[21] _Equalium stantiarum sine responsorio ad unam sententiam tragica coniugatio_ (ii. 8). The _sine responsorio_ distinguishes the true canzone, _canzone distesa_, from the ballata, _canzone a ballo_, in which the _ripresa_ of from two to four lines was repeated after each stanza as well as sung as a prelude to the whole. Dante’s example is his own _Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore_, the poem which began “le nove rime” (_Purg._ xxiv. 49-51). The _tragica coniugatio_ is most nearly realised in English poetry by the ode, while the closest counterpart to the canzone with stanzas divisible into metrical periods is offered by Spenser’s _Epithalamion_. The sestina has been employed by English poets from the Elizabethans to Swinburne and Rudyard Kipling. [22] Cipolla showed that the matter of the first two books more directly controverts the anti-imperialist and anti-Roman arguments of the French political writers of the beginning of the fourteenth century--writers like the Dominican, John of Paris. But these or similar views were now being adduced by Robert of Naples and supported by Clement V. [23] These two ends are the two cities--the earthly and the heavenly--of St. Augustine’s _De Civitate Dei_; but the earthly city, blessedness of this life, is more significant for Dante than it was for Augustine. Felicity in peace and freedom is in some sort man’s right: _Che è quello per che esso è nato_ (_Conv._ iv. 4). [24] For the whole history of the Letters, the reader is referred to Dr. Paget Toynbee’s introduction, _Dantis Alagherii Epistolae_, Oxford, 1920. [25] Torraca would assign it to 1311. [26] Polyphemus, as Biscaro has shown, is most probably Fulcieri da Calboli, the ferocious podestà of Florence in 1303, who had been elected Captain of the People at Bologna for the first six months of 1321 (his predecessor having died in office). _Cf. Ecl._ ii. (iv.) 76-83 with _Purg._ xiv. 58-66. See _Giornale storico della letteratura italiana_, lxxxi. p. 128. Others have taken the person meant as Robert of Naples, or, with Ricci, a kinsman of Venedico Caccianemico whom Dante had covered with infamy in _Inf._ xviii. [27] “This illustrious head, for which the Pruner is already hastening to select unwithering leaves from the noble laurel,” or “to decree an everlasting garland in the divine justice,” according to whether the Virgin is taken as Daphne or Astraea. CHAPTER IV THE “DIVINA COMMEDIA” 1. _Introductory_