"We whose country is the world, as the ocean to the fish," he tells us,
"though we drank of the Arno in infancy, and love Florence so much that,
_because we loved her, we suffer exile unjustly,_ support the shoulders
of our judgment rather upon reason than the senses."[95] And again,
speaking of old ago, he says: "And the noble soul at this age blesses
also the times past, and well may bless them, because, revolving them in
memory, she recalls her righteous conduct, without which she could not
enter the port to which she draws nigh, with so much riches and so great
gain." This language is not that of a man who regrets some former action
as mistaken, still less of one who repented it for any disastrous
consequences to himself. So, in justifying a man for speaking of himself,
he alleges two examples,--that of Boethius, who did so to "clear himself
of the perpetual infamy of his exile"; and that of Augustine, "for, by
the process of his life, which was from bad to good, from good to better,
and from better to best, he gave us example and teaching."[96] After
middle life, at least, Dante had that wisdom "whose use brings with it
marvellous beauties, that is, contentment with every condition of time,
and contempt of those things which others make their masters."[97] If
Dante, moreover, wrote his treatise _De Monarchia_ before 1302, and we
think Witte's inference,[98] from its style and from the fact that he
nowhere alludes to his banishment in it, conclusive on this point, then
he was already a Ghibelline in the same larger and unpartisan sense which
ever after distinguished him from his Italian contemporaries.
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