Dante's only endeavour is to interest; and
he interests by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is
himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects by which
that emotion has been created; but he seizes on the attention, by
showing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry
accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation which
is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object
of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony
in the _Inferno_, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from
the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power
is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate
of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be
endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning,
not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the
absolutely local and individual with the greatest wildness and
mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and shadowy regions of the lower
world, a tomb suddenly rises up with the inscription, "I am the tomb
of Pope Anastasius the Sixth": and half the personages whom he has
crowded into the _Inferno_ are his own acquaintance.
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