Leonardo Bruni (1369–1414) is avowedly designed as a supplement to Boccaccio, who in Brum's opinion had neglected weighty matters for love stories and such-like frivolities. He therefore, while omitting all mention of Beatrice and the Vita Nuova, gives a much fuller account than Boccaccio of Dante's share in the affairs of Florence, and even cites an autograph letter of his, now lost like all others. He is entitled to much respect as a sensible and impartial writer, who took pains to obtain information; while the later mediæval biographers, Manetti and Filelfo, have some literary merit, but no historical value. Of the other three it may be said that a statement in which any two of them agree may usually be received, and that the assertion of any one is entitled to a fair amount of credit when it is not contradicted by another's. The absolute trust-worthiness of the chronicle long attributed to Dinoi Campagni must now be given up; it is, nevertheless, most probably of sufficient antiquity to have preserved some authentic notices.
No biographer of Dante, however, could possibly have compared with Dante himself, and it is much to be lamented that the entire disappearance of what must have been for his time an extensive body of correspondence has deprived us of all autobiographic record except the Vita Nuova, which, almost devoid of incident, paints the inner man with lively force. Except Shelley's Epipsychidon the world has nothing to set beside this dithyrambic of purely Platonic passion. We must recur to it, and need only here fix the death of Beatrice, one of the great landmarks of Dante's life, at June 9, 1290. Somewhat more than a year afterwards we find Dante moved, as a noble soul might well be, not by the attrac-
