aws.

In conveying that thrilling sense of the momentousness of human
destiny which beyond anything else certain historic names evoke,
none can surpass him. The brief, branding lines, with which the
enemies of God are engraved upon their monuments "more lasting
than brass," seem to add a glory to damnation. Who can forget how
that "Simonist" and "Son of Sodom" lifts his hands up out of the
deepest Pit, and makes "the fig" at God? "Take it, God, for at Thee I
aim it!" There is a sting of furious blasphemy in this; _personal
outrage_ that goes beyond all limits.

Yet who is there, but does not feel _glad_ that the "Pistoian" uttered
what he uttered--out of his Hell--to his Maker?

Is not Newman right when he says that the heart of man does not
naturally "love God?"

But perhaps in the whole poem nothing is more beautiful than that
great roll of honor of the unchristened Dead, who make up the
company of the noble Heathen. Sad, but not unhappy, they walk to
and fro in their Pagan Hades, and occupy themselves, as of old, in
discoursing upon philosophy and poetry and the Mystery of Life.

Those single lines, devoted to such names, are unlike anything else
in literature. That "Caesar, in armour, with Ger-Falcon eyes,"
challenges one's obeisance as a great shout of his own legionaries,
while that "Alone, by himself, the Soldan" bows to the dust our
Christian pride, as the Turbaned Commander of the Faithful, with
his ghostly crescent blade, strides past, dreaming of the Desert.

It is in touches like these, surely, rather than in the Beatrice scenes
or the devil scenes, that the poet is most himself.

It needs, perhaps, a certain smouldering dramatic passion, in regard
to the whole spectacle of human life, to do justice to such lines. It
needs also that mixture of disdain and humility which is his own
paramount attribute.

And the same smouldering furnace of "reverence" characterizes
Dante's use of the older literatures. No writer who has ever lived has
such a dramatic sense of the "great effects" in style, and the ritual of
words.

That passage, _"Thou_ art my master and my author. It is from
_thee_ I learnt the beautiful style that has done me so much honour,"
with its reiteration of the rhythmic syllables of "honour," opens up a
salutary field of aesthetic contemplation. His quotations, too, from
the Psalms, and from the Roman Liturgy, become, by their
imaginative inclusion, part of his own creative genius. That "