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Dante, on the subject of natural and acquired genius. Cecco maintained that nature was more potent than art, while Dante asserted the contrary. To prove his principle, the great Italian bard referred to his cat, which, by repeated practice, he had taught to hold a candle in its paw, while he supped or read. Cecco desired to witness the experiment, and came not unprepared for the purpose; when Dante’s cat was performing its part, Cecco, lifting up the lidof a pot which he had filled with mice, the creature of art instantly showed the weakness of a talent merely acquired, and dropping the candle flew on the mice with all its instinctive propensity. Dante was himself disconcerted, and it was adjudged that the advocate for the occult principle of native faculties had gained his cause.” 18
    Â Â Â Â  Many of these stories are obviously much older than the time of Dante, and have been told of various famous persons at different periods. Their association, however, with Dante’s name is sufficient proof of the estimation in which he was held within a few years after his death, and of the way in which his fame as a poet impressed the popular imagination in Italy.
    Â 
----
    Â Â Â Â  1 In bk. ii. of the
Res Memorandae
.
    Â Â Â Â  2 Or, as we should say, “birds of a feather flock together”.
    Â Â Â Â  3 Quoted by Papanti in
Dante secondo la tradizione e i novellatori
, p. 94.
    Â Â Â Â  4 In the margin Gower has put “Nota exemplum cujusdam poete de Ytalia, qui Dantes vocabatur”. The above passage was omitted by Gower from the latest recension of his poem.
    Â Â Â Â  5 Quoted by Papanti,
op. cit
., pp. 90-1.
    Â Â Â Â  6
Purgatorio
, iv. 106-27.
    Â Â Â Â  7
Anonimo Fiorentino
.
    Â Â Â Â  8 See above, p. 42.
    Â Â Â Â  9
Novella
, cxiv.
    Â Â Â Â  10 Equivalent to our “Gee up !”
    Â Â Â Â  11
Novella
cxv.
    Â Â Â Â  12 See pp. 193-202 of the Oxford Dante.
    Â Â Â Â  13 Quoted by Papanti,
op
.
cit
. pp. 47-9.
    Â Â Â Â  14
Facezie di Poggio fiorentino
, No. 1xvi.
    Â Â Â Â  15 Book iv. No. 17 (see Paget Toynbee,
Dante in English Literature
, vol. i. p. 84
    Â Â Â Â  16 Quoted by Papanti,
op. cit.
p. 157.
    Â Â Â Â  17 Edward Wright,
Some Observations made in Travelling through France
,
Italy
,
etc
.
in the Years MDCCXX
,
MDCCXXI
,
and MDCCXXII
(London, 1730), ed. 1764, p. 395 (see
Dante in English Literature
, vol i. pp. 216-17).
    Â Â Â Â  18 Ed. 1866, vol. ii. (
Anecdotes of the Fairfax Family
), p. 464 (see
Dante in English Literature
, vol. i. p. 508, and Papanti,
op
.
cit
. p. 197).

PART V
DANTE’S WORKS
CHAPTER I
    Â Â Â Â  Italian Works—Lyrical Poems—The
Vita Nuova
—The
Convivio
.
    D ANTE’S earliest known composition is the sonnet beginning
    â€œA ciascun’ alma presa e gentil core,” 1
    which, as he tells us in the
Vita Nuova
, he wrote after seeing the marvellous vision which followed on the episode of his being publicly saluted by Beatrice for the first time in the streets of Florence, when they were both in their eighteenth year (i.e. in the year 1283). This sonnet, he further tells us, he sent to many famous poets of the day,from whom he received sonnets in reply. Among those to whom he sent were his first friend, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoja, and Dante da Majano, whose replies have been preserved. 2
    Â Â Â Â 
Canzoniere
.—This sonnet and thirty other poems (twenty-four sonnets, five canzoni, and one ballata) are grouped together in a symmetrical arrangement in the
Vita Nuova
(or
New Life
), the prose text of which is a vehicle for the introduction and interpretation of the poems. Others of Dante’s lyrical poems are introduced in his
Convivio
(or
Banquet
), which contains three canzoni, and in his Latin work on the vulgar tongue (
De Vulgari Eloquentia
), which contains