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A much more important writer, in a purely literary 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 theGentle 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 Nature’s 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 heat’s excess.