We have thus two Benedicts disputing over the spirit of Dante, even as the Archangel and another disputed over the body of Moses—Benedict the Pope and Benedict the Philosopher, Critic and Minister of Education. That the latter has the greater name in the realm of literary criticism, we cannot doubt. His best friends go far to claim for him infallibility in that line. The infallible claims of the former are confined to the region of Faith and Morals; but if Dante could be called in as arbitrator he would probably decide in favour of the Pope, pronouncing with regard to his own religious teaching that it was meant to count, and does count. It is, however, with no animus against the other Benedict in his official capacity that His Holiness proceeds—making an excellent point, which most of us would applaud—to note the absurdity of a State system of secularised Education which tries to banish the Name and the thought of God from the schools, and at the same time hold up the _Divina Commedia_ as an indispensable instrument of culture. Italian priests of to-day are ready to defend the present Minister of Public Instruction as one who, whatever his personal views may be, has endeavoured to mete out evenhanded justice even to “denominational” Education. APPENDIX III DANTE THE POET Benedetto Croce’s[382] contention is, of course, fundamentally true, that Dante is first and last a Poet, and that it is the magnetism of his poetic genius that attracts interest to all the varied subjects which he touches. If he had not been a Poet, these essays would never have been written; and the writer hopes that the poetic quality of his hero will have been felt as a background all through the book. His lyrical power is the driving force of his many-sided message. To the struggling patriot, whether of 1848 or of 1918, he is a Tyrtaeus; to the artist in poetry, a Horace (although he never saw the _Ars Poetica_); to the lover, a Christian Anacreon; to the religious devotee, a Psalmist and Prophet in one; to the student of human nature in its detail and its large epic aspect, a Homer and a Virgil; in every aspect a supreme poet. The very magnetism of his lyrical appeal will, however, continue to keep countless disciples busy, in the future as in the past, exploring the by-ways and investigating the by-products of his genius; gloating over his obscurities, and glorying in everything, big or little, that Dante has touched. Those “questioni dantesche” on the more puerile of which Croce rightly pours his scorn,[383] will emerge to the end of the chapter—a lush growth of mingled flowers and weeds witnessing to the extraordinary fertility of the soil. And we may go on to ask, what, exactly, is the value, or the nature of that “lyrical quality” which Croce justly exalts if it is entirely divorced from its content, its subject-matter?