after the Dies Iræ was written (1268), he loſt his wife, and, broken-hearted, renounced the world to join, like Thomas of Celano, the Order of St. Francis. In the ardor of his devotion, he tried to atone by ſelf-ſought tortures not only for his own ſins, but, like our Saviour, for the ſins of others. At laft his ſorrows ſank into infancy and ended in death.
Dying about the time that Petrarch was born, and while Dante was ſtill a young man, his Cantate Spirituali mark the dawning day of the Italian language. In an old Venetian copy of theſe, the hiſtorian of the Franciſcans (Wadding) found a number of Latin poems, amongſt which was the Stabat Mater, and thus eſtabliſhed for the Order of St. Francis the honor of producing, within the ſame century, the two moſt celebrated of Latin hymns.
When the firſt edition of this book was publiſhed, there was a weakneſs in the Engliſh expoſition of the STABAT MATER which no ſearch after fitting tranſlations could cure, and the reader was warned that few Engliſh verſions had been made, and not one that ſtrictly pre-
