Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/44

26 passion is purely Platonic, and there is no proof that it was in any degree shared by its object, who appears to have been already married.

Dante's biographers, except the late and untrustworthy Filelfo, cast no doubt on the real existence of Beatrice, and it would require very strong evidence to overthrow the testimony of the chief among them, Boccaccio, who lived near Dante's age, whose veneration for him was boundless, and who was personally acquainted with his daughter. We can perceive no adequate reason for the scepticism of Scartazzini and others respecting Boccaccio's trustworthiness. It is true that the use which he made of his opportunities falls sadly below the modern standard. Not only is he careless in collecting and verifying authorities, but he makes no attempt to think himself back into the period of his hero. "Between him and the enthusiasms of the Middle Ages," says Symonds, "a ninefold Styx already rolled its waves." Yet his faults are offences of defect, not of excess in statement, though he sins by introducing many useless disquisitions. His work exists in two shapes, a longer and a shorter recension. The latter is undoubtedly an unauthorised abridgment of the former, and the novel statements which it occasionally introduces can claim no authority from Boccaccio. It seems to have been made by some Florentine who was offended by the severity of Boccaccio's strictures upon his city for her ingratitude to Dante.

The biography by Filippo Villani, one of his Lives of Illustrious Florentines, written about 1400, is mainly taken from Boccaccio, but is important for its vindication of Dante from the charge of profligacy, and for its particular details of his last illness. The valuable life by