ectly and spiritually fair,"

leading him to fit himself to put on immortality. The passion of his
boyhood has now become the ennobling ideal of his life. Sustaining and
stimulating him, saving him from himself, ever leading him upward and
onward, his angelicized lady is an abiding presence with him whether he
is deep in the contemplation of the study of philosophy and the learning
of the ancients, or engaged in the activity of military or political
life, or as homeless wayfarer in exile, making his way from place to
place. When he falls from grace it is Beatrice who disturbs his peace of
mind by "a battle of thoughts." It is the "strong image" of Beatrice who
comes to him as he had seen her as a child, raises him from moral
obliquity, fills him with the very essence of the spiritual. Then he has
a wonderful vision--"a vision in which I saw things which made me
resolve to speak no more of this blessed one (Beatrice) until I could
more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this I study to the utmost
of my power as she truly knows: So that if it shall please Him through
whom all things live that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to
say of her what was never said of any woman."

That promise, involving years of intense study and increasing devotion
to his beloved, Dante kept. The Divine Comedy is his matchless monument
to her who is the protagonist and muse of his poem and the love of his
heart. "Not only has the poet made her" says Norton, "the loveliest and
most womanly woman of the Middle Ages at once absolutely real and truly
ideal," but he has done what no poet had ever before conceived, thereby
achieving something unique in the whole range of literature--he has
"imparadised" among the saints and angels his lovely wonder, Beatrice,
"that so she spreads even there a light of love which makes the angels
glad and even to their subtle minds can bring a certain awe of profound
marvelling." He has given to her such a glorious exaltation that after
Rachel and Eve she of all women is enthroned in the glowing Rose of
Heaven next to the Virgin Mother, "our tainted nature's solitary boast,"
and so enthroned, Beatrice is at once his beloved and the symbol of
revelation, the heavenly light that discloses to mankind both the true
end of our being and the realities of Eternity.

Now with tremulous delight in his heart, admiration on his lips, ecstasy
in his soul, he is able to render her perhaps the very purest tribute