s of man in this mortal life, owing to the
false direction of his desires, through his ignorance and his misuse of
his free will, the chief gift of God to him. The only means of rescue
from this wretchedness was the exercise by man of his reason,
enlightened by the divine grace, in the guidance of his life. To
convince man of this truth, to bring home to him the conviction of the
eternal consequences of his conduct in this world, to show him the path
of salvation, was Dante's aim. As poet he had received a Divine
commission to perform this work. To him the ten talents had been given,
and it was for him to put them to the use for which they had been
bestowed. It was a consecrated task to which both heaven and earth set
their hand, and a loftier task was never undertaken. It was to be
accomplished by expounding the design of God in the creation, by setting
forth the material and moral order of the universe and the share of man
in that order, and his consequent duty and destiny. This was not to be
done in the form of abstract propositions addressed to the
understanding, but in a poetic narrative which should appeal to the
heart and arouse the imagination; a narrative in which human life should
be portrayed as an unbroken spiritual existence, prefiguring in its
mortal aspects and experience its immortal destiny. The poem was not to
be a mere criticism of life, but a solution of its mystery, an
explanation of its meaning, and a guide of its course.

To give force and effect to such a design the narrative must be one of
personal experience, so conceived as to be a type of the universal
experience of man. The poem was to be an allegory, and in making himself
its protagonist Dante assumed a double part. He represents both the
individual Dante, the actual man, and that man as the symbol of man in
general. His description of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and
Paradise has a literal veracity; and under the letter is the allegory of
the conduct and consequences of all human life. The literal meaning and
the allegorical are the web and woof of the fabric, in which the
separate incidents are interwoven, with twofold thread, in designs of
infinite variety, complexity, and beauty.

In the journey through Hell, Dante represents himself as guided by
Virgil, who has been sent to his aid on the perilous way by Beatrice,
incited by the Holy Virgin herself, in her infinite compassion for one
who has strayed from the true way in the da