Non vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna.[258]
And so Virgil’s work is done, and the Teacher shews himself sublimest in the last act. “The hardest lesson,” says the apostle of the New Teaching, “for a clever teacher to learn, is to let a clever pupil be clever in his own way,” nor “has a teacher been really successful” until “he has, by skilful preparation, enabled his pupil to do without him.”[259] This final self-effacement of the Teacher, with its corollary, the achievement of self-mastery and self-determination in the Pupil—the achievement of that liberty of soul which is the supreme aim of the pilgrimage—is best described in Virgil’s matchless words of farewell, which we may now quote in their fulness. His “skilful preparation” has all led up to this ... to make itself dispensable! “By force of wit and skill I have conducted thee hither; henceforward let thine own pleasure be thy guide; from both the steep and the narrow ways thou art now free.... No longer await either word or sign from me; free, sound, and upright is thy will, and it would be amiss not to do its bidding; wherefore over thyself I invest thee with supreme control.”
Tratto t’ ho qui con ingegno e con arte;
Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce;
Fuor sei de l’ erte vie, fuor sei de l’ arte.
...
Non aspettar mio dir più, nè mio cenno,
Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio
E fallo fora non far a suo senno:
Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.[260]