[184] Alone: Of earthly creatures, though in company with Virgil, a shade. In these words is to be found the keynote to the Canto. With the sense of deliverance from immediate danger his enthusiasm has died away. After all, Virgil is only a shade; and his heart misgives him at the thought of engaging, in the absence of all human companionship, upon a journey so full of terrors. He is not reassured till Virgil has displayed his commission.

[185] Muses: The invocation comes now, the First Canto being properly an introduction. Here it may be pointed out, as illustrating the refinement of Dante’s art, that the invocation in the Purgatorio is in a higher strain, and that in the Paradiso in a nobler still.

[186] Silvius’ father: Æneas, whose visit to the world of shades is described in the Sixth Æneid. He finds there his father Anchises, who foretells to him the fortunes of his descendants down to the time of Augustus.

[187] Both of these: Dante uses language slightly apologetic as he unfolds to Virgil, the great Imperialist poet, the final cause of Rome and the Empire. But while he thus exalts the Papal office, making all Roman history a preparation for its establishment, Dante throughout his works is careful to refuse any but a spiritual or religious allegiance to the Pope, and leaves himself free, as will be frequently seen in the course of the Comedy, to blame the Popes as men, while yielding all honour to their great office. In this emphatic mention of Rome as the divinely-appointed seat of Peter’s Chair may be implied a censure on the Pope for the transference of the Holy See to Avignon, which was effected in 1305, between the date assigned to the action of the poem and the period when it was written.

[188] Papal gown: ‘The great mantle’ Dante elsewhere terms it; the emblem of the Papal dignity. It was only in Dante’s own time that coronation began to take the place of investiture with the mantle.

[189] Chosen Vessel: Paul, who like Æneas visited the other world, though not the same region of it. Throughout the poem instances drawn from profane history, and even poetry and mythology, are given as of authority equal to those from Christian sources.

[190] 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.

[191] Dubious state: The limbo of the virtuous heathen (Canto iv.).

[192] The star: In the Vita Nuova Dante speaks of the star in the singular when he means the stars.

[193] In narrowest space: The heaven of the moon, on the Ptolemaic system the lowest of the seven planets. Below it there is only the heaven of fire, to which all the flames of earth are attracted. The meaning is, above all on earth.

[194] The region vast: The empyrean, or tenth and highest heaven of all. It is an addition by the Christian astronomers to the heavens of the Ptolemaic system, and extends above the primum mobile, which imparts to all beneath it a common motion, while leaving its own special motion to each. The empyrean is the heaven of Divine rest.

[195] Burning: ‘Flame of this burning,’ allegorical, as applied to the limbo where Virgil had his abode. He and his companions suffer only from unfulfilled but lofty desire (Inf. iv. 41).

[196] A noble lady: The Virgin Mary, of whom it is said (Parad. xxxiii. 16) that her ‘benignity not only succours those who ask, but often anticipates their demand;’ as here. She is the symbol of Divine grace in its widest sense. Neither Christ nor Mary is mentioned by name in the Inferno.

[197] Lucia: The martyr saint of Syracuse. Witte (Dante-Forschungen, vol. ii. 30) suggests that Lucia Ubaldini may be meant, a thirteenth-century Florentine saint, and sister of the Cardinal (Inf. x. 120). The day devoted to her memory was the 30th of May. Dante was born in May, and if it could be proved that he was born on the 30th of the month the suggestion would be plausible. But for the greater Lucy is to be said that she was especially helpful to those troubled in their eyesight, as Dante was at one time of his life. Here she is the symbol of illuminating grace.

[198] Thy vassal: Saint Lucy being held in special veneration by Dante; or only that he was one that sought light. The word fedele may of course, as it usually is, be read in its primary sense of ‘faithful one;’ but it is old Italian for vassal; and to take the reference to be to the duty of the overlord to help his dependant in need seems to give force to the appeal.

[199] Rachel: Symbol of the contemplative life.

[200] A flood, etc.: ‘The sea of troubles’ in which Dante is involved.

[201] Tears: Beatrice weeps for human misery—especially that of Dante—though unaffected by the view of the sufferings of Inferno.

[202] My Guide, etc.: After hearing how Virgil was moved to come, Dante accepts him not only for his guide, as he did at the close of the First Canto, but for his lord and master as well.