We pass: the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds;
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.

(lxxiii)

Finally the acquiescence in God-appointed law which is here expressed gives place to the influence of hope. The minor key is seldom struck, and notes of joy are heard at the close. He can think of the lost as occupying a larger and nobler place, and

Trust that those we call the dead

Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends.

(cxviii)

Thus at the close a brightness which the tomb cannot quench shines over the poet's thoughts. He can share the joy of those who joy in the wedding gladness.

To-day the grave is bright for me,

For them the light of life increased,
Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.

Let all my genial spirits advance

To meet and greet a whiter sun.
(Epilogue)

As Dante's pilgrimage showed us the pilgrim travelling through the dark realms and climbing upwards till his soul shared the radiant joy of

the highest kingdom, so Tennyson treads a like path of gloom which ends in joy. We must not be content, however, to trace a superficial resemblance between "In Memoriam" and the "Divine Comedy." Tennyson was not likely to throw out a comparison based on the mere transit from darkness through struggle to light. The experience in the medieval poem is a real one. Dante's was no fancy pilgrimage; it was the record of personal and painful experience. Doubtless Dante universalised himself in giving us his great poem, but the cradle of his poem was in the bitter, deep, and real facts of his own life. He could not have written the poem because he could not have conceived it unless he had himself gone down into the uttermost parts of the earth and entered through the gateway of the Hell. The poem is a tale of spiritual experience the record of a soul's agony; in its earliest stages we might call it tragedy; but the glory of the close transforms it into comedy. It is dramatic, if by that we understand the story of the discipline and development of a man's character. It is a spiritual drama, the triumphant close of which is the victory of the man who emerges from his lower bondage into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

The stages of the drama are sufficiently clear. The time-marks in the poem indicate their character. The soul which has become entangled in sin must pass into its appropriate hell. It must see things as they are evil as it is, sin in its veritable ugliness. For Dante there is no other way. Is there another way for any? Must we not all realise that sin is evil and that the self which leads to sin must be forsaken ?

Therefore when Dante has traversed the dark regions of Hell, he has to change the whole attitude of his life. This he narrates. When the fitting place was reached, he tells us:

My leader there, with pain and struggling hard,
Turned round his head where his feet stood before,
And grappled at the fell as one who mounts;
That into hell methought we turned again.
"Expect that by such stairs as these," thus spoke
The teacher panting like a man forespent,
"We must depart from evil so extreme."
"Inferno," xxxiv. 78-84.

A new direction must be given to his aims: a self-revolution must be accomplished. He must cleanse his face with heavenly dew and bind himself with the girdle of new resolves; and, turning himself away from his former self, he

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must now climb upwards till he has won the habit of self-mastery.

But even then the old self is not wholly swept away. Only when a new and heaven-born passion, a love akin to God's love, takes possession of his soul, is he impelled, as by an inward and wholly natural impulse, Godward, and only when so impelled does he enter into regions of changeless joy. Thus self sees the hideousness of that self which is sin. Patient and prolonged efforts win habits of self-mastery; the halfheaven-the Paradise which is still an earthly Paradise-of self-control is reached; and then at length the fire-baptism of a God-sent love creates true heavenliness of spirit. The larger love takes the place of the lesser love, and all traces of egotism finally fall away from the soul.

The pilgrimage of Dante is universal. It has its counterpart in the personal experiences of many. In every crisis of life the essential features of such an experience may be repeated. Grief, the loss of a dear friend, calls forth not only profound sorrow, but often a sorrow more or less tinged with egotism. We are all aware of the strong sentimental element which mingles with our grief: but we are not perhaps all aware why this sentimental element, though it attracts

us when the sorrow is our own, repels us when the sorrow is another's. The reason is that in the sentimental element lurks the egotism of grief: we perceive it as it mingles in the sorrow of others: we hardly notice it in our own.

If the value of every crisis of life is to help us to get rid of some residue of self, then our sorrow only becomes a clear, bright, elevating and refining sorrow, when it is free from the dregs of egotism. Let us keep this in mind, and we shall see how "In Memoriam traces the progress of a sorrow in which the soul is lifted from a grief which has a good deal of self in it into a larger and purer atmosphere, where the sense of loss and the power of love remain, but are set free from the earthly sentimentalism which disfigured the first beginnings. There, as in the "Divine Comedy," the incoming of a larger love, or the lifting of love into a higher region, serves to banish every particle of egotism; for love alone frees self from self.

Before we illustrate these stages from the poem, it is well to recall that Tennyson, like Dante, immortalises a real experience. A personal sorrow lies at the root of the poem. Had Arthur Hallam not died, "In Memoriam" had not been written. We can trace the personal