earned that Dante, who had been, as I told you before,
no more than a passable master of the weapon, now set himself to gain
supremacy over it. Day after day, through long hours, Dante labored at
his appointed task, bracing his sinews, strengthening his muscles,
steadying his eye, doing, in a word, all that a spare and studious youth
must do who would turn himself into a strong and skilful soldier. And
because whatever Dante set head and heart and hand to he was like to
accomplish, I learned later what I guessed from the beginning--that his
patience had its reward.

By reason of his white-hot zeal and tireless determination, Dante gained
his desired end sooner than many a one whom nature had better moulded
for the purpose. And being of a generous eagerness to learn, he did not
content himself with mastering alone the more skilled usage of the
sword, but made his earnest study of the carriage and command of other
weapons, and he applied himself, besides, to the investigation of the
theory and practice of war as it is waged between great cities and great
states, and to the history of military affairs as they are set forth and
expounded in the lives of famous captains, such as Alexander, and Caesar,
and their like. Had he been in expectation of sudden elevation to the
headship of the Republic, he could not have toiled more furiously, nor
more wisely devoured a week's lesson in a day, a month's lesson in a
week, a year's lesson in a month, with all the splendid madness of
desireful youth.

But the marvel of it all was that he did not suffer these studies,
arduous as they were, to eat up his time and his mind, but he kept store
of both to spare for yet another kind of enterprise no less exacting and
momentous, albeit to my mind infinitely more interesting. I will freely
admit that I was never other than an indifferent soldier. I did my part
when the time came, as I am glad to remember, not without sufficient
courage if wholly without distinction, but there was ever more pleasure
for me in the balancing of a rhyme than in the handling of a pike, and I
would liefer have been Catullus than Caesar any day of the week. So the
work that Dante did in his little leisure from application to arms is
the work that wonders me and delights me, and that fills my memory, as I
think of it, with exquisite melodies.

It was about this time that sundry poets of the city, of whom let us say
that Messer Guido Cavalcanti was the greatest and yo