When Dante wrote the Paradise, he well knew that he was engaged in the supreme effort of his life, to which all else had led up. He well knew that he was engaged in no pastime, but with intensest concentration of matured power was delivering such a message from God to man as few indeed had ever been privileged or burdened to receive. He well knew that the words in which through long years of toil he had distilled the sweetness and the might of his vision were immortal, that to latest ages they would bear strength and purity of life, would teach the keen eye of the spirit to gaze into the uncreated light, and would flood the soul with a joy deeper than all unrest or sorrow, with a glory that no gloom could ever dispel. He knew moreover that this his last and greatest poem would speak to a few only in any generation, though speaking to those few with a voice of transforming power and grace.

'Oh, ye,' he cries almost at the beginning of the Paradise, 'who, desirous to hear, have followed in slight bark behind my keel, which sings upon its course, now turn you back and make for your own shores, trust not the open wave lest, losing me, ye should be left bewildered. As yet all untracked is the wave I sail. Minerva breathes, Apollo leads me on, and the nine Muses point me to the pole. Ye other few, who timely have lift up your heads for bread of angels fed by which man liveth but can never surfeit know, well may ye launch upon the ocean deep, keeping my furrow as ye cut your way through waters that return and equal lie.'[77]

In these last words, comparing the track he leaves to the watery furrow that at once subsides, Dante seems to indicate that he was well aware how easily the soul might drop out of his verses, how the things he had to say were essentially unutterable, so that his words could at best be only a suggestion of his meaning dependent for their effect upon the subtlest spiritual influences and adjustments, as well as upon the receptive sympathy of those to whom they were addressed. And if there are so many that fail to catch the spirit and feel the heavenly harmony of the music when it is Dante's own hand that touches the strings, how hopeless seems the task of transferring even its echo, by translated extracts, or descriptions, from which the soul has fled.

There is indeed much that is beautiful, much that is profound, in the Paradise which is capable of easy reproduction, but the divine aroma of the whole could only be translated or transferred by another Dante. Petal after petal of the rose of Paradise may be described or copied, but the heavenly perfume that they breathed is gone.

'His glory that moves all things,' so Dante begins the Paradise, 'pierces the universe; and is here more, here less resplendent. In that Heaven which of His light has most, was I. There I saw things which he who thence descends has not the knowledge or power to retell. For as it draws anigh to its desire, our intellect pierces so deep that memory cannot follow in its track. But of that sacred empire so much as I had power in my mind to store, shall now be matter of my poesy.'[78]

And again, almost at the close he sings, 'As is he who dreams, and when the dream is broke still feels the emotion stamped upon his heart though all he saw is fled beyond recall, e'en such am I; for, all the vision gone well-nigh without a trace, yet does the sweetness that was born of it still drop within my heart.'[79]

If so much as an echo of that echo, if so much as a dream of that dream, falls upon our ears and sinks into our hearts, then we are amongst those few for whom Dante wrote his last and his divinest poem.

Through the successive heavens of Paradise Dante is conducted by Beatrice; and here again the intimate blending in the divine guide of two distinct almost contradictory conceptions forms one of the great obstacles towards giving an intelligible account of the poem. This obstacle can only disappear when patient study guided by receptive sympathy has led us truly into the poet's thought.

In the Paradise, however, the allegorical and abstract element in the conception of Beatrice is generally the ruling one. She is the impersonation of Divine Philosophy, under whose guidance the spiritual discernment is so quickened and the moral perceptions so purified, that the intellect can thread its way through subtlest intricacies of casuistry and theology, and where the intellect fails the eye of faith still sees.

Even in this allegorical character Beatrice is a veritable personality, as are Lucia, the Divine Grace, and the other attributes or agents of the Deity, who appear in the Comedy as personal beings with personal affections and feelings, though at the same time representing abstract ideas. Thus Beatrice, as Divine Philosophy impersonated, is at once an abstraction and a personality. 'The eyes of Philosophy,' says Dante elsewhere, 'are her demonstrations, the smile of Philosophy her persuasions.'[80] And this mystic significance must never be lost sight of when we read of Beatrice's eyes kindling with an ever brighter glow and her smile beaming through them with a diviner sweetness as she ascends through heaven after heaven ever nearer to the presence of God. The demonstrations of Divine Philosophy become more piercing, more joyous, more triumphant, her persuasions more soul-subduing and entrancing, as the spirit draws nearer to its source.

