THE VISION; OR HELL, PURGATORY, AND PARADISE. OF DANTE ALIGHIERI. TRANSLATED BY THE REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY, A. M. VOL. I. THE LIFE OF DANTE. BORN 1265.-DIED 1321. DANTE, a name abbreviated, as was the custom in those days, from Durante or Durando, was of a very ancient Florentine family. The first of his ancestors, concerning whom any thing certain is known, was Cacciaguida, a Florentine knight, who died fighting in the holy war, under the Emperor Conrad III. Cacciaguida had two brothers, Moronto and Eliseo, the former of whom is not recorded to have left any posterity; the latter is the head of the family of the Elisoi, or perhaps (for it is doubtful which is the case) only transmitted to his descendants a name which he had himself inherited. From Cacciaguida himself were sprung the Alighieri, so called from one of his sons, who bore the appellation from his mother's family, as is affirmed by the Poet himself, under the person of Cacciaguida, in the fifteenth canto of the Paradise. This name, Alighieri, is derived from the coat of arms, a wing or, on a field azure, still borne by the descendants of our Poet at Verona, in the days of Leonardo Aretino. Dante was born at Florence in May, 1265. His mother's name was Bella, but of what family is no longer known. His father he had the misfortune to lose in his childhood; but by the advice of his sur |