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Rh Great, Lord of Verona, from whose court he retired, in 1320 to that of Guido Novello da Polenta, at Ravenna. In the following year he undertook a mission to Venice, and there contracted a fever, which, aggravated it is said by the inhospitality of the Venetians in compelling him to return by land, carried him off on September 14, 1321, shortly after he had completed his great epic. His funeral obsequies were celebrated with magnificence; but political troubles delayed for a hundred and sixty years the erection of the monument ultimately raised by the piety of Cardinal Bembo's father, then governing Ravenna for the Venetians, and inscribed with six rhyming Latin verses attributed without adequate evidence to Dante's own pen, but sufficiently ancient to have been expanded by Boccaccio into a noble sonnet:

It is usual to commence a review of an author's productions by his most important work; but the Divina Commedia requires a chapter to itself, and precedence must consequently be given to Dante's minor writings. Of these the Vita Nuova stands first both in time and