er gracious revelation, that she was
in heaven, whither I in my thought oftentimes went,--as it were, seized
up. And this made me desirous of death, that I might go there where she
was."[N] Following upon the chapter in which this remarkable passage
occurs is one which is chiefly occupied with a digression upon the
immortality of the soul,--and with discourse upon this matter, says
Dante, "it will be beautiful to finish speaking of that living and
blessed Beatrice, of whom I intend to say no more in this book.... And
I believe and affirm and am certain that I shall pass after this to
another and better life, in which that glorious lady lives of whom my
soul was enamored."[O]

[Footnote N: _Convito_, Tratt. ii. c. 8.]

[Footnote O: Id. c. 9.]

But it is not from the "Convito" alone that this portion of the "Vita
Nuova" receives illustration. In that passage of the "Purgatory" in
which Beatrice is described as appearing in person to her lover the
first time since her death, she addresses him in words of stern rebuke
of his fickleness and his infidelity to her memory. The whole scene is,
perhaps, unsurpassed in imaginative reality; the vision appears to have
an actual existence, and the poet himself is subdued by the power of his
own imagination. He tells the words of Beatrice with the same feeling
with which he would have repeated them, had they fallen on his mortal
ear. His grief and shame are real, and there is no element of feigning
in them. That in truth he had seemed to himself to listen to and to
behold what he tells, it is scarcely possible to doubt. Beatrice says,--

"Some while at heart my presence kept him sound;
My girlish eyes to his observance lending,
I led him with me on the right way bound.
When of my second age the steps ascending,
I bore my life into another sphere,
Then stole he from me, after others bending.
When I arose from flesh to spirit clear,
When beauty, worthiness, upon me grew,
I was to him less pleasing and less dear."[P]

[Footnote P: Purgatory, c. xxx. vv. 118-126.--CAYLEY'S Translation.]

But although Beatrice only gives utterance to the self-reproaches of
Dante, we have seen already how fully he had atoned for this first and
transient unfaithfulness of his heart. The remainder of the "Vita Nuova"
shows how little she had lost of her power over him, how reverently he
honored her memory, how constant was his love of her whom he should see
never again with hi