In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under such rubric I find written many things; and among them the words which I purpose to copy into this little book; if not all of them, at the least their substance.

I found myself within a forest dark.

The mouse had fallen in with evil cats.

Deed done is well begun.

One ought to be afraid of nothing other then things possessed of power to do us harm, but things innoucuous need not be feared.

Thou shall know by experience how salt the savor is of others' bread, and how sad a path it is to climb and descend another's stairs.

And here Dante describes an evidently spherical world... "The lamp of the world [the sun] rises to mortals through different passages; but through that which joins four circles with three crosses [the position of the rising sun at the vernal equinox] it issues with a better course and conjoined with better stars, and tempers and stamps the wax of the world more after its own fashion. Although such an outlet had made morning there and evening here, and all the hemisphere there was bright, and the other dark..."