_Excellentia Verborum_ 429 _Pexa et hirsuta_ 430 The Canzone 430 Importance of the book 431 Independence and novelty of its method 432 Dante’s attention to Form 433 His disregard of Oratory 433 The influence on him of Romance 434 And of comparative criticism 434 The poetical differentia according to him 435 His antidote to the Wordsworthian heresy 436 His handling of metre 436 Of diction 437 His standards of style 438 The “Chapter of the Sieve” 439 The _pexa_ 440 The _hirsuta_ 441 Other critical _loci_ in Dante 441 The Epistle to Can Grande 441 The _Convito_ 442 Dante on Translation 443 On language as shown in prose and verse 443 Final remarks on his criticism 444 CHAPTER III. THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES. Limitations of this chapter 447 The material it offers 448 The Formal Arts of Rhetoric 448 And of Poetry 449 Examples of Indirect Criticism: Chaucer 450 _Sir Thopas_ 451 Froissart 453 Richard of Bury 455 Petrarch 456 Boccaccio 457 His work on Dante 457 The _Trattatello_ 458 The _Comento_ 459 The _De Genealogia Deorum_ 460 Gavin Douglas 464 Further examples unnecessary 466 INTERCHAPTER III. § I. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MEDIÆVAL PERIOD TO LITERARY 469 CRITICISM