The only other Dante reference of any importance is in _One Word More_. In this poem, Browning’s most beautiful tribute to his wife, he represents every artist as wishing once, in his life, to honor his Margarita or his Beatrice. Dante, he says in speaking of that poet, once prepared to paint an angel, laying aside his own art of poetry. A historical basis for this statement is found in the _Vita Nuova_. But Browning, either intentionally or unintentionally, probably the former, for the purpose of making this basis accord with his poetical conception, departs from the facts in two important particulars. Dante plainly states that his attempt at the drawing grew out of his meditations on the anniversary of the death of Beatrice; and the people who broke in upon him were those of his own town, to whom he apologized for his delayed salutation, by “Another was with me.” Browning assumes that the picture was drawn to please Beatrice and that the people who interrupted symbolized Dante’s own thoughts about the characters of his _Inferno_. VII. OTHER REAL WRITERS.--Aretino and Boccaccio are both presented throughout _The Ring and the Book_ as examples of questionable morality in literature, or at least of tendencies in that direction. In Part III, the gossipers speak of the case of Guido and his wife as “this last best of the Hundred Merry Tales.” In Part V, Guido, in his complaint against the parents of Pompilia, appeals to Boccaccio’s “Book” and “Ser Franco’s [Sacchetti’s] Merry Tales,” as proofs of the greed and wrong-doing of the parents in contrast to his own innocence. Caponsacchi, in Part VI, refers to the forged letters claimed to have been passed between himself and Pompilia, as worthy of the profligate Aretine. In Part X, the Pope makes the same comparison, declaring that the letters are “False to body and soul they figure forth--As though the man had cut out shape and shape From fancies of that other Aretine.” In Part XI, Guido attempts to prove that the Pope, in former times, was very human, since he used to “chirrup o’er the Merry Tales.” Later in the same section, he asserts his right to enjoy “When Master Pietro [Aretino] rhymes a pleasantry.”