IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT

the 'Italia Irredenta' party are chiefly carried on against Austria, in consequence of the retention by that Empire of Trieste and the Southern Tyrol. Until these territories have been relinquished, Italy, or at least a certain part of it, will remain unsatisfied."-J. S. Jeans, Italy (National life and thought, ch. 8).-The Irredentist movement became intensified in 1914, owing to the outbreak of the World War, and as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, Italy has acquired the former Austrian provinces of the Trentino, Gorizia, and Istria. See ITALY: 1870-1901; 1914: Position of Italy.

IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT, expression used by William H. Seward in a speech at Rochester in 1858. This speech "was a philippic against the Democratic party and its devotion to slavery. ... He exposed the injustice of the slave system, and contrasted the good of freedom with the evil of slavery. 'It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation.' Few speeches from the stump have attracted so great attention or exerted so great an influence."-J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, v. 2, p. 344. IRRESISTIBLE, British warship sunk by a mine in the Dardanelles offensive. See WORLD WAR: 1915: VI. Turkey: a, 2.

IRRIGATION. Domestic animals.

See AGRICULTURE: Ancient:

Egypt. See CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: Egypt; EGYPT: Position and nature of the country.

India. See CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: India: 1876-1913.

OF NATURAL RE

OF NATURAL RE

Italy. See CONSERVATION SOURCES: Italy: B.C. 800-A.D. 1915. See CONSERVATION Japan. SOURCES: Japan: Ancient; JAPAN: Agriculture. South Australia. See SoUTH AUSTRALIA: 1916. Spain. See CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: Spain.

United States. See CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: United States: 1847-1901; 1918; CALIFORNIA: 1900; WYOMING: 1900-1905.

IRVING, Sir Henry (1838-1905), English actor. First stage appearance at Sunderland, 1856; began his famous connection with the Lyceum theater in 1871, winning success in "The Bells," "Eugene Aram," "Richelieu," and "Hamlet"; assumed control of Lyceum theater in 1878, and with Miss Ellen Terry, entered upon that long and brilliant partnership which made the Lyceum the most important theater in London; knighted in 1895, being the first actor to receive this recognition; buried in Westminster Abbey.

IRVING, Washington (1783-1859), American author. His first real achievement was the "Knickerbocker's" "History of New York," 1809; the "Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayton, Gent," appeared in 1819; his visit to Spain, 1826-1829, resulted in the production of four books, two of which, the "History of the Life and Times of Christopher Columbus," and "Alhambra," added considerably to his fame. His "Life of Oliver Goldsmith," 1849, and his "Life of Washington"

ISAURIANS

rank among his best works. See also AMERICAN LITERATURE: 1790-1860.

IRVINGITES, name frequently applied in England to members of the Catholic Apostolic Church. See CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

ISAAC I, Comnenus (d. 1061), Roman emperor (Eastern), 1057-1059. See BYZANTINE EMPIRE: 1057-1081.

Isaac II, Angelus (d. 1204), Roman emperor (Eastern), 1185-1195 and 1203-1204. See BYZANTINE EMPIRE: 1203-1204; BULGARIA: 12th century. ISABELLA (1518-1558), queen of Hungary, wife of John Zapolya. See HUNGARY: 1526-1567. ISABELLA I, the Catholic (1451-1504), queen of Castile. Married to Ferdinand of Aragon, 1469; succeeded to the throne of Castile and Leon, 1474; Ferdinand succeeded to the throne of Aragon, 1479; they united the provinces and wage successful war against the Moors of Granada, 1482-1492; gave aid to Columbus in his exploration enterprises, 1492; expelled the Jews from Spain, 1492. See SPAIN: 1368-1479; AMERICA: 1484-1492; 1493; 1493-1496; JEWS: Spain: 8th-15th centuries.

Isabella II (1830-1904), queen of Spain, 18331868. See SPAIN: 1833-1846; LATIN AMERICA: 1836-1895.

