and we were all bereft!
Virgil my sweetest sire! Virgil who led
My soul to safety, when no hope was left.
Not all our ancient mother forfeited,
All Eden, could prevent my dew cleansed cheek
From changing whiteness to a tearful red."
(Purg. XXX, 45, Grandgent's trans.)

One quality is still necessary to complete the picture which our poet
gives of himself. So far we see him as a man of strong faith, of abiding
intensity--a man having supreme confidence in himself with resulting
pride of life, a man big with splendid sincerity and dowered with deep
passion, yet manifesting a gentle, gracious and grateful spirit. So
composed, he is a combination of virtues that may inspire and traits
that may attract many readers. But this is not the finished picture of
the strangely fascinating man who has for six hundred years exercised an
irresistible sway over hearts and minds. What feature is lacking? The
one which has made him master over willing subjects who love and admire
him whether they live in a monarchy or republic, a hovel or a palace,
whether they are of his faith or alien to it. Because the world ever
loves a lover, and because Dante is The Lover _par excellence_ whose
love-story is one "to which heaven and earth have put their hand," he
stands forth with a hold on humanity that is both enduring and supreme.

Love as a passion and a principle of action never left him to his dying
day, from the time when he, a boy of nine years of age, became attracted
by the sweet little girl Beatrice. "She appeared to me" he says,
"clothed in a most noble color, a modest and becoming crimson, and she
was girt and adorned in such wise as befitted her very youthful age." If
we add to those few lines the brief statements made later in the _New
Life_ that her hair was light and her complexion a pearl-pink and that
when he saw her as a maiden she was dressed in white, we have the only
description that Dante ever gave of her personal appearance. It was
love at sight. "I truly say that at that instant the spirit of life
which dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, said these words:
'Behold a god stronger than I, who coming shall rule over me.' From that
time forward Love lorded it over my soul which had been so speedily
wedded to him and he began to exercise over me such control and such
lordship, through the power which my imagination gave him, that it
behooved me to do completely all his pleasure."

If we are d