It is not, however, necessary to suppose that with Dante, any more than with most men of a similar age, a conviction that he had hitherto been on the wrong track involved an entire break with former habits, at all events of mind and thought. He may very well have gone on stringing together the curious medley of learning which he had not unfitly called a “Banquet.”[40] As we have said already, it looks very like the contents of a commonplace book, in which materials for other works--notably for the _Commedia_--were collected. Many of the views enunciated in it may well be those held by Dante long before, and subsequently changed, though he might not have taken the trouble to expunge them, even when stating a maturer opinion in a later work. A good many of the difficulties which arise in the consideration of the dates of Dante’s works, probably arise from oblivion of the fact that “publication” in our modern sense did not exist in those days. An author would no doubt give his manuscript to friends to read, as he went along; and, if they liked it, they would probably take a copy of so much as they had. Thus portions of a book would get about long before the whole was finished; and in this way the views which Dante expresses in the _Convito_ upon the cause of the markings in the moon, the order of the angelic hierarchies, the nature of the Milky Way, and similar matters, may well have been known to many as held by him, and he may have known that this was the case. Subsequently, having changed his mind--it may be, even before 1300--he would take the opportunity of a part of the _Commedia_ having got into circulation, to recant; and even so the original view might stand in the _Convito_, and appear in that work when finally produced. When we further remember that Dante left the _Convito_ little more than begun, and consequently, no doubt, unrevised, it will be clear that very little inference can be drawn as to its date, from the fact that certain opinions expressed in it are retracted in the _Commedia_. It would be truer to say that it had no date. It was first printed in 1490. The _De Monarchia_ is a complete treatise, in fact, probably the only work besides the _Commedia_ which we can feel sure that we have in a form which it would have retained however long Dante might have lived. Enough has been already said as to its scope; it may suffice to add that the Church has never looked upon it with favour, which was probably the reason of its not being printed till 1559, and then in Germany. The unfinished treatise known as _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ had the curious fortune to appear in an Italian translation (1529) some fifty years before it was printed in its original Latin. It is a most interesting little work, showing considerable acuteness of perception in regard to peculiarities of local vernacular, and a general “feeling” for linguistic matters.