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Dante’s prose works demand separate treatment; of earlier examples of prose there is very little to be said. Historians and theologians continued to compose in Latin, and the few writings in the vernacular were chiefly translations from that language. The principal contemporary book in Italian, theTesoro or great encyclopædia of Brunetto Latini, is an important monument of culture, but not of literature. It was, moreover, originally composed in French.

Italian literature had sprung up from nothingness and made enormous progress during three-quarters of a century without having produced a pout of the first or even of the second rank. There was no want of singers; rather there seemed reason for apprehension lest, as Tansillo declared with truth in the Cinque Cento,

The Muses’ troop an army had become, And every hillock a Parnassus grown—

a complaint anticipated by the anonymous writer of a clever ballata in the thirteenth century:

A little wild bird sometimes at my ear Sings his own verses very clear: Others sing louder what I do not hear. For singing loudly is not singing well; But ever by the song that’s soft and low The master-singer’s voice is plain to tell. Few have it, and yet all are masters now, And each of them can trill out what he calls His ballads, canzonets, and madrigals. The world with masters is so covered o’er, There is no room for pupils any more.