ABSTRACT
It may be a singular observation, but we believe it to be a just one, that the modern school of poetry which has arisen in this country within the last thirty years, comes closer to the manner of Dante than any other; and this very remarkable poet actually combines many of the leading traits of the most eminent of our distinguished contemporaries. They do not know it, and probably never thought of it, but he is really at the head of their school, – and, if they would go to him with the same devotion with which poets in general have drank from the fountain of Homer, they would find much light thrown, by his comprehensive genius, on the
path which they are seeking to trace, and which they have as yet only imperfectly found. It has been the great object of modern poets to overthrow every poetical idol, and to seek for the sources of their inspiration in nature alone, and in their own genius. All the classical images and formulæ which had acquired a sort of prescriptive dominion in the regions of Parnassus, (here is one of them) are now banished as fetters upon the originality of genius, and the natural flow of sentiment; and this, we may say, Dante has done of old as thoroughly as it ought to be done. He has his allusions to these things when any good is to be got by them, and never expresses any thing like contempt for them; but his mind is completely unfettered by them to a degree that is not to be found in any other poet previous, perhaps, to Mr Wordsworth; and the reverence which, with all his freedom, he entertains for his old poetical masters, is a feeling which Mr Wordsworth would not be the worse of imbibing from him.
