never pass away. The story of Ruth, again, is
as if all the depth of natural affection in the human race was involved in
her breast. There are descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal of
imagery, more intense in passion, than anything in Homer, as that of the
state of his prosperity, and of the vision that came upon him by night.
The metaphors in the Old Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were
collected more into masses, and gave a greater _momentum_ to the
imagination.

Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim a place
in this connection. His poem is the first great step from Gothic darkness
and barbarism; and the struggle of thought in it to burst the thraldom in
which the human mind had been so long held, is felt in every page. He
stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore which separates the
ancient and the modern world; and saw the glories of antiquity dawning
through the abyss of time, while revelation opened its passage to the
other world. He was lost in wonder at what had been done before him, and
he dared to emulate it. Dante seems to have been indebted to the Bible for
the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which
exalts and kindles his poetry; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His genius
is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace. He is power,
passion, self-will personified. In all that relates to the descriptive or
fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to many who had gone
before, or who have come after him; but there is a gloomy abstraction in
his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight upon the mind; a benumbing
stupor, a breathless awe, from the intensity of the impression; a terrible
obscurity, like that which oppresses us in dreams; an identity of
interest, which moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all
things with the passions and imaginations of the human soul,--that make
amends for all other deficiencies. The immediate objects he presents to
the mind are not much in themselves, they want grandeur, beauty, and
order; but they become every thing by the force of the character he
impresses upon them. His mind lends its own power to the objects which it
contemplates, instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even
of the nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination
peoples the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the
severest of all writers, the most