allusions, showing the wide range of his research and reading in this branch of learning. Aristotle is quoted or referred to, three hundred times; and there is scarcely an important work of Aristotle which is not represented, and often very fully represented, in the pages of Dante. With Virgil's works, especially with the Eneid, he shows himself to be thoroughly acquainted, and introduces at least two hundred quotations from or references to the Mantuan poet. Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Livy, Juvenal, and Seneca are often quoted or referred to, and, besides all this, we have scattering references to Homer, Plato, and others. Our admiration of Dante's 'acquirements becomes indefinitely increased when we remember the difficulties under which this surprising amount of learning was amassed; when we reflect that it was in the days before the invention of printing, when books existed only in manuscript, and were consequently very rare and difficult of access; when there were no helps for study in the way of notes and dictionaries, no conveniences for reference, such as divisions of chapters, sections, paragraphs; above all, no indexes or concordances to help the fallible memory; when, finally, we add to all this the consideration of the circumstances of Dante's own life, a turbulent, wandering, unsettled life, a life of which we may truly say, " without were

fightings, within were fears"; one intensely preoccupied, with fierce political struggles and anxieties. The varied and extensive reading of which Dante's works give evidence would be admirable if it had been exhibited under the most favourable conditions of what we call "learned leisure," and with the help of modern appliances, but under the circumstances under which Dante accomplished it it is nothing less than amazing.

To speak of the vast erudition of Milton, would be superfluous. His classical learning was, perhaps, more profound and varied than that of Dante. He was, also, Hellenist, Hebraist, and modern linguist of no mean order. But we must not forget the wide gulf that divided the literary conditions of the thirteenth from those of the seventeenth century; and if, genius consists in a "continued attention," or in a "protracted patience," then, taking everything into consideration, we should be inclined to accord the palm of genius to the Italian poet rather than to Milton.

Perhaps, it may be matter of surprise to some readers, to know that very few writers, medieval or modern, have had as thorough a knowledge of the Christian Scriptures as Dante had. The whole of the Vulgate, seems to have been perfectly familiar to him; and judging, not only from the number of

his direct quotations (nearly five hundred), but from the frequent interweaving of Scriptural allusion and phraseology into the fabric of his works, and especially of his Divina Commedia, he shows himself to have been as deeply versed, if not more deeply so, in the Vulgate, than Milton was in the Hebrew and Greek Testaments.

In one direction, however, Dante was unquestionably the superior of Milton, namely, in his mastery of mediæval Scholastic learning. The influence of the writings of Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, and, above all, of St. Thomas Aquinas, and Albertus Magnus, is apparent throughout the Divina Commedia; indeed, the Scholastic theology of the age forms the very atmosphere of the Allegory. But in Milton, there is no trace of any knowledge of medieval scholastic thought, except in such passages or allusions as are evidently borrowed from Dante.

The last mark of resemblance between these two great men, which we shall notice, but which we cannot stay to describe at length, is as curious as it is. interesting. Dante was not only a born student, and a born poet, he was a born politician, in the nobler sense of the term; taking the deepest interest in public affairs, and active in all that he considered to be for the good of his native Florence. But it

was an age when the conduct of public affairs was but too often a question of life and death to those who engaged in them; and defeat meant, as in Dante's own case, exile, confiscation, ruin.

We have but scant data for determining when or where the Divina Commedia was written. We know the era of the poem from the author's own statement in Canto twenty-one, where he makes the Fiend, Malacoda, say to Virgil,

"Yesterday, later by five hours than now,

Twelve hundred threescore years and six had filled
The circuit of their course, since here the way
Was broken."

This passage fixes the era of Dante's descent, at Good Friday in the year 1300 and at the thirtyfifth year of the Poet's age; but it does not help us in fixing the exact years spent by the Poet in the composition of his immortal work. From internal evidence, however, it is certain that Dante did not enter seriously upon the composition of his great Allegory until after his banishment; and, perhaps, not until all hope of ever regaining his full status as a citizen of Florence, had passed for ever from his mind.

Similarly, Milton was not only a born student, and a born poet, but, like Dante, he was deeply inter

ested in all the public questions of his day. He was an ardent admirer of Cromwell; became his Latin Secretary; and was in sympathy with all that the name of Cromwell implies. But he was not on the winning side in politics, and with the death of Cromwell, the ex-Secretary of the Commonwealth was buried in as deep a political oblivion, as was Dante, after the issue of the edict of his banishment from Florence.

But more than this. Although the first drafts of the scheme of a possible poem on the subject of Paradise Lost, were written out by Milton as early as between the years 1639 and 1642, or between his thirty-first and thirty-fourth years, yet it is more than probable, that Milton, like Dante, did not begin, in earnest, to turn his attention to the realisation of his life-dream—the writting of his sacred epic-until after his forced retirement from public life. The year when Milton began Paradise Lost [1658], was the year of Cromwell's death.

Dante's conception of the divisions of infinite space is somewhat different from that of either Cædmon or Milton. It will be remembered, that both of the latter poets, depict infinite space as a tripartite kingdom, consisting of the Empyrean, Chaos, and Hell; and subsequently, introduce a fourth kingdom, comprising the Starry Universe,