large and representative audience. The more serious section of the daily press, moreover, allotted much space to reports of the celebrations in honour of Milton, the Times maintaining in this respect its best traditions.

[Pg 61]

No one, therefore, can say that the birth, the poetry and prose, the character and the career and the influence of Milton have not been solemnly celebrated by his countrymen. But it is necessary to add, in the interests of truth, that the celebrations were essentially and exclusively scholarly, and were hardly, if at all, shared in by the nation at large. The intellectual sympathies of the educated were warmly touched, but the heart of the British people was not reached.

Now let us turn—for the subject of this paper is not Milton alone, but Milton and Dante—to the sexcentenary of the birth of Dante in the city of Florence, the month and year of his birth having been May 1265. I had been spending the winter in the City of Flowers, and I could not leave it, in order to journey northward, till after the Dante Commemoration had been held. I shall never forget it. From dawn to dusk the entire Florentine people held joyous festival; and, with the coming of night, not only the entire city, its palaces, its bridges, its Duomo, its Palazzo Vecchio,[Pg 62] that noblest symbol of civic liberty, but indeed all its thoroughfares and the banks of its river broke into lovely light produced by millions of little cressets filled with olive oil, and every villa round was similarly illuminated. The pavement of the famous square of the Uffizi Palace was boarded over; and overhead was spread a canvas covering dyed with the three Italian national colours. Thither thronged hundreds of peasant men and women, who danced and made merry till the early hours of the morning. At the Pagliano Theatre were given tableaux vivants representing the most famous episodes in the Divina Commedia, Ristori, Salvini, and Rossi reciting the corresponding passages from that immortal poem.

[Pg 62]

What a comparison, what a contrast it suggests between the solemn, serious, but limited honour done by us to Milton, and the exultant, universal, national honour paid by his countrymen to Dante! I should add that eight thousand Italian municipalities sent a deputation carrying their local pennons to the square of Santa Croce, where a statue of Dante was unveiled, amid thunderous applause, to popular gaze.

Now let us turn to a more personal contrast between the two poets. To many persons, probably 

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