rane both "to
the intrinsic greatness of the man's personality and to the sheer beauty
of his craftsmanship."

"The secret of Dante's power" writes James Russell Lowell "is not far
to seek. Whoever can express _himself_ with the full force of
unconscious sincerity will be found to have uttered something ideal
and universal."

Whether one or all these reasons are the true explanation of the
twentieth century's great interest in Dante, the fact remains, as
Tennyson said, that far from being a waning classic, Dante "in power
ever grows," and the interest he calls forth constitutes, as James Bryce
observed in his Lowell Institute lectures "the literary phenomenon of
England and America."

Now to Dante as the man let us turn. To know the fibre of his manhood
will help us to appreciate the genius of his art. "It is needful to know
Dante as man" wrote Charles Elliot Norton, "in order fully to
appreciate him as poet." The thought is expressed in another way by
James Russell Lowell: "The man behind the verse is far greater than the
verse itself and Dante is not merely a great poet but an influence, part
of the soul's resources in time of trouble. From him the soul learns
that 'married to the truth she is a mistress but otherwise a slave shut
out of all liberty'" (The Banquet). But that knowledge is dependent upon
our intimacy with the life and spirit of Dante. In many other cases the
knowledge of the life and personality of an author may not be essential
to either our enjoyment or our understanding of his work. In the case of
Dante "he faces his own mirror and so appears in the mid-foreground of
his reflected word." Before looking into that mirror for Dante's
picture, let us first recall some of the established facts in his life
and then see what manner of man he appeared to those who were his
contemporaries or who lived chronologically near him.

Dante was born in Florence in the year 1265. His father was a notary
belonging to an old but decadent Guelph family, his mother, named Bella,
was a daughter of Durante Abati, a Ghibelline noble. Whether his own
family was regarded among the first families of nobility or not, it is
certain that Dante enjoyed the honor of knowing that one of his
forebears, Cacciaguida, had been knighted by Emperor Conrad II on the
Second Crusade. Precocious Dante must have been, as a boy, with
faculties and emotions extraordinarily developed, for in his ninth year,
while attending a festal party, he