[33] A late legend, to which some eminent writers have given too easy credence, does actually assert that Dante did go to Genoa, in the suite of Henry VII., about the end of 1311, and there was ill-used by some of Branca d’Oria’s friends or domestics. But none of the early commentators knows anything of this tale.
[38] Note that _cupidigia_ is, in Dante’s scheme, the vice opposed to _giustizia_, that which debases nations as righteousness exalts them.
The _Commedia_ is, for many readers perhaps, the only book distinctly identified with Dante’s name. Yet it must be remembered that, as a matter of fact, it represents less than half of the total bulk of his writings; and, further, that the remainder comprises several works which, though not attaining to the pre-eminent position which all the world now recognises the great poem as occupying, are very remarkable monuments of mediæval literature.
Of the youthful work, the _Vita Nuova_, we have already spoken. It may be sufficient here to add that--though there is some controversy on the point--the name probably means only “Early” or “Fresh Life.” The book was pretty certainly written not much after 1290, though the last chapter, in which the author’s design to compose a greater work is alluded to, may have been added when the scheme of the _Commedia_ was more developed. The _Vita Nuova_ was not printed till 1578.
With regard to the date at which the most important of the prose works, known as the _Convito_, or “Banquet,” was composed, considerable uncertainty exists. Villani says that the odes to which it is ostensibly a commentary were written in exile. Some critics hold that it belongs, at all events in great part, to the “pre-exilian” period of Dante’s life; while others place it as late as 1310. The late Dr. Witte regarded it as the middle division of what he called “Dante’s Trilogy”--the drama, that is, of the development of Dante’s soul. In this view, the early love portrayed in the _Vita Nuova_ marks an age of simple faith, undisturbed by any doubt. The _Convito_ (so far as it was completed) records a period of philosophical speculation--not actually adverse to the truths of religion, but seeking to establish these rather on the basis of human reason than on revelation. Lastly, the _Commedia_ shows us the soul, convinced that salvation and enlightenment are not to be found on this road, returning again to child-like submission. There is no doubt an attractive symmetry about this arrangement, but it is open to some objections, one of them being, as a French critic said, that part at least of the _Convito_ must almost certainly have been written after the date in which Dante’s conversion is represented as having taken place. Nor is it an answer to say that, the action of the _Commedia_ being purely imaginary, we need pay no attention to dates. For one thing, Dante is extremely careful, and with more success than any one without his marvellous “visualising” power could hope for, to avoid anything like an anachronism in the _Commedia_. If he allows no event, which, in the history of the world, was still future in 1300, to be referred to as past, why should he have allowed this in regard to events in the history of his own spiritual development?