'Leaving behind her that so cruel sea, the bark of poesy now spreads her sails to speed o'er happier waters; and I sing of that mid kingdom where the soul of man is freed from stain, till worthy to ascend to Heaven.'[54] Such are the opening words of Dante's Purgatory, and they drop like balm upon our seared and wounded hearts when we have escaped from the dread abode of eternal ill-desert.

'Man, atoning for the misuse of his free will,' may be regarded as the subject of this poem. And it brings it in a sense nearer to us than either the Hell or the Paradise. Perhaps it ought not to surprise us that the Purgatory has not by any means taken such a hold of the general imagination as the Hell, and that its machinery and incidents are therefore far less widely known; for the power of the Purgatory does not overwhelm us like that of the Inferno whether we understand or no. There are passages indeed in the poem which take the reader by storm and force themselves upon his memory, but as a whole it must be felt in its deeper spiritual meaning to be felt at all. Its gentleness is ultimately as strong as the relentless might of the Hell, but it works more slowly and takes time to sink into our hearts and diffuse its influence there. Nor again need we be surprised that the inner circle of Dante students often concentrate their fullest attention and admiration upon the Paradise, for it is the Paradise in which the poet is most absolutely unique and unapproached, and in it his admirers rightly find the supreme expression of his spirit.

And yet there is much in the Purgatory that seems to render it peculiarly fitted to support our spiritual life and help us in our daily conflict, much which we might reasonably have expected would give its images and allegories a permanent place in the devout heart of Christendom; for, as already hinted, it is nearer to us in our struggles and imperfections, in our aspirations and our conscious unworthiness, nearer to us in our love of purity and our knowledge that our own hearts are stained with sin, in our desire for the fullness of God's light, and our knowledge that we are not yet worthy or ready to receive it; it is nearer to us in its piercing appeals, driven home to the moral experience of every day and hour, nearer to us in its mingled longing and resignation, in its mingled consolations and sufferings, nearer to us in its deep unrest of unattained but unrelinquished ideals, than either the Hell in its ghastly harmony of impenitence and suffering, or the Paradise in its ineffable fruition.

Moreover, the allegorical appropriateness of the various punishments is far more obvious and simple, and the spiritual significance of the whole machinery clearer and more direct, in the Purgatory than in the Hell. In a word, the Purgatory is more obviously though not more truly, more directly though not more profoundly, moral and spiritual in its purport than the Hell.

Dante addresses some of the sufferers on the fifth circle of Purgatory as 'chosen ones of God whose pains are soothed by justice and by hope.'[55] And in truth the spirits in Purgatory are already utterly separated from their sins in heart and purpose, are already chosen ones of God. They are deeply sensible of the justice of their punishment, and they are fed by the certain hope that at last, when purifying pain has done its work, their past sins will no longer separate them from God, they will not only be parted in sympathy and emotion from their own sinful past, but will be so cut off from it as no longer to feel it as their own, no longer to recognise it as a part of themselves, no longer to be weighed down by it. Then they will rise away from it into God's presence. 'Repenting and forgiving,' says one of them, 'we passed from life, at peace with God, who pierces our hearts with longing to see Him.'[56]

The souls in Purgatory, then, are already transformed by the thirst for the living water, already filled with the longing to see God, already at one with Him in will, already gladdened by the hope of entering into full communion with Him. But they do not wish to go into His presence yet. The sense of shame and the sense of justice forbid it. They feel that the unexpiated stains of former sin still cleave to them, making them unfit for Heaven, and they love the purifying torments which are burning those stains away. In the topmost circle of Purgatory, amongst the fierce flames from which Dante would have hurled himself into molten glass for coolness, he sees souls whose cheeks flush at the memory of their sin with a shame that adds a burning to the burning flame; whilst others, clustering at the edge that they may speak with him, yet take good heed to keep within the flame, lest for one moment they should have respite from the fierce pain which is purging away their sins and drawing them nearer to their desire.[57]

Sweet hymns of praise and supplication are the fitting solace of this purifying pain; and as Dante passes through the first of the narrow ascents that lead from circle to circle of Purgatory, he may well contrast this place of torment with the one that he has left, may well exclaim, 'Ah me! how diverse are these straits from those of Hell!'[58]

Penitence, humility, and peace—though not the highest or the fullest peace—are the key-notes of the Purgatory.

