. Poetical works of James Montgomery . aphic delineation, are happily exemplified, in the following brief passage theforce of mere sounds (where no image or personification is presented to theeye) is made to produce a surprising effect. On one of the sloping mazes ofthe spiral Hill of Purgatory, the travellers having parted with some agreeablecompany, which had long engaged them, it is said :— We knew those friendly spirits heard us going,Their silence therefore showd our path was right:Now left alone, proceeding on our lightning when it rends the rerrion, rushdA voice beside us,
. Poetical works of James Montgomery . aphic delineation, are happily exemplified, in the following brief passage theforce of mere sounds (where no image or personification is presented to theeye) is made to produce a surprising effect. On one of the sloping mazes ofthe spiral Hill of Purgatory, the travellers having parted with some agreeablecompany, which had long engaged them, it is said :— We knew those friendly spirits heard us going,Their silence therefore showd our path was right:Now left alone, proceeding on our lightning when it rends the rerrion, rushdA voice beside us, lamentably crying,Ah ! every one that findeth me shall slay me !*And then it fled, like thunder that explodes,All in a moment, from the riven cloud:—Scarce from that sound our ears had truce, when lo !Brake forth another, with astounding peal, I am Aglauros who was turnd to behind the poets back I cowerd,—Then was the air in every quarter still. Del Furgatorio, canto xiv. ? Genesis iv. 14. \ Ovid. Metam. lib. FARINATA. In the tenth canto of the Inferno, where heretics are described as beingtormented in tombs of fire, the lids of which are suspended over them till theday of judgment, Dante finds Farinata DUberti, an illustrious commander ofthe Ohibellincs, (the adherents of the emperor,) who, at the battle of MonteAperto, in 1260, had so utterly defeated the Ouelfs (the Popes party) of Flo-rence, that the city lay at the mercy of its enemies, by whom counsel wastaken to rase it to the ground ; but Farinata, because his bowels yearnedtowards the place of his nativity, stood up alone to oppose the barbarousdesign; and partly by menace—having drawn his sword in the midst of theassembly—and partly by persuasion, preserved it from destruction. Notwith-standing this patriotic interference, when the Guelfs afterwards regained theascendency, he and his kindred were most inveterately proscribed there, anddoomed to perpetual exile. The interview between Dante
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