Prof. Sannia’s work on the humorous element in the _Divine Comedy_[88] marks in some respects an epoch in the study of Dante. Its title may seem audacious, to the verge of irreverence; but if this is so, the fault lies partly in an age-long neglect of one aspect of the great poet’s nature, partly in a difficulty (common to both the Italian language and our own) confronting the critic who would define in appropriate language that subtle element—now gently playful, now fiercely ironical—which redeems Dante’s work as a whole from dulness, and makes the _Divine Comedy_ in particular one of the most human books ever written. Whether or not Prof. Sannia has fallen deep into the pit that ensnares most critics who have a hobby and a mission, his pioneer movement is certainly far from futile. We believe that he has largely proved his point, and given us, in consequence, a living Dante in place of the traditional wooden effigy. At any rate his work will have justified itself if it turns the attention of all-too-serious Dante students to a new field, and emphasizes those qualities in the Divine Poet which the sheer sublimity of his work has hitherto tended to obscure. In the following study we shall not confine ourselves to the limits of the _Divina Commedia_, but gather all we can in so short a space from his other works, and especially from the _Convivio_ and the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_. As a preliminary we shall do well to bestow a glance at least upon Dante’s environment from this particular point of view—the temper of the generation in which he lived, and that of his immediate circle, not neglecting such inferences as may be suggested by the tradition of his physiognomy and the evidence of his earliest biographers. For a provisional definition of the subject we may turn to “The Philosopher” from whom Dante and his contemporaries drew directly and indirectly. “Melancholy men of all others are most witty.” So said the “Maestro di color che sanno,” according to the author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_; and Boccaccio,[89] describing the habitual expression of Dante’s face, says it was “always melancholy and thoughtful.”