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LIFE OF DANTE. XXI
approaches to flattery, a vice which he justly held in the utmost abhorrence. He spoke seldom, and in
a slow voice ; but what he said derived authority from the subtileness of his observations, somewhat like
his own poetical heroes, who _
“ Parlavan rado con voct soavi."
“ Spake
Seldom, but all their words were tuneful sweet."—HelI, iv.
He was connected in habits of intimacy and friendship with the most ingenious men of his time;
with Guido Cavalcanti,1 with Bunonaggiunta da Lucca,2 with Forese Donati,3 with Cino da Pistoia,‘
with Giotto,” the celebrated painter, by whose hand his likeness“ was preserved; with Oderigi da
Gubbio,7 the illuminator, and with an eminent musician 3
" His Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."-.'lIilt0n's Somuls.
Besides these, his acquaintance extended to some others, whose names illustrate the first dawn
of Italian literature: Lapol’ degli Uberti, Dante da Majano,‘o Cecco Angiolieri,“ Dino Fresco
xxii LIFE or DANTE.
baldi,1 Giovanni di Virgilio,’ Giovanni Quirino,3 and Francesco Stabili,‘ who is better known by the
appellation of Cecco D'Ascoli; most of them either honestly declared their sense of his superiority,
or betrayed it by their vain endeavours to detract from the estimation in which he was held.
He is said to have attained some excellence in the art of designing ; which may easily be believed,
when we consider that no poet has afforded more lessons to the statuary and the painter,3 in the variety
of objects which he represents, and in the accuracy and spirit with which they are brought befote the
eye. Indeed, on one occasion,‘ he mentions that he was employed in delineating the figure of an
angel, on the first anniversary of Beatrice's death. It is not unlikely that the seed of the “ Paradiso ”
wzm thus cast into his mind; and that he was now endeavouring to express by the pencil an idea of
celestial beatitude, which could only be conveyed in its full perfection through the medium of song.
As nothing that related to such a man was thought unworthy of notice, one of his biographers,7
who had seen his handwriting, has recorded that it was of a long and delicate character, and remark
able for neatness and accuracy.
Dante wrote in Latin a treatise “De Monarcbié," and two books “ De Vulgari Eloquio."5 In
the former he defends the imperial rights against the pretensions of the Pope, with arguments that are
sometimes chimerical, and sometimes sound and conclusive. The latter, which he left unfinished,
contains not only much information concerning the progress which the vernacular poetry of Italy
had then made, but some reflections on the art itself, that prove him to have entertained large and philo
sophical principles respecting it.
His Latin style, however, is generally rude and unclassical.
it, as he once intended, for the work by which his name was to be perpetuated. In the use of his own
language he was, beyond measure, more successful. The prose of his “ Vita Nuova," and his
“Convito," aIthough five centuries have intervened since its composition, is probably, to an Italian
eye, still devoid neither of freshness nor elegance. ln the “ Vita Nuova,” which he appears to have
written about his twenty-eighth year, he gives an account of his youthful attachment to Beatrice. It is,
according to the taste of those times, somewhat mystical: yet there are some particulars in it which
have not at all the air ofa fiction, such as the death of Beatrice's father, Folco Portinari ; her relation
to the friend whom he esteemed next after Guido Cavalcanti ; his own attempt to conceal his passion,
It is fortunate that he did not trust to
by a pretended attachment to another lady; and the anguish he feIt at the death of his mistress.” He
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>>23022512
>In the “Convito,"1 or Banquet, which did not follow till some time after his banishment, he
>explains very much at large the sense of three out of fourteen of his canzoni, the remainder of which
>he had intended to open in the same manner. “The viands at his banquet,” he tells his readers,
>quaintly enough, “will be set out in fourteen different manners; that is, will consist of fourteen
>canzoni, the materials of which are love and virtue. Without the present bread, they would not be free
>from some shade of obscurity, so as to be prized by many less for their usefulness than for their beauty ;
>but the bread will, in the form of the present exposition, be that light which will bring forth all their
>colours, and display their true meaning to the view. And if the present work, which is named a
>Banquet, and I wish may prove so, be handled after a more manly guise than the ,Vita Nuova,' I
>intend not, therefore, that the former should in any part derogate from the latter, but that the one
>should be a help to the other : seeing that it is fitting in reason for this to be fervid and impassioned ;
>that, temperate and manly. For it becomes us to act and speak otherwise at one age than at another ;
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>samba still hetero