MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 585 



their practice with their profession so opposite were their principles to 

 those of the religion of which they assumed to be the guardians by divine 

 delegation that there arose a belief that the reign of antichrist was come, 

 that mankind had been given up to the dominion of Satan. This disappro- 

 bation of the principles of the pope's government, and disgust at the man- 

 ners and habits of the papal court, are construed by Signor Rosetti into a 

 declaration of hostility to the Roman church, and a denial of the authority 

 of the pope. He asserts there to be identically two sentiments, which, 

 though they may co-exist in the same breast, are essentially different, and 

 by no means involve the existence of each other. He appears to confound 

 a virtuous abhorrence of crime and depravity, with a dissent from the tenets 

 of the church, in the conduct of whose rulers such crime and depravity had 

 been exhibited. An endeavour is made to show that the reproaches cast 

 upon the conduct of its members proceeded from that conviction of error 

 in the constitution of the church itself, which was subsequently avowed 

 under the title of Protestantism, which would be something like attributing 

 to those who disapproved of the measures of our government respecting 

 America, a secret desire for the establishment of a republic. 



But the power and intolerance of the popes prevented the open declara- 

 tion of opinion, or the free communication of sentiment. " Liberty of con- 

 science was forbidden, and no feeling of the heart could be disclosed with 

 impunity." Under this system of persecution men were obliged to disguise 

 their sentiments under the mask of allegory a plan which our author as- 

 serts to have been universal. He quotes the Abbe Plugurt, in proof of a 

 general belief in the visible reign of Satan on earth. " This belief," 

 he remarks, " being common to so many persons, it is very certain 

 that they must have communicated with each other in some parti- 

 cular language, and that they did so will be proved by their own avowal, 

 and by other and unquestionable evidence." This allegorical language 

 collected its terms indiscriminately from mythology and scripture, " by 

 means of which the world was described under two aspects, as what it 

 was, and as what it ought to be." The author endeavours to shew, from 

 the example of the priests of Egypt and Greece, of the druids in our own 

 country, and of the ancient schools of philosophy, that the art of speaking 

 and writing in a language which bears a double interpretation is of very 

 great antiquity, and, from expressions in private letters of Dante, Petrarca, 

 Boccaccio, &c. that these persons adopted this art. " When we read his 

 (Dante's) vivid descriptions of the rivers of hell, of the various demons, 

 as Charon, Minos, Cerberus, and the Minotaur, &c., and of the many 

 condemned of antiquity, as Semiramis, Capaneus, Mahomet, Simon Magus, 

 and Nimrod, the builder of the Tower of Babel, we can hardly divest 

 ourselves of the persuasion that he must be speaking seriously and literally 

 of the hell of another world, but that literal version encloses an allegory ; 

 and if we think attentively, we shall perceive that the rivers, and the 

 demons, and the damned, all convey some allusion to the things and 

 persons then living, in that Babylonish time when Lucifer's kingdom was 

 on earth." Vol. I. p. 130. 



In these two volumes the author gives his reasons for divesting himself 

 of the above-named persuasion. They are worth reading they are in- 

 teresting but the professor admits, in the concluding letter to Charles 

 Lyell, Esq. that " it is not a very easy matter to understand even the 

 literal meaning of the divine comedy ;" and conscience-stricken, as it were, 

 at the hardhihood of his attempt to give the meaning of its supposed 

 allegory, anticipates, in the same letter, the disrespect with which his 

 theory is likely to be treated, and deprecates the sentence he considers the 

 world will probably pass upon his book. Of the translation we feel our- 

 selves bound to speak in terms of high praise. Though not insusceptible 



