Paul, in which the apostle to the Gentiles
is represented as weeping at the tomb of the greatest of poets. Above
all, Virgil had described the descent of Aeneas to the under-world.
Dante's choice of a guide was therefore, in a certain degree, made for
him. But the mere Reason[183] of man without the illumination of divine
Grace cannot be trusted, and accordingly the intervention of Beatrice was
needed,--of Beatrice, as Miss Rossetti admirably well expresses it
"already transfigured, potent not only now to charm and soothe, potent to
rule; to the Intellect a light, to the Affections a compass and a
balance, a sceptre over the Will."
The wood obscure in which Dante finds himself is the world.[184] The
three beasts who dispute his way are the sins that most easily beset us,
Pride, the Lusts of the Flesh, and Greed. We are surprised that Miss
Rossetti should so localize and confine Dante's meaning as to explain
them by Florence, France, and Rome. Had he written in so narrow a sense
as this, it would indeed be hard to account for the persistent power of
his poem. But it was no political pamphlet that Dante was writing.
_Subjectum est Homo_, and it only takes the form of a diary by Dante
Alighieri because of the intense realism of his imagination, a realism as
striking in the _Paradiso_ as the _Inferno_, though it takes a different
shape.
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