I cannot it in thought or speech present.

And then her arms the beauteous lady flung
Around my head, and plunged me in the tide,

So that the water flowed down o'er my tongue;
Thence me she drew and led me purified
Within the dance of that quaternion bright,

And each embraced me in her arms oped wide."—Purg. xxxi. 91-105.

The river which he thus crossed was none other than the stream of Lethe, which Dante, with a profound insight, though in defiance of all Christian traditions, thus places as all but the final stage of purification. He had felt, as all souls that have passed through the crisis of conversion have felt, that what is needed for the soul is that its memory may be cleansed of all the evil of the past, that as God blots out its transgressions as a cloud, and as a thick cloud its sins, so it too may forget the past, or remember it only as belonging to an alien and a vanished self. That cleansing of the conscience, as with the blood of sprinkling so that it becomes white as snow, makes the vision of the Eternal Truth no longer overwhelming, for it is coupled with the vision of the Christ in His divine and human unity.

"Think, reader, what my wonder must have been,
When I beheld the object changeless stand,
Yet in its image changed in form and mien,
While full of joy, yet slow to understand,
My soul its hunger fed with nourishment
Which satisfies yet stimulates demand.
Showing in every act their high descent,
The other three moved on in harmonies
With their angelic dancing in concent:

·

Turn, Reatricé, turn, thine holy eyes,'

So sang their song, 'to this thy servant true,
Who to see thee has dared such enterprise :

For grace' sake, grant this grace, to yield to view
Thy face to him, that he may well discern
What thou dost hide, thy second beauty new.

O splendour of the living light eterne!

Who is there that beneath Parnassus' shade

Hath paled, or quenched his thirst from its fresh burn,
And would not seem to have his mind down-weighed,

Seeking thy form and presence to make known,
O'ershadowed by the heavens that sunrise made,

When to the open air that form was shown?"-Purg. xxxi. 124–145.

The power of that vision of the unveiled truth, falling short only of the ineffably beatific vision of the Divine glory which ends the "Paradiso" as this ends the "Purgatorio," to complete the work of Lethe in blotting out the memory of the evil past, is indicated by a touch of the skill of the supreme artist. Beatrice unfolds to him an apocalypse of the coming history of the Church and the Empire, which is to correct his former theories.

"That thou mayst know,' she said, 'how stands that school
Which thou hast followed, and its doctrines scan,

And learn how far it follows my true rule.'

And then, unconscious of reproach, the very confessions which had just passed from his lips remembered no more, he makes his reply

"And then I answered, Memory dwells not here
That I have so estranged myself from thee,

Nor doth my conscience wake remorseful fear.'"-Purg. xxxii. 85–93. Well may Beatrice tell him that his Lethe-draught has been free and full, and feel that the time has come for it to be followed by that of the other mystic river, which revives the memory of every good deed done, and so completing the transformation wrought out by Lethe, gives to the new man, the true self, the continuity of life which had seemed before to belong to the old and false and evil self. I do not inquire now how far such a philosophy of consciousness is tenable in itself, or may be reconciled with acknowledged truths of ethics or theology; but it will be admitted that there is a mystic greatness in its very conception which places Dante high among the spiritual teachers of mankind. One who could picture that state to himself as the completion of his pilgrimage, the perfected result of the regenerate life begun in baptism, must at least have had some foretastes of ecstatic rapture, of communion with the eternal Wisdom, and of the infinite Goodness which had convinced him of its possibility, and so the closing lines of the "Purgatorio" have definitely the autobiographical element which I have been endeavouring to trace throughout the poem.

"Just on a dim dark shadow's border side,

Shade such as with swards, boughs, and foliage green,
O'er their cold streams the Alps throw far and wide,

Euphrates, Tigris, both in front were seen,

So deemed I, as from one clear fount to flow,
Like dear friends, slow to leave a space between.
'O light, O glory of all man doth know,
What stream is this that thus itself doth pair,
From out one source, and from itself doth go?'
And to my quest came answer, 'Let thy prayer
Matilda ask to tell thee;' and reply

Came, as from one full loth the blame to bear,
From that fair lady's lips, 'These things have I,
And much else, told him, and full clear I see
That Lethe has not hid them from his eye.'

And Beatricé, 'Deeper cares, may be

Which often memory of her strength deprive,
Have clouded o'er his mental vision free,

But see Eunoe's waters hence derive,

Lead him to them, and, as thou'rt wont to do,

Once more his half-dead energy revive.'

As gentle soul that works without ado

The will of others, e'en as 'twere its own,

When patent it is made by token true,

Soon as my hand she clasped, that beauteous one
Moved on, and as a gracious lady, spake

To Statius, saying, With him come thou on.'

Could I, O reader, wider limits take,

For writing, I might hope to sing in part

Of that sweet drink which never thirst can slake,

But since I've filled each corner of my chart,
To this my second Cantique given as due,
My course is hemmed by barriers of my art.
I, from that stream that holy is and true
Returned refreshed, as tender flowerets are,
Reborn, revived, and with a foliage new,

Pure and made sweet to mount where shines each star." Purg. xxxiii. 110-145. The passage which I have just quoted warns me that I too must stop with my task hardly more than half completed. A wide region of inquiry tending to like results opens itself in the other elements which enter into the processes of the Mount of Purgatory, the teachings of art as indicated in the marvellous forecast of the possibilities of the future in the description of the sculptured cornices in Canto XII., which seems almost as a prophecy of the doors of the Baptistery at Florence, the reminiscences of history or literature, which suggest in the poem, as they had suggested in the poet's experience, thoughts that take their place in fashioning his character, deterring from evil, impulsive to new strivings after good. But I, too, have "filled every corner of my chart," and dare not now ask for "wider limits." It will be enough for the present if what I have written in free and loving reverence for the great Florentine, shall lead here and there a few to study the great master-work of his genius, and in so studying to find in the poem the man himself, greater even than his work.

E. H. PLUMPTRE.