would advise all men who _can_ speak their thought, not to sing it; to
understand that, in a serious time, among serious men, there is no vocation
in them for singing it. Precisely as we love the true song, and are
charmed by it as by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, and
account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an
insincere and offensive thing.

I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his _Divine Comedy_ that it
is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the very sound of it there is a
_canto fermo_; it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his simple _terza
rima_, doubtless helped him in this. One reads along naturally with a sort
of _lilt_. But I add, that it could not be otherwise; for the essence and
material of the work are themselves rhythmic. Its depth, and rapt passion
and sincerity, makes it musical;--go _deep_ enough, there is music
everywhere. A true inward symmetry, what one calls an architectural
harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all: architectural; which also
partakes of the character of music. The three kingdoms, _Inferno_,
_Purgatorio_, _Paradiso_, look out on one another like compartments of a
great edifice; a great supernatural world-cathedral, piled up there, stern,
solemn, awful; Dante's World of Souls! It is, at bottom, the _sincerest_
of all Poems; sincerity, here too,, we find to be the measure of worth. It
came deep out of the author's heart of hearts; and it goes deep, and
through long generations, into ours. The people of Verona, when they saw
him on the streets, used to say, "_Eccovi l' uom ch' e stato all' Inferno_,
See, there is the man that was in Hell!" Ah yes, he had been in Hell;--in
Hell enough, in long severe sorrow and struggle; as the like of him is
pretty sure to have been. Commedias that come out _divine_ are not
accomplished otherwise. Thought, true labor of any kind, highest virtue
itself, is it not the daughter of Pain? Born as out of the black
whirlwind;--true _effort_, in fact, as of a captive struggling to free