wish, in clouds and darkness, but in a world of theological mysteries which necessarily lose more in sublimity than they gain in clearness by being perpetually discussed and explained. Dante's poem is at least as full as Milton's of obscure theological doctrines and attempts at their explanation; but, either by virtue of the plan of the _Divina Commedia_ or by some finer instinct of reserve and reverence in the poet, we never find ourselves in Dante as we do in Milton exercising our critical faculties, whether we will or no, on the very words of God Himself. If we reject an argument as unconvincing or fallacious, it is on Virgil or Statius, Beatrice or Thomas Aquinas, that we sit in judgment. The Divine Mind, intensely and constantly felt as its presence is from the first canto of the poem to the last, is yet felt always as from behind a {158} curtain which can never be raised for the sight of mortal eyes. Still, it must be admitted that, impossible as was the task of making the Infinite and Eternal an actor and speaker in a human poem, Milton's very failure in it is sublime. His prodigious powers are nowhere more wonderfully displayed than in trying to do what no one, not even himself, could do. The second half of his third book, for instance, is far more interesting than the first, but it may well be doubted whether the mere fact of his accomplishing the first at all is not a greater proof of his poetic genius. Nowhere does that unfailing certainty of style, in which he has scarcely an equal among the poets of the whole world, stand him in such astonishing stead as in these difficult dialogues in heaven. "Father, thy word is passed, Man shall find grace; And shall Grace not find means, that finds her way, The speediest of thy winged messengers. To visit all thy creatures, and to all Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought? Happy for Man, so coming;"