ISABELLA OF AUSTRIA (Clara Eugenia) (1566-1633), infanta of Spain. See NETHERLANDS: 1594-1609.

ISABELLA OF JERUSALEM (fl. c. 11891197), daughter of Amaury I, king of Jerusalem. See JERUSALEM: 1187-1229.

ISABELLA, city founded by Columbus on the island of Hispaniola, or Haiti. See AMERICA: 1493-1496.

ISACHSEN, G. Norwegian explorer in Spitsbergen. See SPITZBERGEN: 1906-1921.

ISAGORIA, ancient Greek expression for equal freedom of speech. See Isonomy.

ISAIAH (c. 760-700 B.C.), Hebrew prophet. See JEWS: Religion and the prophets.

ISANDLANA, Battle of (1879). See SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF: 1877-1879.

ISASZEG, Battle of (1849). See AUSTRIA: 1848-1849.

ISAURIAN DYNASTY. See BYZANTINE EMPIRE: 717-797; Part in history.

ISAURIANS.-The Isaurians were a fierce and savage race of mountaineers, who occupied anciently a district in Asia Minor, between Cilicia and Pamphylia on the south and Phrygia on the north. They were persistently a nation of robbers, living upon the spoils taken from their neighbors, who were never able to punish them justly in their mountain fastnesses. Even the iron hand of the Romans failed to reduce the Isaurians to order, although P. Servilius, in 78 B.C., destroyed most of their strongholds, and Pompey, eleven years later, in his great campaign against the pirates, put an end to the lawless depredations on sea and land of the Cilicians, who had become confederated with the Isaurians. Five centuries afterwards, in the days of the Eastern Empire, the Isaurians were the best soldiers of its army, and even gave an emperor to the throne at Constantinople in the person of Zeno or Zenon [474-495].-E. W. Brooks, Emperor Zenon and the Isaurians (English Historical Review, Apr., 1893).-Leo III was the second Isaurian occupant of the Byzantine throne, 417-741; and became the founder of a dynasty of three generations.

ALSO IN: J. B. Bury, History of the later Roman empire.-C. Oman, Dark Ages.-W. M. Ramsay, Historical geography of Asia Minor.

ISCA. The name of two towns in Roman Britain, one of which is identified with modern Exeter and the other with Caerleon-on-Usk. The latter was the station of the 2d legion.-T. Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. 8, ch. 5.-See also ExETER; CAERLEON.

ISEGHEM, town in the province of West Flanders, Belgium, taken by the Allies during the WORLD WAR. See WORLD WAR: 1918: II. Western front: r, 2.

ISELBERG, Battle of (1809). See GERMANY: 1809-1810 (April-February).

ISENOKAMI, Abe, Japanese prime minister. See JAPAN: 1797-1854.

ISFAHAN, former capital of Persia and still one of its chief cities. It is very ancient, and was once the scene of great magnificence. The population in 1922 was estimated at 80,000. 14th century.-Massacre by Timur. See TI

MUR.

1907-1908.-Riots. See PERSIA: 1907-1908. 1915. Revolt against Russia. See WORLD WAR: 1915: VII. Persia and Germany.

ISHII, Kikujiro, Viscount (1866- ), Japanese statesman. Headed special mission to the United States in 1917, when the Ishii-Lansing agreement was drawn up and signed. See U. S. A.: 1907-1917; MONROE DOCTRINE: Application by Japan to Asia.

ISHMAELIANS. See ISMAILEANS.

ISHTAR, Assyrian god. See MYTHOLOGY: Babylonian and Assyrian.

ISIDOR MERCATOR, name appropriated by the unknown author of the False Decretals. See ECCLESIASTICAL LAW: 400-1000; PAPACY: 829-847. ISIDORE OF SEVILLE, or Isidorus Hispalensis (c. 560-636), Spanish encyclopedist and historian. See HISTORY: 19.

ISINE. See CAUSANNEÆ.

ISIS, most famous goddess of the Egyptians. She was the sister-wife of Osiris and the mother of Horus. Her cult spread into the western world during the early years of the Roman empire, and maintained itself in Italy into the fifth century.

ISLAM. See MOHAMMEDANISM: Africa: Modern European occupation: 1914-1920: Moslem occupation; ARABIA: Ancient succession and fusion of races; PAN-ISLAMISM; RELIGION: 622; WAH

HABIS.

ISLAM, DAR-UL, and DAR-UL-HARB.

See DAR-UL-ISLAM.

ISLAND NUMBER TEN, in the Mississippi river below Columbus, Kentucky, captured by the Union forces during the Civil War. See U. S. A.: 1862 (March-April: On the Mississippi).

ISLE OF BOURBON, name of island in Mascarene group. See MAURITIUS.

ISLE OF FRANCE, old French province con'taining Paris. Also the French name of Mauritius island, taken by England in 1810. See MAURITIUS. ISLE OF MAN, island in the Irish sea. MANX KINGDOM; SUFFRAGE, WOMAN: England: 1860-1905.

See

ISLE OF PINES, forty miles southeast of the southernmost part of Cuba.

1903. Ceded to Cuba. See CUBA: 1903. 1907.-Controversy between Cuba and United States. Decision of United States Supreme Court. See CUBA: 1907 (April).

ISLE ROYALE, name for Cape Breton island. See CAPE BRETON ISLAND: 1720-1745. ISLES, Lords of the. See HEBRIDES: 1346

15C4; HARLAW, BATTLE OF.

ISLES OF THE BLESSED, name for Canary islands. See CANARY ISLANDS.

ISLY, Battle of (1843). See BARBARY STATES: 1830-1846; FRANCE: 1842-1848.

İSMAIL I (1479-1523), shah of Persia, 15021523. See PERSIA: 1499-1887; BAGDAD: 1393-1638. Ismail II, shah of Persia, 1576-1577

ISMAIL, capital of the province of the same name in Bessarabia. It was captured by the Russians in 1790. See TURKEY: 1776-1792.

ISMAIL PASHA (1830-1895), khedive and viceroy of Egypt, 1863-1879. See EGYPT: 18401869, to 1882-1883.

ISMAILIA, town on the Suez canal in lower Egypt.

1882. Struggle of British and Egyptians. See EGYPT: 1882-1883.

1915.-Region of Turkish attack. See WORLD WAR: 1915: VI. Turkey: b, 1.

ISMAILIANS, or Ishmaelians, Mohammedan sect. See ASSASSINS; BAGDAD: 1258; CALIPHATE: 908-1171; CARMATHIANS.

ISMID, town in Asia Minor at the head of the Gulf of Ismid, and across the straits from Constantinople. See TURKEY: Land.

ISOCRATES, Corinthian admiral. See GREECE: B.C. 429-427: Peloponnesian War: Phormio's sea fights.

ISONOMY, ISOTIMY, ISAGORIA.-"The principle underlying democracy is the struggle for a legalised equality which was usually described [by the ancient Greeks] by the expressions Isonomy, or equality of law for all,-Isotimy, or proportionate regard paid to all,-Isagoria, or equal freedom of speech, with special reference to courts of justice and popular assemblies."-G. F. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece: The state, pt. 2, ch, 12.

ISONZO, river about ten miles east of the 1914 boundary of Italy. During the World War it was the scene of severe fighting between Italians and Austrians; the adjacent territory was ceded to Italy in 1919. See WORLD WAR: 1915: IV. Italy: a; d; 1916: IV. Austro-Italian front: b, 1; c; 1917: IV. Austro-Italian front: a; d.

Battle of (489). See ROME: Medieval city: 488-526.

