was Guido Guinicelli (or Guinizelli) of Bologna, whom Dante calls

"the father

Of me and of my betters, who had ever

Practised the sweet and gracious rhymes of love.” 1

For general purposes the schools may be distinguished as the Sicilian and the Tuscan, but between them stands an intermediate, transitional group composed almost entirely of Florentines. Such were Chiaro Davanzati, Maestro Francesco, Maestro Rinuccino, Maestro Migliore, The Complete Damsel, and Pacino Angiolieri. Of these, by far the most important is Chiaro Davanzati, already mentioned as a follower of Guittone.

Chiaro

Davanzati.

But Chiaro in his time played many parts. First he essays the Provençal style, developing a theme of Sordello: Bel cavalier me plai que per amor. Then, in emulation of Guittone, he discourses on the mysteries of theology, and renounces ordinary love as of the Devil. Towards the end of his career - he was dead in 1280-he suc cumbed to the influence of Guinicelli. Yet, through all these phases and fashions, he manifests a freedom and spontaneity which are full of augury. In his writings, as in those of his countrymen and contemporaries generally, may be remarked a tendency to greater ease and naturalness, especially in those dialogues betwixt lady and lover, of which examples have been left by Chiaro himself and a certain —

1 Purgatorio, xxvi. 97-99.

surely this was a nickname-Ciacco dell' Anguillaia. In compositions like these, archaisms, and Provençalisms, and Guittone's "dear rhymes" and precious periods, give way to a grace and eloquence founded on simplicity. Doubtless the reason is that the Florentines had begun to feel at home in these half-foreign modes, on which they were now to bestow the impress of their own artistic temperament.

This assertion of the native Florentine element is symbolised by Rustico di Filippo, a man of plebeian Rustico di birth, and apprenticed by his father to the Filippo. silk - trade. Nevertheless, he appears to have been of some little note, as Brunetto Latini addressed to him, when rather more than thirty, his Favolello. Rustico is a noticeable mixture of Democritus and Heraclitus, being equally strong in humour and pathos. The insipidities of the Troubadour lyric he exchanged for the passionate breath of deep feeling, and, singing the pangs of love, wept in good earnest. But Rustico can laugh as well as weep, though some have detected in his most boisterous mirth an undertone of melancholy. He delighted in drawing portraits of singular people, and drew them in a way that reminds us of Peter Pindar:

"When Messer Messerino God did make,

It was believed He wrought a miracle;
Since of each kind the creature doth partake,
Bird, beast, and man were satisfied right well.
For in its throat it counterfeits a drake,
And in its shapely loins giraffe I spell,
While in its vermeil face-a dainty cake!
A man 'twill be, according as they tell.

Again, in singing it is like a crow,

And, as to knowledge, 'tis a beast outright,
And man in vesture doth it imitate.

God, when He made it, little had to do,

But 'twas His wish to demonstrate His might,
So strange a thing it pleased Him to create."

I referred above to the Favolello, a poetical epistle addressed to Rustico by Brunetto Latini1 (d. 1294 or 1295), probably from France. Several cirBrunetto Latini. cumstances have conspired to raise Latini's fame higher than is, perhaps, his due. First, there is the well-known passage in the Inferno, especially the line

"M' insegnavate come l' uom s'eterna."

And, secondly, there is Villani's testimony regarding his services to the Florentines. These allusions show that, in his age and country, Latini was an important civilising force; nor can we well resist the conclusion that Dante felt himself under specific obligations to him. It is not a forced or unnatural interpretation of the famous line that Dante owed the idea of the Commedia to Latini's prior experiment, the Tesoretto. Formally, the origin of the Tesoretto was as follows: Latini had gone to Spain as envoy of the Republic of Florence. In returning he met on the plain of Roncesvalles a scholar on a bay mule coming from Bologna.

1 Latini or Latino? It is extremely difficult to say. A man ought to know his own name, and Brunetto calls himself Latino, once in rhyme. On the other hand, Latino is opposed to Italian usage in the case of surnames. If Latino, why not Burnetto, for which there is equally good MS. authority?

Him he questioned about Tuscany, and was informed that the Guelfs had been expelled the country. Latini was heart-broken. Such was his distraction that he lost the highway, and wandered through a wood, where he beheld certain visions. As a fact, he sought refuge in France, which, it may be, the wood symbolises. Anyhow, there is evident kinship between this "selva diversa" and the "selva oscura" of the Commedia, while the words "perdei il gran cammino" may well have suggested che la diritta via era

smarrita."

Apart from Dante, the chief significance of the Tesoretto lies in its being the earliest specimen of that The Romance allegorico-didactic school of poetry which of the Rose. afterwards won such triumphs in Italy. It was, however, in France that allegory first gained an ascendancy. Of that not so much great as famous work, the Romance of the Rose, one part had been written relatively not long before by Guillaume de Lorris, while Jehan de Meung was busied at this very time with the continuation. Not only did Latini sojourn in France, but he became, in a literary sense, naturalised1 there, for he wrote on French soil, and in French prose, an encyclopædia-Li Livres dou Trésor. It would seem, therefore, that among the remoter influences which went to shape the Divine Comedy was that of the Romance of the Rose, a dry,

"Et se aucuns demandoit por quoi cist livres est escriz en romanz selon le langaige des François, puisque nos somes Ytaliens, je diroie que ce est por deux raisons: l'une, car nos somes en France, et parce que la parleure des François est plus délitable et plus commune a toutes gens."-Li Trésor, I. i. 1.

pedantic, and tedious allegory,1 both directly and by the fascination it exercised over the mind of Dante's guide, philosopher, and friend, Brunetto Latini.

Short metre.

And here let me say something as to the metre. The Romance was written in ordinary short couplets of eight syllables; the Tesoretto, in heptasyllabic couplets, which Latini appears to have thought the nearest approach in Italian to the French metre. The choice of such a verse for so high and serious a theme was unquestionably bad, and proves Latini deficient in the poetic instinct which, in giving expression to thought and feeling, infallibly seizes the appropriate form. To be honest, it is only by courtesy that Latini can be styled poet at all. He was essentially a schoolman, who posed as a versewriter for the object of conciliating the ignorant, of rendering his studies popular. Indeed, the Tesoretto may be deemed, and this is its gravest censure, a second edition, in another language and on a much smaller scale, of Li Trésor.

Scholasticism in excelsis.

On awaking from his stupor, the disappointed Guelf encounters Nature. Nature is a woman, of whose outward lineaments-hair, brow, eyes, lips, teeth-is vouchsafed a needless, and (it must out!) stupid, description. The more needless and stupid, since the lady is a confirmed blue-stocking, and lectures the poor man on the Creation, the Fall of the Evil Angels, Man, the Soul and its Faculties, the Four Elements, the Seven Planets, and other

1 Lorris is not so bad, but the other's contribution is much larger.