Dante had not, however, this forbidding appearance when he won the young heart of Beatrice Portinari. They first met at a banquet given by her father, Folco de' Portinari, when Dante was only nine years old, and Beatrice a year younger. His childish attachment, as he tells us himself, commenced from that hour; it became a passion, which increased with his years, and did not perish even with its object. Beatrice has not fared better at the hands of commentators than Laura. Laura, with her golden hair scattered to the winds, "i capei d'oro al aura sporsi," her soft smiles, and her angel-like deportment, was to be Repentance; and the more majestic Beatrice, in whose eyes dwelt love, E spiriti d'amore infiammati, was sublimated into _Theology_: with how much reason we shall examine. In one of his canzoni, called il Ritratto, (the Portrait) Dante has left us a most minute and finished picture of his Beatrice, "which," says Mr. Carey, "might well supply a painter with a far more exalted idea of female beauty, than he could form to himself from the celebrated Ode of Anacreon, on a similar subject." From this canzone and some lines scattered through his sonnets, I shall sketch the person and character of Beatrice. She was not in form like the slender, fragile-looking Laura, but on a larger scale of loveliness, tall and of a commanding figure;[38]--graceful in her gait as a peacock, upright as a crane, Soava a guisa va di un bel pavone, Diritta sopra se, come una grua. Her hair was fair and curling, "Capegli crespi e biondi," but not _golden_,--an epithet I do not find once applied to it: she had an ample forehead, "spaciosa fronte," a mouth that when it smiled surpassed all things in sweetness; so that her Poet would give the universe to hear it pronounce a kind "yes." Mira che quando ride Passa ben di dolcezza ogni altra cosa. Così di quella bocca il pensier mio Mi sprona, perchè io Non ho nel mondo cosa che non desse A tal ch'un si, con buon voler dicesse. Her neck was white and slender, springing gracefully from the bust-- Poi guarda la sua svelta e bianca gola Commessa ben dalle spalle e dal petto. A small, round, dimpled chin, Mento tondo, fesso e piccioletto: and thereupon the Poet breaks out into a rapture, any thing but theological, Il bel diletto Aver quel collo fra le braccia stretto E far in quella gola un picciol segno! Her arms were beautiful and round; her hand soft, white, and polished; La bianca mano morbida e pulita: her fingers slender, and decorated with jewelled rings as became her birth; fair she was as a pearl; Con un color angelica di perla: graceful and lovely to look upon, but disdainful where it was becoming: Graziosa a vederla, E disdegnosa dove si conviene.