The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2)

fied 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 allu

ice che ti f

oco ove to

sse che mi

rno,

d thee on thi

e; from a

joy; love bro

mpts my

y's

e, 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 fio

hose

ient love was st

nce which even in his ch

m'avea

fuor della pu

vering frame confess the thri

egni dell'a

utifully wrought as it is f

ne being he had known and loved upon earth, but

ith a

majesty whic

sence to her a

flavour of su

led with

y's

own by shame and anguish. She accuses him before the listening angels for his neglected time, his wasted talents, his forge

I had

immortal, th

lf to others;

had risen,

nd of virtu

ar to him and

c. 30.-Ca

om woman's lips, but have a solemnity, and even a sublimity, as uttered by a d

looks w

with deceitful

eps a

hing him with his inco

didst

ure aught so

bs that in thei

nd are scatter

g thus failed th

d of mortal s

tem

tory,

this severity of censure, Dante, gazing on his divine monitress, is so rapt by her loveliness, his eyes so eager to recompence themselves for "their ten years' thirst," (Beatrice had been dead ten years) that not being yet freed from the stain of his earthly nature, he is warned not to gaze "too fixedly" on her charms. After a farther probation, Beatrice intro

the region of thunder is above the centre of the sea:" he gazes up at her in a rapture of love and devotion, and in a sublime apostrophe invokes her still to continue her favour towards him. She looks down upon him from her effulgent height, smiles on him with celestial sweetness, and then f

tunate Francesca di Rimini, whose story he has so exquisitely told in the fifth canto of the Inferno. He left several

nderly lamented, and thus sublimely commemorated, but a mere allegorical personage, the creation of a poet's fancy? Nothing can come of nothing; and it was no unreal or imaginary being who

TNO

and of Gemma Donati: her temper was violent and harsh, and their domestic pea