In his studies, Dante was so eager, earnest, and indefatigable, that his wife and family often complained of his unsocial habits. Boccaccio mentions, that once, when he was at Siena, having unexpectedly found at a shop window a book which he had not seen, but had long coveted, he placed himself on a bench before the door, at nine o'clock in the morning, and never lifted up his eyes from the volume till vespers, when he had run through the whole contents with such intense application, as to have totally disregarded the festivities of processions and music which had been passing through the streets the greater part of the day; and when questioned about what had happened even in his presence, he denied having had knowledge of any thing but what he was reading. As might be expected from his other habits, he rarely spoke, except when personally addressed, or strongly moved, and then his words were few, well chosen, weighty, and expressed in tones of voice accommodated to the subject. Yet when it was required, his eloquence brake forth with spontaneous felicity, splendour, and exuberance of diction, imagery, and thought. Dante delighted in music. The most natural and touching incident in his "Purgatorio" is the interview between himself and his friend Casella; an eminent singer in his day, who must, notwithstanding, have been forgotten within his century, but for the extraordinary good fortune which has befallen him, to be celebrated by two of the greatest poets of their respective countries, (Dante and Milton) from whose pages his name cannot soon perish. Choosing to excel in all the elegancies of life, as well as in gentlemanly exercises and intellectual prowess, Dante attached himself to painting not less than to music, and practised it with the pencil (not, indeed, so triumphantly as with the pen, his picture-poetry being unrivalled,) with sufficient facility and grace to make it a favourite amusement in private; and none can believe that he could amuse himself with what was worthless. His four celebrated contemporaries, Cimabue, Odorigi, Franco Bolognese, and Giotto, are all honourably mentioned by him in the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio." There is an interesting allusion to the employment which he loved in the "Vita Nuova:--On the day that completed the year after this lady (Beatrice) had been received among the denizens of eternal life, while I was sitting alone, and recalling her form to my remembrance, I drew an angel on a certain tablet," &c. It may be incidentally observed, that Dante's angels are often painted with unsurpassable beauty as well as inexhaustible variety of delineation throughout his poem, especially in canto IX. of the "Inferno," and cantos II. VIII. XII. XV. XVII. XXIV. of the "Purgatorio." Take six lines of one of these portraits; though the inimitable original must consume the unequal version.