We will celebrate the rite within.
[Exeunt.] ***** CRITICISMS ON THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN WRITERS.
No.

I.DANTE.

(January 1824.) "Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn With thy bright circlet." -- Milton.
In a review of Italian literature, Dante has a double claim to precedency.

He was the earliest and the greatest writer of his country.
He was the first man who fully descried and exhibited the powers of his native dialect.

The Latin tongue, which, under the most favourable circumstances, and in the hands of the greatest masters, had still been poor, feeble, and singularly unpoetical, and which had, in the age of Dante, been debased by the admixture of innumerable barbarous words and idioms, was still cultivated with superstitious veneration, and received, in the last stage of corruption, more honours than it had deserved in the period of its life and vigour.