The ‘Sylvæ’ are dedicated to three young men belonging to the Medicean circle and one who stood outside it. Lorenzo—the son of Pier Francesco de’ Medici, grandson of Cosimo’s brother—whose name stands at the beginning of ‘Manto,’ was at that time on friendly terms with the members of the elder branch of his race. He afterwards became estranged from them; a change the effects of which did not cease when his posterity had entered upon the dominion of Florence, and the last remaining descendant of Cosimo’s line sat on the throne of France. Gifted with poetical talents, and no unworthy rival of his more famous relatives, the younger Lorenzo was a friend of Poliziano’s, who dedicated to him among other things a description of the villeggiatura at Poggio a Cajano. ‘Rusticus’ was intended for Jacopo Salviati, who, when these verses were written, in 1483, had been designated as Lorenzo’s son-in-law; so that Poliziano, who had first sung the praises of the unlucky Archbishop of Pisa and then openly insulted him with extravagant accusations, passed lightly over the troublesome past. ‘Ambra’ was sent to Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of Giovanni, and for a time a pupil, together with Piero de’ Medici, of our poet, who in one of his letters praised his intellectual gifts and knowledge of classical literature. He was a faithful adherent of his relatives, not only in prosperity but also in adversity, which fell on him even more heavily than on them. In the days of Savonarola he was accused of taking part in a conspiracy in favour of the exiles, and, with Niccolò Ridolfi, the father of Lorenzo’s son-in-law, suffered on the scaffold in 1497, at the age of thirty-two, a victim to mob-law. The last of these poems, ‘Nutricia,’ was dedicated, in 1491, several years after its composition, to the Cardinal of Sant’Anastasia, Antonio Pallavicino Gentile of Genoa, who had great influence in state affairs under Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., and took much interest in literature and literary men. At the close of the dedication Poliziano gratefully alludes to the cardinal’s efforts to further his cause with the Pope.
As we have said, the ‘Sylvæ’ were prolegomena to lectures on literature. To a cycle of another kind, to lectures given at Florence in 1483 on the Aristotelian philosophy, Poliziano composed a prose introduction, probably the strangest ever heard at any university.[44] The very title—‘Lamia’ (the Witch)—sounds strange, and we almost suspect a joke, but find that the author is in earnest. The beginning of this address to his students is highly characteristic. ‘Have you ever heard tell of witches? When I was a little boy my grandmother used to tell me about the witches in the neighbouring wood, who eat up naughty children. Fancy what an image of terror a witch was to me in those days! In the neighbourhood of my little villa at Fiesole there is a little brook, hidden by the shadow of the hill-side, and the women of the place who go there to draw water say that it is a place of meeting for the witches. But what is a witch? Plutarch of Chæronea, who was as grave as he was learned, relates that the witches have artificial eyes which they can put in and take out at their pleasure, just as weak-sighted old people do with their spectacles, which they stick on their noses when they want to look carefully at something and then put back into the case; or as others do with their false teeth, which they lay aside with their clothes when they go to bed;—not to mention your helpmeets, ye married men, with their bought braids and curls. If a witch desires to take a walk she puts in her eyes, and wanders through streets and alleys, squares and markets, churches and offices, taverns and baths, looks at everything, thrusts her nose into everything, meddles with everything, let a man do what he may. She has the eyes of an owl and a spy, like the old maid in Plautus. She can find out a grain of sand, and bury herself in the narrowest cranny. When she gets home, as soon as she reaches the threshold, she takes out her eyes and puts them in her pocket. Out of doors she has eyes like a lynx, at home she is blind. You ask what she does then? She sits spinning yarn, and humming a little song from time to time. Have you Florentines never known such witches, who know nothing of their own business, but are always busy about other people’s? No? Yet there are many of them in all cities, even here in yours. But they go about in disguise—you take them for men and women, but they are witches. Once it befell that some of them, happening to see me, stood still, and looked at me curiously, as those desirous to buy are wont to do. They whispered to each other, with uncouth gestures, “That is Poliziano—that is the rhymester who has suddenly dressed himself up as a philosopher,” and then they hurried away like wasps robbed of their sting. What they meant by their discourse is not clear to me; whether it displeases them that a man should be a philosopher, which, however, I am not, or that I venture to play the philosopher without having the material to do so. Let us now see what sort of a creature it is that men call a philosopher. You will soon perceive that I do not belong to the species. I say this not because I think that you believe it, but that no one may take it into his head to believe it. Not that I should be ashamed of the name, if it agreed with the facts, but because I prefer to keep free from titles which are not due to me:
Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olim
Grex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum.
