Dante, by the distinctness of his outline, addresses himself more to the reader’s senses and perception; Milton rouses his higher imaginative capacity.  In the whole “Inferno,” is there a sentence so aglow as this line and a half of “Paradise Lost”?

      “And the torrid clime
  Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.”

Or is there in Dante any sound so loud and terrible as that shout of Milton’s demon-host—­

      “That tore Hell’s concave, and beyond
  Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night”?

Here the unity of his theme stands Milton in stead for grandeur and breadth.

Dante is copious in similes.  Such copiousness by no means proves poetic genius; and a superior poet may have less command of similes than one inferior to him.  Wordsworth has much less of this command than Moore.  But when a poet does use similes, he will be likely often to put of his best into them, for they are captivating instruments and facilities for poetic expansion.  When a poet is in warm sympathy with the divine doings, there will be at times a flashing fitness in his similitudes, which are then the sudden offspring of finest intuition.  In citing some of the most prominent in the “Divina Commedia,” we at once give brief samples of Dante and of the craft of his three latest translators, using the version of Dr. Parsons for extracts from the “Inferno,” that of Mr. Dayman for those from the “Purgatorio,” and that of Mr. Longfellow for those from the “Paradiso.”

  “As well-filled sails, which in the tempest swell,
    Drop, with folds flapping, if the mast be rent;
  So to the earth that cruel monster fell,
    And straightway down to Hell’s Fourth Pit he went.”
                        Inferno:  Canto VII.

  “Swept now amain those turbid waters o’er
    A tumult of a dread portentous kind,
  Which rocked with sudden spasms each trembling shore,
    Like the mad rushing of a rapid wind;
  As when, made furious by opposing heats,
    Wild through the wood the unbridled tempest scours,
  Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats,
    And scatters far the broken limbs and flowers;
  Then fly the herds,—­the swains to shelter scud. 
    Freeing mine eyes, ‘Thy sight,’ he said, ’direct
  O’er the long-standing scum of yonder flood,
    Where, most condense, its acrid streams collect.’”
                        Inferno:  Canto IX.

  “When, lo! there met us, close beside our track,
    A troop of spirits.  Each amid the band
  Eyed us, as men at eve a passer-by
    ’Neath a new moon; as closely us they scanned,
  As an old tailor doth a needle’s eye.”
                        Inferno:  Canto XV.

  “And just as frogs that stand, with noses out
    On a pool’s margin, but beneath it hide
  Their feet and all their bodies but the snout,
    So stood the sinners there on every side.”
                        Inferno:  Canto XXII.