Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things, Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire," this would doubtless have been noble writing. But where would have been that strong impression of reality, which, in accordance with his plan, it should have been his great object to produce? It was absolutely necessary for him to delineate accurately "all monstrous, all prodigious things,' -to utter what might to others appear "unutterable," -to relate with the air of truth what of the reality of apparitions, they have himself to them in any sensible manno apprehension that he will manifest ner. While this is the case, to describe superhuman beings in the language, and to attribute to them the actions of humanity, may be grotesque, unphilosophical, inconsistent; but it will be the only mode of working upon the feelings of men, and therefore the only mode suited for poetry. Shakespeare understood this well, as he understood everything that belonged to his art. Who does not sympathize with the rapture of Ariel, flying after sunset on the wings of the bat, or sucking in the cups of flowers with the bee? Who does not shudder at the caldron of Macbeth? Where is the philosopher who is not moved when he thinks of the strange connection between the infernal spirits and "the sow's blood that hath eaten her nine farrow?" But this difficult task of representing supernatural beings to our minds in a manner which shall be neither unintelligible to our intellects, nor wholly inconsistent with our so well performed as by Dante. I will refer to three instances, which are, perhaps, the most striking;-the description of the transformation of the serpents and the robbers, in the twentyfifth canto of the Inferno,-the passage concerning Nimrod, in the thirty-first canto of the same part,-and the mag nificent procession in the twenty-ninth canto of the Purgatorio. fables had never feigned,- -to embody what fear had never conceived. And I will frankly confess that the vague sublimity of Milton affects me less than these reviled details of Dante. We read Milton; and we know that we are reading a great poet. When we read Dante, the poet vanishes. We are listening to the man who has returned from "the valley of the dolo-ideas of their nature, has never been rous abyss ;" -we seem to see the dilated eye of horror, to hear the shuddering accents with which he tells his fearful tale. Considered in this light, the narratives are exactly what they should be,-definite in themselves, but suggesting to the mind ideas of awful and indefinite wonder. They are made up of the images of the earth: they are told in the language of the earth. Yet the whole effect is, beyond expres The metaphors and comparisons of sion, wild and unearthly. The fact Dante harmonize admirably with that is, that supernatural beings, as long air of strong reality of which I have as they are considered merely with spoken. They have a very peculiar reference to their own nature, excite character. He is perhaps the only our feelings very feebly. It is when poet whose writings become much less the great gulf which separates them intelligible if all illustrations of this from us is passed, when we suspect sort were expunged, His similes are some strange and undefinable relation frequently rather those of a traveller between the laws of the visible and than of a poet. He employs them not the invisible world, that they rouse, to display his ingenuity by fanciful perhaps, the strongest emotions of analogies,-not to delight the reader which our nature is capable. How by affording him a distant and passing many children, and how many men, glimpse of beautiful images remote fron are afraid of ghosts, who are not afraid of God! And this, because, though they entertain a much stronger conviction of the existence of a Deity than the path in which he is proceeding,but to give an exact idea of the objects which he is describing, by comparing them with others generally known. The boiling pitch in Malebolge was Divine Comedy without observing how like that in the Venetian arsenal; little impression the forms of the exthe mound on which he travelled along ternal world appear to have made on the banks of Phlegethon was like that the mind of Dante. His temper and between Ghent and Bruges, but not so his situation had led him to fix his oblarge; the cavities where the Simo-servation almost exclusively on human niacal prelates are confined resembled nature. The exquisite opening of the the fonts in the Church of John at eighth canto of the Purgatorio affords Florence. Every reader of Dante will a strong instance of this. He leaves recall many other illustrations of this to others the earth, the ocean, and the description, which add to the appear-sky. His business is with man. Το ance of sincerity and earnestness from which the narrative derives so much of its interest. other writers, evening may be the season of dews and stars and radiant clouds. To Dante it is the hour of fond recollection and passionate devo tion, -the hour which melts the heart of the mariner and kindles the love of the pilgrim,-the hour when the toll of the bell seems to mourn for another day, which is gone and will return no Many of his comparisons, again, are intended to give an exact idea of his feelings under particular circumstances. The delicate shades of grief, of fear, of anger, are rarely discriminated with sufficient accuracy in the language of the most refined nations. A rude dia- more. themes of our most eminent poets. The herd of blue-stocking ladies and sonneteering gentlemen seems to consider a strong sensibility to the "splendour of the grass, the glory of the flower," as an ingredient absolutely indispensable in the formation of a poetical mind. They treat with contempt all writers who are unfortunately "nec ponere lucum Artifices, nec rus saturum laudare." lect never abounds in nice distinctions The feeling of the present age has of this kind. Dante therefore employs taken a direction diametrically oppo the most accurate and infinitely the site. The magnificence of the physical most poetical mode of marking the pre-world, and its influence upon the hucise state of his mind. Every person man mind, have been the favourite who has experienced the bewildering effect of sudden bad tidings, the stupefaction,the vague doubt of the truth of