ties or grotesque detail. Each separate element and
vein of thought has its precedent, but not their amal-
gamation. Many had written visions of the unseen
world, but they had not blended with them their per-
sonal fortunes. St. Augustine had taught the soul to
contemplate its own history, and had traced its pro-
gress from darkness to light; ¹ but he had not inter.
woven with it the history of Italy, and the consumma-
tion of all earthly destinies. Satire was no new thing;
Juvenal had given it a moral, some of the Provençal
poets a political turn; St. Jerome had kindled into it
fiercely and bitterly even while expounding the Pro-
phets; but here it streams forth in all its violence,
within the precincts of the eternal world, and alter-
nates with the hymns of the blessed. Lucretius had
drawn forth the poetry of nature and its laws; Virgil
and Livy had unfolded the poetry of the Roman Em-
pire; St. Augustine, the still grander poetry of the
history of the City of God; but none had yet ventured
to weave into one the three wonderful threads. And
yet the scope of the Italian poet, vast and comprehen-
sive as the issue of all things, universal as the govern-
ment which directs nature and intelligence, forbids
him not to stoop to the lowest caitiff he has ever de-
spised, the minutest fact in nature that has ever struck
his eye, the merest personal association which hangs
pleasantly in his memory. Writing for all time, he
scruples not to mix with all that is august and per-
manent in history and prophecy, incidents the most
transient, and names the most obscure; to waste an
immortality of shame or praise on those about whom
his own generation were to inquire in vain. Scrip-

-350-