[27] Inf. x. 42. Though Dante was descended from nobles, his rank in Florence was not that of a noble or magnate, but of a commoner.
[28] The month is indicated by Dante himself, Parad. xxii. 110. The year has recently been disputed. For 1265 we have J. Villani and the earliest biographers; and Dante’s own expression at the beginning of the Comedy is in favour of it.
[29] Inf. xxiii. 95.
[30] Inf. xix. 17; Parad. xxv. 9.
[31] Purg. xxx. 55.
[32] Inf. viii. 45, where Virgil says of Dante that blessed was she that bore him, can scarcely be regarded as an exception to this statement.
[33] In 1326, out of a population of ninety thousand, from eight to ten thousand children were being taught to read; and from five to six hundred were being taught grammar and logic in four high schools. There was not in Dante’s time, or till much later, a University in Florence. See J. Villani, xi. 94, and Burckhardt, Cultur der Renaissance, vol. i. p. 76.
[34] For an interesting account of Heresy in Florence from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, see Perrens, Hist. de Florence, vol. i. livre ii. chap. iii.
[35] It opens with Brunetto’s being lost in the forest of Roncesvalles, and there are some other features of resemblance—all on the surface—between his experience and Dante’s.
[36] G. Villani, viii. 10. Latini died in 1294. Villani gives the old scholar a very bad moral character.