[11] Inferno, iii. 22-51.
[12] Compare Inferno, x. 52-72, 109-111.
[13] Paradiso, xvii. 55-63.
II
DANTE'S LIFE AND PRINCIPLES
II. IN EXILE
A rapid sketch of the most decisive events and the leading motives of the life of Dante Alighieri has brought us to the eventful period of his Priorate in 1300 and his banishment in 1302. His unsuccessful efforts to carry out a firm and statesmanlike policy in Florence, with the wreck of his own fortunes consequent upon their failure, may be regarded as the occasion if not the cause of his conceiving his greatest work, the 'Divine Comedy.'
Nineteen years elapsed between Dante's exile and his death, and both tradition and internal evidence indicate that the main strength of his life was poured during the whole of this period into the channels already laid down in its opening years. 'Forging on the anvil of incessant toil' the several parts of his great work, and 'welding them into imperishable symmetry,'[14] the might of his intellect and the passion of his heart grappled for nineteen years with the task of giving worthy utterance to his vast idea. Line by line, canto by canto, the victory was won. Dante had shown that his mother tongue could rise to loftier themes than Greek or Roman had ever touched, and had wrought out the fitting garb of a poem that stands alone in the literature of the world in the scope and sublimity of its conception.
Barely to realise what it was that Dante attempted, wakes feelings in our hearts akin to awe. When we think of that work and of the man who, knowing what it was, deliberately set himself to do it, an appalling sense of the presence of overwhelming grandeur falls upon us, as when a great wall of rocky precipice rises sheer at our side, a thousand and yet a thousand feet towards heaven. Our heads swim as we gaze up to the sky-line of such a precipice, the ground seems to drop from beneath our feet, all our past and present becomes a dream, and our very hold of life seems to slip away from us. But the next moment a great exultation comes rushing upon our hearts, with quickened pulses and drawing deeper breath we rise to the sublimity of the scene around us, and our whole being is expanded and exalted by it. After holding converse with such grandeur our lives can never be so small again. And so it is when the meaning of Dante's Comedy breaks upon us. When we follow the poet step by step as he beats or pours his thought into language, when we note the firmness of his pace, the mastery with which he handles and commands his infinite theme, the unflinching directness, the godlike self-reliance, with which he lays bare the hearts of his fellow-men and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Eternal, when we gaze upon his finished work and the despair of Hell, the yearning of Purgatory, the peace of Heaven, sweep over our hearts, we are ready to whisper in awe-struck exultation: