In addition to these works, several Italian scholars of high repute have attributed to Dante the _Fiore_--a rendering of the _Roman de la Rose_ in 232 sonnets--the author of which twice calls himself “Durante.” The editors of the sexcentenary _testo critico_ have wisely excluded it from their volume, and it has been edited as an “appendice dantiana” by Parodi. Also we know of several smaller things of Dante’s now lost: the letters mentioned by Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo; a _serventese_ containing the names of the sixty most beautiful women in Florence, referred to in the _Vita Nuova_ (_V. N._ vi.), one of his earliest poems; and a canzone on love, of peculiar structure, quoted in the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ (_V. E._ ii. 11). EARLY COMMENTATORS.--No sooner had Dante passed away than his apotheosis began with the epitaph by Giovanni del Virgilio: Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers --“Dante, the theologian, skilled in every branch of knowledge,” and the canzone on his death by Cino da Pistoia: Su per la costa, Amor, de l’alto monte --“Up the side, Love, of the lofty mountain.” Boccaccio tells us that it was Dante’s custom to send the _Divina Commedia_ by instalments to Can Grande at Verona, and he adds a striking story of how, eight months after his death, the poet appeared in a vision, “clad in whitest garments and his face shining with an unwonted light,” to his son Jacopo, to reveal to the world where the manuscript of the last thirteen cantos of the _Paradiso_ was hidden. It is a fact that in April or May, 1322, Jacopo presented a complete copy of the sacred poem to Guido da Polenta, who was then Captain of the People at Bologna. Straightway the work of copyists and commentators began, above all at Florence and Bologna. The earliest dated MSS. are the _Codice Landiano_ at Piacenza and the _Codice Trivulziano_ at Milan (the latter of Florentine origin), dated 1336 and 1337 respectively. Of commentaries, the first two are those on the _Inferno_, written in the twenties of the century, by Dante’s son, Jacopo Alighieri, in Italian, and Ser Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli, chancellor of the Commune of Bologna, in Latin. The earliest extant commentators on the complete poem are the Bolognese Jacopo della Lana and the Florentine author of the _Ottimo Commento_, probably Andrea Lancia; the former wrote shortly before and the latter shortly after 1330. Both wrote in Italian. Pietro Alighieri composed a Latin commentary on his father’s work about 1340, and revised it, with additions, some years later. An important Latin commentary on the _Inferno_, by the Carmelite Guido da Pisa, dates from the forties of the century. And, before the fourteenth century closed, a new epoch in Dante scholarship was inaugurated by the lectures and commentaries of Giovanni Boccaccio at Florence (1373), Benvenuto da Imola at Bologna (1375-80), and Francesco da Buti at Pisa (1380-90). Of all these earlier commentators, Benvenuto da Imola is by far the