[770] Commentario delle più notabili e mostruose cose d’Italia et altri luoghi, di Lingua Aramea in Italiana tradotta. Con un breve Catalogo degli inventori delle cose che si mangiano et beveno, novamente ritrovato. In Venetia 1553 (first printed 1548, based on a journey taken by Ortensio Landi through Italy in 1543 and 1544). That Landi was really the author of this Commentario is clear from the concluding remarks of Nicolo Morra (fol. 46 a): ‘Il presente commentario nato del constantissimo cervello di M. O. L.;’ and from the signature of the whole (fol. 70 a): SVISNETROH SVDNAL, ROTUA TSE, ‘Hortensius Landus autor est.’ After a declaration as to Italy from the mouth of a mysterious grey-haired sage, a journey is described from Sicily through Italy to the East. All the cities of Italy are more or less fully discussed: that Lucca should receive special praise is intelligible from the writer’s way of thinking. Venice, where he claims to have been much with Pietro Aretino ([p. 166]), and Milan are described in detail, and in connexion with the latter the maddest stories are told (fol. 25 sqq.). There is no want of such elsewhere—of roses which flower all the year round, stars which shine at midday, birds which are changed into men, and men with bulls’ heads on their shoulders, mermen, and men who spit fire from their mouths. Among all these there are often authentic bits of information, some of which will be used in the proper place; short mention is made of the Lutherans (fol. 32 a, 38 a), and frequent complaints are heard of the wretched times and unhappy state of Italy. We there read (fol. 22 a): ‘Son questi quelli Italiani li quali in un fatto d’armi uccisero ducento mila Francesi? sono finalmente quelli che di tutto il mondo s’impadronirono? Hai quanto (per quel che io vego) degenerati sono. Hai quanto dissimili mi paiono dalli antichi padri loro, liquali et singolar virtu di cuore e disciplina militare ugualmente monstrarno havere.’ On the catalogue of eatables which is added, see below.
[771] Descrizione di tutta l’Italia.
[772] Satirical lists of cities are frequently met with later, e.g. Macaroneide, Phantas. ii. For France, Rabelais, who knew the Macaroneide, is the chief source of all the jests and malicious allusions of this local sort.
[773] It is true that many decaying literatures are full of painfully minute descriptions. See e.g. in Sidonius Apollinaris the descriptions of a Visigoth king (Epist. i. 2), of a personal enemy (Epist. iii. 13), and in his poems the types of the different German tribes.
[774] On Filippo Villani, see p. 330.
[775] Parnasso teatrale, Lipsia, 1829. Introd. p. vii.
[776] The reading is here evidently corrupt. The passage is as follows (Ameto, Venezia, 1856, p. 54): ‘Del mezo de’ quali non camuso naso in linea diretta discende, quanto ad aquilineo non essere dimanda il dovere.’
[777] ‘Due occhi ladri nel loro movimento.’ The whole work is rich in such descriptions.
[778] The charming book of songs by Giusto dei Conti, La bella Mano (best ed. Florence, 1715), does not tell us as many details of this famous hand of his beloved as Boccaccio in a dozen passages of the Ameto of the hands of his nymphs.
[779] ‘Della bellezza delle donne,’ in the first vol. of the Opere di Firenzuola, Milano, 1802. For his view of bodily beauty as a sign of beauty of soul, comp. vol. ii. pp. 48 to 52, in the ‘ragionamenti’ prefixed to his novels. Among the many who maintain this doctrine, partly in the style of the ancients, we may quote one, Castiglione, Il Cortigiana, l. iv. fol. 176.