point of view, and the first Italian who can be esteemed a poet of high merit, is Guido Guinicelli of Bologna 1220-1276), of whom little is known, except that, like most men of light and leading in those unquiet times, he was banished from his native city. His rank in Italian poetry is prominent, he gave it a more serious and philosophical character than the troubadours had been capable of imparting, and his amorous sentiment is more spirited and impressive. The masterpiece among Dante's sonnets—Tanto gentil e tanto onesta pare—is undoubtedly adumbrated in one of Guinicelli's. Dante calls him "the Sage," and the canzone of the Gentle Heart, to which the great Florentine is alluding, justifies his admiration. The following is the first of six beautiful stanzas:
"Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,
As birds within the green shade of the grove.
Before the gentle heart, in Natures scheme,
Love was not, or the gentle heart ere Love.
For with the sun, at once,
So sprang the light immediately, nor was
Its birth before the sun's.
And Love hath his effect in gentleness
Of very self; even as
Within the middle fire the heafs excess."
Much might be said of many other precursors of Dante, but space admonishes us to restrict ourselves to two—Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian, chiefly known for his Latin romance on the Fall of Troy, but also a vernacular lyrist of considerable merit; and Rustico di Filippo ( 1200–1274), eulogised by Brunetto Latini as a man of great worth, but whose place among poets is mainly that of a satirist. Very biting are his lines on a
