two contending parties, the Guelfs, who adhered to the Pope, and the Ghibelines, who espoused the cause of the Emperor. In the year 1266, after a long alternation of ruinous reverses and ferocious triumphs, the Guelfs of Florence drove the Ghibelines out of their city, and at last permanently established themselves in power. The family of Dante belonged to the victorious party; and while he remained in Florence, it would have been dangerous, perhaps impossible, to avoid mingling in these civil broils. He accordingly went out against the Ghibelines of Arezzo in 1289; and in the following year against those of Pisa. In the former campaign he took part in the battle of Campaldino, in which, after a long and doubtful conflict, the Aretines were completely defeated. On that memorable day he fought valiantly in the front line of the Guelf cavalry, manifesting the same energy in warfare, which he had displayed in his studies and in his love.

But soon after the tumults of the camp had interfered with the calm of his private and meditative life, his adored Beatrice, whether an earthly mistress, or an abstraction of his moral and literary studies, was torn from him. This loss, which in his writings he never ceases to lament, reduced him to extreme despondency. Nevertheless in 1291, but a few months after it, he married a lady of the noble family of the Donati, by whom he had a numerous offspring; a circumstance which would indicate a strange inconsistency of character, had his heart been really preoccupied by another love. This connexion with one of the first families of the republic may have smoothed his way to civic eminence; but if Boccaccio, usually a slanderer of the fair sex, be credited, the lady's temper proved unfavourable to domestic comfort.

He now entirely devoted himself to the business of government, and attained such reputation as a statesman, that hardly any transaction of importance took place without his advice. It has even been asserted that he was employed in no less than fourteen embassies to foreign courts. There may be some exaggeration in this statement; but it is certain that in 1300, at the early age of five and thirty, he was elected one of the Priors, or chief magistrates of the republic; a mark of popular favour which ended in his total ruin.

About this time, the Guelfs of Florence split into two new divisions called Bianchi and Neri (whites and blacks), from the denominations of two factions which had originated at Pistoja, in consequence of a dispute between two branches of the Cancellieri family. The Bianchi were chiefly citizens recently risen to importance, who, having received no personal injury from the Ghibelines, were disposed

to treat them with moderation; while the Neri consisted almost entirely of ancient nobles, who, having formerly been the leaders of the Guelfs, still retained a furious animosity against the Ghibelines. All endeavours to bring them to a reconciliation proved useless: they soon passed from rancour to contumely, and from contumely to open violence. The city was now in the utmost confusion, and was very near being turned into a scene of war and carnage, when the Priors, hardly knowing what course to pursue, invoked the advice of Dante. His situation was most perplexing and critical. The relations of his wife were at the head of the Neri; while Guido Cavalcante, his dearest friend on earth, was one of the foremost leaders of the Bianchi. Nevertheless, silencing all the claims of private affection for the good of his country, he proposed to banish the principal agitators of both parties. By the adoption of this measure, public tranquillity was for a time restored. But Pope Boniface VIII. could not suffer independent citizens to govern the republic. He sent Charles de Valois to Florence under colour of pacifying the contending parties, but in truth to re-establish in power the men most blindly devoted to his own interests. The French prince, after having made the most solemn promises to the Florentine government, that he would act with rigorous impartiality and adopt only conciliatory measures, obtained admission into the city, at the beginning of November, 1301. Making no account of the engagements he had entered into, he now permitted the Neri to perpetrate the most atrocious outrages on the families of their opponents, and to close this scene of horror by pronouncing sentence of exile and confiscation upon six hundred of the most illustrious citizens. Dante was among the victims. He had made himself obnoxious, both to the Neri, whom he had caused to be banished, and to Charles de Valois, whose intrusion in the internal affairs of the commonwealth he had firmly opposed in council. Accordingly, his house was pillaged and razed, his property confiscated, and his life saved only by his absence at Rome, whither he had been sent for the purpose of propitiating the Pope. Highly disgusted at the treacherous conduct of Boniface, who had been deluding him all the while with vain hopes and honeyed words, he suddenly left Rome, and hastened to Siena. On his arrival he heard that he had been charged with embezzling the public money, and condemned to be burned, if he should fall into the hands of his enemies. His indignation now reached its height; and in despair of ever being restored to his native city except by arms, he repaired to Arezzo, and united his exertions to those of the other Bianchi, who, making common cause with the Ghibelines,

formed themselves into an army with the object of entering Florence by force. But their hopes were disappointed; and after four years of abortive attempts they dispersed, each in pursuit of his own fortune.

The noble, opulent citizen, the statesman and minister, the profound philosopher, accustomed in all and each of these characters to the respectful homage of his countrymen, was now, to use his own words, "driven about by the cold wind that springs out of sad poverty," and compelled "to taste how bitter is another's bread, how hard it is to mount and to descend another's stairs." But the change from affluence to want was not the worst evil that awaited the high-minded patriot in banishment. For this he found compensation in the consciousness of having done his duty to his country. But he suffered much more from being mixed, and sometimes even confounded, with other exiles, whose perverse actions tended to disgrace the cause for which he had sacrificed all his private affections and interests. His misery was carried to the utmost by a continual struggle between his nice sense of honour and the pressure of want; by an excessive fear that his intentions might be misunderstood, and a constant readiness to mistake those of others. This morbid feeling he has pathetically expressed in several passages, which can scarce be read without profound emotion.

