"[156]
As the mystic Griffin in the eyes of Beatrice (her demonstrations), so
she in his own,
"Now with the one, now with the other nature;
Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled
When I beheld the thing itself stand still
And in its image it transformed itself."[157]
At the very moment when she had undergone her most sublimated allegorical
evaporation, his instinct as poet, which never failed him, realized her
into woman again in those scenes of almost unapproached pathos which make
the climax of his _Purgatorio_. The verses tremble with feeling and shine
with tears.[158] Beatrice recalls her own beauty with a pride as natural
as that of Fair Annie in the old ballad, and compares herself as
advantageously with the "brown, brown bride" who had supplanted her. If
this be a ghost, we do not need be told that she is a woman still.[159]
We must remember, however, that Beatrice had to be real that she might be
interesting, to be beautiful that her goodness might be persuasive, nay,
to be beautiful at any rate, because beauty has also something in it of
divine. Dante has told, in a passage already quoted, that he would rather
his readers should find his doctrine sweet than his verses, but he had
his relentings from this Stoicism.
"'Canzone, I believe those will be rare
Who of thine inner sense can master all,
Such toil it costs thy native tongue to learn;
Wherefore, if ever it perchance befall
That thou in presence of such men shouldst fare
As seem not skilled thy meaning to discern,
I pray thee then thy grief to comfort turn,
Saying to them, O thou my new delight,
'Take heed at least how fair I am to sight.
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