ribing himself to Buonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatory, he says, "I
am one who, when Love breathes, mark, and according as he dictates
within, I report"; to which the poet of Lucca replies, "O brother, now
I see the knot which kept the Notary and Guittone and me back from that
sweet new style which now I hear. I see well how your pens have
followed close on the dictator, which truly was not the case with
ours."[9] As Love was the common theme of the verses from which
Buonagiunta drew his contrast, the difference between them lay plainly
in sincerity of feeling and truth of expression. The following close
upon the dictates of his heart was the distinguishing merit of Dante's
love-poetry over all that had preceded it and most of what has followed
it. There are, however, some among his earlier poems in which the
"sweet new style" is scarcely heard,--and others, of a later period, in
which the accustomed metaphysical and fanciful subtilties of the elder
poets are drawn out to an unwonted fineness. These were concessions to
a ruling mode,--concessions the more readily made, owing to their being
in complete harmony with the strong subtilizing and allegorizing
tendencies of Dante's own mind. Still, so far as he adopts the modes of
his predecessors in this first book of his, Dante surpasses them all in
their own way. He leaves them far behind him, and goes forward to open
new paths which he is to tread alone.

But there is yet another tendency of the times, to which Dante, in his
later works, has given the fullest and most characteristic expression,
and which exhibits itself curiously in the "Vita Nuova." Corresponding
with the new ardor for the arts, and in sympathy with it, was a newly
awakened and generally diffused ardor for learning, especially for the
various branches of philosophy. Science was leaving the cloister, in
which she had sat in dumb solitude, and coming out into the world. But
the limits and divisions of knowledge were not firmly marked. The
relations of learning to life were not clearly understood. The science
of mathematics was not yet so advanced as to bind philosophy to
exactness. The intellects of men were quickened by a new sense of
freedom, and stimulated by ardor of imagination. New worlds of
undiscovered knowledge loomed vaguely along the horizon. Philosophy
invaded the sphere of poetry, while, on the other hand, poetry gave its
form to much of the prevailing philosophy. To be a proper poet was not
only