brow from
his couch of everlasting fire--the lion-like repose of Sordello--or the
light which shone from the celestial smile of Beatrice. They extolled
their great poet for his smattering of ancient literature and history;
for his logic and his divinity; for his absurd physics, and his most
absurd metaphysics; for everything but that in which he pre-eminently
excelled. Like the fool in the story, who ruined his dwelling by digging
for gold, which, as he had dreamed, was concealed under its foundations,
they laid waste one of the noblest works of human genius, by seeking in
it for buried treasures of wisdom which existed only in their own wild
reveries. The finest passages were little valued till they had been
debased into some monstrous allegory. Louder applause was given to
the lecture on fate and free-will, or to the ridiculous astronomical
theories, than to those tremendous lines which disclose the secrets
of the tower of hunger, or to that half-told tale of guilty love, so
passionate and so full of tears.

We do not mean to say that the contemporaries of Dante read with less
emotion than their descendants of Ugolino groping among the wasted
corpses of his children, or of Francesca starting at the tremulous kiss
and dropping the fatal volume. Far from it. We believe that they admired
these things less than ourselves, but that they felt them more. We
should perhaps say that they felt them too much to admire them. The
progress of a nation from barbarism to civilisation produces a change
similar to that which takes place during the progress of an individual
from infancy to mature age. What man does not remember with regret the
first time that he read Robinson Crusoe? Then, indeed, he was unable
to appreciate the powers of the writer; or, rather, he neither knew nor
cared whether the book had a writer at all. He probably thought it not
half so fine as some rant of Macpherson about dark-browed Foldath,
and white-bosomed Strinadona. He now values Fingal and Temora only as
showing with how little evidence a story may be believed, and with
how little merit a book may be popular. Of the romance of Defoe he
entertains the highest opinion. He perceives the hand of a master in ten
thousand touches which formerly he passed by without notice. But, though
he understands the merits of the narrative better than formerly, he is
far less interested by it. Xury, and Friday, and pretty Poll, the boat
with the shoulder-of-mutton sail, an