in melody, and wilful and superfluous in the rhyme. Sometimes, also,
the writer is inconsistent in circumstance (probably from not having
corrected the poem); and he is not above being filthy. Even in the
episode of Paulo and Francesca, which has so often been pronounced
faultless, and which is unquestionably one of the most beautiful
pieces of writing in the world, some of these faults are observable,
particularly in the obscurity of the passage about _tolta forma_, the
cessation of the incessant tempest, and the non-adjuration of the two
lovers in the manner that Virgil prescribes.

But truly it is said, that when Dante is great, nobody surpasses him. I
doubt if anybody equals him, as to the constant intensity and incessant
variety of his pictures; and whatever he paints, he throws, as it were,
upon its own powers; as though an artist should draw figures that
started into life, and proceeded to action for themselves, frightening
their creator. Every motion, word, and look of these creatures becomes
full of sensibility and suggestions. The invisible is at the back of the
visible; darkness becomes palpable; silence describes a character, nay,
forms the most striking part of a story; a word acts as a flash of
lightning, which displays some gloomy neighbourhood, where a tower is
standing, with dreadful faces at the window; or where, at your feet,
full of eternal voices, one abyss is beheld dropping out of another in
the lurid light of torment. In the present volume a story will be found
which tells a long tragedy in half-a-dozen lines. Dante has the
minute probabilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest and most
generalising poetry; and this feeling of matter-of-fact is impressed by
fictions the most improbable, nay, the most ridiculous and revolting.
You laugh at the absurdity; you are shocked at the detestable cruelty;
yet, for the moment, the thing almost seems as if it must be true. You
feel as you do in a dream, and after it;--you wake and laugh, but the