would they have said of him, could
they have written a counter poem? What would even his friends have said
of him? for we see in what manner he has treated even those; and yet how
could he possibly know, with respect either to friends or enemies, what
passed between them and their consciences? or who was it that gave
him his right to generate the boasted distinction between an author's
feelings as a man and his assumed office as a theologian, and parade
the latter at the former's expense? His own spleen, hatred, and avowed
sentiments of vengeance, are manifest throughout the poem; and there is
this, indeed, to be said for the moral and religious inconsistencies
both of the man and his verse, that in those violent times the spirit
of Christian charity, and even the sentiment of personal shame, were so
little understood, that the author in one part of it is made to blush by
a friend for not having avenged him; and it is said to have been thought
a compliment to put a lady herself into hell, that she might be talked
of, provided it was for something not odious. An admirer of this
infernal kind of celebrity, even in later times, declared that he would
have given a sum of money (I forget to what amount) if Dante had but
done as much for one of his ancestors. It has been argued, that in all
the parties concerned in these curious ethics there is a generous love
of distinction, and a strong craving after life, action, and sympathy
of some kind or other. Granted; there are all sorts of half-good,
half-barbarous feelings in Dante's poem. Let justice be done to the
good half; but do not let us take the ferocity for wisdom and piety; or
pretend, in the complacency of our own freedom from superstition, to see
no danger of harm to the less fortunate among our fellow-creatures in
the support it receives from a man of genius. Bedlams have been filled
with such horrors; thousands, nay millions of feeble minds are suffering
by them or from them, at this minute, all over the world. Dante's best
critic, Foscolo, has said much of the heroical nature of the age in
which the poet lived; but he adds, that its mixture of knowledge and
absurdity is almost inexplicable. The truth is, that like everything
else which appears harsh and unaccountable in nature, it was an excess
of the materials for good, working in an over-active and inexperienced
manner; but knowing this, we are bound, for the sake of the good, not
to retard its improvement by ignorin