Page:The Earliest Lives of Dante (Smith 1901).djvu/100

 and punishments of human life, happiness and misery, and the middle way that lies between these two extremes. I believe that there never was any one who took a larger or more fertile subject by which to deliver the mind of all its conceptions through the different spirits who discourse on diverse causes of things, on different countries, and on the various chances of fortune.

Dante began this, his chief work, before his expulsion, and completed it afterwards in exile, as the work itself clearly reveals. He also wrote moral canzoni and sonnets. His canzoni are perfect, polished, graceful, and full of high sentiment. All of them begin in noble fashion, like the one that commences:

wherein there is a subtle philosophical comparison between the effects of the sun and the effects of love. Another begins:

Still another begins:

And in many other canzoni he is equally subtle, scholarly, and polished. In his sonnets he does not show the same power.

So much for his works in the vernacular; but he also wrote in Latin prose and verse: in prose, a book entitled the De Monarchia, written in unadorned fashion, with no beauty of style; also a book entitled De Vulgari Eloquentia, and many letters. In Latin verse he wrote several eclogues, and the beginning of the Commedia in hexameters, but, as he did not succeed with the style, he pursued it no further.

Dante died at Ravenna in the year 1321. He left, among others, one son by name Piero, who studied law and showed himself a man of ability. Thanks to his own powers and to