. The well known passage in the tragic Seneca is not to be compared with it. The
copia verborum
of the mother Florentine tongue, and the easiness of his style, afterwards brought to perfection by Berni, are the chief merits of Pulci; his chief demerit is his heartless spirit of jest and buffoonery, by which sovereigns and their courtiers were flattered by the degradation of nature, and the
impossibilification
of a pretended virtue.
Footnote 1
: Meaning the 25th canto.
Ed
.