ch. To us they are at first sight grotesque, because they are no
longer real to us. We have ceased to believe in such things, and they no
longer awaken any feeling akin to terror. But in the thirteenth century,
in the minds of Dante and his readers, they were living, terrible
realities. That Dante believed literally in all this unearthly world,
and described it with such wonderful minuteness because he believed
in it, admits of little doubt. As he walked the streets of Verona the
people whispered, "See, there is the man who has been in hell!" Truly,
he had been in hell, and described it as he had seen it, with the keen
eyes of imagination and faith. With all its weird unearthliness, there
is hardly another book in the whole range of human literature which is
marked with such unswerving veracity as the "Divine Comedy." Nothing
is there set down arbitrarily, out of wanton caprice or for the sake of
poetic effect, but because to Dante's imagination it had so imposingly
shown itself that he could not but describe it as he saw it. In reading
his cantos we forget the poet, and have before us only the veracious
traveller in strange realms, from whom the shrewdest cross-examination
can elicit but one consistent account. To his mind, and to the
mediaeval mind generally, this outer kingdom, with its wards of Despair,
Expiation, and Beatitude, was as real as the Holy Roman Empire itself.
Its extraordinary phenomena were not to be looked on with critical eyes
and called grotesque, but were to be seen with eyes of faith, and to be
worshipped, loved, or shuddered at. Rightly viewed, therefore, the poem
of Dante is not grotesque, but unspeakably awful and solemn; and the
statement is justified that all grotesqueness and bizarrerie in its
interpretation is to be sedulously avoided.

Therefore, while acknowledging the accuracy with which Mr. Longfellow
has kept pace with his original through line after line, following the
"footing of its feet," according to the motto quoted on his title-page,
I cannot but think that his accuracy would have been of a somewhat
higher kind if he had now and then allowed himself a little more liberty
of choice between English and Romanic words and idioms.

A few examples will perhaps serve to strengthen as well as to elucidate
still further this position.

"Inferno," Canto III., line 22, according to Longfellow:--

"There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud
Resounded through the air without