That these were the
special virtues of practical goodness Dante had already told us in a
passage before quoted from the _Convito_.[131] That this was Dante's
meaning is confirmed by what Beatrice says to him,[132]
"Short while shalt thou be here a forester (_silvano_)
And thou shalt be with me forevermore
A citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman";
for by a "forest" he always means the world of life and action.[133] At
the time when Dante was writing the _Canzoni_ on which the _Convito_ was
a comment, he believed science to be the "ultimate perfection itself, and
not the way to it,"[134] but before the _Convito_ was composed he had
become aware of a higher and purer light, an inward light, in that
Beatrice, already clarified wellnigh to a mere image of the mind, "who
lives in heaven with the angels, and on earth with my soul."[135]
So spiritually does Dante always present Beatrice to us, even where most
corporeal, as in the _Vita Nuova_, that many, like Biscione and Rossetti,
have doubted her real existence. But surely we must consent to believe
that she who speaks of
"The fair limbs wherein
I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth,"
was once a creature of flesh and blood,--
"A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food.
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