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196 the 'Vita Nuova,' which has been indicated in a previous chapter, but with no longer the inspiration of warm and exalted passion which had given that book a hold upon all hearts. He had not found his way yet into the long and solemn round of travelling by which Hell and Heaven were opened to him, and so many wonders made plain; but was in the same condition as the Psalmist when he called to earth and sky to show him "something good," and when his heart burned to see the prosperity of the wicked. In his very impatience, impotent as he seemed for all good, with the sense of failure bitter in him, not able even to begin, to his liking, the more important work which was in his mind, the mingled passion and difficulty with which he would seem to have stretched out his hand to his old tools has a great deal of pathos in it. The 'Vita Nuova,' with its artless artifices, and that strange unreality which rather enhances than detracts from its passion and fervour, must have been so satisfactory to the young poet as a mode of disclosing his heart to his friends, and to them so bewildering, yet so delightful, that (if it is permitted to speak of such a book as successful) Dante can have had no doubt of its success. And it is no unusual thing in the history of the imagination to see a first effort thus repeated in very perplexity of the restless and yet unformed genius, eager to do it knows not what, and to press on to further heights, not yet understood or fully descried.

The 'Convito'—banquet, symposium, feast of imagination and reason, spread before the world and his countrymen—was, according to the poet's scheme, to consist of fourteen poems of love and virtue, to be accompanied by