In Lib.
II. Cap. II., is a remarkable passage in which, defining the various
subjects of song and what had been treated in the vulgar tongue by
different poets, he says that his own theme had been righteousness.
The _Convito_ is also imperfect. It was to have consisted of fourteen
treatises, but, as we have it, contains only four. In the first he
justifies the use of the vulgar idiom in preference to the Latin. In the
other three he comments on three of his own _Canzoni_. It will be
impossible to give an adequate analysis of this work in the limits
allowed us.[62] It is an epitome of the learning of that age,
philosophical, theological, and scientific. As affording illustration of
the _Commedia_, and of Dante's style of thought, it is invaluable. It is
reckoned by his countrymen the first piece of Italian prose, and there
are parts of it which still stand unmatched for eloquence and pathos. The
Italians (even such a man as Cantu among the rest) find in it and a few
passages of the _Commedia_ the proof that Dante, as a natural philosopher
was wholly in advance of his age,--that he had, among other things,
anticipated Newton in the theory of gravitation. But this is as idle as
the claim that Shakespeare had discovered the circulation of the blood
before Harvey,[63] and one might as well attempt to dethrone Newton
because Chaucer speaks of the love which draws the apple to the earth.
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