ouragement of their own position or
pretension; but a god for the world at large he never was, or can be;
and I doubt if an impression to this effect was not always, from the
very dawn of our literature, the one entertained of him by the genius
of our native country, which could never long endure any kind of
unwarrantable dictation. Chaucer evidently thought him a man who would
spare no unnecessary probe to the feelings (see the close of his version
of _Ugolino_). Spenser says not a word of him, though he copied Tasso,
and eulogised Ariosto. Shakspeare would assuredly have put him into
the list of those presumptuous lookers into eternity who "_take upon
themselves to know" (Cymbeline_, act v. sc. 4). Milton, in his sonnet
to Henry Lawes, calls him "that sad Florentine"--a lamenting epithet,
by which we do not designate a man whom we desire to resemble. The
historian of English poetry, admirably applying to him a passage out of
Milton, says that "Hell grows darker at his frown." [26]

Walter Scott could not read him, at least not with pleasure. He tells
Miss Seward that the "plan" of the poem appeared to him "unhappy;
the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and
uninteresting." [27] Uninteresting, I think, it is impossible to consider
it. The known world is there, and the unknown pretends to be there; and
both are surely interesting to most people.

Landor, in his delightful book the _Pentameron_--a book full of the
profoundest as well as sweetest humanity--makes Petrarch follow up
Boccaccio's eulogies of the episode of Paulo and Francesca with
ebullitions of surprise and horror:

"_Petrarca_. Perfection of poetry! The greater is my wonder at
discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole section
of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,

'And he who fell as a dead body falls'

would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy! What
execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, Genoa! what hatred
against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal
and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the
_Inferno_ as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written.
Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and
certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged
forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling it,
if this had been his intention." [28]