FOOTNOTES
[1] See Giesebrecht, De Litterarum studiis apud Italos primis medii ævi sæculis, Berolini, 1845, p. 15.
[2] See Giesebrecht, op. cit. p. 19. Wippo recommends the Emperor to compel his subjects to educate their sons in letters and law. It was by such studies that ancient Rome acquired her greatness. In Italy at the present time, he says, all boys pass from the games of childhood into schools. It is only the Teutons who think it idle or disgraceful for a man to study unless he be intended for a clerical career.
[3] See Adolfo Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. i. pp. 142-158, and p. 167, on Guido delle Colonne and Qualichino da Spoleto.
[4] See above, vol. i. [Age of the Despots], 2nd ed. [chap. 2.]
[5] The Italians did not even begin to reflect upon their lingua volgare until the special characters and temperaments of their chief States had been fixed and formed. In other words, their social and political development far anticipated their literary evolution. There remained no center from which the vulgar tongue could radiate, absorbing local dialects. Each State was itself a center, perpetuating dialect.
[6] See Du Méril, Poésies Populaires Latines antérieures au douzième Siècle, Paris, 1843.
[7] Regarding the authorship of Latin hymns see the notes in Mone's Hymni Latini Medii Ævi, Friburgi Brisgoviæ, 1853, 3 vols. For the French origin of Carmina Burana see Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder der Mittelalters, von Oscar Hubatsch, Görlitz, 1870.
[8] Du Méril, op. cit. p. 268.
[9] Dante, Paradiso, xv.
[10] See [Age of the Despots], [p. 65].
[11] xvi. 115.
[12] See D'Ancona, Poesia Popolare, p. 11, note.
[13] See Carducci, Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale, p. 29.
[14] Romagnoli has reprinted some specimens of the Illustre et Famosa Historia di Lancillotto del Lago, Bologna, 1862.
[15] Muratori in Antiq. Ital. Diss. xxx. p. 351, quotes a decree of the Bolognese Commune, dated 1288, to the effect that Cantatores Francigenarum in plateis Communis omnino morari non possint. They had become a public nuisance and impeded traffic.
[16] In the Cento Novelle there are several Arthurian stories. The rubrics of one or two will suffice to show how the names were Italianized. Qui conta come la damigella di Scalot morì per amore di Lanciallotto de Lac. Nov. lxxxii. Qui conta della reina Isotta e di m. Tristano di Leonis. Nov. lxv. In the Historia di Lancillotto, cited above, Sir Kay becomes Keux; Gawain is Gauuan. In the Tavola Ritonda, Morderette stands for Mordred, Bando di Benoiche for Ban of Benwick, Lotto d'Organia for Lot of Orkeney.
[17] See Adolfo Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. ii. chapters iii., iv., v., vi., for a minute inquiry into this early dialectical literature.
[18] Cento Novelle, Milano, 1825, Nov. ii. and xxi.
[19] Chronica Fr. Salimbene Parmensis, ord. min., Parmæ, 1857, p. 166.
[20] See the Cronache Siciliane, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865, the first of which bears upon its opening paragraph the date 1358. Sicilian, it may be said in passing, presents close dialectical resemblance to Tuscan. Even the superficial alteration of the Sicilian u and i into the Tuscan o and e (e.g. secundu and putiri into secondo and potere) effaces the most obvious differences.
[21] The Italians wavered long between several metrical systems, before they finally adopted the hendecasyllabic line, which became the consecrated rhythm of serious poetry. Carducci, in his treatise Intorno ad alcune Rime (Imola, Galeati, 1876), pp. 81-89, may be profitably consulted with regard to early Italian Alexandrines. He points out that Ciullo's Tenzone:
Rosa fresc' aulentissima—c'appar' in ver' l'estate:
and the Ballata of the Comari:
Pur bi' del vin, comadr'—e no lo temperare:
together with numerous compositions of the Northern Lombard school (Milan and Verona), are written in Alexandrines. In the Lombardo-Sicilian age of Italian literature, before Bologna acted as an intermediate to Florence, this meter bid fair to become acclimatized. But the Tuscan genius determined decisively for the hendecasyllabic.
[22] See the [Appendix] to this chapter on Italian hendecasyllables.
[23] See Carducci, Cantilene, etc. (Pisa, 1871), pp. 58-60, for thirteenth-century rispetti illustrating the Sicilian form of the Octave Stanza and its transformation to the Tuscan type.
[24] The poetry of this period will be found in Trucchi, Poesie Inedite, Prato, 1846; Poeti del Primo Secolo, Firenze, 1816; Raccolta di Rime Antiche Toscane, Palermo, Assenzio, 1817; and in a critical edition of the Codex Vaticanus 3793, Le Antiche Rime Volgari, per cura di A. d'Ancona e D. Comparetti, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1875.
[25] The most important modern works upon this subject are three Essays by Napoleone Caix, Saggio sulla Storia della Lingua e dei Dialetti d'Italia, Parma, 1872; Studi di Etimologia Italiana e Romanza, Firenze, 1878; Le Origini della Lingua Poetica Italiana, Firenze, 1880. D'Ovidio's Essay on the De Eloquio in his Saggi Critici, Napoli, 1878, may also be consulted with advantage.
[26] "Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam quam aliæ linguæ, et ideo magis est communis et intelligibilis." Antonio da Tempo, born about 1275, says this in his Treatise on Italian Poetry, recently printed by Giusto Grion, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1869. See p. 17 of that work.
[27] This fact was recognized by Dante. He speaks of the languages of Si, Oil, and Oc, meaning Italian, French, and Spanish. De Eloquio, lib. i. cap. 8. Dante points out their differences, but does not neglect their community of origin.
[28] De Vulg. Eloq. i. 16.
[29] Ibid. i. 18.
[30] See Archivio Glottologico Italiano, vol. ii. Villani, lib. vii. cap. 68.
[31] Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali nei Secoli xiii. e xiv. A cura di Giosuè Carducci (Pisa, 1871), pp. 29-32.
[32] Ibid. pp. 18, 22.
[33] Ibid. pp. 39, 42.
[34] Ibid. pp. 43, 45.
[35] See ibid. p. 45, the stanza which begins, Matre tant ò.
[36] Ibid. pp. 47-60.
[37] Ibid. pp. 62-66.
[38] The practical and realistic common sense of the Italians, rejecting chivalrous and ecclesiastical idealism as so much nonsense, is illustrated by the occasional poems of two Florentine painters—Giotto's Canzone on Poverty, and Orcagna's Sonnet on Love. Orcagna, in the latter, criticises the conventional blind and winged Cupid, and winds up with:
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L'amore è un trastullo: Non è composto di legno nè di osso; E a molte gente fa rompere il dosso. |
[39] See Carducci, op. cit. pp. 52-60, for early examples of Tuscanized Sicilian poems of the people.
[40] The Tuscanized Sicilian poems in Carducci's collection referred to above, are extracted from a Florentine MS. called Napolitana, and a Tenzone between man and woman (ib. p. 52), which has clearly undergone a like process, is called Ciciliana.
[41] See Francesco d'Ovidio, Sul Trattato De Vulgari Eloquentia. It is reprinted in his volume of Saggi Critici, Napoli, 1879. The subject is fully discussed from a point of view at variance with my text by Adolf Gaspary, Die Sicilianische Dichterschule, Berlin, 1878.
[42] Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, Firenze, Morandi, 1828, 2 vols.
[43] De Vulg. Eloq. ii. 6; ii. 1; i. 13, and Purg. xxvi. 124.
[44] His poems will be found in the collections above mentioned, [p. 26, note].
[45] Purg. xxvi.
[46] Purg. xxiv.
[47] Purg. xxvi.
[48] De Vulg. Eloq. i. 15.
[49] Fauriel, Dante et les origines, etc. (Paris, 1854), i. 269.
[50] D'Ancona, La Poesia Popolare Italiana (Livorno 1878), p. 36, note.
[51] Giov. Vill. vii. 89.
[52] Stefani, quoted by D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 36.
[53] Ibid. p. 37, note.
[54] Giov. Vill. x. 216.
[55] Giov. Vill. vii. 132.
[56] Storia di Firenze di Goro Dati (Firenze, 1735), p. 84.
[57] The date commonly assigned to Folgore is 1260, and the Niccolò he addresses in his series on the Months has been identified with that
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Nicolò, che la costuma ricca Del garofano prima discoperse, |
so ungently handled by Dante in the Inferno, Canto xxix. I am aware that grave doubts, based upon historical allusions in Folgore's miscellaneous sonnets, have been raised as to whether we can assign so early a date to Folgore, and whether his Brigata was really the brigata godereccia, spendereccia, of Siena alluded to by Dante. See Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. ii. cap. II, for a discussion of these points. See also Giulio Navone's edition of Folgore's and Cene's Rime, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880. This editor argues forcibly for a later date—not earlier at all events than from 1300 to 1320. But, whether we choose the earlier date 1260 or the later 1315, Folgore may legitimately be used for my present purpose of illustration.
[58] This is equally true of Cene dalla Chitarra's satirical parodies of the Months, in which, using the same rhymes as Folgore, he turns each of his motives to ridicule. Cene was a poet of Arezzo. His series and Folgore's will both be found in the Poeti del Primo Secolo, vol. ii., and in Navone's edition cited above.
[59] These remarks have to be qualified by reference to an unfinished set of five sonnets (Navone's edition, pp. 45-49), which are composed in a somewhat different key. They describe the arming of a young knight, and his reception by Valor, Humility, Discretion, and Gladness. Yet the knight, so armed and accepted, is no Galahad, far less the grim horseman of Dürer's allegory. Like the members of the brigata godereccia, he is rather a Gawain or Astolfo, all love, fine clothes, and courtship. Each of these five sonnets is a precious little miniature of Italian carpet-chivalry. The quaintest is the second, which begins:
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Ecco prodezza che tosto lo spoglia, E dice: amico e' convien che tu mudi, Per ciò ch'i' vo' veder li uomini nudi, E vo' che sappi non abbo altra voglia. |
This exordium makes one regret that the painter of the young knight in our National Gallery (Giorgione?) had not essayed a companion picture. Valor disrobing him and taking him into her arms and crying Queste carni m'ai offerte would have made a fine pictorial allegory.
[60] If I were writing the history of early Tuscan poetry, I should wish here to compare the rarely beautiful poem of Lapo Gianni, Amor eo chero, with Folgore, and the masterly sonnets of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, especially the one beginning S'io fossi fuoco, with Cene dalla Chitarra, in order to prove the fullness of sensuous and satirical inspiration in the age preceding Dante. Lapo wishes he had the beauty of Absalom, the strength of Samson; that the Arno would run balm for him, her walls be turned to silver and her paving-stones to crystal; that he might abide in eternal summer gardens among thousands of the loveliest women, listening to the songs of birds and instruments of music. The voluptuousness of Folgore is here heightened to ecstasy. Cecco desires to be fire, wind, sea, God, that he might ruin the world; the emperor, that he might decapitate its population; death, that he might seek out his father and mother; life, that he might fly from both; being Cecco, he would fain take all fair women, and leave the foul to his neighbors. The spite of Cene is deepened to insanity.
[61] See Paradiso, xv.; Giov. Vill. vi. 69.
[62] Rime di Guido Cavalcanti, edite ed inedite, etc., Firenze, 1813. See p. 29 for the Canzone, and p. 73 for a translation into Italian of Dino's Latin commentary.
[63] Op. cit. pp. 21-27. Two in particular, Era in pensier and Gli occhi di quella gentil forosetta, may be singled out. A pastourelle, In un boschetto, anticipates the manner of Sacchetti. As for the May song, its opening lines, Ben venga Maggio, etc., are referred by Carducci to Guido Cavalcanti.
[64] See Vita e Poesie di Messer Cino da Pistoja, Pisa, Capurro, 1813. Also Barbèra's diamond edition of Cino da Pistoja and other poets, edited by Carducci.
[65] The tomb of Cino in the Duomo at Pistoja, with its Gothic canopies and the bass-reliefs which represent a Doctor of Laws lecturing to men of all ranks and ages at their desks beneath his professorial chair, is a fine contemporary monument. The great jurist is here commemorated, not the master of Petrarch in the art of song.
[66] Cp. Dante De Vulg. Eloq. i. 17, upon Cino's purification of Italian from vulgarisms, with Lorenzo de' Medici, who calls Cino "tutto delicato e veramente amoroso, il quale primo, al mio parere, cominciò l'antico rozzore in tutto a schifare." Lettera all'illustr. Sig. Federigo, Poesie (ed. Barbèra, 1858), p. 33.
[67] Il Canzoniere (Fraticelli's edition), p. 199.
[68] Voi che portate; Donna pietosa; Deh peregrini.
[69] See Rossetti's translation of the Vita Nuova.
[70] Rossetti's translation of the Vita Nuova.
[71] Donna del cielo; O benigna, o dolce; O bon Gesù. See Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo (Firenze, Morandi, 1828), vol. ii. pp. 212, 3; vol. i. p. 61.
[72] Not only the sixth Æneid, but the Dream of Scipio also, influenced the medieval imagination. The Biblical visions, whether allegorical like those of Ezekiel and Paul, or apocalyptic, like S. John's, exercised a similar control.
[73] See the little book of curious learning by Alessandro d'Ancona, entitled I Precursori di Dante, Firenze, Sansoni, 1874.
[74] See De Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. i. chap. 5. Of the Commedia Spirituale dell'Anima I have seen a Sienese copy of the date 1608, a reprint from some earlier Florentine edition. The Comedy is introduced by two boys, good and bad. The piece itself brings God as the Creator, the soul He has made, its guardian angel, the devil, the powers of Memory, Reason, Will, and all the virtues in succession, with corresponding vices, on the scene. It ends with the soul's judgment after death and final marriage to Christ. Dramatically, it is almost devoid of merit.
[75] See Revival of Learning, chapter ii.
[76] See above, Revival of Learning, chapter ii. I may also refer to an article by me in the Quarterly Review for October, 1878, from which I shall have occasion to draw largely in the following pages.
[77] Par. xvi.
[78] Carducci, "Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale:" Studi Letterari (Livorno, 1874), p. 60.
[79] The Divine Comedy was probably begun in earnest about 1303, and the Decameron was published in 1353.
[80] Boccaccio was called Giovanni della Tranquillità partly in scorn. He resented it, as appears from a letter to Zanobi della Strada (Op. Volg. vol. xvii. p. 101), because it implied a love of Court delights and parasitical idleness. In that letter he amply defends himself from such imputations, showing that he led the life of a poor and contented student. Yet the nickname was true in a deeper sense, as is proved by the very arguments of his apology, and confirmed by the description of his life at Certaldo remote from civic duties (Letter to Pino de' Rossi, ibid. p. 35), as well as by the tragi-comic narrative of his discomfort at Naples (Letter to Messer Francesco, ibid. pp. 37-87). Not only in these passages, but in all his works he paints himself a comfort-loving bourgeois, whose heart was set on his books, whose ideal of enjoyment was a satisfied passion of a sensual kind.
[81] See above, vol. ii. Revival of Learning, chap. ii. pp. 87-98.
[82] Boccaccio, Opere Volgari (Firenze, 1833), vol. xv. p. 18.
[83] Revival of Learning, p. 88.
[84] I may specially refer to the passages of the Amorosa Visione (cap. v. vi.) where he meets with Dante, "gloria delle muse mentre visse," "il maestro dal qual'io tengo ogni ben," "il Signor d'ogni savere;" also to the sonnets on Dante, and that most beautiful sonnet addressed to Petrarch after death at peace in heaven with Cino and Dante. See the Rime (Op. Volg. vol. xvi.), sonnets 8, 60, 97, 108.
[85] De Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. i. cap. 9.
[86] "Che la ragion sommettono al talento:" Inferno v. Compare these phrases:
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Le genti dolorose Che hanno perduto il ben dell'intelletto. —Inferno iii. |
And Semiramis:
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Che libito fe lecito in sua legge. —Inferno v. |
[87] In all his earlier works, especially in the Fiammetta, the Filostrato, the Ninfale Fiesolano, the Amorosa Visione, he sings the hymn of Il Talento, triumphant over medieval discipline. They form the proper prelude to what is sometimes called the Paganism of the Renaissance, but what is really a resurgence of the natural man. It was this talento which Valla philosophized, and Beccadelli and Pontano sang.
[88] One instance will suffice to illustrate the different methods of Boccaccio and Dante in dealing with the same material. We all know in what murk and filth Dante beheld Ciacco, the glutton, and what torments awaited Filippo Argenti, the fiorentino spirito bizzarro, upon the marsh of Styx (Inferno vi. and viii.). These persons play the chief parts in Giorn. ix. nov. 8, of the Decameron. They are still the spendthrift parasite, and the brutally capricious bully. But while Dante points the sternest moral by their examples, Boccaccio makes their vices serve his end of comic humor. The inexorableness of Dante is nowhere more dreadful than in the eighth Canto of the Inferno. The levity of Boccaccio is nowhere more superficial than in that Novella.
[89] See the little work, full of critical learning, by Adolfo Bartoli, I Precursori del Boccaccio, Firenze, Sansoni.
[90] See Le Novelle Antiche (another name for Il Novellino), per cura di Guido Biagi, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880. It is a curious agglomeration of anecdotes drawn from the history of the Suabian princes, Roman sources, the Arthurian legends, the Bible, Oriental apologues, fables, and a few ancient myths. That of Narcis, p. 66, is very prettily told. Only one tale is decidedly cynical. We find in the book selections made from the débris of a vast and various medieval library. French influence is frequently perceptible in the style.
[91] Precursori del Boccaccio, p. 57 to end.
[92] See Carmina Burana (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 1-112; Poems of Walter Mapes, by Thomas Wright (for Camden Society, 1841), pp. 1-257, for examples of these satiric poems. The Propter Syon non tacebo, Flete Sion filiæ, Utar contra vitia, should be specially noticed. Many other curious satires, notably one against marriage and the female sex, can also be found in Du Méril's three great collections, Poésies Populaires Latines antérieures au douzième Siècle, Poésies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age, and Poésies Inédites du Moyen Age, Paris, 1843-1847. Those to whom these works are not accessible, may find an excellent selection of the serious and jocular popular Latin medieval poetry in a little volume Gaudeamus! Carmina Vagorum selecta, Lipsiæ, Teubner, 1877. The question of their authorship has been fairly well discussed by Hubatsch, Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder, Görlitz, 1870.
[93] The erotic and drinking songs of the Vagi deserve to be carefully studied by all who wish to understand the germs of the Renaissance in the middle ages. They express a simple naturalism, not of necessity Pagan, though much is borrowed from the language of classical mythology. I would call attention in particular to Æstuans interius, Omittamus studia, O admirabile Veneris idolum, Ludo cum Cæcilia, Si puer cum puellula, and four Pastoralia, all of which may be found in the little book Gaudeamus cited above. In spontaneity and truth of feeling they correspond to the Latin hymns. But their spirit is the exact antithesis of that which produced the Dies Iræ and the Stabat Mater. The absence of erudition and classical imitation separates them from the poems of Beccadelli, Pontano, Poliziano, or Bembo. They present the natural material of neo-pagan Latin verse without its imitative form. It is youth rejoicing in its strength and lustihood, enjoying the delights of spring, laughing at death, taking the pleasures of the moment, deriding the rumores senum severiorum, unmasking hypocrisy in high places, at wanton war with constituted social shams. These songs were written by wandering students of all nations, who traversed Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, seeking special knowledge at the great centers of learning, following love-adventures, poor and careless, coldly greeted by the feudal nobility and the clergy, attached to the people by their habits but separated from them by their science. In point of faith these poets are orthodox. There is no questioning of ecclesiastical dogma, no anticipation of Luther, in their verses. This blending of theological conformity with satire on the Church and moral laxity is eminently characteristic of the Renaissance in Italy.
[94] See the last sentence of Giorn. iii. Nov. 1.
[95] Op. Volg. vol. xiv.
[96] Cap. xlix.
[97] Letter to Leigh Hunt, September 8, 1819.
[98] Op. Volg. vol. vii. p. 230. I am loth to attempt a translation of this passage, which owes its charm to the melody and rhythm of chosen words:—
"With ears intent upon the music, he began to go in the direction whence he heard it; and when he drew nigh to the fountain, he beheld the two maidens. They were of countenance exceeding white, and this whiteness was blent in seemly wise with ruddy hues. Their eyes seemed to be stars of morning, and their little mouths, of the color of a vermeil rose, became of pleasanter aspect as they moved them to the music of their song. Their tresses, like threads of gold, were very fair, and slightly curled went wandering through the green leaves of their garlands. By reason of the great heat their tender and delicate limbs, as hath been saaid above, were clad in robes of the thinnest texture, the which, made very tight above the waist, revealed the form of their fair bosoms, which like two round apples pushed the opposing raiment outward, and therewith in divers places the white flesh appeared through graceful openings. Their stature was of fitting size, and each limb well-proportioned."
[99] The description of the nymph Lia in the Ameto (Op. Volg. xv. 30-33) carries Boccaccio's manner into tedious prolixity.
[100] Boccaccio was a great painter of female beauty and idyllic landscape; but he had not the pictorial faculty in a wider sense. The frescoes of the Amorosa Visione, when compared with Poliziano's descriptions in La Giostra, are but meager notes of form. Possibly the progress of the arts from Giotto to Benozzo Gozzoli and Botticelli may explain this picturesque inferiority of the elder poet; but in reading Boccaccio we feel that the defect lay not so much in his artistic faculty as in the limitation of his sympathy to certain kinds of beauty.
[101] Dante (De Vulg. Eloq. ii. 2) observed that while there were three subjects of great poetry—War, Love, Morality—no modern had chosen the first of these themes. Boccaccio in the last Canto of the Teseide seems to allude to this:
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Poichè le muse nude cominciaro Nel cospetto degli uomini ad andare, Già fur di quelli che le esercitaro Con bello stile in onesto parlare, Ed altri in amoroso le operaro; Ma tu, o libro, primo a lor cantare Di Marte fai gli affanni sostenuti, Nel volgar Lazio mai più non veduti. |
[102] How far Boccaccio actually created the tale can be questioned. In the dedication to Fiammetta (Op. Volg. ix. 3), he says he found a very ancient version of his story, and translated it into rhyme and the latino volgare for the first time. Again, in the exordium to the first Book (ib. p. 10), he calls it:
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una storia antica Tanto negli anni riposta e nascosa Che latino autor non par ne dica Per quel ch'i' senta in libro alcuna cosa. |
We might perhaps conjecture that he had discovered the legend in a Byzantine MS.
[103] Carducci, "Cantilene, etc.," Op. cit. pp. 168, 170, 171, 173.
[104] Op. cit. p. 160.
[106] This appears from the conclusion (Op. Volg. viii. 376). Fiammetta was the natural daughter of Petrarch's friend and patron, King Robert. Boccaccio first saw her in the church of S. Lawrence at Naples, April 7, 1341.
[107] The history of this widely popular medieval romance has been traced by Du Méril in his edition of the thirteenth-century French version (Paris, 1856). He is of opinion that Boccaccio may have derived it from some Byzantine source. But this seems hardly probable, since Boccaccio gained his knowledge of Greek later in life. Certain indications in the Filocopo point to a Spanish original.
[108] See Op. Volg. vii. 6-11. Compare with these phrases those selected from the humanistic writings of a later date, Revival of Learning, p. 397.
[109] This is the climax (Parte Terza, stanza xxxii.):
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A cui Troilo disse; anima mia, I' te ne prego, sì ch'io t'abbia in braccio Ignuda sì come il mio cor disia. Ed ella allora: ve' che me ne spaccio; E la camicia sua gittata via, Nelle sue braccia si raccolse avvaccio; E stringnendo l'un l'altro con fervore, D'amor sentiron l'ultimo valore. |
[110] The Amorosa Visione ends with these words, Sir di tutta pace; their meaning is explained in previous passages of the same poem. At the end of cap. xlvi. the lady says:
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Io volli ora al presente far quieto Il tuo disio con amorosa pace, Dandoti l'arra che finirà il fleto. |
Again in cap. l. we read:
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E quel disio che or più ti tormenta Porrò in pace, con quella bellezza Che l'alma al cor tuttora ti presenta. |
The context reveals the nature of the peace to be attained. It is the satisfaction of an orgasm. We may compare the invocation to Venus and her promise at the end of the Caccia di Diana, canto xvii. (Op. Volg. xiv.). The time-honored language about "expelling all base thoughts" is here combined with the anticipation of sensual possession.
[111] Op. Volg. vi. 21, 89, 91.
[112] Bonucci in his edition of Alberti's works, conscious of that author's debt to Boccaccio, advances the wild theory that he wrote the Fiammetta. See Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti, vol. iii. p. 353.
[113] Laberinto d'Amore (Firenze, Caselli), p. 153, and p. 127.
[114] Ibid. p. 174.
[115] See [Age of the Despots], [p. 186, note].
[116] See Sonnets vii. and viii. of the Rime.
[117] The same motive occurs in the Ameto, where the power of love to refine a rustic nature is treated both in the prose romance and in the interpolated terza rima poems. See especially the song of Teogapen (Op. Volg. xv. 34).
[118] Boccaccio breaks the style and becomes obscenely vulgar at times. See Parte Quarta, xxxvi. xxxvii., Parte Quinta, xlv. xlvi. The innuendoes of the Ugellino and the Nicchio are here repeated in figures which anticipate the novels and capitoli of the cinque cento.
[119] Students may consult the valuable work of Vincenzo Nannucci, Manuale della Letteratura del primo secolo della Lingua Italiana, Firenze, Barbèra, 1874. The second volume contains copious specimens of thirteenth-century prose.
[120] Nannucci, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 95.
[121] The journals of Matteo Spinelli, ascribed to an Apulian of the thirteenth century, were long accepted as the earliest vernacular attempt at history in prose. It has lately been suggested, with good show of argument, that they are fabrications of the sixteenth century. With regard to the similar doubts affecting the Malespini Chronicles and Dino Compagni, I may refer to my discussion of this question in the first volume of this work, [Age of the Despots], pp. [251], [262-273].
[122] Nannucci, op. cit. p. 137.
[123] Of Villani's Chronicle I have already spoken sufficiently in the [Age of the Despots], [chap. 5], and of the Vita Nuova in this chapter (above, [pp. 67-70]).
[124] Vita Nuova, cap. 2.
[125] Filocopo, Op. Volg. vii. 4.
[126] Fioretti di S. Francesco (Venezia, 1853), p. 104.
[127] See below, the chapter on the Purists.
[128] See Capponi's Storia della Repubblica di Firenze, lib. iii. cap. 9, for a very energetic statement of this view.
[129] See Rime di M. Cino da Pistoja e d'altri del Secolo xiv. (Firenze, Barbèra, 1862), p. 528. It begins:
|
Ora è mancata ogni poësia E vote son le case di Parnaso. |
It contains the famous lines:
|
Come deggio sperar che surga Dante Che già chi il sappia legger non si trova? E Giovanni che è morto ne fe scola. |
Not less interesting is Sacchetti's funeral Ode for Petrarch (ibid. p. 517). Both show a keen sense of the situation with respect to the decline of literature.
[130] I may refer to the [Age of the Despots], 2nd edition, [pp. 58-65], for a brief review of the circumstances under which the Nation defined itself against the Church and the Empire—the ecclesiastical and feudal or chivalrous principles—during the Wars of Investiture and Independence. In Carducci's essay Dello Svolgimento delta Letteratura nazionale will be found an eloquent and succinct exposition of the views I have attempted to express in these paragraphs.
[131] Revival of Learning.
[132] It is not quite exact, though convenient, to identify Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio severally with the religious, chivalrous and national principles of which I have been speaking. Petrarch stands midway. With Dante he shares the chivalrous, with Boccaccio the humanistic side of the national element. Though Boccaccio anticipates in his work the literature of the Renaissance, yet Petrarch was certainly not less influential as an authority in style. Ariosto represents the fusion of both sections of the national element in literature—Italian is distinguished from Tuscan.
[133] See [Age of the Despots], [chap. 2].
[134] See above, [p. 138]. All that is known about Sacchetti's life may be found in the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, prefixed to Silvestri's edition of the Novelle.
[135] For Sacchetti's conception of a citizen's duty, proving him a son of Italy's heroic age, see the sonnet Amar la patria, in Monsignor Bottari's Discourse above mentioned.
[136] See the Sonnet Pien di quell'acqua written to Boccaccio on his entering the Certosa at Naples.
[137] Here too he mentions a translation of the Decameron into English.
[138] This should also be the place to mention the Novelle of Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca. They have lately been re-edited by Professor d'Ancona, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1871. They are short tales, historical and moral, drawn from miscellaneous medieval sources, and resembling the Novellino in type. Two of them (Novelle ix. and x., ed. cit. pp. 62-74) are interesting as forming part of the Legend of Dante the Poet.
[139] For example, the first Novel of the fourth day is the story which Shakspere dramatized in The Merchant of Venice, and forms, as every one can see, the authentic source of that comedy.
[140] It must be remarked that the text of Il Pecorone underwent Domenichi's revision in the sixteenth century, which may account for a certain flatness.
[141] See Carducci, Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali nei Secoli xiii e xiv, Pisa, Nistri, 1871. Pp. 176-205 contain a reprint of these lyrics. Carducci's work Intorno ad alcune Rime, Imola, 1876, may be consulted at pp. 54 et seq. for the origin, wide diffusion, and several species of the popular dance-song.
[142] Cantilene, etc. pp. 196, 199, 204.
[143] Cantilene, etc. p. 211.
[144] Cantilene, etc. p. 220.
[145] Ibid. p. 219. Compare Passando con pensier in the Rime di Messer Cino e d'altri (Barbèra), p. 563.
[146] Ibid. p. 233.
[147] Ibid. p. 231.
[148] Ibid. p. 214 and note. The popularity of this dance-poem is further proved by a pious parody written to be sung to the same air with it: "O vaghe di Gesù, o verginelle." See Laudi Spirituali (Firenze, Molini, 1863), p. 105.
[149] Ibid. pp. 217, 218.
[150] See ibid. pp. 252-256, 259, 263.
[151] It is enough to mention Exit diluculo, Vere dulci mediante, Æstivali sub fervore.
[152] I must briefly refer to Carducci's Essay on "Musica e Poesia nel mondo elegante italiano del secolo xiv," in his Studi Letterari, Livorno, Vigo, 1874, and to my own translations from some of the there published Madrigals in [Sketches and Studies in Italy], pp. 214-216.
