During his stay at Verona, Dante was a frequent guest of the governor of the city, who had greatly befriended him, and to whom, in return for his kindness, the poet dedicated "Il Paradiso." One day it happened that the governor, while at table, related some unseemly jest, and made merry over it, his guests joining in the indecorous mirth. Dante, who held such jokes in abhorrence, did not conceal his annoyance; and his host perceiving it, asked him why he abstained from joining the general merriment. The poet replied with some hauteur, "Your surprise will cease if you remember that it requires similarity of tastes to enable me to enter into other people's jokes."

In the course of one of his leisurely rambles, Dante chanced to come upon a smith who, while beating the iron upon the anvil, was singing some stanzas of the "Divina Commedia," and murdering them to an extent which greatly irritated their author. Without uttering a word, he stepped into the smithy, and taking up the hammers, pincers, scales, and other tools he saw lying about, he dashed them to the ground, saying to the smith, "If you do not want me to injure your work, for goodness' sake let mine alone!"

Another time he encountered a muleteer who, while following his beasts, was reciting, after his own fashion, some parts of the "Purgatorio," and in the pauses of his declamation whipped up the mules, exclaiming, "Get on, get on!" Dante, on hearing this, dealt him a sound blow on the back, saying angrily,

"I never wrote 'get on, get on'!" The peasant, not knowing who Dante was, nor why he acted in so strange a manner, thrust out his tongue with a gesture of contempt, exclaiming, "Take that!" "A hundred tongues such as yours," replied the poet, “would not be worth one like mine."

Such incidents as these furnish sufficient proof that Dante was no more unconscious of his merits than is Matthew Arnold, who places him above Milton. Dante has also furnished ill-natured persons some reason for inventing other stories illustrative of his petty failings.

B. 1304.

PETRARCH.

D. 1374.

PETRARCH loved the fame of more sonnets better than Laura, as was shown by his reply when the Pope offered to absolve him from his vows of celibacy. "I have," said he, “still too many sonnets to write.”

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI.

B. 1474. D. 1564.

MICHAEL ANGELO was great as a sculptor, painter, and architect, and was also the author of many sonnets. He was possibly best satisfied with his works. as sculptor, until he painted the frescos in the Sistine Chapel; and then possibly best pleased with his fame as a painter, until he achieved even a greater reputa

tion as an architect, especially of St. Peter's at Rome. At a time when he thought Pope Julius II. listened too much to his enemies, he wrote this sonnet:

TO POPE JULIUS II.

My lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth,

Hear this which saith: Who can, doth never will.
Lo! thou hast but thine ear to fables still,
Rewarding those who hate the name of truth.
I am thy drudge, and have been from my youth,-
Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill;
Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill :
The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.

Once, 't was my hope to raise me by thy height;
But 't is the balance and the powerful sword
Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need.
Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite
Here on the earth, if this be our reward,-

To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed.

Michael Angelo was employed for many years on his work of St. Peter's without pay, and was often badly treated by those around him; but although this was the work of his old age, it was a great work, and he never lost confidence in himself. The following is an extract from one of his letters, showing that he believed he had been chosen by God for this work:

"I have always held it to be a condition not to leave Rome till I have carried on the building of St. Peter's so far that it cannot be altered from my design nor spoilt; and also not to give an opportunity to robbers to return and to plunder, as they did before and hope to do again. These have been my objects,

and are so still,-to carry out which many believe, as I do, that I have been chosen by God."

Having no children, Michael Angelo, near the close of his life, said, "My works are the children I shall leave; and if they are not worth much, they will at least live for some time."

B. 1809.

COUNT CAVOUR.

D. 1860.

IN 1853, long before the revolution in Italy brought Count Cavour to the front, he wrote to a lady as follows:

"I am very grateful, madame, for the interest you are kind enough to take in my misfortunes; but I assure you I shall make my way notwithstanding. I own I am ambitious, enormously ambitious, — and when I am minister I hope I shall justify my ambition. In my dreams I see myself already Minister of the Kingdom of Italy."

That dream came to pass.

B. 1483.

MARTIN LUTHER.

D. 1546.

WHEN Martin Luther first denied the right of the Pope to grant indulgences or to forgive sins, his indignation was particularly excited by the traffic of John Tetzel, a Dominican friar who was active in raising funds by the sale of the Pope's indulgences; and Luther exclaimed, "God willing, I will beat a hole in his drum!"

B. 1571.

JOHANN KEPLER.

D. 1630.

KEPLER, after his immortal work of twenty-two years, and the discovery of the so-called harmonic laws, or the relations of the planets, could say with rapture, and without much vanity :

"The die is cast; I have written my book; it will be read either in the present age or by posterity, it matters not which; it may well await a reader, since God has waited six thousand years for an interpreter of his works."

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND.

B. 1733. D. 1813.

"You, my friend, know me well enough to know that I am satisfied with my lot in every point of view. . . . But I shouid arrogate to myself a merit to which I have no claim, were I to deny that, after spending the greater part of my life in the service of the Muses, I have done more for myself than for others. It was pure truth, and will probably remain true to the end of my days, that I said to my Muse, from the fulness of my heart, more than fifteen years

1 The laws are: First, all planets describe ellipses around the sun; Second, a line joining the planet and sun sweeps over equal areas in equal times; Third, the squares of the periodic times of the planets are proportioned to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun.