ABSTRACT
The poetry of Dante does not rise at once to its height; it begins simply and becomes gradually more and more copious and varied, and free in motion. The entrance to the Inferno, in accordance with the plan of the poem, is by a gate bearing an announcement partly explanatory and partly terrifying. The moralist begins to exercise his judgment and to graduate the sins and vices of mankind. He places the lazy, the timid, the perpetually irresolute, unfit for good or evil, almost outside of this graduation, according to a fantastic law of retribution. The moralist and indeed the theologian begins again with the descent, where are found those who did not receive baptism and did not know the true God. They do not suffer external torments, but a pain that is altogether internal, and waste themselves away in perpetual desire without the light of hope.
