Alighieri), one of the first poets of Italy, born at Florence in 1265, of a good family. He consecrated the first of his muse to love; but afterwards he undertook a more serious work. He would have been more happy if he had never meddled with anything else: for being ambitious, and having attained some of the most considerable posts of the common wealth, he was crushed by the ruins of the faction he had embraced. Pope Boniface VIII. sent Charles of Valois thither in 1301, to re-establish the peace; Florence being divided into two factions, one named the white, and the other the black. No better way was found to pacify the city than to expel thence the faction of the white, which Dante favoured. He endeavoured to revenge himself at the expense of his country, and did all he could to expose it to a bloody war. He died in exile in 1321. He applied himself diligently to study during his banishment; and wrote some books wherein he showed more fire and spirit than he would have done had he enjoyed a more quiet state of life. The most considerable of his works is the poem entitled "The Comedy of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise." It has much displeased the church of Rome; as did likewise another book of his entitled, "Dante (John Baptist)," a native of Perugia, an excellent mathematician, called the new Dedalus, for the wings he made himself, and with which he flew several times over the lake Thrasymenus. He fell in one of his enterprises; the iron work with which he managed one of his wings having failed; by which accident he broke his thigh: but it was fet by the surgeons, and he was afterwards called to Venice to profess mathematics.