with arched back. Whereat the demons, beneath the bridge, shouted: 'Here is no place to pray to the Holy Face! The swimming is not like the river Serchio! Therefore, if thou likest not our hooks, do not show thyself above the pitch!' Then they snapped him up with more than a hundred prongs, saying: 'Here all the dancing is under cover. Do thy grabbing unseen, if thou canst!' Even so do cooks bid their scullions push the meat under, with their forks, in the middle of the pot, to keep it from floating." In the portrayal of these mischievous guardians, wickeder than the criminals they torment, and, as Dante and Virgil nearly learn to their cost, quite as ready to punish the innocent as the guilty, there seems to be a bit of personal reminiscence; for in them the poet probably intended to picture with grim humor the unscrupulous officials of Florence who accused him of dishonesty and condemned him to death by fire.

Toward Florence, the beautiful ingrate, Dante's feelings were mixed. Florence was his city, his pretty fold," for which he always yearned; yet Florence was foolish, presumptuous, fickle, cruel, the home of glib and shallow politics. Terrible are his repeated denunciations and his prophecies of coming retribution. "But a little while hence," he cries, "thou shalt suffer what [thy neighbor] Prato wishes thee not to speak of others. If it had already happened, it would be none too early. Would it might be thus, since it must be! For it will be the harder for me to bear, the older

I grow." All along the Arno, declares a soul in Purgatory, from its mountain source to its mouth, "virtue is shunned as a foe by all as if it were a snake, either because of some ill fortune of the place, or because evil custom incites them; therefore have the dwellers in that wretched valley so changed their nature that one would think Circe had put them to pasture." The people of the Casentino are ugly swine, fit only for acorns; the Aretines are curs, who snarl louder than their strength justifies; the Florentines are wolves; the Pisans foxes, so full of deceit that they fear no trap.

From the wickedness and stupidity of men Dante turned for comfort to the perfect goodness and wisdom of God. Always of a genuinely religious bent, he became, in the days of adversity, more deeply devout, more ardent and mystical in his aspiration. With intense meditation on things divine, came unexpected divine illumination. Then suddenly did day redouble day,

Or so it seemed, as if the One who can
Had bid the sky a second sun display.

In very truth Beatrice might have said to him, as she cries in the poem:

Thou art not, as thou thinkest, down on earth;
For lightning never left its native sky

So swift as thou dost seek thy land of birth.

Faithful as Dante was, and eager to conform his will to the will of the Almighty, his intellectual curiosity and his positive, logical mind made it

difficult for him to leave a mystery unexplained. Theological study fascinated him, and he evidently found in it satisfaction for most of his speculative difficulties. One problem, however, always baffled him: the origin of imperfection. At least, although he returns to it again and again, he never reaches a consistent solution. The material world, he says, is defective because, being made of matter, which is by nature imperfect, it cannot fully realize God's perfect idea. This explanation suffices for a Platonist, who holds that God and matter are coeternal, but not for a Christian, who believes — and, if orthodox, must believe that matter was created by the Lord. Indeed, this doctrine of the creation of matter is explicitly stated by Dante, who affirms also that whatsoever God himself has made is perfect. So we are left where we were in the first place. If it were possible to assume that matter has always existed, we might argue further that, not being the work of the Creator, it is inferior, and that whatsoever is fashioned of it must fall short of perfection. But this assumption is heretical. Here is a sore temptation for a philosopher, divided between his faith and his logic. Dante himself, as he tells us in the Banquet, was disturbed by the question "whether the primal matter of the elements was conceived by God." He decided aright; but his experience enabled him to sympathize with those minds whose acumen and self-confidence led them into heresy. The heretics in his lower world are tormented but not despic

able. One of the poet's most impressive figures is Farinata degli Uberti, who amid the flames "stands with brow and chest erect, as if he held Hell in great contempt." In his Heaven Dante places, among the lights of theology, two men of dubious, or more than dubious, orthodoxy: Joachim of Calabria, the mystic prophet; and the daringly brilliant philosopher Sigier of Brabant, who in the University of Paris "syllogized invidious truths."

Against unbelief he was fortified, as he was saved from the consequences of his besetting sins, by divine watchfulness, for which he never could be sufficiently thankful. A special debt of gratitude he bore to the Blessed Virgin, the embodiment of heavenly mercy, to whom he so often and so happily appealed. His devotion to her certainly influenced his whole conception of Beatrice, as it is developed in the Divina Commedia. When this "most gentle lady," - about to answer a really simple question which to Dante seems hopelessly difficult, when Beatrice

First breathed a pitying sigh, then sweet and mild
Inclined her eyes upon me with the look

A mother gives to her delirious child,

we see the very image of the compassionate Lady of Heaven, "the Rose in which the divine Word became flesh " "that beauteous flower," says the poet, on which I always call at morn and

eve."

"Now look,'" cries St. Bernard, whom Dante

finds at his side when he reaches the real Paradise, 666 now look into the face that is most like Christ, for its brightness alone can prepare thee to see Christ.' Over her I saw descending such a shower of gladness, borne by the holy minds [of angels], created to flit through those heights, that whatsoever I had seen before did not hold me rapt in such amazement, nor reveal to me such likeness of God." To her the saint addresses that beautiful prayer beginning

Vergine madre, figlia del tuo Figlio,
Umile ed alta più che creatura,
Termine fisso d' eterno consiglio,

which continues thus: "Thy kindness not only succors him who asks, but ofttimes freely forestalls the asking. In thee is mercy, in thee piety, in thee magnificence, in thee is united whatsoever goodness there is in aught created. Now this man, who from the lowest pool of the universe as far as here hath beheld the spiritual states one by one, beseeches thee, in thy grace, for such power that his eyes may lift him still higher toward the Last Weal. And I, who never yearned more hotly for my own sight than I now long for his, offer thee all my prayers- and I pray they be not scant-that thou, with thine own supplications, melt from him every mist of his mortality, until the Joy Supreme shall be revealed to him. Further I pray thee, O Queen, who canst do thy will, to keep his desires whole, after this great vision. Let thy watchfulness overcome his human