nd indifferent mirror, but as from a mirror that
shapes and orders its reflections for a definite end beyond that of art,
and extraneous to it. And in this lies the secret of Dante's hold upon
so many and so various minds. He is the chief poet of man as a moral
being.

To understand aright the work of any great poet we must know the
conditions of his times; but this is not enough in the case of Dante. We
must know not only the conditions of the generation to which he
belonged, we must also know the specific conditions which shaped him
into the man he was, and differentiated him from his fellows. How came
he, endowed with a poetic imagination which puts him in the same class
with Homer and Shakespeare, not to be content, like them, to give us a
simple view of the phantasmagoria of life, but eager to use the fleeting
images as instruments by which to enforce the lesson of righteousness,
to set forth a theory of existence and a scheme of the universe?

The question cannot be answered without a consideration of the change
wrought in the life and thoughts of men in Europe by the Christian
doctrine as expounded and enforced by the Roman Church, and of the
simultaneous changes in outward conditions resulting from the
destruction of the ancient civilization, and the slow evolution of the
modern world as it rose from the ruins of the old. The period which
immediately preceded and followed the fall of the Roman Empire was too
disorderly, confused, and broken for men during its course to be
conscious of the directions in which they were treading. Century after
century passed without settled institutions, without orderly language,
without literature, without art. But institutions, languages, literature
and art were germinating, and before the end of the eleventh century
clear signs of a new civilization were manifest in Western Europe. The
nations, distinguished by differences of race and history, were settling
down within definite geographical limits; the various languages were
shaping themselves for the uses of intercourse and of literature;
institutions accommodated to actual needs were growing strong; here and
there the social order was becoming comparatively tranquil and secure.
Progress once begun became rapid, and the twelfth century is one of the
most splendid periods of the intellectual life of man expressing itself
in an infinite variety of noble and attractive forms. These new
conditions were most strongly marked in Fra