isposed to doubt Dante's capability of deep emotion at so
tender an age we have only to remember that Cupid's darts pierced at an
early age the hearts of others of precocious sensibilities. The love
experience of Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, and Canova the sculptor, when
they too were only children is a matter of history. This statement we
shall the more readily accept if we recall the dictum of Pascal: "The
passions are great in proportion as the intelligence is great. In a
great soul everything is great." In the light of that principle we must
say that if Dante's love attachment in early life runs counter to the
experience of mankind, he is, even as a boy, exceptional in the power of
imagination and peculiarly sensitive to heart impressions.

His experience as a nine year old boy loving with a depth of increasing
emotion a girl with whom there probably had never been any
communication except a mere greeting, a love reverential, persisting,
even after her marriage to another, continuing through the married life
of the poet himself, a love, the story of which is celebrated in
matchless verse,--all that is so unique a thing that critics have been
led to deny the very existence of Beatrice or to see in the story an
allegory which may be interpreted in various ways.

Some critics see in Beatrice only the ideal of womanhood; others make
her an allegory of conflicting things. Francesco Perez holds that
Beatrice is only the figure of Active Intelligence, while Dante Gabriel
Rossetti advances the fantastic theory that she is the symbol of the
Roman Empire, and love--the anagram of Roma--on Dante's part is only
devotion to the imperial cause. According to Scartazzini, Beatrice is
the symbol of the Papacy. Gietmann denies the historicity of Beatrice
and declares that she typifies the Church. The argument for this theory
expressed by a sympathetic reviewer of Gietmann's book, "Beatrice, Geist
und Kern der Danteshen Dichtung," follows: "Beatrice is the soul and
center of the poet's works, his inspiring genius, the ideal which moulds
his life and character. If we consider her as a mere historical
personage we must look upon those works as silly and meaningless
romances, and on the poet himself as a drivelling day-dreamer.

"But if we are able to assign to Dante's beloved an appropriate and
consistent allegorical character, in keeping with the views of the
poet's time, and with the quality of the varied material which goes to
build up