Yet while he is thus in every point an individual, he is at the same time an exemplar of the whole species; and he may emphatically say to the reader who can follow him in his journeys, receive his inspirations, and share in his troubles, anxieties, joys, and disappointments:--"Am I not a man and a brother?" Dante, though in this sense the hero of his own poem, is any thing but a hero, either in the vulgar or the chivalrous sense of the term. He is a human being, with all the faults, frailties, and imperfections of our common nature, as they really existed in himself, and as they more or less exist in every other person; nor can a less sophisticated character be found in all the volumes of prose and rhyme that have appeared since this auto-biographical poem. He assumes nothing; he conceals nothing; his fears, his ignorance, his loves, and his enmities, are all undisguisedly set forth, as though he were all the while communing with his own heart, without the cowardly apprehension of blame, or the secret desire of applause from a fellow-creature. He is always, indeed, noble, manly, and candid, but travelling continually in company of some superior intelligence,--Virgil in hell and purgatory, and Beatrice in purgatory and heaven,--he always defers to the one or the other in difficulty, doubt, or danger, and clings for protection, as well as looks up for instruction, with childlike simplicity and docility; returning with the most reverent and affectionate gratitude every token of kindness received from either. Marvellous and incredible, it must be confessed, are many of the stories which he tells; but he tells them with the plainness and straight-forwardness of a man who is speaking the truth, and nothing else, of his own knowledge.