Dante was born under the sign of the twins, “the glorious stars pregnant with virtue, to whom he owes his genius such as it is.” Astrologers considered this constellation as favourable to literature and science, and Brunetto Latini, his instructor, tells him in the Inferno (xv. 25, foil.) that, if he follows its guidance, he cannot fail to reach the harbour of fame. Boccaccio relates that before his birth his mother dreamed that she lay under a very lofty laurel, growing in a green meadow, by a very clear fountain, when she felt the pangs of childbirth,—that her child, feeding on the berries which fell from the laurel, and on the waters of the fountain, in a very short time became a shepherd, and attempted to reach the leaves of the laurel, the fruit of which had nurtured him,—that, trying to obtain them he fell, and rose up, no longer a man, but in the guise of a peacock. We know little of Dante’s boyhood except that he was a hard student and a pupil of Brunetto Latini. Boccaccio tells us that he became very familiar with Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Statius, and all other famous poets; and that, “taken by the sweetness of knowing the truth of the things concealed in heaven, and finding no other pleasure dearer to him in life, he left all other worldly care and gave himself to this alone, and, that no part of philosophy might remain unseen by him, he plunged with acute intellect into the deepest recesses of theology, and so far succeeded in his design that, caring nothing for heat or cold, or watchings or fastings, or any other bodily discomforts, by assiduous study he came to know of the divine essence and of the other separate intelligences all that the human intellect can comprehend.” Leonardo Bruni says that “by study of philosophy, of theology, astrology, arithmetic, and geometry, by reading of history, by the turning over many curious books, watching and sweating in his studies, he acquired the science which he was to adorn and explain in his verses.” Of his teacher Brunetto Latini, of whom he speaks with the most loving gratitude and affection, but whose gross vices he does not hesitate to brand with infamy, Giovanni Viliam has left us a graphic picture: He was a great philosopher, and a consummate master of rhetoric, not only in knowing how to speak well, but how to write well. He it was who explained the rhetoric of Tully and made the good and useful book called Tesoro, and the Tesoretto and the Chiave del Tesoro, and other works in philosophy and of vices and virtues, and he was secretary of our commune. He was a worldly man; but we have made mention of him because he both began and directed the growth of the Florentines, both in making them ready in speaking well and in knowing how to guide and direct our republic according to the rules of politics.” Under this guidance Dante became master of all the science of his age at a time when it was not /impossible to know all that could be known. He was a skilful draughtsman, and tells us that on the anniversary of the death of Beatrice he drew an angel on a tablet. He was an intimate friend of Giotto, who has immortalized his youthful lineaments in the chapel of the Bargello, and who is recorded to have drawn from his friend’s inspiration the allegories of Virtue and Vice which fringe the frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua. Nor was he less sensible to the delights of music. Milton had not a keener ear for the ’oud uplifted angel trumpets and the immortal harps of golden wires of the cherubim and seraphim; and our English poet was proud to compare his own friendship with Henry Lawes with that between Dante and Casella, “met in the milder shades of purgatory.” Most dear to him of all were the companions Cino di Pistoia, Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti, and others, similarly gifted and dowered with like tastes, who lived in the lively streets of the city of the flowers, and felt with him the first warm flush of the coming renaissance. He has written no sweeter or more melodious lines than those in which he expresses the wish that he, with Guido and Lapo, might be wafted by enchantment over the sea wheresoever they might list, shielded from fortune and evil times, and living in such contentment that they should wish to live always, and that the good enchanter should bring Monna Vanna and Monna Bice and that other lady into their barque, where they should for ever discourse of love and be for ever happy. It is a wonderful thing (says Leonardo Bruni) that, though he studied without intermission, it would not have appeared to any one that he studied, from his joyous mien and youthful conversation. Like Milton he was trained in the strictest academical education which the age afforded; but Dante lived under a warmer sun and brighter skies, and’ found in the rich variety and gaiety of his early life a defence against the withering misfortunes of his later years. Milton felt too early the chill breath of Puritanism, and the 3erious musing on the experience of life, which saddened the verse of both poets, deepened in his case into grave and desponding melancholy.

We must now consider the political circumstances in which lay the activity of Dante’s manhood. From 1115, the year of the death of Matilda countess of Tuscany, to 1215, Florence enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted peace. Attached to the Guelf party it remained undivided against itself. But in 1215 a private feud between the families of Buondelmonte and Uberti introduced into the city the horrors of civil war. Villani (lib. v. cap. 38) relates how Buondelmonte de’Buondelmonti, a noble youth of Florence, being engaged to marry a lady of the house of Amidei, allied himself instead to a Donati, and how Buondelmonte was attacked and killed by the Amidei and Uberti at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, close by the pilaster which bears the image of Mars. “The death of Messer Buondelmonte was the occasion and beginning of the accursed parties of Guelfs and Ghibellines in Florence.” Of the seventy-two families then in Florence thirty-nine became Guelf under the leadership of the Buondelmonte and the rest Ghibelline under the Uberti. The strife of parties was for a while allayed by the war against Pisa in 1222, and the constant struggles against Siena; but in 1248 Frederick II. sent into the city his natural son Frederick, prince of Antioch, with 1600 German knights. The Guelfs were driven away from the town, and took refuge, part in Montevarchi, part in Capraia. The Ghibellines, masters of Florence, behaved with great severity, and destroyed the towers and palaces of the Guelf nobles. At last the people became impatient. They rose in rebellion, deposed the podestk, elected in his place a captain of the people, established a more democratic constitution, and, encouraged by the death of Frederick in December 1250, recalled the exiled Guelfs. Manfred, the bastard son of Frederic, pursued the policy of his father. He stimulated the Ghibelline Uberti to rebel against their position of subjection. A rising of the vanquished party was put down by the people, in July 1258 the Ghibellines were expelled from the town, and the towers of the Uberti razed to the ground. The exiles betook themselves to the friendly city of Siena. Manfred seut them assistance. The Florentines, after vainly demanding their surrender, despatched an army against them. On September 4, 1260, was fought the great battle of Montaperti, which dyed the Arbia red, and in which the Guelfs were entirely defeated. The hand which held the banner of the republic was sundered by the sword of a traitor. For the first time in the history of Florence the Caroccio was taken. Florence lay at the mercy of her enemies. A parliament was held at Empoli, in which the deputies of Siena, Pisa, Arezzo, and other Tuscan towns consulted on the best means of securing their new war power. They voted that the accursed Guelf city should be blotted out. But Farinata of the Uberti stood up in their midst, bold and defiant as when he stood erect among the sepulchres of hell, and said that if, from the whole number of the Florentines, he alone should remain, he would not suffer, whilst he could wield a sword, that his country should be destroyed, and that, if it were necessary to die a thousand times for her, a thousand times would he be ready to encounter death. Help came to the Guelfs from an unexpected quarter. Clement IV., elected Pope in 1265, offered the crown of Apulia and Sicily to Charles of Anjou. The French prince, passing rapidly through Lombardy, Romagna, and the Marches, reached Rome by way of Spoleto, was crowned on January 6, 1266, and on February 23 defeated and killed Manfred at Benevento. In such a storm of conflict did Dante first see the light. In 1267 the Guelfs were recalled, but instead of settling down in peace with their opponents they summoned Charles of Anjou to vengeance and the Ghibellines were driven out. The meteor passage of Conradin gave hope to the imperial party, which was quenched when the head of the fair-haired boy fell on the scaffold at Naples. Pope after Pope tried in vain to make peace. Gregory X. placed the rebellious city under an interdict; Nicolas III. in 1280 patched up a hollow truce. In 1282 the constitution of Florence received the final form which it retained till the collapse of freedom. From the three arti maggiori were chosen six priors, in whose hands was placed the government of the republic. They remained in office for two months, and during that time lived and shared a common table in the Public Palace. We shall see what influence this office had upon the fate of Dante. The success of the Sicilian Vespers, the vacancy of the Holy See, the death of Charles of Anjou, roused again the courage of the Ghibellines. They took possession of Arezzo, and threatened to drive out the Guelfs from Tuscany. The historian Ammirato has left us a lively account o£ the skirmishes against Arezzo in the year 1288, a prelude to the great battle of Campaldino in the following summer. Then it was that Dante saw “horsemen moving camp and commencing the assault, and holding muster, and the march of foragers, the shock of tournaments, and race of jousts, now with trumpets and now with bells, with drums and castle signals, with native things and foreign” (Zn/l xxii. 1, foil.) On June 11, 1289, at Campaldino near Poppi, in the Casentino, the Ghibellines were utterly defeated. They never again recovered their hold on Florence, but the violence of faction survived under other names. Dante fought with distinction at Campaldino, was present shortly afterwards at the battle of Caprona (Th/. xxi. 95, foil.), and returned in September 1289 to his studies and his love. His peace yras of short luration. On June 9, 1290, died Beatrice, whose mortal love had guided him for thirteen years, and whose immortal spirit purified his later life, and revealed to him the mysteries of Paradise.

Dante had first met Beatrice Portinari at the house of her father Folco on May-day 1274. In his own words, “already nine times after my birth the heaven of light had returned as it were to the same point, when there appeared to my eyes the glorious lady of my mind, who was by many called Beatrice who knew not what to call her. She had already been so long in this life that already in its time the starry heaven had moved towards the east the twelfth part of a degree, so that she appeared to me about the beginning of her ninth year, and I saw her about the end of my ninth year. Her dress on that day was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned in such sort as best suited with her tender age. At that moment I saw most truly that the spirit of life which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook therewith; and in trembling it said these words, ‘ Ecce deus fortior me qui veniens domin-abitur mihi.’” In the Vita Nuosa is written the story of his passion from its commencement to within a year after the lady’s death. He saw Beatrice only once or twice, and she probably knew little of him. She married Simone de’ Bardi. But the worship of her lover was stronger for the remoteness of its object. The last chapter of the Vita Nuova relates how, after the lapse of a year, “it was given me to behold a wonderful vision, wherein I saw things which determined me that I would say nothing further of this blessed one until such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to this end I labour all I can, as she in truth knoweth. Therefore if it be His pleasure through whom is the life of all things that my life continue with me a few years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman. After the which may it seem good unto Him who is the master of grace that my spirit should go hence to behold the glory of its lady, to wit, of that blessed Beatrice who now gloriously gazes on the countenance of Him qui est per omnia saecula benedictus.” In the Convito he resumes the story of his life. “When I had lost the first delight of my soul (that is, Beatrice) I remained so pierced with sadness that no comforts availed me anything, yet after some time my mind, desirous of health, sought to return to the method by which other disconsolate ones had found consolation, and I set myself to read that little-known book of Boetius in which he consoled himself when a prisoner and an exile. And hearing that Tully had written another work, in which, treating of friendship, he had given words of consolation to Laelius, I set myself to read that also.” He so far recovered from the shock of his loss that in 1292 he married Gemma, daughter of Manetto Donati, a connection of the celebrated Corso Donati, afterwards Dante’s bitter foe. It is possible that she is the lady mentioned in the Vita Nuova as sitting full of pity at her window and comforting Dante for his sorrow. By this wife he had seven children, and although he never mentions her in the Divina Oommedia, and although she did not accompany him into exile, there is no reason to suppose that she was other than a good wife, or that the union was otherwise than happy. Certain it is that he spares the memory of Corso in his great poem, and speaks kindly of his kinsmen Piccarda and Forese.

Dante now began to take an active part in politics. He was inscribed in the arte of the Medici and Speziali, which made him eligible as one of the six priori to whom the government of the city was intrusted in 1282. Documents still existing in the archives of Florence show that he took part in the deliberations of the several councils of the city in 1295, 1296, 1300, and 1301. Filelfo says that he served on fourteen embassies, a statement not only unsupported by evidence, but impossible in itself. Filelfo does not mention the only embassy in which we know for certain that Dante was engaged, that to the town of San Gemignano in 1299. From June 15 to August 15, 1300, he held the office of prior, which was the source of all the miseries of his life. The spirit of faction had again broken out in Florence. The two rival families were the Cerclti and the Donati,—the first of great wealth but recent origin, the last of ancient ancestry but poor. A quarrel had arisen in Pistoia between the two branches of the Cancellieri,—the Bianchi and Neri, the Whites and the Blacks. The quarrel spread to Florence, the Donati took the side of the Blacks, the Cerchi of the Whites. Pope Boniface was asked to mediate, and sent Cardinal Matteo d’Acquasparta to maintain peace. He arrived just as Dante entered upon his office as prior. The cardinal effected nothing, but Dante and his colzeagues banished the heads of the rival parties in different directions to a distance from the capital. The Blacks were sent to Cittk della Pieve in the Tuscan mountains; the Whites, among whom was Dante’s dearest friend Guido Cavalcanti, to Serrezzano in the unhealthy Maremma. After the expiration of Dante’s office both parties returned, Guido Cavalcanti so ill with fever that he shortly afterwards died. The Blacks sought for vengeance. The journey of Charles of Valois to Rome gave them an opportunity. At a meeting held in the church of the Holy Trinity the Whites were denounced as Ghibellines, enemies of France and of the pope, and the French prince was invited to the town as peacemaker, to defend the Guelfs against their machinations. The priori sent at the end of September four ambassadors to the Pope, one of whom was Dante. He never again saw the towers of his native city. Charles of Valois marched from Pavia and took up his abode in the Oltr’ Arno, Corso Donati, who had been banished a second time, returned in force and summoned the Blacks to arms. The prisons were broken open, the podestk driven from the town, the Cerchi confined within their houses, a third of the city was destroyed with fire and sword. By the help of Charles the Blacks were victorious. They appointed Cante de’ Gabrielli of Gubbio as podestk, a man devoted to their interests. More than 600 Whites were condemned to exile and cast as beggars upon the world. On January 27, 1302, Dante with three others was condemned to pay a fine of 5000 lire of small florins. If the money was not paid within three days their property was to be destroyed and laid waste ; if they did pay the fine they were to be exiled for two years from Tuscany; in any case they were never again to hold office in the republic. On March 10 Dante and fourteen others were condemned to be burned alive if they should come into the power of the republic. _ Similar sentences were passed in September 1311 and October 1315. The sentence was not formally reversed till 1494, under the government of the Medici.

Dante received the news of his banishment in Siena. The exiles met first at Gargonza, a castle between Siena and Arezzo, and then at Arezzo itself. They joined themselves to the Ghibellines, to...