The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico.  The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are.  Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only to the initiated.  Their value depends less on what they directly represent than on what they remotely suggest.  However strange, however grotesque, may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describing it.  He gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the size.  His similes are the illustrations of a traveller.  Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, business-like manner; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn; not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem; but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself.  The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent.  The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery of St. Benedict.  The place where the heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles.

Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton.  We will cite a few examples.  The English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan.  He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk.  In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island.  When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas:  his stature reaches the sky.  Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod.  “His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter’s at Rome, and his other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair.”  We are sensible that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet.  But Mr. Cary’s translation is not at hand; and our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning.

Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante.  Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery.  Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike.  What says Dante?  “There was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs.”