...e words say for him what they were not wont to express for other poets. That is the only sincere glimpse we get of the living, breathing, word-compelling Dante. Looked at outwardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter and disastrous failure. What its inward satisfactions must have been, we, with the Paradiso open before us, can form some faint conception. To him, longing with an int...