4. _The “Eclogae”_ Belonging, like the tenth Epistle, to that closing period of Dante’s life when he was engaged on the _Paradiso_, are two delightful pastoral poems in Latin hexameters. Here, too, we owe much to the piety of Boccaccio. The earliest and most authoritative of the five manuscripts is again in his handwriting, in the _Zibaldone Boccaccesco_ (where the poems are accompanied by explanatory notes), in the Laurentian Library. Giovanni del Virgilio, a young lecturer and a poet, had written to Dante from Bologna a letter in Latin verse, expressing his profound admiration for the singer of the Commedia, but respectfully remonstrating with him for writing in Italian, and suggesting some stirring contemporary subjects as worthy matters for his muse: the death of Henry VII., the battle of Montecatini, a victory of Can Grande over the Paduans, the struggle by sea and land between King Robert of Naples and the Visconti for the possession of Genoa. The reference to this last event shows that the letter cannot have been written before July 1318, while a passage towards the close clearly indicates the early part of the following year. It further contains a pressing invitation to come and take the laurel crown at Bologna, or, at least, to answer the letter, “if it vex thee not, to have read first the feeble numbers which the rash goose cackles to the clear-voiced swan.” Dante’s first Eclogue is the answer. Adopting the pastoral style, he himself and his companion Dino Perini (whom Boccaccio afterwards knew) appear as shepherds, Tityrus and Meliboeus, discussing the invitation from Mopsus. It was probably written in the spring or early summer of 1319. In a medley of generous praise and kindly banter, Dante declines to visit Bologna, “that knows not the gods,” and still hopes to receive the poet’s crown at Florence. When the _Paradiso_ is finished, then will it be time to think of ivy and laurel; and in the meanwhile, to convert Mopsus from his errors with respect to vernacular poetry, he will send him ten measures of milk fresh from the best-loved ewe of all his flock--ten cantos from the _Paradiso_, which evidently are not yet published, since the sheep is yet unmilked.