charm, and must show compassion, not wrath, since he has been in that most beautiful lady: Morte, assai dolce ti tegno; Tu dei omai esser cosa gentile, The poem is moving in its simplicity. A whole world of feeling, of painful recollections, is compressed in those few words, "Morta è la donna tua, ch' era sì bella," and we can already recognize the poet of the Commedia and his capacity to bring before our soul, in a few traits, a complete image, instinct with feeling: : Ed avea seco umiltà sì verace Che parla che dicesse : io son in pace. The figure of the departed one lies at rest, in such calm repose that we long for her peace. It was thus that painters depicted the death of the saints. It is curious, considering this piece, that Beatrice's death itself should not have inspired any poem of distinction. The canzone, "Gli occhi dolenti per pietà del core," which refers to it, contains, perhaps, only two of these expressive and touching verses: Chiamo Beatrice, e dico: Or se' tu morta! E mentre ch' io la chiamo, mi conforta. Beatrice died on June 9th, 1290, in her twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year. The Vita Nuova, that is to say, the collection of the poems and the addition of the prose text, was not begun till after her death. It is everywhere plain that the commentary is much later than the poems, as, for instance, in the case of the very first sonnet. The true meaning of the dream, says Dante, with reference to the presentiment of his beloved's death contained in the last verse, was not seen by any one at the time; but now it is plain to the dullest, that is to say, the prophecy is now fulfilled and Beatrice is no more. The close of the narrative goes more than a year beyond Beatrice's death. That brings us to the year 1292 as the date of the composition of the book, and this agrees with what Dante says in the Convivio (i. 1) that it was written at the beginning of his youth, that is to say, after the twenty-fifth year, and almost exactly with the words of Boccaccio in his Vita di Dante, to the effect that the author wrote it when he was "about twenty-six years old " more correct would have been, “at the age of twenty-six." Another opinion, according to which the Vita Nuova belongs to the year 1300, I regard as refuted, after Fornaciari's examination of the facts. Love in so transfigured and exalted a form as it is represented in the Vita Nuova, that intimate fusion of a symbol and a concrete being, became difficult to understand in later ages. Many doubted whether this love had ever been actually felt, while others could not conceive that the object of it was a mortal person, and consequently endeavored to regard Dante's Beatrice as a mere symbol and allegory, as the personification of the poet's own thoughts, not having any basis on an actual personality. Boccaccio relates in his Vita di Dante, that the lady celebrated by the poet was the daughter of Folco Portinari, and this statement is repeated in his Dante commentary (lez. viii. p. 224), with the addition, that the authority for it rests with a trustworthy person, who had known Beatrice, and been connected with her in very close blood relationship. Of this Bice Portinari we know from the will of her father, that on January 15th, 1288, the date at which the document was drawn up, she was the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi. That Dante should have loved and celebrated a married woman can cause but little surprise, in view of the manners of the age; the troubadours always extolled married women, and the Italian poets probably did likewise, though in their case we have no positive testimony. It was just from these relations that chivalrous love took its origin, as Gaston Paris has demonstrated in such a brilliant manner, and the mystical and spiritual love had nothing to alter in this respect. Dante's passion was for the angel, not for the earthly woman; her marriage belonged to her earthly existence, with which the poet was not concerned. We must beware of confounding our age with that of Dante. What a terrible event for the poets of our day is the marriage of the loved one to another! What tempests in the heart, what complaints, what despair! Dante does not allude to the event by a single word. But it would be wrong to deduce from this fact that it never took place; it was merely something of which that poetry took no heed, and which could find no place in it. Accordingly we have no valid reasons for doubting Boccaccio's statement. The houses of the Portinari were close to those of the Alaghieri, and Folco Portinari died on December 31st, 1289, which date tallies very well with the passage in the Vita Nuova which treats of the death of Beatrice's father. It is true that Boccaccio was the first to identify Beatrice with the one of the Portinari family, but there is nothing strange in that. Love affairs are not set out in official documents, and the report may well have been handed down by tradition till some one wrote the biography of the poet. III 1 ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE VITA NUOVA 1 It is to be observed upon close examination, that the poems of the Vita Nuova are arranged in such order as to suggest an intention on the part of Dante to give his work a symmetrical structure. If the arrangement be accidental, or governed simply by the relation of the poems to the sequence of the events described in the narrative which connects them, it is certainly curious that they happened to fall into such order as to give to the little book a surprising regularity of construction. The succession of the thirty-one poems of the New Life is as follows: At first sight no regularity appears in their order, but a little analysis reveals it. The most important poems, not only from their form and length, but also from their substance, are the three canzoni. Now it will be observed that the first canzone is preceded by ten and followed by four minor poems. The second 1 Charles Eliot Norton, Essay III. in translation of The New Life. 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