This is not the judgment of the most refined readers. “The acutest critics,” says Shelley, “have justly reversed the judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the _Divina Commedia_ is the measure of the admiration which they accord to Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.” “The whole _Purgatorio_,” says Symonds, “is a monument to the beauty and tranquillity of Dante’s soul. The whole _Paradiso_ is a proof of its purity and radiance and celestial love.” This is true, and yet it is indisputable that in thinking of Dante the _Inferno_ always comes first to the mind, and that this portion of his poem, had one part only been published, would have done far more to preserve his name than either of the others in the like case, and this although it is far more tainted than they are with his most characteristic and least pardonable faults. The chief causes, no doubt, are that the material sublime is always more impressive to the mass of men than the moral; that there is an element of risk and adventure in the poet’s journey among the shades absent from the other two parts; and that Virgil is a more tangible and human personage than Beatrice. Yet it must also be admitted that the diviner beauty of the two latter parts suffers from an admixture of theological and philosophical disquisition, not the less tedious because it was impossible for the poet to avoid it. Milton tells us that the fallen spirits reasoned “of fate, freewill, fore-knowledge absolute,” but judiciously avoids reporting their observations. Dante’s place in comparison with the other chief poets of the world is difficult to determine, for none but he has written an apocalypse. He is emphatically the Seer among them, the “Soothsayer” in the original sense of the term, the most independent of poetical fiction and convention. He is also by far the most individual and autobiographic, and the only one who is the hero of his own poem. Milton, who is most naturally paralleled with him, does not deliver a revelation, but records a history. This at once places Dante in a higher category than Milton as an elementary force, and when we consider the circumstances of their respective ages it seems impossible to deny that Dante was by far the more wonderful man. This does not necessarily establish the superiority of the _Divina Commedia_ to _Paradise Lost_. Isaiah presents himself in a more august and venerable character than Homer, but his prophecy is not as majestic as the _Iliad_. It is also difficult, when assigning the relative ranks of poets, to discriminate strictly between the claims that arise from mere poetical endowment and the significance of their position in history. One may stand upon the higher pedestal, and the other may have the sweeter voice.