and winds up with the strange assurance that:

da lui si sente
Anzi s'impara con gioja infinita
Come viver si debbe in questa vita.

[465] Sonnet xxvii.

[466] Sonnet ix.

[467] The scholars of the day were not content with writing burlesque Capitoli. They must needs annotate them. See Caro's Commentary on the Ficheide of Molza (Romagnoli, Scelta di Curiosità Letterarie, Dispensa vii. Bologna, 1862) for the most celebrated example. There is not a sentence in this long and witty composition, read before the Accademia delle Virtù, which does not contain a grossly obscene allusion, scarcely a paragraph which does not refer to an unmentionable vice.

[468] The six opening lines of the Lamentazion d'Amore prevent our regarding Berni's jests as wholly separate from his experience and practice.

[469] A familiar illustration is Cellini's Capitolo del Carcere. Curious examples of these occasional poems, written for the popular taste, are furnished by Mutinelli in his Annali Urbani di Venezia. See above, [Part i. pp. 172], [519], for the vicissitudes of terza rima after the close of the fourteenth century.

[470]

A Papacy composed of compliment,
Debate, consideration, complaisance,
Of furthermore, then, but, yes, well, perchance,
Haply, and such-like terms inconsequent;
Of thought, conjecture, counsel, argument,
Starveling surmise to summon countenance,
Negotiations, audiences, romance,
Fine words and shifts, disbursement to prevent;
Of feet of lead, of tame neutrality,
Of patience and parade to outer view.
Of fawning Faith, of Hope and Charity,
Of Innocence and good intentions too,
Which it were well to dub simplicity,
Uglier interpretations to eschew;
With your permission, you,
To speak the plain truth out, shall live to see
Pope Adrian sainted through this Papacy.

[471] Sonnets xi. xvi. xiv. iii. xx. The same vivid picturesqueness is displayed in the desecrated Abbey (Sonnet xvii.), which deserves to be called an etching in words.