our own perceptions which they produce, will understand the following simile:-"I was as he is who dreameth his own harm, -- who, dreaming, wishes that it may be all a dream, so that he desires that which is as though it were not." This is only one out of a hundred equally striking and expressive similitudes. The comparisons of Homer and Milton are magnificent digressions. It scarcely injures their effect to detach them from the work. Those of Dante are very different. They derive their beauty from the context, and reflect beauty upon it. His embroidery cannot be taken out without spoiling the whole web. cannot dismiss this part of the subject without advising every person who can muster sufficient Italian to read the simile of the sheep, in the third canto of the Purgatorio. I think it the most perfect passage of the kind in the world, the most imaginative, the most picturesque, and the most sweetly expressed. No person can have attended to the I The orthodox poetical creed is more Catholic. The noblest earthly object of the contemplation of man is man himself. The universe, and all its fair and glorious forms, are indeed included in the wide empire of the imagination; but she has placed her home and her rieties and the impenetrable mysteries of sanctuary amidst the inexhaustible va the mind. "In tutte parti impera, e quivi regge Quivi è la sua cittade, e l'alto seggio." Othello is perhaps the greatest work in the world. From what does it derive its power? From the clouds? From the ocean? From the mountains? Or room. There is another peculiarity in the poem of Dante, which, I think, deserves notice. Ancient mythology has hardly ever been successfully interwoven with modern poetry. One class of writers have introduced the fabulous deities merely as allegorical representatives of love, wine, or wisdom. This necessarily renders their works tame and cold. We may som. times admire their ingenuity; but with what interest can we read of beings of whose personal existence the writer does not suffer us to entertain, for a moment, even a conventional belief? Even Spenser's allegory is scarcely tolerable, till we contrive to forget that Una signifies innocence, and consider her merely as an oppressed lady under the protection of a generous knight. from love strong as death, and jea- incomparable style, the most loathsome lousy cruel as the grave! What is it objects of the sewer and the dissecting: that we go forth to see in Hamlet? Is it a reed shaken with the wind? A small celandine? A bed of daffodils? Or is it to contemplate a mighty and wayward mind laid bare before us to the inmost recesses? It may perhaps be doubted whether the lakes and the hills are better fitted for the education of a poet than the dusky streets of a huge capital. Indeed, who is not tired to death with pure description of scenery? Is it not the fact, that external objects never strongly excite our feelings but when they are contemplated in reference to man, as illustrating his destiny, or as influencing his character? The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman. But who that can analyze his feelings is not sensible that she owes her fascination less to grace of outline and delicacy of colour, than to a thousand associations which, often unperceived by ourselves, connect those qualities with the source of our existence, with the nourishment of our infancy, with the passions of our youth, with the hopes of our age, with elegance, with vivacity, with tenderness, with the strongest of natural instincts, with the dearest of social ties? To those who think thus, the insensibility of the Florentine poet to the beauties of nature will not appear an unpardonable deficiency. On mankind no writer, with the exception of Shakespeare, has looked with a more penetrating eye. I have said that his poetical character had derived a tinge from his peculiar temper. It is on the sterner and darker passions that he delights to dwell. All love, excepting the half mystic passion which he still felt for his buried Beatrice, had palled on the fierce and restless exile. The sad story of Rimini is almost a single exception. I know not whether it has been remarked, that, in one poin, misanthropy seems to have affected his mind as it did that of Swift. Nauseous and revolting images seem to have had a fascination for his mind; and he repeatedly places before his readers, with all the energy of his Those writers who have, more judiciously, attempted to preserve the personality of the classical divinities have failed from a different cause. They have been imitators, and imitators at a disadvantage. Euripides and Catullus believed in Bacchus and Cybele as little as we do. But they lived among men who did. Their imaginations, if not their opinions, took the colour of the age. Hence the glorious inspiration of the Bacche and the Atys. minds are formed by circumstances: and I do not believe that it would be in the power of the greatest modern poet to lash himself up to a degree of enthu siasm adequate to the production of such works. Our Dante alone, among the poets of later times, has been, in this respect, neither an allegorist nor an imitator; and, consequently, he alone has introduced the ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon, his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be more beautiful or original than the use which he has made of the river of Lethe. He has never assigned to his mythological characters any functions inconsistent with the creed of the Catholic Church. He has related nothing concerning them which a good Christian of that age might not b lieve possible. On this account, there is nothing in these passages that appears puerile or pedantic. On the contrary, this singular use of classical names suggests to the mind a vague and awful idea of some mysterious revelation, anterior to all recorded history, of which the dispersed fragments might have been retained amidst the impostures and superstitions of later religions. Indeed the mythology of the Divine Comedy is of the elder and more colossal mould. It breathes the spirit of Homer and Eschylus, not of Ovid and Claudian. many men of genius have panegyrized and imitated them! The style of Dante is, if not his highest, perhaps his most peculiar excellence. I know nothing with which it can be compared. The noblest models of