But though we shall never understand the Paradise unless we perceive the allegorical significance and appropriateness not only of the general conception of Beatrice, but also of many details in Dante's descriptions of her, yet we should be equally far from the truth if we imagined her a mere allegory. She is a glorified and as it were divine personality, and watches over and guides her pupil with the tenderness and love of a gentle and patient mother. The poet constantly likens himself to a wayward, a delirious, or a frightened child, as he flies for refuge to his blessed guide's maternal care.[81]

Again, they are in the eighth heaven, and Beatrice knows that a glorious manifestation of saints and angels is soon to be vouchsafed to Dante. Listen to his description of her as she stands waiting: 'E'en as a bird amongst the leaves she loves, brooding upon the nest of her sweet young throughout the night wherein all things are hid, foreruns the time to see their loved aspect and find them food, wherein her heavy toil is sweet to her, there on the open spray, waiting with yearning longing for the sun, fixedly gazing till the morn shall rise; so did she stand erect, her eyes intent on the meridian. And seeing her suspended in such longing I became as one who yearns for what he knows not, and who rests in hope.'[82]

Under Beatrice's guidance, then, Dante ascends through the nine heavens into the empyrean heights of Paradise. Here in reality are the souls of all the blessed, rejoicing in the immediate presence and light of God,[83] and here Dante sees them in the glorified forms which they will wear after the resurrection. But in order to bring home to his human understanding the varied grades of merit and beatitude in Paradise, he meets or appears to meet the souls of the departed in the successive heavens through which he passes, sweeping with the spheres in wider and ever wider arc, as he rises towards the eternal rest by which all other things are moved.

It is in these successive heavens that Dante converses with the souls of the blessed. In the lower spheres they appear to him in a kind of faint bodily form like the reflections cast by glass unsilvered; but in the higher spheres they are like gems of glowing light, like stars that blaze into sight or fade away in the depths of the sky; and these living topaz and ruby lights, like the morning stars that sing together in Job, break into strains of ineffable praise and joy as they glow upon their way in rhythmic measure both of voice and movement.

Thus in the fourth Heaven, the Heaven of the Sun, Dante meets the souls of the great doctors of the Church. Thomas Aquinas is there, and Albertus Magnus and the Venerable Bede and many more. A circle of these glorious lights is shining round Dante and Beatrice as Aquinas tells the poet who they were on earth. 'Then like the horologue, that summons us, what hour the spouse of God rises to sing her matins to her spouse, to win his love, wherein each part urges and draws its fellow, making a tinkling sound of so sweet note that the well-ordered spirit swells with love: so did I see the glorious wheel revolve, and render voice to voice in melody and sweetness such as ne'er could noted be save where joy stretches to eternity.

'Oh, senseless care of mortals! Ah, how false the thoughts that urge thee in thy downward flight! One was pursuing law, and medicine one, another hunting after priesthood, and a fourth would rule by force or fraud; one toiled in robbery, and one in civil business, and a third was moiling in the pleasures of the flesh all surfeit-weary, and a fourth surrendered him to sloth. And I the while, released from all these things, thus gloriously with Beatrice was received in Heaven.'[84]

When Beatrice fixes her eyes—remember their allegorical significance as the demonstrations of Divine philosophy—upon the light of God, and Dante gazes upon them, then quick as thought and without sense of motion, the two arise into a higher heaven, like the arrow that finds its mark while yet the bow-string trembles; and Dante knows by the kindling beauty that glows in his guardian's eyes that they are nearer to the presence of God and are sweeping Heaven in a wider arc.

The spirits in the higher heavens see God with clearer vision, and therefore love Him with more burning love, and rejoice with a fuller joy in His presence than those in the lower spheres. Yet these too rest in perfect peace and oneness with God's will.

