Great Books

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. DANTE. THE INFERNO. Dante was not only great, but one of the greatest of religious teachers. He was great in himself; he has been called "the Voice of Ten Silent Centuries." He was so great, and so conscious of his own greatness, that, in his "Inferno," he calmly places himself among the six foremost poets, known to him, of all the ages; and posterity has fully ratified his judgment. What might be set down to insane vanity in smaller men, becomes, in the greatest, a calm consciousness of heaven-bestowed endowments. "The man of great soul," says Aristotle, "is one who counts himself worthy of great things, being worthy." Few have dared to claim this immortality whom time has not justified in their claim. Even an Ovid wrote, -- "Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas." Even a Horace could say, "Exegi monumentum cere perennius." Milton determined, while yet a youth, "to write something which the world should not willingly let die." Bacon, with calm confidence, intrusted his reputation to future ages. Shakespeare says, even of one of his sonnets, -- "Not marble, not the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlast this powerful verse." And not only was Dante so great in himself, but he deals with the greatest of all subjects, he teaches verities the most awful, and the most eternal. At some few of these we will endeavor to glance. And, once more, Dante's immortal poem, "The Divine Comedy," concentrates into itself the essence of many of the most remarkable outcomes of human literature. It more nearly resembles the Apocalypse of St. John than any other book. Like the "Confessions" of St. Augustine and Rousseau, and like the "Samson Agonistes " of Milton, it is, in part, a scarcely veiled autobiography...