Truth was the chief quality of his intellect, and upon this, as upon an unshaken foundation, rest the marvellous power and consistency of his imaginations. This introduction, short as it is, exhibits a characteristic trait of Dante’s mind, in the declaration of his intention to copy from the book of his memory, or, in other words, to write the true records of experience. Under which rubric I find the words written which it is my intention to copy into this little book,-if not all of them, at least their meaning.” “ In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read is found a rubric which says : Incipit Vita Nova.

Beatrice had died between two and three years before, in 1290 and he seems to have pleased himself after her loss by recalling to his memory the sweet incidents of her life, and of her influence upon himself. When the “Vita Nuova” was completed, Dante was somewhat less than twenty-eight years old. But connected as it is with Dante’s life,-the first of that series of works in which truth, intensity, and tenderness of feeling are displayed as in the writings of no other man,-its interest no longer arises merely from itself and from its place in literature, but becomes indissolubly united with that which belongs by every claim to the “ Divina Commedia” and to the life of Dante.

The sentiment of the “ Vita Nuova” is separated by the wide gulf that lies between simplicity and affectation from the sentimentality of Petrarch’s sonnets. It would be of interest, as contrasted with the later growth of the sentimental element in literature, which speedily exhibits the influence of factitious feeling, of self-conscious effort, and of ambitions display. WERE the author of the “ Vita Nuova” unknown, its story of youth and love would still possess a charm, as standing in the dawn of modern literature,- the first book in which modern sentiment finds free expression.

Dante's la vita