Whereupon Ser Brunetto, plunged in meditation and sorrow, loses the high road and wanders in a wondrous forest. Here he discovers the august and gigantic figure of Nature, who relates to him the creation of the world, and gives him a banner to protect him on his pilgrimage through the forest, in which he meets with no adventures, but with the Virtues and Vices, Philosophy, Fortune, Ovid, and the God of Love, and sundry other characters, which are sung at large through eight or ten chapters. He then emerges from the forest, and confesses himself to the monks of Montpellier; after which he goes back into the forest again, and suddenly finds himself on the summit of Olympus; and the poem abruptly leaves him discoursing about the elements with Ptolemy, “Mastro di storlomia E di filosofia.” It has been supposed by some commentators that Dante was indebted to the Tesoretto for the first idea of the Commedia . “If any one is pleased to imagine this,” says the Abbate Zannoni in the Preface to his edition of the Tesoretto , (Florence, 1824,) “he must confess that a slight and almost invisible spark served to kindle a vast conflagration.” The Tesoro , which is written in French, is a much more ponderous and pretentious volume.