manner. of Dante; but he has treated it in a widely different We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting our own great poet than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. 5 The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hieroglyphics* of Egypt differed from the picturewriting of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves: they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signification which 10 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 which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describ15 ing it. He gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, business * Hieroglyphics (literally sacred sculptures). Both those of Egypt and of Mexico, are representations of natural or artificial objects on monuments, used to express language. But the essential difference between the two is that whereas the Egyptian pictures stand for letters, syllables, or words, the Mexican merely reproduce the objects intended to be specified. The Egyptian in fact are a kind of elaborate alphabet which rightly interpreted may be read into words; the Mexican tell their story directly by depicting the things themselves. For example, the picture of an eagle on an Egyptian monument stands for the letter A; and the picture of a goose for the letter S; while on a Mexican monument the picture of a city or of a king, stands for that city or king and nothing more. This is the distinction Macaulay has in view, but it is necessary to explain that even in the case of the Egyptian pictures, the original use was to represent ideas; the alphabetic and grammatical application being a later development. like manner, not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn, not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem, but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of 5 the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on 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 10 were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles !* Now, let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never thought of 15 taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage, the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an 20 island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas; his stature reaches the sky. descriptions the lines in which the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. Contrast with these * It is not considered necessary to clear up all those allusions. The reader will feel the force of Macaulay's contrast, although not able to localise every individual place, and no annotation apart from reading the poems themselves, would render everything clear. 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 5 tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair.' We are sensible that we do no 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. IO Once more, compare the lazar-house * in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct, but solemn and tremendous imagery-Despair hurrying from couch to couch 15 to mock the wretches with his attendance; Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in the hospitals 20 of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs.' There We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office 25 of settling precedency between two such writers.. Each, in his own department, is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has, wisely or fortunately, taken * Lazar House (derived from the New Testament Lazarus), a public building for the reception of diseased persons. Also called a Lazaretto (Ital.). a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second 5 death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Diaghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy 10 sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside. such a tale in incredulous disgust unless it were told with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even 15 in its horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis * differ from those of Gulliver.+ The author of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he 20 had introduced those minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift-the nautical * Amadis-the hero of a Romance in prose (Amadis of Gaul), originally written in Portuguese, in four books, but added to in the Spanish and French translations. He was a poet and a musician, a linguist, and a gallant, a knight errant and a king, the very model of chivalry. + Gulliver, Lemuel, the fictitious hero of Swift's famous travels-a bitter political and social satire under the form of a sailor's book of adventure in strange lands. It is in four parts. Ist part, the voyage to Lilliput (pygmies), 2nd, to Brobdingnag (giants), 3rd, to Laputa (flying island), 4th, to the country of the Houyhnhnms (philosophising horses). observations, the affected delicacy about names, the official documents transcribed at full length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are 5 not shocked at being told that a man, who lived nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights; and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, now actually resident in Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies, Io and giants, flying islands and philosophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a deception on the imagination. Of all the poets who have introduced into their 15 works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him; and as this is a point on which many rash and ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal 20 error which a poet can possibly commit in the management of his machinery, is that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, though 25 sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. What is spirit ? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with which we are best acquainted ? We observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain |