"He is."
Then I begged him to tell me why these mournful images were scattered over his goodly earth, these maimed gods, this blood and weeping; but I may not set down all that he told me, seeing that much of it was dark, and much, as I thought, not pertinent to the issue. Much again was said with his hands, which I cannot interpret here. Suffice it that I learned this concerning the Agonist, that he was the son of the goddess and greater than she, though in a sense less. Mortal he was, and immortal, abject to look upon, being indeed accounted a malefactor and crucified like a thief; and yet a king of men, speaking wisdom whereof the like hath hardly been heard. For of two things he taught there would seem to be no bottom to them, so profound and unsearchable they are. And one of them was this,— "The kingdom is within you" (or some such words); and the other was, "Who will lose his life shall save it." Whereof, methinks, the first comprehends all the teaching of the Academy and the second that of the Porch. So this man must needs have been a god, and whether the son or no of the Soul of the World, greater than she. For what she did, as it were by necessity and her blind inhering power, he knew. Therefore he must have been Wisdom itself. And thus I knew that he could not be Dionysus the Saviour, though he might have many of his attributes; nor simply that son of Venus whom Ausonius alone of our poets saw fastened to a cross. So at last, "I will tell you," said I, "who this god really is, as it seems to me. Being of vile estate and yet greatest of all; being mortal and yet immortal, god and man; being at once most wise and most simple, and (as such his condition imports) intermediate between Earth and Heaven, he must needs be the Divine Eros, concerning whom Plato's words are yet with us. So I can understand why he is so wise, why he suffers always, and yet cannot be driven by torment nor persuaded by sophisms to cease loving. For the necessity of love is to crave ever; and he is Love himself. Wherefore I am very sure he can lead men, if they will, from the fair things of the world to those infinitely fairer things in themselves whereby what we now have are so very fair to see. And he may well be son of this goddess and nourished by her milk; for it behoves us that a god should stand between Earth and Heaven and be compact of the elements of either, so that he should condescend the wisdom of his head to instruct the clemency of his heart. And we know, you and I, that the gods are but attributes of God, whose intellect (as I say) may well be in Heaven, but His heart is in the Earth, and is the core of it. For so we say of the poet that his heart is ever in his fair work."
Thus we took our wine and were well content to sit in the sunshine.
IV
OF POETS AND NEEDLEWORK
The man of our time to class poetry as a thing very pleasant and useful shall hardly be found. At most the saying will suffer reprint as a quaintness, a freak, or a paradox; and so it has proved. From Prato, dusty little city of mid-Tuscany, and with the impress of its Reale Orfanotrofio (nourisher, it would thus appear, of more Humanities than one) comes an "Opera Nova, nella quale si contengono bellissime historie, contrasti, lamenti et frottole, con alcune canzoni a ballo, strambotti, geloghe, farse, capitoli e bazellette di più eccellenti autori. Aggiuntevi assai tramutationi, villanelle alla napolitana, sonetti alla bergamasca et mariazi alla povana, indovinelli, ritoboli e passerotti"; cosa, this legend goes on to say, molto piacevole et utile. This is, no doubt, rococo, and at best a pitiful, catchfarthing bit of ancientry: yet it looks back to a time when it was indeed the fact that no choice work could be but useful, and when eyes and ears, as conduits to the soul, had that full of consideration we reserve for mouth and nose, purveyors to the belly.
Vasari, Giorgio, he too, bourgeois though he were, and in so far the best of testimony, knew it when he found Luca's blue and white to be "molto utile per la state." We should say that of a white umbrella or suit of flannels; why of earthenware or an adroit strambotto? That marks the cleft, the incurable gulf of difference between a people like the Tuscans with art in their marrow, and our present selves with our touching reliance upon a most unseemly hunger after facts. I suppose I should be stretching a point if I said that Samson Agonistes was cosa molto piacevole ed utile. And yet I name there a great poem and a weighty, whence the general public suck, or claim to suck, no small advantage. Is it more useful to them than Bradshaw? I doubt. But here, in this Opera Nova so furthered, are sixty-three little snatches of Luigi Pulci's, eight lines to the stave, about the idlest of make-believe love affairs, full of such Petrarchisms as "Gl' occhi tuoi belli son li crudel dardi," or
"Tu m' ai trafitto il cor! donde io moro,
Se tu, iddea, non mi dai aiutoro."—
the merest commonplaces of gallantry: called on what account by their contrivers molto utile?
I have urged in my Second Essay that the Tuscans were inveterate weavers of fancy, choosing what came easiest to hand to weave withal. I dared to see such airy spinning in that Spanish Chapel from which Mr. Ruskin has nearly frightened the lovers of Art; I said that the Summa was to the painters there as good vantage ground as any novel of Sacchetti's. I now say that Luigi Pulci and his kindred so treated the love-lore which was solemn mystery to Guinicelli and Lapo and Fazio, or the young Dante shuddering before his lord of terrible aspect. I would add Petrarch's name to this honourable roll if I believed it fitting such a niche; but I find him the greatest equivocator of them all, and owe him a grudge for making a fifteenth-century Dante impossible. It is true, had there been such a poet we should never have had our Milton; but that may not serve the Swan of Vaucluse as justification for being miserable before a looking-glass, that he starved his grandsons to serve ours. Take him then as a poser: give him, for the argument's sake, Boccace to his company, Cino; give him our Pulci, give him Ariosto, give him Lorenzo, Politian; give him Tasso for aught I care; you have no one left but the sugar-cured Guarino. Dante stands alone upon the skyey peaks of his great argument, steadied there and holding his breath, as for the hush that precedes weighty endeavour; and Bojardo (no Tuscan by birth) stands squarely to the plains, holding out one hand to Rabelais over-Alps and another to Boccace grinning in his grave. The fellow is such a sturdy pagan we must e'en forgive him some of his quirks. Italian poesy, poor lady, stript to the smock, can still look honestly out if she have but two such vestments whole and unclouted as the Commedia and the Orlando. Let us look at some of her spoiled bravery. Take up my Opera Nova and pick over Pulci in his lightest mood. I am minded to try my hand for your amusement.