Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/37

Rh a better standard of taste, is perhaps more generally pleasing. Like Cavalcariti, he was a man of varied accomplishments, and it is his special renown to have been among the first jurists of his time. Like Dante, he was exiled from his native city, and went to Paris; he subsequently professed law in several of the chief cities of Italy, and was eventually restored to his own. His verse, like Cavalcanti's, bears a strong affinity to Dante's lyrical poetry, and, in the opinion of so accomplished a judge as Lorenzo de' Medici, is even more completely divested of primitive rudeness. His most celebrated composition is the canzone consoling Dante for the loss of Beatrice, from which we quote a stanza in Rossetti's version:

Here, and in the remainder of the poem, there is a clear prefiguration of Petrarch, who admired Cino, and wrote a sonnet on his death. The following is a favourable example of Cino's own sonnets:

Descend, fair Pity, veiled in mortal weed;
 * And in thy guise my messengers be dight,
 * Partakers to appear of virtuous might

That Heaven hath for thy attribute decreed