e
of bread is that is not our own." It is even thought not improbable,
from one awful passage of his poem, that he may have "placed himself in
some public way," and, "stripping his visage of all shame, and trembling
in his very vitals," have stretched out his hand "for charity" [13]--an
image of suffering, which, proud as he was, yet considering how great a
man, is almost enough to make one's common nature stoop down for pardon
at his feet; and yet he should first prostrate himself at the feet of
that nature for his outrages on God and man. Several of the princes and
feudal chieftains of Italy entertained the poet for a while in their
houses; but genius and worldly power, unless for worldly purposes, find
it difficult to accord, especially in tempers like his. There must be
great wisdom and amiableness on both sides to save them from jealousy
of one another's pretensions. Dante was not the man to give and take in
such matters on equal terms; and hence he is at one time in a palace,
and at another in a solitude. Now he is in Sienna, now in Arezzo, now in
Bologna; then probably in Verona with Can Grande's elder brother; then
(if we are to believe those who have tracked his steps) in Casentino;
then with the Marchese Moroello Malaspina in Lunigiana; then with the
great Ghibelline chieftain Faggiuola in the mountains near Urbino; then
in Romagna, in Padua, in _Paris_ (arguing with the churchmen), some say
in Germany, and at _Oxford_; then again in Italy; in Lucca (where he is
supposed to have relapsed from his fidelity to Beatrice in favour of
a certain "Gentucca"); then again in Verona with the new prince, the
famous Can Grande (where his sarcasms appear to have lost him a doubtful
hospitality); then in a monastery in the mountains of Umbria; in Udine;
in Ravenna; and there at length he put up for the rest of his life with
his last and best friend, Guido Novello da Polenta, not the father, but
the nephew of the hapless Francesca.

It was probably in the middle period of his exile, that in one of the
moments of his greatest longing for his native country, he wrote that
affecting passage in the _Convito_, which was evidently a direct effort
at conciliation. Excusing himself for some harshness and obscurity in
the style of that work, he exclaims, "Ah! would it had pleased the
Dispenser of all things that this excuse had never been needed;
that neither others had done me wrong, nor myself undergone penalty
undeservedly--the pe