into written speech the tongue in which, against all precedent, he chose to tell his great and solemn tale—a masterpiece of poetic imagination which, in all the after-refinements of the language, has never been equalled. The great dramatists of Greece press close upon the steps of their venerable leader, but neither in Italy nor in Latin Europe has any one arisen worthy to take his place by the side of the great dreamer, who was the first to rescue the vulgar tongue, the language of the people, from the babble of common affairs, and make of it that noble, sonorous, majestic Italian language which has ever since been the admiration of the world. He is thus the head not of Italy alone, but of all the literature of the West, so varied, so splendid, so individual Before Dante, the learned class, which included not only the writers but the readers of those early ages, regarded the spoken languages of their day with the indifference of contempt, incredulous of any power in them to express the thoughts of the wise. "It seemed to me," said the prior of a seaside monastery, where the poet strayed in one of his many wanderings, "not only difficult but inconceivable that he could embody in the vulgar tongue so arduous a work; and it scarcely appeared seemly to array so much knowledge in a popular garment." This was the conviction of the early Christian centuries. The vague floating ballads and heroic tales with which the people—unconsidered by the superior class who wrote and were written for in Latin—consoled themselves, remained long without the safeguard of any writing at all, floating in the air, engraved in thousands of rude memories, the inheritance of wandering minstrels—here a wild Niblung song as in Germany, there a never-ending romance of
