"'That is a sight for Pagans,' he said, 'and may give them pleasure. But
my Paradise were embittered if I had to watch the sorrows of others, and
their torments, however well deserved. The others are gazing on the
purgatory of critics and commentators.'
"He passed from me, and I joined the 'Ionian father of the rest'--Homer,
who, with a countenance of unspeakable majesty, was seated on a throne of
rock, between the Mantuan Virgil of the laurel crown, Hugo, Sophocles,
Milton, Lovelace, Tennyson, and Shelley.
"At their feet I beheld, in a vast and gloomy hall, many an honest
critic, many an erudite commentator, an army of reviewers. Some were
condemned to roll logs up insuperable heights, whence they descended
thundering to the plain. Others were set to impositions, and I
particularly observed that the Homeric commentators were obliged to write
out the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' in their complete shape, and were always
driven by fiends to the task when they prayed for the bare charity of
being permitted to leave out the 'interpolations.' Others, fearful to
narrate, were torn into as many fragments as they had made of these
immortal epics. Others, such as Aristarchus, were spitted on their own
critical signs of disapproval. Many reviewers were compelled to read the
books which they had criticised without perusal, and it was terrible to
watch the agonies of the worthy pressmen who were set to this unwonted
task.
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