their yet undiscovered feelings. When they came to that passage in the romance, where the lovers, after many tender approaches, are gradually drawn by one uniform reciprocation of involuntary attraction to kiss each other, the book dropped from their hands. By a fudden impulfe and an irresistible fympathy, they are tempted to do the fame. Here was the commencement of their - tragical history. Noi leggiavam' un giorno per diletto Di LANCILOTTO, comme amor le ftrinfe; Quel giorno più non vi legemmo avante ». But this picture, in which nature, fentiment, and the graces are concerned, I have to contraft with scenes of a very different nature. Salvator Rofa has here borrowed the pencil Correggio. Dante's beauties are not of the foft and gentle kind. Through many a dark and dreary vale They pass'd, and many a region dolorous, A hurricane fuddenly rifing on the banks of the river Styx is thus described. He is one of the knights of the Round Table, and is commonly called Sir GALHAAD, in ARTHUR'S romance. CANT. V. Et Et gia venia fù per le torbid onde Che fier la falva fenz' alcun rattento Et fa fuggir le fiere et glipaftori . Dante and his mystagogue meet the monster Geryon. He has the face of a man with a mild and benign afpect, but his human form ends in a ferpent with a voluminous tail of immense length, terminated by a fting, which he brandishes like a fcorpion. His hands are rough with briftles and scales. His breast, back, and fides have all the rich colours difplayed in the textures of Tartary and Turkey, or in the labours of Arachne. To speak in Spenfer's language, he is, A dragon, horrible and bright. No monfter of romance is more favage or fuperb. Lo doffo, e'l petto, ad amenduo le cofte, The conformation of this heterogeneous beast, as a fabulous hell is the subject, perhaps immediately gave rife to one of • CANT. ix. FAIR. QU. i. ix. 52. CANT. xvii. Dante fays, that he lay on the banks of a river like a Beaver, the CASTOR. But this foolish comparison is affectedly introduced by our author for a difplay of his natural knowledge from Pliny, or rather from the TESORO of his mafter Brunetto. the the formidable Shapes which fate on either fide of the gates of hell in Milton. Although the fiction is founded in the claffics. The one feem'd woman to the wafte and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast, a ferpent arm'd With mortal fting . Virgil, feeming to acknowledge him as an old acquaintance, mounts the back of Geryon. At the fame time Dante mounts, whom Virgil places before," that you may not, fays he, be expofed to the monster's venomous fting." Virgil then commands Geryon not to move too rapidly, "for, confider, what "a new burthen you carry !" 66 "Gerion muoviti omai, "Le ruote large, e lo fcender fia poco : In this manner they travel in the air through Tartarus: and from the back of the monfter Geryon, Dante looks down on the burning lake of Phlegethon. This imagery is at once great and ridiculous. But much later Italian poets have fallen into the fame strange mixture. In this horrid situation says Dante, I fentia già dalla man deftra il gorgo Far fotto noi un orribile ftrofcio: Oud' io tremando tutto mi rancofco 1. This airy journey is copied from the flight of Icarus and Phaeton, and at length produced the Ippogrifo of Ariofto. Nor is it quite improbable, that Milton, although he has greatly improved and dignified the idea, might have caught from hence his fiction of Satan foaring over the infernal abyfs. At length Geryon, having circuited the air like a faulcon towering without prey, depofits his burthen and vanishes *. While they are wandering along the banks of Phlegethon, as the twilight of evening approaches, Dante fuddenly hears the found of a horn more loud than thunder, or the horn of Orlando'. Ma io fenti fonare alto corno: Non fono fi terribilimente Orlando ". Dante defcries through the gloom, what he thinks to be many high and vaft towers, molte alti torri. These are the giants who warred against heaven, standing in a row, half concealed within and half extant without an immenfe abyss or pit. Gli orribili giganti, cui minaccia Giove del cielo ancora quando tuona". But Virgil informs Dante that he is deceived by appearances, and that these are not towers but the giants. Sappi, che non fon torri ma giganti One of them cries out to Dante with horrible voice. Another, Ephialtes, is cloathed in iron and bound with huge chains. In the thirty-fourth CANTO, Dante and Virgil return to light on the back of Lucifer, who (like Milton's Satan, ii. 927.) is defcribed as having wings like fails, Vele di mar non vid' io mai eft celi. And again, Quando l'ale furo aperte affai. This Canto begins with a Latin line, Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni. 'Or Roland, the fubject of archbishop Turpin's romance. See fupr. vol. i. 132. m. CANT. xxxi. a Ibid. • Ibid. Dante Dante wishes to fee Briareus: he is answered, that he lies in an interior cavern biting his chain. Immediately Ephialtes arose. from another cavern, and shook himself like an earthquake. Non fu tremuoto già tanto rubesto, Dante views the horn which had founded fo vehemently hanging by a leathern thong from the neck of one of the giants. Antaeus, whose body stands ten ells high from the pit, is commanded by Virgil to advance. They both mount on his shoulders, and are thus carried about Cocytus. The giant, says the poet, moved off with us like the mast of a ship. One cannot help obferving, what has been indeed already hinted, how judiciously Milton, in a fimilar argument, has retained the juft beauties, and avoided the childish or ludicrous exceffes of these bold inventions. At the fame time we may remark, how Dante has sometimes heightened, and fometimes diminished by improper additions or misrepresentations, the legitimate descriptions of Virgil. One of the torments of the Damned in Dante's INFERNO, is the punishment of being eternally confined in lakes of ice. Eran l'ombre dolenti nell ghiaccia Mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna'. The ice is defcribed to be like that of the Danube or Tanais. This species of infernal torment, which is neither directly warranted by scripture, nor suggested in the systems of the Platonic fabulifts, and which has been adopted both by Shakespeare and |