'Thou seest in my opinion every worth.'
This was, as it were, the beginning of our friendship when he knew that it was I who had sent these verses to him." This first of Dante's friends was Guido Cavalcanti. Their friendship was of long duration, beginning thus in Dante's nineteenth year, and ending only with Guido's death, in 1300, when Dante was thirty-five years old. It may be taken as a proof of its intimacy and of Dante's high regard for the genius of his friend, that, when Dante, in his course through Hell, at Easter in 1300, represents himself as being recognized by the father of Guido, the first words of the old man to him are,
"If through this blind prison thou goest through loftiness of soul, where is my son? oh, why is he not with thee?"[E]
[Footnote E: Inferno, x. 58-60.]
The sonnet of Guido, in reply to that sent him by Dante, has been preserved, together with the replies by two other contemporary poets; but Dante says of them all,—"The true meaning of my sonnet was not then seen by any one, though now it is plain to the simplest."
After this vision, the poet, whose soul was wholly devoted to his most gentle lady, was brought by Love into so frail a condition of health, that his friends became anxious for him, and questioned him about that which he most wished to conceal. Then he told them that it was Love which had brought him to this pass. But when they asked him, "For whom has Love thus wasted thee?" he looked at them smiling, and said nothing.
"One day it happened," he goes on to relate, "that this most gentle lady sat where words concerning the Queen of Glory are heard, and I was in a place from which I beheld my bliss. Between her and me in a direct line sat a gentle lady of most pleasing aspect, who looked at me often, wondering at my gaze, which seemed to terminate upon her; and many observed her looks. So great attention, indeed, was paid to this, that when I went out from the place I heard some one say, 'Behold how that lady wastes the life of this man!'—and naming her, I heard that they spoke of her who had been in the path of the straight line which, parting from my most gentle Beatrice, had ended in my eyes." Then he says he thought to make this lady serve as a screen for his real love, and he did this so well that in a short time many persons fancied they knew his secret. And in order to deceive them still more, he addressed to this lady many trifles in rhyme, of which he will insert in this account of his "New Life" only those which bear reference to Beatrice.
Some time after this, "it was the pleasure of the Lord of the Angels to call to his glory a young and beautiful lady, who had been very lovely in the city of Florence. And I saw her body lying without its soul, surrounded by many ladies who wept grievously. Then remembering that I had formerly seen her in company with that most gentle lady, I could not restrain some tears; and, weeping, I proposed to say some words about her death, as a return for that I had seen her sometimes with my lady." Then, he says, he wrote two poems, of which we give the last, adding to it his verbal comment, as an example of the style of commentary with which he has accompanied all the poems of the "Vita Nuova":—
"O villain Death, compassion's foe,
The Mother from of old of woe,
Inexorable judge severe,
Thou givest sorrow for the heart to bear;
Wherefore in grief I go,
And blaming thee my very tongue outwear.
"And if of every grace thou wouldst be
bare,
It only needs that I declare
The guilt of this thy sinful blow,
So that all those shall know,
And each shall be thy foe,
Who erst were nurtured with Love's tender
care