great. And 'when you reach
Our Lady, hide not from her that your end Is labour that would lessen
wrong.'" Where it is to be observed that, as our Lord says, "We ought
not to cast pearls before swine," because it is not to their
advantage, and it is injury to the pearls; and, as Aesop the poet says
in the first fable, a little grain of corn is of far more worth to a
cock than a pearl, and therefore he leaves the pearl and picks up the
grain of corn: reflecting on this, as a caution, I speak and give
command to the Song that it reveal its high office where this Lady,
that is, where Philosophy, will be found. And that most noble Lady
will be found when her dwelling-place is found, that is, the Soul in
which she finds her Inn. And this Philosophy dwells not in wise men
alone, but likewise, as is proved above in another treatise, wherever
the love for her inhabits, she is there. "And to such as these," I say
to the Song, "thou mayst reveal thine office, because to them the
purpose thereof will be useful, and by them its thoughts will be
gathered in."

And I bid it say to this Lady, "I travel ever talking of your Friend."

Nobility is her Friend. For so much does the one love the other, that
Nobility always seeks her, and Philosophy does not turn aside her most
sweet glance to any other.

O, what a great and beautiful ornament is this which is given to her
in the last part of this Song, by giving to her the title of Friend,
the Friend of her whose own abode is in the most secret depths of the
Divine Mind.

* * * * *

NOTE

ON THE DATE OF THE CONVITO

It is natural to suppose that Dante's death at Ravenna in 1321 caused
the Convito, a work of his latter years, to be left unfinished. But
there are arguments that have been especially dwelt upon by writers
who regard the Convito as a work begun before the conception of the
Divine Comedy, and dropped when the Poet's mind became intent upon
that masterpiece.

One argument is that the Divine Comedy is nowhere mentioned or alluded
to in the Convito. But as the place designed for the Convito is midway
between the Vita Nuova, which preceded it, and the Divine Comedy,
which was to follow, references to the poem which was not yet before
the reader would have been a fault in art.

Another argument is drawn from the fourteenth chapter of the Second
Treatise, where (on page 84 in this volume) the shadow in the Moon is
ascribed to "the rari