This note of gayety and pure enjoyment is sustained throughout his lyrics. In one Ballata he describes a country girl, caught by thorns, and unable to avoid her admirer's glance.[144] Another gives a pretty picture of a maiden with a wreath of olive-leaves and silver.[145] A third is a little idyll of two girls talking to their lambs, and followed by an envious old woman.[146] A fourth is a biting satire on old women—Di diavol vecchia femmina ha natura.[147] A fifth is that incomparably graceful canzonet, O vaghe montanine pasturelle, the popularity of which is proved by the fact that it was orally transmitted for many generations, and attributed in after days to both Lorenzo de' Medici and Angelo Poliziano.[148] Indeed, it may be said in passing that Poliziano owed much to Sacchetti. This can be seen by comparing Sacchetti's Ballata on the Gentle Heart, and his pastoral of the Thorn-tree with the later poet's lyrics.[149]
The unexpressed contrast between the cautious town-life of the burgher poet and his license in the villa, to which I have already called attention, determines the character of many minor lyrics by Sachetti.[150] We comprehend the spirit of these curious poems, at once popular and fashionable, when we compare them with medieval French Pastourelles, or with similar compositions by wandering Latin students. In the Carmina Burana may be found several little poems, describing the fugitive loves of truant scholars with rustic girls, which prove that, long before Sacchetti's age, the town had sought spring-solace in the country.[151] Men are too apt to fancy that what they consider the refinements of passion and fashion (the finer edge, for example, put upon desire by altering its object from the known and trivial to the untried and exceptional, from venal beauties in the city to shepherd maidens on the village-green) are inventions of their own times. Yet it was precisely a refinement of this sort which gave peculiar flavor to Sacchetti's songs in the fourteenth century, and which made them sought after. They had great vogue in Italy, enjoying the privilege of popularity among the working classes, and helping to diffuse that sort of pastoral part-song which we still know as Madrigal.[152] Sacchetti was himself a good musician; many of his songs were set to music by himself, and others by his friends. This gives a pleasant old-world homeliness to the Latin titles inscribed beneath the rubrics—Franciscus de Organis sonum dedit; Intonatum per Francum Sacchetti; Francus sonum dedit; and so forth.
The Ballads and Madrigals of Niccolò Soldanieri should be mentioned in connection with Sacchetti; though they do not detach themselves in any marked way from the style of love poetry practiced at the close of the fourteenth century.[153] The case is different with Alesso Donati's lyrics. In them we are struck by a new gust of coarse and powerful realism, which has no parallel among the elder poets except in the savage sonnets of Cecco Angiolieri. Vividly natural situations are here detached from daily life and delineated with intensity of passion, vehement sincerity. Sacchetti's gentleness and genial humor have disappeared. In their place we find a dramatic energy and a truth of language that are almost terrible. Each of the little scenes, which I propose to quote in illustration of these remarks, might be compared to etchings bitten with aquafortis into copper. Here, for example, is a nun, who has resolved to throw aside her veil and follow her lover in a page's dress[154]:
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La dura corda e 'l vel bruno e la tonica Gittar voglio e lo scapolo Che mi tien qui rinchiusa e fammi monica; Poi teco a guisa d'assetato giovane, Non già che si sobarcoli, Venir me 'n voglio ove fortuna piovane: E son contenta star per serva e cuoca, Chè men mi cocerò ch'ora mi cuoca. |
Here is a dialogue at dawn between a woman and her paramour. The presence of the husband sleeping in the chamber is suggested with a brutal vigor[155]:
Scarcely less forcible is the girl's vow against her mother, who keeps her shut at home[156]:
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In pena vivo qui sola soletta Giovin rinchiusa dalla madre mia, La qual mi guarda con gran gelosia. Ma io le giuro alla croce di Dio Che s'ella mi terrà qui più serrata, Ch'i' diro—Fa' con Dio, vecchia arrabiata; E gitterò la rocca, il fuso e l'ago, Amor, fuggendo a te di cui m'appago. |
To translate these madrigals would be both difficult and undesirable. It is enough to have printed the original texts. They prove that aristocratic versifiers at this period were adopting the style of the people, and adding the pungency of brief poetic treatment to episodes suggested by novelle.[157]
While dealing with the Novelle and the semi-popular literature of this transition period, I have hitherto neglected those numerous minor poets who continued the traditions of the earlier trecento.[158] There are two main reasons for this preference. In the first place, the novelle was destined to play a most important part in the history of the Renaissance, imposing its own laws of composition upon species so remote as the religious drama and romantic epic. In the second place, the dance-songs, canzonets and madrigals of Sacchetti's epoch lived upon the lips of the common folk, who during the fifteenth century carried Italian literature onward through a subterranean channel.[159] When vernacular poetry reappeared into the light of erudition and the Courts, the influences of that popular style, which drew its origin from Boccaccio and Sacchetti rather than from Dante or the Trovatori, determined the manner of Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano. Meanwhile the learned poems of the latest trecentisti were forgotten with the lumber of the middle ages. For the special purpose, therefore, of this volume, which only regards the earlier stages of Italian literature in so far as they preceded and conditioned the Renaissance, it was necessary to give the post of honor to Boccaccio's followers. Some mention should, however, here be made of those contemporaries and imitators of Petrarch, in whom the traditions of the fourteenth century expired. It is not needful to pass in review the many versifiers who treated the old themes of chivalrous love with meritorious conventional facility. The true life of the Italians was not here; and the phase of literature which the Sicilian School inaugurated, survived already as an anachronism. The case is different with such poetry as dealt immediately with contemporary politics. In the declamatory compositions of this age, we hear the echoes of the Guelf and Ghibelline wars. The force of that great struggle was already spent; but the partisans of either faction, passion enough survived to furnish genuine inspiration. Fazio degli Uberti's sermintese on the cities of Italy, for example, was written in the bitter spirit of an exiled Ghibelline.[160] His ode to Charles IV. is a torrent of vehement medieval abuse, poured forth against an Emperor who had shown himself unworthy of his place in Italy[161]: