[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: