[68] Rivavol characterized only a single quality of Dante's style,
who knew how to spend as well as spare. Even the Inferno, on which he
based his remark, might have put him on his guard. Dante understood
very well the use of ornament in its fitting place. _Est enim
exornatio alicujus convenientis additio_, he tells us in his De
Vulgari Eloquio (Lib. II. C. II.). His simile of the doves (Inferno,
V. 82 et seq.), perhaps the most exquisite in all poetry, quite
oversteps Rivarol's narrow limit of "substantive and verb."
[69] Discorso sul testo, ec., sec. XVIII.
[70] Convito, B. IV. C. XXII.
[71] It is remarkable that when Dante, in 1297, as a preliminary
condition to active politics, enrolled himself in the guild of
physicians and apothecaries, he is qualified only with the title
_poeta_. The arms of the Alighieri (curiously suitable to him who
_sovra gli altri come aquila vola_) were a wing of gold in a field of
azure. His vivid sense of beauty even hovers sometimes like a
_corposant_ over the somewhat stiff lines of his Latin prose. For
example, in his letter to the kings and princes of Italy on the
coming of Henry VII: "A new day brightens, revealing the dawn which
already scatters the shades of long calamity; already the breezes of
morning gather; _the lips of heaven are reddening!"_
[72] Purgatorio, XXXII.
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