200 Epitome of the Progress of Natural Science, 



But it was poetry that first gave life to the vulgar dialect of the 

 people, and led to the cultivation of the new Italian tongue, 

 which soon left the degenerate Latin to the pedantry of theolo- 

 gians and jurists. Nevertheless this poetry, at its origin, was at 

 best but a feeble mass of amatory expressions, without natural 

 feeling, and never directed to high achievements, or to the de- 

 scription of those interesting objects with which Italian nature 

 abounds. The Italians, at the dawning of their written language, 

 sang of pains they never felt, and in quaint conceits, which 

 sprang from the head and not from the heart, celebrated the 

 power of mistresses that never inspired them with real tender- 

 ness. This habit of exaggeration seized hold of every thing: 

 hyperbolical flattery stood in the place of honest commendation ; 

 the motives of human action being travestied, history became 

 falsified, and men, instead of reasoning from facts to unerring re- 

 sults, still continued the dupes of puerile conceits, and undefined 

 words. Still th^ beauty and softness of their language, compen- 

 sated to the Italians for the insubstantiality of their literature, ^ 

 by favouring the developement of their musical powers. 



But a poet, who has had no superior, soon arose amongst them, 

 and took away this reproach. Although Sicily gave the signal 

 for the new literature, the Italian cities, Florence, Bologna, Pa- 

 dua, Naples, &c., quickly followed it. Letters and the arts first 

 began to revive in Florence towards the end of the 13th century, 

 where a republican form of government was established, and 

 where judicial astrology was in great credit. 



Dante — a familiar abbreviation of Durante, his baptismal 

 name — was born at Florence, A. D. 1265. One of the best edu- 

 cated and most distinguished youths of the city, he, at the age of 

 twenty-five, lost his mistress Beatrice, whom he had loved from his 

 boy-hood. In a collection of his earliest poetry, made by himself 

 soon after her death, in 1290, and which he called Vita Nuova, are 

 found all the interesting circumstances of their early loves ; but 

 towards the end, finding that the eflfort had fallen short of the ex- 

 pression of his deep and wounded feeUngs, he says, " If God shall 

 continue my days, I hope to say things of her, which have never 

 been said of woman before."* It was to this purpose he conse- 

 crated his great poem the Divina Commedia, a production that 

 ranks him with the most illustrious poets that have written in 

 ♦ Spero di dire di lei, quelle che mai non fu detto d'alcund. 



