"Lo giorno che costei nel mondo venne, Secondo che si trova Nel libro della mente che vien meno, La mia persona parvola sostenne Una passion nova."
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 10: _Decamerone_, Giorn. vi. Nov. 9. _Logician_ is here to be understood in an extended sense, as the student of letters, or _arts_, as they were then called, in general.]
The night is made for cooling shade, For silence, and for sleep; And when I was a child, I laid My hands upon my breast, and prayed, And sank to slumbers deep: Childlike as then, I lie to-night, And watch my lonely cabin light.