--It has been usual for the literary critic to compare
Milton and Dante; and it is certain that in the conception, at least, of
his great themes, Milton took Dante for his guide. Without an odious
comparison, and conceding the great value, principally historical, of the
_Divina Commedia_, it must be said that the palm remains with the English
poet. Take, for a single illustration, the fall of the arch-fiend. Dante's
Lucifer falls with such force that he makes a conical hole in the earth to
its centre, and forces out a hill on the other side--a physical
prediction, as the antipodes had not yet been established. The cavity is
the seat of Hell; and the mountain, that of Purgatory. So mathematical is
his fancy, that in vignette illustrations we have right-lined drawings of
these surfaces and their different circles. Science had indeed progressed
in Milton's time, but his imagination scorns its aid; everything is with
him grandly ideal, as well as rhetorically harmonious:
... Him the Almighty power,
Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal power,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent in arms.
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