The gentle bevy that adorns the world.
He paints cabinet-pictures like Spenser, in isolated stanzas, with a pencil at once solid and light; as in the instance of the charming one that tells the story of Mercury and his net; how he watched the Goddess of Flowers as she issued forth at dawn with her lap full of roses and violets, and so threw the net over her "one day," and "took her;"
"un dì lo prese[51]."
But he does not confine himself to these gentle pictures. He has many as strong as Michael Angelo, some as intense as Dante. He paints the conquest of America in five words
"Veggio da diece cacciar mille."[52]
I see thousands
Hunted by tens.
He compares the noise of a tremendous battle heard in the neighbourhood to the sound of the cataracts of the Nile:
"un alto suon ch' a quel s' accorda
Con che i vicin' cadendo il Nil assorda."[53]
He "scourges" ships at sea with tempests—say rather the "miserable seamen;" while night-time grows blacker and blacker on the "exasperated waters."[54]
When Rodomont has plunged into the thick of Paris, and is carrying every thing before him ("like a serpent that has newly cast his skin, and goes shaking his three tongues under his eyes of fire"), he makes this tremendous hero break the middle of the palace-gate into a huge "window," and look through it with a countenance which is suddenly beheld by a crowd of faces as pale as death:
"E dentro fatto l' ha tanta finestra,
Che ben vedere e veduto esser puote
Dai visi impressi di color di morte[55]."