glory hereafter to be revealed; but in the Hebrew dispensation,
Providence took an immediate share in the affairs of this life. Jacob's
dream arose out of this intimate communion between heaven and earth: it
was this that let down, in the sight of the youthful patriarch, a golden
ladder from the sky to the earth, with angels ascending and descending
upon it, and shed a light upon the lonely place, which can never pass
away. The story of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth of natural
affection in the human race was involved in her breast. There are
descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal of imagery, more intense
in passion, than any thing in Homer, as that of the state of his
prosperity, and of the vision that came upon him by night. The metaphors
in the Old Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were collected
more into masses, and gave a greater _momentum_ to the imagination.

Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim a
place in this connection. His poem is the first great step from Gothic
darkness and barbarism; and the struggle of thought in it to burst the
thraldom in which the human mind had been so long held, is felt in every
page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore which
separates the ancient and the modern world; and saw the glories of
antiquity dawning through the abyss of time, while revelation opened its
passage to the other world. He was lost in wonder at what had been done
before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems to have been
indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for
the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry; but he is
utterly unlike Homer. His genius is not a sparkling flame, but the
sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, passion, self-will personified.
In all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he
bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or who have come after
him; but there is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies