“Ladies that have intelligence in love, Of mine own lady I would speak with you; Not that I hope to count her praises through, But, telling what I may, to ease my mind.”

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Jacopo da Lentino, or “the Notary,” was a Sicilian poet who flourished about 1250, in the later days of the Emperor Frederick the Second. Crescimbeni, L’Istoria Della Volgar Poesia , III 43, says that Dante “esteemed him so highly, that he even mentions him in his Comedy, doing him the favor to put him into Purgatory.” Tassoni, and others after him, make the careless statement that he addressed a sonnet to Petrarca. He died before Petrarca was born. Rossetti gives several specimens of his sonnets and canzonette in his Early Italian Poets , of which the following is one:⁠—