to open to us the
intimate social life of the literary men of that period as reflected
in their vague Platonic rhapsodies, their friendly letters, their
jests and quarrels, their joy and sadness. Interwoven with all this
are stately _canzoni_, and dainty sonnets full of quaint conceits,
like that wherein Jacopo da Lentino (1250) sings _Of his Lady in
Heaven_:

I have it in my heart to serve God so
That into Paradise I shall repair--
The holy place through the which everywhere
I have heard say that joy and solace flow.
Without my lady I were loath to go--
She who has the bright face and the bright hair--
Because if she were absent, I being there,
My pleasure would be less than naught, I know.
Look you, I say not this to such intent
As that I there would deal in any sin:
I only would behold her gracious mien,
And beautiful soft eyes, and lovely face,
That so it should be my complete content
To see my lady joyful in her place.

We seem, in turning over these pages, to see the brilliant,
ever-changing current of Italian thirteenth and fourteenth century
life--from Palermo, where Frederick II. held an almost Oriental
court, to the communes of Central Italy, the best type of which is
the merchant-city of the Arno, whose sons in those days could fight as
well as wield the yardstick, and sing in strains that have rarely
been equaled. In the first division of the work the great poet and his
friends are brought vividly before us from the time when, a sensitive
child, his eyes first beheld Beatrice and his new life began, to the
painful hours of bereavement and exile. The poet, it is known, made
a curious sonnet out of a dream he had after his first meeting with
Beatrice, and, in accordance with the fashion of the day, sent it to
various well-known poets, asking them to interpret his vision. The
answers are all given here; and among those whose attention was thus
attracted to the precocious youth was one whom he calls his "first
friend," Guido Cavalcanti--after Dante one of the most interesting
literary personages of the day. Rash and chivalrous, we can follow him
in his poems from the time he made his pilgrimage to the shrine of St.
James, and fell in love on the way with Mandetta of Toulouse, to the
turbulent days of Florentine party strife, when he rides down Messer
Corso Donati, "the baron," and wounds him with his javelin, and then
goes into exile at Sarzana, where he sings his dying song a