(his commentary on Aristotle was translated into Latin about 1250), gave back, in a modified form, to Western Europe, the works of the Philosopher, of which the original Greek was not acquired by them till several centuries later. This Graeco-Arabian philosophy forms the basis of those constantly recurring, and to many of us rather tiresome, astronomical excursions which form so characteristic a feature of the _Divine Comedy_. This form of Aristotelianism plays an immense part in the scholastic philosophy; and his deference to it is among Dante’s chief claims to be representative of the religious thought and teaching of his day. In countless other ways the Poet’s writings are representative of what was best and highest in contemporary thought: the wide grasp of innumerable topics and details, the encyclopaedic temper, quaintly obvious in the _Convivio_ but more worthily embodied in the _Divina Commedia_; the spiritualising of troubadour love, beautifully manifested in the promise of _Vita Nuova_ and _Canzoniere_, but more sublimely still in the Beatrice of the _Paradiso_; the blending of religious with political theory so conspicuous in the _Monarchia_ and _Commedia_; the realistic vividness of conception; the eye for contrast, which makes Dante’s great poem a mirror of the kaleidoscopic life of the Middle Ages. Among the qualities which made Dante what he was—and is—two would seem to be supreme. First his encyclopaedic knowledge, and secondly the unrivalled power of plastic visualisation, by which he was enabled “to use as a poet what he had acquired as a scholar.”[174] Dante has been described by Eliot Norton as an instance of “the incredible diligence of the Middle Ages.” In days when there was no Funk and Wagnalls Company to minister encyclopaedic knowledge by cheap instalments—when everything must be painfully acquired from MSS. and the diligent student ran the risk not only of leanness[175] but of blindness[176] Dante appears, from his extant works, to have known all that was to be known. Dr. Moore’s investigations (in _Dante Studies_, Vol. I) go some way towards justifying—if anything can absolutely justify so dogmatic a statement—the perhaps over-enthusiastic words of A. G. Butler: “Dante was born a student as he was born a poet, and had he never written a single poem, he would still have been famous as the most profound scholar of his time.”[177] But if Dante had finished the _Convivio_, and written nothing else, his vast learning would have been as uninteresting to the average modern mind as is that of Albertus Magnus or Thomas Aquinas. Albertus Magnus with his incredible learning and his more than incredible fecundity and voluminousness is unknown to most of us. Thomas Aquinas, though the soundness of his judgment and the depth of his insight have given his writings a permanent place of honour, more especially in the Roman Communion, is little more than a name to the average student even of literature and philosophy.