[153] Carducci, Cantilene, pp. 265-296.
[154] Op. cit. p. 298.
[155] Op. cit. p. 301.
[156] Op. cit. p. 300.
[157] It may be worth mentioning that Soldanieri and Donati as well as Sacchetti belonged to the old nobility of Florence, the Grandi celebrated by name in Dante's Paradiso.
[158] See Trucchi's Poesie Inedite, and the Rime Antiche Toscane, cited above, for copious collections of these poets.
[159] This can be seen in Carducci's Cantilene, pp. 115, 116, 150, and in his Studi Letterari, pp. 374-446.
[160] O pellegrina Italia. Rime di Cino e d'altri (Barbèra), p. 318. I shall quote from this excellent edition of Carducci, as being most accessible to general readers. The Sermintese or Serventese, it may be parenthetically said, was a form of satirical and occasional lyric adapted from the Provençal Sirvente.
[161] Cino, etc. p. 342.
[162] Ibid. p. 334.
[163] Cino, etc. p. 548.
[164] Ibid. p. 586.
[165] Cino, etc. p. 391.
[166] Ibid. pp. 199, 200.
[167] Ibid. pp. 384, 389.
[168] Cino, etc. pp. 202, 211, 573, 390.
[169] Ibid. pp. 504, 535, 498.
[170] In the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, Section vi., printed before Sacchetti's Novelle.
[171] Cino, etc. pp. 445-474, 258-263.
[172] Navone's edition (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880), p. 56. The date of this sonnet must be about 1315. We have to choose between placing Folgore in that century or assigning the sonnet to some anonymous author. See [Appendix II.] for translations.
[173] Cino, etc. pp. 174-195, 420-441.
[174] Ibid. p. 418.
[175] Ibid. p. 197, 198.
[176] He was the author of the Ghibelline Canzoni quoted above.
[177] It was composed about 1360. I have seen two editions of this poem, Opera di Faccio degli uberti Fiorentino, Chiamato Ditta Mundi, Volgare. Impresso in Venetia per Christoforo di Pensa da Mondelo. Adi iiii. Setembrio MCCCCCI. The second is a version modernized in its orthography: Il Dittamondo, Milano, Silvestri, 1826. My quotations will be made from the second of these editions, which has the advantage of a more intelligible text.
[178] Lib. i., cap. 2. Cp. Fazio's Ode on Rome, above, p. 160.
[179] Lib. iii. cap. 9.
[180] Libro chiamato Quatriregio del Decorso de la Vita Humana in Terza Rima, Impresso in Venetia del MCCCCCXI a di primo di Decembrio. There is, I believe, a last century Foligno reprint of the Quadriregio; but I have not seen it.
[181] "Regno di Dio Cupido," "Regno di Sathan," "Regno delli Vitii," "Regno della Dea Minerva e di Virtù."
[182] Lib. i. cap. 1.
[183] Lib. ii. cap. 2.
[184] Lib. ii. cap. 7.
[185] See Ficini Epistolæ, 1495, folio 17. If possible, I will insert some further notice of Palmieri's poem in an Appendix.
[186] See Vasari (Lemonnier, 1849), vol. v. p. 115, and note. This work by Botticelli is now in England.
[187] I may refer curious readers to two Lamenti of Pre Agostino, condemned to the cage or Chebba at Venice for blasphemy. They are given at length by Mutinelli, Annali Urbani di Venezia, pp. 352-356.
[188] For instance, "Un Miracolo di S.M. Maddalena," in D'Ancona's Sacre Rappr. vol. i. p. 397.
[189] It would be an interesting study to trace the vicissitudes of terza rima from the Paradiso of Dante, through the Quadriregio and Dittamondo, to Lorenzo de' Medici's Beoni and La Casa's Capitolo del Forno. In addition to what I have observed above, it occurs to me to mention the semi-popular terza rima poems in Alberti's Accademia Coronaria (Bonucci's edition of Alberti, vol. i. pp. clxxv. et seq.) and Boiardo's comedy of Timone. Both illustrate the didactic use of the meter.
[190] Le Lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, Firenze, Barbèra, 1860. Edited and furnished with a copious commentary by Niccolò Tommaseo. Four volumes.
[191] Op. cit. vol. iv. pp. 5-12.
[192] See for example, the passages from Graziani's Chronicle of Perugia quoted by me in [Appendix IV.] to [Age of the Despots].
[193] See Alcune Lettere familiari del Sec. xiv, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1868. This collection contains letters by Lemmo Balducci (1333-1389), Filippo dell'Antella (circa 1398), Dora del Bene, Lanfredino Lanfredini (born about 1345), Coluccio Salutati (1330-1406), Giorgio Scali (died 1381), and Marchionne Stefani (died 1385).
[194] Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, Lettere di una Gentildonna Fiorentina del secolo xv, Firenze, Sansoni, 1877.
[195] See Revival of Learning, chap. 4, and [Age of the Despots], [chap. 5].
[196] Istorie Fiorentine scritte da Giov. Cavalcanti, 2 vols. Firenze, 1838.
[197] Besides Muratori's great collection and the Archivio Storico, the Chronicles of Lombard, Umbrian, and Tuscan towns have been separately printed too voluminously for mention in a note.
[198] L'Historia di Milano volgarmente scritta dall'eccellentissimo oratore M. Bernardino Corio, in Vinegia, per Giovan. Maria Bonelli, MDLIIII. "Cronaca della Città di Perugia dal 1492 al 1503 di Francesco Matarazzo detto Maturanzio," Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. xvi. par. ii. Of Corio's History I have made frequent use in the [Age of the Despots]. It is a book that repays frequent and attentive reperusals. Those students who desire to gain familiarity at first hand with Renaissance cannot be directed to a purer source.
[199] In [Studies in Italy and Greece], article "[Perugia]," I have dealt more at large with Matarazzo's Chronicle than space admits of here.
[200] Il Novellino di Masuccio Salernitano. Edited by Luigi Settembrini. Napoli, Morano, 1874.
[201] Introduction to Part iii. op. cit. p. 239. "Cognoscerai i lasciati vestigi del vetusto satiro Giovenale, e del famoso commendato poeta Boccaccio, l'ornatissimo idioma e stile del quale ti hai sempre ingegnato de imitare."
[202] For an instance of Masuccio's feudal feeling, take this. A knight kills a licentious friar—"alquanto pentito per avere le sue possenti braccia con la morte di un Fra Minore contaminato" (op. cit. p. 13). It emerges in his description of the Order of the Ermine (ibid. p. 240). It is curious to compare this with his strong censure of the point of honor (pp. 388, 389) in a story which has the same blunt sense as Ariosto's episode of Giocondo. The Italian here prevails over the noble.
[203] See especially Nov. xi. and xxxviii.
[204] Nov. ii. iii. v. xi. xviii. xxix.
[205] Nov. xxxi.—Masuccio's peculiar animosity against the clergy may be illustrated by comparing his story of the friar who persuaded the nun that she was chosen by the Holy Ghost (Nov. ii.) with Boccaccio's tale of the Angel Gabriel. See, too, the scene in the convent (Nov. vi.), the comedy of S. Bernardino's sermon (Nov. xvi.), the love-adventures of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia.
[206] For example, Nov. vii. xiii. v.
[207] Op. cit. pp. 292, 282, 391, 379.
[208] Nov. i. and xxviii. The second of these stories is dedicated to Francesco of Aragon, who, born in 1461, could not have been more than fifteen when this frightful tale of lust and blood was sent him. Nothing paints the manners of the time better than this fact.
[209] See op. cit. pp. 28, 68, 89, 141, 256, 273, 275, 380, 341, 343.
[210] For specimens of his invective read pp. 517, 273, 84, 275, 55, 65, 534. I have collected some of these passages, bearing on the clergy, in a [note to p. 458] of my [Age of the Despots], 2nd edition. No wonder that Masuccio's book was put upon the Index!
[211] Nov. xxvii, xxxiii. xxxv. xxxvii. xlviii.
[212] See Revival of Learning, pp. 341-344, for some account of Alberti's life and place among the humanists; [Fine Arts], p. 74, for his skill as an architect.
[213] Sacchetti, we have seen, called himself uomo discolo; Ser Giovanni proclaimed himself a pecorone; Masuccio had the culture of a nobleman; Corio and Matarazzo, if we are right in identifying the latter with Francesco Maturanzio, were both men of considerable erudition.
[214] The most charming monument of Alberti's memory is the Life by an anonymous writer, published in Muratori and reprinted in Bonucci's edition, vol. i. Bonucci conjectures, without any substantial reason, that it was composed by Alberti himself.
[215] For the Camera Optica, Reticolo de' dipintori, and Bolide Albertiana, see the Preface (pp. lxv.-lxix.) to Anicio Bonucci's edition of the Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti, Firenze, 1843, five vols. All references will be made to this comprehensive but uncritical collection. Hubert Janitschek's edition of the Treatises on Art should be consulted for its introduction and carefully prepared text—Vienna, 1877, in the Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte.
[216] The sentence of banishment was first removed in 1428; but the rights of burghership were only restored to the Alberti in 1434. Leo Battista finished the Treatise on Painting at Florence, Sept. 7, 1435 (see Janitschek, op. cit. p. iii.), and dedicated it to Brunelleschi, July 17, 1436. From that dedication it would seem that he had only recently returned.
[217] A passage in the Della Tranquillità dell'Animo (Op. Volg. i. 35), shows how Alberti had lived into the conception of cosmopolitan citizenship. It may be compared with another in the Teogenio (op. cit. iii. 194) wher he argues that love for one's country, even without residence in it, satisfies the definition of a citizen.
[218] Op. cit. ii. 215-221.
[219] Such phrases as i nostri maggiori patrizii in Roma (i. 37), la quasi dovuta a noi per le nostre virtù da tutte le genti riverenzia e obbedienzia (ii. 218), nostri ottimi passati Itali debellarono e sotto averono tutte le genti (ii. 9), might be culled in plenty. Alberti shows how deep was the Latin idealism of the Renaissance, and how impossible it would have been for the Italians to found their national self-consciousness on aught but a recovery of the past.
[220] Especially the fine passage beginning, "Quello imperio maraviglioso senza termini, quel dominio di tutte le genti acquistato con nostri latini auspici, ottenuto colla nostra industria, amplificato con nostre armi latine" (ii. 8); and the apostrophe, "E tu, Italia nobilissima, capo e arce di tutto l'universo mondo" (ib. 13).
[221] An example of servile submission to classical authority might be chosen from Alberti's discourse on Friendship (Famiglia, lib. iv. op. cit. ii. 415), where he adduces Sylla and Mark Antony in contradiction to his general doctrine that only upright conversation among friends can lead to mutual profit.
[222] Alberti's loss of training in the vernacular is noticed by his anonymous biographer (op. cit. i. xciv.). It will be observed by students of his writings that he does not speak of la nostra italiana but la nostra toscana (ii. 221). Again (iv. 12) in lingua toscana is the phrase used in his dedication of the Essay on Painting to Brunelleschi.
[223] The anonymous biographer says: "Scripsit præterea et affinium suorum gratia, ut linguæ latinæ ignaris prodesset, patrio sermone annum ante trigesimum ætatis suæ etruscos libros, primum, secundum, ac tertium de Familia, quos Romæ die nonagesimo quam inchoârat, absolvit; sed inelimatos et asperos neque usquequaquam etruscos ... post annos tres, quam primos ediderat, quartum librum ingratis protulit" (op. cit. i. xciv. c.). It appears from a reference in Book ii. (op. cit. ii. xxviii.) that the Treatise was still in process of composition after 1438; and there are strong reasons for believing that Book iii., as it is now numbered, was written separately and after the rest of the dialogue.
[224] Note especially the passage in Book iii., op. cit. ii. 256, et seq.
[225] There is, I think, good reason to believe the testimony of the anonymous biographer, who says this Treatise was written before Alberti's thirtieth year; and if he returned to Florence in 1434, we must take the date of his birth about 1404. The scene of the Tranquillità dell'Animo is laid in the Duomo at Florence; we may therefore believe it to have been a later work, and its allusions to the Famiglia are, in my opinion, trustworthy.
[226] The pedigree prefixed to the Dialogue in Bonucci's edition would help the student in his task. I will here cite the principal passages of importance I have noticed. In volume ii. p. 102, we find a list of the Alberti remarkable for literary, scientific, artistic, and ecclesiastical distinctions. On p. 124 we read of their dispersion over the Levant, Greece, Spain, France, England, Belgium, Germany, and the chief Italian towns. Their misfortunes in exile are touchingly alluded to with a sobriety of phrase that dignifies the grief it veils, in the noble passage beginning with p. 256. Their ancient splendor in the tournaments and games of Florence, when the people seemed to have eyes only for men of the Alberti blood, is described on p. 228; their palaces and country houses on p. 279. A list of the knights, generals, and great lawyers of the Casa Alberti is given at p. 346. The honesty of their commercial dealings and their reputation for probity form the themes of a valuable digression, pp. 204-206, where we learn the extent of their trade and the magnitude of their contributions to the State-expenses. On p. 210 there is a statement that this house alone imported from Flanders enough wool to supply the cloth-trade, not only of Florence, but also of the larger part of Tuscany. The losses of a great commercial family are reckoned on p. 357; while p. 400 supplies the story of one vast loan of 80,000 golden florins advanced by Ricciardo degli Alberti to Pope John. The friendship of Piero degli Alberti contracted with Filippo Maria Visconti and King Ladislaus of Naples is described in the autobiographical discourse introduced at pp. 386-399. This episode is very precious for explaining the relation between Italian princes and the merchants who resided at their courts. Their servant Buto, p. 375, should not be omitted from the picture; nor should the autobiographical narrative given by Giannozzo of his relation to his wife (pp. 320-328) be neglected, since this carries us into the very center of a Florentine home. The moral tone, the political feeling, and the domestic habits of the house in general must be studied in the description of the Casa, Bottega, and Villa, the discourses on education, and the discussion of public and domestic duties. The commercial aristocracy of Florence lives before us in this Treatise. We learn from it to know exactly what the men who sustained the liberties of Italy against the tyrants of Milan thought and felt, at a period of history when the old fabric of medieval ideas had broken down, but when the new Italy of the Renaissance had not yet been fully formed. If, in addition to the Trattato della Famiglia, the letters addressed by Alessandra Macinghi degli Strozzi to her children in exile be included in such a study, a vivid picture might be formed of the domestic life of a Florentine family.[A] These letters were written from Florence to sons of the Casa Strozzi at Naples, Bruges, and elsewhere between the years 1447 and 1465. They contain minute information about expenditure, taxation, dress, marriages, friendships, and all the public and personal relations of a noble Florentine family. Much, moreover, can be gathered from them concerning the footing of the members of the circle in exile. The private ricordi of heads of families, portions of which have been already published from the archives of the Medici and Strozzi, if more fully investigated, would complete this interesting picture in many of its important details.
[A] Lettere di una Gentildonna fiorentina, Firenze, Sansoni, 1877.
[227] Notice the discussion of wet-nurses, the physical and moral evils likely to ensue from an improper choice of the nurse (op. cit. ii. 52-56).
