Solution of the maze.

What I have heard,

Is plain, thou say'st: but wherefore God this way
For our redemption chose, eludes my search.
"Brother! no eye of man not perfected,
Nor fully ripen'd in the flame of love,
May fathom this decree. It is a mark,

In sooth, much aim'd at, and but little kenn'd :
And I will therefore show thee why such way
Was worthiest. The celestial love', that spurns

All envying in its bounty, in itself

With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth
All beauteous things eternal. What distils 2

Immediate thence, no end of being knows;
Bearing its seal immutably imprest.
Whatever thence immediate falls, is free,
Free wholly, uncontrollable by power
Of each thing new: by such conformity

More grateful to its author, whose bright beams,
Though all partake their shining, yet in those
Are liveliest, which resemble him the most.
These tokens of pre-eminence3 on man
Largely bestow'd, if any of them fail,
He needs must forfeit his nobility,
No longer stainless. Sin alone is that,

Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike
To the chief good; for that its light in him

Is darken'd. And to dignity thus lost

Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void,
He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain.
Your nature, which entirely in its seed
Transgress'd, from these distinctions fell, no less

1 The celestial love.] From Boëtius de Consol. Philos. lib. iii. Metr. 9. Quem non externæ pepulerunt fingere causæ

Materiæ fluitantis opus, verum insita summi
Forma boni livore carens; tu cuncta superno
Ducis ab exemplo, pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse
Mundum mente gerens, similique in imagine formans,
Perfectasque jubens perfectum absolvere partes.

2 What distils.] "That, which proceeds immediately from God, and without the intervention of secondary causes, is immortal."

3 These tokens of pre-eminence.] The before-mentioned gifts of immediate creation by God, independence on secondary causes, and consequent similitude and agreeableness to the divine Being, all at first conferred on man.

Than from its state in Paradise; nor means
Found of recovery (search all methods out
As strictly as thou may) save one of these,
The only fords were left through which to wade :
Either, that God had of his courtesy

Released him merely; or else, man himself
For his own folly by himself atoned.

"Fix now thine eye, intently as thou canst,
On the everlasting counsel; and explore,
Instructed by my words, the dread abyss.
"Man in himself had ever lack'd the means
Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop
Obeying, in humility so low,

As high, he, disobeying, thought to soar:
And, for this reason, he had vainly tried,
Out of his own sufficiency, to pay
The rigid satisfaction. Then behoved

That God should by his own ways lead him back
Unto the life, from whence he fell, restored:
By both his ways, I mean, or one alone1.
But since the deed is ever prized the more,
The more the doer's good intent appears;
Goodness celestial, whose broad signature
Is on the universe, of all its ways

To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none.
Nor aught so vast or so magnificent,
Either for him who gave or who received,
Between the last night and the primal day,
Was or can be. For God more bounty show'd,
Giving himself to make man capable
Of his return to life, than had the terms
Been mere and unconditional release.
And for his justice, every method else
Were all too scant, had not the Son of God
Humbled himself to put on mortal flesh.
"Now, to content thee fully, I revert;
And further in some part2 unfold my speech,

1 By both his ways, I mean, or one alone.] Either by mercy and justice united, or by mercy alone. 2 In some part.] She reverts to that part of her discourse where she had said that what proceeds immediately from God "no end of being knows." She then proceeds to tell him that the elements,

That thou mayst see it clearly as myself.

"I see, thou sayst, the air, the fire I see,
The earth and water, and all things of them
Compounded, to corruption turn, and soon
Dissolve. Yet these were also things create.
Because, if what were told me, had been true,
They from corruption had been therefore free.
"The angels, O my brother! and this clime
Wherein thou art, impassible and pure,

I call created, even as they are

In their whole being. But the elements,

Which thou hast named, and what of them is made,
Are by created virtue inform'd: create,

Their substance; and create, the informing virtue
In these bright stars, that round them circling move.
The soul of every brute and of each plant,
The ray and motion of the sacred lights,
Draw from complexion with meet power endued.
But this our life the eternal good inspires
Immediate, and enamours of itself;

So that our wishes rest for ever here.

"And hence thou mayst by inference conclude
Our resurrection certain2, if thy mind
Consider how the human flesh was framed,

When both our parents at the first were made."

which, though he knew them to be created, he yet saw dissolved, received their form not immediately from God, but from a virtue or power created by God; that the soul of brutes and plants is in like manner drawn forth by the stars with a combination of those elements meetly tempered, "di complession potenziata;" but that the angels and the heavens may be said to be created in that very manner in which they exist, without any intervention of agency. 1 Draw.] I had before rendered this differently, and I now think erroneously:

With complex potency attract and turn.

2 Our resurrection certain.] Venturi appears to mistake the Poet's reasoning, when he observes: "Wretched for us, if we had not arguments more convincing, and of a higher kind, to assure us of the truth of our resurrection." It is, perhaps, here intended that the whole of God's dispensation should be taken into the account. The conclusion may be, that as before sin man was immortal, and even in flesh proceeded immediately from God, so being restored to the favour of heaven by the expiation made for sin, he necessarily recovers his claim to immortality even in the body. There is much in this poem to justify the encomium which the learned Salvini has passed on it, when, in an epistle to Redi, imitating what Horace had said of Homer, that the duties of life might be better learnt from the Grecian bard, than from the teachers of the porch or the academy, he says→→

CANTO VIII.

ARGUMENT.

The Poet ascends with Beatrice to the third heaven, which is the planet Venus; and here finds the soul of Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who had been Dante's friend on earth, and who now, after speaking of the realms to which he was heir, unfolds the cause why children differ in disposition from their parents.

THE world' was, in its day of peril dark,
Wont to believe the dotage of fond love,
From the fair Cyprian deity, who rolls
In her third epicycle2, shed on men
By stream of potent radiance: therefore they
Of elder time, in their old error blind,
Not her alone with sacrifice adored
And invocation, but like honours paid
To Cupid and Dione, deem'd of them

Her mother, and her son, him whom they feign'd
To sit in Dido's bosom3: and from her,
Whom I have sung preluding, borrow'd they
The appellation of that star, which views
Now obvious, and now averse, the sun.

And dost thou ask, what themes my mind engage?
The lonely hours I give to Dante's page;
And meet more sacred learning in his lines,
Than I had gain'd from all the school divines.

Se volete saper la vita mia,

Studiando io sto lungi da tutti gli uomini;
Ed ho imparato più teologia

In questi giorni, che ho riletto Dante,

Che nelle scuole fatto io non avria.

1 The world.] The Poet, on his arrival at the third heaven, tells us that the world, in its days of heathen darkness, believed the influence of sensual love to proceed from the star, to which, under the name of Venus, they paid divine honours; as they worshiped the supposed mother and son of Venus, under the names of Dione and Cupid.

2 Epicycle.]

the sphere

With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle.

Milton, P. L. b. viii. 84. "In sul dosso di questo cerchio," &c. Convito di Dante, p. 48. "Upon the back of this circle, in the heaven of Venus, whereof we are now treating, is a little sphere, which has in that heaven a revolution of its own; whose circle the astronomers term epicycle." To sit in Dido's bosom.] Virgil, Æn. lib. i. 718. 4 Now obvious.] Being at one part of the year, a morning, and at another an evening star. So Frezzi:

I was not ware that I was wafted up
Into its orb; but the new loveliness,

That graced my lady, gave me ample proof
That we had enter'd there. And as in flame
A sparkle is distinct, or voice in voice
Discern'd, when one its even tenour keeps,
The other comes and goes; so in that light
I other luminaries saw, that coursed
In circling motion, rapid more or less,
As their eternal vision each impels.

Never was blast from vapour charged with cold,
Whether invisible to eye or no2,

Descended with such speed, it had not seem'd
To linger in dull tardiness, compared

To those celestial lights, that towards us came,
Leaving the circuit of their joyous ring,
Conducted by the lofty seraphim.

And after them, who in the van appear'd,
Such an Hosanna sounded as hath left
Desire, ne'er since extinct in me, to hear
Renew'd the strain. Then, parting from the rest,
One near us drew, and sole began: "We all
Are ready at thy pleasure, well disposed
To do thee gentle service. We are they

To whom thou in the world erewhile didst sing;

"O ye! whose intellectual ministry 3

'Moves the third heaven:' and in one orb we roll,
One motion, one impulse, with those who rule
Princedoms in heaven4; yet are of love so full,

Il raggio della stella

Che'l sol vagheggia or drieto or davanti. Il Quadrir. lib. i. cap. i. whose ray,

Being page and usher to the day,

Does mourn behind the sun, before him play. John Hall.

1 As their.] As each, according to their several deserts, partakes more or less of the beatific vision. 2 Whether invisible to eye or no.] He calls the blast invisible, if unattended by gross vapour; otherwise, visible. 30 ye! whose intellectual ministry.]

Voi ch' intendendo il terzo ciel movete.

The first line in our Poet's first Canzone. See his Convito, p. 40.

+ Princedoms in heaven.] See Canto xxviii. 112, where the princedoms are, as here, made co-ordinate with this third sphere. In his Convito, p. 54, he has ranked them differently, making the thrones the moving intelligences of Venus.