[327] [In his _Convito_, Dante speaks of his banishment, and the poverty and distress which attended it, in very affecting terms. "Ah! would it had pleased the Dispenser of all things that this excuse had never been needed; that neither others had done me wrong, nor myself undergone penalty undeservedly,--the penalty, I say, of exile and of poverty. For it pleased the citizens of the fairest and most renowned daughter of Rome--Florence--to cast me out of her most sweet bosom, where I was born and bred, and passed half of the life of man, and in which, with her good leave, I still desire with all my heart to repose my weary spirit, and finish the days allotted me; and so I have wandered in almost every place to which our language extends, a stranger, almost a beggar, exposing against my will the wounds given me by fortune, too often unjustly imputed to the sufferer's fault. Truly I have been a vessel without sail and without rudder, driven about upon different ports and shores by the dry wind that springs out of dolorous poverty; and hence have I appeared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps, by some better report, had conceived of me a different impression, and in whose sight not only has my person become thus debased, but an unworthy opinion created of everything which I did, or which I had to do."--_Il Convito_, book i. chap. iii., translated by Leigh Hunt, _Stories from the Italian Poets_, 1846, i. 22, 23.] [328] {275} What is Horizon's quantity? Horīzon, or Horĭzon? adopt accordingly.--[B.] [cn]--_and the Horizon for bars_.--[MS. Alternative reading.] [329] [Compare-- "Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar." _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lvii., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 371, note 1. "Between the second and third chapels [in the nave of Santa Croce at Florence] is the colossal monument to Dante, by Ricci ... raised by subscription in 1829. The inscription, '_A majoribus ter frustra decretum_,' refers to the successive efforts of the Florentines to recover his remains, and raise a monument to their great countryman."--_Handbook, Central Italy_, p. 32.] [330] "E scrisse più volte non solamente a' particolari Cittadini del Reggimento, ma ancora al Popolo; e intra l' altre un' Epistola assai lunga che incomincia: '_Popule mee_ (sic), _quid feci tibi?_"--_Le vite di Dante, etc._, _scritte da Lionardo Aretino_, 1672, p. 47. [331] {276}[About the year 1316 his friends obtained his restoration to his country and his possessions, on condition that he should pay a certain sum of money, and, entering a church, avow himself guilty, and ask pardon of the republic.