Many other poets might be mentioned, but they are now mere names, except SENUCCIO DEL BENE, chiefly renowned as Petrarch’s friend, but himself a graceful writer, and two of considerably later date, of one of whom it may be truly if paradoxically said that he is chiefly remembered for being forgotten. This is DOMENICO BURCHIELLO, a standing example of the fickleness of popular taste. He was a Florentine, who lived from about 1400 to 1448, and composed numerous burlesque sonnets alla coda (with a tag of three lines), which retained sufficient vitality to go through thirty editions soon after the invention of printing, but are now inevitably neglected, inasmuch as the Florentine slang in which they are mainly composed has ceased to be amusing, or even intelligible. The other poet of the period, GIUSTO DE’ CONTI, a jurist, who lived at the court of Sigismondo Malatesta, Prince of Rimini, and died there about 1452, is remarkable as the chief contemporary imitator of Petrarch, whom he followed with such servility as greatly to impair the credit otherwise due to him for the sweetness of his verse and the occasional dignity of his style. His collection of sonnets, entitled La Bella Mano, from its perpetual reference to the beauties of his lady’s hand, stands out at all events, as even an inferior work might have done, from the almost total poetical barrenness of the middle of the fifteenth century, otherwise only relieved by the elegant sonnets of another Petrarchist, Bonaccorso da Montemagno, and the popular carols which gained Leonardo Giustiniani deserved reputation.
More genuine poetry is to be found in the occasional lyrics of two writers near the end of the fourteenth century, chiefly eminent in a different species of composition, the novelette. FRANCO SACCHETTI and GIOVANNI FIORENTINO are artists in words, and men of true poetic feeling. A canzonet of Sacchetti’s (the earliest Italian poet, says Rossetti, with whom playfulness was a characteristic), O vaghe montanine pastorelle, was so popular as to have been transmitted for some generations by oral recitation, while his novelettes, until printed in the eighteenth century, existed only in a single mutilated manuscript. This is the conclusion of Rossetti’s translation of this charming lyric:
I think your beauties might make great complaint
Of being thus shown ever mount and dell;
Because no city is so excellent
But that your stay therein were honourable.
In very truth now does it like you well
To live so poorly on the hillside here?
Better it liketh one of us, pardie,
Behind her flock to seek the pasture-stance,
Far better than it liketh one of ye
To ride unto your curtained rooms and dance.
We seek no riches, neither golden chance,
Save wealth of flowers to weave into our hair.
Ballad, if I were now as once I was,
I’d make myself a shepherd on some hill,
And, without telling any one, would pass
Where these girls went, and follow at their will,
And “Mary,” and “Martin,” we would murmur still,
And I would be for ever where they were.
This exquisite poem, however, rather belongs to the late fourteenth than to the early fifteenth century, as do other songs of equal beauty by Sacchetti and his contemporaries, which contrast favourably with earlier Italian lyrics by their brevity and simplicity. This is partly attributable to their having been in general written for music. Some of the most charming examples have been collected in Carducci’sStudi Letterari.
Sacchetti and Giovanni mark the termination of the Trecentisti period. Many writings of their contemporaries have been printed as models of pure diction, but are otherwise too unimportant to deserve independent notice in a literary history[9]. After the beginning of the fifteenth century Italian prose for a while declined, mainly from the false standard of excellence produced by exaggerated enthusiasm for the newly recovered classics. Neglecting the spirit, though only too attentive to the letter, of these models, writers corrupted their diction with Latinisms. The best books were histories, and the best of these were written in Latin. It might have been said that to find a really good vernacular historian we must go back to the fourteenth century, were it not for the doubts which beset the alleged chronicle of DINO COMPAGNI, which professedly details events at Florence from 1286 to 1318. The question of its genuineness has aroused the sharpest controversy, which cannot be regarded as even yet absolutely determined: the prevailing opinion, however, seems to be that it is a fabrication dating from about 1450. It is so entertaining that one would wish it trustworthy.
GINO CAPPONI, a leading Florentine citizen of the latter fourteenth and earlier fifteenth century, has left valuable memoirs of some of the transactions in which he was engaged. The great Florentine historian of the age, however, is GIOVANNI VILLANI, a characteristic embodiment of all the better qualities of his city, who, inspired by ardent patriotism, wrote its history, including a review of the contemporary transactions of the world, from the Tower of Babel to 1346, on the verge of the Black Death of 1348, by which he was himself carried off. His work was continued by his brother Matteo and his nephew Filippo to 1368. Villani possessed every qualification which experience of public business could afford, having filled several important offices, among them those of Prior and Master of the Mint. His language is exceedingly pure, his fidelity and impartiality are beyond suspicion, and he is peculiarly valuable from his preservation of financial and economical details, and other matters affecting ordinary life. He would have been a model historian if he had lived when the spirit of critical inquiry was awake, and historians had learned the delineation of character and the artistic construction of narrative; he must, however, in this case have forfeited the golden simplicity which renders his narrative so delightful. His nephew Filippo, who lived far into the fifteenth century, wrote in Latin theLives of Illustrious Florentines, already cited as an authority on Dante. His memoir of Boccaccio has been frequently reprinted.