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202 that "divine philosophy," which was to Dante never "harsh and crabbed," but "musical as is Apollo's lute." The third poem departs altogether from the elevated and inspiring, even if fanciful, connection with Beatrice, and brings us completely into the region of ethics. Leaving "the sweet rhymes of love," which have been his previous occupation, the poet here discusses the ignoble theory that wealth is the chief foundation of nobility, and gives it an indignant denial. We are disposed to hope that this diversion of his genius from the themes most adapted for poetical treatment opened Dante's eyes to the over-strained and fictitious character of the work altogether; but perhaps it was only the wave of evil fortune which pursued him, that here rushed in, sweeping away the poet and his book together into the renewed wanderings and struggles of life, into the 'Divine Comedy' and its greater yet more simple strain. Even at his obscurest, however, the glow and fervour of intense genius shine through, whenever the subtilities of scholastic reasoning will permit; and the 'Convito,' though but a dim lantern, still shows by intervals how vivid was the living light within it. There is a certain pathos, too, in its failure, and we look on with a silence of awe at the gropings of the great singer, not yet sure of himself or his powers; after the instrument which was to pour forth so noble a flood of song. There seems no reason to doubt that the 'Convito' was the second of his works chronologically, and was written in the very beginning of the fourteenth century.

The second of Dante's prose works—indeed the first which comes to us without any admixture of verse—is the discourse upon the vulgar tongue, 'De Vulgare Eloquio,'