Leaning from the narrow windows of this castle, with the spacious view to westward, I thought of Dante.  For Dante in this castle was the guest of Moroello Malaspina, what time he was yet finishing the ‘Inferno.’  There is a little old neglected garden, full to south, enclosed upon a rampart which commands the Borgo, where we found frail canker-roses and yellow amaryllis.  Here, perhaps, he may have sat with ladies—­for this was the Marchesa’s pleasaunce; or may have watched through a short summer’s night, until he saw that tremolar della marina, portending dawn, which afterwards he painted in the ‘Purgatory.’

From Fosdinovo one can trace the Magra work its way out seaward, not into the plain where once the candentia moenia Lunae flashed sunrise from their battlements, but close beside the little hills which back the southern arm of the Spezzian gulf.  At the extreme end of that promontory, called Del Corvo, stood the Benedictine convent of S. Croce; and it was here in 1309, if we may trust to tradition, that Dante, before his projected journey into France, appeared and left the first part of his poem with the Prior.  Fra Ilario, such was the good father’s name, received commission to transmit the ‘Inferno’ to Uguccione della Faggiuola; and he subsequently recorded the fact of Dante’s visit in a letter which, though its genuineness has been called in question, is far too interesting to be left without allusion.  The writer says that on occasion of a journey into lands beyond the Riviera, Dante visited this convent, appearing silent and unknown among the monks.  To the Prior’s question what he wanted, he gazed upon the brotherhood, and only answered, ‘Peace!’ Afterwards, in private conversation, he communicated his name and spoke about his poem.  A portion of the ‘Divine Comedy’ composed in the Italian tongue aroused Ilario’s wonder, and led him to inquire why his guest had not followed the usual course of learned poets by committing his thoughts to Latin.  Dante replied that he had first intended to write in that language, and that he had gone so far as to begin the poem in Virgilian hexameters.  Reflection upon the altered conditions of society in that age led him, however, to reconsider the matter; and he was resolved to tune another lyre, ’suited to the sense of modern men.’  ‘For,’ said he, ’it is idle to set solid food before the lips of sucklings.’

If we can trust Fra Ilario’s letter as a genuine record, which is unhappily a matter of some doubt, we have in this narration not only a picturesque, almost a melodramatically picturesque glimpse of the poet’s apparition to those quiet monks in their seagirt house of peace, but also an interesting record of the destiny which presided over the first great work of literary art in a distinctly modern language.

IV.—­LA SPEZZIA