ISOPOLITY.-"Under Sp. Cassius [493 B.C.], Rome concluded a treaty with the Latins, in which the right of isopolity or the 'jus municipi' was conceded to them. The idea of isopolity changed in the course of time, but its essential features in early times were these. between the Romans and Latins and between the Romans and Caerites there existed this arrangement, that any citizen of the one state who wished to settle in the other, might forthwith be able to exercise there the rights of a citizen."-B. G. Niebuhr, Lectures on the history of Rome, v. 1, lect. 13.

ISOTIMY, Greek expression for proportionate regard before the law. See ISONOMY.

ISRAEL, Kingdom of. See JEWS: Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

ISRAEL, Lost ten tribes of. See JEWS: Conquest of Canaan; Kingdoms of Israel, etc. ISRAELITES. See JEWS.

ISRAELS, Josef (1824-1911), Dutch painter. See Painting: Europe (19th century).

ISSUS, Battle of (333 B.C.). See CYPRUS: Early history; MACEDONIA: B.C. 334-330; B.C. 330-323.

ISTÆVONES, ancient Germanic tribe. See GERMANY: As known to Tacitus.

ISTAKR, OR STAKR, native name, under the later, or Sassanian, Persian empire, of the ancient capital, Persepolis.-G. Rawlinson, Seventh great oriental monarchy, ch. 3, foot-note. ISTAMBOUL. See STAMBOUL.

ISTER

ISTER, or Istros, ancient Greek name of the Danube, below the junction of the Theiss and the Save. See DANUBE: B.C. 5th-A.D. 15th century; MOESIA.

ISTHMIAN CANAL. See PANAMA CANAL. Commission. See PANAMA CANAL: 1904-1905. ISTHMIAN GAMES. See NEMEAN AND ISTHMIAN GAMES.

ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. See PANAMA. ISTRIA, Count Capo D'. See CAPO D'ISTRIA. ISTRIA, Italian province situated on the northeastern shore of the Adriatic sea.

Slavonic occupation. See SLAVS: 6th-7th centuries.

803.-Embraced in Eastern empire by Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. See VENICE: 697-810. 944.-Destruction of Istrian pirates. See VENICE: 810-961.

1797.-Acquisition by Austria from Napoleon. See FRANCE: 1796-1797 (October-April).

1805.-Ceded to Italy by Austria. See GERMANY: 1805-1806.

1915.-Promised to Italy by secret Treaty of London. See LONDON, TREATY OR PACT OF; ADRIATIC QUESTION: Treaty of London.

1916.-Ports bombed by Italian warships. See

ITALIAN LITERATURE

WORLD WAR: 1917: IX. Naval operations: b, 2. 1919.-Friction between Italy and JugoSlavia.-Yielded to Italy by St. Germain Treaty. See ADRIATIC QUESTION: Friction between Italy and Jugo-Slavia; ST. GERMAIN, TREATY OF (1919): Section I: Italy.

ISTRIANS. See ILLYRIA.

ISUMEB, Battle of (1915). See SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF: 1915.

ISURIUM, Roman town in Britain, which had previously been the chief town of the British tribe of the Brigantes. It is identified with Aldborough, Yorkshire, "where the excavator meets continually with the tesselated floors of the Roman houses."-T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, ch. 5.

ITAGAKI, Taisuke, Count (1837-1920), Japanese statesman. See JAPAN: 1868-1894; 1894-1912. ITALI. See ENOTRIANS.

ITALIA IRREDENTA. See IRREDENTISTS. ITALIAN ANNALS. See ANNALS: French, German, Italian, etc.

ITALIAN EAST AFRICA. See SOMALILAND; AFRICA: Modern European occupation: 1884-1899. ITALIAN LANGUAGE. See PHILOLOGY: 9; 11.

Transition from Latin to Italian.-"After the glory of Rome had gone down before the barbarian hordes that swept in like a sea from the north, Italy remained for some three hundred years in intellectual darkness. . . . Latinism was dead. The rare classic manuscripts, which remained hidden in the monasteries, were readable only by the very few. Italian speech, as we know it, did not yet exist, but in the various provinces a new tongue was coming into life. . . . The volgare was naturally scorned by the scholars. The rare new books that this age produced were written in a corruption of the splendid Latin of the past."M. L. E. Castle, Italian literature, p. 1.-"The position, . . . of the Italians at the close of the thirteenth century with regard to language, was this. They possessed the classic Latin authors in a bad state of preservation, and studied a few of them with some minuteness, basing their own learned style upon the imitation of Virgil and Ovid, Cicero, Boethius, and the rhetoricians of the lower empire. But at home, in their families, upon the market-place, and in the prosecution of business, they talked the local dialects, each of which was more or less remotely representative of the ancient vulgar Latin. However these dialects might differ, they formed in combination a new language, distinct from the parent stock of rustic Latin, and equally distinct from French and Spanish. . . . In these circumstances it was the problem of writers, at the close of the thirteenth century, to construct the ideal vulgar tongue, to discover its capacities for noble utterance, to refine it for artistic usage by the omission of cruder elements existing in each dialect, and to select from those store-houses of living speech the phrases which appeared well suited to graceful utterance. The desideratum, to use Dante's words, was 'that illustrious, cardinal, courtly, curial mother-tongue, proper to each Italian State, special to none, whereby the local idioms of every city are to be measured, weighed, and compared.' Dante saw that this selection of a literary language from the fresh shoots sent up by the antique vulgar Latin

stock could best be accomplished in a capital or Court, the meeting-place of learned people and polished intelligences. But such a metropolis of culture, corresponding to Elizabeth's London or the Paris of Louis XIV., was ever wanting in Italy.... The peculiar conditions of Italy, as he described them, were destined to subsist throughout the next two centuries and a half, when men of learning, taking Tuscan as their standard, sought by practice and example to form a national language. The self-consciousness of the Italians front to front with this problem, as revealed to us in the pages of the De Eloquio, and the decision with which the great authors of the fourteenth century fixed a certain type of diction, accurately spoken nowhere, though nearer to the Tuscan than to any other idiom, may be reckoned among the most interesting phenomena in the history of literautre. Tuscan predominated; but that the masterpieces of the trecento were not composed in any one of the unadulterated Tuscan dialects is clear, not merely from the contemporary testimony of Dante himself, but also from the obstinate discussions raised upon this subject by Bembo at a later period. A guiding and controlling principle of taste determined the instinctive method of selection whereby Tuscan was adapted to the common needs of Italy. . . . It is impossible to fix even an approximate date for the emergence of Italian prose. Law documents, deeds of settlement, contracts, and public acts, which can be referred with certainty to the first half of the thirteenth century, display a pressure of the vulgar speech upon the formal Latin of official verbiage. The effort to obtain precision, in designating some particular locality or some important person, forces the scribe back upon his common speech; and these evidences of difficulty in wielding the Latin which had now become a dying language, prove that, long before it was written, Italian was spoken. . . . From the dry records of incipient prose it is refreshing to turn to another species of popular poetry; for poetry in the period of origins is always more adult than

