Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/61

Rh this sonnet there appeared to me a wondrous vision, wherein I beheld things which made me resolve to say no more concerning my Blessed One until I could treat of her more worthily. And that I may attain unto this I study with all my might, as she truly knoweth. Wherefore if it shall be the pleasure of Him by whom all things live that my life shall yet endure for some years, I hope to say concerning her that which has never been said concerning any woman." The Vita Nuova is believed to have been written about 1294, At this time, therefore, Dante was meditating a poetical apotheosis of Beatrice on a scale surpassing anything attempted before, although the natural inference from his words would seem to be that he had not yet begun to write.

He would probably at first contemplate nothing more than the expansion of the thought of his sonnet into a vision somewhat resembling that of Laura in Petrarch's Trionfi; but ere long he might say to himself, inverting the question which Ellwood the Quaker addressed to Milton: "Thou hast told us of Paradise gained, what hast thou to tell us of Paradise lost?" and, granted the existence of the intermediate realm of Purgatory, the entire scheme of the Divina Commedia would be present to his mind. As poets but rarely "imitate the example of those two prudent insects the bee and the spider," he would begin with the Inferno, where, notwithstanding the inscription, offensive to an age as far in advance of its sentiment as Dante himself was in advance of Homer's polytheism and anthropomorphism, which he has thought fit to place upon the portal, Beatrice could have neither part nor lot. It must be long indeed before he could rejoin her.

It can hardly be said, then, that Beatrice is the heroine