Note 2 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (continued 6)

Dante's reasoning in the Convito (cap. iii. sq.) offers an interesting analogy to that of Petrarch. "I have," he says, "gone through almost all the land in which this language [Italian] lives,—a pilgrim, almost a mendicant;... and I have appeared despicable in the eyes of many who perhaps, through some report, had imagined me in other guise; in the sight of whom not only did my person become contemptible, but my works, both those that were completed and those that remained to be done, appeared less worthy." Dante adds a philosophical explanation of this.