[228] These topics of Amicizia, as the virtue on which society is based, are further discussed in a separate little dialogue, La Cena di Famiglia (op. cit. vol. i.).
[229] [Age of the Despots], [pp. 239-243].
[230] In stating the question, and in all that concerns the MS. authority upon which a judgment must be formed, I am greatly indebted to the kindness of Signor Virginio Cortesi, who has placed at my disposal his unpublished Essay on the Governo della Famiglia di Agnolo Pandolfini. As the title of his work shows, he is a believer in Pandolfini's authorship.
[231] I use this word according to its present connotation. But such literary plagiarism was both more common and less disgraceful in the fifteenth century. Alberti himself incorporated passages of the Fiammetta in his Deifira, and Jacopo Nardi in his Storia Fiorentina appropriated the whole of Buonaccorsi's Diaries (1498-1512) with slight alterations and a singularly brief allusion to their author.
[232] Such information, as will be seen, is both vague and meager. The MSS. of the Governo in particular do not seem to have been accurately investigated, and are insufficiently described even by Cortesi. Yet this problem, like that of the Malespini and Compagni Chronicles, cannot be set at rest without a detailed comparison of all existing codices.
[233] The anonymous biographer expressly states that the fourth book was written later than the other three, and dedicated to the one Alberti who took any interest in the previous portion of the work. This, together with the isolation and more perfect diction of Book iii. is strong presumption in favor of its having been an afterthought.
[234] The Œconomicus of Xenophon served as common material for the Economico and the Governo, whatever we may think about the authorship of these two essays. Many parallel passages in Palmieri's Vita Civile can be referred to the same source. To what extent Alberti knew Greek is not ascertained; but even in the bad Latin translations of that age a flavor so peculiar as that of Xenophon's style could not have escaped his fine sense.
[235] See Op. Volg. vol. i. pp. lxxxvi.-lxxxviii.
[236] Op. Volg. ii. p. 223.
[237] Op. Volg. i. 10.
[238] It should, however, be added that Vespasiano alludes to Pandolfini's habits of study and composition after his retirement to Signa. Yet he does not cite the Governo.
[239] It is clear that all this reasoning upon internal evidence can be turned to the advantage of both sides in the dispute. The question will have finally to be settled on external grounds (comparison of MSS.), combined with a wise use of such arguments from style as have already been cited.
[240] Anyhow, and whatever may have been the source of Alberti's Economico, the whole scene describing exile and winding up with the tirade against a political career, is a very noble piece of writing. If space sufficed, it might be quoted as the finest specimen of Alberti's eloquence. See Op. Volg. v. pp. 256-266.
[241] See Op. Volg. Preface to vol. v.
[242] It is greatly to be desired that Signor Cortesi should print this Studio Critico and, if possible, append to it an account of the MSS. on which Pandolfini's claims to be considered the original author rest.
[243] Op. Volg. vol. iii. The meaning of the title appears on p. 132, where the word Iciarco is defined Supremo uomo e primario principe della famiglia sua. It is a compound of οἶκος and ἀρχή.
[244] See pp. 24, 28, 88, and the fine humanistic passage on p. 47, which reads like an expansion of Dante's Fatti non foste per viver come bruti in Ulysses' speech to his comrades.
[245] Op. Volg. vol. i.
[246] He calls it il nostro tempio massimo and speaks of il culto divino, pp. 7-9.
[247] Op. Volg. vol. iii.
[248] Ibid. p. 160. This enables us to fix the date within certain limits. Niccolò III. of Este died 1441. Lionello died 1450. Alberti speaks of the essay as having been already some time in circulation. It must therefore have been written before 1440.
[249] Like Boccaccio, Alberti is fond of bad Greek etymologies. Perhaps we may translate these names, "the God-born" and "the little pupil." In the same dialogue Tichipedio seems to be "the youth of fortune."
[250] See Revival of Learning, p. 339.
[251] Op. Volg. iii. 179.
[252] Ibid. p. 186.
[253] Op. Volg. vol. ii. pp. 320-322.
[254] Il Santo. Probably S. John.
[255] Alberti in a Letter of Condolement to a friend (Op. Volg. v. 357) chooses examples from the Bible. Yet the tone of that most strictly pious of his writings is rather Theistic than Christian.
[256] Op. Volg. vol. iv. See, too, Janitschek's edition cited above.
[257] Bonucci believes it was composed in Italian. Janitschek gives reasons for the contrary theory (op. cit. p. iii.).
[258] Op. Volg. vols. iii. and v.
[259] Passages in the plays of our own dramatists warn us to be careful how we answer in the negative. But here are some specimens of Amiria's recipes (op. cit. v. 282). "Radice di cocomeri spolverizzata, bollita in orina, usata più dì, lieva dal viso panni e rughe. Giovavi sangue di tauro stillato a ogni macula, sterco di colombe in aceto ... insieme a sterco di cervio ... lumache lunghe ... sterco di fanciullo ... sangue d'anguille." All these things are recommended, upon one page, for spots on the skin. I can find nothing parallel in the very curious toilet book called Gli Ornamenti delle Dame, scritti per M. Giov. Marinelli, Venetia, Valgrisio, 1574.
[260] Op. Volg. vol. iii. 367; vol. i. 191, 215.
[261] Op. Volg. v. 233.
[262] Op. Volg. i. 236.
[263] I may refer to the Latin song against marriage, Sit Deo gloria (Du Méril, Poésies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age, pp. 179-187), for an epitome of clerical virulence and vileness on this topic.
[264] Op. Volg. iii. 274.
[265] Op. Volg. v. 352.
[266] Ibid. pp. 355-359, 367-372.
[267] For example the lines beginning "Sospetto e cure." Ibid. p. 368.
[268] Op. Volg. i. lxv. He was not alone in this experiment. Barbarous Italian Sapphics and Hexameters are to be found in the Accademia Coronaria on Friendship, of which more in the next [chapter].
[269] De Re Ædificatoria, Florence, 1485. This preface is a letter addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici.
[270] "Quicquid ingenio esset hominum cum quâdam effectum elegantiâ, id prope divinum dicebat," says the anonymous biographer. This sentence is the motto of humanism as elaborated by the artistic sense. Its discord with the religion of the middle ages is apparent.
[271] Op. Volg. i. 8.
[272] This we learn from the last words of the first edition, "Tarvisii cum decorissimis Poliae amore lorulis distineretur misellus Poliphilus MCCCCLVII." The author's name is given in the initial letters to the thirty-eight chapters of the book.
[273] For this and other points about the Hypnerotomachia see Ilg's treatise Ueber der Kunsthistorischen Werth der Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Wien, Braunmüller, 1872.
[274] It ought, however, to be said that, being the first paragraph of the whole book, its style is not so free and simple as in more level passages. Though I do not pretend to understand the meaning clearly, I subjoin a translation.—"Phœbus advancing at that moment, when the forehead of Matuta Leucothea whitened, already free from Ocean's waves, had not yet shown his whirling wheels suspense. But bent with his swift chargers, Pyrous first and Eous just disclosed to view, on painting the pale chariot of his daughter with vermeil roses, in most vehement flight pursuing her, made no delay. And sparkling over the azure and unquiet wavelets, his light-showering tresses flowed in curls. Upon whose advent at that point descending to her rest stayed Cynthia without horns, urging the two steeds of her carriage with the Mule, the one white and the other dark, drawing toward the furthest horizon which divides the hemispheres where she had come, and, routed by the piercing star who lures the day, was yielding. At that time when the Riphaean mountains were undisturbed, nor with so cold a gust the rigid and frost-creating east-wind with the side-blast blowing made the tender branches quake, and tossed the mobile stems and spiked reeds and yielding grasses, and vexed the pliant tendrils, and shook the flexible willows, and bent the frail fir-branches 'neath the horns of Taurus in their wantonness. As in the winter time that wind was wont to breathe. Likewise the boastful Orion was at the point of staying to pursue with tears the beauteous Taurine shoulder of the seven sisters."
[275] When the book was translated into French and republished at Paris in the sixteenth century, the blocks were imitated, and at a later epoch it became fashionable to refer them to Raphael. The mistake was gross. Its only justification is the style adopted by the French imitators in their rehandling of the illustrations to Poliphil's soul pleading before Venus. These cuts seem to have felt the influence of the Farnesina frescoes.
[276] Here is the description of Poliphil's reception by the damsels: "Respose una lepidula placidamente dicendo. Da mi la mano. Hora si tu sospite & il bene venuto. Nui al presento siamo cinque sociale comite come il vedi. Et io me chiamo Aphea. Et questa che porta li buxuli & gli bianchissimi liuteamini, e nominata Offressia. Et questaltra che dil splendente speculo (delitie nostre) e gerula, Orassia e il suo nome. Costei che tene la sonora lyra, e dicta Achoe. Questa ultima, che questo vaso di pretiosissimo liquore baiula, ha nome Geussia."
[277] A portion of the passage describing this dalliance may be extracted as a further specimen of the author's style: "Cum lascivi vulti, et gli pecti procaci, ochii blandienti et nella rosea fronte micanti e ludibondi. Forme prae-excellente, Habiti incentivi, Moventie puellare, Risguardi mordenti, Exornato mundissimo. Niuna parte simulata, ma tutto dalla natura perfecto, cum exquisita politione, Niente difforme ma tutto harmonia concinnissima, Capi flavi cum le trece biondissime e crini insolari tante erano bellissime complicate, cum cordicelle, o vero nextruli di seta e di fili doro intorte, quanto che in tutto la operatione humana excedevano, circa la testa cum egregio componimento invilupate e cum achi crinali detente, e la fronte di cincinni capreoli silvata, cum lascivula inconstantia praependenti." There is an obvious study of Boccaccesque phrase, with a no less obvious desire to improve upon its exquisiteness of detail, masking an incapacity to write connectedly.
[278] The reiteration of sensuous phrases is significant. These inscriptions, παντων τοκαδι, παν δει ποιειν κατα την αυτου φυσιν, γονος και ευφυια, together with the Triumphs of Priapus and Cupid, accord with the supremacy of Venus Physizoe.
[279] See Rosmini, Vita di Filelfo, vol. ii. p. 13, for Filelfo's dislike of Italian. In the dedication of his Commentary to Filippo Maria Visconti he says: "Tanto più volentieri ho intrapreso questo comento, quanto dalla tua eccellente Signoria non solo invitato sono stato, ma pregato, lusingato et provocato." The first Canto opens thus:
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O Philippo Maria Anglo possente, Perchè mi strengi a quel che non poss'io? Vuoi tu ch'io sia ludibrio d'ogni gente? |
[280] Dated Milan, Feb. 1477. Rosmini, op. cit. p. 282.
[281] Ercolano (in Vinetia, Giunti, 1570), p. 185.
[282] Prose Volgari, etc., edite da I. del Lungo (Firenze, Barbèra, 1867), p. 80.
[283] Prose, etc., op. cit. pp. 45 et seq. pp. 3 et seq.
[284] Alberti, Op. Volg. vol. i. pp. clxvii.-ccxxxiii. The quality of these Latin meters may be judged from the following hexameters:
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Ma non prima sarà che 'l Dato la musa corona Invochi, allora subito cantando l'avete, Tal qual si gode presso il celeste Tonante. |
Of the Sapphics the following is a specimen:
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Eccomi, i' son qui Dea degli amici, Quella qual tutti li omini solete Mordere, e falso fugitiva dirli, Or la volete. |
[285] Carducci, "Della Rime di Dante Alighieri," Studi, p. 154.
[286] For Giotto's and Orcagna's poems, see Trucchi, vol. ii. pp. 8 and 25.
[287] See above, [pp. 17] et seq.
[288] The Tavola Ritonda has been reprinted, 2 vols., Bologna, Romagnoli, 1864. It corresponds very closely in material to our Mort d'Arthur, beginning with the history of Uther Pendragon and ending with Arthur's wound and departure to the island of Morgan le Fay.
[289] See above, [p. 18]. The subject of these romances has been ably treated by Pio Rajna in his works, I Reali di Francia (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1872), and Le Fonti dell'Orlando Furioso (Firenze, Sansoni, 1876).
[290] The Rinaldino, a prose romance recently published (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865), might be selected as a thoroughly Italian fioritura on the ancient Carolingian theme.
[291] We have here the germ of the Orlando and of the first part of the Morgante.
[292] Rajna, I Reali, p. 320, fixes the date of its composition at a little before 1420.
[293] Ibid. p. 3.
[294] I Reali, pp. 311-319.
[295] The Storie Nerbonesi were published in two vols. (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1877), under the editorship of I.G. Isola. The third volume forms a copious philological and critical appendix.
[296] Guerino was versified in octave stanzas, by a poet of the people called L'Altissimo, in the sixteenth century.
[297] See I Novellieri Italiani in Verso by Giamb. Passano (Romagnoli, 1868). The whole Decameron was turned into octave stanzas by V. Brugiantino, and published by Marcolini at Venice in 1554. Among Novelle versified for popular reading may be cited, Masetto the Gardener (Decam. Giorn. iii. 1), Romeo and Juliet (Verona, 1553), Il Grasso, Legnaiuolo (by B. Davanzati, Florence, 1480), Prasildo and Lisbina (from the Orlando Innamorato), Oliva, Fiorio e Biancifiore (the tale of the Filocopo). Of classical tales we find Sesto Tarquinio et Lucretia, Orpheo, Perseo, Piramo, Giasone e Medea.
[298] Tancredi Principe di Salerno, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1863. Il Marchese di Saluzzo e la Griselda, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1862.
[299] See above, [p. 212]. The literary hesitations of an age as yet uncertain of its aim might be illustrated from these romances. Of Ippolito e Leonora we have a prose, an ottava rima, and a Latin version. Of Griselda we have Boccaccio's Italian, and Petrarch's Latin prose, in addition to the anonymous ottava rima version. Of the Principe di Salerno we have Boccaccio's Italian, and Lionardo Bruni's Latin versions in prose, together with Filippo Beroaldo's Latin elegiacs, Francesco di Michele Accolti's terza rima and Benivieni's octave stanzas. Lami in his Novelle letterarie (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1859) prints an Italian novella on the same story, which he judges anterior to the Decameron. Later on, Annibal Guasco produced another ottava rima version; and the tale was used by several playwrights in the composition of tragedies.
[300] La Storia di Ginevra Almieri che fu sepolta viva in Firenze (Pisa, Nistri, 1863).
[301] The same point is illustrated by the tales of the Marchese di Saluzzo and the Principe di Salerno, which produced the novels of Griselda and Tancredi. See notes to [p. 250], above.
[302] Raccolta dei Novellieri Italiani, vol. xiii.
[303] Op. cit. vol. xiii. An allusion to Masuccio in this novel is interesting, since it proves the influence he had acquired even in Florence: "Masuccio, grande onore della città di Salerno, molto imitatore del nostro messer Giovanni Boccaccio," ib. p. 34. Pulci goes on to say that the reading of the Novellino had encouraged him to write his tale.
[304] See D'Ancona, La Poesia Popolare Italiana, pp. 64-79.
[305] A fine example of these later Lamenti has been republished at Bologna by Romagnoli, 1864. It is the Lamento di Fiorenza upon the siege and slavery of 1529-30.
[306] A medieval specimen of this species of composition is the Ballata for the Reali di Napoli in the defeat of Montecatini. See Carducci's Cino e Altri, p. 603.
