Where, indeed, is the Poet who could not say of some woman, and, if he be fortunate, of more than one, what, in the Twenty-second Canto of the Purgatorio, Dante makes Statius say to Virgil, "Per te poeta fui,” "It was through you that I became a Poet.'

Throughout the remaining Cantos of the Inferno, Beatrice naturally is never mentioned, nor yet in the Purgatorio, till we reach Canto the Thirtieth, wherein occurs perhaps the most painful scene in the aweinspiring poem. In it she descends from Heaven, an apparition of celestial light, compared by the Poet to the dazzling dawn of a glorious day. Smitten with fear, he turns for help to Virgil, but Virgil has left him. << Weep not," says Beatrice to him, “that Virgil is no longer by your side; you will need all your tears when you hear me." Then begins her terrible arraignment:

Guardaci ben ben sem, ben sem Beatrice.

Look on me well! Yes, I am Beatrice.

Confused, Dante gazes upon the ground, and then glances at a fountain hard by; but, seeing his own image trembling in the water, he lowers his eyes to the green sward encircling it, and fixes them there, while she upbraids him for his deviation from absolute fidelity to her memory, and his disregard of her heavenly endeavours still to help and purify him. Boccaccio says that Dante was a man of strong passions, and possibly, indeed probably, he was. But Beatrice seems to reproach him with only one transgression, and, if one is to say what one thinks, she has always appeared to me a little hard on him. Nor does she rest content till she has compelled him to confess his fault. He does so, and then she tells him to lay aside

his grief, and think no more of it, for he is forgiven. Perhaps, in mitigation of the feeling that her severity was in excess of the cause, one ought to remember, since it is peculiarly pertinent to my theme, that we are in the above harrowing scene presented with the crowning characteristic of Dante's poetic conception of Woman, that, be the offence against her what it may, she forgets and forgives.

It might be interesting on some other occasion to inquire how far Dante's poetic conception of Woman is shared by Poets generally, and by the greater Poets of our own land in particular. Meanwhile one may affirm that the inquiry would serve to show that it is in substance the same, though no other Poet, in whatsoever tongue, has extolled and glorified a woman as Dante did Beatrice. But Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, could all be shown, by apposite illustration, to leave on the mind a conception of woman as a being tender, devoted, faithful, helpful, “sweet, and serviceable," as Tennyson says of Elaine, quick to respond to affection, sensitive to beauty in Nature and Arts, sympathising companion alike of the hearth and of man's struggle with life—in a word, a creature of whom it is true to say, as, indeed, Byron has said, that "Love is her whole existence," meaning by Love not what is too frequently in these days falsely presented to us in novels as such, but Love through all the harmonious scale of loving, maternal, filial, conjugal, romantic, religious, and universal.

Read then the Poets. They have a nobler conception of woman and of life than the novelists. Their unobtrusive but conspicuous teaching harmonises with the conduct of the best women, and has its deep

foundation in a belief in the beneficent potency of Love, from the most elementary up to an apprehension of the meaning of the last line of the Divina Commedia :

L'amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle.

Love that keeps the sun in its course, and journeys with the planets in their orbit.

POETRY AND PESSIMISM

THE term Pessimism has in these later days been so intimately associated with the philosophical theories of a well-known German writer, that I can well excuse those who ask, What may be the connection between Pessimism and Poetry? There are few matters of human interest that may not become suitable themes for poetic treatment; but I scarcely think Metaphysics is among them. It is not, therefore, to Schopenhauer's theory of the World conceived as Will and Idea, that I invite your attention. The Pessimism with which we are concerned is much older than Metaphysics, is as old as the human heart, and is never likely to become obsolete. It is the Pessimism of which the simplest, the least cultured, and the most unsophisticated of us may become the victims, and which expresses the feeling that, on the whole, life is rather a bad business, that it is not worth having, and that it is a thing which, in the language used by the Duke in Measure for Measure, in order to console Claudio, none but fools would keep.

Now, as all forms of feeling, and most forms of thought, are reflected in the magic mirror of Poetry, it is only natural that gloomy views of existence, of the individual life, and of the world's destiny should from time to time find expression in the poet's verse. There is quite enough pain in the experience of the individual,

quite enough vicissitude in the history of nations, quite enough doubt and perplexity in the functions and mission of mankind, for even the most cheerful and masculine Song to change sometimes into the pathetic minor. What I would ask you to consider with me is if there be not a danger lest poetry should remain for long in this minor key, and if the Poet does not find ample justification and warrant-nay, should he be a true and comprehensive interpreter of life, of

All moods, all passions, all delights,

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

if he does not find himself compelled, in reply to the question, "What of the night?" to answer, "The stars are still shining."

No survey of the attitude of Poetry towards Pessimism would be satisfactory that confined itself to one particular age; and I shall ask you, therefore, to attend to the utterances of poets in other generations than our own. But, since our own age necessarily interests us the most, let us at least begin with IT.

I should be surprised to find any one doubting that during the last few years a wave of disillusion, of doubt, misgiving, and despondency has passed over the world. We are no longer so confident as we were in the abstract wisdom and practical working of our Institutions; we no longer express ourselves with such certainty concerning the social and moral advantages of our material discoveries; we entertain we entertain growing anxiety as to the future of our Commerce; many persons have questioned the very foundations of religious belief, and numbers have taken refuge from conflicting creeds in avowed Agnosticism, or the confession that we know and can know absolutely