Whatever the truth--and there is little chance that we shall ever know the truth--this much is certain: Dante's earliest long poem, the famous "_Vita Nuova_" (New Life) celebrates his love for Beatrice, and is nothing more than a journal of the heart, a secret diary of his emotions. The _Vita Nuova_ is as far removed from the modern sentimental love tale as June is removed from some almanac prepared a year in advance of the weather changes predicted. It records Dante's first glimpse of Beatrice, the adoration she awakened in him, and the fervour of devotion to which she lifted him; it describes his premonition of her death, and it ends with his resolve to devote his remaining years to her memory. The last chapter of the book looks forward to the _Divine Comedy_. About a year after Beatrice's death, he writes: "It was given me to behold a wonderful vision, wherein I saw things which determined me to say nothing further of this blessed one unto such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to this end I labour all I can, as she in truth knoweth. Therefore if it be His pleasure through whom is the life of all things that my life continue with me a few years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman." Completed years later, the immortal _Comedy_ exists to-day as the most wonderful tribute to a woman ever penned by any poet.
In a mood of lofty pride, Dante placed himself among the six great poets of all time. To-day, all scholars applaud the accuracy and humility of his judgment. Every strong man knows what he can do. He is conscious of his own vast reserves. So often has he measured himself with his fellow-men that he realizes the number, the magnitude and relative strength of his divine endowments. All men of the first order of genius have realized the endowment they have received from God and their fathers. And the _Divine Comedy_ justifies Dante's pride in his own powers. It cannot be classified with a phrase nor dismissed with a label. It is not a poem, like one of Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_; it is rather an encyclopedia upon Italy. It is at one and the same moment an autobiography, a series of personal reminiscences, a philosophy, an oration and the spiritual pilgrimage of a thirteenth century _Childe Harold_, with here and there a lyric poem. The motive which inspired Dante was his sense of the wretchedness of man in this mortal life. The only means of rescue from this wretchedness he conceived to be the exercise of reason, enlightened by God. To convince man of this truth, to bring home to him the conviction of the eternal consequences of his conduct in this world, to show him the path of salvation, was Dante's aim. To lend force and beauty to such a design he conceived the poem as an allegory, and made himself to be its protagonist. He depicts a vision, in which the poet is conducted first by Virgil, as the representative of human reason, through Hell and Purgatory, and then by Beatrice, as the representative of divine revelation, through Paradise to the Heaven, where at last he beholds the triune God.