When Dante issued from the deadly shades of Hell, his cheeks all stained with tears, his eyes and heart heavy with woe, his whole frame spent with weariness and agony, the sweet blue heavens stretched above him, and his eyes, that for so long had gazed on nought but horror, rested in their peaceful depths; Venus, the morning star, brightened the east, and the Southern Cross poured its splendour over the heavens; daybreak was at hand, and the poets were at the foot of the mount of Purgatory.

The sea rippled against the mountain, and reeds, the emblems of humility, ever yielding to the wave that swept them, clustered round the shore. Dante and Virgil went down to the margin, and there the living poet bathed away the stains and tears of Hell.

Ere long the waves were skimmed by a light bark, a radiant angel standing in the prow, bearing the souls of the redeemed, who must yet be purified, singing the psalm, 'When Israel came out of Egypt.' Amongst the shades thus borne to the mount of purification was Dante's friend Casella, the singer and musician. How often had his voice lulled all Dante's cares to sleep, and 'quieted all his desires,' and now it seemed as though he were come to bring his troubled heart to peace, to rest him in his utter weariness of body and of soul.

So, at his entreaty, Casella raised his voice, and all the shades gathered entranced around him as he sang a noble canzone composed by Dante himself in years gone by.[59] The sweet sound never ceased to echo in the poet's memory—not even the ineffable harmonies of Paradise drowned those first strains of peace that soothed him after his awful toil.

But Purgatory is no place of rest, and Casella's song was rudely interrupted by the guardian of the place, who cried aloud, 'How now, ye sluggard souls! What negligence and what delay is here? Speed to the mountain! Rid you of the crust that lets not God be manifest to you!' To purge away our sins is not to rest; and no longing for repose must tempt us to delay even for a moment.[60]

Dante draws no flattering picture of the ease of self-purification; Hell itself hardly gives us such a sense of utter weariness as the first ascent of the mount of Purgatory. Virgil is on in front, and Dante cries out, altogether spent, 'Oh, my sweet father, turn thou and behold how I am left alone unless thou stay;' but Virgil still urges him on, and after a time comforts him with the assurance that though the mountain is so hard to scale at first, yet the higher a man climbs the easier the ascent becomes, till at last it is so sweet and easy to him that he rises without effort as a boat drops down the stream: then he may know that the end of his long journey has come, that the weight of sin is cast off, that his soul obeys its own pure nature, and rises unencumbered to its God.[61]

The lower portion of the mountain forms a kind of ante-Purgatory, where the souls in weary exile wait for admission to the purifying pain for which they long. Here those who have delayed their penitence till the end of life atone for their wilful alienation by an equal term of forced delay ere they may enter the blessed suffering of Purgatory. Here those who have lived in contumacy against the Church expiate their offences by a thirty-fold exile in the ante-Purgatory; but as we saw in Hell that Papal absolution will not shield the sinful soul, so we find in Purgatory that the Papal malediction, the thunders of excommunication itself, cannot permanently part the repentant soul from the forgiving God.[62]

When this first exile is at an end, and the lower mountain scaled, the gate of the true Purgatory is reached. Three steps lead up to it, 'the first of marble white, so polished and so smooth that in it man beholds him as he is.' This represents that transparent simplicity and sincerity of purpose that, throwing off all self-delusion, sees itself as it is, and is the first step towards true penitence. 'The second step, darker than purpled black, of rough and calcined stone, all rent through length and breadth,' represents the contrite heart of true affliction for past sin. 'The third and crowning mass methought was porphyry, and flamed like the red blood fresh spouting from the vein.' This is the glowing love which crowns the work of penitence, and gives the earnest of a new and purer life. Above these steps an angel stands to whom Peter gave the keys—the silver key of knowledge and the golden key of authority—bidding him open to the penitent, and err rather towards freedom than towards over-sternness.[63]

Within the gate of Purgatory rise the seven terraces where sin is purged. On the three lower ledges man atones for that perverse and ill-directed love which seeks another's ill—for love of some sort is the one sole motive of all action, good or bad.[64] In the lowest circle the pride that rejoices in its own superiority, and therefore in the inferiority of others, is purged and expiated. 'As to support a ceiling or a roof,' says Dante, 'one sees a figure bracket-wise with knees bent up against it bosom, till the imaged strain begets real misery in him who sees, so I beheld these shades when close I scanned them. True it is that less or greater burdens cramped each one or less or more, yet he whose mien had most of patience, wailing seemed to say, "I can no more!"'[65]

In the second circle the blind sin of envy is expiated. Here the eyelids of the envious are ruthlessly pierced and closed by the stitch of an iron wire, and through the horrid suture gush forth tears of penitence that bathe the sinner's cheeks. 'Here shall my eyes be closed,' says Dante, half in shame at seeing those who saw him not, 'here shall my eyes be closed, though open now—but not for long. Far more I dread the pain of those below; for even now methinks I bend beneath the load.'[66]

In the third circle the passionate wend their way through a blinding, stinging smoke, darker than Hell; but all are one in heart, and join in sweet accord of strain and measure singing the 'Agnus Dei.'

In these three lower circles is expiated the perverse love that, in pride, in envy, or in passion, seeks another's ill.

Round the fourth or central ledge hurry in ceaseless flight the laggards whose feeble love of God, though not perverse, was yet inadequate.

Then on the succeeding circles are punished those whose sin was excessive and ill-regulated love of earthly things.

There in the fifth round the avaricious and the prodigal, who bent their thoughts alike to the gross things of earth and lost all power of good, lie with their faces in the dust and their backs turned to heaven, pinioned and helpless.

In the sixth circle the gluttonous in lean and ghastly hunger gaze from hollow eyes 'like rings without the gems,' upon the fruit they may not taste.[67]

And lastly, in the seventh circle the sin of inchastity is purged, in flames as fierce as its own reckless passion.

Through all of these circles to which its life on earth has rendered it liable, the soul must pass, in pain but not in misery; at perfect peace with God, loving the pain that makes it fit to rise into His presence, longing for that more perfect union, but not desiring it as yet because still knowing itself unworthy.

At last the moment comes when this shrinking from God's presence, this clinging to the pain of Purgatory, has its end. The desire to rise up surprises the repentant soul, and that desire is itself the proof that the punishment is over, that the soul is ripe for Heaven. Then, as it ascends, the whole mountain shakes from base to summit with the mighty cry of 'Gloria in excelsis!' raised by every soul in Purgatory as the ransomed and emancipated spirit seeks its home.[68]

Through all these circles Dante is led by Virgil, and here as in Hell he meets and converses with spirits of the departed. He displays the same unrivalled power and the same relentless use of it, the same passionate indignation, the same yearning pity, which take the soul captive in the earlier poem. In the description of Corso Donati's charger dragging his mangled body towards the gorge of Hell in ever fiercer flight; in the indignant protest against the factious spirit of Italy and the passionate appeal to the Empire; in the description of the impotent rage of the fiend who is cheated by 'one wretched tear' of the soul of Buonconte; in the scathing denunciations of the cities of the Arno;[69] in these and in many another passage the poet of the Purgatory shows that he is still the poet of the Hell; but it is rather to the richness of the new thoughts and feelings than to the unabated vigour and passion of the old ones, that we naturally direct our attention in speaking of the Purgatory. And these we have by no means exhausted.

