His similes are frequently rather those of a traveller than of a poet.

He employs them not to display his ingenuity by fanciful analogies,--not to delight the reader by affording him a distant and passing glimpse of beautiful images remote from the path in which he is proceeding, but to give an exact idea of the objects which he is describing, by comparing them with others generally known.

The boiling pitch in Malebolge was like that in the Venetian arsenal:--the mound on which he travelled along the banks of Phlegethon was like that between Ghent and Bruges, but not so large:--the cavities where the Simoniacal prelates are confined resemble the Fonts in the Church of John at Florence.
Every reader of Dante will recall many other illustrations of this description, which add to the appearance of sincerity and earnestness from which the narrative derives so much of its interest.
Many of his comparisons, again, are intended to give an exact idea of his feelings under particular circumstances.

The delicate shades of grief, of fear, of anger, are rarely discriminated with sufficient accuracy in the language of the most refined nations.

A rude dialect never abounds in nice distinctions of this kind.