CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER VIII.LUIGI PULCI AND ANGELO POLIZIANO.Aninfluence hardly less important than that of the philosophers and grammarians was exercised on Lorenzo and his epoch by the literary innovators who, with some infusion of classic learning, were not so pedantic as the early humanists, while they bore the impress of the teaching of the preceding century. The Medici were to these men of letters, just as much as they were to the philosophers, the centre to which their several rays converged, and Lorenzo’s name is inseparable from the names of several among them. One in this brilliant circle holds a different position from the rest. He took as a poet the part which Landino took as a critic in the revival of the study of Dante. Matteo Palmieri holds a place by himself. The first glance into his great poem, the ‘City of Life,’ (‘Città di Vita’) shows it to be an imitation of the ‘Divine Comedy;’ but only in the outward form. It is a philosophical work, the object of which is to describe and correct the problems and abuses of citizen life. It contains no real poetry, but has the merit of popularising the doctrines of moral philosophy in language somewhat lifeless, indeed, yet expressive, comparatively pure, and free from the philological follies of the age. The book became known only within a narrow circle. Theological criticism discovered in it the heretical doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which indeed Alamanno Rinuccini avowed without scruple in his funeral oration on the poet, and the work was suppressed. In later years the author wrote an unfinished historyof the world, and a life of the grand seneschal Nicola Acciaiuolo. He had been a pupil of Traversari and Marsuppini, had held important offices of state, and after fulfilling several embassies with honour, died at a ripe age in 1475.[22]While this faint echo of Dante was addressing itself to the higher classes, and proving how large was the retrogression from the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, the popular poetry, of which the religious side has been already noticed, began to sound a natural strain in a lighter style. Burlesque, which belonged to the character of the people, was allowed considerable play. The sonnets that came forth from the barber’s shop of Domenico, called ‘Burchiello,’ in the very heart of old Florence, the Calimala, and the market, enjoy a reputation that must be taken on trust. They were chiefly experiments in the Florentine vulgar tongue—full of allusions and trivialities; but occasionally they take a flight which may serve to throw light on social and political matters, if all the writings attributed to this man, who died at Rome in 1448, are really by him. Another burlesque poet, Matteo Franco, whom we shall meet again, belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s household, and used to hold with other poets, particularly with Luigi Pulci, satirical and not always very seemly sham-fights as a social pastime. But far more important for this period was the rise of a new style which was destined to give to the sixteenth century its special poetic character. Of the brothers Pulci, scions of an old family somewhat reduced in circumstances, one, Bernardo, tried his hand both as an original writer and a translator of eclogues; the two others are among the cultivators of the poetry of chivalry, which began its course as a branch of literature under their auspices. Both Luca and Luigi belong to the immediate Medicean circle.Luca Pulci, the eldest brother, born at Florence in 1431, is commonly designated as the author of the poem on Lorenzo de’ Medici’s tournament, which only retains a place in literature because it records an event in the life of a celebrated man. But the assumption of this authorship is by no means certain, for the first edition bears the name of Luigi Pulci, whose literary fame it would not enhance. That Luca was intimate with the young Medici is shown by the fact that at their desire he began the poem ‘Ciriffo Calvaneo,’ which two generations later was partially continued by Bernardo Giambullari for another Lorenzo, grandson of the Magnificent. It is a poetical version of a popular romance of chivalry, which in its Italian form bears the title of the ‘Povero Avveduto,’ and relates the battles and adventures of the time of King Louis d’Outre-mer of France, in 921-954.[23]Luca Pulci, after some unlucky banking affairs at Rome and Florence, died in 1470, in the debtors’ prison of the Stinche, and left to his brothers the burden of a large family. He was, as we have said, the eldest of the brothers; but it is probable that his ‘Ciriffo’ was preceded by Luigi’s ‘Morgante.’ We are led to assume this by the fact that Luigi chose a far better subject.[24]His poem must have been written in and after 1460, and the cantos must have followed close upon each other. We learn from the author himself that its original conception was due in part to Lorenzo’s mother. In a letter addressed by him to Lorenzo from Fuligno, December 4, 1470, he held out prospects of a new heroic poem.[25]Thata serious and pious woman like Madonna Lucrezia should be patroness of a work more or less offensive in a religious point of view may be matter of surprise. But after making allowance for the tendencies of the time, which saw no harm in a mixture of religion and burlesque, and, amid the strictest devotional practices, treated questions of faith with incredible unceremoniousness, it must be remembered that this lady was wont for the sake of genius to judge leniently many things in literature and in life that were questionable. Thus she remained a supporter of Angelo Poliziano after he had fallen into disgrace with her daughter-in-law, and presented him with her religious poems when the unfavourable rumours as to his faith and morals could be no secret to her. But Luigi Pulci, the free-thinker and loose mocker, who mixed up quotations from St. John’s Gospel with open expressions of unbelief, found in her an active and zealous friend till her life’s close.The ‘Morgante Maggiore’ was the beginning of the romantic epopee, which successfully laid hold of the cycle of Carolingian legends that had been rendered accessible to the Italian nation by the ‘Chronicle’ of Turpin and the book of the ‘Reali di Francia.’ This choice of a subject was all the happier because Florence attributed her restoration to Charlemagne, as may be read carved in stone in the church of the Apostles. The style of the work is original. Amid all its prodigies the old knightly romance is serious and full of faith. Christianity is always the foil to the chivalry which sprang from it, and which is animated by its spirit. ‘Morgante’ (the story takes its name from the giant who accomplishes his strange exploits) is not a satire on chivalry, but it is so saturated with burlesque that it assumes a very peculiar character. Neither is it a denial of Christianity, from which, on the contrary, it derives here and there a deeply religious tone; but it is Christianity struggling with scepticism and denial, so that the faith of the Church and the people is driven into the background. In this respect‘Morgante’ is a true mirror of the time. With its perfect command of the subject, bound down to no poetical rules or precedents, it is a mixture of seriousness and irony, Christianity and unbelief, Biblical texts and profane witticisms. It is full of the most glaring contrasts of sound common-sense and folly, of elegance and coarseness, of lofty intellectual flights and mere buffoonery. There is in this poem more richness of imagination and spontaneity than perhaps in any other work before the appearance of the ‘Orlando Furioso;’ passages occur full of the deepest pathos, and showing a feeling that belongs only to a real poet—passages too often followed by a grotesqueness that tends to destroy their effect. The qualities here united in very unequal degrees were developed and discriminated by later poets. The importance of Luigi Pulci lies less in his poem, which falls short of perfection in every way, than in the fact that his work contains the germs of the romantic epopee in all its various branches. In considering that the two parent poems of chivalry in Italian, the ‘Morgante’ and ‘Ciriffo,’ originated in the Medicean house, let it be remembered how much this branch of poetry, up to the ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ with which it terminates, was connected with that Court life which is so constantly represented in its varied productions. From the household of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, who at the highest pinnacle of their fame did not abandon the simplicity and comfort of free citizen life, to the ceremonious Court of Alfonso of Este, is certainly a very long step. Though the Pulci did not go so far as to weave into their ottava rima a genealogy of their patrons reaching back to demigods, still theirs was a kind of poetry destined to enliven stately banquets.Luigi Pulci’s intimacy with Lorenzo is shown by his oft-quoted letters, which throw some side-lights on the various relations between patron and client, and on the commissions, rather political than literary, entrusted to the latter. The author of ‘Morgante’ was sincerely attached to his youngpatron. When the latter was going to Southern Italy in 1466, before the Neroni and Pitti conspiracy, Pulci wrote to him from the convent of Alverina:[26]‘Dost thou really mean to leave me buried in the snow among these woods, lonely and comfortless, while thou goest to Rome? Is it really my fate that, whatever thou mayest think of me, as the climax of my ill-luck, I must never mount a horse by thy side? Am I to come to that only when I am an old man? How often have we talked about Rome, and now shall I not accompany thee?—can it be because I should increase the expenses of the journey? Let not that trouble thee; amid all my troubles I will yet do thee credit. A horse is all I ask of thee; for I shall find so many friends yonder, and will manage so well, that I will not be a burthen to thee, as perhaps thou fearest. Truly thou art wrong to pass me by, not to mention that it would hurt me more than anything in this world. Do not treat me as if I were old iron, for I shall soon be well if thou carest for me.’ And Lorenzo really did care for him. Two years later Pulci wrote to him from Pisa: ‘If thou dost not wish people to believe or know that I am thy friend, and have some influence with thee, placard it on the walls—at thine own expense, of course; as for some time past having had no money to pay away, I have been paying with thy name instead. Wherever I show myself people whisper, “That is Lorenzo’s great friend.”’ That Pulci’s money matters were not in brilliant order we have already seen. His brother’s business misfortunes brought him into great difficulties. ‘Never yet have I made a plan,’ he wrote to Lorenzo after Luca’s failure, ‘that Fate did not destroy in an hour what I had taken a year to build up. I must have come into the world like hares and other poor animals, doomed to be the prey of the huntsman. It is my fate to love thee, and to be very little in thy company.’ That the Medicean bank helped him out, but that the loanswere very unimportant and notorious besides, we learn from a petition dated from his estate at Mugello, May 14, 1479, to the effect that Lorenzo would grant him a longer delay for the repayment of a hundred gold florins. He was evidently included in the measures which were rendered necessary by the bad state of the Medicean finances at that time. Pulci, who among others was very intimate with the Sanseverini, seems to have been employed by Lorenzo especially at Naples, Bologna, and Milan, both before and after this period. The last of the poet’s letters known to us, written from Verona, August 28, 1484, shows him to us in the suite of Roberto da Sanseverino and his son Fracasso, who were on their way to Venice. He died in Padua shortly after, but nothing is known about his death.[27]Luigi Pulci was about seventeen years older than his princely friend Lorenzo de’ Medici, while the man who entered into the closest and most productive intellectual relations with Lorenzo was a few years his junior. In 1464 a boy of ten came to Florence to seek maintenance and instruction in the house of some not very wealthy relatives. He had been rendered fatherless by one of those tragedies which bring to light and stigmatise the wild passions and party hatred that in the Tuscan communes of the fifteenth century mocked at justice, and which, though so fearful in punishment, was so powerless for the protection of the citizens. Benedetto Ambrogini of Montepulciano, a jurist of a not undistinguished family, who had held civil and judicial offices at home and abroad, had in the previous year applied to Piero de’ Medici[28]for protection against the bloodthirsty enmity of fellow-citizens and neighbours, to which he soon after fell a victim, leaving unprovided a widow with five children, of whom the above-named boy was the eldest.[29]Angelo, who took from his birthplace the name of Poliziano, early became acquainted with the serious side of life; for although as a child he showed brilliant talents and made rapid progress, he was in danger of being compelled to seek a living as assistant in a shop, and of renouncing the studies to which he was ardently devoted. At fifteen he expressed this tormenting dread in a Latin poem addressed to the young but celebrated philologer, Bartolommeo Fonte, who at that time assisted him with guidance and encouragement.[30]In the year 1469-70 he studied at the Florentine university, and at seventeen he wrote Greek epigrams. He had the privilege of listening to the men who kept alive the traditions of the university’s best days, Argyropulos and Andronikos Kallistos, Landino and Ficino. That polite literature attracted him more than philosophical lectures he declares himself, saying that he had done with philosophy as dogs with the Nile: one drink, and then away! ‘Nature and youth drew me to Homer, and with all the zeal and industry of which I was capable I set myself to translate him into Latin verse.’ In one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of his Latin poems, the distichs addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici in commendation of his master Kallistos, he sets forth how the latter was reading the Trojan war in Argive verse. In this poem he alludes to the time when he hopes to sing the deeds of Lorenzo, then limited to youthful exercises, and his adroit conduct in the matter of the Pitti conspiracy, which Poliziano commemorates in a later elegy.[31]It must have been about 1470 that he began to translate the ‘Iliad.’ Carlo Marsuppini had translated the first book; Angelo began with the second. It was a great undertaking for a young man. A Latin Homer had been thein votisupto that time; and now the work was begun by one who had but just entered the world and was still unknown, but who displayed an ease and grace of diction, melodiousness and richness of versification, that caused general surprise. This work and the admiration it excited opened the Medicean house to the young poet. It was probably Ficino who recommended the ‘Homeric youth’ to Lorenzo. The young head of the house, who had only become independent the year before, took him up; and whatever changes outward and inward occurred in Lorenzo’s life, the man who owed his brilliant endowments to Heaven, and their early and happy recognition to him kept faithful; he stood beside his patron’s death-bed and ere long followed him to the tomb. The dedication of the second book contains praises of the generous protector—praises lavish according to custom, but not untrue if the custom and the glory with which the young ruler of Florence had surrounded himself be taken into consideration.[32]A troop of panegyrists followed, Marsilio Ficino at their head. There was no lack of exaggeration. The head of the Platonists raised a flattering doubt whether any one could discover if the Greek or the Latin text of this Iliad was the original; another asked who had the greatest merit, he who had given occasion for the undertaking, or he who had accomplished it. Meanwhile the translator went on with his work; and when, two years after the completion of the second book, he presented the third to his patron, he expressed a hope that after finishing the whole he might begin an epic poem on a subject taken from Lorenzo’s own life, the war of Volterra. The ‘Iliad’ was never finished, the epic was never written. Lorenzo, who knew the world much better than did Angelo, probably objected to the glorification of an expedition of questionable prowess and of unquestionable barbarity. In like manner, when his son Leo was raised to the cardinalate, he disapproved of the eulogium which Poliziano addressedto the Pope. When Poliziano described the most important and dramatic event of his patron’s life, the conspiracy of the Pazzi, it was in prose.The man who had received the young poet into his house and enabled him to give all his time to study was doubtless also the cause of his sending a specimen of his work to Cardinal Ammanati, who kept up such intimate relations with the Medici. Poliziano’s address to this Prince of the Church[33]was modest. He wrote that he was doing like the eagle, which carries its young as soon as they are out of the shell into the light of the rising sun, that their eyes may become accustomed to its splendour. The cardinal, in whom survived the humanistic tradition of the days of Pius II., returns him phrase for phrase without offending against truth. The verses were wonderfully harmonious for so young a writer; the enterprise was useful as an introduction to great things. But if Homer could be asked whether he wished to be turned into Latin, he feared that the old poet, feeling the impossibility of a perfect rendering, would prefer to remain a citizen of Kolophon rather than become a Florentine, and would consider the pallium a more suitable vesture than the toga. In 1473, our poet had addressed some verses full of sonorous but very ordinary flattery to the spendthrift Cardinal of San Sisto, Pietro Riario, on the occasion of his appointment to the archbishopric of Florence. Instead of the expected present, he was put off with fine speeches, and, after the fashion of poor poets, complained bitterly.[34]About this time, also, he was rewarded with nothing but words by another cardinal, a very different man from Riario. He must have said to himself that the days of Nicholas V. were over, although Sixtus IV. hardly yielded to him in his zeal for collecting books. He never seems to have become acquainted with the Pope, and the disagreementwhich gradually arose between the latter and Poliziano’s protector deprived him of all opportunity of doing so. Four books of the translation of Homer are in existence;[35]whether the work proceeded further is uncertain. It was twice interrupted, and the second interruption decided its fate. Poliziano may, in the progress of his studies, have come round to the views of the Cardinal of Pavia, and have doubted whether a Latinity which strove after the elegance of the Augustan age was suited to the old Greek epic.The first short interruption was a journey to Mantua with Cardinal Francesco da Gonzaga, in August 1472. The intimate relations between the Gonzaga and the Medici, which corresponded to those between the Marquis Lodovico and the city of Florence, have been already spoken of. Francesco took the youthful poet with him from the Medici house. