effectually, that without her he can be but faintly seen, and not at all understood; and there is no real ground for supposing this, or for withdrawing from the beautiful Florentine lady the noblest and most faithful homage which man has ever paid to woman. As it will be necessary to enter into this wonderful tale in the following chapter, which will treat of the 'Vita Nuova,' we must not touch upon it here, further than to say, that even while his heart and life were absorbed in that ideal world, no sentimental weakness ever shows in Dante, nothing that could keep him from that share in the public life of his generation which became a young man of spirit and genius in a community where, more than in almost any other on record, individual character and power asserted themselves.
Florence was exceptionally peaceable through his earlier days—the Guelf party, to which his family belonged, having the unquestioned mastery; and it was only after Dante had reached maturity, when the heavenly mists of the 'Vita Nuova' were beginning to disperse, that the Guelfists themselves, weary of too much concord, began to split into parties and struggle with each other with all the fervour of fraternal hatred. Before that period he had fought at the battle of Campaldino, and had been present at the siege of Caprona, the only two warlike incidents of the time; and when the civic struggle recommenced, Dante soon became visible among his contemporaries, taking the Liberal side of the white party against that of the black—the old Conservatives, so to speak, of the Guelf faction. About three years after the death of Beatrice, he married Gemma Donati, about whom absolutely nothing is known, though some of his later
