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upon her, and tracing, as he meditated, the figure of an angel on his tablets.* Can any one doubt that this little incident, so natural and so affecting, his thinking on his lost Beatrice, and by association sketching the figure of an angel, while his mind dwelt upon her removal to a brighter and better world, must have been real? It gave rise to the 18th Sonnet of the Vita Nuova, which he calls "Il doloroso annovale," (the mournful anniversary.)

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Another little circumstance, not less affecting, he has beautifully commemorated in two Sonnets which follow the one last mentioned. They are addressed to some kind and gentle creature, who from a window beheld Dante abandon himself, with fearful vehemence, to the agony of his feelings, when he believed no human eye was on him. "She turned pale," he says, "with compassion; her eyes filled with tears, as if she had loved me: then did I remember my noble-hearted Beatrice, for even thus she often looked upon me," &c.

* Vita Nuova, p. 268.

And he confesses that the grateful, yet mournful pleasure with which he met the pitying look of this fair being, excited remorse in his heart, that he should be able to derive pleasure from any thing.

Dante concludes the collection of his Rime, (his miscellaneous poems on the subject of his early love) with this remarkable note:—

"I beheld a marvellous vision, which has caused me to cease from writing in praise of my blessed Beatrice, until I can celebrate her more worthily; which that I may do, I devote my whole soul to study, as she knoweth well; in so much, that if it please the Great Disposer of all things to prolong my life for a few years upon this earth, I hope hereafter to sing of my Beatrice what never yet was said or sung of woman."

And in this transport of enthusiasm, Dante conceived the idea of his great poem, of which Beatrice was destined to be the heroine. It was to no Muse, called by fancy from her fabled heights, and feigned at the poet's will; it was not to ambition of fame, nor literary leisure

seeking a vent for overflowing thoughts; nor to the wish to aggrandise himself, or to flatter the pride of a patron ;-but to the inspiration of a young, beautiful, and noble-minded woman, we owe one of the grandest efforts of human genius. And never did it enter into the imagination of any lover, before or since, to raise so mighty, so vast, so enduring, so glorious a monument to the worth and charms of a mistress. Other poets were satisfied if they conferred on the object of their love an immortality on earth; Dante was not content till he had placed his a throne in the Empyreum, above choirs of angels, in presence of the very fountain of glory; her brow wreathed with eternal beams, and clothed with the ineffable splendours of beatitude;-an apotheosis, compared to which, all others are earthly and poor indeed.

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CHAPTER IX.

DANTE AND BEATRICE CONTINUED.

THROUGH the two first parts of the Divina Commedia, (Hell and Purgatory,) Beatrice is merely announced to the reader-she does not appear in person; for what should the sinless and sanctified spirit of Beatrice do in those abodes of eternal anguish and expiatory torment? Her appearance, however, in due time and place, is prepared and shadowed forth in many beautiful allusions: for instance, it is she, who descending from the empyreal height, sends Virgil to be the deliverer of Dante in the mysterious forest, and his guide through the abysses of

torment.

Io son Beatrice che ti faccio andare;

Vegno di loco ove tornar disio:

Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare.

INFERNO, C. 2.

"I who now bid thee on this errand forth

Am Beatrice; from a place I come

Revisited with joy; love brought me thence,
Who prompts my speech."

CAREY'S TRANS.

And she is indicated, as it were, several times in the course of the poem, in a manner which prepares us for the sublimity with which she is at length introduced, in all the majesty of a superior nature, all the dreamy splendour of an ideal presence, and all the melancholy charm of a beloved and lamented reality. When Dante has left the confines of Purgatory, a wondrous chariot approaches from afar, surrounded by a flight of angelic beings, and veiled in a cloud of flowers ("un nuvola di fiori," is the beautiful expression.)-A female form is at length apparent in the midst of this angelic pomp, seated in the car, and "robed in hues of living flame:" she is

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