Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APPRECIATIONS The Dream is a rare rendering into English verse of that high ritual which, from the deathbed to the Mass of Supplication, encompasses the faithful soul. It pierces, indeed, beyond the veil, but in strict accordance or analogy with what every Catholic holds to be there. Hence we shall interpret its meaning if we liken it, not to Milton, whose supernatural worlds are his peculiar device, founded upon heathen rather than Christian tradition; nor to Dante, who mingles history and landscape from his time and travels in the solemn sweet Purgatorio which remains his masterpiece, but to Calderon's Autos Sacramentales, at once an allegory and an act of faith. . . . The Dream is the answer given at length to Lead, kindly Light ? a revelation of the Unseen, severe yet tender, demanding an heroic service, but to One who was entirely human; the simpleChristian truth, set in a mystery almost scenic, that it might be the more taking. William Barry. The Dream of Gerontius was the true copestone for Newman to cut and lay on the literary and religious work of his whole life. Had Dante himself composed The Dream as his elegy on the death of some beloved friend, it would have been universally received as altogether worthy of his superb genius, and it would have been a jewel altogether worthy of his peerless crown. There is nothing of its kind, outside of the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, at all equal to The Dream for solemnizing, ennobling, and sanctifying power. It is a poem that every man should have by heart who has it before him to die. Alexander Whyte. The Dream of Gerontius resembles Dante more than any other poetry written since the great Tuscan's time. Sir Henry Taylor. To my mind The Dream of Gerontius is the poem of a man to whom the vision of the Christia...