and justify, the use of "the vulgar tongue" in literary works; the other, to set forth and support the doctrine of that universal monarchy which was the ideal of the Ghibelline party. The 'Convito' seems to have had a less special origin. It would seem, according to the conclusion of most commentators, to have been written at Bologna during the pause in Dante's life which succeeded his first passionate resistance to the sentence which condemned him to exile. In the sting of that condemnation he rushed into conspiracy and party strife, trying, it scarcely mattered by what means, by violence or persuasion, to get himself back into his city. After a year or two, however, of this bootless struggling, Dante seems to have grown disgusted, as it was natural such a mind as his should, with the conspiracies and complots, and to have retired from the plotters into the studious quiet of Bologna, where he lived peaceably and in a softened disposition of mind, as long as he was permitted to remain in this neighbour town, which, for its part, though in a somewhat modified way, was also subject to the faction fights and revolutions which did so much harm to Florence. This was before the 'Divine Comedy' had been effectively begun; and if we may believe that Dante had already tried the beginning of his great poem in Latin verse, and had flung it aside as unsuccessful, it will throw some light upon the state of mind in which—poor, banished, and alone—he looked around him, wistfully regarding the dim mental horizon for some touch of hope, with his genius restless within him, and longing for utterance, of which as yet it had not found the most excellent way. In the 'Convito,' which he began in this mood, he took up the old plan of
