Uncertain as the traditions concerning this portion of Dante's life (and indeed of every other) may be, there is no doubt that he became early and intimately acquainted with the reliques of all the Roman writers then known in Italy. Among these, Virgil, Ovid, and Statius were his favourites, and naturally so, as excelling (each according to his peculiar genius) in marvellous and beautiful narrative, to which their youthful admirer's own sublime and daring genius intuitively led him. At the same time, he not less courageously and patiently groped his way through the labyrinths of school divinity, and the dark caverns of what was then deemed philosophy, under the bewildering guidance of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Full proof of the improvement which he made, both under classical and polemical tutors and prototypes, may be traced in all his compositions, prose as well as verse, from the earliest to the last: yet, that which was his own, it must be acknowledged, is ever the best; and if, in addition to a large proportion of this, there had not been a savour of originality communicated to every thing which he borrowed or had been taught, his works must have perished with those of his contemporaries, who are now either nameless, or survive only as names in the titles of unread and unreadable volumes. During this season of seed time for the mind, we are told that, notwithstanding his indefatigable labours in the acquirement and cultivation of knowledge, he appeared so cheerful, frank, and generous in deportment and disposition, that nobody would have imagined him to be such a devotee to literature in the stillness of the closet, or the open field of college exercises. On the contrary, he passed in public for a gallant and highbred man of the world; following its customs and fashions, so far as might be deemed consistent in a person of honour, and independence,--qualities on which he sufficiently prided himself; for which, also, in after life, he dearly paid the price,--and paid it, like Aristides, by banishment. But Beatrice dying in 1290[6], her lover is reported to have fallen into such a state of despondency, that his friends, fearing the most frightful effects upon his reason not less than upon his health, persuaded him, as a last resource, to marry. Accordingly he took to wife Madonna Gemma, of the house of Donati; one of the most powerful families of Tuscany, and unhappily one of the most turbulent where few could be called pacific. By her he had five sons and a daughter. Her husband's biographers (with few exceptions) have conspired to darken this lady's memory with the stigma of being an insufferable shrew, who rendered his life a martyrdom by domestic discomforts. Aline in the "Inferno," Canto XVI., in which one of the lost spirits, Jacopo Rusticci, says, "La fiera moglie, più ch' altro, mi nuoce," "More than aught else, my furious wife annoys me,"--