he most barbarous licences of
idiom, are found in this poet, whose power of expression is at other
times so peculiarly happy. His style is indeed generally free from those
conceits of thought which discredited the other poets of his country;
but no sense is too remote for a word which he finds convenient for his
measure or his rhyme. It seems indeed as if he never altered a line on
account of the necessity of rhyme, but forced another, or perhaps a
third, into company with it. For many of his faults no sufficient excuse
can be made. But it is candid to remember, that Dante, writing almost in
the infancy of a language which he contributed to create, was not to
anticipate that words which he borrowed from the Latin, and from the
provincial dialects, would by accident, or through the timidity of later
writers, lose their place in the classical idiom of Italy. If Petrarch,
Bembo, and a few more, had not aimed rather at purity than copiousness,
the phrases which now appear barbarous, and are at least obsolete, might
have been fixed by use in poetical language.

The great characteristic excellence of Dante is elevation of sentiment,
to which his compressed diction and the emphatic cadences of his measure
admirably correspond. We read him, not as an amusing poet, but as a
master of moral wisdom, with reverence and awe. Fresh from the deep and
serious, though somewhat barren studies of philosophy, and schooled in
the severer discipline of experience, he has made of his poem a mirror
of his mind and life, the register of his solicitudes and sorrows, and
of the speculations in which he sought to escape their recollection. The
banished magistrate of Florence, the disciple of Brunetto Latini, the
statesman accustomed to trace the varying fluctuations of Italian
faction, is for ever before our eyes. For this reason, even the prodigal
display of erudition, which in an epic poem would be entirely misplaced,
increases the respect we feel for the poet, though it does not tend to
the reader's gratification. Except Milton, he is much the most learned
of all the great poets, and, relatively to his age, far more learned
than Milton. In one so highly endowed by nature, and so consummate by
instruction, we may well sympathise with a resentment which exile and
poverty rendered perpetually fresh. The heart of Dante was naturally
sensible, and even tender; his poetry is full of simple comparisons from
rural life; and the sincerity of his early pa