But where would have been that strong impression of reality, which, in accordance with his plan, it should have been his great object to produce?
It was absolutely necessary for him to delineate accurately "all monstrous, all prodigious things,"-- to utter what might to others appear "unutterable,"-- to relate with the air of truth what fables had never feigned,--to embody what fear had never conceived.

And I will frankly confess that the vague sublimity of Milton affects me less than these reviled details of Dante.
We read Milton; and we know that we are reading a great poet.

When we read Dante, the poet vanishes.

We are listening to the man who has returned from "the valley of the dolorous abyss;" ("Lavalle d'abisso doloroso."-- Inferno, cantoiv.)--we seem to see the dilated eye of horror, to hear the shuddering accents with which he tells his fearful tale.

Considered in this light, the narratives are exactly what they should be,--definite in themselves, but suggesting to the mind ideas of awful and indefinite wonder.