th,
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 for
ever 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,
concentered itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great
not because he is world-wide, 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
for ever! 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: cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire. Plutus, the
blustering giant, collapses at Virgil's rebuke; it is 'as the sails
sink, the mast being suddenly broken'. Or that poor Sordello, with the
_cotto aspetto_, 'face _baked_', parched brown and lean; and the
'fiery snow' that falls on them there, a 'fiery snow without wind',
slow, deliberate, never-ending! Or the lids of those Tombs; square
sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in
torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at the Day of
Judgement, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises; and how
Cavalcante falls--at hearing of his Son, and the past tense '_fue_!'
The very movements in Dante have something brief; swift, decisive,
almost military. It is of the inmost essence of his gen