“And from the seats, in midway rank, that knit These double files, and downwards, thou wilt find That none do for their own deserving sit, But for another’s under terms assigned; For every one of these hath been set free Ere truly self-determined was the mind. This by the childish features wilt thou see, If well thou scan them, and if well thou list Wilt hear it by the childlike symphony.” Dante is perplexed by the difference even in these innocent babes, but S. Bernard reminds him that there is difference in endowment, but that all are subject to the divine all-embracing law:— “And therefore these, who took such hasty flight, Into the true life not without a cause Are entered so, these more, and those less, bright,”— an interpretation of the vision which is really less scholastic than suggested by the deeper insight of the poetic mind. The most significant passage, however, is found in the famous words at the beginning of the Vita Nuova, which fix Dante’s first sight of Beatrice when he was nine years old. “And since,” he closes, “to dwell upon the passions and actions of such early youth seems like telling an idle tale, I will leave them, and, passing over many things which might be drawn from the original where these lie hidden, I will come to those words which are written in my memory under larger paragraphs.”[28] In these last words is apparent Dante’s own judgment upon the worth of his recollections of childhood: one page only in that book of his memory he deems worthy of regard,—the page upon which fell the image of Beatrice. It will be said with truth that the childhood of Dante and Beatrice is in reality the beginning of maturity, for it is counted only as the initiation of a noble passion. The time, indeed, had not yet come in the history of human life when the recollection of that which is most distinctive of childhood forms the basis of speculation and philosophic dream. The absence of childhood from the visions of Dante is a negative witness to the absence from the world, in the age prior to the Renaissance, of hope and of simple faith and innocence. Dante’s faint recognition of these qualities throws them back into a quickly forgotten and outgrown childhood. The lisping child becomes the greedy worldling, the cruel and unloving man, and the tyranny of an empire of souls is hinted at in the justification by the poet of the presence of innocent babes in Paradise; they are there by the interposition of a sacrificial act. The poet argues to still the doubts of men at finding these children in Paradise. It would almost seem as if the words had been forgotten which characterized heaven through the very image of childhood.