a sympathy mastering
the natural spirit; in the "Divina Commedia" the sympathy is controlled
by the force of established character. The change is that from him who
follows to him who commands. It is the privilege of men of genius, not
only to give more than others to the world, but also to receive more
from it. Sympathy, in its full comprehensiveness, is the proof of the
strongest individuality. By as much as Dante or Shakspeare learnt of
and entered into the hearts of men, by so much was his own nature
strengthened and made peculiarly his own. The "Vita Nuova" shows the
first stages of that genius, the first proofs of that wide sympathy,
which at length resulted in the "Divine Comedy." It is like the first
blade of spring grass, rich with the promise of the golden harvest.

[Footnote 1: _Vita di Dante_. Milan, 1823, pp. 29, 30.]

[Footnote 2: _Vita di Dante_, p. 69.]

[Footnote 3: For _vita nova_ in the sense of _early life_, see
_Purgatory_, xxx. 115, with the comments of Landino and Benvenuto da
Imola; and for _eta novella_ in a similar sense, see Canzone xviii. st.
6. Fraticelli, who supports this interpretation, gives these with other
examples, but none more to the point. Mr. Joseph Carrow, who had a
translation into English of the _Vita Nuova_, printed at Florence in
1840, entitles his book "The Early Life of Dante Allighieri." But as
giving probability to the meaning to which we incline, see Canzone x.
st. 5.

"Lo giorno che costei nel mondo venne,
Secondo che si trova
Nel libro della mente che vien meno,
La mia persona parvola sostenne
Una passion nova."

That day when she unto the world attained,
As is found written true
Within the book of my now sinking soul,
Then by my childish nature was sustained
A passion new.

In referring to Dante's Minor Poems, we shall refer to them as they
stand in the first volume of Fraticelli's edition of the _Opere Minore
al Dante_, Firenze, 1834. There is great need of a careful, critical
edition of the _Canzoniere_ of Dante, in which poems falsely ascribed
to him should no longer hold place among the genuine. But there is
little hope for this from Italy; for the race of Italian commentators
on Dante is, as a whole, more frivolous, more impertinent, and duller,
than that of English commentators on Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 4: The word in the original (Villani, Book vii. C. 89) is
_Giocolari_, the Italian form of the French _jongleur_,--the
appella