Yet he was familiar
with French and Provencal poetry. Beside the evidence of the _Vulgari
Eloquio_, there are frequent and broad traces in the Commedia of the
_Roman de la Rose_, slighter ones of the _Chevalier de la Charette,
Guillaume d'Orange,_ and a direct imitation of Bernard de Ventadour.
[167] Convito, Tr. I. c. 12.
[168] Purgatorio, XXII. 115, 116.
[169] That Dante loved fame we need not be told. He several times
confesses it, especially in the De Vulgari Eloquio, I. 17. "How
glorious she [the Vulgar Tongue] makes her intimates [_familiares_,
those of her household], we ourselves have known, who in the
sweetness of this glory put our exile behind our backs."
[170] Dante several times uses the sitting a horse as an image of
rule. See especially Purgatorio, VI. 99, and Convito, Tr. IV. c. 11.
[171] "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge
of God!" Dante quotes this in speaking of the influence of the stars,
which, interpreting it presently "by the theological way," he
compares to that of the Holy Spirit "And thy counsel who hath known,
except thou give wisdom and send thy Holy Spirit from above?" (Wisdom
of Solomon, ix. 17.) The last words of the Convito are, "her
[Philosophy] whose proper dwelling is in the depths of the Divine
mind".
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