s. 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, concentred 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
forever! 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 Brunette Latini,
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 Judgment, 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 genius, this sort
of painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent,
passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent "pale rages",
speaks itself in these things.

For though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a
man, it comes like all else from the essential faculty of him; it is
physiognomical of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint you a
likeness, you have fou