LIFE OF DANTE. xvii
The time at which he sought an asylum at Verona, under the hospitable roof of the Signori della
Scala, is less distinctly marked. It would seem as if those verses in the “ Paradise,” where the shade
of his ancestor declares to him
“ Lo primo tuo rifugio e'l primo ostello
Sara la cortesla del gran Lombardo,"
" First‘ refuge thou must find, first place of rest,
In the great Lombard‘s courtesy,"
should not be interpreted too strictly; but whether he experienced that courtesy at a very early period
of his banishment, or, as others have imagined, not till I308, when he had quitted the Marchese
Morello, it is believed that he left Verona in disgust at the flippant levity of that court, or at some
slight which he conceived to have been shown him by his munificent patron, Can Grande, on whose
liberality he has passed so high an encomium.‘*’ Supposing the latter to have been the cause of his de
parture, it must necessarily be placed at a date posterior to I 308; for Can Grande, though associated
with his amiable brother Alboinoa in the govemment of Verona, was then only seventeen years of age,
and therefore incapable of giving the alleged offence to his guest.
The mortifications which he underwent during these wanderings will be best described in his own
language. In his “Convito," he speaks of his banishment, and the poverty and distress which
attended it, in very affecting terms. “ Alas !”“ said he ; “ had it pleased the Dispenser of the Universe,
that the occasion of this excuse had never existed ; that neither others had committed wrong against
me, nor I suffered unjustly ; suffered, I say, the punishment of exile and poverty ; since it was
the pleasure of the citizens of that fairest and most renowned daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me
forth out of her sweet bosom, in which I had my birth and nourishment even to the ripeness of my age ;
and in which, with her good will, I desire, with all my heart, to rest this wearied spirit of mine, and to
terminate the time allotted to me on earth. Wandering over almost every part to which this our
language extends, I have gone about like a mendicant; showing, against my will, the wound with
which fortune has smitten me, and which is often imputed to his ill-deserving on whom it is inflicted.
I have, indeed, been a vessel without sail and without steerage, carried about to divers ports, and
roads, and shores, by the dry wind that springs out of sad poverty ; and have appeared before the eyes
of many, who, perhaps, from some report that had reached them, had imagined me of a different form;
in whose sight not only my person was disparaged, but every action of mine became of less value, as
well already performed as those which yet remained for me to attempt.” It is no wonder that, with
feelings like these, he was now willing to obtain, by humiliation and entreaty, what he had before been
unable to effect by force.
He addressed several supplicatory epistles, not only to individuals who composed the govemment,
but to the people at large; particularly one letter, of considerable length, which Leonardo Aretino
relates to have begun with this expostulation : “ Popule mi, quid feci tibi ? ”
V'hile he anxiously waited the result of these endeavours to obtain his pardon, a different com
plexion was given to the face of public atfairs by the exaltation of Henry of Luxemburgh‘ to the
imperial throne ; and it was generally expected that the most important political changes would follow,
on the arrival of the new sovereign in Italy. Another prospect, more suitable to the temper of Dante, now
disclosed itself to his hopes; he once more assumed a lofty tone of defiance ; and, as it should seem,
without much regard either to consistency or prudence, broke out into bitter invectives against the
rulers of Florence, threatening them with merited vengeance from the power of the emperor, which he
declared that they had no adequate means of opposing. He now decidedly relinquished the party of the
Guelphs, which had been espoused by his ancestors, and under whose banners he had served in the
earlier part of his life on the plains of Campaldino, and attached himself to the cause of their opponents,
the Ghibellines. Reverence for his country, says one of his biographers,° prevailed on him to absent