every poem which has since made its appearance. But our limits prevent us from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions.

31. The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy.1 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 2 literature.

3

32. 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 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 describing it. He gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the

'The English name by which Dante's great poem is known. Dante called it Commedia, because the ending is not tragical. His admirers called it "Divine."

2 Dante was a citizen of Florence of Tuscany, and was the first famous writer in the native Italian of that land.

The picture-writing of the Indians is always a rude representation of the thing signified. Even so Dante represents things directly. But the Egyptian hieroglyphics represent words or syllables, or it may be letters only. So Milton's words suggest ideas remote from themselves, and his descriptions are not intelligible unless you know the inner meanings of his words.

Grotesque, "found in a grotto; " fantastic, like the grotto-work of the Renaissance. Compare "antic," like the antique.

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-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 the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell1 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 were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles.5

33. 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 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 mis

'Dante's poem represents him as descending, circle after circle, round the sides of the pit of hell. In each round he meets different scenes of punishment arranged for different sorts of crime, the lowest being the worst.

2 The Adige, a foaming mountain torrent, full of wild bowlders, running between the lofty hills of the Brenner pass. On it stands the

city of Trent.

“The Fire-river," one of the streams of the under-world in

Arles is in France, near the mouth of the Rhone.

"As at Arles,

where the Rhone stagnates, sepulchres make all the places uneven; so did they here. Among the tombs flames were scattered.

All their lids were rifted and dire laments were issuing forth."-Inferno, Canto IX.

takes for an island.1 When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe 2 or Atlas; his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball1 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 5 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.

34. Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante.8 Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery-Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance; Death shaking his dart over

Paradise Lost, Book I., verse 194; Book IV., verse 985.

2 The Peak of Teneriffe is on the largest of the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa. It is 12,200 feet high. Atlas is a mountain in Morocco, more than 12,000 feet high. 3 Inferno, Canto XXXI.

4 The "pine cone" of bronze, from the Mausoleum of Hadrian, in Dante's time stood in the fore court of St. Peter's. It is now in the Vatican Garden.

66

'Ball" is a mistranslation. "Frieslanders," supposed to be very tall.

Cary's translation remains the standard poetical translation of the Divine Comedy. For students the prose translation of Charles Eliot Norton (3 vols., octavo. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is rather to be commended

'Lazar house, Italian lazaretto, a hospital for those diseased, named for Lazarus in the parable.

8 Paradise Lost, Book XI., verse 567; Inferno, Canto XXIX. "Malebolge is a place in Hell, all of stone, and of an iron color."-Canto

them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante ? "There was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia,1 were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs."

35. 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 exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy 2 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 death,3 who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope,1 who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer.

mountain of expiation.

His own feet have climbed the
His own brow has been marked

'These geographical names are all of unhealthy places belonging to Italy.

2"The personages of Dante are all from real life. They are men and women undergoing actual experiences. Their characters and fates are, what all human characters and fates really are, types of spiritual law." Inferno, Canto I.

3

4 On the doors of Hell were written, "All ye that enter here leave Hope behind."-Canto III. 5 Canto IX.

6 The names of two of the fiends in the weird scene in Canto XXI., who plunge sinners into a pit full of burning pitch.

7 Dante climbs out of Hell by clinging to and crawling up the body of the giant Lucifer.-Canto XXXIV.

8 The Mount of Purgatory, up which Dante climbs on the way from the Pit of Hell to the Heights of Heaven.

by the purifying angel.1 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 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 2 differ from those of Gulliver.3 The author of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift, the nautical 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 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. when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe,* tells us of pygmies,5 and giants, flying islands and philosophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a deception on the imagination.

But

36. Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has suc

1 The angel who, at the entrance to Purgatory, marks Dante's brow with seven P's for the seven deadly sins (peccata). These marks disappear as he goes upward.

2 The hero of a popular romance of chivalry, Amadis of Gaul.

3 In Gulliver's Travels, the best known work of Dean Swift (1667– 1745).

5

An English village, to which Gulliver retired after his travels.

Pygmy, a Greek word, describing a people of dwarfs in ancient Greek legend, who were supposed to measure one cubit (pygmé) and to live in Africa. Such dwarf people have been found by recent explorers all the way from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope. Macaulay uses the word here, as it is often used in English, as a general term for dwarfs.