Renaissance in Italy, Volume 4 (of 7) / Italian Literature, Part 1

MORGANTE XXV. 119.

There is a spirit, Astarotte height,
Wise, terrible, and fierce exceedingly;
In Hell's dark caves profound he hides from sight:
No goblin, but a fiend far blacker he.—
Malagigi summoned him one deep midnight,
And cried: "How fares Rinaldo, tell to me!
Then will I say what more I'd have thee work;
But look not on me with face so mirk!

"If thou wilt do this bidding, I declare
I'll never call nor conjure thee by force,
But burn upon my death yon book, I swear,
Which can alone compel thee in due course:
So shalt thou live thenceforward free as air."—
Thereat the fiend swaggered, and had recourse
To threatening wiles, and would not yield an inch,
If haply he could make the master flinch.

But when he saw Malagigi's blood was stirred,
In act to flash the ring of his dread art,
And hurl him to some tomb by book and word,
He threw his cards up with a sudden start,
And cried: "Of your will yet I've nothing heard."
Then Malagigi answered: "In what part
Are Ricciardetto and Rinaldo now?
Tell all the truth, or you'll repent, I vow!"

MORGANTE XXV. 135.

Said Astarotte: "This point remains obscure,
Unless I thought the whole night through thereon;
Nor would my best of judgments be secure;—
The paths of heaven for us are all undone,
Our sight of things to be is no more sure
Than that of sages gazing on the sun;
For neither man nor beast would 'scape from Hell,
Had not our wings been shortened when we fell.

"Of the Old Testament I've much to teach,
And of what happened in the days gone by;
But all things do not come within our reach:
One only Power there is, who sees on high,
As in a glass before him, all and each,
Past, present, and remote futurity:
He who made all that is, alone knows all,
Nor doth the Son well know what shall befall.

"Therefore I could not without thought intense
Tell thee the destined fate of Charlemain:—
Know that the air around us now is dense
With spirits; in their hands I see them strain
Astrolabe, almanac, and tablet, whence
To read yon signs in heaven of strife and bane—
The blood and treason, overthrow and war,
Menaced by Mars in Scorpio angular.

"And for thy better understanding, he
Is joined with Saturn in the ascendant, so
Charged with all-powerful malignity
That e'en the wars of Turnus had less woe.
Slaughters of many peoples we shall see,
With dire disasters in confusion flow,
And change of states and mighty realms; for I
Know that these signs were never wont to lie.

"I know not whether thou hast fixed thy thought
Upon those comets which appeared of late,
Veru and Dominus and Ascon, brought
Treasons and wars and strife to indicate,
With deaths of princes and great nobles fraught?
These, too, ne'er falsified the word of fate.
So that it seems from what I learn and see,
That what I say, and worse, is like to be.

"What Gano with Marsilio planned before,
I know not, since I did not think thereon:
But he's the same, methinks, he was of yore;
Wherefore this needs no divination:
A seat is waiting for him at hell's core;
And if his life's book I correctly con,
That evil soul will very shortly go
To weep his sins in everlasting woe."

Then spake Malagigi: "Something thou hast said
Which holds my sense and reason still in doubt,
That some things even from the Son are hid;
This thy dark saying I can fathom not."
Then Astarotte: "Thou, it seems, hast read
But ill thy Bible, or its words forgot;
For when the Son was asked of that great day,
Only the Father knows, He then did say.

"Mark my words, Malagigi! Thou shalt hear,
Now if thou wilt, the fiend's theology:
Then to thy churchmen go, and make it clear.
You say: Three Persons in one entity,
One substance; and to this we, too, adhere:
One flawless, pure, unmixed activity:—
Wherefore it follows from what went before,
That this alone is what you all adore.

"One mover, whence all movement is impelled:
One order, whence all order hath its rise;
One cause, whereby all causes are compelled;
One power, whence flow all powers and energies;
One fire, wherein all radiances are held;
One principle, which every truth implies;
One knowledge, whence all wisdom hath been given;
One Good, which made all good in earth and heaven.

"This is that Father and that ancient King,
Who hath made all things and can all things know,
But cannot change His own wise ordering,
Else heaven and earth to ruin both would go.
Having lost His friendship, I no more may wing
My flight unto the mirror, where our woe
Perchance e'en now is clearly shown to view;
Albeit futurity I never knew.

"If Lucifer had known the doom to be,
He had not brought those fruits of rashness forth;
Nor had he ruined for eternity,
Seeking his princely station in the North;
But being impotent all things to see,
He and we all were damned 'neath heaven and earth;
And since he was the first to sin, he first
Fell to Giudecca, and still fares the worst.

"Nor had we vainly tempted all the blest,
Who now sit crowned with stars in Paradise,
If, as I said, a veil by God's behest
Had not been drawn before our mental eyes;
Nor would that Saint, of Saints the first and best
Been tempted, as your Gospel testifies,
And borne by Satan to the pinnacle
Where at the last he saw His miracle.

"And forasmuch as He makes nothing ill,
And all hath circumscribed by fixed decrees,
And what He made is present with Him still,
Being established on just premises,
Know that this Lord repents not of His will;
Nay, if one saith that change hath been, he sees
Falsehood for truth, in sense and judgment blind
For what is now, was in the primal mind."

"Tell me," then answered Malagigi, "more,
Since thou'rt an angel sage and rational!
If that first Mover, whom we all adore,
Within His secret soul foreknew your fell,
If time and hour were both foreseen before,
His sentence must be found tyrannical,
Lacking both justice and true charity;
Since, while creating, and while damning, He

"Foreknew you to be frail and formed in sin;
Nathless you call Him just and piteous,
Nor was there room, you say, pardon to win:—
This makes our God the partisan of those
Angels who stayed the gates of heaven within,
Who knew the true from false, discerning thus
Which side would prosper, which would lose the day,
Nor went, like you, with Lucifer astray."

Astarotte, like the devil, raged with pain;
Then cried: "That just Sabaoth loved no more
Michael than Lucifer; nor made he Cain
More apt than Abel to shed brother's gore:
If one than Nimrod was more proud and vain,
If the other, all unlike to Gabriel, swore
He'd not repent nor bellow psalms to heaven,
It was free-will condemned both unforgiven.

"That was the single cause that damned us all:
His clemency, moreover, gave full time,
Wherein 'twas granted us to shun the fall,
And by repentance to compound our crime;
But now we've fallen from grace beyond recall:
Just was our sentence from that Judge sublime;
His foresight shortened not our day of grace,
For timely penitence aye finds a place.

"Just is the Father, Son, and just the Word!
His justice with great mercy was combined:
Through pride no more than thanklessness we erred;
That was our sin malignant and unkind:
Nor hath remorse our stubborn purpose stirred,
Seeing that evil nourished in the mind
And will of those who knew the good, and were
Untempted, never yet was changed to fair.

"Adam knew not the nature of his sin;
Therefore his primal error was forgiven,
Because the tempter took him in a gin:
Only his disobedience angered heaven;
Therefore, though cast from Eden, he might win
Grace, when repentance from his heart had driven
The wicked will, with peace to end his strife,
And mercy also in eternal life.

"But the angelic nature, once debased,
Can never more to purity return:
It sinned with science and corrupted taste:
Whence in despair incurable we burn.
Now, if that wise one answered not, nor raised
His voice, when Pilate asked of him to learn
What was the truth, the truth was at his side;
This ignorance was therefore justified.

"Pilate was lost, because in doing well
He persevered not when he washed his hand;
And Judas, too, beyond redemption fell,
Because, though penitent at last, he banned
Hope, without which no soul escapes from hell:
His doom no Origen shall countermand,
Nor who to Judas give what's meant for Judah—
In diebus illis salvabitur Juda.

"Thus there is one first Power in heaven who knew
All things, by whom all things were also made:
Making and damning us, He still was true;
On Truth and Justice all His work is laid:
Future and past are present to his view;
For it must follow, as I elsewhere said,
That the whole world before His face should lie,
From whom proceeds force, virtue, energy.

"But now that thou hast bound me to relate,
My master thou, the cause of our mischance,
Thou fain would'st hear why He who rules o'er fate,
And of our fall foresaw each circumstance,
Labored in vain, and made us reprobate?—
Sealed is that rubric, closed from every glance,
Reserved for Him, the Lord victorious:
I know not, I can only answer thus!

"Nor speak I this to put thy mind to proof;
But forasmuch as I discern that men
Weave on this warp of doubts a misty woof,
Seeking to learn; albeit they cannot ken
Whence flows the Nile—the Danube's not enough!
Assure thy soul, nor ask the how and when,
That heaven's high Master, as the Psalmist taught,
Is just and true in all that he hath wrought.

"The things whereof I speak are known not by
Poet or prophet, moralist or sage:
Yet mortal men in their presumption try
To rank the hierarchies, stage over stage!
A chieftain among Seraphim was I;
Yet knew not what in many a learnéd page
Denys and Gregory wrote!—Full surely they
Who paint heaven after earth will go astray!

"But above all things see thou art not led
By elves and wandering sprites, a tricksy kind,
Who never speak one word of truth, but shed
Doubt and suspicion on the hearer's mind;
Their aim is injury toward fools ill-sped:
And, mark this well, they ne'er have been confined
To glass or water, but reside in air,
Playing their pranks here, there, and everywhere.

"From ear to ear they pass, and 'tis their vaunt
Ever to make things seem that are not so:
For one delights in horseplay, jeer and jaunt;
One deals in science; one pretends to show
Where treasures lurk in some forgotten haunt:
Others, more grave, futurity foreknow:—
But now I've given thee hints enough, to tell
That courtesy can even be found in Hell!"

MORGANTE XXV. 282.

And when Rinaldo had learned all his need,
"Astarotte," he cried, "thou art a perfect friend,
And I am bound to thee henceforth indeed!
This I say truly: if God's will should bend,
If grace divine should e'er so much concede
As to reverse heaven's ordinance, amend
Its statutes, sentences, or high decrees,
I will remember these thy services.

"More at the present time I cannot give:
The soul returns to Him from whom it flew:
The rest of us, thou knowest, will not live!
O love supreme, rare courtesy and new."—
I have no doubt that all my friends believe
This verse belongs to Petrarch; yet 'tis true
Rinaldo spoke it very long ago:
But who robs not, is called a rogue, you know.—

Said Astarotte: "Thanks for your good will!
Yet shall those keys be lost for us for ever:
High treason was our crime, measureless ill.
Thrice happy Christians! One small tear can sever
Your bonds!—One sigh, sent from the contrite will:
Lord, to Thee only did I sin!—But never
Shall we find grace: we sinned once; now we lie
Sentenced to hell for all eternity.

"If after, say, some thousand million ages
We might have hope yet once to see again
The least spark of that Love, this pang that rages
Here at the core, could scarce be reckoned pain!—
But wherefore annotate such dreary pages?
To wish for what can never be, is vain.
Therefore I mean with your kind approbation
To change the subject of our conversation."

MORGANTE XXV. 73.

What God ordains is no chance miracle.
Next prodigies and signs in heaven were seen;
For the sun suddenly turned ghastly pale,
And clouds with rain o'erladen flew between,
Muttering low prelude to their thunder-knell,
As when Jove shakes the world with awful spleen:
Next wind and fury, hail and tempest, hiss
O'er earth and skies—Good God, what doom is this?

Then while they cowered together dumb with dread,
Lightning flashed forth and hurtled at their side,
Which struck a laurel's leaf-embowered head,
And burned it; cleft unto the earth, it died.
O Phœbus! yon fair curls of gold outspread!
How could'st thou bear to see thy love, thy pride,
Thus thunder-smitten? Hath thy sacred bay
Lost her inviolable rights to-day?

Marsilio cries: "Mahound! What can it mean!
What doleful mystery lies hid beneath?
O Bianciardino, to our State, I ween,
This omen brings some threat of change or death!"
But, while he spoke, an earthquake shook the scene,
Nay, shook both hemispheres with blustering breath:
Falseron's face changed hue, grew cold and hot,
And even Bianciardino liked it not.

Yet none for very fear dared move a limb,
The while above their heads a sudden flush
Spread like live fire, that made the daylight dim;
And from the font they saw the water gush
In gouts and crimson eddies from the brim;
And what it sprinkled, with a livid flush
Burned: yea, the grass flared up on every side;
For the well boiled, a fierce and sanguine tide.

Above the fountain rose a locust-tree,
The tree where Judas hanged himself, 'tis said;
This turned the heart of Gano sick to see,
For now it ran with ruddy sweat and bled,
Then dried both trunk and branches suddenly,
Moulting its scattered leaves by hundreds dead;
And on his pate a bean came tumbling down,
Which made the hairs all bristle on his crown.

The beasts who roamed at will within the park,
Set up a dismal howl and wail of woe;
Then turned and rushed amuck with yelp and bark,
Butting their horns and charging to and fro:
Marsilio and his comrades in the dark
Watched all dismayed to see how things would go;
And none knew well what he should say or do,
So dreadful was heaven's wrath upon the crew.

MORGANTE XXV. 115.

I had it in my mind once to curtail
This story, knowing not how I should bring
Rinaldo all that way to Roncesvale,
Until an angel straight from heaven did wing,
And showed me Arnald to recruit my tale:
He cries, "Hold, Louis! Wherefore cease to sing?
Perchance Rinaldo will turn up in time!"
So, just as he narrates, I'll trim my rhyme.

I must ride straight as any arrow flies,
Nor mix a fib with all the truths I say;
This is no story to be stuffed with lies!
If I diverge a hand's breadth from the way,
One croaks, one scolds, while everybody cries,
"Ware madman!" when he sees me trip or stray.
I've made my mind up to a hermit's life,
So irksome are the crowd and all their strife.

Erewhile my Academe and my Gymnasia
Were in the solitary woods I love,
Whence I can see at will Afric or Asia;
There nymphs with baskets tripping through the grove,
Shower jonquils at my feet or colocasia:
Far from the town's vexations there I'd rove,
Haunting no more your Areopagi,
Where folk delight in calumny and lie.

MORGANTE XXVII. 6.

Then answered Baldwin: "If my sire in sooth
Hath brought us here by treason, as you say,
Should I survive this battle, by God's truth,
With this good sword I will my father slay!—
But, Roland, I'm no traitor—I forsooth,
Who followed thee with love as clear as day!—
How could'st thou fling worse insult on thy friend?"
Then with fierce force the mantle he did rend,

And cried: "I will return into the fight,
Since thou hast branded me with treason, thou!
I am no traitor! May God give me might,
As living thou shalt see me ne'er from now!"
Straight toward the Paynim battle spurs the knight,
Still shouting, "Thou hast done me wrong, I vow!"
Roland repents him of the words he spake,
When the youth, mad with passion, from him brake.

MORGANTE XXVIII. 138.

I ask not for that wreath of bay or laurel
Which on Greek brows or Roman proudly shone:
With this plain quill and style I do not quarrel,
Nor have I sought to sing of Helicon:
My Pegasus is but a rustic sorrel;
Untutored mid the graves I still pipe on:
Leave me to chat with Corydon and Thyrsis;
I'm no good shepherd, and can't mend my verses.

Indeed I'm not a rash intrusive claimant,
Like the mad piper of those ancient days,
From whom Apollo stripped his living raiment,
Nor quite the Satyr that my face bewrays.
A nobler bard shall rise and win the payment
Fame showers on loftier style and worthier lays:
While I mid beech-woods and plain herdsmen dwell,
Who love the rural muse of Pulci well.

I'll tempt the waters in my little wherry,
Seeking safe shallows where a skiff may swim:
My only care is how to make men merry
With these thick-crowding thoughts that take my whim:
'Tis right that all things in this world should vary;—
Various are wits and faces, stout and slim,
One dotes on white, while one dubs black sublime,
And subjects vary both in prose and rhyme.

APPENDIX VI.

Translations of Elegiac Verses by Girolamo Benivieni and
Michelangelo Buonarroti.

(See page 321).

The heavenly sound is hushed, from earth is riven
The harmony of that delighted lyre,
Which leaves the world in grief, to gladden heaven.
Yea, even as our sobs from earth aspire,
Mourning his loss, so ring the jocund skies
With those new songs, and dance the angelic choir.
Ah happy he, who from this vale of sighs,
Poisonous and dark, heavenward hath flown, and lost
Only the vesture, frail and weak, that dies!
Freed from the world, freed from the tempest-tossed
Warfare of sin, his splendor now doth gaze
Full on the face of God through endless days.

Thou'rt dead of dying, and art made divine;
Nor need'st thou fear to change or life or will;
Wherefore my soul well-nigh doth envy thine.
Fortune and time across thy threshold still
Shall dare not pass, the which mid us below
Bring doubtful joyance blent with certain ill.
Clouds are there none to dim for thee heaven's glow;
The measured hours compel not thee at all;
Chance or necessity thou canst not know.
Thy splendor wanes not when our night doth fall,
Nor waxes with day's light however clear,
Nor when our suns the season's warmth recall.

END OF THE FIRST PART.

MAIN CONTENTS

SECOND PART

FOOTNOTES

[1] See Giesebrecht, De Litterarum studiis apud Italos primis medii ævi sæculis, Berolini, 1845, p. 15.

[2] See Giesebrecht, op. cit. p. 19. Wippo recommends the Emperor to compel his subjects to educate their sons in letters and law. It was by such studies that ancient Rome acquired her greatness. In Italy at the present time, he says, all boys pass from the games of childhood into schools. It is only the Teutons who think it idle or disgraceful for a man to study unless he be intended for a clerical career.

[3] See Adolfo Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. i. pp. 142-158, and p. 167, on Guido delle Colonne and Qualichino da Spoleto.

[4] See above, vol. i. Age of the Despots, 2nd ed. chap. 2.

[5] The Italians did not even begin to reflect upon their lingua volgare until the special characters and temperaments of their chief States had been fixed and formed. In other words, their social and political development far anticipated their literary evolution. There remained no center from which the vulgar tongue could radiate, absorbing local dialects. Each State was itself a center, perpetuating dialect.

[6] See Du Méril, Poésies Populaires Latines antérieures au douzième Siècle, Paris, 1843.

[7] Regarding the authorship of Latin hymns see the notes in Mone's Hymni Latini Medii Ævi, Friburgi Brisgoviæ, 1853, 3 vols. For the French origin of Carmina Burana see Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder der Mittelalters, von Oscar Hubatsch, Görlitz, 1870.

[8] Du Méril, op. cit. p. 268.

[9] Dante, Paradiso, xv.

[10] See Age of the Despots, p. 65.

[11] xvi. 115.

[12] See D'Ancona, Poesia Popolare, p. 11, note.

[13] See Carducci, Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale, p. 29.

[14] Romagnoli has reprinted some specimens of the Illustre et Famosa Historia di Lancillotto del Lago, Bologna, 1862.

[15] Muratori in Antiq. Ital. Diss. xxx. p. 351, quotes a decree of the Bolognese Commune, dated 1288, to the effect that Cantatores Francigenarum in plateis Communis omnino morari non possint. They had become a public nuisance and impeded traffic.

[16] In the Cento Novelle there are several Arthurian stories. The rubrics of one or two will suffice to show how the names were Italianized. Qui conta come la damigella di Scalot morì per amore di Lanciallotto de Lac. Nov. lxxxii. Qui conta della reina Isotta e di m. Tristano di Leonis. Nov. lxv. In the Historia di Lancillotto, cited above, Sir Kay becomes Keux; Gawain is Gauuan. In the Tavola Ritonda, Morderette stands for Mordred, Bando di Benoiche for Ban of Benwick, Lotto d'Organia for Lot of Orkeney.

[17] See Adolfo Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. ii. chapters iii., iv., v., vi., for a minute inquiry into this early dialectical literature.

[18] Cento Novelle, Milano, 1825, Nov. ii. and xxi.

[19] Chronica Fr. Salimbene Parmensis, ord. min., Parmæ, 1857, p. 166.

[20] See the Cronache Siciliane, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865, the first of which bears upon its opening paragraph the date 1358. Sicilian, it may be said in passing, presents close dialectical resemblance to Tuscan. Even the superficial alteration of the Sicilian u and i into the Tuscan o and e (e.g. secundu and putiri into secondo and potere) effaces the most obvious differences.

[21] The Italians wavered long between several metrical systems, before they finally adopted the hendecasyllabic line, which became the consecrated rhythm of serious poetry. Carducci, in his treatise Intorno ad alcune Rime (Imola, Galeati, 1876), pp. 81-89, may be profitably consulted with regard to early Italian Alexandrines. He points out that Ciullo's Tenzone:

Rosa fresc' aulentissima—c'appar' in ver' l'estate:

and the Ballata of the Comari:

Pur bi' del vin, comadr'—e no lo temperare:

together with numerous compositions of the Northern Lombard school (Milan and Verona), are written in Alexandrines. In the Lombardo-Sicilian age of Italian literature, before Bologna acted as an intermediate to Florence, this meter bid fair to become acclimatized. But the Tuscan genius determined decisively for the hendecasyllabic.

[22] See the Appendix to this chapter on Italian hendecasyllables.

[23] See Carducci, Cantilene, etc. (Pisa, 1871), pp. 58-60, for thirteenth-century rispetti illustrating the Sicilian form of the Octave Stanza and its transformation to the Tuscan type.

[24] The poetry of this period will be found in Trucchi, Poesie Inedite, Prato, 1846; Poeti del Primo Secolo, Firenze, 1816; Raccolta di Rime Antiche Toscane, Palermo, Assenzio, 1817; and in a critical edition of the Codex Vaticanus 3793, Le Antiche Rime Volgari, per cura di A. d'Ancona e D. Comparetti, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1875.

[25] The most important modern works upon this subject are three Essays by Napoleone Caix, Saggio sulla Storia della Lingua e dei Dialetti d'Italia, Parma, 1872; Studi di Etimologia Italiana e Romanza, Firenze, 1878; Le Origini della Lingua Poetica Italiana, Firenze, 1880. D'Ovidio's Essay on the De Eloquio in his Saggi Critici, Napoli, 1878, may also be consulted with advantage.

[26] "Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam quam aliæ linguæ, et ideo magis est communis et intelligibilis." Antonio da Tempo, born about 1275, says this in his Treatise on Italian Poetry, recently printed by Giusto Grion, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1869. See p. 17 of that work.

[27] This fact was recognized by Dante. He speaks of the languages of Si, Oil, and Oc, meaning Italian, French, and Spanish. De Eloquio, lib. i. cap. 8. Dante points out their differences, but does not neglect their community of origin.

[28] De Vulg. Eloq. i. 16.

[29] Ibid. i. 18.

[30] See Archivio Glottologico Italiano, vol. ii. Villani, lib. vii. cap. 68.

[31] Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali nei Secoli xiii. e xiv. A cura di Giosuè Carducci (Pisa, 1871), pp. 29-32.

[32] Ibid. pp. 18, 22.

[33] Ibid. pp. 39, 42.

[34] Ibid. pp. 43, 45.

[35] See ibid. p. 45, the stanza which begins, Matre tant ò.

[36] Ibid. pp. 47-60.

[37] Ibid. pp. 62-66.

[38] The practical and realistic common sense of the Italians, rejecting chivalrous and ecclesiastical idealism as so much nonsense, is illustrated by the occasional poems of two Florentine painters—Giotto's Canzone on Poverty, and Orcagna's Sonnet on Love. Orcagna, in the latter, criticises the conventional blind and winged Cupid, and winds up with:

L'amore è un trastullo:
Non è composto di legno nè di osso;
E a molte gente fa rompere il dosso.

[39] See Carducci, op. cit. pp. 52-60, for early examples of Tuscanized Sicilian poems of the people.

[40] The Tuscanized Sicilian poems in Carducci's collection referred to above, are extracted from a Florentine MS. called Napolitana, and a Tenzone between man and woman (ib. p. 52), which has clearly undergone a like process, is called Ciciliana.

[41] See Francesco d'Ovidio, Sul Trattato De Vulgari Eloquentia. It is reprinted in his volume of Saggi Critici, Napoli, 1879. The subject is fully discussed from a point of view at variance with my text by Adolf Gaspary, Die Sicilianische Dichterschule, Berlin, 1878.

[42] Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, Firenze, Morandi, 1828, 2 vols.

[43] De Vulg. Eloq. ii. 6; ii. 1; i. 13, and Purg. xxvi. 124.

[44] His poems will be found in the collections above mentioned, p. 26, note.

[45] Purg. xxvi.

[46] Purg. xxiv.

[47] Purg. xxvi.

[48] De Vulg. Eloq. i. 15.

[49] Fauriel, Dante et les origines, etc. (Paris, 1854), i. 269.

[50] D'Ancona, La Poesia Popolare Italiana (Livorno 1878), p. 36, note.

[51] Giov. Vill. vii. 89.

[52] Stefani, quoted by D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 36.

[53] Ibid. p. 37, note.

[54] Giov. Vill. x. 216.

[55] Giov. Vill. vii. 132.

[56] Storia di Firenze di Goro Dati (Firenze, 1735), p. 84.

[57] The date commonly assigned to Folgore is 1260, and the Niccolò he addresses in his series on the Months has been identified with that

Nicolò, che la costuma ricca
Del garofano prima discoperse,

so ungently handled by Dante in the Inferno, Canto xxix. I am aware that grave doubts, based upon historical allusions in Folgore's miscellaneous sonnets, have been raised as to whether we can assign so early a date to Folgore, and whether his Brigata was really the brigata godereccia, spendereccia, of Siena alluded to by Dante. See Bartoli, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. ii. cap. II, for a discussion of these points. See also Giulio Navone's edition of Folgore's and Cene's Rime, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880. This editor argues forcibly for a later date—not earlier at all events than from 1300 to 1320. But, whether we choose the earlier date 1260 or the later 1315, Folgore may legitimately be used for my present purpose of illustration.

[58] This is equally true of Cene dalla Chitarra's satirical parodies of the Months, in which, using the same rhymes as Folgore, he turns each of his motives to ridicule. Cene was a poet of Arezzo. His series and Folgore's will both be found in the Poeti del Primo Secolo, vol. ii., and in Navone's edition cited above.

[59] These remarks have to be qualified by reference to an unfinished set of five sonnets (Navone's edition, pp. 45-49), which are composed in a somewhat different key. They describe the arming of a young knight, and his reception by Valor, Humility, Discretion, and Gladness. Yet the knight, so armed and accepted, is no Galahad, far less the grim horseman of Dürer's allegory. Like the members of the brigata godereccia, he is rather a Gawain or Astolfo, all love, fine clothes, and courtship. Each of these five sonnets is a precious little miniature of Italian carpet-chivalry. The quaintest is the second, which begins:

Ecco prodezza che tosto lo spoglia,
E dice: amico e' convien che tu mudi,
Per ciò ch'i' vo' veder li uomini nudi,
E vo' che sappi non abbo altra voglia.

This exordium makes one regret that the painter of the young knight in our National Gallery (Giorgione?) had not essayed a companion picture. Valor disrobing him and taking him into her arms and crying Queste carni m'ai offerte would have made a fine pictorial allegory.