His gentleness is all the more striking by contrast,
like that silken compensation which blooms out of the thorny stem of the
cactus. His moroseness,[80] his party spirit, and his personal
vindictiveness are all predicated upon the _Inferno_, and upon a
misapprehension or careless reading even of that. Dante's zeal was not of
that sentimental kind, quickly kindled and as soon quenched, that hovers
on the surface of shallow minds,
"Even as the flame of unctuous is wont
To move upon the outer surface only";[81]
it was the steady heat of an inward fire kindling the whole character of
the man through and through, like the minarets of his own city of
Dis.[82] He was, as seems distinctive in some degree of the Latinized
races, an unflinching _a priori_ logician, not unwilling to "syllogize
invidious verities,"[83] wherever they might lead him, like Sigier, whom
he has put in paradise, though more than suspected of heterodoxy. But at
the same time, as we shall see, he had something of the practical good
sense of that Teutonic stock whence he drew a part of his blood, which
prefers a malleable syllogism that can yield without breaking to the
inevitable, but incalculable pressure of human nature and the stiffer
logic of events. His theory of Church and State was not merely a
fantastic one, but intended for the use and benefit of men as they were;
and he allowed accordingly for aberrations, to which even the law of
gravitation is forced to give place; how much more, then, any scheme
whose very starting-point is the freedom of the will!
We are thankful for a commentator at last who passes dry-shod over the
_turbide onde_ of inappreciative criticism, and, quietly waving aside the
thick atmosphere which has gathered about the character of Dante both as
man and poet, opens for us his City of Doom with the divining-rod of
reverential study.
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