On the contrary, this singular use of classical names suggests to the mind a vague and awful idea of some mysterious revelation, anterior to all recorded history, of which the dispersed fragments might have been retained amidst the impostures and superstitions of later religions.

Indeed the mythology of the Divine Comedy is of the elder and more colossal mould.

It breathes the spirit of Homer and Aeschylus, not of Ovid and Claudian.
This is the more extraordinary, since Dante seems to have been utterly ignorant of the Greek language; and his favourite Latin models could only have served to mislead him.

Indeed, it is impossible not to remark his admiration of writers far inferior to himself; and, in particular, his idolatry of Virgil, who, elegant and splendid as he is, has no pretensions to the depth and originality of mind which characterise his Tuscan worshipper, In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

Their minds are under the tyranny of ten thousand associations imperceptible to others.