Of this great series, the crowning work has, of course, had many translators, and there have been translators also of the book that shows the youth of love.

But the noble fragment of the Convito that unites these two has, I believe, never yet been placed within reach of the English reader, except by a translation of its poems only into unrhymed measure in Mr.Charles Lyell's "Poems of the Vita Nuova and the Convito," published in 1835.
The Convito is a fragment.

There are four books where fifteen were designed, including three only of the intended fourteen songs.

But the plan is clear, and one or two glances forward to the matter of the last book, which would have had Justice for its theme, show that all was to have been brought to a high spiritual close.
Its aim was no less than the lifting of men's minds by knowledge of the world without them and within them, bound together in creation, showing forth the Mind of the Creator.

The reader of this volume must not flinch from the ingenious dialectics of the mediaeval reasoner on Man and Nature.