In the Heaven of the Moon, for instance, the lowest of all, Dante meets Piccarda. She was the sister of Forese, whom we saw in the highest circle but one of Purgatory, raised so far by his widowed Nella's prayers. When Dante recognises her amongst her companions, in her transfigured beauty, he says, '"But tell me, ye whose blessedness is here, do ye desire a more lofty place, to see more and to be more loved by God?" She with those other shades first gently smiled, then answered me so joyous that she seemed to glow with love's first flame, "Brother, the power of love so lulls our will, it makes us long for nought but what we have, and feel no other thirst. If we should wish to be exalted more, our wish would be discordant with His will who here assigned us; and that may not be within these spheres, as thou thyself mayst see, knowing that here we needs must dwell in love, and thinking what love is. Nay, 'tis inherent in this blessedness to hold ourselves within the will Divine, whereby our wills are one. That we should be thus rank by rank throughout this realm ordained, rejoices all the realm e'en as its King, who draws our wills in His. And His decree is our peace. It is that sea to which all things are moved which it creates and all that nature forges." Then was it clear to me how every where in Heaven is Paradise, e'en though the grace distil not in one mode from that Chief Good.'[85]

So again in the second heaven, the Heaven of Mercury, the soul of Justinian tells the poet how that sphere is assigned to them whose lofty aims on earth were in some measure fed by love of fame and glory rather than inspired by the true love of God. Hence they are in this lower sphere. Yet part of their very joy consists in measuring the exact accord between the merits and the blessedness of the beatified. 'As diverse voices make sweet melody,' he continues, 'so do the diverse ranks of our life render sweet harmony amidst these spheres.'[86]

Indeed, one of the marvels of this marvellous poem is the extreme variety of character and even of incident which we find in Heaven as well as in Hell and Purgatory. In each of the three poems there is one key-note to which we are ever brought back, but in each there is infinite variety and delicacy of individual delineation too. The saints are no more uniform and characterless in their blessedness than are the unrepentant sinners in their tortures or the repentant in their contented pain.

Nor must we suppose that the Paradise is an unbroken succession of descriptions of heavenly bliss. Here too, as in Hell and Purgatory, the things of earth are from time to time discussed by Dante and the spirits that he meets. Here too the glow of a lofty indignation flushes the very spheres of Heaven. Thus Peter cries against Pope Boniface VIII: 'He who usurps upon the earth my place, my place, MY PLACE, which in the presence of the Son of God is vacant now, has made the city of my sepulture a sink of blood and filth, at which the rebel Satan, who erst fell from Heaven, rejoices down in Hell.' And at this the whole Heaven glows with red, and Beatrice's cheek flushes as at a tale of shame.[87]

Dante is still the same. The sluggish self-indulgence of the monks, the reckless and selfish ambition of the factious nobles and rulers, the venal infamy of the Court of Rome, cannot be banished from his mind even by the beatific visions of Heaven. Nay, the very contrast gives a depth of indignant sadness to the denunciations of the Paradise which makes them almost more terrible than those of Hell itself.

Interwoven too with the descriptions of the bliss of Heaven, is the discussion of so wide a range of moral and theological topics that the Paradise has been described as having 'summed up, as it were, and embodied for perpetuity ... the quintessence, the living substance, the ultimate conclusions of the scholastic theology;'[88] and it may well be true that to master the last cantica of the 'Divine Comedy' is to pierce more deeply into the heart of mediÆval religion and theology than any of the schoolmen and doctors of the Church can take us. At the touch of Dante's staff, the flintiest rock of metaphysical dogma yields the water of life, and in his mouth the subtlest discussion of casuistry becomes a lamp to our feet.

And beyond all this, such is the marvellous concentration of Dante's poetry, there is room in the Paradise for long digressions, biographical, antiquarian, and personal; whilst all these parts, apparently so heterogeneous, are welded into perfect symmetry in this one poem.

Amongst the most important of the episodes is the account of ancient Florence given to Dante by his ancestor Cacciaguida, who also predicts the poet's exile and wanderings, and in a strain of lofty enthusiasm urges him to pour out all the heart of his vision and brave the hatred and the persecution that it will surely bring upon him.

