But there was also in Dante a quality of mind which led him to unite the results of knowledge with poetry in a manner almost peculiar to himself.  He was essentially a mystic.  The dark and hidden side of things was not less present to his imagination than the visible and plain.  The range of human capacity in the comprehension of the spiritual world was not then marked by as numerous boundary-stones of failure as now limit the way.  Impossibilities were sought for with the same confident hope as realities.  The alchemists and the astrologers believed in the attainment of results as tangible and real as those which travellers brought back from the marvellous and still unachieved East.  The mystical properties of numbers, the influence of the stars, the powers of cordials and elixirs, the virtues of precious stones, were received as established facts, and opened long vistas of discovery before the student’s eyes.  Curiosity and speculative inquiry were stimulated by wonder and fed by all the suggestions of heated fancies.  Dante, partaking to the full in the eager spirit of the times, sharing all the ardor of the pursuit of knowledge, and with a spiritual insight which led him into regions of mystery where no others ventured, naturally connected the knowledge which opened the way for him with the poetic imagination which cast light upon it.  To him science was but another name for poetry.

Much learning has been expended in the attempt to show that even the doctrine of Love, which is displayed in “The New Life,” is derived, more or less directly, from the philosophy of Plato.  It has been supposed that this little autobiographic story, full of the most intimate personal revelations, and glowing with a sincere passion, was written on a preconceived basis of theory.  A certain Platonic form of expression, often covering ideas very far removed from those of Plato, was common to the earlier, colder, and less truthful poets.  Some strains of such Platonism, derived from the poems of his predecessors, are perhaps to be found in this first book of Dante’s.  But there is nothing to show that he had deliberately adopted the teachings of the ancient philosopher.  It may well, indeed, be doubted if at the time of its composition he had read any of Plato’s works.  Such Platonism as exists in “The New Life” was of that unconscious kind which is shared by every youth of thoughtful nature and sensitive temperament, who makes of his beloved a type and image of divine beauty, and who by the loveliness of the creature is led up to the perfection of the Creator.

The essential qualities of the “Vita Nuova,” those which afford direct illustration of Dante’s character, as distinguished from those which may be called youthful, or merely literary, or biographical, correspond in striking measure with those of the “Divina Commedia.”  The earthly Beatrice is exalted to the heavenly in the later poem; but the same perfect purity and intensity of feeling with which she is reverently