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Introductionliterally, "The glorious lady of my mind who was called Beatrice by many who knew not how she was called." This presents the obvious difficulty that the lady's name really was Beatrice, and that Dante throughout uses that name himself. In the text of my version I have adopted, as a rendering, the one of the various compromises which seemed to give the most beauty to the meaning. But it occurs to me that a less irrational escape out of the difficulty than any I have seen suggested may possibly be found by linking this passage with the close of the sonnet at page 104 of the Vita Nuova, beginning, "I felt a spirit of love begin to stir," in the last line of which sonnet Love is made to assert that the name of Beatrice is Love. Dante appears to have dwelt on this fancy with some pleasure, from what is said in an earlier sonnet (page 39) about "Love in his proper form" (by which Beatrice seems to be meant) bending over a dead lady. And it is in connection with the sonnet where the name of Beatrice is said to be Love, that Dante, as if to show us that the Love he speaks of is only his own emotion, enters into an argument as to Love being merely an accident in substance, in other words, "Amore e il cor gentil son una cosa." This conjecture may be pronounced extravagant; but the Vita Nuova, when
