" Here are general truths which any Christian may accept and find
comfort in. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is the real
history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant
human soul; it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow, and that the ladder
of that faith by which man climbs to the actual fruition of things not
seen _ex quovis ligno non fit_, but only of the cross manfully borne. The
poem is also, in a very intimate sense, an apotheosis of woman Indeed, as
Marvell's drop of dew mirrored the whole firmament, so we find in the
_Commedia_ the image of the Middle Ages, and the sentimental gyniolatry
of chivalry, which was at best but skin-deep, is lifted in Beatrice to an
ideal and universal plane. It is the same with Catholicism, with
imperialism, with the scholastic philosophy, and nothing is more
wonderful than the power of absorption and assimilation in this man, who
could take up into himself the world that then was, and reproduce it with
such, cosmopolitan truth to human nature and to his own individuality, as
to reduce all contemporary history to a mere comment on his vision. We
protest, therefore, against the parochial criticism which would degrade
Dante to a mere partisan, which sees in him a Luther before his time, and
would clap the _bonnet rouge_ upon his heavenly muse.
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