ed the metres and manner of the great Greek lyric
poets, from Alcaeus and Sappho downward. Before Horace Latin lyric
poetry is represented almost wholly by the brilliant but technically
immature poems of Catullus; after him it ceases to exist. For what he
made it he claims, in a studied modesty of phrase but with a just
sense of his own merits, an immortality to rival that of Rome.

DANTE

By ARCHDEACON FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.

(1265-1321)

[Illustration: Dante.]

In this paper I will give a rapid sketch of Dante's life, and then
will try to point to some of the features of a poem which must ever
take its place among the supremest efforts of the human intellect,
side by side with Homer's "Iliad," and Virgil's "Aeneid," and Milton's
"Paradise Lost," and the plays of Shakespeare; and which is not less
great than any of these in its immortal and epoch-making significance.

Dante was born in 1265, in the small room of a small house in
Florence, still pointed out as the Casa di Dante. His father,
Aldighieri, was a lawyer, and belonged to the humbler class of
burgher-nobles. The family seems to have changed its name into
Alighieri, "the wing-bearers," at a later time, in accordance with the
beautiful coat of arms which they adopted--a wing in an azure field.
Dante was a devout, beautiful, precocious boy, and his susceptible
soul caught a touch of "phantasy and flame" from the sight of
Beatrice, daughter of Folco de' Portinari, whom he saw clad in crimson
for a festa. From that day the fair girl, with her rosy cheeks, and
golden hair, and blue eyes, became to the dreamy boy a vision of
angelic beauty, an ideal of saintly purity and truth. But while he
cherished this inward love he continued to study under his master,
Brunetto Latini, and acquired not only all the best learning, but also
all the most brilliant accomplishments of his day. He had never
breathed a word of his love to Beatrice; it was of the unselfish,
adoring, chivalrous type, which was content to worship in silence.
Beatrice was wedded to another, and shortly afterward, in 1289, she
died. So far from causing to Dante any self-reproach, he regarded his
love for her as the most ennobling and purifying influence of his
life--a sort of moral regeneration. Beatrice became to him the type of
Theology and Heavenly truth. Nor did his love in any way interfere
with the studies or activities of his life. His sonnets early gained
him fame as a poet, and the lov