This Cacciaguida was a Crusader who fell in the Holy Land, and Dante meets him in the burning planet of Mars, amongst the mighty warriors of the Lord whose souls blaze there in a ruddy glow of glory. There is Joshua, there Judas MaccabÆus, and Charlemagne and Orlando and Godfrey and many more.

A red cross glows athwart the planet's orb, and from it beams in mystic guise the Christ; but how, the poet cannot say, for words and images are wanting to portray it. Yet he who takes his cross and follows Christ, will one day forgive the tongue that failed to tell what he shall see when to him also Christ shall flash through that glowing dawn of light.

Here the souls, like rubies that glow redder from the red-glowing cross as stars shine forth out of the Milky Way, pass and repass from horn to horn, from base to summit, and burst into a brighter radiance as they join and cross, while strains of lofty and victorious praise, unknown to mortal ears, gather upon the cross as though it were a harp of many strings, touched by the hand of God, and take captive the entranced, adoring soul.

There Cacciaguida hailed his descendant Dante, and long they conversed of the past, the present, and the future. Alas for our poor pride of birth! What wonder if men glory in it here? For even there in Heaven, where no base appetite distorts the will and judgment, even there did Dante glow with pride to call this man his ancestor.

At last their converse ended; Cacciaguida's soul again was sweeping the unseen strings of that heavenly harp, and Dante turned again to look for guidance from his guardian. Beatrice's eyes were fixed above; and quick as the blush passes from a fair cheek, so quick the ruddy glow of Mars was gone, and the white light of Jupiter shone clear and calm in the sixth heaven—the Heaven of the Just.

What a storm of passions and emotions swept through Dante's soul when he learnt where he was! 'O chivalry of Heaven!' he exclaimed in agony, 'pray for those who are led all astray on earth by foul example.' When would the Righteous One again be wroth, and purge His temple of the traffickers—His temple walled by miracles and martyrdoms? How long should the Pope be suffered to degrade his holy office by making the penalties of Church discipline the tools of selfish politics—how long should his devotion to St. John the Baptist, whose head was stamped upon the coins of Florence, make him neglect the fisherman and Paul?

Such were the first thoughts that rose in Dante's mind in the Heaven of the Just; but they soon gave way to others. Here surely, here if anywhere, God's justice must be manifest. Reflected in all Heaven, here must it shine without a veil. The spirits of the just could surely solve his torturing doubt. How long had his soul hungered and found no food on earth, and now how eagerly did he await the answer to his doubt! They knew his doubt, he need not tell it them; oh, let them solve it!

Yes, they knew what he would say: 'A man is born upon the bank of Indus, and there there is none to speak of Christ, or read or write of him. All this man's desires and acts are good, and without sin, as far as human eye can see, in deed or word. He dies unbaptised, without the faith. Where is that justice which condemns him? Where is his fault in not believing?' Yes, they knew his doubt, but could not solve it. Their answer is essentially the same as Paul's: 'Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?'

The Word of God, say the spirits of the just, could not be so expressed in all the universe but what it still remained in infinite excess. Nay, Lucifer, the highest of created beings, could not at once see all the light of God, and fell through his impatience. How then could a poor mortal hope to scan the ways of God? His ken was lost in His deep justice as the eye is lost in the ocean. We can see the shallow bottom of the shore, but we cannot see the bottom of the deep, which none the less is there. So God's unfathomable justice is too deep, too just, for us to comprehend. The Primal Will, all goodness in itself, moves not aside from justice and from good. Never indeed did man ascend to heaven who believed not in Christ, yet are there many who cry, Lord, Lord, and in the day of judgment shall be far more remote from Christ than many a one that knew him not.[89]

With this answer Dante must be content. He must return from Heaven with this thirst unslaked, this long hunger still unsatisfied. Ay, and with this answer must we too rest content. And yet not with this answer, for we do not ask this question. That awful load of doubt under which Dante bent is lifted from our souls, and for us there is no eternal Hell, there are no virtuous but rejected Heathen. Yet to us too the ocean of God's justice is too deep to pierce. And when we ask why every blessing, every chance of good, is taken from one child, while another is bathed from infancy in the light of love, and is taught sooner than it can walk to choose the good and to reject the evil, what answer can we have but Dante's? Rest in faith. You know God's justice, for you feel it with you in your heart when you are fighting for the cause of justice; you know God's justice, for you feel it in your heart like an avenging angel when you sin; you know God's justice—but you do not know it all.

