e not
so timid when you plundered the merchantman off Cape Malea. Take up the
torch and move. Hippomachus, tell one of the slaves to bring a sow. (A
sow was sacrificed to Ceres at the admission to the greater mysteries.)

CALLICLES. And what part are you to play?

ALCIBIADES. I shall be hierophant. Herald, to your office. Torchbearer,
advance with the lights. Come forward, fair novice. We will celebrate
the rite within.

[Exeunt.]

*****

CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS.

No. I. DANTE. (January 1824.)

"Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet." --Milton.

In a review of Italian literature, Dante has a double claim to
precedency. He was the earliest and the greatest writer of his country.
He was the first man who fully descried and exhibited the powers of
his native dialect. The Latin tongue, which, under the most favourable
circumstances, and in the hands of the greatest masters, had still been
poor, feeble, and singularly unpoetical, and which had, in the age of
Dante, been debased by the admixture of innumerable barbarous words
and idioms, was still cultivated with superstitious veneration, and
received, in the last stage of corruption, more honours than it had
deserved in the period of its life and vigour. It was the language of
the cabinet, of the university, of the church. It was employed by all
who aspired to distinction in the higher walks of poetry. In compassion
to the ignorance of his mistress, a cavalier might now and then proclaim
his passion in Tuscan or Provenc'al rhymes. The vulgar might occasionally
be edified by a pious allegory in the popular jargon. But no writer
had conceived it possible that the dialect of peasants and market-women
should possess sufficient energy and precision for a majestic and
durable work. Dante adventured first. He detected the rich treasures of
thought and diction which still lay latent in their ore. He refined them
into purity. He burnished them into splendour. He fitted them for every
purpose of use and magnificence. And he has thus acquired the glory, not
only of producing the finest narrative poem of modern times but also of
creating a language, distinguished by unrivalled melody, and peculiarly
capable of furnishing to lofty and passionate thoughts their appropriate
garb of severe and concise expre