part to which our language extends; showing against my will the wound
with which fortune has smitten me, and which is so often imputed to his
ill-deserving, on whom it is inflicted.' The precise time of his death
is not accurately ascertained; but, it was either in July or September
of the year 1321. His friend in adversity, Guido da Polenta, mourned his
loss, and testified his sorrow and respect by a sumptuous funeral, and,
it is said, intended to have erected a monument to his memory; but, the
following year, contending factions deprived him of the sovereignty
which he had held for more than half a century; and he, in his turn,
like the great poet whom he had protected, died in exile. I believe,
however, that the tomb, with an inscription purporting to have been
written by Dante himself, of which I have here given an outline, was
erected at the time of his decease: and, that his portrait, in
bas-relief, was afterwards added by Bernardo Bembo, in the year 1483,
who, at that time was a Senator and Podestà of the Venetian republic."

Byron truly sings:

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages.
There is a tomb in Arquà; rear'd in air,
Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose
The bones of Laura's lover.

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