If this be true, our quest may perhaps modestly congratulate itself on the avoidance of undue levity. Nor need we take it seriously to heart if we have failed to vindicate for Dante the character of a humorist in the modern sense, and of the American type. The most that our investigation can be said to have proved is that Dante, embittered as he was by his exile, and emaciated by long and serious study, was not devoid of that sense of humour whereby man is able to wring matter for cheerfulness and mirth out of the most unlikely material, and, going through this vale of misery—“questo aspro disorto”—to “use it for a well.” But neither is he the cold abstraction, both less and more than human, which tradition, of a sort, has handed down to us. His works display, for those who care to look for them, a breadth of sympathy, a capacity for observation and discernment, a keenness of interest, an eye for the incongruous, a richness and sureness of self-expression that are guarantees of the possession of the sense of humour.[160] The manifold play of the forces of one of the most picturesque ages of human history found a sympathetic response in Dante’s genius, though the sublimity and the restraint of his work has obscured this. This side of his genius is well summed up by Sannia.[161] “La coscienza lucidissima di sè stesso, l’ attitudine all’ analisi psicologica, la febbrile curiosità del mondo esterno, naturale ed umano, lo spirito d’ osservazione, il senso più squisito dell’ arte, la divina serenità, la multiforme impressionabilità dell’ artista, il senso del tenero, la pietà umana, il pessimismo furono note spiccatissime, eminenti del suo genio.” IV DANTE AND MEDIAEVAL THOUGHT Vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno Seder tra filosofica famiglia. Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno. —_Inf._ iv. 131-3. Those who were privileged to listen to Mr. Trevelyan’s lecture on “Italy’s Part in the War,” and to see the wonderful slides presented to him by the _Comando Supremo_, will remember the thrill contributed by the last picture—the great statue of Dante at Trento, with the fugitive Austrian soldiers at its base, fleeing, as it were, before his face. Dante, we felt, has at last come to his own; the Trentino is at last indefeasibly— Suso in Italia bella, and the “alps above Tiralli” effectively “bar out” the Teuton![162] Dante’s inspiration has indeed brooded over the heroic efforts and struggles of Italy’s twentieth century patriots, even as over their forefathers of the Risorgimento. And this living influence of the Divine Poet’s genius has been brought before our readers in the first two Essays of this collection.