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Il Battistere Il mio bel San Giovanni Dante)

Sasse di Dante See Wordsworths Sonnet

rasa degli Alighier House of Dante. 1300

Casa de Portinar House of Beatrice..

Casa de Donati House of Gemma wife of Dante. 129.

Caza de Priori 1277. Dante was one of the six Priors.

Porta San Pietro 1300 See G. Villani l'ap 132. Anno 1341.

8 Capella del Fodestà in which is the portrait of Dante by Giotto.

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DANTE ALIGHIERI.

BORN 1265.-DIED 1321.

THE following notice is extracted from the chronicle of Giovanni Villani* (born 1280? died 1348), an historian celebrated for simplicity and candour, the contemporary and fellow-citizen of Dante, and belonging to an opposite political faction.

"In the month of July of this year, 1321, died Dante, at the city of Ravenna in Romagna, soon after his return from an embassy to Venice, undertaken in the service of the Lords of Polenta with whom he resided; and he was buried in front of the entrance of the cathedral of Ravenna, with the honours becoming a great poet and philosopher. He died in exile at about 56 years of age.

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"This Dante was of an honourable and ancient family, citizens of Florence, of the quarter Porta San Piero;' and the cause of his banishment was this; that when Charles of Valois of the house of France came to Florence in 1301, and expelled the faction of the Bianchi, Dante was one of the principal governors of our city and belonged to that party, although he was a Guelph; therefore, without having any other fault, he was expelled with the rest of his party, and

Delle Historie de' suoi tempi, di Giovanni Villani, Cittadino Fiorentino, libro ix. cap. 135: Del Poeta Dante e come morì.

banished from Florence. After which he went and studied at Bologna, Paris, and many other places in Europe.

"Although a layman, he was profoundly learned in almost every science, and was distinguished as the greatest poet and philosopher of his time. As a rhetorician he was perfect, both in prose and verse; an eloquent public speaker; and the noblest writer in the loftiest and most beautiful style of poetry that has ever appeared in our language, either before his time or since.

"In his youth he composed the book entitled La Vita Nuova d'Amore; and afterwards, when in exile, about twenty Canzoni, moral and amatory, of great excellence; and among other things, wrote three noble epistles, one of which he addressed to the government of Florence, lamenting his banishment and complaining of its injustice; another to the emperor Henry the Seventh, who was besieging Brescia, reproving him, almost prophetically, for the error he was committing in remaining there; the third he addressed to the Italian cardinals, when the papal chair had become vacant by the death of Clement the Fifth, urging them to unite in electing an Italian for his successor. These epistles are written in Latin, the diction elevated, the sentiments just, and the reasoning powerful, and they were much commended by the wise and learned.

"He composed also La Commedia, in which he united polished verse to important and subtile disquisitions, moral, natural, astronomical, philosophical and theological; adorning them with new and beautiful poetical figures and comparisons, and treating most profoundly, in a hundred chapters or cantos, of the nature and condition of Hell, Purgatory, and

Paradise as he who will study the poem, and has a deep and penetrating understanding, will see and acknowledge. True it is, that in that Commedia he has indulged himself sometimes in railing and censuring, after the manner of poets, more than was becoming; but this perhaps was provoked by the embittered feelings of an exile.

"Another work of his, in Latin, entitled De Monarchia, treats of the office of pope and that of emperor.

"He began also a comment in Italian upon fourteen of the above-mentioned moral Canzoni, which was left imperfect by his untimely death; except as regards three of them; and by that specimen, which is adorned with beautiful language and philosophical argument, we see that, if completed, it would have been a profound, elegant, and very extensive work.

"He also composed a small book, which he entitles De Vulgari Eloquentia, in which four parts are promised, but two only have been found; his sudden death perhaps prevented there being more. It is characterized by forcible and elegant latinity, and good reasoning, and points out the imperfections of the different dialects prevailing in Italy.

"This Dante, being sensible of his great talents and acquirements, was somewhat haughty, reserved, and disdainful; and, with an ungraciousness common to philosophers, he could scarcely brook the society of the unlearned: but on account of his many virtues, his science, and worth, it appears to me a duty to give a perpetual memorial of such a citizen in this our chronicle; more especially as the noble works he has left us in writing bear true testimony to his merit, and extend the honourable fame of our city."

RITRATTO DI DANTE.

Fu'l nostro Dante di mezza statura;

Vestì onesto, secondo suo stato ;
Mostrossi un po' per l'età richinato;
Fè mansueta e grave l'andatura;

La faccia lunga un po' più che misura;
Aquilin naso; e'l pel nero e ricciato ;
E'l mento lungo e grosso; e l' labro alzato,
E grosso un po' sotto la dentatura;
Aspetto maninconico e pensoso;

Cigli umidi; cortese; e vigilante

Fu negli negli studj; sempre grazioso ;
Vago in parlar; la voce risonante;
Dilettossi nel canto e in suon maestoso;

Fu in gioventù di Beatrice amante;

Ed ebbe virtù tante,

Che il corpo a morte meritò corona

Poetica, e andò l'alma a vita bona.

Nacque 1265. Morì 1321.

Note. The above description corresponds correctly with that given by Boccaccio in his Vita di Dante. It was copied at Paris in 1834, from an autograph of the Commentator G. Biagioli, written on the fly-leaf of a "Comedia di Danthe, Venetia 1529." Biagioli had added, “Portrait du Dante tel qu'il se trouve à la fin d'un grand nombre de manuscrits du XIV et xv siècle."

Professor Karl Witte, in "Dante Alighieri's Lyrische Gedichte, Leipzig 1842, Zweiter Theil, p. xxx," alludes to it thus: "Das Dante schildernde Sonett aus Cod. Laurent., Plut. xl. No. 26.” A conjectural alteration has been hazarded in the thirteenth line, to complete the rhymes. It stands thus in the original :

"Dilettossi nel canto e in ogni sono."

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