The news of the poet's death was received at Florence with the profoundest expressions of sorrow, and the Florentines sought to have his body brought to his native city, designing to erect a stately mausoleum for it, but the citizens of Ravenna refused to part with the remains of the exiled poet who had died in their midst. Disappointed in their desire to honour the memory of Dante in this manner, the Florentines instituted a public lectureship to illustrate the mysteries of the 'Commedia,' the first professor of which was Boccaccio an example which, within a century after, was followed by many other cities of Italy.

Dante's personal appearance is thus spoken of by Boccaccio: 'This poet of ours was of moderate stature. . . His face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes rather great than small, his jaws large, and his under lip projected beyond his upper lip. He had a brown complexion, his hair and beard were thick, black, and curly, and his countenance was always melancholy and thoughtful; on which account one day it happened at Verona that he, passing before a door where many women were sitting, one of them said to another softly, but not so softly but that she could be well heard by him, "Look at the man who goes into hell, and returns

when he pleases, and brings news to us here above from those there below." To which one of them answered simply, "Verily, thou must speak the truth. Dost not thou see how the heat and smoke down below have given him so dark a colour and so curled a beard?" Which words he hearing, Dante looked back on them, and perceiving that these women spoke seriously, was amused and almost pleased that they held such opinions, and smiling a little continued his walk.' Gratified by such a testimony as this to his popularity, as he might well be, yet Dante showed considerable irritability on other occasions, particularly if he heard any of his songs or sonnets sung and spoilt in the singing. Sacchetti relates that as Dante 'was passing by the gate of San Piero, he heard a smith striking his anvil, and who as he worked sang some of our poet's verses, but mutilated, and with additions. and alterations. Dante said nothing, but approaching the workshop where the smith kept the tools which he used in his trade, he seized the hammer and threw it across the street; he seized the tongs, and threw them likewise across the street; he seized the scales and threw them also; and so he did to many of the tools. The smith, turning to him in a brutal manner, said:

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"What are you about-are you mad?"

Dante said, "What are you about?" "I am about my trade,” said the smith, "and you spoil my tools by throwing them into the street." Says Dante, "If you do not wish me to spoil your things, do not spoil mine." "What do I spoil of yours?" said the smith. Says Dante, "You sing songs out of my book, and not as I wrote them. I have no other trade, and you spoil it for me." The enraged smith, having no answer ready, collected his things and returned to his work; and the next time he wanted to sing, he sang of Tristram and Lancelot, and left Dante alone.'

It is supposed that the 'Divina Commedia' was written for the most part during the wandering life of Dante; the monastery of St. Croce, in the vicinity of Gubbio, being referred to as one of the refuges where he wrote several cantos of the epic. Its subject is the mysteries of the invisible world—a subject agreeable enough, doubtless, to the age in which the poet lived. The monks of St. Francis and St. Dominic had, in the exercise of the grossest spiritual jugglery, rekindled the fanaticism which had been sleeping for centuries, by means of various kinds of 'mystery plays,' and in

these, fire, boiling tar, serpents, &c., were brought to act on living persons, whose sufferings gave a horrid reality to the illusions which the monks contrived. Such a spectacle, it is believed, gave the poet his idea of the 'Commedia :' and one special occasion of this nature has been positively referred to a dramatic mystery which was enacted on the Bridge of the Arno by way of welcome to a legate of the Pope. This drama was intended to represent the Infernal Regions, and as the appropriate characters were enacting their several parts, the bridge gave way beneath the assembled crowds, when numbers perished in the river. This event, however, has been stated by some authorities not to have occurred till two years after Dante's exile, and consequently, however much such a scene might have impressed the poet, he could not have owed any of his inspiration to it. Other critics have attempted to show a resemblance between the 'Commedia' and various old French and German Mystery-Plays; while the celebrated Italian author, Ginguéné, gives a curious derivation of his own.

But whatever fanciful origin may be given to Dante's epic, there is no question but that the poet had genius enough to invent, and ability to work out, for himself

the Divina Commedia' without being in any degree obliged to borrow either idea or plan. That he was thoroughly original is abundantly shown by the way in which he has, throughout the work, introduced noted individuals of his own time who had taken prominent parts in public affairs, and to whom, according to party feeling, he has assigned consonant positions in the three sections of the epic.

Dante was the author of a number of other works, but the Commedia' is that on which his fame mainly rests, and it was called a 'comedy' because, though it opened sadly, it had a happy termination. term 'Divina' was added to its title, some years

after its first poet in Italy.

The

production, by the admirers of the

The epic is divided into three parts,

of which the first is the most important and elaborate, and is called 'The Inferno.' According to the poet, the Inferno is in four principal divisions, which are again subdivided into nine circles, narrowing as they tend towards the centre of the earth. The First Division comprises the Vestibule-the abode of the unbaptized, who were delivered by Christ when He descended into Hell-and the first Circle, where are the great spirits of olden and heroic times, as