memory is full of its usages, formalities, graces, follies, fashions--of expressive motions, postures, gestures, looks--of music, of handicrafts, of the conversation of friends or associates--of all that passes, so transient, yet so keenly pleasant or distasteful, between man and man. As a traveller, he recalls continually the names and scenes of the world;--as a man of speculation, the secrets of nature--the phenomena of light, the theory of the planets' motions, the idea and laws of physiology. As a man of learning, he is filled with the thoughts and recollections of ancient fable and history; as a politician, with the thoughts, prognostications, and hopes, of the history of the day; as a moral philosopher he has watched himself, his external sensations and changes, his inward passions, his mental powers, his ideas, his conscience; he has far and wide noted character, discriminated motives, classed good and evil deeds. All that the man of society, of travel, of science, of learning, the politician, the moralist, could gather, is used at will in the great poetic structure; but all converges to the purpose, and is directed by the intense feeling of the theologian, who sees this wonderful and familiar scene melting into, and ending in another yet more wonderful, but which will one day be as familiar--who sees the difficult but sure progress of the manifold remedies of the Divine government to their predestined issue; and, over all, God and His saints. So comprehensive in interest is the _Commedia_. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the key-note; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the _Convito_ would show how he placed "the Divine Science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is God," in single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, as Solomon speaks, but queens, or concubines, or maidens; but she is the 'Dove,' and the 'perfect one'--'Dove,' because without stain of strife--'perfect,' because perfectly she makes us behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is at rest." But the same passage[72] shows likewise how he viewed all human knowledge and human interests, as holding their due place in the hierarchy of wisdom, and among the steps of man's perfection. No account of the _Commedia_ will prove sufficient, which does not keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and deep spirit of faith with which it was written, and then the wide liberty of materials and means which the poet allowed himself in working out his design. [Footnote 72: _Convito_, Tr. 2, c. 14, 15.]