Probably the best way for a modern to realize how much of interest there may be for him in Dante is to consider the great Italian epic poet in comparison with our greatest of English epic poets, Milton. While any such comparison in the expressive Latin phrase is sure to walk lame, it serves to give an excellent idea of the methods of the two men in the illustration of their ideas. We venture therefore to quote a comparison between these two poets from a distinguished critic who knows both of them well, and whose modern training in English methods of thought, would seem to make him likely to be partial to the more modern poet though as a matter of fact he constantly leans toward the great medieval bard. "The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differ from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a {316} signification which is often discernible only to the initiated. . . . However strange, however grotesque, he never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the color, the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the size. His similies are the illustrations of a traveler. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain business-like manner, not for the sake of any of the beauty in the objects from which they are drawn; not for the sake of any ornament they may impart to the poem; but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself." "Still more striking is the similarity between Dante and Milton. This may be said to lie rather in the kindred nature of their subjects, and in the parallel development of their minds, than in any mere external resemblance. In both the man was greater than the poet, the souls of both were 'like a star and dwelt apart.' Both were academically trained in the deepest studies of their age; the labour which made Dante lean made Milton blind. The 'Doricke sweetnesse' of the English poet is not absent from the tender pages of the Vita Nuova. The middle life of each was spent in active controversy; each lent his services to the state; each felt the quarrels of his age to be the 'business of posterity,' and left his warnings to ring in the ears of a later time. The lives of both were failures. 'On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,' they gathered the concentrated experience of their lives into one immortal work, the quintessence of their hopes, their knowledge, and their sufferings. But Dante is something more than this. Milton's voice is grown faint to us--we have passed into other modes of expression and of thought."