• How far these self-accusations of Dante were justified by facts, and how far they may be regarded as expressions of a sensitive and excited conscience, we have no means of determining. It is doubtless but simple justice to apply to him the words which he applies to Virgil, Canto III 8:⁠— “O noble conscience, and without a stain, How sharp a sting is trivial fault to thee!” This should be borne in mind when we read what Dante says of his own shortcomings; as, for instance, in his conversation with his brother-in-law Forese, Canto XXIII 115:⁠— “If thou bring back to mind What thou with me hast been and I with thee, The present memory will be grievous still.” But what shall we say of this sonnet addressed to Dante by his intimate friend, Guido Cavalcanti? Rossetti, Early Italian Poets , p. 358:⁠— “I come to thee by daytime constantly, But in thy thoughts too much of baseness find: Greatly it grieves me for thy gentle mind, And for thy many virtues gone from thee. It was thy wont to shun much company, Unto all sorry concourse ill inclined: And still thy speech of me, heartfelt and kind, Had made me treasure up thy poetry. But now I dare not, for thine abject life, Make manifest that I approve thy rhymes; Nor come I in such sort that thou may’st know. Ah! prithee read this sonnet many times: So shall that evil one who bred this strife Be thrust from thy dishonored soul, and go.” ↩