And this Philosophy dwells not in wise men alone, but likewise, as is proved above in another treatise, wherever the love for her inhabits, she is there.

"And to such as these," I say to the Song, "thou mayst reveal thine office, because to them the purpose thereof will be useful, and by them its thoughts will be gathered in." And I bid it say to this Lady, "I travel ever talking of your Friend." Nobility is her Friend.

For so much does the one love the other, that Nobility always seeks her, and Philosophy does not turn aside her most sweet glance to any other.
O, what a great and beautiful ornament is this which is given to her in the last part of this Song, by giving to her the title of Friend, the Friend of her whose own abode is in the most secret depths of the Divine Mind.
* * * * * NOTE ON THE DATE OF THE CONVITO It is natural to suppose that Dante's death at Ravenna in 1321 caused the Convito, a work of his latter years, to be left unfinished.

But there are arguments that have been especially dwelt upon by writers who regard the Convito as a work begun before the conception of the Divine Comedy, and dropped when the Poet's mind became intent upon that masterpiece.
One argument is that the Divine Comedy is nowhere mentioned or alluded to in the Convito.

But as the place designed for the Convito is midway between the Vita Nuova, which preceded it, and the Divine Comedy, which was to follow, references to the poem which was not yet before the reader would have been a fault in art.
Another argument is drawn from the fourteenth chapter of the Second Treatise, where (on page 84 in this volume) the shadow in the Moon is ascribed to "the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the Sun can find no end wherefrom to strike back again as in the other parts." In the second canto of the Purgatorio, Beatrice opposes that opinion, whence it may be inferred that Dante had learnt better, and he speaks of this again in a later canto (the twenty-second) as a former opinion.