aced
by clear faith in the _things_, so that a man acted on the impulse of
that only, and counted the other non-extant; what a new livelier feeling
towards this Burns were it!

Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if
not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints
of Poetry; really, if we will think of it, _canonized_, so that it is
impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working
across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante
and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, in a kind of royal
solitude; none equal, none second to them: in the general feeling of the
world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection,
invests these two. They _are_ canonized, though no Pope or Cardinals
took hand in doing it! Such, in spite of every perverting influence,
in the most unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence for
heroism.--We will look a little at these Two, the Poet Dante and the
Poet Shakspeare: what little it is permitted us to say here of the Hero
as Poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion.

Many volumes have been written by way of commentary on Dante and his
Book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as
it were, irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering,
sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived; and
the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes.
It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After
all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The
Book;--and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto,
which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine,
whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces
that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the
simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known
victory which is also deathless;--significant of the whole history of
Dante! I think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from
reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it,
as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of
a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into
abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking
out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from