to heaven. He encouraged, if not personally assisted, two ineffectual
attempts of the Ghibellines against Florence; wrote, besides his great
work, a book of mixed prose and poetry on "Love and Virtue" (the
_Convito_, or Banquet); a Latin treatise on Monarchy (_de Monarchia_),
recommending the "divine right" of the Emperor; another in two parts,
and in the same language, on the Vernacular Tongue (_de Vulgari
Eloquio_); and learnt to know meanwhile, as he affectingly tells us,
"how hard it was to climb other people's stairs, and how salt the taste
of bread is that is not our own." It is even thought not improbable,
from one awful passage of his poem, that he may have "placed himself in
some public way," and, "stripping his visage of all shame, and trembling
in his very vitals," have stretched out his hand "for charity" [13]--an
image of suffering, which, proud as he was, yet considering how great a
man, is almost enough to make one's common nature stoop down for pardon
at his feet; and yet he should first prostrate himself at the feet of
that nature for his outrages on God and man. Several of the princes and
feudal chieftains of Italy entertained the poet for a while in their
houses; but genius and worldly power, unless for worldly purposes, find
it difficult to accord, especially in tempers like his. There must be
great wisdom and amiableness on both sides to save them from jealousy
of one another's pretensions. Dante was not the man to give and take in
such matters on equal terms; and hence he is at one time in a palace,
and at another in a solitude. Now he is in Sienna, now in Arezzo, now in
Bologna; then probably in Verona with Can Grande's elder brother; then
(if we are to believe those who have tracked his steps) in Casentino;
then with the Marchese Moroello Malaspina in Lunigiana; then with the
great Ghibelline chieftain Faggiuola in the mountains near Urbino; then
in Romagna, in Padua, in _Paris_ (arguing with the churchmen), some say
in Germany, and at _Oxford_; then again in Italy; in Lucca (where he is
supposed to have relapsed from his fidelity to Beatrice in favour of