When Dante first entered the gate of Purgatory he heard 'voices mingled with sweet strains' chanting the Te Deum, and they raised in his heart such images as when we hear voices singing to the organ and 'partly catch and partly miss the words.'[70] And this sweet music, only to find its fullest and distinctest utterance in the Paradise, pervades almost the whole of the Purgatory, filling it with a reposeful longing that prepares for the fruition it does not give.

There is a tender and touching simplicity in the records of their earthly lives which the gentle souls in Purgatory give to our poet. Take as an example, the story of Pope Adrian V., whom Dante finds amongst the avaricious: 'A month and little more I felt the weight with which the Papal mantle presses on his shoulders who would keep it from the mire. All other burdens seem like feathers to it. Ah me! but late was my conversion; yet when I became Rome's Shepherd then I saw the hollow cozenage of life; for my heart found no repose in that high dignity, and yonder life on earth gave it no room to aim yet higher; wherefore the love of this life rose within me. Till then was I a wretched soul severed from God, enslaved to avarice, for which, thou seest, I now bear the pain.'[71]

Most touching too are the entreaties of the souls in Purgatory for the prayers of those on earth, or their confession that they have already been lifted up by them. 'Tell my Giovanna to cry for me where the innocent are heard,' says Nino to Dante;[72] and when the poet meets his friend Forese, who had been dead but five years, in the highest circle but one of Purgatory, whereas he would have expected him still to be in exile at the mountain's base, he asks him to explain the reason why he is there, and Forese answers, 'It is my Nella's broken sobs that have brought me so soon to drink the sweet wormwood of torment. Her devout prayers and sighs have drawn me from the place of lingering, and freed me from the lower circles. My little widow, whom I greatly loved, is all the dearer and more pleasing to God because her goodness stands alone amid surrounding vice.'[73]

Surely it is a deep and holy truth, under whatever varying forms succeeding ages may embody it, that the faithful love of a pure soul does more than any other earthly power to hasten the passage of the penitent through Purgatory. When under the load of self-reproach and shame that weighs down our souls, we dare not look up to Heaven, dare not look into our own hearts, dare not meet God, then the faithful love of a pure soul can raise us up and teach us not to despair of ourselves, can lift us on the wings of its prayer, can waft us on the breath of its sobs, swiftly through the purifying anguish into the blissful presence of God.

A feature of special beauty in the Purgatory is formed by the allegorical or typical sculptures on the wall and floor of some of the terraces, by the voices of warning or encouragement that sweep round the mountain, and by the visions that from time to time visit the poet himself. Let one of these visions suffice. Dante is about to enter the circles in which the inordinate love of earthly things, with all vain and vicious indulgence, is punished. 'In dream there came to me,' he says, 'a woman with a stuttering tongue, and with distorted eyes, all twisted on her feet, maimed in her hands, and sallow in her hue. I gazed at her, and as the sun comforts the chilled limbs by the night oppressed, so did my look give ease unto her speech, and straightway righted her in every limb, and with love's colours touched her haggard face. And when her speech was liberated thus, she sang so sweetly it were dire pain to wrest attention from her. "I," she sang, "am that sweet siren who lead astray the sailors in mid sea, so full am I of sweetness to the ear. 'Twas I that drew Ulysses from his way with longing for my song; and he on whom the custom of my voice has grown, full rarely leaves me, so do I content him."' In the end this false siren is exposed in all her foulness, and Dante turns from her in loathing.[74]

Throughout Purgatory Dante is still led and instructed by Virgil. I think there is nothing in the whole Comedy so pathetic as the passages in which the fate of Virgil, to be cut off for ever from the light of God, is contrasted with the hope of the souls in Purgatory. The sweetness and beauty of Virgil's character as conceived by Dante grow steadily upon us throughout this poem, until they make the contemplation of his fate and the patient sadness with which he speaks of it more heartrending than anything that we have heard or seen in Hell. After this we hardly need to hear from Dante the direct expression he subsequently gives of his passionate thirst to know the meaning of so mysterious a decree as that which barred Heaven against the unbaptised.

