acts. The air of mysticism with which Dante has enveloped his
love for the daughter of the Portinari family does not in any way
detract from our interest in his point of view, for the principal fact
for the modern world is that he had such thoughts about women. Legouve
has said that spiritual love was always mingled with a respect for
women, and that sensual admiration was rarely without secret scorn and
hatred; and it is his further opinion that spiritual love was naturally
allied to sentiments of austere patriotism in illustrious men, while
those who celebrated the joys of sensual passion were indifferent to the
cause of country and sometimes traitor to it. Dante and Petrarch, the
two chaste poets, as they are sometimes called, were the most ardent
patriots in all Italy. Midst the tortures of the _Inferno_ or the joys
of the _Paradiso_, the image of the stricken fatherland is ever with
Dante, and more than once does he cry out against her cruel oppressors.
With Petrarch, as it has well been said, his love for the Latin language
was but the form of his love for his people, as in his great hope for
the future the glory of the past was to return. Boccaccio was the most
illustrious of those in literature who represented the sensual
conception of woman; and whatever his literary virtues may have been, no
one has ever called attention to his patriotic fervor or to his dignity
of character. Laura and Beatrice, though not of royal birth, have been
made immortal by their poet lovers; Boccaccio loved the daughter of a
king, but he has described her with such scant respect that what little
renown she may have derived from her liaison with him is all to her
discredit.

The story of Dante and Beatrice is now an old one, but ever fresh with
the rare charm which it possesses even after the lapse of these many
years. The _New Life_, Dante's earliest work, which is devoted to a
description of his first meeting with Beatrice and his subsequent
all-powerful love for her, has been regarded sceptically by some
critics, who are inclined to see in it but an allegory, and there are
others who go so far as to say that Beatrice never existed. What
uncertainty can there be regarding her life, when Cino da Pistoja wrote
his most celebrated poem, a _canzone_ to Dante, consoling him for her
loss? The following stanza from Rossetti's matchless version is proof
enough for all who care to read:

"Why now do pangs of torment clutch thy heart,