a stone chest, wherein he still lieth. And
returning to the house in which Dante lately lived, according to the
Ravennese custom he himself delivered an ornate and long discourse
both in commendation of the profound knowledge and the virtue of the
deceased, and in consolation of his friends whom he had left in
bitterest grief. He purposed, had his estate and his life endured, to
honour him with so choice a tomb that if never another merit of his
had made him memorable to those to come, this tomb should have
accomplished it.

"This laudable intent was in brief space of time made known to certain
who in those days were most famous for poetry in Ravenna; whereon each
one for himself, to show his own power and to bear witness to the
goodwill he had to the dead poet, and to win the grace and love of the
signore, who was known to have it at heart, made verses which, if
placed as epitaph on the tomb that was to be, should with due praises
teach posterity who lay therein. And these verses they sent to the
glorious signore, who, by great guilt of Fortune, in short space of
time lost his estate, and died at Bologna; wherefore the making of the
tomb and the placing of the verses thereon were left undone. Now when
these verses were shown to me long afterward, perceiving that they had
never been put in their place, by reason of the chance already spoken
of, and pondering on the present work that I am writing, how that it
is not indeed a material tomb, but is none the less--as that was to
have been--a perpetual preserver of his memory, I imagined that it
would not be unfitting to add them to this work. But in as much as no
more than the words of some one of them (for there were several) would
have been cut upon the marble, so I held that only the words of one
should be written here; wherefore on examining them all I judged that
the most worthy for art and for matter were fourteen verses made by
Messer Giovanni del Virgilio the Bolognese, a most illustrious and
great poet of those days, and one who had been a most especial friend
of Dante. And the verses are these hereafter written:

"'Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers,
Quod foveat claro philosophia sinu,
Gloria musarum, vulgo gratissimus auctor,
Hic iacet, et fama pulsat utrumque polum,
Qui loca defunctis, gladiis regnumque gemellis,
Distribuit, laicis rhetoricisque modis.
Pascua Pieriis demum resonabat avenis,
Atropos heu letum livida rupit opus
Huic