self the
sport of her and her young friends by his adoring timidity (see the 5th
and 6th sonnets in the same work)--in short, constituted her a paragon
of perfection, and enabled her, by so doing, to shew that she was none.
He says, that finding himself unexpectedly near her one day in company,
he trembled so, and underwent such change of countenance, that many of
the ladies present began to laugh with her about him--"_si gabbavano di
me_." And he adds, in verse,

"Con l'altre donne mia vista gabbate,
E non pensate, donna, onde si mova
Ch'io vi rassembri si figura nova,
Quando riguardo la vostra beltate," &c. Son. 5.

"You laugh with the other ladies to see how I look (literally, you mock
my appearance); and do not think, lady, what it is that renders me so
strange a figure at sight of your beauty."

And in the sonnet that follows, he accuses her of preventing pity of him
in others, by such "killing mockery" as makes him wish for death ("_la
pieta, che 'l vostro gabbo recinde_," &c.)[7]

Now, it is to be admitted, that a young lady, if she is not very wise,
may laugh at her lover with her companions, and yet return his love,
after her fashion; but the fair Portinari laughs and marries another.
Some less melancholy face, some more intelligible courtship, triumphed
over the questionable flattery of the poet's gratuitous worship; and the
idol of Dante Alighieri became the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi. Not
a word does he say on that mortifying point. It transpired from a clause
in her father's will. And yet so bent are the poet's biographers on
leaving a romantic doubt in one's mind, whether Beatrice may not have
returned his passion, that not only do all of them (as far as I have
observed) agree in taking no notice of these sonnets, but the author
of the treatise entitled _Dante and the Catholic Philosophy of the
Thirteenth Century_, "in spite" (as a critic says) "of the _Beatrice,
his daughter, wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi_, of the paternal will,"
describes her as dying in "all the lustre of virginity." [8] The
assumption appears to be thus gloriously stated, as a counterpart to the
notoriety of its untruth. It must be acknowledged, that Dante himself
gave the cue to it by more than silence; for he not only vaunts her
acquaintance in the next world, but assumes that she returns his love in
that region, as if no such person as her husband could have existed, or
as if he himself had not been marr