rving that
perhaps the prior had not seen it, expressed a wish to leave it with his
new friend as a memorial. It was "a portion," he said, "of his work."
The prior received the volume with respect; and politely opening it at
once, and fixing his eyes on the contents, in order, it would seem,
to shew the interest he took in it, appeared suddenly to check some
observation which they suggested. Dante found that his reader was
surprised at seeing the work written in the vulgar tongue instead of
Latin. He explained, that he wished to address himself to readers of all
classes; and concluded with requesting the prior to add some notes, with
the spirit of which he furnished him, and then forward it (transcribed,
I presume, by the monks) to their common friend, the Ghibelline
chieftain--a commission, which, knowing the prior's intimacy with that
personage, appears to have been the main object of his coming to the
place[17].

This letter has been adduced as an evidence of Dante's poem having
transpired during his lifetime: a thing which, in the teeth of
Boccaccio's statement to that effect, and indeed the poet's own
testimony[18], Foscolo holds to be so impossible, that he turns the
evidence against the letter. He thinks, that if such bitter invectives
had been circulated, a hundred daggers would have been sheathed in the
bosom of the exasperating poet[19]. But I cannot help being of opinion,
with some writer whom I am unable at present to call to mind (Schlegel,
I think), that the strong critical reaction of modern times in favour
of Dante's genius has tended to exaggerate the idea conceived of him in
relation to his own. That he was of importance, and bitterly hated in
his native city, was a distinction he shared with other partisans who
have obtained no celebrity, though his poetry, no doubt, must have
increased the bitterness; that his genius also became more and more felt
out of the city, by the few individuals capable of estimating a man of
letters in those semi-barbarous times, may be regarded as certain; but
that busy politicians in general, war-making statesmen, and princes
constantly occupied in fighting for their existence with one another,
were at all alive either to his merits or his invectives, or would have
regarded him as anything but a poor wandering scholar, solacing his
foolish interference in the politics of this world with the old clerical
threats against his enemies in another, will hardly, I think, be doubt