Lorenzo de’ Medici in a letter to Don Federigo d’ Arragona, son of the King of Naples, writes about “the delicate Florentine Guido Cavalcanti, a subtle logician, and for his century a profound philosopher. Even as he was handsome, winning and of gentle blood, so was he above nearly all the others in the grace and charm of his writings: accurate and admirable in conception, dignified in his sentences, copious and elevated, wise and far-seeing in his composition. All these gifts are adorned, as though with an embroidered vest, by an enchanting, sweet and ever-youthful style, which, had it been used in a wider field, would indubitably have set him in the first rank.” Dante did place him in the first rank, even above Guido Guinicelli then considered the greatest of Italian poets, when he wrote— “Thus hath one Guido from the other snatch’d The letter’d prize....” He dedicated the _Vita Nuova_ to Guido Cavalcanti, whom he calls “primo de’ miei amici,” and they wrote many sonnets to each other; but Guido’s _Ballate_ are by far the most natural and charming of his productions; “Here,” says Symonds, “we find the first full blossom of genuine Italian verse. Their beauty is that of popular song, starting flower-like from the soil and fragrant in its first expansion beneath the sun of courtesy and culture.” His poem, _Donna mi prega perch’ io voglia dire_, has had volumes of commentaries written on its beauties, and is one of the poems cited by Petrarch as among the finest in the Italian language. Soon after Guido’s death new dissensions broke out between the rival factions: Masino Cavalcanti was beheaded by the advice of Pazzino de’ Pazzi, the palaces of the Cavalcanti in Florence were burnt and they fled to their castles, from whence they harried the territory of the Republic. The Florentines marched out to attack the strong castle of Le Stinche which after a desperate struggle fell into their hands, and the defenders were immured in a new prison the Signoria had just built on the site of some houses belonging to the Uberti in the parish of San Simone. From these first inmates the prison came to be called Le Stinche—dreaded name in the later annals of the city. Montecalvo was also taken, and the Cavalcanti were only permitted to return to Florence three years later, to be again driven out in 1311 when Paffiero Cavalcanti murdered Pazzino de’ Pazzi to revenge the decapitation of his brother Masino. Several of the family then emigrated to Naples, where their descendants filled some of the highest posts in the kingdom.