was pledging himself to--through what years of toil and anguish he would have to seek the light and the power he had asked; in what form his high venture should be realised. But the _Commedia_ is the work of no light resolve, and we need not be surprised at finding the resolve and the purpose at the outset of the poet's life. We may freely accept the key supplied by the words of the _Vita Nuova_. The spell of boyhood is never broken, through the ups and downs of life. His course of thought advances, alters, deepens, but is continuous. From youth to age, from the first glimpse to the perfect work, the same idea abides with him, "even from the flower till the grape was ripe." It may assume various changes--an image of beauty, a figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a type of heavenly wisdom and joy--but still it holds, in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative and versatile and tenacious spirit. It was the dream and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and come to naught--to be other than the seed of the achievement and crown of life. But with all faith in the star and the freedom of genius, we may doubt whether the prosperous citizen would have done that which was done by the man without a home. Beatrice's glory might have been sung in grand though barbarous Latin to the literati of the fourteenth century; or a poem of new beauty might have fixed the language and opened the literature of modern Italy; but it could hardly have been the _Commedia_. That belongs, in its date and its greatness, to the time when sorrow had become the poet's daily portion, and the condition of his life. [Footnote 47: _Vita Nuova_, last paragraph. See _Purg._ 30; _Parad._ 30, 6, 28-33.]