his boyhood. He had however for preceptor, Brunetto Latini; so that he received as good an education as was then to be had. His love of letters (which was so remarkable that he was known as an author, before he was ten years old) did not prevent his eager participation in the exercises and amusements of youth; so, that he was a good musician, swordsman, horseman, falconer, etc. He was a warm admirer of the fairest portion of creation; and the individual for whom he felt the passion of Love, in all its most romantic Platonic purity, continued inseparably linked with most of his thoughts, words and writings, from even his infancy up to his death; so that, with the mere exception of his political and grammatical treatises and his translations from the Bible, it were not easy to find a single composition of his, in which she is not either directly named, or implicitly hinted at; and in all his grand productions she occupies the first post of honor. She however died before he was twenty-six : and he was at last induced to marry, in order not to be wanting as a citizen. He was (like most young Florentines) brought up a soldier; and had already risen to a distinguished post ere the battle of Campaldino, in 1290. This however did not prevent his diplomatic career;

and, ere his thirty-second year, he had been sent on ten or twelve different embassies not only to various Italian courts, but into Sicily and France. Through the different gradations of office, he at last was elected a Prior, or head magistrate of Florence, in 1300. He was then in his thirty-fifth year. Besides the Guelphs and Ghibellines, other sanguinary factions now appeared -the Blacks and Whites. These he endeavoured to restrain, but in vain: and the event was, that, on the Blacks becoming triumphant two years after, (by the aid of the Pope, and of a French army) Dante was ejected for ever from his native city. From that period, he continued rambling up and down Italy and France (once even he came into England ); and at last died at Ravenna in 1321. His earliest productions were songs; in his youth he composed his Vita Nuova, which is a mixture of prose and verse: so that he had acquired high literary fame before commencing his great poem, THE DIVINE COMEDY. This he began between twenty and thirty, and had scarcely finished when he died: so it occupied above twenty years in the composition. While composing it, however, he was not only engaged in wars, politics, and travelling, but wrote a variety of minor works a long treatise on

Italian grammar, the earliest of its kind; a book on politics, called De Monarchia; various Eclogues, and letters, and other productions either now wholly lost, or to be found in a very mutilated condition; these all in Latin : and in Italian - a philosophical comment named Il Convito; a translation of seven of the psalms and other religious pieces; and many letters and historical tracts of which very little is now extant. He left several children; all of whom emigrated from Florence, where their property had been confiscated; nor, when the republic offer'd to restore it to his descendants, could these be prevailed on to return: and at last his line became entirely extinct about the middle of the sixteenth century- the male branch of it; for there is a noble family which still continues (or at least did so, not long ago) to quarter his arms a gold wing in a field of azure with its own, on account of its descent from a female Alighieri. Dante's mortal remains still lie where he expired -in Ravenna: notwithstanding a negotiation which the Republic of Florence attempted, in order to obtain them, about twenty years after his death; as well as a still bolder attempt to the same purpose, made in the sixteenth century by no less men than Leo X and Michelangelo.

The Ravennati have hitherto treasured them with a jealous reverence that becomes both.

What secures Dante's fame now is his Divina Commedia. His other writings, more or less of a temporary nature, have fallen, or may fall a prey to Time: but this multifarious poem will not expire before all Italian letters become utterly extinct. For it not only is united with the birth of the history and language of one of the most noted people in the world, and is prized by them above every other product of their literature, but its subject is universally interesting

more so than that of Homer, and not less than Milton's. To much knowledge of the poetry and philosophy and religion of Antiquity, drawn from the Greek and Roman classics and the oriental writers, Dante added that of Mahometism and Christianity; and besides his own remarks and reflections in the character of a warrior, statesman, traveller, natural philosopher, etc. inserted those of the various remarkable men of his day, whether Italians, French, Germans, Spaniards, or Saracens; for there was scarcely one of them with whom he was not personally acquainted. The first great modern painter (Giotto) was his friend and left us his portrait. With Marco Polo, the earliest Modern who performed a fa

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mous voyage of discovery, Dante must have been intimately acquainted, and learned from his own mouth many things about the countries beyond the Line, which are not to be found in Polo's book. Some of Dante's observations- particularly regarding the antarctic pole can be reasonably accounted for in no other way. Where he was taught his doctrine of gravity (whether by conversation with the Arabs or Spanish-moors, or by some of their writings not now known, or by his proper meditation) is a curious problem; but few are aware, how nearly he approaches Newton on the subject of the centripetal attraction of the Earth. To investigate these matters, and elucidate them, particularly by extracts from his minor works, is to be one great branch of this comment. Among the number of volumes lately produced on a subject that appears little interesting to Oltremontani (I mean the verbal war between the Tuscans and the Lombards) there is one that may interest generally. Its author, Count Perticari, is of a similar opinion to mine regarding the politics of Dante. Yet I never saw the Count's book, until I had written all that is written of my own; nor indeed till after this volume had gone to press. That two impartial men considering separately