"Se Dio te lasci, lettor prender frutto Di tua lezione."
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1872. 8vo. pp. 296.
[2] The Florentines should seem to have invented or re-invented banks, book-keeping by double entry, and bills of exchange. The last, by endowing Value with the gift of fern seed and enabling it to walk invisible, turned the flank of the baronial tariff-system and made the roads safe for the great liberalizer Commerce. This made Money omnipresent, and prepared the way for its present omnipotence. Fortunately it cannot usurp the third attribute of Deity,--omniscience. But whatever the consequences, this Florentine invention was at first nothing but admirable, securing to brain its legitimate influence over brawn. The latter has begun its revolt, but whether it will succeed better in its attempt to restore mediaeval methods, than the barons in maintaining them remains to be seen.
[3] Ghiberti's designs have been criticised by a too systematic aestheticism, as confounding the limits of sculpture and painting. But is not the _riliero_ precisely the bridge by which the one art passes over into the territory of the other?
[5] The Nouvelle Biographie Générale gives May 8 as his birthday. This is a mere assumption, for Boccaccio only says generally May. The indication which Dante himself gives that he was born when the sun was in Gemini would give a range from about the middle of May to about the middle of June, so that the 8th is certainly too early.
[6] Secolo di Dante, Udine edition of 1828, Vol. III. Part I. p.578.
[7] Arrivabene, however, is wrong. Boccaccio makes precisely the same reckoning in the first note of his Commentary (Bocc. Comento, etc., Firenze, 1844, Vol. I. pp. 32, 33).
[12] Though he himself preferred French, and wrote his _Trésor_ in that language for two reasons, _"l'una perchè noi siamo in Francia, e l'altra perchè, la parlatura francesca e più dilettevolee più comune che tutti li altri linguaggi_." (_Proemio, sul fine_.)
[15] See especially Inferno, IX. 112 et seq.; XII. 120; XV. 4 et seq.; XXXII. 25-30.
[18] Letter of Dante, now lost, cited by Aretino.
[20] Balbo, Vita di Dante, Firenze, 1853, p. 117.
[21] Life and Times of Dante, London, 1858, p. 80.
[22] Notes to Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar."