ude helpless utterance of
the _first_ Thought of men,--the chief recognised virtue, Courage,
Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but
for the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only!--

* * * * *

And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very
strange way, found a voice. The _Divina Commedia_ is of Dante's
writing; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten Christian centuries, only
the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the
smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning
methods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past
inventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all
things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they
lived by stands here in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his,
terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of
all the good men who had gone before him. Precious they; but also is
not he precious? Much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb; not
dead, yet living voiceless.

On the whole, is it not an utterance, this Mystic Song, at once of one
of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had
hitherto realised for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is
another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than 'Bastard
Christianism' half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert
seven-hundred years before!--The noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto
among men, is sung, and emblemed-forth abidingly, by one of the
noblest men. In the one sense and in the other, are we not right glad
to possess it? As I calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of
years. For the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's
soul, differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The
outer is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away,
in swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, today and
forever. True souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this
Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his
thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity;
they will feel that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in
Saint-Helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. The
oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours,
does yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak to all men's
hearts. I