allegory of human life; and not of human life as an abstraction,
but of the individual life; and herein, as Mr. Lowell, whose
phrase I borrow, has said, "lie its profound meaning and its
permanent force." [1] And herein too lie its perennial freshness
of interest, and the actuality which makes it contemporaneous
with every successive generation. The increase of knowledge, the
loss of belief in doctrines that were fundamental in Dante's
creed, the changes in the order of society, the new thoughts of
the world, have not lessened the moral import of the poem, any
more than they have lessened its excellence as a work of art. Its
real substance is as independent as its artistic beauty, of
science, of creed, and of institutions. Human nature has not
changed; the motives of action are the same, though their
relative force and the desires and ideals by which they are
inspired vary from generation to generation. And thus it is that
the moral judgments of life framed by a great poet whose
imagination penetrates to the core of things, and who, from his
very nature as poet, conceives and sets forth the issues of life
not in a treatise of abstract morality, but by means of sensible
types and images, never lose interest, and have a perpetual
contemporaneousness. They deal with the permanent and unalterable
elements of the soul of man.

[1] Mr. Lowell's essay on Dante makes other writing about the
poet or the poem seem ineffectual and superfluous. I must assume
that it will be familiar to the readers of my version, at least
to those among them who desire truly to understand the Divine
Comedy.