Philosophy is the romance of the aged, and Religion the only future history for us all. Both these subjects of contemplation we find in Dante’s Paradise, and pursued with a rare modesty, not beyond the limits of our understanding, and with due submission to the Divine Law which placed these limits.”

“The last part of the Commedia, which Dante finished about this time (1320),⁠ ⁠… is said to be the most difficult and obscure part of the whole poem. And it is so; and it would be in vain for us to attempt to awaken in the generality of readers that attention which Dante has not been able to obtain for himself. Readers in general will always be repulsed by the difficulties of its numerous allegories, by the series of heavens, arranged according to the now forgotten Ptolemaic system, and more than all by disquisitions on philosophy and theology which often degenerate into mere scholastic themes.