This fact will seem to many minds conclusive on the point in question. But, following the investigations of recent scholars, we find this form of verse pretty generally referred to the watch-song of the Modenese soldiers. Thus Professor Adolfo Bartoli, after quoting two lines of that song,
|
O tu qui servas armis ista moenia, Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila, |
adds: "quì apparisce per la prima volta il nostro verso endecasillabo, regolarmente accentato." If this, which is the view accepted by Italian critics, be right, he ought to have added that each line of the Modenese watch-song is a sdrucciolo verse. Otherwise, the rhythm bears the appearance of a six-foot accentual iambic, an appearance which is confirmed by the recurrence of a single rhyme or assonance in a throughout the poem. Still the strong accent on the antepenultimate syllable of every verse is sufficient to justify us in regarding the meter as endecasillabo sdrucciolo.
Going further back than the Modenese watch-song (date about 924), the next question is whether any of the classic meters supplied its precedent. By reading either Horatian Sapphics or Catullian hendecasyllables without attention to quantity, we may succeed in marking the beat of the endecasillabo piano.[629] Thus:
Cui do|no lep|idum | novum | libellum?
and:
|
Serus | in coe|lum red|eas, | diuque Lætus | inter|sis po|pulo | Quirini. |
When these lines are translated into literal Italian, the metamorphosis is complete. Thus:
Cui don|o il lep|ido | nuovo | libretto?
and: