Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/52

34 poem complete in themselves, and may be cited in Rossetti's matchless version:

Although the Vita Nuova is essentially true history, the same cannot be said of a later work preferred to it by the author himself, albeit posterity has reversed his judgment. This is the Convito, or Banquet, in which Beatrice appears as an allegory of divine philosophy. The process of this mutation is not difficult to discover.