The Life of Dante

fices and rewards, and the good exiled, crushed and humiliated. To the which things what end the judgment of God may have in store let them consider who turn the helm of this ship; for we, the humbler throng, are tossed indeed on the stormy tide, but have no share in the offence. And although what I have said above might be made good by countless instances of ingratitude or of dissolute pardon, patent to all, yet (the less to expose our faults, and also to come at my main purpose) it shall suffice me to have recounted a single one. Nor shall this one be little or of small account, for I am to record the exile of that most illustrious man, Dante Alighieri. And how much good this ancient citizen, born of no obscure parents, had deserved by his virtue, by his knowledge and by his good deeds, is shewn and shall be shewn sufficiently by the things that we see he wrought; the which, had they been done in a just city, without doubt should have prepared for him the most distinguished rewards.