His Quotations and His Originality. 155 
ever while that described in Plutarch was only “ an obscure, 
shadow-like line. ” He copied nothing unchanged. 
Again, when Virgil inquired the way up the steep of some 
pilgrims there, Dante’s shadow was descried by them with so 
much surprise that a crowd flocked together to gaze at it, and 
hence at its owner. Among the gazers was Manfred, King of 
Sicily, who related his own tragical fate, why he had been de¬ 
tained in Ante-purgatory, and how he had escaped going fur¬ 
ther and faring worse. Once more. A band singing Miserere 
stopped at the sight of Dante’s shadow. They changed their 
note into a great O! long and not very melodious, and dispatched 
two of their number to enquire into the matter. These messen¬ 
gers, darting up swifter than stars fall, came back with the 
whole bevy, etc. 
Further on, when our pilgrim arrived where sinners were 
cleansed by the hunger-cure, his shadow induced an old friend, 
Forese, to seek his face, and learn his story. 
Yet once again, when Dante reached the host being purified 
by fire he says: 
“ Then with my shadow did I make the flame 
Appear more red; and even to such a sign 
Shades saw I many as they went give heed. 
This was the cause that gave them a beginning 
To speak of me. And to themselves began they 
To say: ‘ That’s not an unsubstantial body.’ ” 
The idea that spirits have lost their shadows led Dante on 
still further. He holds that they never stand in each other’s 
light — more than one ray hinders the passage of another. 
Thus the fancy concerning shadows and shadowlessness which 
in Plutarch was a barren fact forever—a veritable shadow—in 
Dante became substance and of wide significance. His origin¬ 
ality gave it evolution to its highest power, as Euclid drew out 
a point into every variety of geometrical line and surface and 
solid. It was to him as suggestive as our new found Roentgen 
rays. 
Many another bit of raw material in the Dantesque labora¬ 
tory was no longer idle ore, 
“ But iron dug in central gloom, 
And heated hot in burning fears, 
And dipped in baths of hissing tears, 
And fashioned by the dints of doom 
To shape and use.” 
