bound to remain so to civilised men, any more than the eating of man's
flesh or the worship of Jugghernaut. When we think of the wonderful
things lately done by science for the intercourse of the world, and
the beautiful and tranquil books of philosophy written by men of equal
energy and benevolence, and opening the peacefulest hopes for mankind,
and views of creation to which Dante's universe was a nutshell,--such
a vision as that of his poem (in a theological point of view) seems no
better than the dream of an hypochondriacal savage, and his nutshell a
rottenness to be spit out of the mouth.

Heaven send that the great poet's want of charity has not made myself
presumptuous and uncharitable! But it is in the name of society I
speak; and words, at all events, now-a-days are not the terrible,
stake-preceding things they were in his. Readers in general,
however--even those of the literary world--have little conception of
the extent to which Dante carries either his cruelty or his abuse. The
former (of which I shall give some examples presently) shews appalling
habits of personal resentment; the latter is outrageous to a pitch of
the ludicrous--positively screaming. I will give some specimens of it
out of Foscolo himself, who collects them for a different purpose;
though, with all his idolatry of Dante, he was far from being insensible
to his mistakes.

"The people of Sienna," according to this national and Christian poet,
were "a parcel of cox-combs; those of Arezzo, dogs; and of Casentino,
hogs. Lucca made a trade of perjury. Pistoia was a den of beasts, and
ought to be reduced to ashes; and the river Arno should overflow and
drown every soul in Pisa. Almost all the women in Florence walked
half-naked in public, and were abandoned in private. Every brother,
husband, son, and father, in Bologna, set their women to sale. In all
Lombardy were not to be found three men who were not rascals; and in
Genoa and Romagna people went about pretending to be men, but in reality
were bodies inhabited by devils, their souls having gone to the 'lowest
pit of hell' to join the betrayers of their friends and kinsmen." [30]

So much for his beloved countrymen. As for foreigners, particularly
kings, "Edward the First of England, and Robert of Scotland, were a
couple of grasping fools; the Emperor Albert was an usurper; Alphonso
the Second, of Spain, a debauchee; the King of Bohemia a coward;
Frederick of Arragon a coward and miser; the