LESSER CONTEMPORARIES OF DANTE
To the same period with Dante belongs Francesco Barberini, the disciple, like Dante, of Brunetto Latini, and author of a treatise in verse on moral philosophy, which, in conformity with the affected spirit of the times, he entitled I Documenti d’Amore. Cecco d’Ascoli was also the contemporary of Dante, and his personal enemy. His poem in five books, called L’Acerba, or rather, according to M. Ginguené, L’Acerva, “the heap,” is a collection of all the sciences of his age, including astronomy, philosophy, and religion. It is much less remarkable for its intrinsic merit than for the lamentable catastrophe of its author, who was burned alive in Florence as a sorcerer, in 1327, at the age of seventy years, after having long held the professorship of judicial astrology in the University of Bologna.
Cino da Pistoia, of the house of the Sinibaldi, was the friend of Dante, and was equally distinguished by the brilliancy of his talents in two different departments: as a lawyer, by his commentary on the first nine books of the code, and, as a poet, by his verses addressed to the beautiful Selvaggia de’ Vergiolesi, of whom he was deprived by death, about the year 1307. As a lawyer, he was the preceptor of the celebrated Bartolo, who, if he has surpassed his master, yet owed much to his lessons. As a poet, he was the model which Petrarch loved to imitate; and, in this view, he perhaps did his imitator as much injury by his refinement and affectation as he benefited him by the example of his pure and harmonious style. Fazio de’ Uberti, grandson of the great Farinata, who, in consequence of the hatred which the Florentines entertained for his ancestor, lived and died in exile, raised himself to equal celebrity at this period by his sonnets and other verses. At a much later time of life, he composed a poem of the descriptive kind, entitled Dettamondo, in which he proposed to imitate Dante, and to display the real world, as that poet had portrayed the world of spirits. But it need hardly be said that the distance between the original and the imitation is great indeed.
In some respects all these poets, and many others whose names are yet more obscure, have common points of resemblance. We find, in all, the same subtlety of idea, the same incoherent images, and the same perplexed sentiments. The spirit of the times was perverted by an affected refinement; and it is a subject of just surprise that, in the very outset of a nation, simplicity and natural feeling should have been superseded by conceit and bombast. It is, however, to be considered that this nation did not form her own taste, but adopted that of a foreign country, before she was qualified, by her own improved knowledge, to make a proper choice. The verses of the troubadours of Provence were circulated from one end of Italy to the other. They were diligently perused and committed to memory by every poet who aspired to public notice, some of whom exercised themselves in compositions in the same language; and although the Italians, if we except the Sicilians, had never any direct intercourse with the Arabians, yet they derived much information from them by this circuitous route. The almost unintelligible subtleties with which they treated of love passed for refinement of sentiment; while the perpetual rivalry which was maintained between the heart and the head, between reason and passion, was looked upon as an ingenious application of philosophy to a literary subject. The causeless griefs, the languors, the dying complaints of a lover became a constituent portion of the consecrated language in which he addressed his mistress, and from which he could not without impropriety depart. Conventional feelings in poetry thus usurped the place of those native and simple sentiments which are the offspring of the heart.