rather than direct statements. The general notion of God was still (perhaps is largely even now) of a provincial, one might almost say a denominational, Deity. The popular poets always represent Macon, Apolin, Tervagant, and the rest as quasi-deities unable to resist the superior strength of the Christian God. The Paynim answers the arguments of his would-be converters with the taunt that he would never worship a divinity who could not save himself from being done ignominiously to death. Dante evidently was not satisfied with the narrow conception which limits the interest of the Deity to the affairs of Jews and Christians. That saying of Saint Paul, "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you," had perhaps influenced him, but his belief in the divine mission of the Roman people probably was conclusive. "The Roman Empire had the help of miracles in perfecting itself," he says, and then enumerates some of them. The first is that "under Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, when he was sacrificing according to the rite of the Gentiles, a shield fell from heaven into the city chosen of God."* In the Convito we find "Virgil speaking in the person of God," and Æacus "wisely having recourse to God," the god being Jupiter. + Ephialtes is punished in hell for rebellion against "the Supreme Jove," and, that there may be no misunderstanding, Dante elsewhere invokes the "Jove Supreme, Who upon earth for us wast crucified." § It is noticeable also that Dante, with evident design, *De Monarchia, Lib. II. § 4. † Convito, Tr. IV. c. 4; Ib., c. 27; Æneid, I. 178, 179; Ovid's Met., VII. Inferno, XXXI. 92. § Purgatorio, VI. 118, 119. Pulci, not understanding, has parodied this. ("Morgante," Canto II. st. 1.) constantly alternates examples drawn from Christian and Pagan tradition or mythology.* He had conceived a unity in the human race, all of whose branches had worshipped the same God under divers names and aspects, had arrived at the same truth by different roads. We cannot understand a passage in the twenty-sixth Paradiso, where Dante inquires of Adam concerning the names of God, except as a hint that the Chosen People had done in this thing even as the Gentiles did.+ It is true that he puts all Pagans in Limbo, "where without hope they live in longing," and that he makes baptism essential to salvation. But it is noticeable that his Limbo is the Elysium of Virgil, and that he particularizes Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, and others as prisoners there with the rest till the descent of Christ into hell. But were they altogether without hope? and did baptism mean an immersion of the body or a purification of the soul? The state of the heathen after death had evidently been to Dante one of those doubts that spring up at the foot of every truth. In the De Monarchia he says: "There are some judgments of God to which, though human reason cannot attain by its own strength, yet is it lifted to them by the help of faith and of those things which are said to us in Holy Writ, as to this, that no one, however perfect in the *See, for example, Purgatorio, XX. 100-117. We believe that Dante, though he did not understand Greek, knew something of Hebrew. He would have been likely to study it as the sacred language, and opportunities of profiting by the help of learned Jews could not have been wanting to him in his wanderings. In the above-cited passage some of the best texts read Is' appellava, and others Un s' appellava. God was called I (the Je in Jehovah) or One, and afterwards El, the strong, - an epithet given to many gods. Whichever reading we adopt, the meaning and the inference from it are the same. Inferno, IV. § Dante's "Limbo," of course, is the older "Limbus Patrum.” moral and intellectual virtues both as a habit [of the mind] and in practice, can be saved without faith, it being granted that he shall never have heard anything concerning Christ; for the unaided reason of man cannot look upon this as just; nevertheless, with the help of faith, it can.' ""* But faith, it should seem, was long in lifting Dante to this height; for in the nineteenth canto of the Paradiso, which must have been written many years after the passage just cited, the doubt recurs again, and we are told that it was "a cavern," concerning which he had "made frequent questioning." The answer is given here: "Truly to him who with me subtilizes, If so the Scripture were not over you, For doubting there were marvellous occasion." But what Scripture? Dante seems cautious, tells us that the eternal judgments are above our comprehension, postpones the answer, and when it comes, puts an orthodox prophylactic before it : "Unto this kingdom never Ascended one who had not faith in Christ Before or since he to the tree was nailed. But look thou, many crying are, 'Christ, Christ!' To him than some shall be who knew not Christ." There is, then, some hope for the man born on the bank of Indus who has never heard of Christ? Dante is still cautious, but answers the question indirectly in the next canto by putting the Trojan Ripheus among the blessed : "Who would believe, down in the errant world, Could be the fifth one of these holy lights? * De Monarchia, Lib. II. § 8. Then he seems to hesitate again, brings in the Church legend of Trajan brought back to life by the prayers of Gregory the Great that he might be converted; and after an interval of fifty lines tells us how Ripheus was saved: "The other one, through grace that from so deep Whence he believed therein, and suffered not And he reproved therefor the folk perverse. Those maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel If the reader recall a passage already quoted from the Convito,t he will perhaps think with us that the gate of Dante's Limbo is left ajar even for the ancient philosophers to slip out. The divine judgments are still inscrutable, and the ways of God past finding out, but faith would seem to have led Dante at last to a more merciful solution of his doubt than he had reached when he wrote the De Monarchia. It is always humanizing to see how the most rigid creed is made to bend before the kindlier instincts of the heart. The stern Dante thinks none beyond hope save those who are dead in sin, and have made evil their good. But we are by no means sure that he is not right in insisting rather on the implacable severity of the law than on the possible relenting of the judge. Exact justice is commonly more merciful in the long run than pity, for it tends to * Faith, Hope, and Charity. (Purgatorio, XXIX. 121.) Mr. Long fellow has translated the last verse literally. The meaning is, "More than a thousand years ere baptism was." + In which the celestial Athens is mentioned. H These foster in men those stronger qualities which make them good citizens, an object second only with the Romanminded Dante to that of making them spiritually regenerate, nay, perhaps even more important as a necessary preliminary to it. The inscription over the gate of hell tells us that the terms on which we receive the trust of life were fixed by the Divine Power (which can what it wills), and are therefore unchangeable; by the Highest Wisdom, and therefore for our truest good; by the Primal Love, and therefore the kindest. are the three attributes of that justice which moved the maker of them. Dante is no harsher than experience, which always exacts the uttermost farthing; no more inexorable than conscience, which never forgives nor forgets. No teaching is truer or more continually needful than that the stains of the soul are ineffaceable, and that though their growth may be arrested, their nature is to spread insidiously till they have brought all to their own color. Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than Good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy. It must have company, for it cannot bear to be alone in the dark, while "Virtue can see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light." There is one other point which we will dwell on for a moment as bearing on the question of Dante's orthodoxy. His nature was one in which, as in Swedenborg's, a clear practical understanding was continually streamed over by the northern lights of mysticism, through which the familiar stars shine with a softened and more spiritual lustre. Nothing is more interesting than the way in which the two qualities of his mind alternate, and indeed play into each other, tingeing his matter-of-fact sometimes with unexpected glows of fancy, sometimes |