a complaint anticipated by the anonymous writer of a clever _ballata_ in the thirteenth century: _A little wild bird sometimes at my ear Sings his own verses very clear: Others sing louder what I do not hear. For singing loudly is not singing well; But ever by the song that’s soft and low The master-singer’s voice is plain to tell. Few have it, and yet all are masters now, And each of them can trill out what he calls His ballads, canzonets, and madrigals. The world with masters is so covered o’er, There is no room for pupils any more._ --ROSSETTI. But the great poet was about to arise who may almost be said to have created two literatures--his country’s and that specially devoted to himself--and whose own works are such, that if every other production of Italian literature were to perish, it would, on their account alone, continue to deserve a place among the great literatures of the world. FOOTNOTES: [2] The other prose Italian writings of approximate date are for the most part either translations from the Latin, which do not enter into the plan of this work, or novelettes, which will be more advantageously considered along with other works of their class. The origin of Italian prose would have to be carried considerably farther back if the _Carte di Arborea_ in the public library of Cagliari were genuine, but they are unquestionably forgeries. [3] _Gin my seven sons were seven rats, Rinning over the castle wa’, And I mysel’ were the auld grey cat, Full soon would I worry them a’!_ --OLD BALLAD. CHAPTER III DANTE’S LIFE AND MINOR WRITINGS Creditable as were their essays in the new literary instrument of thought, Dante’s predecessors can be regarded as his forerunners only in so far as they had helped to create an intellectual atmosphere congenial to the special bent of his genius. The general character of this may be defined as an alliance of the chivalrous and impassioned sentiment which had come down from the troubadours with the science of Aristotle and the thought of Aquinas. Guido Cavalcanti had shown how these might be combined, and Dante followed in his steps without, perhaps, any clear consciousness of his own infinite superiority; of which, however, a well-known passage in the _Inferno_ seems to intimate that he eventually came to entertain a sufficient notion.