That day when she unto the world attained,
As is found written true
Within the book of my now sinking soul,
Then by my childish nature was sustained
A passion new.
In referring to Dante's Minor Poems, we shall refer to them as they stand in the first volume of Fraticelli's edition of the Opere Minore al Dante, Firenze, 1834. There is great need of a careful, critical edition of the Canzoniere of Dante, in which poems falsely ascribed to him should no longer hold place among the genuine. But there is little hope for this from Italy; for the race of Italian commentators on Dante is, as a whole, more frivolous, more impertinent, and duller, than that of English commentators on Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 4: The word in the original (Villani, Book vii. C. 89) is Giocolari, the Italian form of the French jongleur,—the appellation of those whose profession was to sing or recite the verses of the troubadours or the romances of chivalry.]
[Footnote 5: See Boccaccio, Decamerone, Giorn. vi, Nov. 9, for an entertaining picture of Florentine festivities.]
[Footnote 6: The feeling which moved Florence thus to build herself into beauty was one shared by the other Italian republican cities at this time. Venice, Verona, Pisa, Siena, Orvieto, were building or adding to churches and palaces such as have never since been surpassed.]
[Footnote 7: Cicognara, Storia della Scultura, II. 147.]
[Footnote 8: Guido Guinicelli will always be less known by his own verses than by Dante's calling him
———"father
Of me and all those better others
Who sweet chivalric lovelays formed."
Purg. xxvi. 97-99.
And Guido Cavalcanti, "he who took from this other Guido the praise of speech," (Purg. xi. 97,) is more famous as Dante's friend than as a poet.]
[Footnote 9: Purgatory, xxiv. 53-60.]