FOREWORD
29 lines✦
he critics and biographers who professseeing in Beatrice an abstraction and nota woman, are deceived by the formal artof literary expression current at that period.To all such views it is fairly objected: aswell declare that Sidney's love adumbratesa Platonic eidolon; that Shakespeare's son-nets reflect the pallid fervours of Academe ;that The House of Life connotes ideal beautyunbreathed upon by earthly passion : in finethat for these men and poets nothing wassave the cloud-wrack of super-sensuousillusion. There is and always will be, a wider anddeeper, because more human, view.' It isfound in all its far-reaching implications inthe wondrous Second Part of Goethe'stragedy, where the soul of Faust, ascendingto judgment, is saved through Marguerite'sintercession. This, then, is the Higher Law,— that the love of man for woman restoreshim though he were dead in his trespasses •and this is the genetic base and structurefrom first to last informing and unifying LaVita Nuova, 2 Sometimes confirmed in unexpected ways. Seet/4VarUmt in tbt P^ita t^wovo, London jlcadtmy, Decem-ber I, 1894. (Reprinted in Fourteenth Annual Reportof the Dante Societfi Cambridge, 1895.)
✦