[307] D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 78.
[308] Sermintese Storico di A. Pucci, Livorno, Vigo, 1876. It will be remembered that Dante in the Vita Nuova (section vi.) says he composed a Serventese on sixty ladies of Florence. The name was derived from Provence, and altered into Sermintese by the Florentines. We possess a poem of this sort by A. Pucci on the Florentine ladies, printed by D'Ancona in his edition of the Vita Nuova (Pisa, Nistri, p. 71), together with a valuable discourse upon this form of poetry. Carducci in his Cino e Altri prints two Sermintesi by Pucci on the beauties of women.
[309] D'Ancona, Poesia Popolare Italiana, pp. 47-50, has collected from Leonardo Bruno and other sources many interesting facts about Pope Martin's anger at this ditty. He seems to have gone to the length of putting Florence under an interdict.
[310] D'Ancona, op. cit. pp. 51-56.
[311] One of the last plebeian rhymes on politics comes from Siena, where, in the year 1552, the people used to sing this couplet in derision of the Cardinal of the Mignanelli family sent to rule them:
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Mignanello, Mignanello, Non ci piace il tuo modello. |
See Benci's Storia di Montepulciano (Fiorenza, Massi e Landi, 1641), p. 104. An anecdote from Busini (Lettere al Varchi, Firenze, Le Monnier, p. 220) is so characteristic of the popular temper under the oppression of Spanish tyranny that its indecency may be excused. He says that a law had been passed awarding, "quattro tratti di corda ad uno che, tirando una c—— disse: Poi che non si può parlare con la bocca, io parlerò col c——."
[312] See the work entitled Sulle Poesie Toscane di Domenico il Burchiello nel secolo xv, G. Gargani, Firenze, Tip. Cenn. 1877.
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Intendi a me, che già studiai a Pisa, E ogni mal conosco senza signo. |
Sonetti del Burchiello, del Bellincioni, e d'altri, 1757, Londra, p. 125. See, too, the whole sonnet Son medico in volgar.
[314] Gargani, op. cit. p. 23, extract from the Catasto, 1427: "Domenicho di Giovanni barbiere non ha nulla."
[315] The parallel between these passages of Burchiello's life and Filelfo's at the same period is singular. See Revival of Learning, p. 275.
[316] Gargani, op. cit. p. 90.
[317] The best edition bears the date Londra, 1757.
[318] The edition cited above includes Sonetti alla Burchiellesca by a variety of writers. The strange book called Pataffio, which used to be ascribed to Brunetto Latini, seems born of similar conditions.
[319] Florentines themselves take this view, as is proved by the following sentence from Capponi: "È pure qui obbligo di registrare anche il Burchiello, barbiere di nome rimasto famoso, perchè fece d'un certo suo gergo poesia forse arguta ma triviale; oscura oggi, ma popolare nei tempi suoi e che ebbe inclusive imitatori" (Storia della Rep. di Firenze, ii. 176).
[320] See the Sonnet quoted in Note 59 to Mazzuchelli's Life of Berni, Scrittori d'Italia, vol. iv.
[321] The Ballata or Canzone a Ballo, as its name implies, was a poem intended to be sung during the dance. A musician played the lute while young women executed the movements of the Carola (so beautifully depicted by Benozzo Gozzoli in his Pisan frescoes), alone or in the company of young men, singing the words of the song. The Ballata consisted of lyric stanzas with a recurrent couplet. It is difficult to distinguish the Ballate from the Canzonette d'Amore.
[322] See Carducci, Cantilene e Ballate (Pisa, 1871), pp. 82, 83.
[323] Ibid. pp. 171-173.
[324] Ibid. pp. 214-217.
[325] A volume of ancient Canzoni a Ballo was published at Florence in 1562, by Sermatelli, and again in 1568.
[326] Le Rime di Messer A. Poliziano, pp. 295, 346.
[327] See Laude Spirituali di Feo Belcari e di Altri, Firenze, 1863. The hymn Crocifisso a capo chino, for example, has this heading: "Cantasi come—Una donna d'amor fino," which was by no means a moral song (ib. p. 16). D'Ancona in his Poesia Pop. It. pp. 431-436, has extracted the titles of these profane songs, some of which are to be found in the Canzoni a Ballo (Firenze, 1568), and Canti Carnascialeschi (Cosmopoli, 1750), while the majority are lost.
[328] The books which I have consulted on this branch of vernacular poetry are (1) Tommaseo, Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici e greci, Venezia, 1841. (2) Tigri, Canti popolari toscani, Firenze, 1869. (3) Pitré, Canti popolari siciliani, and Studi di poesia popolare, Palermo, 1870-1872. (4) D'Ancona, La Poesia popolare italiana, Livorno, 1878. (5) Rubieri, Storia della poesia popolare italiana, Firenze, 1877. Also numerous collections of local songs, of which a good list is furnished in D'Ancona's work just cited. Bolza's edition of Comasque poetry, Dal Medico's of Venetian, Ferraro's of Canti Monferrini (district of Montferrat), Vigo's of Sicilian, together with Imbriani's of Southern and Marcoaldo's of Central dialects, deserve to be specially cited. The literature in question is already voluminous, and bids fair to receive considerable additions.
[329] I take this example at random from Blessig's Römische Ritornelle (Leipzig, 1860), p. 48:
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Flower of Pomegranate tree! Your name, O my fair one, is written in heaven; My name it is writ on the waves of the sea. |
[330] The term Villotta or Vilota is special, I believe, to Venice and the Friuli. D'Ancona identifies it with Rispetto, Rubieri with Stornello. But it has the character of a quatrain, and seems therefore more properly to belong to the former.
[331] Tigri, p. 123. Translated by me thus:
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Ah, when will dawn that blissful day When I shall softly mount your stair, Your brothers meet me on the way, And one by one I greet them there! When comes the day, my staff, my strength, To call your mother mine at length? When will the day come, love of mine, I shall be yours and you be mine! |
[332] Pitrè, vol. i. p. 185. Translated by me thus, with an alteration in the last couplet:
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When thou wert born, O beaming star! Three holy angels flew to earth; The three kings from the East afar Brought gold and jewels of great worth; Three eagles on wings light as air Bore the news East and West and North. O jewel fair, O jewel rare, So glad was heaven to greet thy birth. |
[333] Dalmedico, Canti Ven. p. 69:
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Many there are who when they hear me sing, Cry: There goes one whose joy runs o'er in song! But I pray God to give me succoring; For when I sing, 'tis then I grieve full strong. |
[334] For instance, Rispetti in the valley of the Po are called Romanelle. In some parts of Central Italy the Stornello becomes Mottetto or Raccommandare. The little Southern lyrics known as Arii and Ariette at Naples and in Sicily, are elsewhere called Villanelle or Napolitane and Siciliane. It is clear that in this matter of nomenclature great exactitude cannot be sought.
[335] The proofs adduced by D'Ancona in his Poesia popolare, pp. 177-284, seem to me conclusive on this point.
[336] See Pitrè, Studi di Poesia popolare (Palermo, Lauriel, 1872), two essays on "I Poeti del Popolo Siciliano," and "Pietro Fullone e le sfide popolari," pp. 81-184. He gives particulars relating to contemporary improvisations. See, too, the Essays by L. Vigo, Opere (Catania, 1870-74), vol. ii.
[337] Op. cit. pp. 285, 288-294.
[338] I may refer at large to Tigri's collection, and to my translations of these Rispetti in [Sketches in Italy and Greece].
[339] Carducci, Cantilene, p. 57.
[340] See Rubieri, Storia della poesia popolare, pp. 352-356, for a selection of variants.
[341] The terms employed above require some illustration. Poliziano's Canzonet, La pastorella si leva per tempo, is a pasticcio composed of fragments from popular songs in vogue at his day. We possess three valuable poems—one by Bronzino, published in 1567; one by Il Cieco Bianchino of Florence, published at Verona in 1629; the third by Il Cieco Britti of Venice, published in the same year—which consist of extracts from popular lyrics united together by the rhymster. Hence their name incatenatura. See Rubieri, op. cit. pp. 121, 130, 212. See, too, D'Ancona, op. cit. pp. 100-105, 146-172, for the text and copious illustrations from contemporary sources of Bronzino's and Il Cieco Bianchino's poems.
[342] Prose Volgari, etc., di A.A. Poliziano (Firenze, Barbèra, 1867), p. 74. "Siamo tutti allegri, e facciamo buona cera, e becchiamo per tutta la via di qualche rappresaglia e Canzone di Calen di Maggio, che mi sono parute più fantastiche qui in Acquapendente, alla Romanesca, vel nota ipsa vel argumento."
[343] See D'Ancona, op. cit. pp. 354-420, for copious and interesting notices of the popular press in several Italian towns. The Avallone of Naples, Cordella of Venice, Marescandoli of Florence, Bertini and Baroni of Lucca, Colomba of Bologna, all served the special requirements of the proletariate in town and country. G.B. Verini of Florence made anthologies called L'Ardor d'Amore and Crudeltà d'Amore in the sixteenth century, both of which are still reprinted. The same is true of the Olimpia and Gloria of Olimpo degli Alessandri of Sassoferrato. The subordinate titles commonly used in these popular Golden Treasuries are, "Canzoni di amore," "di gelosia," "di sdegno," "di pace e di partenza." Their classification and description appear from the following rubrics: "Mattinate," "Serenate," "Partenze," "Strambotti," "Sdegni," "Sonetti," "Villanelle," "Lettere," "Affetti d'Amore," etc.
[344] Upon this point consult Rubieri, op. cit. chap. xiv. In Sicily the Ciure, says Pitrè, is reckoned unfit for an honest woman's mouth.
[345] The South seems richer in this material than the Center. See Pitrè's Canti Pop. Sic. vol. ii., among the Leggende e Storie, especially La Comare, Minni-spartuti, Principessa di Carini, L'Innamorata del Diavolo, and some of the bandit songs.
[346] Palermo, Lauriel, 1875.
[347] Canti Monferrini (Torino-Firenze, Loescher, 1870), pp. 1, 6, 14, 26, 28, 34, 42. One of the ballads cited above, La Sisilia, is found in Sicily.
[348] Ibid. p. 48.
[349] It does not occur in the Canti Monferrini.
[350] See my letter to the Rassegna Settimanale, March 9, 1879, on the subject of this ballad. Though I begged Italian students for information respecting similar compositions my letter only elicited a Tuscan version of the Donna Lombarda.
[351] Op. cit. p. 106.
[352] D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 106.
[353] Ibid. pp. 99, 105.
[354] See Child's English and Scottish Ballads, vol. ii. pp. 244, et seq.
[355] Bolza, Canz. Pop. Comasche, No. 49. Here is the Scotch version from Lord Donald:
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What will ye leave to your true-love, Lord Donald, my son? What will ye leave to your true-love, my jollie young man? The tow and the halter, for to hang on yon tree, And lat her hang there for the poisoning o' me. |
[356] This is the Scotch version, with the variant of Lord Randal:
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What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son? What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man? I gat eels boiled in broo; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down. What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randal, my son? What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man? O, they swelled and they died; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down. |
[357] In Passano's I Novellieri Italiani in Verso I find, at p. 20, the notice of a poem, in octave stanzas, which corresponds exactly to the Heir of Lynn. Published at Venice, 1530, 1531, 1542, it bears this title: "Essempio dun giovane ricchissimo; qual consumata la ricchezza: disperato a un trave si sospese. Nel qual il padre previsto il suo fatalcorso gia molti anni avanti infinito tesoro posto havea, et quello per il carico fracassato, la occulta moneta scoperse." The young man's name is Fenitio. I have not seen this poem, and since it is composed in ottava rima it cannot be classed exactly with the Avvelenato. Passano also catalogues the Historia di tre Giovani disperati e di tre fate, and the Historia di Leon Bruno, which seem to contain ballad elements.
[358] Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. viii. 712.
[359] A curious letter describing the entrance of the Battuti into Rome in 1399 may be read in Romagnoli's publication Le Compagnie de' Battuti in Roma, Bologna, 1862. It refers to a period later by a century than the first outbreak of the enthusiasm.
[360] Some banners—Gonfaloni or Stendardi—of the Perugian fraternities, preserved in the Pinacoteca of that town, are interesting for their illustration of these religious companies at a later date. The Gonfalone of S. Bernardino by Bonfigli represents the saint between heaven and earth pleading for his votaries. Their Oratory (Cappella di Giustizia) is seen behind, and in front are the men and women of the order. That of the Societas Annuntiatæ with date 1466, shows a like band of lay brethren and sisters. That of the Giustizia by Perugino has a similar group, kneeling and looking up to Madonna, who is adored by S. Francis and S. Bernardino in the heavens. Behind is a landscape with a portion of Perugia near the Church of S. Francis. The Stendardo of the Confraternità di S. Agostino by Pinturicchio exhibits three white-clothed members of the body, kneeling and gazing up to their patron. There is also a fine picture in the Perugian Pinacoteca by Giov. Boccati of Camerino (signed and dated 1447) representing Madonna enthroned in a kind of garden, surrounded by child-like angels with beautiful blonde hair, singing and reading from choir books in a double row of semi-circular choir-stalls. Below, S. Francis and S. Dominic are leading each two white Disciplinati to the throne. These penitents carry their scourges, and holes cut in the backs of their monastic cloaks show the skin red with stripes. One on either side has his face uncovered: the other wears the hood down, with eye-holes pierced in it. This picture belonged to the Confraternity of S. Domenico.
[361] Cantici di Jacopone da Todi (Roma, Salviano, 1558), p. 64. I quote from this edition as the most authentic, and reproduce its orthography.
[362] This Life is prefixed to Salviano's Roman edition of Jacopone's hymns, 1558.
[363] The biographer adds, "Ma fu si horribile e spiacevole a vedere che conturbò tutta quella festa, lasciando ogniuno pieno di amaritudine."
[364] See above, [p. 284]. The seventeenth-century editor of Jacopone and his followers, Tresatti, has justly styled this repulsive but characteristic utterance, "invettiva terribile contro di se."
[365] Op. cit. p. 109.
[366] Ibid. p. 77.
[367] Ibid. p. 122. See [Appendix].
[368] Ibid. p. 45.
[369] It is printed in Salviano's, and reproduced in Tresatti's edition. I have followed the reading offered by D'Ancona, Origini del Teatro, vol. i. p. 142. See Translation in [Appendix].
[370] The word Corrotto, used by Mary, means lamentation for the dead. It corresponds to the Greek Threnos, Corsican Vocero, Gaelic Coronach.
[371] Le Poesie spirituali del Beato Jacopone da Todi. In Venetia, appresso Niccolò Miserrimi, MDCXVII. The book is a thick 4to, consisting of 1,055 pages, closely printed. It contains a voluminous running commentary. The editor, Tresatti, a Minorite Friar, says he had extracted 211 Cantici of Jacopone from MSS. belonging to his Order, whereas the Roman and Florentine editions, taken together, contained 102 in all. He divides them into seven sections: (1) Satires, (2) Moral Songs, (3) Odes, (4) Penitential Hymns, (5) The Theory of Divine Love, (6) Spiritual Love Poems, (7) Spiritual Secrets. This division corresponds to seven stages in the soul's progress toward perfection. The arrangement is excellent, though the sections in some places interpenetrate. For variety of subjects, the collection is a kind of lyrical encyclopædia, touching all needs and states of the devout soul. It might supply material for meditation through a lifetime to a heart in harmony with its ascetic and erotically enthusiastic tone.
[372] Op. cit. p. 149.
[373] Ibid. p. 244.
[374] Ibid. p. 253.
[375] Op. cit. p. 266. See Translation in [Appendix].
[376] Op. cit. p. 306.
[377] Ibid. p. 343.
[378] Op. cit. pp. 416, 420.
[379] Ibid. p. 433.
[380] Op. cit. p. 703.
[381] Ibid. p. 741.
[382] Ibid. p. 715.
[383] Opere di Girolamo Benivieni (Venegia, G. de Gregori, 1524), p. 151.
[384] Op. cit. p. 143. I have only translated the opening stanzas of this hymn.
[385] Published at Florence by Molini and Cecchi, 1863. Compare the two collections printed by Prof. G. Ferraro from Ferrarese MSS. Poesie popolari religiose del secolo xiv. Bologna, Romagnoli, 1877.
[386] Laude, etc. p. 105.
[387] Op. cit. p. 16. See Canzone a Ballo, etc. (Firenze, 1568), p. 30, on this song.
[388] Op. cit. pp. 96, 227, 50.
[389] See op. cit. pp. 227, 234, and passim.
[390] Carducci, Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale, p. 90.
[391] See Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. xxiv. 1205, and ibid. 1209, Friulian Chronicle.
[392] See the frontispiece to Laude di Feo Belcari e di altri.
[393] D'Ancona, Or. del T. op. cit. vol. i. p. 109.
[394] The phases of this progress from ottonari to ottava rima have been carefully traced by D'Ancona (op. cit. vol. i. pp. 151-165). Ottonari are lines of eight syllables with a loose trochaic rhythm, in which great licenses of extra syllables are allowed. The stanza rhymes a b a b c c. The sesta rima of the transition has the same rhyming structure. The Corrotto by Jacopone da Todi, analyzed above, shows a similar system of rhymes to that of some Latin hymns: a a a b c c c b, the b rhyme in ato being carried through the whole poem.
[395] See above, [pp. 292-294], and [Appendix].
[396] D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 108. At p. 282 he gives some curious details relating to the Coliseum Passion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1539 it was suppressed by Paul III., because the Romans, infuriated by the drama of the Crucifixion, were wont to adjourn from the Flavian amphitheater to the Ghetto, and begin a murderous crusade against the Jews!
[397] In the directions for a "Devotione de Veneredì sancto," analyzed by D'Ancona (op. cit. pp. 176-182), we read: "predica, e como fa signo che Cristo sia posto in croce, li Judei li chiavano una mano e poi l'altra" ... "a quello loco quando Pilato comanda che Cristo sia posto a la colona, lo Predicatore tase."
[398] Ducange explains thalamum by tabulatum.
[399] See Appendix to vol. ii. of D'Ancona's Origini del Teatro.
[400] In the prologues of the later comedies of learning (commedia erudita) allusions to the rude style of Fiesolan shows are pretty frequent. The playwrights speak of them as our Elizabethan dramatists spoke of Bartholomew Fair. The whole method of a Fiesolan Sacra Rappresentazione is well explained in the induction to the play of Abraam e Sara (Siena, 1581). A father and his son set out from Florence, at the boy's request:
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Et vo che noi andiamo a Fiesolani poggi, Ch'io mi ricordo c'hoggi una festa non più vista Mai più el Vangelista vi fa e rappresenta. |
On the road they wonder, will the booth be too full for them to find places, will they get hot by walking fast up hill, will their clothes be decent? They meet the Festajuolo at the booth-door, distracted because:
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manca una voce Et è ito un veloce a Firenze per lui. |
Voce was the technical name for the actor.
[401] See D'Ancona, op. cit. pp. 245-267. Compare the section on "Geselligkeit und die Feste" in Burckhardt's Cultur der Renaissance in Italien.
[402] Graziani, Arch. Stor. xvi. 344.
[403] Allegretti, Muratori, xxxiii. 767.
[404] Corio, quoted by me, [Age of the Despots], [p. 390].
[405] See D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 245, and compare the account of a similar show in Galvano Flamma's Chronicle of Milan.
[406] Pii Secundi Commentarii (Romæ, 1584), viii. 365.
[407] Niccolò della Tuccia, Cron. di Viterbo (Firenze, Vieusseux, 1872) p. 84.
[408] Look above in [chapter i.] [pp. 50-53], for passages from Goro Dati's Chronicle and other sources, touching on the summer festivals of Florence.
[409] This passage from Palmieri's MS. will be found, together with full information on the subject of S. John's Day, in Cambiagi, Memorie istoriche riguardanti le feste, etc. (Firenze, Stamp. Gran-ducale, 1766), p. 65.
[410] D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 205. This use of the term Miracle seems to indicate that the Florentines applied to them the generic term for Northern Sacred Plays.
[411] Lemonnier's edition, vol. v.
[412] Sacre Rappresentazioni, Florence, Lemonnier, 3 vols. 1872.
[413] It may be not uninteresting to compare this terza rima with a passage written fifty years later by Michelangelo Buonarroti on his father's death, grander in style but less simply Christian:
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Tu se' del morir morto e fatto divo, Nè tem'or più cangiar vita nè voglia; Che quasì senza invidia non lo scrivo. Fortuna e 'l tempo dentro a vostra soglia Non tenta trapassar, per cui s'adduce Fra no' dubbia letizia e cierta doglia. Nube non è che scuri vostra luce, L'ore distinte a voi non fanno forza, Caso o necessità non vi conduce. Vostro splendor per notte non s'ammorza, Nè crescie ma' per giorno, benchè chiaro, Sie quand'el sol fra no' il caldo rinforza. |
In the [Appendix] will be found translations.
[414] Cecchi's Elevation of the Cross aims at the dignity of a five-act tragedy; but it was not represented until 1589. Santa Uliva illustrates the interludes; and a very interesting example is supplied by the Miracolo di S. Maria Maddalena, where two boys prologize in dialogue, comment at intervals upon the action, and conclude the exhibition with a Laud.
[415] "L'Angelo annunzia la festa," is the common stage-direction at the beginning; and at the end "L'Angelo dà licenza."
[416] "Constantino Imperatore," Sacre Rappr. ii. 187. "Un Giovine con la citara annunzia."
[417] Op. cit. vol. i. pp. 357-359.
[418] Sacre Rappr. i. 391. Cp. the Abraam quoted in a note above, [p. 313].
[419] Compare, for example, Vespasiano's naïve astonishment at the virginity of the Cardinal di Portogallo with the protestations of chastity in the Tre Pellegrini (Sacre Rappr. iii. 467).
[420] Sacre Rappr. iii. p. 235 and p. 1.
[421] Sacre Rappr. p. 121. Shakespeare Soc. Publ. vol. xvii.
[422] For the technical terms Nuvola and Paradiso see above, [pp. 318], [319].
[423] It is probable that the painting of the period yields a fair notion of the scenic effects attempted in these shows. Or, what is perhaps a better analogue, we can illustrate the pages of the libretti by remembering the terra-cotta groups of the Sacro Monte at Varallo. Designed by excellent artists and painted in accordance with the traditions of the Milanese school, it is not impossible that these life-size representations of Christ's birth and Passion reproduce the Sacred Drama with fidelity.
[424] Sacre Rappr. iii. 270.
[425] Sacre Rappr. i. 193. See Shakespeare Society's Publications, i. 119.
[426] Sacre Rappr. i. 255.
[427] Sacre Rappr. i. 357.
[428] All the novelists might be cited to illustrate this point.
[429] At the end of the Rappresentazione di un Pellegrino (Sacre Rappr. iii. 430) a little farce is printed, bearing no relation to the play. It is a dialogue between a good and bad apprentice, who discuss the question of gambling. Here and in the Figliuol Prodigo and the induction to the Miracolo di S. Maddalena we have the elements of comedy, which, however, unfortunately came to nothing. These scenes remind us of Heywood's tavern pictures, Marston's "Eastward Ho!" and other precious pieces of English Elizabethan farce.
[430] Sacre Rappr. i. 304.
[431] Ibid. p. 319.
[432] Sacre Rappr. i. 229.
[433] This play ends with a pretty moralization of the episode that forms its motive, addressed by Mary to the people (ib. p. 240).
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Figliuo' diletti, che cercate in terra Trovar il figliuol mio, pietoso Iddio, Non vi fermate in questa rozza terra, Chè Jesù non istà nel mondo rio. Chi vel crede trovar, fortement' erra, E come stolto morra nel disio. Al tempio, chi lo vuol, venghi oggi drento, Chè 'l viver vostro è come foglia al vento. |
[434] Sacre Rappr. i. 342.
[435] Ibid. iii. 439.
[436] For these incidents we may think of Signorelli's huge angels and swarming devils at Orvieto. What follows suggests the Lorenzetti fresco at Pisa, and the Orcagna of the Strozzi Chapel. Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo also supply pictorial parallels.
[437] Poetry forced Castellani to decide where Solomon should go; Lorenzetti left it vague.
[438] Sacre Rappr. ii. 33.
[439] Sacre Rappr. iii. 140.
[440] Ibid. ii. 124.
[441] Ibid. ii. 235.
[442] Ibid. ii. 269.
[443] Ibid. ii. 323.
[444] Ibid. ii. 71.
[445] La Mort d'Arthur (Wright's edition), vol. iii. p. 331.
[446] Polidori's edition, vol. i. p. 542.
[447] The greater maturity of the plastic than of the poetic arts in the fifteenth century is apparent when we contrast the Rappresentazioni with Masaccio's, Ghirlandajo's, Mantegna's, or Carpaccio's paintings. Art, as I have frequently had to observe, emancipated the human faculties, and humanized the figments of the middle age by investing them with corporeal shape and forms of æsthetic beauty. The deliverance of the Italian genius was thus effected in painting earlier than in poetry, and in those very spheres of religious art where the poets were helpless to attain true freedom. Italian poetry first became free when it turned round and regarded the myths with an amused smile. I do not say that this was absolutely necessary, that an heroic Christian poetry might not have been produced in the fifteenth century by another race. But for the Italians it was necessary.
[448] Sacre Rappr. ii. 447.
[449] Sacre Rappr. iii. 177.
[450] Ibid. ii. 163.
[451] Sacre Rappr. iii. 235. Also edited separately with an introduction by D'Ancona.
[452] Sacre Rappr. iii. 319.
[453] Sacre Rappr. iii. 362.
[454] Ibid. iii. 485.
[455] Sacre Rappr. iii. 416.
[456] Ibid. iii. 439.
[457] Sacre Rappr. iii. 466.
[458] The date of the former is probably 1472, of the latter 1486.
[459] Lorenzo de' Medici, b. 1448, d. 1492. Poliziano, b. 1454, d. 1494. Luigi Pulci, b. 1432, d. about 1487. Boiardo, b. about 1434, d. 1494. Sannazzaro, b. 1458, d. 1530.
[460] Machiavelli, b. 1469, d. 1527. Ariosto, b. 1474, d. 1533. Guicciardini, b. 1482, d. 1540. Bembo, b. 1470, d. 1547. Castiglione, b. 1478, d. 1529. La Casa, b. 1503, d. 1556. Pietro Aretino, b. 1492, d. 1557.
[461] See [Fine Arts], p. 183.
[462] See Revival of Learning, pp. 215 et seq.; [Fine Arts], pp. 183 et seq.
[463] It is right to say here that considerable portions of Southern Italy, the Marches of Ancona and Romagna, Piedmont and Liguria, remained outside the Renaissance movement at this period.
[464] See [Age of the Despots], pp. [277], [520], [542]; Revival of Learning, pp. 314-323; [Fine Arts], pp. 263, 387. See also [Sketches and Studies in Italy], Article on [Florence and the Medici].
[465] Op. Lat. p. 423.
[466] Poesie di Lorenzo de' Medici (Firenze, Barbèra, 1859), pp. 10-19.
[467] Ibid. pp. 24-34. Notice especially the verdict on Cino and Dante, p. 33.
[468] Read for instance No. xii. in the edition cited above, "Vidi madonna sopra un fresco rio;" No. xviii., "Con passi sparti," etc.; No. xlvii., "Belle fresche e purpuree viole."
[469] Ibid. p. 97.
[470] "Tolsi donna ... ovvero mi fu data," from the Ricordi printed in the Appendix to Roscoe's Life.
[471] "Innamoramento," Poesie, pp. 58-62. Compare "Selve d'Amore," ib. pp. 172-174.
[472] Poesie, pp. 206-213.
[473] Ibid. p. 236.
[474] Poesie, pp. 190-194, 200-204.
[475] See the peroration to Ambra, in the Sylvæ; Poliziano, Prose Volgari e Poesie Latine, etc. (Firenze, 1867), p. 365: Et nos ergo illi, etc.
[476] Poesie, p. 238.
[477] Ibid. p. 239.
[478] Poesie, p. 294.
[479] If anything had to be quoted from I Beoni, I should select the episode of Adovardo and his humorous discourse on thirst, cap. ii. ib. p. 299. For a loathsome parody of Dante see cap. v. ib. p. 315.
[480] The date is 1489.
[481] Especially "O Dio, o sommo bene," and "Poi ch'io gustai, Gesù;" ib. pp. 444, 447. Likewise "Vieni a me;" ib. p. 449.
[482] Guicciardini, in his Storia Fiorentina (Op. Ined. vol. iii. 88), writes of Lorenzo: "Fu libidinoso, e tutto venereo e constante negli amori suoi, che duravano parecchi anni; la quale cosa, a giudicio di molti, gli indebolì tanto il corpo, che lo fece morire, si può dire, giovane." Then, after describing his night-adventures outside Florence, he proceeds: "Cosa pazza a considerare che uno di tanta grandezza, riputazione e prudenza, di età di anni quaranta, fussi sì preso di una dama non bella e già piena di anni, che si conducessi a fare cose, che sarebbono state disoneste a ogni fanciullo."
[483] Canzone per andare in maschera, facte da più persone. No place or date or printer's name; but probably issued in the lifetime of Lorenzo from Mongiani's press. There is a similar woodcut on the title-page of the Canzone a Ballo, Firenze, 1568. It represents the angle of the Medicean Palace in the Via Larga, girls dancing in a ring upon the street, one with a wreath and thyrsus kneeling, another presenting Lorenzo with a book.
[484] Ist. Fior. viii.; Stor. Fior. ix.
[485] Trattato circa il Reggimento e Governo della Città di Firenze (Florence, 1847), ii. 2.
[486] Tutti i Trionfi, Carri, etc., Firenze, 1559. See the edition dated Cosmopoli, 1750.
[487] In this place should be noticed a sinister Carnival Song, by an unknown author, which belongs, I think, to the period of Savonarola's democracy. It is called Trionfo del Vaglio, or "Triumph of the Sieve" (Cant. Carn. p. 33):
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To the Sieve, to the Sieve, to the Sieve, Ho, all ye folk, descend! With groans your bosoms rend! And find in this our Sieve Wrath, anguish, travail, doom for all who live! To winnow, sift and purge, full well we know, And grind your souls like corn: Ye who our puissance scorn, Come ye to trial, ho! For we will prove and show How fares the man who enters in our Sieve. Send us no groats nor scrannel seed nor rye, But good fat ears of grain, Which shall endure our strain, And be of sturdy stuff. Torment full stern and rough Abides for him who resteth in our Sieve. Who comes into this Sieve, who issues thence, Hath tears and sighs, and mourns: But the Sieve ever turns, And gathers vehemence. Ye who feel sin's offence, Shun ye the rage, the peril of our Sieve. A thousand times the day, our Sieve is crowned; A thousand times 'tis drained: Let the Sieve once be strained, And, grain by grain, around Ye shall behold the ground Covered with folk, cast from the boltering Sieve. Ye who are not well-grained and strong to bear, Abide ye not this fate! Penitence comes too late! Seek ye some milder doom! Nay, better were the tomb Than to endure the torment of our Sieve! |
[488] Life of Piero di Cosimo.
[489] Life of Pontormo.
[490] Revival of Learning, pp. 345-357, 452-465.
[491] Carducci, Preface to his edition of Le Stanze, L'Orfeo e Le Rime di Messer Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano (Firenze, 1863), p. xxiii.
[492] This poem must have been written between 1476, the date of Simonetta's death, and 1478, the date of Giuliano's murder, when Poliziano was about twenty-four. Chronology prevents us from regarding it as the work of a boy of fourteen, as Roscoe thought, or of sixteen, as Hallam concluded.
[493] His Latin elegies on Simonetta and on Albiera degli Albizzi, and those Greek epigrams which Scaliger preferred to the Latin verses of his maturity, had been already written.
[494] From Le Stanze, i. 7, we learn that he interrupted the translation of the Iliad in order to begin this poem in Italian. He never took it up again. It remains a noble torso, the most splendid extant version of a Greek poem in Latin by a modern hand.
[495] By a strange coincidence this was the anniversary of his love, Simonetta's, death in 1476. The close connection between her untimely end—celebrated by Lorenzo de' Medici in his earlier Rime, by Poliziano in his Latin Elegy and again in the Giostra—and the renascence of Italian poetry, makes her portrait by Botticelli della Francesca in the Pitti interesting.
[496] I must refer my readers to the original, and to the translations published by me in [Sketches and Studies in Italy], pp. 217-224. The description of Simonetta in the meadow (Giostra, i. 43 and following) might be compared to a Florentine Idyll by Benozzo Gozzoli; the birth of Venus from the waves (i. 99-107) is a blending of Botticelli's Venus in the Uffizzi with his Primavera in the Belle Arti; the picture of Venus in the lap of Mars (i. 122-124) might be compared to work by Piero di Cosimo, or, since poetry embraces many suggestions, to paintings from the schools of Venice. The metamorphoses of Jupiter (i. 104-107) remind us of Giulio Romano. The episode of Ariadne and the Bacchic revel (i. 110-112) is in the style of Mantegna's engravings. All these passages will be found translated by me in the book above quoted.
[497] I believe the Favola di Orfeo, first published in 1494, and republished from time to time up to the year 1776, was the original play acted at Mantua before the Cardinal Gonzaga. It is not divided into acts, and has the usual "Annunziatore della Festa," of the Sacre Rappresentazioni. The Orphei Tragædia, published by the Padre Ireneo Affò at Venice in 1776, from two MSS. collated by him, may be regarded as a subsequent recension of his own work made by Poliziano. It is divided into five acts, and is far richer in lyrical passages. Carducci prints both in his excellent edition of Poliziano's Italian poems. I may refer English readers to my own translation of the Orfeo and the note upon its text, [Studies and Sketches in Italy], pp. 226-242, 429, 430.
[498] The popularity of Poliziano's poems is proved by the frequency of their editions. The Orfeo and the Stanze were printed together or separately twenty-two times between 1494 and 1541, thirteen times between 1541 and 1653. A redaction of the Orfeo in octave stanzas was published at Florence in 1558 for the use of the common people. It was entitled La Historia e Favola d'Orfeo alla dolce lira. This narrative version of Poliziano's play is still reprinted from time to time for the Tuscan contadini. Carducci cites an edition of Prato, 1860.
[499] No one who has read Poliziano's Greek epigrams on Chrysocomus, or who knows the scandal falsely circulated regarding his death, will have failed to connect the sentiments put into the mouth of Orpheus (Carducci, pp. 109-110) with the personality of the poet-scholar. That the passage in question could have been recited with applause before a Cardinal, is a fact of much significance.
[500] Perhaps Ficino was the first to give him this title. In a letter of his to Lorenzo de' Medici we read: "Nutris domi Homericum ilium adolescentem Angelum Politianum qui Græcam Homeri personam Latinis coloribus exprimat. Exprimit jam; atque, id quod mirum est ita tenerâ ætate, ita exprimit ut nisi quivis Græcum fuisse Homerum noverit dubitaturus sit e duobus uter naturalis sit et uter pictus Homerus" (Ep. ed. Flor. 1494, lib. i. p. 6). Ficino always addressed Poliziano as "Poeta Homericus."
[501] Among the frescoes by Signorelli at Orvieto there is a tondo in monochrome, representing Orpheus before the throne of Pluto. He is dressed like a poet, with a laurel crown, and he is playing on a violin of antique form. Medieval demons are guarding the prostrate Eurydice. It would be curious to know whether a rumor of the Mantuan pageant had reached the ears of the Cortonese painter, or whether he had read the edition of 1494.
[502] The original should be read in the version first published by the Padre Affò (Carducci, pp. 148-154). My translation will be found in [Studies and Sketches in Italy], pp. 235-237.
[503] "La notte esceva per Barletta (rè Manfredi) cantando strambotti e canzoni, che iva pigliando lo frisco, e con isso ivano due musici Siciliani ch'erano gran romanzatori." M. Spinello, in Scr. Rer. Ital. vii. Spinello's Chronicles are, however, probably a sixteenth-century forgery.
[504] A letter addressed by Poliziano to Lorenzo in 1488 from Acquapendente justifies the belief that the cultivation of popular poetry had become a kind of pastime in the Medicean circle. He says: "Yesterday we set off for Viterbo. We are all gay, and make good cheer, and all along the road we whet our wits at furbishing up some song or May-day ditty, which here in Acquapendente with their Roman costume seem to me more fanciful than those at home." See Del Lungo's edition of the Prose Volgari, etc., p. 75.
[505] See above, [p. 378]. For translations of several Ballate by Poliziano I may refer to my [Sketches and Studies in Italy], pp. 190-225.
[506] For translations of detached Rispetti, see my [Sketches and Studies in Italy], p. 197.
[507] I have translated one long Rispetto Continuato or Lettera in Istrambotti; see [Sketches and Studies in Italy], pp. 198-201. It is probable that Poliziano wrote these love-poems for his young friends, which may excuse the frequent repetitions of the same thoughts and phrases.
[508] In Carducci's edition, pp. 342, 355, 363. The first seems to me untranslatable. The second and third are translated by me in [Sketches and Studies, etc.], pp. 202-207.
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But she who gives my soul sorrow and mirth, Seemed Pallas in her gait, and in her face Venus; for every grace And beauty of the world in her combined. Merely to think, far more to tell my mind, Of that most wondrous sight, confoundeth me; For mid the maidens she Who most resembled her was found most rare. Call ye another first among the fair; Not first, but sole before my lady set: Lily and violet. And all the flowers below the rose must bow. Down from her royal head and lustrous brow The golden curls fell sportively unpent. While through the choir she went With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound. |
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White is the maid, and white the robe around her, With buds and roses and thin grasses pied; Enwreathéd folds of golden tresses crowned her, Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride: The wild wood smiled; the thicket, where he found her, To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side: Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild, And with her brow tempers the tempests wild. |
| . . . . . . . . . . |
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Reclined he found her on the swarded grass In jocund mood; and garlands she had made Of every flower that in the meadow was, Or on her robe of many hues displayed; But when she saw the youth before her pass, Raising her timid head awhile she stayed; Then with her white hand gathered up her dress, And stood, lap full of flowers, in loveliness. |
[511] Praised for their incomparable sweetness by Scaliger, and translated into softest Italian by Firenzuola.
[513] This poem relates the adventures of Ciriffo and Il Povero Avveduto, bastards of two noble ladies, and gives the history of a crusade of Louis against the Soldan of Egypt. It was published as the work, as far as the first Book, of Luca Pulci, completed and restored by Bernardo Giambullari. "Il Ciriffo Calvaneo, diviso in iv. Canti, col primo Libro di Luca Pulci, ed il resto riformato per Bernardo Giambullari" (Roma, Mazzocchio, 1514). Luigi Pulci claims a share in it, if not the whole in the Morgante, xxviii. 118, 129.
[514] See Lettere di Luigi Pulci a Lorenzo Il Magnifico, Lucca, Giusti, 1868. Sonetti di Matteo Franco e Luigi Pulci, 1759. The sonnets are indescribably scurrilous, charged with Florentine slang, and loaded with the filthiest abuse. The point of humor is that Franco and Pulci undertook (it is said, for fun) to heap scandals on each other's heads, ransacking the language of the people for its vilest terms of invective. If they began in joke, they ended in earnest; and Lorenzo de' Medici, who had a taste for buffoonery, enjoyed the scuffle of his Court-fools. It was a combat of humanists transferred from the arena of the schools to the market-place, where two men of parts degraded themselves by assuming the character of coal-heavers.
[515] The poetical talents of the Pulci family were hereditary. Cellini tells us of a Luigi of that name who improvised upon the market-place of Florence.
[516] Turpin's Chronicle consists of thirty-two chapters, relating the wars of Charlemain with the Spanish Moors, the treason of Ganelon, and Roland's death in Roncesvalles. The pagan knight, Ferraguto, and the Christian peers are mentioned by name, proving that at the date of its compilation the whole Carolingian myth was tolerably perfect in the popular imagination.
[517] It has been conjectured by M. Génin, editor of the Chant de Roland, not without substantial grounds, that Gui de Bourgogne, bishop of Vienne, afterwards Pope Calixtus II., was himself the pseudo-Turpin.
[518] See Chanson de Roland, line 804, and compare Morg. Magg. xxvii. 79.
[519] See Ludlow's Popular Epics of the Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 412, and M. Génin's Introduction to the Chanson de Roland, Paris, 1851.
[520] See Génin (op. cit. pp. xxix., xxx.) for the traces of the Roland myth in the Pyrenees, at Rolandseck, in England, and at Verona; also for gigantic statues in Germany called Rolands (ib. pp. xxi. xxii.). At Spello, a little town of Umbria between Assisi and Foligno, the people of the place showed me a dint in their ancient town wall, about breast-high, which passes for a mark made by Orlando's knee. There is learned tradition of a phallic monument named after Roland in that place; but I could find no trace of it in local memory.
[521] The Song of Roland does not give this portrait of Charlemagne's dotage. But it is an integral part of the Italian romances, a fixed point in all rifacimenti of the pseudo-Turpin.
[522] Ludlow (op. cit. i. 358) translates the Basque Song of Atta-biçar, which relates to some destruction of chivalrous forces by the Pyrenean mountaineers.
[523] See Génin (op. cit. pp. xxv.-xxviii.).
[524] Introduction to Panizzi's edition of the Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso (London, Pickering, 1830), vol. i. pp. 126-128.
[525] See Dante, Inf. xxxii. 61, v. 67, v. 128. Galeotto, Lancelot's go-between with Guinevere, gave his name to a pimp in Italy, as Pandarus to a pander in England. Boccaccio's Novelliere was called Il Principe Galeotto. Petrarch in the Trionfi and Boccaccio in the Amoroso Visione make frequent references to the knights of the Round Table. The latter in his Corbaccio mentions the tale of Tristram as a favorite book with idle women. The Fiammetta might be quoted with the same object of proving its wide-spread popularity. The lyrics of Folgore da San Gemignano and other trecentisti would furnish many illustrative allusions.
[527] The Reali di Francia sets forth this legendary genealogy at great length, and stops short at the coronation of Charles in Rome and the discovery of Roland. Considering the dryness of its subject-matter, it is significant that this should have survived all the prose romances of the fifteenh century. We may ascribe the fact perhaps to the tenacious Italian devotion to the Imperial idea.
[528] Orl. Inn. Rifac. i. 18, 26. Niccolò da Padova in the thirteenth century quoted Turpin as his authority for the history of Charlemagne which he composed in Northern French. This proves the antiquity of the custom. See Bartoli, Storia della Lett. It. vol. ii. p. 44. To believe in Turpin was not, however, an article of faith. Thus Bello in the Mambriano, c. viii.:
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Ma poi che 'l non è articolo di fede, Tenete quella parte che vi piace, Che l'autor libramente vel concede. |
[529] "Un Dio, uno Orlando, e una Roma." Morg. Magg. xxvii. 220. Compare this with Arthur's "Flos regum Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus."
[530] See Propugnatore (Anni ii., iii., iv.). La Spagna was itself two popular compilations.
[531] This is only strictly true of Cantos xxiv., xxv., xxvi., xxvii. The last Canto, in fact the whole poem after the execution of Marsilio, is a dull historical epitome, brightened by Pulci's personal explanations at the ending.
[532] It is called Morgante Maggiore because the part relating to him was published separately under the title of Morgante. This character Pulci derived from the MS. poem called by Signor Rajna the Orlando to distinguish it. In the year 1500 we find one of the Baglioni called Morgante which proves perhaps the popularity of this giant.
[533] Canto xxv. 73-78. The locust-tree, according to the tradition of the South, served Judas when he hanged himself. Northern fancy reserved this honor for the elder, not perhaps without a poetic sense of the outcast existence of the plant and its worthlessness for any practical use. On the same locust-tree Marsilio was afterwards suspended (c. xxvii. 267). The description of the blasted pleasure-garden in the latter passage is also very striking. For the translation of these passages see [Appendix].
[534] xxvii. 5-7 and 47. Note in particular (translated in [Appendix]):
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Rispose Baldovin: Se il padre mio Ci ha qui condotti come traditore, S'io posso oggi campar, pel nostro Iddio, Con questa spada passerògli il core! Ma traditore, Orlando, non son io, Ch'io t'ho seguito con perfetto amore; Non mi potresti dir maggiore ingiuria! Poi si stracciò la vesta con gran furia, E disse: Io tornerò nella battaglia, Poi che tu m'hai per traditore scorto; Io non son traditor, se Dio mi vaglia, Non mi vedrai più oggi se non morto! E inverso l'oste de' Pagan si scaglia, Dicendo sempre: Tu m'hai fatto torto! Orlando si pentea d'aver ciò detto Chè disperato vide il giovinetto. |
[535] Of all the Paladins only Orlando is uniformly courteous to Charlemagne. When Rinaldo dethrones the Emperor and flies to his cousin (c. xi. 114), Orlando makes him return to his obedience (ib. 127). See, too, c. xxv. 100:
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Or oltre in Roncisvalle Orlando va, Per obbedir, com'e' fe' sempre, Carlo. |
[536] xxvi. 126:
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Rinaldo, quando e' fu nella battaglia, Gli parve esser in ciel tra' cherubini Tra suoni e canti. |
[537] Canto xxvi. 24-39. These two touches, out of many that are noble, might be chosen:
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Stasera in paradiso cenerete; Come disse quel Greco anticamente Lieto a' suoi già, ma disse—Nello inferno: |
and
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La morte è da temere, o la partita, Quando l'anima e 'l corpo muore insieme; Ma se da cosa finita a infinita Si va qui in ciel fra tante diademe, Questo è cambiar la vita a miglior vita. |
[538] This pervasive doubt finds its noblest and deepest expression in some lines spoken by Orlando just before engaging in the fight at Roncesvalles (xxvi. 31):
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Tutte cose mortal vanno ad un segno; Mentre l'una sormonta, un'altra cade: Così fia forse di Cristianitade. |
This is said not from the hero's but the author's point of view. Pomponazzi afterwards gave philosophical utterance to the same disbelief in the permanence of Christianity.
