We say in his memory, for such idealizations have a very
subtle retrospective action, and the new condition of feeling or thought
is uneasy till it has half unconsciously brought into harmony whatever is
inconsistent with it in the past. The inward life unwillingly admits any
break in its continuity, and nothing is more common than to hear a man,
in venting an opinion taken up a week ago, say with perfect sincerity, "I
have always thought so and so." Whatever belief occupies the whole mind
soon produces the impression on us of having long had possession of it,
and one mode of consciousness blends so insensibly with another that it
is impossible to mark by an exact line where one begins and the other
ends. Dante in his exposition of the _Canzoni_ must have been subject to
this subtlest and most deceitful of influences. He would try to reconcile
so far as he conscientiously could his present with his past. This he
could do by means of the allegorical interpretation. "For it would be a
great shame to him," he says in the _Vita Nuova_, "who should poetize
something under the vesture of some figure or rhetorical color, and
afterwards, when asked, could not strip his words of that vesture in such
wise that they should have a true meaning." Now in the literal exposition
of the _Canzone_ beginning, "Voi che intendendo il terzo ciel
movete,"[123] he tells us that the _grandezza_ of the _Donna Gentil_ was
"temporal greatness" (one certainly of the felicities attainable by way
of the _vita attiva_), and immediately after gives us a hint by which we
may comprehend why a proud[124] man might covet it.
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