personally mixed up with his writings beyond that of any other poet, has
led me into references to his church and creed, unavoidable at any
time in the endeavour to give a thorough estimate of his genius, and
singularly demanded by certain phenomena of the present day. I hold
those phenomena to be alike feeble and fugitive; but only so by reason
of their being openly so proclaimed; for mankind have a tendency to the
absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed; and one of the
uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it
to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and
the strange identification of his knowledge with all that was knowable,
would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a
prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was
reversing the duty of a Christian and a great man; and there happen to
be existing reasons why it is salutary to chew that he had no right to
do so, and must not have his barbarism confounded with his strength.
Machiavelli was of opinion, that if Christianity had not reverted to its
first principles, by means of the poverty and pious lives of St. Francis
and St. Dominic,[2] the faith would have been lost. It may have been;
but such are not the secrets of its preservation in times of science and
progression, when the spirit of inquiry has established itself among
all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as it used to be. A few
persons here and there, who confound a small superstitious reaction in
England with the reverse of the fact all over the rest of Europe, may
persuade themselves, if they please, that the world has not advanced in
knowledge for the last three centuries, and so get up and cry aloud to
us out of obsolete horn-books; but the community laugh at them. Every
body else is inquiring into first principles, while they are dogmatising
on a forty-ninth proposition. The Irish themselves, as they ought to do,
care more for their pastors than for the Pope; and if any body wishes to
know what is thought of his Holiness at head-quarters, let him consult