[539] Canto xxvii. 172.
[540] Ibid. 196.
[541] Ibid. 198.
[542] Canto xxvi. 91.
[543] Canto xxvi. 89.
[544] Canto xxv. 217, 218.
[545] Canto xviii. 114, et seq.
[546] I have placed in the [Appendix] a rough plaster cast rather than a true copy of Margutte's admirable comic autobiography. My stanzas cannot pretend to exactitude of rendering or interpretation. The Morgante has hitherto been very imperfectly edited; and there are many passages in this speech which would, I believe, puzzle a good Florentine scholar, and which, it is probable, I have misread.
[547] Canto xix. 148.
[548] Cantos xxv. xxvi.
[549] xxv. 119. This distinction between the fallen angels and the spiriti folletti deserves to be noticed. The latter were light and tricksy spirits, on whom not even a magician could depend. Marsilio sent two of them in a magic mirror to Charlemagne (xxv. 92), and Astarotte warned Malagigi expressly against their vanity (xxv. 160, 161). Fairies, feux follets, and the lying spirits of modern spiritualists seem to be of this family. Translations from Astarotte's dialogue will be found in the [Appendix].
[550] xxv. 159, 208.
[551] xxv. 161; xxvi. 83.
[552] Canto xxv. 141-158; translation in [Appendix].
[553] Ibid. 233.
[554] Ibid. 284.
[555] Doctor Faustus, act i. Scene with Mephistophilis in a Franciscan's habit.
[556] The scene in the banquet-hall at Saragossa (xxv. 292-305) is very similar to some of the burlesque scenes in Doctor Faustus.
[557] xxv. 228-231. Astarotte's discourses upon theology and physical geography are so learned that this part of the Morgante was by Tasso ascribed to Ficino. It is not improbable that Pulci derived some of the ideas from Ficino, but the style is entirely his own. The sonnets he exchanged with Franco prove, moreover, that he was familiar with the treatment of grave themes in a burlesque style. In acknowledging the help of Poliziano he is quite frank (xxv. 115-117, 169; xxviii. 138-149). What that help exactly was, we do not know. But there is nothing whatever to justify the tradition that Poliziano was the real author of the Morgante. Probably he directed Pulci's reading; and I think it not impossible, judging by one line in Canto xxv. (stanza 115, line 4), that he directed Pulci's attention to the second of the two poems out of which the narrative was wrought. If we were to ascribe all the passages in the Morgante that display curious knowledge to Pulci's friends, we might claim the discourse on the antipodes for Toscanelli and the debates on the angelic nature for Palmieri. Such criticism is, however, far-fetched and laboriously hypothetical. Pulci lived in an intellectual atmosphere highly charged with speculation of all kinds, and his poem reflected the opinion of his age. His own methods of composition and the relation in which he stood to other poets of the age are explained in two passages of the Morgante (xxv. 117, xxviii. 138-149), where he disclaims all share of humanistic erudition, and expresses his indifference to the solemn academies of the learned. See translation in [Appendix].
[558] xxvi. 82-88. We may specially note these phrases:
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Astarotte, e' mi duole Il tuo partir, quanto fussi fratello; E nell'inferno ti credo che sia Gentilezza, amicizia e cortesia. |
| . . . . . . . . . |
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Chè di servirti non mi fia fatica; E basta solo Astarotte tu dica, Ed io ti sentirò sin dello inferno. |
[559] Book II. canto viii. 1. All references will be made to Panizzi's edition of the Orlando Innamorato, London, Pickering, 1830.
[560] Sonetti e Canzone [sic] del poeta clarissimo Matteo Maria Boiardo Conte di Scandiano, Milano, 1845. The descriptions of natural beauty, especially of daybreak and the morning star, of dewy meadows, and of flowers, in which these lyrics abound, are very charming and at all points worthy of the fresh delightful inspiration of Boiardo's epic verse. Nor are they deficient in metrical subtlety; notice especially the intricate rhyming structure of a long Canto, pp. 44-49.
[562] See the exordium to the second Book, where it appears that the gentle poet caressed a vain hope that the peace of Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century was destined to revive chivalry.
[563] See the opening of Book II. Canto xviii. where Boiardo compares the Courts of Arthur and of Charlemagne.
[564] The acute and learned critic Pio Rajna, whose two massive works of scholarlike research, I Reali di Francia (Bologna, 1872), and Le Fonti dell'Orlando Furioso (Firenze, 1876), have thrown a flood of light upon Chivalrous Romance literature in Italy, is at pains to prove that the Orlando Innamorato contains a vein of conscious humor. See Le Fonti, etc., pp. 24-27. I agree with him that Boiardo treated his subject playfully. But it must be remembered that he was far from wishing to indulge a secret sarcasm like Ariosto, or to make open fun of chivalry like Fortiguerra.
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Mentre che io canto, o Dio redentore, Vedo l'Italia tutta a fiamma e foco, Per questi Galli, che con gran valore Vengon, per disertar non so che loco. |
Compare II. xxxi. 50; III. i. 2.
[566] Orlando was not handsome (II. iii. 63):
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avea folte le ciglia, E l'un de gli occhi alquanto stralunava. |
[567] See his prayer, II. xxix. 36, 37.
[568] See the description of him in the tournament (I. ii. 63, iii. 4), when he saves the honor of Christendom to the surprise of everybody including himself. Again (I. vii. 45-65), when he defies and overthrows Gradasso, and liberates Charles from prison. The irony of both situations reveals a master's hand.
[569] For instance, when he attacks Argalia with his sword, contrary to stipulation, after being unhorsed by him (I. i. 71-73). The fury of Ferraguto in this scene is one of Boiardo's most brilliant episodes.
[570] His epithets are always fiorito, fior di cortesia, di franchezza fiore, etc. For the effect of his beauty, see II. xxi. 49, 50. The education of Ruggiero by Atalante was probably suggested to Boiardo by the tale of Cheiron and Achilles. See II. i. 74, 75.
[571] See II. i. 56, for Rodamonte's first appearance; for his atheism, II. iii. 22:
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Che sol il mio buon brando e l'armatura E la mazza, ch'io porto, e 'l destrier mio E l'animo, ch'io ho, sono il mio Dio. |
[572] II. iii. 40.
[573] In Bello's Mambriano, for instance, we have a very lively picture of the amorous and vain Astolfo. Pulci supplies us with even a more impressive Orlando than Boiardo's hero, while his Amazonian heroines, Meridiana and Antea, are at least rough sketches for Marfisa. It was Boiardo's merit to have grasped these characters and drawn them with a fullness of minute detail that enhances their vitality.
[574] Her arts and their success are splendidly set forth, I. xxv. xxvi.
[575] In proem to II. xii., Boiardo makes an excuse, imitated by Ariosto to his lady for this bad treatment of women.
[576] Leodilla's story is found in I. xxi. xxii. xxiv. 14-17, 44.
[577] I. iii. 47-50.
[578] I. xxii. 24-27; I. xix. 60-65.
[579] I. xvii. 21, 22.
[580] II. vii. 50.
[581] II. xii. 14, et seq.
[582] I. xvi. 36-44; xviii. 39-47; xix. 15, 16.
[583] I. v. 7-12; xix. 47; ix. 55-57.
[584] I. xviii. 39-47.
[585] I. xxv. 13, 14.
[586] I. xxvii. 15-22; xxviii. 4-11.
[587] II. vi. 7-15, 28-42; II. iv. 24-39; II. xiii. 20-23; I. xxv. 38.
[588] I. xxiii. 38, 47; xxvi. 28.
[589] I. xxiii. 6.
[590] Burne Jones, in his Pan and Syrinx, offers a parallel.
[591] II. xv. 43 et seq.
[592] II. xvii. 49 et seq.
[593] See II. xxxi. xlv.; III. i. ii.
[594] See I. viii. 56 et seq. The whole tale of Grifone and Marchino in that Canto is horrible.
[595] On Ariosto's treatment of Boiardo's characters there is much excellent criticism in Pio Rajna's Le Fonti dell'Orlando Furioso (Firenze, Sansoni, 1876), pp. 43-53.
[596] I do not mean that other poets—Pulci and Bello, for example—had not interwoven episodical novelle. The latter's poem of Mambriano owes all its interest to the episodes, and many of its introductory reflections are fair specimens of the discursive style. But the peculiarity of Boiardo, as followed by Ariosto, consisted in the art of subordinating these subsidiary motives to the main design. Neither Pulci nor Bello showed any true sense of poetical unity. It may here be parenthetically remarked that Francesco Bello, a native of Ferrara, called Il Cieco because of his blindness, recited his Mambriano at the Mantuan Court of the Gonzagas. It was not printed till after his death in 1509. This poem consists of a series of tales, loosely stitched together, each canto containing just enough to stimulate the attention of an idle audience. Rinaldo, Astolfo, and Mambriano, king of Bithynia, play prominent parts in the action.
[597] See Satire, i. 100-102; ii. 109-111.
[598] See Satire, i. 113-123, for his reasons. He seems chiefly to have dreaded the loss of personal liberty, if he took orders.
[599] Ippolito is said to have asked the poet: "Dove avete trovato, messer Lodovico, tante corbellerie?" That he did in effect say something of the kind is proved by Satire, ii. 94-99.
[600] Campori, Notizie per la Vita di L. Ariosto (Modena, Vincenzi, 1871), pp. 55-58.
[601] Ibid. p. 58.
[602] He penned the following couplet in 1503, when it is to be hoped he had yet not learned to know his master's real qualities:
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Quis patre invicto gerit Hercule fortius arma, Mystica quis casto castius Hippolyto? |
In another epigram, written on the death of the Cardinal, he pretends that Ippolito, hearing of Alfonso's illness, vowed his own life for his brother's and was accepted. See Opere Minori, i. 349.
[603] See Satires ii. vii.; Capitoli i. ii.
[604] Campori, op. cit. p. 59.
[605] See Satire iv. 67-72.
[606] See Satire v. 172-204.
[607] This is one of the pretty stories on which some doubt has lately been cast. See Campori, pp. 105-110, for a full discussion of its probable truth.
[608] "Small, but suited to my needs, freehold, not mean, the fruit of my own earnings." His son Virginio substituted another inscription which may still be seen upon the little house-front: Sic domus hæc Areostea propitios habeat deos olim ut Pindarica—"May this house of Ariosto have gods propitious as of old the house of Pindar."
[609] The date is uncertain. It was not before 1522, perhaps even so late as 1527.
[610] xv. 28; xxxiii. 24.
[611] See Panizzi, op. cit. vol. vi. p. cxix. for a description of these verbal changes.
[612] See especially Satire ii. 28-51, and Capitolo i.
[613] "Ludovici Areosti humantur ossa," etc., Op. Min. i. 365.
[614] See the Opere Minori, vol. i. p. 336. Also Carducci's eloquent defense of these Horatian verses in his essay, Delle Poesie Latine di L. Ariosto (Bologna, Zanichelli, 1876), p. 82. The latter treatise is a learned criticism of Ariosto's Latin poetry from a point of view somewhat too indulgent to Ariosto as a poet and a man. Carducci, for example, calls the four Alcaic stanzas in question "una cosellina quasi perfetta," though they contain three third lines like these:
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Furore militis tremendo.... Jacentem aquæ ad murmur cadentis.... Mecumque cespite hoc recumbens. |
Ariosto was but second-rate among the Latin versifiers of his century. It must, however, be added that his Latin poems were written in early manhood and only published after his death by Giambattista Pigna, in 1553.
[615] Op. Min. vol. i. p. 333:
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Quid nostra an Gallo regi an servire Latino, Si sit idem hinc atque hinc non leve servitium? Barbaricone esse est pejus sub nomine, quam sub Moribus? At ducibus, Dii, date digna malis. |
What Ariosto thought about the Italian despots finds full expression in the Cinque Canti, ii. 5, 6, where he protests that Caligula, Nero, Phalaris, Dionysius and Creon were surpassed by them in cruelty and crime.
[616] I have followed the order of Lemonnier's edition, vol. i. of Opere Minori, Florence, 1857. But the dates of composition are uncertain, and it may be doubted whether Ariosto's own autograph can be taken as the basis of a chronological arrangement. Much obscurity rests upon these poems. We do not know, for instance, whether they were sent to the friends addressed in them by name, or whether the author intended them for publication. The student may profitably consult upon these points the lithographed facsimile of the autograph, published at Bologna by Zanichelli in 1875. Meanwhile it is enough to mention that the first epistle was addressed to Messer Galasso Ariosto, the poet's brother, the second to Messer Alessandro Ariosto and Messer Lodovico da Bagno, the third and fourth to Messer Annibale Maleguccio, the fifth to Messer Sismondo Maleguccio, the sixth to Messer Buonaventura Pistofilo, and the seventh to Monsignore Pietro Bembo.
[617] The first and second Capitoli, upon the irksome and exhausting service of the Cardinal, as dangerous to Ariosto's health as it was irritating to his temper, should be read side by side with this Epistle.
[618] See above, [p. 505], for Ariosto's liking for turnips. He ate them with vinegar and wine sauce.
[619] Compare the apologue of the gourd and the pear-tree in the sixth Satire (55-114). It is to the same effect, but even plainer.
[620] The word I have translated "magpie" is gaza in the autograph. This has been interpreted as a slip of the pen for ganza; but it may be a Lombardism for gazza. In the latter case we should translate it "magpie," in the former "sweetheart." I prefer to read gazza, as the ironical analogy between a magpie and a poet is characteristic of Ariosto.
[621] The irony of this passage is justly celebrated. After all his hopes and all the pontiff's promises, the poet gets a kiss, a trifling favor, and has to trudge down from the Vatican to his inn. The mezza bolla is supposed to refer to the fine for entrance on the little benefice of Sant'Agata, half of which Leo remitted.
[622] The third elegy is a beautiful lamentation over his separation from his mistress. Written to ease his heart in solitude, it is more impassioned and less guarded than the epistle.
[623] It may be interesting to compare this scarcely disguised satire with the official flatteries of Canzone ii. and Elegies i., xiv., where Ariosto praises the Medici, and especially Lorenzo, as the saviours of Florence, the honor of Italy.
[624] 22-69.
[625] As when, for instance, he calls the sun in the first Canzone, "l'omicida lucido d'Achille." Several of the sonnets are artificial in their tropes.
[626] De Sanctis, ii.
[627] See especially the lines entitled De suâ ipsius mobilitate.
[628] See Sonnets xii. xi. xxvi. xxiii.
[629] See Ermolao Rubieri, Storia della Poesia Popolare Italiana, p. 45.
[630] Carducci, Intorno ad Alcune Rime, p. 107.
[631] Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti, vol. i. p. ccxxv.