i am writing on the six hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of dante. the poet was born in 1265; i am writing in 1915. six hundred and fifty years represent a tremendous slice of history; and these six hundred and fifty years span a chasm between two specially notable crises in the annals of this little world. dante was born in a year of battle and of tumult, of fierce dissension and of bitter strife. it was a year that decided the destinies of empires and changed the face of europe. such a year, too, is this in which i write, and, writing, look down the long, long avenue of the centuries that intervene. this morning, however, i am not concerned with the story of revolution and of conflict, of political convulsions and of nations at war. such a study would have fascinations of its own; but i deliberately leave it that i may contemplate the secret history of a great, a noble, and a tender soul. edward fitzgerald tells us that he and tennyson were one day looking in a shop window in regent street. they saw a long row of busts, among which were those of goethe and dante. 185the poet and his friend studied them closely and in silence. at last fitzgerald spoke. ‘what is it,’ he asked, ‘which is present in dante’s face and absent from goethe’s?’ the poet answered, ‘the divine!’ now how did that divine element come into dante’s life? he has himself told us. has the spiritual autobiography of dante, as revealed to us in the introductory lines of his inferno, ever taken that place among our devotional classics to which it is justly entitled? surely the pathos, the insight, and the exquisite simplicity of that first page are worthy of comparison with the choicest treasures of bunyan or of wesley, of brainerd or of fox. let us glance at it.
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i have heard many evangelists preach on such texts as: ‘the son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost.’ it was necessary, of course, that they should explain to their audiences what they meant by this lost condition. wisely enough, they have usually had recourse to illustration. the child lost in a london crowd; the ship lost on a trackless sea; the sheep lost among the lonely hills; the traveller lost in the endless bush,—all these have been exploited again and again. from literature, one of the best illustrations is the moving story of enoch arden. when poor enoch returns 186from his long sojourn on the desolate island, he finds that his wife, giving him up for dead, has married philip, and that his children worship their new father. it is the garrulous old woman at the inn who tells him, never dreaming that she is speaking to enoch. says she:
‘enoch, poor man, was cast away and lost!’
he, shaking his grey head pathetically,
repeated, muttering, ‘cast away and lost!’
again in deeper inward whispers, ‘lost!’
but none of these illustrations are as good as dante’s. he opens by describing the emotions with which, at the age of thirty-five, his soul awoke. he was lost!
in the midway of this our mortal life,
i found me in a gloomy wood, astray,
gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell
it were no easy task, how savage wild
that forest, how robust and rough its growth,
which to remember only, my dismay
renews, in bitterness not far from death.
neither bunyan’s pilgrim in his city of destruction, nor his city of mansoul beleaguered by fierce foes, is quite so human or quite so convincing as this weird scene in the forest. the gloom, the loneliness, the silence, and the absence of all hints as to a 187way out of his misery; these make up a scene that combines all the elements of adventure with all the elements of reality. dante was lost, and knew it.
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the poet cannot tell us by what processes he became entangled in this jungle. ‘how first i entered it i scarce can say.’ but it does not very much matter. the way by which he escaped is the thing that concerns us; and to this theme he bravely addresses himself. in his description of his earliest sensations in the dark forest, several things are significant. he clearly regarded it as a very great gain, for example, to have discovered that he was lost. ‘i found me,’ he says, ‘i found me in a gloomy wood, astray.’ those three words, ‘i found me,’ remind us of nothing so much as the record of the prodigal, ‘and he came to himself.’ i am pleased to notice that it is of the incomparable story of the prodigal that dante’s opening confession reminds most of his expositors. thus, mr. a. g. ferress howell, in his valuable little monograph on dante, observes that this finding of himself ‘shows that he has got to the point reached by the prodigal son when he said, “i will arise and go to my father.” he found, that is to say, that he had altogether missed the true object of life. the 188wild and trackless wood,’ mr. howell goes on to observe, ‘represents the world as it was in 1300. why was it wild and trackless? because the guides appointed to lead men to temporal felicity in accordance with the teachings of philosophy, and to eternal felicity in accordance with the teachings of revelation—the emperor and the pope—were both of them false to their trust.’ so here was poor dante, only knowing that he was hopelessly lost; and unable to discover among the undergrowth about him any suggestion of a way to safety.
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suddenly the vision beautiful breaks upon him. he stumbles blindly through the forest until he arrives at the base of a sunlit mountain:
... a mountain’s foot i reached, where closed
the valley that had pierced my heart with dread.
i looked aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
already vested with that planet’s beam
who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
the hill is, of course, the life he fain would live—steep and difficult, but free from the mists of the valley and the entanglements of the wood. and is it not illumined by the sun of righteousness—‘who leads all wanderers safe through every 189way’? he stepped out from the valley and cheerfully commenced the ascent. and then his troubles began. one after the other, wild beasts barred his way and dared him to persist. his path was beset with the most terrible difficulties. now here, if anywhere, the poet betrays that spiritual insight, that flash of genuine mysticism, that entitles him to rank with the great masters. for whilst he wandered in the murky wood no ravenous beasts assailed him. there, life, however unsatisfying, was at least free from conflict. but as soon as he essayed to climb the sunlit hill his way was challenged. it is a very ancient problem. the psalmist marvelled that, whilst the wicked around him enjoyed a most profound and unruffled tranquillity, his life was so full of perplexity and trouble. john bunyan was arrested by the same inscrutable mystery. why should he, in his pilgrim progress, be so storm-beaten and persecuted, whilst the people who abandoned themselves to folly enjoyed unbroken ease? i have often thought of the problem when out shooting. the dog invariably ignores the dead birds and devotes all his energy to the fluttering things that are struggling to escape. in the stress of the experience itself, however, such comfortable thoughts do not occur to us, and it seems passing strange that, whilst our days in the wood were undisturbed by hungry eyes or gleaming 190fangs, our attempt to climb the sunlit hill should bring about us a host of unexpected enemies. many a young and eager convert, fancying that the christian life meant nothing but rapture, has been startled by the discovery of the beasts of prey awaiting him.
