t is the one sole secret of continuing long memorable. Dante,
for depth of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too; his words,
like theirs, come from his very heart. One need not wonder if it were
predicted that his Poem might be the most enduring thing our Europe
has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. All
cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement
never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable
heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of
importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognisable
combinations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has made much;
great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds, bodies of opinion
and practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Thought.
Homer yet _is_, veritably present face to face with every open soul of
us; and Greece, where is _it_? Desolate for thousands of years; away,
vanished; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the life and
existence of it all gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King
Agamemnon! Greece was; Greece, except in the _words_ it spoke, is not.

The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his 'uses.' A human
soul who has once got into that primal element of _Song_, and
sung-forth fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the _depths_ of our
existence; feeding through long times the life-_roots_ of all
excellent human things whatsoever,--in a way that 'utilities' will not
succeed well in calculating! We will not estimate the Sun by the
quantity of gas-light it saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no
value. One remark I may make: the contrast in this respect between the
Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we
saw, had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem
to be yet very much where they were. Shall we say, then, Dante's
effect on the world was small in comparison? Not so: his arena is far
more restricted: but also it is far nobler, clearer;--perhaps not less
but more important. Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in the
coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies,
crudities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and there
with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante speaks to the noble,
the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither does he grow
obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as a pure star, fixed there
in the firmament, at wh