There in the Heaven of the Just was David; now he knew how precious were his songs, since his reward was such. There too was Trajan, who by experience of the bliss of Heaven and pain of Hell knew how dear the cost of not obeying Christ. There were Constantine, and William of Sicily, and Ripheus, that just man of Troy. 'What things are these?' was the cry that dropped by its own weight from Dante's lips. The heathens Trajan and Ripheus here! No, not heathens. Ripheus had so given himself to justice when on earth, that God in His grace revealed to him the coming Christ, and he believed. Faith, Hope, and Charity were his baptism more than a thousand years ere baptism was known. And for Trajan, Gregory had wrestled in prayer for him, had taken the Kingdom of Heaven by storm with his warm love and living hope; and since no man repents in Hell, God at the prayer of Gregory had recalled the imperial soul back for a moment to its mouldering clay. There it believed in Christ, and once more dying, entered on his joy.[90]

Thus did Dante wrestle with his faith, and in the passion of his love of virtue and thirst for justice seek to escape the problem which he could not solve.

But we must hasten to the close. Dante and Beatrice have passed through all the heavens. The poet's sight is gradually strengthened and prepared for the supreme vision. He has already seen a kind of symbol of the Uncreated, surrounded by the angelic ministers. It was in the ninth heaven, the Heaven of the Primum Mobile, that he saw a single point of intensest light surrounded by iris rings, upon which point, said Beatrice, all Heaven and all nature hung.[91]

But now they have passed beyond all nine revolving heavens into the region of 'pure light, light intellectual full of love, love of the truth all full of joy, joy that transcends all sweetness.'[92] And here the poet sees that for which all else had been mere preparation.

But I will not strive to reproduce his imagery, with the mighty river of light inexhaustible, with the mystic flowers of heavenly perfume, with the sparks like rubies set in gold ever passing between the flowers and the river. Of this river Dante drank, and then the true forms of what had hitherto been shadowed forth in emblems only, rose before his eyes. Rank upon rank the petals of the mystic rose of Paradise stretched far away around and above him. There were the blessed souls of the holy ones, bathed in the light of God that streamed upon them from above, while the angels ever passed between it and them ministering peace and love.

There high up, far, far beyond the reach of mortal eye, had it been on earth, sat Beatrice, who had left the poet's side. But in Heaven, with no destroying medium to intervene, distance is no let to perfect sight. He spoke to her. He poured out his gratitude to her, for it was she who had made him a free man from a slave, she who had made him sane, she who had left her footprints in Hell for him, when she went to summon Virgil to his aid. Oh, that his life hereafter might be worthy of the grace and power that had so worked for him! Then from her distant place in Heaven, Beatrice looked at him and smiled, then turned her eyes upon the Uncreated Light.[93]

St. Bernard was at Dante's side, and prayed that the seer's vision might be strengthened to look on God. Then Dante turned his eyes to the light above. The unutterable glory of that light dazzled not his intent, love-guided gaze. Nay, rather did it draw it to itself and every moment strengthen it with keener sight and feed it with intenser love.

Deeper and deeper into that Divine Light the seer saw. Had he turned his eyes aside, then indeed he knew the piercing glory would have blinded them; but that could never be, for he who gazes on that light feels all desire centred there—in it are all things else. So for a time with kindling gaze the poet looked into the light of God, unchanging, yet to the strengthening sight revealing ever more. Mysteries that no human tongue can tell, no human mind conceive, were flashed upon him in the supreme moment, and then all was over—'The power of the lofty vision failed.'

Dante does not tell us where he found himself when the vision broke. He only tells us this: that as a wheel moves equally in all its parts, so his desire and will were, without strain or jar, revolved henceforth by that same Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.[94]

This was the end of all that Dante had thought and felt and lived through—a will that rolled in perfect oneness with the will of God. This was the end to which he would bring his readers, this was the purpose of his sacred poem, this was the meaning of his life.[95]