Note 15 — INTRODUCTION.

The commentators assert that the last two lines here do not allude to the dead lady, but to Beatrice. This would make the poem very clumsy in construction; yet there must be some covert allusion to Beatrice, as Dante himself intimates. The only form in which I can trace it consists in the implied assertion that such person as had enjoyed the dead lady’s society was worthy of heaven, and that person was Beatrice. Or indeed the allusion to Beatrice might be in the first poem, where he says that Love “in forma vera” (that is, Beatrice), mourned over the corpse: as he afterwards says of Beatrice, “Quella ha nome Amor.” Most probably both allusions are intended.