truth, into clear visuality. Each answers to the other; each fits
in its place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. It is
the soul of Dante, and in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered
forever rhythmically visible there. No light task; a right intense one:
but a task which is _done_.

Perhaps one would say, _intensity_, with the much that depends on it, is
the prevailing character of Dante's genius. Dante does not come before
us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian
mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of
his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentred itself into
fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is worldwide,
but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it
were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante.
Consider, for example, to begin with the outermost development of his
intensity, consider how he paints. He has a great power of vision;
seizes the very type of a thing; presents that and nothing more. You
remember that first view he gets of the Hall of Dite: _red_ pinnacle,
red-hot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;--so
vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever! It is as an emblem of
the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in
him: Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed; and then in Dante it seems
a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and
then there is silence, nothing more said. His silence is more eloquent
than words. It is strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches
the true likeness of a matter: cuts into the matter as with a pen of
fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, collapses at Virgil's rebuke; it
is "as the sails sink, the mast being suddenly broken." Or that poor
Brunetto Latini, with the _cotto aspetto_, "face _baked_," parched brown
and lean; and the "fiery snow" that falls on them there, a "fiery snow
without wind," slow, deliberate, never-ending! Or the lids of those
Tombs; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with
its Soul in torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at
the Day of Judgment, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises; and how
Cavalcante falls--at hearing of his Son, and the past tense "_fue_"! The
very movements in Dante have something brief; swift, decisive, almost
military. It is of the inmost essence of his