Guido’s merits as a poet were highly estimated by his contemporaries. Dante mentions him in his treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_ among the masters of Italian literature, and declares that he has eclipsed Guido Guinicelli, whom also he greatly admired. Benevento da Imola, the commentator on the _Divine Comedy_, names him along with Dante as one of the two great lights of the age. That these praises were not undeserved will appear from a comparison of his lyrics with Dante’s, remembering that he was the older man and that the obligation was entirely on the side of the younger. Dante, especially in his sonnets, is continually borrowing thoughts which, whether original with Cavalcanti or not, had been previously expressed by him. The expression is indeed greatly improved, but even Cavalcanti’s comparatively rude form is full of charm. In his _ballate_ he has the great merit of having exalted a popular carol to the dignity of literature with little injury to its simplicity. Of the canzoni ascribed to him only two are recognised as undoubtedly genuine. Both are instinct with the philosophical spirit which he imported into poetry. The objections to the genuineness of the others derived from external evidence do not always appear very conclusive; but it must be admitted that there is an almost entire lack of external testimony in their favour. Four of them, from one of which we have already borrowed a quotation, have been translated by Rossetti. The most celebrated of Guido’s genuine compositions, the canzone beginning “_Donna mi prega; perch’ io voglio dire_,” was considered by his contemporaries the _ne plus ultra_ of poetry, but rather for its erudition than its strictly poetical merits: it had eight separate commentaries, which indeed were by no means superfluous. Guittoncino de’ Sinibuldi, commonly called CINO DA PISTOIA, a poet of somewhat later date (1270-1336), possessed less originality than Guido Cavalcanti, but having a better standard of taste, is perhaps more generally pleasing. Like Cavalcanti, he was a man of varied accomplishments, and it is his special renown to have been among the first jurists of his time. Like Dante, he was exiled from his native city, and went to Paris; he subsequently professed law in several of the chief cities of Italy, and was eventually restored to his own. His verse, like Cavalcanti’s, bears a strong affinity to Dante’s lyrical poetry, and, in the opinion of so accomplished a judge as Lorenzo de’ Medici, is even more completely divested of primitive rudeness. His most celebrated composition is the canzone consoling Dante for the loss of Beatrice, from which we quote a stanza in Rossetti’s version: