The passages we have touched upon in the _Divina Commedia_ are those most obviously to the point. Prof. Sannia’s Italian mind can discern subtleties of humour in places where the foreigner cannot always hope to follow. But there is one point on which he lays much stress, namely the importance, for our purpose, of observing Dante’s attitude towards himself throughout the mystical journey, and especially as he passes through the dismal regions of the First Kingdom. The Dante so graphically depicted to us in the _Divine Comedy_ is altogether different from the cold, abstract Dante of tradition. He is an impatiently curious child, in whom the passion of curiosity even conquers fear. And while the pilgrim is depicted to us in very human guise, and his motions and his attributes described in terms which presuppose not only a remarkable degree of self-knowledge, and a striking power of psychological analysis, but also a very real sense of humour; the poet who sings of the pilgrim, reveals to us by the way, a whole group of characteristics which claim the humorous gift as their inevitable associate. Such are his broad humanity, his sympathy, his reverence even for the noble damned, his very modern type of tenderness shown by interest in the ways of children, animals, birds, insects, from whose life he loves to draw his similes. “True humour,” says Carlyle, “is sensibility in the most catholic and deepest sense.” Virgil—the Virgil of history—had this in a pre-eminent degree—and so has his mystic companion of the Eternal World.[141] Popular tradition has imagined him as a heartless, unfeeling judge, without that indulgence towards human frailty which the gift of humour presupposes: but the entire _Purgatorio_ belies this calumny, and not a few episodes in the _Inferno_ itself. To pass from the _Divina Commedia_ to the _Convivio_ is in any case a drop down. If it is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, the sublimity of the _Divina Commedia_ should bring us very close to the regions where laughter is generated. The _Convivio_, with all its manifold interest is obviously far below the level on which thought and feeling habitually move in the _Divine Comedy_. Has it therefore less promise in the matter of our quest? I venture to think that there is a strain of playfulness underlying a good deal of the argument of this work; and that even if we can bring ourselves to believe Dante’s own solemnly elaborate interpretation of his love-songs to be quite serious in the main.