[1148]. “Tutta volta bisogna ancor confessare, che questo fu il primo genere di Poesia, che fosse al Mondo.” There is a long account of improvisation in Crescimbeni, L’Istoria della Volgar Poesia, Venice, 1731 (written in 1697), pp. 219 ff. An old and very interesting gradus ad Parnassum is Ruscelli, Del Modo di Comporre in Versi nella Lingua Italiana, Venice, 1582 (a new edition), “nel quale va compreso un pieno ordinatissimo Rimario,” and there are directions for using the voice both for prose and for verse. The seventh chapter is on the “stanze d’ottava Rima,” and treats of improvisation, mentioning even an infant phenomenon in this art (“essendo ancor fanciullo ... non arrivava ai sedici anni”), who made verses off-hand on any subject which was given to him.
[1149]. From two books, one Italian, Saggi di Poesie parte dette all’ improvviso e parte scritte dal Cavaliere Perfetti patrizio Sanese ed insigne Poeta estemporaneo coronato di laurea in Campidoglio ... dal Dottor Domenico Cianfogni, 2 vols., Florence, 1748 (Vol. II. has the account of the crowning); and a Latin pamphlet of 56 pp., Josephi Mariani Parthenii S. J. de Vita et Studiis Bernadini Perfetti Senensis Poetae Laureati, Rome, 1771. They are interesting in many ways.
[1150]. Latin, xix.
[1151]. The pious father tells elsewhere of mitigating contrivances: “Frigida inter canendum uti solebat, ad fauces nimirum recreandas et ad nimium fervorem, quo incendebatur, restringuendum!”
[1152]. Along with Perfetti’s moribund art of individual improvisation dies as well the improvised flyting, even in its more complicated and artistic phases. Through sundry references made above (pp. 208, note, 325, 416 f.) in regard to the interlaced stanzas of ballad and song. I have come into a bit of unintentional and quite explicable confusion. These serranas were called artificial, and yet were cited in the proof of communal origins. Artistic and even artificial these serranas undoubtedly become; and yet so does the refrain. They are very common; as Professor Lang points out in his Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal, Halle, 1894, pp. xlvii, lxiii, they make “die Norm des altportugiesischen Kunstgedichtes,” and are found alike in songs of love and in the various kinds of flyting. Here, in the public song-duel, one crosses into communal territory; and the serranas go back to that rivalry of variation based upon a refrain or a repeated traditional verse.
[1154]. I regret that all references to Bücher’s Arbeit und Rhythmus have been made from the first edition, and not from the second, which came to my hands after the foregoing chapters were printed. In bulk the book has more than doubled, increase lying mainly in new songs and refrains of labour, particularly of Bittarbeit and Frohnarbeit. Neither this new edition, however, nor the new edition of Bücher’s Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft (see my note above, p. [107]) changes materially his theory as quoted in defence of communal poetry. Not so much the priority of play is conceded as the early lack of a definite boundary between play and work. Again, references have been made above to Yrjö Hirn’s book, Förstudier till en Konstfilosofi; this material, and much more of the sort, are now to be found in the same author’s Origins of Art, London and New York, 1900. Possibly some modification, due to the chapter on “Erotic Art,” should be made in the statements of ethnologists with regard to the lack of this motive in savage poetry.
[1155]. The science of poetry has had its share of wild theories meant to establish “laws” of progress. See Tarde, Les Lois Sociales, pp. 24 ff. But the play of collective and individual forces is too evident, too reasonable, to be classed with Vico’s Ricorsi and with Plato’s or Bacon’s cycles.
[1156]. In Chapters III and VII.
[1157]. See the brilliant description of this epoch in the opening chapter of Pellissier’s Mouvement Littéraire au XIXᵉ Siècle, 5th ed., Paris, 1898.