But let the known be what it may, the true soul rises from it to a sense of the divine mysteries of Wisdom and of Love.
Dante's knowledge may be full of ignorance, and so is ours.

But he fills it as he can with the Spirit of God.

He is not content that men should be as sheep, and look downward to earth for all the food they need.

He bids them to a Banquet of another kind, whose dishes are of knowledge for the mind and heavenward aspiration for the soul.
Dante's Convito--of which the name was, no doubt, suggested by the Banquets of Plato and Xenophon--was written at the close of his life, after the Divine Comedy, and no trace has been found of more of its songs than the three which may have been written and made known some time before he began work on their Commentary.

Death stayed his hand, and the completion passed into a song that joined the voice of Dante to the praise in heaven.
H.M.
_April_ 1887.
THE BANQUET OF DANTE ALIGHIERI * * * * * The First Treatise..