Page:Dante (Oliphant).djvu/39

Rh ''response is to be made. The second part commences with the words''—'A fourth part.'

"To this sonnet I received replies from many, and of various import, and among those who answered was he whom I call the foremost of my friends, who on this occasion wrote a sonnet beginning, 'Vedesti al mio parere ogni valore,—All worth, unto my thinking, thou hast seen.' And our friendship may be said to date from the time when I sent this to him. The true meaning of my dream was not then perceived by any one, but now it is manifest to the most simple.

"From the time of this vision my natural spirit began to be obstructed in its working, forasmuch as my soul was wholly given up to thinking of this most gracious creature; whereby I fell ere long into a state of health so feeble and delicate, that my appearance caused much concern to many of my friends; while others, moved thereunto by malice, cast eagerly about to discover that which above all things I wished to conceal. And I, being well advised of the vile motive of their questionings, did by the prompting of Love, who counselled me in accordance with the dictates of reason, reply to them, that it was Love who had brought me to this pass; and this I said, because I bore in my looks so many of his marks, that the fact could not be concealed. And when they asked me, 'For whom are you so love-shaken?' I looked at them and smiled, and answered them not again."

After this it occurs to Dante to veil his devotion to Beatrice under an appearance of love to another—a somewhat doubtful expedient, which, however, he seems to have thought, in the strange subtility of his absorbed mind, quite justifiable; so much so, that when the first lady who acted as a screen to his worship of Beatrice left Florence, Love himself appeared to the poet in a dream, and recommended another for the same purpose—a recommendation so well followed out that trouble ensued.