some portion of their father's abilities, which they employed chiefly in the pious task of illustrating his Divina Commedia. The former of these possessed acquirements of a more profitable kind; and obtained considerable wealth at Verona, where he was settled, by the exercise of the legal profession. He was honored with the friendship of Petrarch, by whom some verses were addressed to him1 at Trevigi, in 1361.

His daughter Beatrice (whom he is said to have named after the daughter of Folco Portinari) became a nun in the convent of S. Stefano dell' Uliva, at Ravenna; and, among the entries of expenditure by the Florentine Republic, appears a present of ten golden florins sent to her in 1350, by the hands of Boccaccio, from the state. The imagination can picture to itself few objects more interesting, than the daughter of Dante, dedicated to the service of religion in the city where her father's ashes were deposited, and receiving from his countrymen this tardy tribute of their reverence for his divine genius, and her own virtues.

It is but justice to the wife of Dante not to omit what Boccaccio3 relates of her; that after the banishment of her husband she secured some share of his property from the popular fury, under the name of her dowry; that out of this she contrived to support their little family with exemplary discre

cesco, made a translation of Vitruvius, which is supposed to have perished. A better fate has befallen an elegant dialogue written by him, which was published, not many years ago, in the Anecdota Literaria, edit. Roma, (no date,) vol. ii. p. 207. It is entitled Francisci Aligerii Dantis III. Filii Dialogus Alter de Antiquitatibus Valentinis ex Cod. MS. Membranaceo. Sæc. xvi. nunc primum in lucem editus. Pietro, another son of Dante III., who was also a scholar, and held the office of Proveditore of Verona in 1539, was the father of Ginevra, mentioned above in the note to p. 10. See Pelli, p. 28, &c. Vellutello, in his life of the Poet, acknowledges his obligations to this last Pietro for the information he had given him.

4 Jacopo is mentioned by Bembo among the Rimatori, lib. ii. della Volg. Ling. at the beginning; and some of his verses are preserved in MS. in the Vatican, and at Florence. He was living in 1342, and had children, of whom little is known. The names of our Poet's other sons were Gabriello, Aligero, and Eliseo. The last two died in their childhood. Of Gabriello, nothing certain is known.

1 Carm. lib. iii. ep. vii.

2 Pelli, p. 33.

3 Vita di Dante, p. 57, ed. Firenze, 1576

tion; and that she even removed from them the pressure of poverty, by such industrious efforts as in her former affluence she had never been called on to exert. Who does not regret, that with qualities so estimable, she wanted the sweetness of temper necessary for riveting the affections of her husband?

Dante was a man of middle stature and grave deportment; of a visage rather long; large eyes; an aquiline nose; dark complexion; large and prominent cheek-bones; black curling hair and beard; the under lip projecting beyond the upper. He mentions, in the Convito, that his sight had been transiently impaired by intense application to books. In his dress, he studied as much plainness as was suitable with his rank and station in life; and observed a strict temperance in his diet. He was at times extremely absent and abstracted; and appears to have indulged too much a disposition to sarcasm. At the table of Can Grande, when the company was amused by the conversation and tricks of a buffoon, he was asked by his patron, why Can Grande himself, and the guests who were present, failed of receiving as much pleasure from the exertion of his talents, as this man had been able to give them. "Because all creatures delight in their own resemblance," was the reply of Dante." In other respects, his manners are said to have been dignified and polite. He was particularly careful not to make any 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

1 "Per affaticare lo viso molto a studio di leggere, intanto debilitai gli spiriti visivi, che le stelle mi pareano tutte d'alcuno albore ombrate: e per lunga riposanza in luoghi scuri, e freddi, e con affreddare lo corpo dell'occhio con acqua pura, rivinsi la virtù disgregata, che tornai nel prima buono stato della vista." Convito, p. 108.

2 There is here a point of resemblance (nor is it the only one) in the character of Milton. "I had rather," says the author of Paradise Lost, "since the life of man is likened to a scene, that all my entrances and exits might mix with such persons only, whose worth erects them and their actions to a grave and tragic deportment, and not to have to do with clowns and vices." "Colasterion, Prose Works, vol. i. p. 339. Edit. London, 1753.

Parlavan rado con voci soavi.

spake

Seldom, but all their words were tuneful sweet.

Hell, iv.

He was connected in habits of intimacy and friendship with the most ingenious men of his time; with Guido Cavalcanti; with Buonaggiunta da Lucca 2 with Forese Donati ;3 with Cino da Pistoia with Giotto, the celebrated painter, by whose hand his likeness was preserved; with

1 See Hell, x. and notes.

2 See Purg. xxiv. Yet Tiraboschi observes, that though it is not improbable that Buonaggiunta was the contemporary and friend of Dante, it cannot be considered as certain. Stor. della Poes. Ital., tom. i. p. 109, Mr. Mathias's Edit.

3 See Purg. xxiii. 44.

4 Guittorino de' Sigibuldi, commonly called Cino da Pistoia, (besides the passage that will be cited in a following note from the De Vulg. Eloq.,) is again spoken of in the same treatise, lib. i. c. 17, as a great master of the vernacular diction in his Canzoni, and classed with our Poet himself, who is termed "Amicus ejus ;" and likewise in lib. ii. c. 2, where he is said to have written of "Love." His verses are cited too in other chapters. He addressed and received sonnets from Dante; and wrote a sonnet, or canzone, on Dante's death, which is preserved in the library of St. Mark, at Venice. Tiraboschi, della Poes. Ital., v. i. p. 116, and v. ii. p. 60. The same honor was done to the memory of Cino by Petrarch, son. 71, part i. "Celebrated both as a lawyer and a poet, he is better known by the writings which he has left in the latter of these characters," insomuch that Tiraboschi has observed, that among those who preceded Petrarch, there is, perhaps, none who can be compared to him in elegance and sweetness. "There are many editions of his poems, the most copious being that published at Venice in 1589, by P. Faustino Tasso; in which, however, the Padre degli Agostini, not without reason, suspects that the second book is by later hands." Tiraboschi, ibid. There has been an edition by Seb. Ciampi, at Pisa, in 1813, &c.; but see the remarks on it in Gamba's Testi di Lingua Ital. 294. He was interred at Pistoia, with this epitaph: "Cino eximio Juris interpreti Bartolique præceptori dignissimo populus Pistoriensis Civi suo B. M. fecit. Obiit anno 1336." Guidi Panziroli de Claris Legum Interpretibus, lib. ii. cap. xxix. Lips. 4to. 1721. A Latin letter supposed to be addressed by Dante to Cino was published for the first time from a MS. in the Laurentian library, by M. Witte.

See Purg. xi.

Mr. Eastlake, in a note to Kugler's Hand-Book of Painting, translated by a Lady, Lond. 1842, p. 50, describes the discovery and restoration, in July, 1840, of Dante's portrait, by Giotto, in the chapel of the Podestà at Florence, where it had been covered with whitewash or plaster. But it could scarcely have been concealed so soon as our distinguished artist supposes, since Landino speaks of it as remaining in his time, and Vasari says it was still to be seen when he wrote.

Oderigi da Gubbio,' the illuminator; and with an eminent musician2

his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,

Met in the milder shades of Purgatory. Milton's Sonnets. Besides these, his acquaintance extended to some others, whose names illustrate the first dawn of Italian literature. Lapo degli Uberti; Dante da Majano;* Cecco Angiolieri; Dino Frescobaldi ;

1 See Purg. xi.

2 Ibid. canto ii.

9 Lapo is said to have been the son of Farinata degli Uberti, (see Hell, x. 32, and Tiraboschi della Poes. Ital., v. i. p. 116,) and the father of Fazio degli Uberti, author of the Dittamondo, a poem which is thought, in the energy of its style, to make some approaches to the Divina Commedia, (ibid. v. ii. p. 63,) though Monti passes on it a much less favorable sentence, (see his Proposta, v. iii. pte 2, p. ccx. 8vo. 1824.) He is probably the Lapo mentioned in the sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti, beginning,

Guido vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io,

which Mr. Hayley has so happily translated, (see Hell, x. 62;) and also in a passage that occurs in the De Vulg. Eloq. v. i. p. 116, "Quanquam fere omnes Tusci in suo turpiloquio sint obtusi, nonnullos Vulgaris excellentiam cognovisse sentimus, scilicet Guidonem Lapum, et unum alium, Florentinos, et Cinum Pistoriensem, quem nunc indigne postponimus, non indigne coacti." "Although almost all the Tuscans are marred by the baseness of their dialect, yet I perceive that some have known the excellence of the vernacular tongue, namely, Guido Lapo," (I suspect Dante here means his two friends Cavalcanti and Uberti, though this has hitherto been taken for the name of one person,)" and one other," (who is supposed to be the author himself,) "Florentines; and last, though not of least regard, Cino da Pistoia."

4 Dante da Majano flourished about 1290. He was a Florentine, and composed many poems in praise of a Sicilian lady, who, being herself a poetess, was insensible neither to his verses nor his love, so that she was called the Nina of Dante. Pelli, p. 60, and Tiraboschi, Storia della Poes. Ital., v. i. p. 137. There are several of his sonnets addressed to our Poet, who declares, in his answer to one of them, that, although he knows not the name of its author, he discovers in it the traces of a great mind.

5 Of Cecco Angiolieri, Boccaccio relates a pleasant story in the Decameron, G. 9, N. 4. He lived towards the end of the thirteenth century, and wrote several sonnets to Dante, which are in Allacci's collection. In some of them he wears the semblance of a friend; but in one the mask drops, and shows that he was well disposed to be a rival. See Crescimbeni, Com.alla Storia di Volg. Poes., v. ii. par. ii. lib. ii. p. 103; Pelli, p. 61.

6 Dino, son of Lambertuccio Frescobaldi. Crescimbeni (ibid. lib. iii. p. 120) assures us that he was not inferior to Cino da Pistoia. Pelli, p. 61. He is said to have been a friend of Dante's, in whose writings I have not observed any mention of him. Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante, calls Dino "in que' tempi famosissimo dicitore in rima in Firenze."

Giovanni di Virgilio; Giovanni Quirino; 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 endeavors 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,* in the variety of objects which he represents, and in the accuracy and spirit with which they are brought before 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 was thus cast into his mind; and that he was now endeavoring to express by the pencil an idea of celestial beatitude, which could only be con

1 Giovanni di Virgilio addressed two Latin eclogues to Dante, which were answered in similar compositions; and is said to have been his friend and admirer. See Boccaccio, Vita di Dante; and Pelli, p. 137. Dante's poetical genius sometimes breaks through the rudeness of style in his two Latin eclogues.

2 Muratori had seen several sonnets, addressed to Giovanni Quirino by Dante, in a MS. preserved in the Ambrosian library. Della Perfetta Poesia Ital. Ediz. Venezia, 1770, tom. i. lib. i. c. iii. p. 9.

3 For the correction of many errors respecting this writer,

see Tiraboschi, Stor. della Lett. Ital., tom. v. lib. ii. cap. ii. in sesta rima, he has taken several occasions of venting his spleen against his great contemporary.

4 Besides Filippo Brunelleschi, who, as Vasari tells us,

diede molta

opera

whose Last Judgment is probably the mightiest effort of modern art, as the loss of his sketches on the margin of the Divina Commedia may be regarded as the severest loss the gelico di Fiesole, Luca Signorelli, Spinello Aretino, Giacomo art has sustained; besides these, Andrea Orgagna, Gio. Anda Pontormo, and Aurelio Lomi, have been recounted among the many artists who have worked on the same original. See Cancellieri, Osservationi, &c. p. 75. To these we may justly pride ourselves in being able to add the names of Reynolds. Fuseli, and Flaxman, The frescoes by Cornelius in the Villa Massimi at Rome, lately executed, entitle the Germans to a share in this distinction.

alle cose di Dante, and Michael Angelo,

in parte, nella quale, ricordandomi di lei, io disegnava uno ta donna era fatta delle cittadine di vita eterna, io mi sedeva 5"In quel giorno, nel quale si compieva l'anno, che quesAngelo sopra certe tavolette, e mentre io il disegnava, volsi

gli occhi, &c."

Vita Nuova, p. 268.