_pour son libraire_) for having been right, declaring that he esteems him
neither more nor less for having made a mistake of five years. Oddly
enough, Voltaire adopts this alleged blunder of five years on the next
page in saying that Dante died at the age of 56, though he still more
oddly omits the undisputed date of his death (1321), which would have
shown Bayle to be right. The poet's descent is said to have been derived
from a younger son of the great Roman family of the Frangipani, classed
by the popular rhyme with the Orsini and Colonna:--

"Colonna, Orsini, e Frangipani,
Prendono oggi e pagano domani."

That his ancestors had been long established in Florence is an inference
from some expressions of the poet, and from their dwelling having been
situated in the more ancient part of the city. The most important fact of
the poet's genealogy is, that he was of mixed race, the Alighieri being
of Teutonic origin. Dante was born, as he himself tells us,[9] when the
sun was in the constellation Gemini, and it has been absurdly inferred,
from a passage in the _Inferno_,[10] that his horoscope was drawn and a
great destiny predicted for him by his teacher, Brunetto Latini. The
_Ottimo Comento_ tells us that the Twins are the house of Mercury, who
induces in men the faculty of writing, science, and of acquiring
knowledge. This is worth mentioning as characteristic of the age and of
Dante himself, with whom the influence of the stars took the place of the
old notion of destiny.[11] It is supposed, from a passage in Boccaccio's
life of Dante, that Alighiero the father was still living when the poet
was nine years old. If so, he must have died soon after, for Leonardo
Aretino, who wrote with original documents before him, tells us that
Dante lost his father while yet a child. This circumstance may have been
not without influence in muscularizing his nature to that character of