This therefore is the first point. The second is, whether the condition of a philosopher is bad. When I have proved the contrary I will speak to you briefly of myself and the subject of my lectures.’ After this introduction follows a sketch of the course of Grecian philosophy, and an exposition of the work of the later schools of thought.
The man who raised to such a height the poetry of his native tongue, and the idiom from which it sprang, was deeply interested in popular poetry. He went hand in hand with his patron and friend in efforts to bring back language and literature ‘from the constraint of false rules to truth and nature.’ Both found the popular minstrelsy in the peculiar shape it retains to the present day, and differing completely in tone from the songs of other lands. In the rispetti the ottava rima predominates, treated freely as it was in Boccaccio’s days for epic poetry. Even the sentimental pieces are epigrammatically pointed, and full of antitheses, which give an impression of artificiality and imitation of the antique, more especially in southern Tuscany and the Roman district. They are not narratives, nor do they develope a state of mind, but they vividly describe momentary emotion. Without making up a whole history with such little songs, like Pulci and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano composed a series of rispetti describing joy and sorrow, accepted and especially despised love. They are partly in dialogue, frequently in a natural easy style, which reminds us of improvisations, more tender in expression, more flexible in diction than the two writers above mentioned, who not unfrequently betray that they are mocking at their own work. Other similar songs, but without internal connection, display a versatility resulting naturally from the way in which they originated. These fugitive poems grew within the Medicean circle, products of social intercourse in the villa and in evening walks in the garden; or, like the dance-songs (ballate), of which Poliziano wrote a great number, they were sung with music in the public squares. In short, they belonged to the life of the people who had furnished models for the rhymes composed for them by the poets of quality, with greater refinement, and not always without a secondary object in view.
Poliziano’s versatility is wonderfully shown in the labours he undertook in the field of classical philology while thus wandering through the woods of poetry. He was one of the first to establish the true principles of textual criticism; at the request of Innocent VIII. he translated Herodian’s Roman history into Latin,[45] and made the writings of Hippocrates and Galen accessible to those of his countrymen who were not acquainted with Greek. On the latter occasion he claimed the assistance of the learned doctor Pietro Leoni, who was then lecturing in Padua, to secure the correct rendering of the medical terms.[46] The most talented poet of the fifteenth century was also the philologer who, while equal to others in knowledge of antiquity, represents its spirit with more truth and originality. In trying to rival the classical letter-writers, Poliziano followed a fashion that had influenced statesmen and men of learning from Petrarca downwards. He left a mass of epistolary testimony to the character of his age, the value of which must not be lightly estimated, though it may not always answer the expectations raised by the names. Like Ficino and others, Poliziano had arranged his Latin correspondence for publication, and wrote a dedication to Piero de’ Medici, when death cut short his career.[47] More interesting to us than the generality of these letters, which nevertheless contain valuable matter, are his confidential letters in the vulgar tongue, not meant for publication. Even this highly gifted man was not free from the bad habit of the learned men of the fifteenth century—the intermixture of Latin phrases with Italian when the subject gave no occasion for it.
CHAPTER IX.
POLIZIANO IN THE MEDICEAN HOUSE. SCALA AND RUCELLAI.