type:--they are without form and void; and darkness is upon the
face of them. Yet how many men of genius have panegyrised and imitated
them!

The style of Dante is, if not his highest, perhaps his most peculiar
excellence. I know nothing with which it can be compared. The noblest
models of Greek composition must yield to it. His words are the fewest
and the best which it is possible to use. The first expression in which
he clothes his thoughts is always so energetic and comprehensive that
amplification would only injure the effect. There is probably no writer
in any language who has presented so many strong pictures to the mind.
Yet there is probably no writer equally concise. This perfection of
style is the principal merit of the Paradiso, which, as I have already
remarked, is by no means equal in other respects to the two preceding
parts of the poem. The force and felicity of the diction, however,
irresistibly attract the reader through the theological lectures and the
sketches of ecclesiastical biography, with which this division of the
work too much abounds. It may seem almost absurd to quote particular
specimens of an excellence which is diffused over all his hundred
cantos. I will, however, instance the third canto of the Inferno, and
the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The
merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor
can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it
in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most
eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante
is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who
desires to attain oratorical eminence.

But it is time to close this feeble and rambling critique. I cannot
refrain, however, from saying a few words upon the translations of the
Divine Comedy. Boyd's is as tedious and languid as the original is rapid
and forcible. The strange measure which he has chosen, and, for aught I
know, invented, is most unfit for such a work. Translations ought never
to be written in a verse which requires much command of rhyme. The
stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes; and the thoughts of the unfortunate
author are alternately racked and curtailed to fit their new receptacle.
The abrupt and yet consecutive style of Dante suffers more than that
of any other poet by a version diffuse in style, and divided into
paragraphs, for they deserve n