DANTE AND DEL VIRGILIO
In the year 1319 Giovanni del Virgilio, professor of Latin in the university of Bologna, wrote an epistle in Latin hexameters to Dante, then residing in Ravenna, couched in terms of affectionate respect and admiration, but reproaching him for writing in Italian instead of Latin, and urging him to compose 'something for students.' He suggested a variety of contemporary political themes as subjects for a Latin poem. It was grievous, he thought, that so great a poet as Dante should desert the practice of all his precursors, and should insult the Muses by clothing them in the unworthy garb of the vernacular. If he would adopt his suggestion of a Latin poem, or (apparently) even if he would promise to do so, Del Virgilio himself would be proud to place the laurel crown upon his head, before the applauding students of Bologna, if Dante would deem him worthy of such an office.
To these proposals Dante answered, in the poem that follows (Eclogue I.), with patient sweetness of temper (enhanced rather than otherwise by a touch of gentle and pathetic sarcasm) in the form of a pastoral eclogue. Fortunately the whole correspondence was preserved by Boccaccio, and so annotated (either by himself or by one writing very shortly after him) as