In Purgatory, Virgil and Dante meet the emancipated soul of the Roman poet Statius, freed at last after many centuries of purifying pain, and ready now to ascend to Heaven. Virgil asks him how he became a Christian, and Statius refers him to his own words in one of the Eclogues, regarded in those days as containing a prophecy of Christ. 'Thou,' says Statius, 'didst first guide me to Parnassus to drink in its grottoes, and afterwards thou first didst light me unto God. When thou didst sing, "The season is renewed, justice returns, and the first age of man, and a new progeny descends from Heaven," thou wast as one who, marching through the darkness of the night, carries the light behind him, aiding not himself, but teaching those who follow him the way. Through thee was I a poet, and through thee a Christian.' Not a shade of envy, not a thought of resentment or rebellion, passes over Virgil's heart as he hears that while saving others he could not save himself.[75]

But now, without dwelling further on the episodes of the poem, we must hasten to consider the most beautiful and profoundest of its closing scenes.

Under Virgil's guidance Dante had traversed all the successive circles of the mount of Purgatory. He stood at its summit, in the earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden which Eve had lost. There amid fairest sights and sounds he was to meet the glorified Beatrice, and she was to be his guide in Heaven as Virgil had been his guide in Hell and Purgatory.

In any degree to understand what follows we must try to realise the intimate blending of lofty abstract conceptions and passionate personal emotions and reminiscences in Dante's thoughts of Beatrice.

This sweet and gentle type of womanhood, round whose earthly life the genius and devotion of Dante have twined a wreath of the tenderest poetry, the most romantic love, that ever rose from heart of man, had been to him in life and death the vehicle and messenger of God's highest grace. Round her memory clustered all the noblest purposes and purest motives of his life, and in her spirit seemed to be reflected the divinest truth, the loftiest wisdom, that the human soul could comprehend. And so, making her objectively and in the scheme of the universe what she had really been and was to him subjectively, he came to regard her as the symbol of Divine philosophy as Virgil was the symbol of human virtue and wisdom.

Touched by the glow of an ideal love, Dante had reached a deeper knowledge, a fuller grace, than the wisdom of this world could teach or gain. The doctors of the Church, the sweet singers, the mighty heroes, the profound philosophers, who had instructed and supported him, had none of them touched his life so deeply, had none of them led him so far into the secret place of truth, had none of them brought him so near to God, as that sweet child, that lovely maid, that pure woman, who had given him his first and noblest ideal.

Now to Dante and to his age it was far from unnatural to erect concrete human beings into abstract types or personifications. Leah and Rachel are the active and the contemplative life respectively. Virgil, we have seen, is human philosophy. Cato of Utica represents the triumph over the carnal nature and the passions. And it is not only the Old Testament and classical antiquity that furnish these types. The celebrated Countess Matilda, who lived only about two centuries before Dante himself, becomes in his poem, according to the generally received interpretation, one of the attributes of God personified. And so Beatrice became the personification of that heavenly wisdom, that true knowledge of God, of which she had been the vehicle to Dante.

But to the poet and to the age in which he lived, it was impossible to separate this heavenly wisdom in its simple, spiritual essence, from the form which its exposition had received at the hands of the great teachers of the Church. To them true spiritual wisdom, personal experience and knowledge of God, were inseparable from theology. The two united in the conception of Divine philosophy. Thus by a strange but intelligible gradation Dante blended in his conception of Beatrice two elements which seem to us the very extreme of incompatibility. She is in the first place the personification of scholastic theology, with all its subtle intricacy of pedantic method; she is in the second place the maiden to whom Dante sang his songs of love in Florence, and whose early death he wept disconsolate. And in the closing scenes of the Purgatory these two conceptions are more intimately blended, perhaps, than anywhere else in Dante's writings.

