seems a law that every great poem which thus resumes the thought of an age shall be a song, not of Carlyle's phœnix "soaring aloft, hovering with outstretched wings, filling earth with her music," but rather of the same phœnix "with spheral swan-song immolating herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer." Homer's theology, we may be sure, was already obsolete for the higher Greek mind when, or not long after,
"The Iliad and the Odyssee
Rose to the swelling of the voiceful sea."
Our own national epic, Shakespeare's series of historical plays, could not be written until the state of society it depicted was ceasing to exist.
Dante himself has told us the origin of his poem. In the last sonnet of his Vita Nuova he represents himself as having in thought followed Beatrice from earth to heaven:
"Beyond the sphere that doth all spheres enfold
Passes the sigh that from my heart takes flight,
By weeping Love with new perception dight
Sure way to the ethereal vault to hold;
Then having won unto that height untold,
Of Lady throned in honour hath he sight,
Resplendent so, that by the vesturing light
The spirit peregrine doth her behold
So seen, that when he doth report the same,
I miss his sense, so subtle doth it seem
Unto the grieving heart that makes demand;
Yet know I that my Lady is his theme,
For oft he nameth Beatrice's name,
And then, dear Ladies, well I understand."
Here is the germ of the Paradiso, at all events; but, to preclude all misapprehension, Dante adds: "After
