DANTE 23 though transcendently purer and greater. It is a vision, like the " Pilgrim's Prog- ress" of John Bunyan, but written with incomparably wider knowledge and keener insight. It is a soul's history, like Goethe's " Faust," but attaining to a far loftier level of faith and thoughtfulness and moral elevation. It is a divine poem, like Milton's " Paradise Lost," dealing, as Milton does, with God and Satan, and heaven and hell, but of wider range and intenser utterance. With the plays of Shakespeare, in their oceanic and myriad-minded variety, it can hardly be compared, because it originated under conditions so widely different, and was developed in an environment so strangely dissimilar. It is, moreover, one poem, while they form a multitude of dramas. But few would hesitate to admit that in reading Dante we are face to face with a soul, if less gifted yet less earthly than that of Shakespeare ; a soul which " was like a star and dwelt apart " " Soul awful, if this world has ever held An awful soul." I would urge all who are unacquainted with Dante to read, or rather to study, him at once. They could study no more ennobling teacher. If they are un- familiar with Italian, they may read the faithful prose version of the "In- ferno" by John Carlyle, of the " Purgatorio" and " Paradiso," by A. J. Butler, or the translations by Cary in blank verse, and the Dean of Wells in terza rima. If they desire to begin with some general introduction, they may read the fine essays by Dean Church and Mr. Lowell (in " Among my Books ") and the ex- cellent " Shadow of Dante," by Maria Rosetti. To such books, or to those of Mrs. Oliphant and others, I must refer the reader for all details respecting the structure of the poem which he called the " Divine Comedy." The name " Com- edy " must not mislead any one. The poem is far too stately, intense, and terri- ble for humor of any kind. It was only called " Commedia " partly because it ends happily, and partly because it is written in a simple style and in the vernac- ular Italian, not, as was then the almost universal custom for serious works, in Latin. The name " Divina " is meant to indicate its solemnity and sacredness. Many are unable to apprehend the greatness of the " Divine Comedy." Vol- taire called the " Inferno " revolting, the " Purgatorio" dull, and the " Paradiso " unreadable. The reason is because they are not rightly attuned for the accept- ance of the great truths which the poem teaches, and because they look at it from a wholly mistaken standpoint. If anyone supposes that the " Inferno," for instance, is meant for a burning torture-chamber of endless torments and horrible vivisection, he entirely misses the central meaning of the poem as Dante himself explained it. For he said that it was not so much meant to foreshadow the state of souls after death although on that subject he accepted, without attempting wholly to shake them off, the horrors which, in theory, formed part of mediaeval Catholicism but rather " man as rendering himself liable by the exercise of free-will to the rewards and punishments of justice." The hell of Dante is the hell of self ; the hell of a soul which has not God in all its thoughts ; the hell of final impenitence, of sin cursed by the exclusive possession of sin. It is a hell
