and attempts of all kinds to get back to Florence; and partly—with an impatient sickening of these less noble occupations, which is apparent by intervals in all his after-life—in Bologna, where he recommenced the graver studies of his youth, read philosophy, and is believed to have written two of his prose works, the 'Convito' and the treatise 'Sul Volgare Eloquio.' Bologna too, however, shared the vicissitudes of the time, and a revolution in her government made her no longer an asylum for the banished Florentines, who could no more settle where they liked, even "outside," than they could get back to their homes. Dante, we are told, received his manuscript, which he had thought lost, as a special indication from heaven that the work was to be continued and completed; and he immediately recommenced the composition, using this time, however, the Volgare, the common Italian mother-tongue. The story is told by Boccaccio, his contemporary, who quotes the beginning of the eighth canto, Io dico seguitando, which may be freely translated "I resume," as a proof that the work had been here interrupted; and, so far as we are aware, there is no reason for doubting Boccaccio's narrative of events which must have been generally known in his time.
Many vicissitudes and many wanderings occurred after this in the poet's life. He would appear to have finished the 'Inferno' in Malaspina's castle among the hills, and he left the completed manuscript with the prior of the convent of Santa Croce del Corvo, near Spezia, when apparently on his way to Paris, where he spent two years in great poverty, studying at the Sorbonne. At the end of this dim and peaceful period, however, the accession of the new Emperor Henry VII.
