"And art thou, then, that Virgil," said Dante, "who has filled the world with such floods of eloquence? O glory and light of all poets, thou art my master, and thou mine _author_; thou alone the book from which I have gathered beauties that have gained me praise. Behold the peril I am in, and help me, for I tremble in every vein and pulse."
Virgil comforted Dante. He told him that he must quit the wood by another road, and that he himself would be his guide, leading him first to behold the regions of woe underground, and then the spirits that lived content in fire because it purified them for heaven; and then that he would consign him to other hands worthier than his own, which should raise him to behold heaven itself; for as the Pagans, of whom he was one, had been rebels to the law of him that reigns there, nobody could arrive at Paradise by their means.[4]
So saying, Virgil moved on his way, and Dante closely followed. He expressed a fear, however, as they went, lest being "neither Æneas nor St. Paul," his journey could not be worthily undertaken, nor end in wisdom. But Virgil, after sharply rebuking him for his faintheartedness, told him, that the spirit of her whom he loved, Beatrice, had come down from heaven on purpose to commend her lover to his care; upon which the drooping courage of the pilgrim was raised to an undaunted confidence; as flowers that have been closed and bowed down by frosty nights, rise all up on their stems in the morning sun.[5]
"Non vuol che 'n sua città per me sì vegna."
The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers avowedly set reason at defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd," as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued, much more so, they had at least an equal claim on the submission of the reason; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological triumph.
"Through me is the road to the dolorous city; Through me is the road to the everlasting sorrows; Through me is the road to the lost people. Justice was the motive of my exalted maker; I was made by divine power, by consummate wisdom, and by primal love; Before me was no created thing, if not eternal; and eternal am I also. Abandon hope, all ye who enter."