ator; and, consequently, he alone has
introduced the ancient fictions with effect. His Minos, his Charon,
his Pluto, are absolutely terrific. Nothing can be more beautiful or
original than the use which he has made of the River of Lethe. He has
never assigned to his mythological characters any functions inconsistent
with the creed of the Catholic Church. He has related nothing concerning
them which a good Christian of that age might not believe possible. On
this account there is nothing in these passages that appears puerile or
pedantic. On the contrary, this singular use of classical names suggests
to the mind a vague and awful idea of some mysterious revelation,
anterior to all recorded history, of which the dispersed fragments might
have been retained amidst the impostures and superstitions of later
religions. Indeed the mythology of the Divine Comedy is of the elder and
more colossal mould. It breathes the spirit of Homer and Aeschylus, not
of Ovid and Claudian.

This is the more extraordinary, since Dante seems to have been utterly
ignorant of the Greek language; and his favourite Latin models could
only have served to mislead him. Indeed, it is impossible not to remark
his admiration of writers far inferior to himself; and, in particular,
his idolatry of Virgil, who, elegant and splendid as he is, has no
pretensions to the depth and originality of mind which characterise his
Tuscan worshipper, In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal
rule that good poets are bad critics. Their minds are under the tyranny
of ten thousand associations imperceptible to others. The worst writer
may easily happen to touch a spring which is connected in their minds
with a long succession of beautiful images. They are like the gigantic
slaves of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power, but bound by spells
so mighty that when a child whom they could have crushed touched a
talisman, of whose secret he was ignorant, they immediately became his
vassals. It has more than once happened to me to see minds, graceful
and majestic as the Titania of Shakspeare, bewitched by the charms of an
ass's head, bestowing on it the fondest caresses, and crowning it
with the sweetest flowers. I need only mention the poems attributed to
Ossian. They are utterly worthless, except as an edifying instance of
the success of a story without evidence, and of a book without merit.
They are a chaos of words which present no image, of images which have
no arche