Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/144

114 which is compounded of egoism and inventive imagination. Its throes are those of a transition from absolute art to the sympathetic method of the new day.

Dante could effect this only by a symbolism combining the supreme emblems of pagan and Christian schools.

In his allegory of Hell, Purgatory, and, above all, of Paradise, he is the most profound and aspiring of ethical teachers. The feebler handling of symbolism, for art's sake and beauty's, and with an affectation of the virtues, is seen in the "Faërie Queene" of our courtly Spenser, the poet's poet, yet one who never reached the mountain-top of absolute ethics. The tinker Bunyan's similitudes—and he was essentially a poet, writing in English beyond a mere scholar's mastery—are more intrinsically dramatic. But they illustrate a rigid creed, and are below the imagery that sets forth equally human crime and '''"On a Bust of Dante." By T. W. Parsons.''' nobleness, the vision that illumines life, churchcraft, statecraft, nationality, art, and religion. Within the eternal blazon of that saturnine bard whose

"rugged face

Betrays no spirit of repose,

The sullen warrior sole we trace,

The marble man of many woes.

Such was his mien when first arose

The thought of that strange tale divine,

When hell he peopled with his foes,

Dread scourge of many a guilty line.