In studying Dante, therefore, we must consider carefully the differences
produced, first, by allegory being substituted for polytheism; and
secondly and mainly, by the opposition of Christianity to the spirit of
pagan Greece, which receiving the very names of its gods from Egypt,
soon deprived them of all that was universal. The Greeks changed the
ideas into finites, and these finites into 'anthropomorphi,' or forms of
men. Hence their religion, their poetry, nay, their very pictures,
became statuesque. With them the form was the end. The reverse of this
was the natural effect of Christianity; in which finites, even the human
form, must, in order to satisfy the mind, be brought into connexion
with, and be in fact symbolical of, the infinite; and must be considered
in some enduring, however shadowy and indistinct, point of view, as the
vehicle or representative of moral truth.

Hence resulted two great effects; a combination of poetry with doctrine,
and, by turning the mind inward on its own essence instead of letting it
act only on its outward circumstances and communities, a combination of
poetry with sentiment. And it is this inwardness or subjectivity, which
principally and most fundamentally distinguishes all the classic from
all the modern poetry. Compare the passage in the 'Iliad' (Z. vi.
119-236.) in which Diomed and Glaucus change arms,--


[Greek (transliterated): Cheiras t'allilon labetin kai pistosanto]

They took each other by the hand, and pledged friendship--


with the scene in 'Ariosto' (Orlando Furioso, c. i. st. 20-22.), where