In this mental torture he wandered throughout Italy, from town to town, and from the palace of one of his benefactors to that of another, without ever finding a resting place for his wounded spirit. He stooped in vain to address letters of supplication to the Florentines; the rancour of his enemies was not to be softened by prayers. Meanwhile the hopes of the Ghibelines were again raised, when Henry VII., who had been elected Emperor in 1308, entered Italy to regain the rights of sovereignty which his predecessors had lost. Elated by the better prospects which appeared to open, Dante became a strenuous advocate of the imperial cause. He composed a treatise on monarchy, in which he asserted the rights of the empire against the encroachments of the Court of Rome he wrote a circular both to the Kings and Princes of Italy, and to the Senators of Rome, admonishing them to give an honourable reception to their Sovereign; and he sent a hortatory epistle to the Emperor himself, urging him to turn his arms against Florence, and to visit that refractory city with severe punishment. Henry did accordingly lay siege to Florence in September, 1312, but without success; and the hopes of the Ghibelines were finally extinguished in the following August, by his death, under strong suspicion of poison. Thus Dante, in consequence of his recent conduct, saw himself farther than ever from restoration to his beloved Florence. The unfor

tunate exile, now reduced to despair, resumed his wanderings, often returning to Verona, where the Scaligeri family always received him at their court with peculiar kindness. It has been asserted that his thirst for knowledge led him to Paris and Oxford. His journey to England is still involved in doubt; but it appears certain, that he visited Paris, where he is said to have acquired great fame, by holding public disputations on several questions of theology.

On his return to Italy, he at length found a permanent refuge at Ravenna, at the court of Guido da Polenta, the father of that ill-fated Francesca da Rimini, for whom the celebrated episode of Dante has engaged the sympathy of succeeding ages. The reception which he experienced from this Prince, who was a patron of learning and a poet, was marked by the reverence due to his character, no less than by the kindness excited by his misfortunes. In order to employ his diplomatic talents, and give him the pleasing consciousness of being useful to his host, Guido sent him as ambassador, to negotiate a peace with Venice. Dante, happy at having an opportunity of evincing his gratitude to his benefactor, proceeded on his mission with sanguine expectation of success. But being unable to obtain a public audience from the Venetians, he returned to Ravenna, so overwhelmed with fatigue and mortification, that he died shortly afterwards, in the fiftyseventh year of his age, A. D. 1321, receiving splendid obsequies from his disconsolate patron, who himself assumed the office of pronouncing a funeral oration on the dead body.

The portrait of Dante has been handed down to posterity, both by history and the arts. He is represented as a man of middle stature, with a pensive and melancholy expression of countenance. His face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes rather prominent, but full of fire, his cheek bones large, and his under lip projecting beyond the upper one; his complexion was dark, his hair and beard thick and curled. These features were so marked, that all his likenesses, whether on medals, or marble, or canvas, bear a striking resemblance to each other. Boccaccio describes him as grave and sedate in his manners, courteous and civil in his address, and extremely temperate in his way of living; whilst Villani asserts, that he was harsh, reserved, and disdainful in his deportment. But the latter writer must have painted Dante such as he was in his exile, when the bitter cup of sorrow had changed the gravity of his temper into austerity. He spoke seldom, but displayed a remarkable subtleness in his answers. The conscious

ness of worth had inspired him with a noble pride which spurned vice in all its aspects, and disdained condescending to any thing like

flattery or dissimulation. Earnest in study, and attached to solitude, he was at times liable to fits of absence. The testimony of his contemporaries, and the still better evidence of his own works, prove that his hours of seclusion were heedfully employed. He was intimately conversant with several languages; extensively read in classical literature, and deeply versed in the staple learning of the age, scholastic theology, and the Aristotelian philosophy. He had acquired a considerable knowledge of geography, astronomy, and mathematics; had made himself thoroughly acquainted with mythology and history, both sacred and profane; nor had he neglected to adorn his mind with the more elegant accomplishments of the fine arts.

The mass of Dante's writings, considering the unfavourable circumstances under which he laboured, is almost as wonderful as the extent of his attainments. The treatise De Monarchia,' which he composed on the arrival of Henry VII. in Italy, is one of the most ingenious productions that ever appeared, in refutation of the temporal pretensions of the Court of Rome. It was hailed with triumphant joy by the Ghibelines, and loaded with vituperation by the Guelfs. The succeeding emperor, Lewis of Bavaria, laid great stress on its arguments as supporting his claims against John XXII.; and on that account, the Pope had it burnt publicly by the Cardinal du Pujet, his legate in Lombardy, who would even have disinterred and burnt Dante's body, and scattered his ashes to the wind, if some influential citizens had not interposed. Another Latin work, De Vulgari Elo' quentia,' treats of the origin, history, and use of the genuine Italian tongue. It is full of interesting and curious research, and is still classed among the most judicious and philosophical works that Italy possesses on the subject. He meant to have comprised it in four books, but unfortunately only lived to complete two.

6

Of his Italian productions, the earliest was, perhaps, the Vita Nuova,' a mixture of mysterious poetry and prose, in which he gives a detailed account of his love for Beatrice. It is pervaded by a spirit of soft melancholy extremely touching; and it contains several passages having all the distinctness and individuality of truth; but, on the other hand, it is interspersed with visions and dreams, and metaphysical conceits, from which it receives all the appearance of an allegorical invention. He also composed about thirty sonnets, and nearly as many Canzoni,' or songs, both on love and morality. The sonnets, though not destitute of grace and ingenuity, are not distinguished by any particular excellence. The songs display a vigour of style, a sublimity of thought, a depth of feeling, and a richness of imagery not