himself: that is Thought. In all ways we are "to become perfect through
_suffering_."--_But_, as I say, no work known to me is so elaborated as
this of Dante's. It has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of
his soul. It had made him "lean" for many years. Not the general whole
only; every compartment of it is worked out, with intense earnestness, into
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: