stone of Inferno, is powerless, speechless, hopeless; doomed to be so for all eternity, as the archetype of the deadly, unpardonable crime of high treason against his Maker, from whom he thought to wrench the sceptre of the Universe. Bereft of his pride, his ambition, and his former power, fettered and harmless, he stands the symbol of degradation and impotent hate.

Moreover, in Dante's description of Lucifer, he tell us :

Oh, what a sight!

How passing strange it seemed, when I did spy
Upon his head three faces: one in front
Of hue vermilion, the other two with this
Midway each shoulder joined and at the crest ;
The right 'twixt wan and yellow seemed; the left
To look on, such as come from whence old Nile
Stoops to the lowlands.

What a contrast! the anger, the envy, and the despair, emblematical of the threefold personality of Lucifer; and the love of the Father, the self-sacrifice of the Son, and the grace of the Holy Ghost, One God, whom the Arch-Traitor, in his haughty insolence, had defied!

THE

CHAPTER IX.

Three Poetic Hells.

Conclusion.

HE modern traditional Hell of Milton has very little in common with the mediæval, philosophical Inferno of Dante.

As we pointed out in the last chapter, Dante collects and classifies all manner of wrong-doing, and all manner of states of the human soul before and after a guilty deed, and then paints a grand panorama of the punishments which follow those who are guilty of these evil deeds. But the poet, being Italian, adopts as the basis of his classification, the fundamental principle of Roman jurisprudence, namely, that the punishment inflicted for wrongdoing should be proportioned, not to its effects on the individual who commits it, or to the crime per se, but to its effects on Society at large. Hence, in the Inferno, treason against God or Universal order, meets with the direst punishment which the poet's imagination can depict. Treachery, Fraud,/

and Violence are punished more severely than Anger and Sullen Rage; and these, again, are more severely punished than Avarice, Prodigality, Gluttony, and Lust.

But Dante himself explains most fully this principle of punishment which characterises the Inferno. Before passing to the seventh Circle, the two poets rest behind a huge tomb,-the tomb of one of the Popes, in order to become accustomed to the fetid exhalations rising from the abyss below. While here, Virgil explains the principle or law of punishment which Dante adopts in his poem.

Upon the utmost verge of a high bank,

By craggy rocks environ'd round, we came,
Where woes beneath, more cruel yet, were stow'd .
And here, to shun the horrible excess

Of fetid exhalation upward cast

From the profound abyss, behind the lid

Of a great monument we stood retired.

"My son within these rocks," he thus began,
"Are three close circles in gradation placed,
As these which now thou leavest. Each one is full
Of spirits accurst; but that the sight alone
Hereafter may suffice thee, listen how

And for what cause in durance they abide.
"Of all malicious act abhorr'd in heaven,
The end is injury; and all such end
Either by force or fraud works other's woe.

But fraud, because of man peculiar evil,
To God is more displeasing; and beneath,
The fraudulent are therefore doom'd to endure
Severer pang. The violent occupy

All the first circle; and because, to force,
Three persons are obnoxious, in three rounds,
Each within other separate, is it framed.
To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man
Force may be offer'd; to himself I say,
And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear

At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds
Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes,
By devastation, pillage, and the flames,

His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites
In malice, plunderers, and all robbers, hence
The torment undergo of the first round,
In different herds. Man can do violence
To himself and his own blessings and for this,
He, in the second round must aye deplore
With unavailing penitence his crime,
Whoe'er deprives himself of life and light,
In reckless lavishment his talent wastes,
And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy.
To God may force be offer'd, in the heart
Denying and blaspheming his high power,
And Nature with her kindly law contemning.
And thence the inmost round marks with its seal
Sodom, and Cahors, and all such as speak
Contemptuously of the Godhead in their hearts.
"Fraud, that in every conscience leaves a sting
May be by man employ'd on one, whose trust
He wins, or on another who withholds

Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way

Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes.

Whence in the second circle have their nest,
Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries,
Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce
To lust, or set their honesty at pawn,
With such vile scum as these. The other way
Forgets both Nature's general love, and that
Which thereto added afterward gives birth
To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle,
Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis,
The traitor is eternally consumed."

But there is another feature of Dante's philosophy to be noticed, before we shall be in a position to form an estimate of the relative grandeur of imagination, and depth of thought, of Dante and Milton.

According to Dante's philosophy, or rather his scholastic theology, a person's free-will may act in any one of three directions. It may act in harmony with wrong-doing, which is the mental and spiritual state of Inferno; the deed itself producing the subjective environment of punishment. Or, it may act in uniform opposition to wrong-doing, which is the mental and spiritual state of Paradiso; the deed itself producing a subjective environment of happiness. Or, it may recoil from wrong-doing, when it sees the injurious effects upon Self and Society, which is the mental and spiritual state of