ITALIAN LITERATURE

prose. Numerous fragments of political songs have been disinterred from chronicles, which can be referred to the thirteenth century. . . . In quite a different region, but of no less importance for the future of Italian literature, must be reckoned the religious hymns, which, during the thirteenth century, began to be composed in the vernacular.... During the thirteenth century the dialects of each district had begun to seek literary expression. There are many indications that the products of one province speedily became the property of the rest. Spontaneous motives were mingled with French and Provençal recollections; and already we can trace the unconscious effort to form a common language in the process known as Toscaneggiamento, or the translation of local songs into Tuscan idiom. It would, therefore, be incorrect to imagine either that the Sicilian poets were blank imitators of Provençal models, or that the Italian language started into being at Palermo. What really happened was, that Frederick's Court became the centre of a widespread literary movement. . . . Nearly all the poetry of the Sicilian epoch has been transmitted to us in Florentine MSS., after undergoing Toscaneggiamento. We possess but a few stanzas in a pure condition. There is, therefore, reason to believe that when Dante treated of the courtly Sicilian poets in his essay De Vulgari Eloquio, he knew their writings in a form already Tuscanised. In commending the curial and illustrious vernacular, as something distinct from the dialects, he was in truth praising the dialect of his own province, refined by the practice of polite versifiers. At the date of the composition of that essay, the Suabian House had been extinguished; the literary society of the south was broken up; and to Florence had already fallen the heritage of art. What is even more remarkable, the Bolognese poets, who preceded Dante and his peers by one generation, had abandoned their own dialect in favour of the purified Tuscan. Consequently the new Italian literature was already Tuscan either by origin, or by adoption, or by a process of transformation, before the Florentines assumed the dictatorship of letters."-J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Italian literature, V. 1, pp. 31-35, 37, 40-43.

12th-14th centuries.-Sicilian poetry.-Umbrian school.-Tuscan prose. "The earliest known work in the volgare is a catilena written by Ciullo d'Alcamo, the son of one of the Italian immigrants. This poet took his name from his birthplace, an Arab fortress some miles from Palermo. The poem, which was probably composed between 1172 and 1178, is in the form of a dialogue between a lover and his lady. . . . The Court of Sicily reached its highest brilliance in the first half of the thirteenth century, during the reign of Frederick II., Emperor of Rome, King of Naples and Sicily, known to his contemporaries as Stupor Mundi. He not only encouraged writers of Italian love-songs, and gathered them about him, but he himself was a poet of no mean quality. His canzone 'Of his Lady in Bondage' has a beauty akin to that of the work of Ciullo d'Alcamo, but with a deeper note of tenderness. [See also ITALY: 1183-1250.]. . . Frederick's son, Enzo, King of Sardinia (1225-1272), was a poet of a lesser talent. The Emperor's Minister Pietro delle Vigne (circa 1190-1249) is a more important figure in literature, for to him belongs the honour of having been the first to compose an Italian sonnet. . . . The Sicilian dialect passed over to Italy. With the end of the twelfth century the centre of culture shifted, and we find the love-verses of the vulgar tongue flour

