It will be noted that Dante has nothing to say of the personal appearance of his beloved. This is true, however, of the whole series of poems to and about her. He never seems to have thought for a moment of her physical qualities. What he finds worthy to praise is her goodness which shines out from her features so that everyone rejoices in it, while a sweetness fills the heart as if a heavenly visitor had come. For him her supreme quality is that, with all her beauty, envy finds no place in others' hearts because she is so clothed around with love and faith and courteous gentleness. It has often been said that Shakespeare did not describe the physical appearances of his heroines because he realized that this meant very little, but then Shakespeare had to write for the stage and realized that blondes and brunettes, especially in the olden time, could not be made to order and that it was better to leave the heroine's physical appearance rather vague. It would be expected, however, that Dante, with his Southern temperament, would have dwelt on the physical perfections of his fair. The next {303} sonnet, however, of the best known group emphasizes his abstraction of all physical influence in the matter and insists on her goodness and the womanly beauty of her character. It will be found in our chapter on Women of the Century. In his earlier years Dante considered himself one of the Troubadours, and there can be no doubt that if he had never written the Divine Comedy, he still would have been remembered as one of the great poets who wrote of love in this Thirteenth Century. Not only does he deserve a place among the greatest of the Minnesingers, the Trouvères, and the Troubadours, but he is perhaps the greatest of them. That he should have sung as he did at the end of the century only shows that he was in the stream of literary evolution and not being merely carried idly along, but helping to guide it into ever fairer channels. Dante's minor poems would have made enduring fame for any poet of less genius than himself. His prose works deserve to be read by anyone who wishes to know the character of this greatest of poets, and also to appreciate what the educational environment of the Thirteenth Century succeeded in making out of good intellectual material when presented to it. Dante's works are the real treasury of information of the most precious kind with regard to the century, since they provide the proper standpoint from which to view all that it accomplished.