It is often held and taught, that a strong and definite didactic purpose must inevitably be fatal to the highest forms of art, must clip the wings of poetic imagination, distort the symmetry of poetic sympathy, and substitute hard and angular contrasts for the melting grace of those curved lines of beauty which pass one into the other. Had Dante never lived, I know not where we should turn for the decisive refutation of this thought; but in Dante it is the very combination said to be impossible that inspires and enthrals us. A perfect artist, guided in the exercise of his art by an unflagging intensity of moral purpose; a prophet, submitting his inspirations to the keenest philosophical analysis, pouring them into the most finished artistic moulds, yet bringing them into ever fresher and fuller contact with their living source; a moralist and philosopher whose thoughts are fed by a prophet's directness of vision and a poet's tender grace of love, a poet's might and subtlety of imagination--Philosopher, Prophet, Poet, supreme as each, unique as a combination of them all--such was Dante Alighieri! And his voice will never be drowned or forgotten as long as man is dragged downward by passion and struggles upward towards God, as long as he that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, and he that sows to the spirit reaps of the spirit life everlasting, as long as the heart of man can glow responsive to a holy indignation with wrong, or can feel the sweetness of the harmonies of peace. It is little that I can hope to do, and yet I would fain do something, towards opening to one here and there some glimpse into that mighty temple, instinct with the very presence of the Eternal, raised by the master hand, nay rather wrought out of the mighty heart of Dante; but before we can even attempt to gather up a few fragments of the 'Divine Comedy,' as landmarks to guide us, in our turn, through Hell and Purgatory up to Heaven, it is needful for us to have some conception who Dante Alighieri was, and what were his fortunes in this mortal life.