[Footnote 61: _Ibid._ iv. 37-95.] [Footnote 62: _Purgatorio_, iii. 112-145, iv. 127-135.] [Footnote 63: _Purgatorio_, ix. 76-129.] [Footnote 64: For the general scheme of Purgatory, see _Purgatorio_, xvii. 91-139.] [Footnote 65: _Purgatorio_, x. 130-139.] [Footnote 66: _Ibid._ xiii. 73, 74, 133-138.] [Footnote 67: _Purgatorio_, xxiii. 31.] [Footnote 68: _Purgatorio_, xx. 124-151, xxi. 34-78.] [Footnote 69: _Purgatorio_, v. 85-129, vi. 76-151, xiv. 16-72, xxiv. 82-87.] [Footnote 70: _Ibid._ ix. 139-145.] [Footnote 71: _Purgatorio_, xix. 103-114.] [Footnote 72: _Purgatorio_, viii. 71, 72.] [Footnote 73: _Ibid._ xxiii. 85-93.] [Footnote 74: _Purgatorio_, xix. 7-33.] [Footnote 75: _Purgatorio_, xxii. 55-73.] [Footnote 76: _Purgatorio_, xxx. 22--xxxi. 90.] V HEAVEN When Dante wrote the Paradise, he well knew that he was engaged in the supreme effort of his life, to which all else had led up. He well knew that he was engaged in no pastime, but with intensest concentration of matured power was delivering such a message from God to man as few indeed had ever been privileged or burdened to receive. He well knew that the words in which through long years of toil he had distilled the sweetness and the might of his vision were immortal, that to latest ages they would bear strength and purity of life, would teach the keen eye of the spirit to gaze into the uncreated light, and would flood the soul with a joy deeper than all unrest or sorrow, with a glory that no gloom could ever dispel. He knew moreover that this his last and greatest poem would speak to a few only in any generation, though speaking to those few with a voice of transforming power and grace. 'Oh, ye,' he cries almost at the beginning of the Paradise, 'who, desirous to hear, have followed in slight bark behind my keel, which sings upon its course, now turn you back and make for your own shores, trust not the open wave lest, losing me, ye should be left bewildered. As yet all untracked is the wave I sail. Minerva breathes, Apollo leads me on, and the nine Muses point me to the pole. Ye other few, who timely have lift up your heads for bread of angels fed by which man liveth but can never surfeit know, well may ye launch upon the ocean deep, keeping my furrow as ye cut your way through waters that return and equal lie.'[77]