Great, Lord of Verona, from whose court he retired, in 1320 to that of Guido Novello da Polenta, at Ravenna. In the following year he undertook a mission to Venice, and there contracted a fever, which, aggravated it is said by the inhospitality of the Venetians in compelling him to return by land, carried him off on September 14, 1321, shortly after he had completed his great epic. His funeral obsequies were celebrated with magnificence; but political troubles delayed for a hundred and sixty years the erection of the monument ultimately raised by the piety of Cardinal Bembo's father, then governing Ravenna for the Venetians, and inscribed with six rhyming Latin verses attributed without adequate evidence to Dante's own pen, but sufficiently ancient to have been expanded by Boccaccio into a noble sonnet:
"Dante am I, of deepest lore in song
Hierophant, elected to combine
Inheritance in Art with Natures sign,
Accounted miracle all men among.
Wings of Imagination sure and strong
Bore me through worlds infernal and divine,
And gave to verse immortal to consign
What doth to Earth or doth to Heaven belong.
Bright Florence brought me forth, but her fond son
To bitter exile drove, step-mother made
By guile of tongues malevolent and base.
Ravenna sheltered me; in her is laid
My dust; my spirit thitherward has gone
Where Wisdom reigns, and Envy hath not placed."
It is usual to commence a review of an author's productions by his most important work; but the Divina Commedia requires a chapter to itself, and precedence must consequently be given to Dante's minor writings. Of these the Vita Nuova stands first both in time and
