e former
I find the simple, vigorous, clear narration, I find also what I would
not wish, the features of Ugolino reflected full in Dante. The two
characters are similar in themselves; hard, cruel, inflexible,
malignant, but, whenever moved, moved powerfully. In Francesca, with
the faculty of divine spirits, he leaves his own nature (not indeed
the exact representative of theirs) and converts all his strength into
tenderness. The great poet, like the original man of the Platonists,
is double, possessing the further advantage of being able to drop one
half at his option, and to resume it. Some of the tenderest on paper
have no sympathies beyond; and some of the austerest in their
intercourse with their fellow-creatures have deluged the world with
tears. It is not from the rose that the bee gathers her honey, but
often from the most acrid and the most bitter leaves and petals:

Quando leggemmo il disiato viso
Esser baciato di cotanto amante,
Questi, chi mai da me non sia diviso!
La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante ...
_Galeotto_ fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse ...
Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante.

In the midst of her punishment, Francesca, when she comes to the
tenderest part of her story, tells it with complacency and delight;
and, instead of naming Paolo, which indeed she never has done from the
beginning, she now designates him as

Questi chi mai da me non sia diviso!

Are we not impelled to join in her prayer, wishing them happier in
their union?

_Petrarca._ If there be no sin in it.

_Boccaccio._ Ay, and even if there be ... God help us!

What a sweet aspiration in each cesura of the verse! three love-sighs
fixed and incorporate! Then, when she hath said

La bocca mi bacio, tutto tremante,

she stops: she would avert the eyes of Dante from her: he looks for
the sequel: she thinks he looks severely: she says: '_Galeotto_ is the
name of the book,' fancying by this timorous little flight she has
drawn him far enough from the nest of her young loves. No, the eagle
beak of Dante and his piercing eyes are yet over her.

'_Galeotto_ is the name of the book.'

'What matters that?'

'And of the writer.'

'Or that either?'

At last she disarms him: but how?

'_That_ day we read no more.'

Such a depth of intuitive judgment, such a delicacy of perception,
exists not in any other work of human genius; and from an author who,
on almost all occasions,