CARY'S _Dante, Inferno_, c. iii.

Dante had much more profound feelings than Homer, and therefore he has
painted deep mysteries of the human heart with greater force and
fidelity. The more advanced age of the world, the influence of
spiritual faith, the awful anticipation of judgment to come, the
inmost feelings which, during long centuries of seclusion, had been
drawn forth in the cloister, the protracted sufferings of the dark
ages, had laid bare the human heart. Its sufferings, its terrors, its
hopes, its joys, had become as household words. The Italian poet
shared, as all do, in the ideas and images of his age, and to these he
added many which were entirely his own. He painted the inward man, and
painted him from his own feelings, not the observation of others. That
is the grand distinction between him and Homer; and that it is which
has given him, in the delineation of mind, his great superiority. The
Grecian bard was an incomparable observer; he had an inexhaustible
imagination for fiction, as well as a graphic eye for the delineation
of real life; but he had not a deep or feeling heart. He did not know
it, like Dante and Shakspeare, from his own suffering. He painted the
external symptoms of passion and emotion with the hand of a master;
but he did not reach the inward spring of feeling. He lets us into his
characters by their speeches, their gestures, their actions, and keeps
up their consistency with admirable fidelity; but he does not, by a
word, an expression, or an epithet, admit us into the inmost folds of
the heart. None can do so but such as themselves feel warmly and
profoundly, and paint passion, emotion, or suffering from their own
experience, not the observation of others. Dante has acquired his
colossal fame from the matchless force with which he has portrayed the
wildest passions, the deepest feelings, the most intense sufferings of
the heart. He is the refuge of all those who labour and are heavy
laden--of all who feel profoundly or have suffered deeply. His verses
are in the mouth of all who are torn by passion, gnawed by remorse, or
tormented by apprehension; and how many are they in this scene of woe!

A distinguished modern critic[2] has said, that he who would now
become a great poet must first become a little child. There is no
doubt he is right. The seen and unseen fetters of civilization; the
multitude of old ideas afloat in the world; the innumerable worn-out