attain great truths, Vergil stood out preëminently
among the great names of antiquity as the one who,
according to mediæval ideas, appeared the purest and
the nearest the Christ, of whom he had been, however
unconsciously, a prophet. And finally, in the con-
struction of his great poem, Dante derived the main
idea and many of the details from Vergil, and made
more use of him than of any other writer in the course
of his work.

All this will, I trust, make it clear that the office
of guide assigned by Dante to Vergil is a thoroughly
genuine one, and that the choice of Vergil for this
purpose is not, as is generally considered, a mere freak
of the imagination determined by external causes, but
has just as true a psychological reason as the choice
of his other guide, Beatrice. And it is further neces-
sary to bear in mind the essential fact that Dante's is
a creative genius, not in the field of science, but in
that of poetry, and that therefore, while admiring
intellectual greatness in every form, if called upon to
choose as his associate between a philosopher and a
poet, he could not fail to choose the latter. Hence
those with whom in his poem he spends much time
are always artists and poets, such as Vergil, Statius,
Sordello, Arnaldo, and Casella, while the five men di
cotanto senno, whom he meets in Limbo, are all poets.
It is as poet that he regards himself in the moments
of his strongest emotions; this is his supreme merit,
by which he hopes to obtain that return from exile
al bell' ovile ov' io dormii agnello; and it is a poet's
crown which he aspires to take in his belSan Gio-
vanni, where first he was admitted into the Christian
communion:--

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