Note 19 — INTRODUCTION.

It is difficult not to connect Dante’s agony at this wedding-feast with our knowledge that in her twenty-first year Beatrice was wedded to Simone de’ Bardi. That she herself was the bride on this occasion might seem out of the question, from the fact of its not being in any way so stated: but on the other hand, Dante’s silence throughout the Vita Nuova as regards her marriage (which must have brought deep sorrow even to his ideal love) is so startling, that we might almost be led to conceive in this passage the only intimation of it which he thought fit to give.