ABSTRACT
“Dante tells us,” writes Macaulay, “that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter between a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other. A great cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis began. Each creature was transfigured into the likeness of its antagonist. The serpent’s tail divided into two legs; the man’s legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his body. At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake; the man sank down a serpent, and glided hissing away.” ( 1 ) Something, I suppose, not unlike this appalling picture of Dante’s occurs in the world whenever a man’s soul becomes saturated with hatred. It will be remembered, for instance, that even Shelley’s all-forgiving and sublime Prometheus was forced by the torture of the furies to cry out in anguish,
“Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate.”