After wandering, as it were, in the forest of a bewildered life, the poet is led through Hell and Purgatory until he stands face to face at last with his own purest and loftiest ideal; and the fierceness of his own self-accusation when thus confronted with Beatrice he expresses under the form of reproaches which he lays upon her lips, but which we must retranslate into the reproachful utterances of his own tortured heart, if we are to retain our gentle thoughts of Beatrice.

We need not dwell even for a moment on the gorgeous pageantry with which Dante introduces and surrounds Beatrice. Suffice it to say that she comes in a mystic car, which represents the Church, surrounded by saints and angels.

No sooner does Dante see her, although closely veiled, than the might of the old passion sweeps upon him, and like a child that flees in terror to its mother, so does he turn to Virgil with the cry: 'Not one drop of blood but trembles in my veins! I recognise the tokens of the ancient flame.' But Virgil is gone. Dante has no refuge from his own offended and reproachful ideal. As he bursts into lamentations at the loss of Virgil's companionship, Beatrice sternly calls him back: 'Dante! weep not that Virgil has gone from thee. Thou hast a deeper wound for which to weep.'

As one who speaks, but holds back words more burning than he utters, so she stood. A clear stream flowed between her and Dante, and as she began to renew her reproaches he cast down his eyes in shame upon the water;—but there he saw himself! The angels sang a plaintive psalm, and Dante knew that they were pleading for him more clearly than if they had used directer words. Then the agony of shame and penitence that Beatrice's reproof had frozen in his bosom, as when the icy north wind freezes the snow amid the forests of the Apennine, was melted by the angels' plea for him as snow by the breezes of the south, and burst from him in a convulsion of sobs and tears.

How was it possible that he should have gone so far astray, have been so false to the promise and the purpose of his early life, have abused his own natural gifts and the superadded grace of heaven? How was it possible that he should have let all the richness of his life run wild? That after Beatrice had for a time sustained him and led him in the true path with her sweet eyes, he should have turned away from her in Heaven whom he had so loved on earth? How could he have followed the false semblances of good that never hold their word? His visions and his dreams of the ideal he was deserting had not sufficed, and so deep had he sunk that nothing short of visiting the region of the damned could save him from perdition. Why had he deserted his first purposes? What obstacle had baffled or appalled him? What new charm had those lower things of earth obtained to draw him to them? 'The false enticements of the present things,' he sobbed, 'had led his feet aside, soon as her countenance was hid.' But should not the decay of that fair form have been itself the means of weaning him from things of earth, that he might ne'er again be cheated by their beauty or drawn aside by them from the pursuit of heavenly wisdom and of heavenly love? When the fairest of all earthly things was mouldering in the dust, should he not have freed himself from the entanglements of the less beauteous things remaining?

To all these reproaches, urged by Beatrice, Dante had no reply. With eyes rooted to the ground, filled with unutterable shame, like a child repentant and confessing, longing to throw himself at his mother's feet, but afraid to meet her glance while her lips still utter the reproof, so Dante stood. From time to time a few broken words, which needed the eye more than the ear to interpret them, dropped from his lips like shafts from a bow that breaks with excess of strain as the arrow is delivered.

At last Beatrice commanded him to look up. The wind uproots the oak tree with less resistance than Dante felt ere he could turn his downcast face to hers; but when he saw her, transcending her former self more than her former self transcended others, his agony of self-reproach and penitence was more than he could bear, and he fell senseless to the ground.[76]

When he awoke he was already plunged in the waters of Lethe, which with the companion stream of EunoË would wash from his memory the shame and misery of past unfaithfulness, would enable him, no longer crushed by self-reproach, to ascend with the divine wisdom and purity of his own ideal into the higher realms.

And here the Purgatory ends, the Paradise begins.