Because if she were absent, I being there,
My pleasure would be less than naught, I know.
Look you, I say not this to such intent
As that I there would deal in any sin:
I only would behold her gracious mien,
And beautiful soft eyes, and lovely face,
That so it should be my complete content
To see my lady joyful in her place.
We seem, in turning over these pages, to see the brilliant, ever-changing current of Italian thirteenth and fourteenth century life—from Palermo, where Frederick II. held an almost Oriental court, to the communes of Central Italy, the best type of which is the merchant-city of the Arno, whose sons in those days could fight as well as wield the yardstick, and sing in strains that have rarely been equaled. In the first division of the work the great poet and his friends are brought vividly before us from the time when, a sensitive child, his eyes first beheld Beatrice and his new life began, to the painful hours of bereavement and exile. The poet, it is known, made a curious sonnet out of a dream he had after his first meeting with Beatrice, and, in accordance with the fashion of the day, sent it to various well-known poets, asking them to interpret his vision. The answers are all given here; and among those whose attention was thus attracted to the precocious youth was one whom he calls his "first friend," Guido Cavalcanti—after Dante one of the most interesting literary personages of the day. Rash and chivalrous, we can follow him in his poems from the time he made his pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James, and fell in love on the way with Mandetta of Toulouse, to the turbulent days of Florentine party strife, when he rides down Messer Corso Donati, "the baron," and wounds him with his javelin, and then goes into exile at Sarzana, where he sings his dying song and sends it to his lady, "who," he says, "of her noble grace shall show thee courtesy." All the poets were not as constant as their own lines would have us believe. Dante reproaches the famous Cino da Pistoja for fickleness, and the latter confesses the charge, and declares he cannot get "free from Love's pitiless aim." Guido Cavalcanti rebukes Dante himself for his way of life after the death of Beatrice; and this valuable sonnet should be read in connection with the beautiful passage in the Purgatory (xxx. 55-75) where Beatrice herself upbraids the tearful poet.
In the second part, comprising Poets chiefly before Dante, we have specimens of the Sicilian school—a canzone by the great Frederick, and a sonnet by his luckless son Enzo, who died in prison at Bologna after a confinement of nearly twenty-three years. Of more importance are the poems of Guido Guinicelli, of which the philosophical one entitled "Of the Gentle Heart" was a nine days' wonder, but which, even in Rossetti's elegant version, seems cold and formal. The most natural and pleasing pieces among much that is artificial and conventional are a ballad and two "catches" by Sacchetti, who died just after 1400, and properly does not belong to Dante's circle. Mr. Rossetti's readers will, however, be grateful to him for his delightful versions of the two catches, one "On a Fine Day," the other "On a Wet Day," giving the experiences of a band of young girls who have gone to spend the afternoon in the fields and are overtaken by a shower.