Dante therefore employs the most accurate and infinitely the most poetical mode of marking the precise state of his mind.

Every person who has experienced the bewildering effect of sudden bad tidings,--the stupefaction,--the vague doubt of the truth of our own perceptions which they produce,--will understand the following simile:--"I was as he is who dreameth his own harm,--who, dreaming, wishes that it may be all a dream, so that he desires that which is as though it were not." This is only one out of a hundred equally striking and expressive similitudes.

The comparisons of Homer and Milton are magnificent digressions.

It scarcely injures their effect to detach them from the work.

Those of Dante are very different.
They derive their beauty from the context, and reflect beauty upon it.
His embroidery cannot be taken out without spoiling the whole web.