ITALIAN LITERATURE

ishing in the peninsula instead of in the island. Bologna was the home of many poets, but their writing has lost the early freshness that belonged to Ciullo d'Alcamo. . . . There is but one immortal of the Bolognese school, the tender singer Guido Guinicelli. . . . Guido was born in Bologna, in 1220, of a noble family, famous for its learning. There is very little known of his life. ... Upon the rise of Guelf power in the town he was exiled, and after two years' broken-hearted wandering he died. His famous canzone beginning Al Cor Gentil had the great honour of being imitated by Dante. . . . There was a school of Umbrian verse unnoticed by contemporaries. It was mainly religious, and rose from that spring of beautiful inspiration, the Franciscan Order. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) was himself the first singer of the cycle. His canticas have the lovely freshness which is characteristic of all that concerns him. . . . That masterpiece of prose-poetry, rightly named the Fioretti di San Francesco, has the same perfume of purity about it. The Flowers' were originally composed by a companion of St. Francis. . . . A prominent and pathetic figure of the Umbrian School is Fra Jacopone da Todi, who was born about the year 1230. . . . He composed several 'mystery plays' for public performances organized by the Franciscans. Devout men, both lay and clerical self-named the 'Jongleurs of God,' journeyed from place to place in those days, acting Scriptural scenes for the edification of the people. . . . The new tongue reached its perfection in Tuscany. To-day the Lingua Toscana is a byword for its purity; so was it long ago. Bonaggiunta of Lucca and Dante da Majano are among the singers of the generation immediately preceding that of the greater Dante. The only poet of importance among the precursors, Guido Cavalcanti, belongs by intellect to that cycle, though by date he was contemporaneous with the author of the 'Divine Comedy.' Guido Cavalcanti was born in Florence in 1250. He came of a rich and noble race, of Guelf traditions. . . . It was no wonder that Guido should have been Dante's first and dearest friend, in spite of the difference in age, for they were like in many ways. . . . Some of Cavalcanti's poems are laboured and involved, and seem empty of genuine inspiration; but the few that come from his heart have a very different quality. ... Brunetto Latini (circa 1210-1294) holds a curious place in Italian literature. He is chiefly known to the modern world by the fact that Dante was his scholar, but he has other claims to renown. Giovanni Villani says that Brunetto was 'the beginner and earliest master of the refining of the Florentines,' and this because he was the first to translate certain books of Cicero and other ancient authors into the new tongue. Of his original works, the Tesoretto, a tiresome allegorical poem with jingling rhyme, was the only one written in Italian. The book by which he himself set the greatest store, the Livre du Trésor, a prose encyclopædia of medieval knowledge, was written in French, because Brunetto, being in exile when he composed it, wished to gain a livelihood in France. It was very soon translated into the volgare by Bono Giamboni and became extremely popular. ... The Tuscans were the first to write prose in the vulgar tongue. The earliest example is to be found in the epistles of Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, of the secular Order of the Frati Gaudenti, who died in Florence about the year 1294. . . . In these times prose was scarcely used for anything except epistles and chronicles. The oldest chronicle that exists is that of the Neapolitan, Matteo Spinelli, who died in 1268, but it is not of any importance.

Riccardo Malaspini (d. 1281) wrote a Storia di Firenze. The beginning is a collection of many floating legends of the age, full of ludicrous anachronisms; but the account of contemporary happenings is clear and reliable. His nephew, Giachetto Malaspini, continued the history down to 1286. Then the mantle fell to Dino Compagni (1265-1323), the first great chronicler. Dino was a democratic Guelf, and his writings are strongly coloured with his views. . . . His Cronaca covers the time between 1280 and 1312. His book is severely historical, but has all the fascination of a romance."-M. L. E. Castle, Italian literature, PP. 2, 4-7, 9-10, 12-13, 16, 19-21, 23-25.

1283-1375.-Establishment of Italian as a literary language.-Leaders of the great Trecento. - Dante. Petrarch. Boccaccio. "When, in 1283, Dante Alighieri at the age of eighteen wrote his first sonnet, it was clear that the Tuscan vernacular was to become the literary language of Italy. His own successful use of it won for it ultimate preeminence over all claimants, even though in an unfinished Latin work De vulgari eloquentia) he urged the choice of the best elements of each dialect as the only way to form a sound and living Italian vernacular. The looselyknit prose of his Vita nuova (1292) has a peculiarly tender effectiveness; more Latin and more complex in its syntax is the prose of his Convivio (1308). . . . When after his death (1321) his poem, La Commedia, at which he had been working for many a. year, became known in its completeness in literary circles, all discussion ceased. Yet he himself and his contemporaries were under the impression that Latin was still a living language in Italy. . . . [Cavalcanti was] almost the centre of a Florentine group of poets of stil nuovo, as they called themselves, to which Dante belonged, together with Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, and others. Cino de' Sigisbuldi of Pistòia, the learned lawyer, was at one and the same time the friend of Dante, the last of the poets of stil nuovo, and the link between this group and Petrarch."-C. Foligna, Epochs of Italian literature, PP. 10-11. "Dante (Durante) Alighieri was born at Florence in 1265. . . . Our knowledge of Dante's outer life at this period of his history is imperfect, [but] it is otherwise with his spiritual life, which he has revealed as no other could, in the... Vita Nuova. . . . It is simply the record of his attachment to a young lady whom he calls Beatrice, and whom Boccaccio enables us to identify with one whom we know from other sources to have actually existed, Beatrice de' Portinari. . . . For some years Dante participated in [the] endeavours [of the Ghibellines] to reinstate themselves by force; but eventually . . . he became a wanderer among the courts of the princes and nobles of Northern Italy, generally finding honour and protection, which he frequently repaid by diplomatic services. . . . His most distinguished patron in his later years was Cane della Scala, surnamed the Great, Lord of Verona, from whose court he retired in 1320 to that of Guido Novello da Polenta, at Ravenna. In the following year he undertook a mission to Venice, and there contracted a fever, which, aggravated it is said by the inhospitality of the Venetians in compelling him to return by land, carried him off on September 14, 1321, shortly after he had completed his great epic. . . . [Of Dante's minor writings] the Vita Nuova stands first both in time and in importance. It is epoch-making in many ways, as the first great example of Italian prose, the first

ITALIAN LITERATURE

revelation of the genius of the greatest mediæval poet. . . . The main note of Dante's genius here is its exquisite and unearthly spirituality. . . . Although the Vita Nuova is essentially true history, the same cannot be said of a later work preferred to it by the author himself, albeit posterity has reversed his judgment. This is the Convito, or Banquet, in which Beatrice appears as an allegory of divine philosophy. . . The mortal maiden . . becomes a type of supernatural glory and perfection, as we see her in the Divina Commedia. . . . She is no longer Beatrice de' Portinari, but Philosophy, and unfortunately in too many instances Dante's poetry has become philosophy also. . . . The literary merits of the Italian language are more fully expounded in another work of Dante's, which, however, he composed in Latin, that his arguments might reach those who would not have condescended to read the vernacular. The De Vulgari Eloquio, originally entitled De Eloquentia Vulgari, or of the Vulgar Tongue, is shown by historical allusions to have been composed by 1304. Like the Convito it is unfinished, only two books of the four of which it was to have consisted having been written. Dante's conception of the capabilities of his native tongue does him honour, even though he restricts the number of subjects adapted to it, and would deny its use to all but gifted writers. . . . The hopes founded upon the appearance of the Emperor in Italy in 1311 probably induced Dante to publish a work written some years previously, his treatise De Monarchia, embodying the best mediæval conception of the spheres of temporal and spiritual government upon earth. [See ITALY: 1310-1313.] . . . To have assumed a position so far in advance of, and so decisively discriminated from that of any of his contemporaries, as in the Vita Nuova,. would alone have ensured Dante immortality as a poet. But his lyrical works are to his epic [the Divine Comedy] as Shakespeare's sonnets to Shakespeare's dramas. ... Dante's place in comparison with the other chief poets of the world is difficult to determine, for none but he has written an apocalypse. . . . In the year 1304, on the very day when Dante and his exiled companions were making their desperate attempt to fight their way back into Florence, Francesco Petrarca, the child of one of their number, was born . . . in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. Six years after Dante's death a casual encounter with a lady who awoke the faculty of song within him made the scholar the first poet of his age. But neither the innate love of letters nor the awakened faculty of poetry would have exalted Petrarch to the literary supremacy. . . . [In 1333] Petrarch graduated as a patriotic poet by composing his fine Latin metrical epistle on the woes of Italy. . . . Petrarch's [later] rural leisure was largely employed in the composition of a Latin history of Rome, which . . . would have been deeply interesting as exhibiting the classical feeling of the representative of the early Renaissance. He ultimately destroyed it, and turned to the composition of his Latin epic on the Punic war, Africa, for and from which he long expected immortality. His detestation of the Papal Court breaks out about this time in some powerful sonnets. His Italian poems, meanwhile, had made their way with the world to a degree surprising in an age unacquainted with printing. In 1340 he received on the same day the offer of the poetic laurel from the cities of Paris and Rome. Deciding for the latter, he embarked at Marseilles in February 1341, voyaged to Naples,