Of the myriad beings who people these three realms of hell, purgatory. and heaven, Dante's supreme creation is Lucifer. Indeed, this per sonification of Evil is the supreme intellectual conception of the Fallen God of all literature and of all time. Dante in some measure at tained to and completed what 2Eschylus essayed. Dante's Lucifer is as repulsive as Milton's Satan is fascinating. All glory is alien to him; all things of sin are a part of and have their source in him. He is all-evil, Evil, and en during, the author of all the sin mankind en dures, the loathsomeness of his person, the vileness of his acts, the futility of the motion of his vast bat-like wings, the worst of the hugeness and horror are indescribable. lAt each of his three mouths he with his teeth is crunching a sinner in the manner of a brake.° Brutus Cassius, Judas Iscariot! These are the three arch sinners whom Satan's teeth are champing. The first betrayed his king, the sec ond betrayed his friend and king, the third betrayed his friend, his king and his God. And all about is ice and life-congealing winds, the intense darkness of the vast cavern in which the strange voices of Dante and Virgil sound alien, hoarse and hollow.
There are many other stupendous descrip tions in the Commedia, powerful apostrophes, withering invectives; the haughty words of Farinata degli Uberti, rising from his tomb; the piteous stories of Francesca da Rimini, and of Pia dei Tolomei; the description of the ser pents growing into men, then burning down to ashes and forever repeating this atrocious tor ment; the appalling picture of the forest of withering branches weeping their intolerable misery in drops of blood. Shakespeare has
more chords to his lyre, and Homer often rises to supreme heights, but with Shake speare and Homer will ever be associated in an immortal triumvirate the name of Dante. He remains the chief glory of Italian litera ture, and a world poet of the highest rank. Cino da Pistoia, after Dante, the most deli cate of poets of the stil nuovo, has left many sonnets, ballads and cansoni, in which he sang his love for fair Selvagqia. His passionate verses alternate moods of joy and grief, and show some psychologic observations. Cecco Angiolieri writes with humor, despair ' and gaiety. There is also ample and interesting material in the prose writing of the time. The 'Fioretti di San Francesco,' a compilation of legends and sayings about Saint Francis of Assisi or attributed to him, are exquisitely sim ple and of deep piety. Dino Compagni's Cronice, and the Cronaca of the three Villanis' describes the world in which Dante lived. •