Note 190 — CANTO II.

A dame: Beatrice, the heroine of the Vita Nuova, at the close of which Dante promises some day to say of her what was never yet said of any woman. She died in 1290, aged twenty-four. In the Comedy she fills different parts: she is the glorified Beatrice Portinari whom Dante first knew as a fair Florentine girl; but she also represents heavenly truth, or the knowledge of it—the handmaid of eternal life. Theology is too hard and technical a term to bestow on her. Virgil, for his part, represents the knowledge that men may acquire of Divine law by the use of their reason, helped by such illumination as was enjoyed by the virtuous heathen. In other words, he is the exponent of the Divine revelation involved in the Imperial system—for the Empire was never far from Dante’s thoughts. To him it meant the perfection of just rule, in which due cognisance is taken of every right and of every duty. The relation Dante bears to these two is that of erring humanity struggling to the light. Virgil leads him as far as he can, and then commits him to the holier rule of Beatrice. But the poem would lose its charm if the allegorical meaning of every passage were too closely insisted on. And, worse than that, it cannot always be found.