“Dante,” says Shelley, “was the second epic poet, that is, the second poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived. Milton was the third.” Hence Shelley in another place calls Milton “the third among the sons of light.” Both these great men, in truth, versed in all the learning of their ages, and entertaining a conviction of the indefeasible truth of what they believed themselves to know which no successor will be able to share, applied themselves to embody these beliefs in works of genius. Even as great empires have vanished from the earth, and left nothing but the works of art which were not the greatness itself but merely its testimonies and symbols, so here the opinions have gone while the works remain. It almost seems a law that every great poem which thus resumes the thought of an age shall be a song, not of Carlyle’s phœnix “soaring aloft, hovering with outstretched wings, filling earth with her music,” but rather of the same phœnix “with spheral swan-song immolating herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.” Homer’s theology, we may be sure, was already obsolete for the higher Greek mind when, or not long after, _The Iliad and the Odyssee Rose to the swelling of the voiceful sea._ Our own national epic, Shakespeare’s series of historical plays, could not be written until the state of society it depicted was ceasing to exist. Dante himself has told us the origin of his poem. In the last sonnet of his _Vita Nuova_ he represents himself as having in thought followed Beatrice from earth to heaven: _Beyond the sphere that doth all spheres enfold Passes the sigh that from my heart takes flight, By weeping Love with new perception dight Sure way to the ethereal vault to hold; Then having won unto that height untold, Of Lady throned in honour hath he sight, Resplendent so, that by the vesturing light The spirit peregrine doth her behold. So seen, that when he doth report the same, I miss his sense, so subtle doth it seem Unto the grieving heart that makes demand; Vet know I that my Lady is his theme, For oft he nameth Beatrice’s name, And then, dear Ladies, well I understand._