Monfieur de Lucifer! "Je fuis un Saint; voyes ma robe grife: Je fus abfous par le Chef de l'Eglife. "A tes pareils et, grâce a l'Italie, "A Belzebut, il raifonnoit trop bien. "Lors il n'empoigne, et d'un bras roide et ferme Vingt coups de fouet, dont bien fort il me cuit: "Que Dieu le rend à Boniface huit." Dante thus tranflated would have had many more readers than at prefent. I take this opportunity of remarking, that our author's perpetual reference to recent facts and characters is in imitation of Virgil, yet with this very material difference. The perfons recognised in Virgil's fixth book, for inftance the chiefs of the Trojan war, are the cotemporaries of the hero not of the poet. The truth is, Dante's poem is a fatirical history of his own times. Dante fees fome of the ghosts of Purgatory advancing forward, more meagre and emaciated than the reft. He asks how this could happen in a place where all live alike without nourishment. Virgil quotes the example of Meleager, who wasted with a firebrand, on the gradual extinction of which his life depended. He also produces the comparison of a mirror reflecting a figure. These obfcure explications do not fatisfy the doubts of Dante. Statius, for his, better inftruction, explains how a child grows in the womb of the mother, how it is enlarged, and by degrees receives life and intellect. The drift of our author author is apparent in these profound illuftrations. He means to shew his skill in a sort of metaphysical anatomy. We fee fomething of this in the TESORETTO of Brunetto. Unintelligible folutions of a fimilar fort, drawn from a frivolous and mysterious philosophy, mark the writers of Dante's age. The PARADISE of Dante, the third part of this poem, resembles his PURGATORY. Its fictions, and its allegories which fuffer by being explained, are all conceived in the fame chimerical fpirit. The poet fucceffively views the glory of the saints, of angels, of the holy Virgin, and at laft of God himself. Heaven as well as hell, among the monks, had its legendary description; which it was herefy to disbelieve, and which was formed on perverfions or misinterpretations of fcripture. Our author's vifion ends with the deity, and we know not by what miraculous affiftance he returns to earth. It must be allowed, that the fcenes of Virgil's fixth book have many fine ftrokes of the terrible. But Dante's colouring is of a more gloomy temperature. There is a fombrous caft in his imagination: and he has given new shades of horror to the claffical hell. We may fay of Dante, that Hell Grows DARKER at his FROWN' The fenfations of fear impreffed by the Roman poet are lefs harraffing to the repose of the mind: they have a more equable and placid effect. The terror of Virgil's tremendous objects is diminished by correctness of compofition and elegance of style. We are reconciled to his Gorgons and Hydras, by the grace of expreffion, and the charms of verfification. In the mean time, it may feem a matter of furprise, that the Italian poets of the thirteenth century who restored, admired, and studied the claffics, did not imitate their beauties. But while they poffeffed the genuine models of antiquity, their • PAR. L. ii. 720. unnatural unnatural and eccentric habits of mind and manners, their attachments to system, their scholastic theology, fuperftition, ideal love, and above all their chivalry, had corrupted every true principle of life and literature, and consequently prevented the progress of taste and propriety. They could not conform to the practices and notions of their own age, and to the ideas of the antients, at the fame time. They were dazzled with the imageries of Virgil and Homer, which they could not always understand or apply or which they faw through the mift of prejudice and misconception. Their genius having once taken a falfe direction, when recalled to copy a juft pattern, produced only conftraint and affectation, a distorted and unpleafing resemblance. The early Italian poets disfigured, inftead of adorning their works, by attempting to imitate the claffics. The charms which we so much admire in Dante, do not belong to the Greeks and Romans. They are derived from another origin, and must be traced back to a different ftock. Nor is it at the fame time less surprising, that the later Italian poets, in more enlightened times, should have paid fo respectful a compliment to Dante as to acknowledge no other model, and with his excellencies, to transcribe and perpetuate all his extravagancies. VOL. III. K k ЗБСТ. SE CT. XXXII. I NOW return to the MIRROUR OF MAGISTRATES, and to Sackville's Legend of Buckingham, which follows his INDUCTION. The Complaynt of HENRYE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, is written with a force and even elegance of expreffion, a copiousness of phraseology, and an exactness of verfification, not to be found in any other parts of the collection. On the whole, it may be thought tedious and languid. But that objection unavoidably refults from the general plan of these pieces. It is impoffible that foliloquies of fuch prolixity, and defigned to include much his torical and even biographical matter, fhould every where fustain a proper degree of fpirit, pathos, and intereft. In the exor dium are these nervous and correct couplets. Whom flattering Fortune falfely fo beguilde, That loe, the flew, where earst ful smooth she smilde. Again, And paynt it forth, that all eftates may knowe: Have they the warning, and be mine the woe. Buckingham is made to enter thus rapidly, yet with much address, into his fatal fhare of the civil broils between York and Lancaster. But what may boot to ftay the fifters three, In these lines there is great energy. O would to God the cruell dismall day That gave me light fyrst to behold thy face, The unhappie hower, the time, and eke the day, &c. And the following are an example of the fimple and fublime united. And thou, Alecto, feede me with thy foode! Many comparisons are introduced by the diftreffed fpeaker. But it is common for the best poets to forget that they are describing what is only related or spoken. The captive Proteus has his fimile of the nightingale; and Eneas decorates his narrative of the disastrous conflagration of Troy with a variety of the most laboured comparisons. Buckingham in his reproaches against the traiterous behaviour of his antient friend Banaftre, utters this forcible exclamation, which breathes the genuine fpirit of revenge, and is unloaded with poetical superfluities. Hated be thou, difdainde of everie wight, The ingenious writers of these times are perpetually deserting propriety for the fake of learned allufions. Buckingham exhorts peers and princes to remember the fate of fome of the most the |