Dante and Vergil

Lately I've been reading Domenico Comparetti's Vergil in the Middle Ages (VMA). Published originally in 1885, VMA is considered a seminal work in the field. Right now, I'm primarily interested in Dante's reception of Vergil, and I really liked this quotation from page 199, which suggests what makes Dante different from others in the Middle Ages and from those in the Renaissance:

"...[Dante] has a high opinion of the human intellect, and though he considers its powers as limited, yet he feels a great respect for those of its representatives who were independent of and anterior to the mission of Christ; hence he is not merely aquainted with the ancients through the medium of the schools of grammar, nor does he confine his study of them to what is barely necessary, but he devotes himself directly to them, not as a grammarian or a philologist, still less as a humanist, but as a thinker and a poet."

One of Comparetti's arguments for Dante's choice of Vergil as his guide on the spiritual journey of the Divina Commedia is that Dante responded strongly to the poetic power of his predecessor. I like this idea, it has a Romantic ring to it.