(_Inferno,_ xxi. 94-96,) "I saw the foot-soldiers,
who, having made terms, came out from Caprona, afraid when they beheld
themselves among so many enemies."[B]

[Footnote B: Landino, and most of the commentators after him, state that
Dante refers in this passage to the fear of the garrison taken in
the place when it was recaptured the next year by the Pisans. But as
Florence and Pisa continued at desperate enmity, Dante could hardly have
witnessed this latter scene.]

Thus, during a great part of the summer of 1289, Dante was in active
service as a soldier. He was no lovesick idler, no mere home-keeping
writer of verses, but was already taking his part in the affairs of the
state which he was afterwards to be called on for a time to assist in
governing, and he was laying up those stores of experience which were to
serve as the material out of which his vivifying imagination was to form
the great national poem of Italy. But of this active life, of these
personal engagements, of these terrible events which took such strong
possession of his soul, there is no word, no suggestion even, in the
book of his "New Life." In it there is no echo, however faint, of those
storms of public violence and private passion which broke dark over
Italy. In the midst of the tumults which sprang from the jealousies of
rival states, from the internal discords of cities, from the divisions
of parties, from the bitterness of domestic quarrels,--this little book
is full of tenderness and peace, and tells its story of love as if the
world were the abode of tranquillity. No external excitements could
break into the inner chambers of Dante's heart to displace the love that
dwelt within them. The contrast between the purity and the serenity of
the "Vita Nuova" and the coarseness and cruelty of the deeds that were
going on while it was being written is complete. Every man in some sort
leads a double life,--one real and his own, the other seeming and the
world's,--but with few is the separation so entire as it was with
Dante.

But in these troubled times the "New Life" was drawing to its close.
The spring of 1290 had come, and the poet, now twenty-five years old,
sixteen years having passed since he first beheld Beatrice, was engaged
in writing a poem to tell what effect the virtue of his lady wrought
upon him. He had written but the following portion when it was broken
off, never to be resumed:--

"So long hath Love retained me at his hest,