Dante was far above the level of the average educated man. Not that his scientific ideas were in advance of his age: on the contrary, one special interest that they have for us is that they illustrate, like his political and religious views, the beliefs and feelings of the period. His authorities were the authorities of all, but he had studied them and made their thoughts his own, as few others did, except some churchmen and professed scholars. The extent and depth of his reading is evident from his own writings, and his great learning is noted with admiration by all his biographers. Giovanni Villani, in the earliest account we possess of Dante, says that he was “a great scholar in almost every branch of learning, although he was a layman.” Boccaccio would have us believe that while still a child, so young that he might be expected to spend his time playing with other children or sitting on his mother’s knee, he gave the whole of his time to reading and learning. Lionardo Bruni, however, assures us that though he was an ardent student, and showed unusual powers at an early age, he by no means tried to “sever himself from the world, but living and moving about amongst other young men of his age, he approved himself gracious and skilful in every youthful exercise.” It was wonderful, he says, how Dante maintained all his social and civic intercourse while he pursued his studies so fervently. In truth, the poet’s troubled life was far removed from that life of calm retirement which one thinks suitable for a scholar. In his early youth he experienced a passionate love and sorrow; a year before the death of Beatrice he was fighting for Florence in the great battle of Campaldino, nor was it the first time he had borne arms; in 1296 he spoke in the council of the Hundred; in 1300 he was ambassador for the Tuscan League to San Gemignano, and was elected to the highest office a citizen could hold in his native city, that of Prior; in 1301 he was ambassador to the Pope in Rome, and in the year following he was exiled. After this he was always wandering, often in great poverty, dependent on first one patron and then another, always hoping that some turn of affairs would restore him to Florence, always taking a keen and active interest in Italian politics, until he died, still in exile, at Ravenna. Add to this the difficulties common to all scholars of his day, viz. absence of printed books, public libraries, and journals, etc., and we must marvel how he ever found the opportunities and the serenity of mind for his prolonged studies. Boccaccio adds another obstacle—his wife! To console him for the death of Beatrice, his friends and relatives persuaded him to marry a wife of their choosing with melancholy results:—