Page:Dante and His Circle, with the Italian Poets Preceding Him.djvu/68

24 soul" which made blessed the mother who had borne him.

Leaving to his fate (whatever that may have been) the Scamp of Dante's Circle, I must risk the charge of a confirmed taste for slang by describing Author:Guido Orlandi as its Bore. No other word could present him so fully. Very few pieces of his exist besides the five I have given. In one of these, he rails against his political adversaries; in three, falls foul of his brother poets; and in the remaining one, seems somewhat appeased (I think) by a judicious morsel of flattery. I have already referred to a sonnet of his which is said to have led to the composition of Guido Cavalcanti's Canzone on the Nature of Love. He has another sonnet beginning, "Per troppa sottiglianza il fil si rompe," in which he is certainly enjoying a fling at somebody, and I suspect at Cavalcanti in rejoinder to the very poem which he himself had instigated. If so, this stamps him a master-critic of the deepest initiation. Of his life nothing is recorded; but no wish perhaps need be felt to know much of him, as one would probably have dropped his acquaintance. We may be obliged to him, however, for his character of Guido Cavalcanti (at page 137), which is boldly and vividly drawn.

Next follow three poets of whom I have given one specimen apiece. By Author:Bernardo da Bologna (page 139) no other is known to exist, nor can anything be learnt of his career. Author:Gianni Alfani was a noble and distinguished Florentine, a much graver man, it would seem, than one could judge from this sonnet of his (page 138), which belongs rather to the school of Sir Pandarus of Troy.

Author:Dino Compagni, the chronicler of Florence, is