I see well how your pens have
followed close on the dictator, which truly was not the case with
ours."[9] As Love was the common theme of the verses from which
Buonagiunta drew his contrast, the difference between them lay plainly
in sincerity of feeling and truth of expression. The following close
upon the dictates of his heart was the distinguishing merit of Dante's
love-poetry over all that had preceded it and most of what has followed
it. There are, however, some among his earlier poems in which the
"sweet new style" is scarcely heard,--and others, of a later period, in
which the accustomed metaphysical and fanciful subtilties of the elder
poets are drawn out to an unwonted fineness. These were concessions to
a ruling mode,--concessions the more readily made, owing to their being
in complete harmony with the strong subtilizing and allegorizing
tendencies of Dante's own mind. Still, so far as he adopts the modes of
his predecessors in this first book of his, Dante surpasses them all in
their own way. He leaves them far behind him, and goes forward to open
new paths which he is to tread alone.
But there is yet another tendency of the times, to which Dante, in his
later works, has given the fullest and most characteristic expression,
and which exhibits itself curiously in the "Vita Nuova.
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