Perhaps no two passages could better show the difference between Dante and Milton, than this canto and “Plato’s Archetypal Man,” which in Leigh Hunt’s translation runs as follows:⁠— “Say, guardian goddesses of woods, Aspects, felt in solitudes; And Memory, at whose blessed knee The Nine, which thy dear daughters be, Learnt “of the majestic past; And thou, that in some antre vast Leaning afar off dost lie, Otiose Eternity, Keeping the tablets and decrees Of Jove, and the ephemerides Of the gods, and calendars, Of the ever festal stars; Say, who was he, the sunless shade, After whose pattern man was made; He first, the full of ages, born With the old pale polar morn, Sole, yet all; first visible thought, After which the Deity wrought? Twin-birth with Pallas, not remain Doth he in Jove’s o’crshadowed brain; But though of wide communion, Dwells apart, like one alone; And fills the wondering embrace, (Doubt it not) of size and place.