terable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and hydras, and chimaeras 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 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 dolorous abyss;" ("Lavalle d'abisso
doloroso."--Inferno, cantoiv.)--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 expression, wild and unearthly. The fact is, that
supernatural beings, as long as they are considered merely with
reference to their own nature, excite our feelings very feebly. It is
when the great gulf which separates them from us is passed, when we
suspect some strange and undefinable relation between the laws of the
visible and the invisible world, that they rouse, perhaps, the strongest
emotions of which our nature is capable. How many children, and how many
men, 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 of the reality of apparitions, they have no apprehension that
he will manifest himself to them in any sensible manner. 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. Shakspeare understood this well, as he understood everything
that belonged to his art. Who does not sympathise w