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elephant,’ was the reply. Then said Dante: ‘Oh ! elephant, leaveme alone in peace, for I am pondering weightier matters than your silly chatter ‘.” 14
    Â Â Â Â  Another version of this story is included among
The Most Elegant and Witty Epigrams
(first published in 1615) of Sir John Harington. It is entitled
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
A good answere of the Poet
Dant
to an Atheist
.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  The pleasant learn’d
Italian Poet Dant
,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Hearing an Atheist at the Scriptures jest,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Askt him in jest, which was the greatest beast ?
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  He simply said; he thought an Elephant.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Then
Elephant
(quoth
Dant
) it were commodious,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  That thou wouldst hold thy peace, or get thee hence,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Breeding our Conscience scandal and offence
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  With thy prophan’d speech, most vile and odious.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Oh Italy, thou breedst but few such
Dants
,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  I would our England bred no Elephants. 15
    Â Â Â Â  The following anecdote of Dante and the Doge of Venice belongs to quite the end of Dante’s life, the occasion in question being when he was in Venice on his embassy from Guido da Polenta in the summer of 1321, a few months before his death:—
    Â Â Â Â  “Dante of Florence being once on a mission in Venice, was invited to dinner by the Doge on a fast-day. In front of the envoys of the other princes who were of greater account than the Polenta lord of Ravenna, and were served before Dante, were placed the largest fish; while in front of Dante were placed the smallest. This difference of treatment nettled Dante, who took up one of the little fish in his hand, and held it to his ear, as though expecting it to say something. The Doge, observing this, asked him what this strange behaviour meant. To which Dante replied: ‘As I knew that the father of this fish met hisdeath in these waters, I was asking him news of his father’. ‘Well,’ said the Doge, ‘and what did he answer ?’ Dante replied: ‘He told me that he and his companions were too little to remember much about him; but that I might learn what I wanted from the older fish, who would be able to give me the news I asked for’. Thereupon the Doge at once ordered Dante to be served with a fine large fish.” 16
    Â Â Â Â  An English traveller in Italy at the beginning of the eighteenth century picked up in Florence the following curious story about Dante:—
    Â Â Â Â  “This great man, we are told, had a most unhappy itch of pilfering; not for lucre (for it was generally of mere trifles), but it was what he could not help; so that the friends whose houses he frequented, would put in his way rags of cloth, bits of glass, and the like, to save things of more value (for he could not go away without something); and of such as these, at his death, a whole room full was found filled.” 17
    Â Â Â Â  Another anecdote is given by Isaac D’Israeli in his
Curiosities of Literature
:—
    Â Â Â Â  “A story is recorded of Cecco d’ Ascoli and of