initely the most poetical mode of marking
the precise state of his mind. Every person 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. I
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 Divine Comedy without observing how
little impression the forms of the external world appear to have made on
the mind of Dante. His temper and his situation had led him to fix his
observation almost exclusively on human nature. The exquisite opening of
the eighth* canto of the Purgatorio affords a strong instance of this.
(I cannot help observing that Gray's imitation of that noble line

"Che paia 'lgiorna pianger che si muore,"--

is one of the most striking instances of injudicious plagiarism with
which I am acquainted. Dante did not put this strong personification at
the beginning of his description. The imagination of the reader is so
well prepared for it by the previous lines, that it appears perfectly
natural and pathetic. Placed as Gray has placed it, neither preceded
nor followed by anything that harmonises with it, it becomes a frigid
conceit. Woe to the unskilful rider who ventures on the horses of
Achilles!)

He leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky. His business is
with man. To 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 devotion,--the hour which melts the heart of the mariner and
kindles the love of the pilgrim,--the hour when the toll of the bell
se