ALIGHIERI, one of the first poets of Italy, was born at Florence in 1265, of an ancient and honourable family. Boccaccio, who lived in the same period, has left a very curious and entertaining treatise, on the life, the studies, and manners of this extraordinary poet, whom he regarded as his master, and for whose memory he professed the highest veneration. This biographer relates, that Dante, before he was nine years old, conceived a passion for the lady whom he has immortalized in his singular poem. Her age was near his own; and her name was Beatrice, the daughter of Folco Portinari, a noble citizen of Florence. The passion of Dante, however, like that of his successor Petrarch, seems to have been of the chaste and platonic kind, according to the account he has himself given of it, in one of his early productions, entitled Vita Nuova; a mixture of mysterious poetry and prose; in which he mentions both the origin of his affection and the death of his mistress, who, according to Boccaccio, died at the age of 24. The same author affirms, that Dante fell into a deep melancholy in consequence of this event, from which his friends endeavoured to raise him, by persuading him to marriage. After some time he followed their advice, and repented it; for he unfortunately made choice of a lady who bore some resemblance to the celebrated Xantippe. The poet, not possessing the patience of Socrates, separated himself from her with such vehement expressions of dislike, that he never afterwards admitted her to his presence, though she had born him several children. In the early part of his life he gained some credit in a military character; distinguishing himself by his bravery in an action where the Florentines obtained a signal victory over the citizens of Arezzo. He became still more eminent by the acquisition of civil honours; and at the age of 25 he rose to be one of the chief magistrates of Florence, when that dignity was conferred by the suffrages of the people. From this exaltation the poet himself dated his principal misfortunes, as appears from the fragment of a letter quoted by Leonardo Bruni, one of his early biographers, where Dante speaks of his political failure with that liberal frankness which integrity inspires. Italy was at that time divided by the contending factions of the Ghibellins and the Guelphs: the latter, among whom Dante took an active part, were again divided into the Blacks and the Whites. Dante, says Gravina, exerted all his influence to unite these inferior parties; but his efforts were ineffectual, and he had the misfortune to be unjustly persecuted by those of his own faction. A powerful citizen of Florence, named Corso Donati, had taken measures to terminate these intestine broils, by introducing Charles of Valois, brother to Philip the Fair king of France. Dante, with great vehemence opposed this disgraceful project, and obtained the banishment of Donati and his partizans. The exiles applied to the pope (Boniface VIII.), and by his assistance succeeded in their design. Charles of Valois entered Florence in triumph, and those who had opposed his admission were banished in their turn. Dante had been dispatched to Rome as the ambassa- Dante. dor of his party; and was returning, when he received intelligence of the revolution in his native city. His enemies, availing themselves of his absence, had procured an iniquitous sentence against him, by which he was condemned to banishment, and his possessions were confiscated. His two enthusiastic biographers, Boccaccio and Manetti, express the warmest indignation against the injustice of his country. Dante, on receiving this intelligence, took refuge in Sienna, and afterwards in Arezzo, where many of his party were assembled. An attempt was made to surprise the city of Florence, by a small army which Dante is supposed to have attended: the design miscarried, and our poet is conjectured to have wandered to various parts of Italy, till he found a patron in the great Candella Scala, prince of Verona, whom he has celebrated in his poem. The high spirit of Dante was ill suited to courtly dependence; and he is said to have lost the favour of his Veronese patron by the rough frankness of his behaviour. From Verona he retired to France, according to Manetti; and Boccaccio affirms that he disputed in the theological schools of Paris with great reputation. Bayle questions his visiting Paris at this period of his life; and thinks it improbable, that a man, who had been one of the chief magistrates of Florence, should condescend to engage in the public squabbles of the Parisian theologians; but the spirit both of Dante and the times in which he lived sufficiently account for this exercise of his talents; and his residence in France at this season is confirmed by Boccaccio, in his life of our poet, which Bayle seems to have had no opportunity of consulting.

The election of Henry count of Luxemburgh to the empire, in November 1308, afforded Dante a prospect of being restored to his native city, as he attached himself to the interest of the new emperor, in whose service he is supposed to have written his Latin treatise De Monarchia, in which he asserted the rights of the empire against the encroachments of the Papacy. In the year 1311, he instigated Henry to lay siege to Florence; in which enterprise, says one of his biographers, he did not appear in person, from motives of respect towards his native city. The emperor was repulsed by the Florentines; and his death, which happened in the succeeding year, deprived Dante of all hopes concerning re-establishment in Florence. After this disappointment, he is supposed to have passed some years in roving about Italy in a state of poverty and distress, till he found an honourable establishment at Ravenna, under the protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of that city, who received this illustrious exile with the most enduring liberality, continued to protect him through the few remaining years of his life, and extended his munificence to the ashes of the poet.

Eloquence was one of the many talents which Dante possessed in an eminent degree. On this account he is said to have been employed on fourteen different embassies in the course of his life, and to have succeeded in most of them. His patron Guido had occasion to try his abilities in a service of this nature, and dispatched him as his ambassador to negotiate a peace with the Venetians, who were preparing for hostilities against Ravenna. Manetti affirms that he was unable to procure a public audience at Venice, and returned to Ravenna by land, from his apprehensions of the Venetian fleet; when the fatigue of his journey, and the mortification of failing in his attempt to preserve his generous patron from the impending danger, threw him into a fever, which terminated in death on the 14th of September 1321. He died, however, in the palace of his friend; and the affectionate Guido paid the most tender regard to his memory. This munificent patron (says Boccaccio) commanded the body to be adorned with poetical ornaments, and, after being carried on a bier through the streets of Ravenna by the most illustrious citizens, to be deposited in a marble coffin. He pronounced himself the funeral oration, and expressed his design of erecting a splendid monument in honour of the deceased: a design which his subsequent misfortunes rendered him unable to accomplish. At his request, many epitaphs were written on the poet: the best of them (says Boccaccio) by Giovanni del Virgilio of Bologna, a famous author of that time, and the intimate friend of Dante. Boccaccio then cites a few Latin verses, not worth transcribing, six of which are quoted by Bayle as the composition of Dante himself, on the authority of Paul Jovius. In 1483 Bernardo Bembo, the father of the celebrated cardinal, raised a handsome monument over the neglected ashes of the poet, with the following inscription:

Exigua tumuli Danthae hic forte jacebas Squalenti nulli cogitata pene situ; At nunc marmoreo subnixus condoris arcu, Omnibus et cultu splendidiore nites; Nimirum Bembus, Musis incensus Etruscis, Hoc tibi, quem in primis ha coluere, dedi.

Before this period the Florentines had vainly endeavoured to obtain the bones of their great poet from the city of Ravenna. In the age of Leo X. they made a second attempt, by a solemn application to the pope for that purpose; and the great Michael Angelo, an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, very liberally offered to execute a magnificent monument to the poet. The hopes of the Florentines were again unsuccessful. The particulars of their singular petition may be found in the notes of Codivi's Life of Michael Angelo.

At what time, and in what place, he executed the great and singular work which has rendered him immortal, his numerous commentators seem unable to determine. Boccaccio affirms, that he began it in his 35th year, and had finished seven cantos of his Inferno before his exile; that in the plunder of his house, on that event, the beginning of his poem was fortunately preserved, but remained for some time neglected, till its merit being accidentally discovered by an intelligent poet named Dino, it was sent to the marquis Marcello Malefipina, an Italian nobleman, by whom Dante was then protected. The marquis restored these lost papers to the poet, and intreated him to proceed in a work which opened in so promising a manner. To this incident we are probably indebted for the poem of Dante, which he must have continued under all the disadvantages of an unfortunate and agitated life. It does not appear at what time he completed it; perhaps before he quitted Verona, as he dedicated the Paradise to his Veronese patron. The critics have variously accounted for his having called his poem Comedia. He gave it the title (said one of his sons), be- cause it opens with distres and closes with felicity. The very high estimation in which this production was held by his country, appears from a singular institution. The republic of Florence, in the year 1373, assigned a public stipend to a person appointed to read lectures on the poem of Dante : Boccaccio was the first person engaged in this office; but his death happening in two years after his appointment, his comments extended only to the seventeen first cantos of the Inferno. The critical dissertations that have been written on Dante are almost as numerous as those to which Homer has given birth; the Italian, like the Grecian bard, has been the subject of the highest panegyric, and of the grossest invective. Voltaire has spoken of him with that precipitate vivacity, which so frequently led that lively Frenchman to insult the reputation of the noblest writers. In one of his entertaining letters, he says to an Italian abbe, Je fais grand cas du courage, avec lequel vous avez osé dire que Dante étoit un fou, et fon ouvrage un monstre.—Le Dante pourra entrer dans les bibliothèques des curieux, mais il ne sera jamais lu. But more temperate and candid critics have not been wanting to display the merits of this original poet. Mr Warton has introduced into his last volume on English poetry, a judicious and spirited summary of Dante's performance.

John Baptist, a native of Perugia, an excellent mathematician, called the new Daedalus, from 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 let by the surgeons, and he was afterwards called to Venice to profess mathematics.