cultivated the arts of music and design, and the same biographers who have mentioned these circumstances, add to their notices of his youthful accomplishments, the fact that his handwriting was remarkably elegant. He was in love, and wrote poetry in very early youth his mistress died when she and Dante were both twenty five years old. His love was, we will hope, an affair of the imagination rather than of the heart, for Boccaccio asserts, in his commentary on the second canto of the Inferno, that the lady died the wife of a Florentine gentleman. Dante celebrated his early attachment in many a sonnet and canzone, and in a work which he called the Vita Nuova. That work is a mixture of prose and poetry. Some of his minor poems are full of common thoughts, expressed in common language. Others have all the concetti and metaphysical subtleties which I have already said characterized the early ages of Italian poetry. But sometimes there are indications of the grandeur of idea and vigour of style of the Divina Commedia; and occasionally a strain of ardent or melancholy fondness is breathed, which Petrarca might have envied. With a noble consciousness of superior powers, he tells his Beatrice that he will one day celebrate her in a way in which no woman had ever been distinguished.

"Sicchè, se piacere sarà di colui a cui tutte le cose vivono, che la mia vita peralquanti anni perseveri, spero di dire di lei quello che mai non fu detto d'alcuna."

He fancied that nature had copied the charms of his early mistress in the form of Gemma, a lady of the Donati family, a family of high honour at Florence. He married her in the year 1291, a twelvemonth after the death of Beatrice. The marriage was an abundant source of infelicity. His wife was a Xantippe, instead of being the personification of a poet's fancy. But she was a woman of spirit and talent; and when her husband was banished from Florence, she wrung from the state a decree for her dowry (treating the banishment as a civil death,) and was thus enabled to sustain her family. Three of the sons of the marriage died young: the other two survived and became men of respectable abilities and attainments. It is interesting to observe that his only daughter was named Beatrice.

Dante had, in early youth, entered himself among the Minor or Franciscan friars, but he threw off the cowl before the close of his novitiate. He was a servant of the state. He both fought and negotiated for her, and when he was about thirty-five years old, he was elected one of the Priori, or chief governors of the city. This elec

tion took place ten years after the battle of Campaldino, wherein he had been on the conquering side, and in which the Ghibellines were defeated. Dante was more a Guelf than a Ghibelline, because he preferred aristocratical to democratical rule. From his devotion to politics all his misfortunes arose. The embers of civil war were rekindled by the heads of two factions of Pistoia, who removed their dissensions to Florence. Superficial observers thought, that when either the Guelfs or the Ghibellins should become absolute masters of Florence, an end would bę put to civil broils. The Guelfs were lords of the city during the priorship of Dante. The necessity of union and the spirit of party had held them together during their contests with the Ghibellins: but though that struggle had ceased, the pride and ambition which had given rise to it still mastered their minds. Their mischievous restlessness, and consequent love of contention, eagerly embraced the quarrel of the whites and the blacks, for such were the names of the disputants of Pistoia. The merits of the case made a schism among the Guelfs; the family of the Cerchi took part with the whites, and the equally illustrious family of the Donati were on the side of the blacks.

Florence became the theatre of great disor

ders. At the suggestion of Dante, his fellowpriori took the wise and bold measure of banishing the chiefs of both parties. The whites soon returned, it is said, on account of the illness of the poet, Guido Cavalcanti, one of their mem bers. Dante had no public concern with that return, for he had previously resigned his priorship. The government was so feeble, and the principles of justice had such little influence, that every person who mingled in politics was obliged to connect his mind and his fortunes with some of the parties of the state. Dante sided with the whites. The blacks not only intrigued with the pope, but even wished for the interference of foreigners to appease the state troubles, as they said; or, rather, to aid them in crushing the whites. Charles de Valois, brother of the French King Philip the Fair, became master of Florence. Dante was at that time at Rome, endeavouring to persuade Boniface VIII., the father of the Latin Christian world, to adopt the virtues of impartiality and benevolence. The Florentine populace, following the course of conquest, plundered and then destroyed the house of Dante. His enemies, the blacks, in the first stage of ferocity, passed a sentence of exile and confiscation against him and his moderate patrimony; and, by a second decree, condemned

him and his adherents to be burned alive. This proscription happened about the year 1302.

After some ineffectual efforts to recover his station in Florence, Dante submitted to his sentence of banishment. He became a Ghibelline, or Imperialist; and he did so on principle, because the pope, the head of the Guelfs, had deserted his friends, and had aided the blacks to overthrow the Florentine government. In a moment of strong reliance on the Imperialists, Dante wrote his treatise De Monarchia. It does not possess much literary ability. The author maintains the absurd position, that an unìversal monarchy is necessary for the world; but with more knowledge and talents, he denies the dependence of princes upon the pope, and bounds the power of the Holy See within ecclesiastical limits.

Dante quitted every thing that was most dear to him, and this dissolving of his domestic ties was the first arrow that was shot from the bow of exile.

Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta

Più caramente; e questo è quello strale

Che l'arco dell' esilio pria saetta.

DEL PARADISO. CANTO 17.

Dante wandered over all Italy; his political connexions were numerous, and he, therefore,