[380] The Poetica was printed in 1529; but it had been composed some years earlier.
[381] His grammatical and orthographical treatises were published under the titles of Epistola a Clemente VII., Grammatichetta, Dialogo Castellano, Dubbi Grammaticali. Firenzuola made Trissino's new letters famous and ridiculous by the burlesque sonnets he wrote upon them.
[382] Vicenza, Tolomeo Janicolo, 1529.
[383] Nine books were first printed at Rome in 1547 by Valerio and Luigi Dorici. The whole, consisting of twenty-seven books, was published at Venice in 1548 by Tolomeo Janicolo of Brescia. This Janicolo was Trissino's favorite publisher.
[384] See the Madrigals in Opere Burlesche, vol. iii. pp. 36-38.
[385] Ibid. p. 290.
[386] In Mac. xx. (p. 152 of Mantuan edition, 1771), he darkly alludes to this episode of his early life, where he makes an exposed witch exclaim:
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Nocentina vocor magicis tam dedita chartis, Decepique mea juvenem cum fraude Folengum. |
[387] I cannot find sufficient authority for the story of Folengo's having had a grammar-master named Cocaius, from whom he borrowed part of his pseudonym. The explanation given by his Mantuan editor, which I have adopted in the text, seems the more probable. Cocáj in Mantuan dialect means a cork for a bottle; and the phrase ch'al fà di cocáj is used to indicate some extravagant absurdity or blunder.
[388] There seems good reason, from many passages in his Maccaronea, to believe that his repentance was sincere. I may here take occasion to remark that, though his poems are gross in the extreme, their moral tone is not unhealthy. He never makes obscenity or vice attractive.