an age of faith, there were many Florentines who, in spite of their outward conformity, had drifted as far from spiritual allegiance to the Church as the furthest point reached by any of their descendants who some two ages later belonged to the school of Florentine Platonists. Chief among these free-thinkers, and, sooth to say, free-livers--though in this respect they were less distinguished from the orthodox--was Brunetto Latini, for some time Secretary to the Republic, and the foremost Italian man of letters of his day. Meagre though his greatest work, the _Tesoro_, or _Treasure_, must seem to any one who now glances over its pages, to his contemporaries it answered the promise of its title and stood for a magazine of almost complete information in the domains of natural history, ethics, and politics. It was written in French, as being a more agreeable language than Italian; and was composed, there is reason to believe, while Latini lived in Paris as an exiled Guelf after Montaperti. His _Tesoretto_, or _Little Treasure_, a poem in jingling eight-syllabled Italian verse, has been thought by some to have supplied hints to Dante for the _Comedy_.[35] By neither of these works is he evinced a man of strong intellect, or even of good taste. Yet there is the testimony of Villani that he did much to refine the language of his contemporaries, and to apply fixed principles to the conduct of State affairs.[36] Dante meets him in Inferno, and hails him as his intellectual father--as the master who taught him from day to day how fame is to be won.[37] But it is too much to infer from these words that Latini served as his teacher, in the common sense of the word. It is true they imply an intimacy between the veteran scholar and his young townsman; but the closeness of their intercourse is perhaps best accounted for by supposing that Latini had been acquainted with Dante's father, and by the great promise of Dante's boyhood was led to take a warm interest in his intellectual development. Their intimacy, to judge from the tone of their conversation down in Inferno, had lasted till Latini's death. But no tender reminiscence of the days they spent together avails to save him from condemnation at the hands of his severe disciple. By the manners of Brunetto, and the Epicurean heresies of others of his friends, Dante, we may be sure, was never infected or defiled. Dante describes himself as having begun the serious study of philosophy and theology only at the mature age of twenty-seven. But ere that time he had studied to good effect, and not books alone, but the world around him too, and the world within. The poet was formed before the theologian and philosopher. From his earliest years he was used to write in verse; and he seems to have esteemed as one of his best endowments the easy command of his mother tongue acquired by him while still in boyhood.