Greek composition must yield to it. His words are the fewest and the best which it is possible to use. The first expression in which he clothes his thoughts is always so energetic and comprehensive, that amplification would only injure the effect. There is probably no writer in any language who This is the more extraordinary, since has presented so many strong pictures Dante seems to have been utterly igno- to the mind. Yet there is probably no rant of the Greek language; and his writer equally concise. This perfec favourite Latin models could only have tion of style is the principal merit of served to mislead him. Indeed, it is the Paradiso, which, as I have already impossible not to remark his admira- remarked, is by no means equal in tion of writers far inferior to himself; other respects to the two preceding and, in particular, his idolatry of Virgil, parts of the poem. The force and who, elegant and splendid as he is, has felicity of the diction, however, irresisno pretensions to the depth and origi- tibly attract the reader through the nality of mind which characterize his theological lectures and the sketches of Tuscan worshipper. In truth, it may be ecclesiastical biography, with which laid down as an almost universal rule this division of the work too much that good poets are bad critics. Their minds are under the tyranny of ten thou sand associations imperceptible to others. The worst writer may easily happen to touch a spring which is connected in their minds with a long succession of beautiful images. They are like the gigantic slaves of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power, but bound by spells so mighty that, when a child whom they could have crushed touched a talisman, of whose secret he was ignorant, they immediately became his vassals. It has more than once happened to me to see minds, graceful and majestic as the Titania of Shakespeare, bewitched by the charms of an ass's head, bestowing on it the fondest caresses, and crowning it with the sweetest flowers. I need only mention the poems attributed to Ossian. They are utterly worthless, except as an edifying instance of the success of a story without evidence, and of a book without merit. They are a chaos of words which present no image, of images which have no archetype;-they are without form and void; and darkness is upon the face of them. Yet how abounds. It may seem almost absurd to quote particular specimens of an excellence which is diffused over all his hundred cantos. I will, however, instance the third canto of the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who desires to attain oratorical eminence. DANTE AND MILTON. I From the Essays of T. B. Macaulay. The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some points, resembled that of Dante; but he has treated it in a widely different manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting our own great poet, than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome; and his other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank which concealed him from the waist downwards nevertheless showed so much of him, that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand; and our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture- writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of hair." We are sensible that we do no Milton have a signification which is often discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent than on what they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, may be the appearance Once more, compare the lazar-house which Dante undertakes to describe, he in the eleventh book of the Paradise never shrinks from describing it. He Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome the smell, the taste; he counts the num- details, and takes refuge in indistinct bers; he measures the size. His similes but solemn and tremendous imagery. are the illustrations of a traveller. Un- Despair hurrying from couch to couch like those of other poets, and especially to mock the wretches with his attendof Milton, they are introduced in a plain, ance, Death shaking his dart over them, business-like manner; not for the sake but, in spite of supplications, delaying of any beauty in the objects from which to strike. What says Dante? "There they are drawn; not for the sake of any was such a moan there as there would ornament which they may impart to the be if all the sick who, between July poem; but simply in order to make the and September, are in the hospitals of meaning of the writer as clear to the Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, reader as it is to himself. The ruins of and of Sardinia, were in one pit tothe precipice which led from the sixth together; and such a stench was issuing the seventh circle of hell were like those forth as is wont to issue from decayed of the rock which fell into the Adige on limbs." the south of Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles. We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to Now let us compare with the exact exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest details of Dante the dim intimations of advantage. The Divine Comedy is a Milton. We will cite a few examples. personal narrative. Dante is the eyeThe English poet has never thought of witness and ear-witness of that which he taking the measure of Satan. He gives relates. He is the very man who has us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. heard the tormented spirits crying out In one passage the fiend lies stretched for the second death, who has read the out huge in length, floating many a dusky characters on the portal within rood, equal in size to the earth-born which there is no hope, who has hidden enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, which the mariner mistakes for an island. who has fled from the hooks and the When he addresses himself to battle seething pitch of Barbariccia and Dragagainst the guardian angels, he stands hignazzo. His own hands have grasped like Teneriffe or Atlas: his stature the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own reaches the sky. Contrast with these feet have climbed the mountain of expiadescriptions the lines in which Dante tion. His own brow has been marked has described the gigantic spectre of by the purifying angel. The reader |