Once realise that Dante was, like our own Milton, a man with a keen sense of what ought to be, and an equally keen appreciation of the fact that things in his time were by no means as they ought to be, that he was fallen on evil days and evil tongues--an appreciation which doubtless most great souls, short of the few greatest, have had at most periods of the world’s history--and you have the key to much that no ordinary theory of party-spirit will explain. Men of this temper care little for the party cries of everyday politics; and yet they cannot quite sit outside the world of affairs and watch the players, as we may imagine Shakespeare to have done, in calm consciousness that the shaping of our rough-hewn ends was in other hands than ours. No great historian of Shakespeare’s time devoted a whole chapter to his memory, as did Villani to that of Dante; yet we can hardly doubt that in the education of the world Shakespeare has borne the more important share, and Dante, with his deep conviction of the higher dignity of the “contemplative life,” would be the first to own it. The third subdivision, known as Tolommea, has, as one of its inmates says, the “privilege” of receiving the souls of sinners while their bodies are yet alive on earth, animated by demons. With this horrible conception we seem to have reached the highest mark of Dante’s inventive power. Only two names are mentioned, but one feels that if the owners of them ever came across the poem in which they had earned so sinister a commemoration, their sentiment towards the poet would hardly be one of gratitude.[33] These are the last of his contemporaries whom Dante brands, the last, indeed, whom he recognises. In Giudecca (Canto xxxiv.) the sinners are wholly sunk below the ice, and only show through like straws or other small impurities in glass. An exception is made in the case of the three persons whom Dante regards as having carried the sin of ingratitude to its highest point. Lucifer, who, as has been said, is fixed at the lowest point, has three faces. In the mouth of the central one he for ever gnaws Judas Iscariot, while in the others are Brutus and Cassius. The journey to the upper world is begun by a climb down the shaggy sides of the Archfiend himself. On reaching his middle, which is also the centre of the earth, the position is reversed, and the ascent begins. For a short distance they climb up by Lucifer’s legs, then through a chimney in the rock; lastly, it would appear, following the course of a stream which winds spirally down through the earth, they reach the surface, and again come in sight of the stars. § 2. PURGATORY.