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and such beasts! trouble seemed to succeed trouble; difficulty followed on the heels of difficulty; peril came hard upon peril.
scarce the ascent
began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light,
and covered with a speckled skin, appeared,
nor when it saw me, vanished, rather strove
to check my onward going; that ofttimes
with purpose to retrace my steps i turned.
he had scarcely recovered from the shock, and driven this peril from his path, when
... a new dread succeeded, for in view
a lion came, ’gainst me, as it appeared,
with his head held aloft and hunger-mad.
that e’en the air was fear-struck. a she-wolf
was at his heels, who in her leanness seemed
full of all wants, and many a land hath made
disconsolate ere now. she with such fear
o’erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appalled,
that of the height all hope i lost.
191the panther, the lion, and the wolf; that is very suggestive, and we must look into this striking symbolism a little more closely.
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the three fierce creatures that challenged dante’s ascent of the sunlit hill represent evils of various kinds and characters. if a man cannot be deterred by one form of temptation, another will speedily present itself. it is, as the old prophet said, ‘as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.’ if one form of evil is unsuccessful, another instantly replaces it. if the panther is driven off, the lion appears; and if the lion is vanquished, the lean wolf takes its place. but there is more than this hidden in the poet’s parable. did dante intend to set forth no subtle secret by placing the three beasts in that order? most of his expositors agree that he meant the panther to represent lust, the lion to represent pride, and the wolf to represent avarice. lust is the besetting temptation of youth, and therefore the panther comes first. pride is the sin to which we succumb most easily in the full vigour of life. we have won our spurs, made a way for ourselves in the world, and the glamour of our triumph is too much for us. and avarice comes, not exactly 192in age, but just after the zenith has been passed. the beasts were not equidistant. the lion came some time after the panther had vanished; but the wolf crept at the lion’s heels. what a world of meaning is crowded into that masterly piece of imagery! assuming that this interpretation be sound, two other suggestions immediately confront us; and we must lend an ear to each of them in turn.
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the three creatures differed in character. the panther was beautiful; the lion was terrible; the wolf was horrible. although the poet knew full well the cruelty and deadliness of the crouching panther’s spring, he was compelled to admire the creature’s exquisite beauty. ‘the hour,’ he says,
the hour was morning’s prime, and on his way.
aloft the sun ascended with those stars
that with him rose, when love divine first moved
those its fair works; so that with joyous hope
all things conspire to fill me, the gay skin
of that swift animal, the matin dawn.
and the sweet season.
the lion, on the other hand, is the symbol of majesty and terror. but the lean she-wolf was positively 193horrible. her hungry eyes, her gleaming fangs, her panting sides, filled the beholder with loathing. ‘her leanness seemed full of all wants.’ the poet says that the very sight of her o’erwhelmed and appalled him. dante himself confessed that, of the three, he regarded the last as by far the worst of these three brutal foes. now i fancy that, in the temptations that respectively assail youth, maturity, and decline, i have noticed these same characteristics. as a rule, the sins of youth are beautiful sins. the appeals to youthful vice are invariably defended on aesthetic grounds. the boundary-line that divides high art from indecency is a very difficult one to define. and it is so difficult to define because the blandishments to which youth succumbs are for the most part the blandishments of beauty. like the panther, vice is cruel and pitiless; yet the glamour of it is so fair that it ‘blends with the matin dawn and the sweet season.’ the sins that bring down the strong man, on the other hand, are not so much beautiful as terrible. the man in his prime goes down before those terrific onslaughts that the forces of evil know so well how to organize and muster. they are not lovely; they are leonine. and is it not true that the temptations that work havoc in later life are as a rule unalluring, hideous, and difficult to understand? the world is thunderstruck. it seems so incomprehensible that, after having 194survived his struggle with the beauteous panther and the terrible lion, a man of such mettle should yield to a lean and ugly wolf!
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the other thing is this: there is a distinction in method, a difference in approach, distinguishing these three beasts. the panther crouches, springs suddenly upon its unsuspecting prey, and relies on the advantage of surprise. such are the sins of youth. ‘alas,’ as george macdonald so tersely says,
alas, how easily things go wrong!
a sigh too deep, or a kiss too long,
there follows a mist and a weeping rain.
and life is never the same again.
the lion meets you in the open, and relies upon his strength. the wolf simply persists. he follows your trail day after day. you see his wicked eyes, like fireflies, stabbing the darkness of the night. he relies not upon surprise or strength, but on wearing you down at the last. wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth—having beaten off the panther—beware of the lion and the wolf. and, still more imperatively, let him that thinketh he standeth—having vanquished both the panther and the lion—take heed lest he fall at last to the grim 195and frightful persistence of the lean she-wolf. it is just six hundred and fifty years to-day since dante was born; but, as my pen has been whispering these things to me, the centuries have fallen away like a curtain that is drawn. i have saluted across the ages a man of like passions with myself, and his brave spirit has called upon mine to climb the sunlit hill in spite of everything.
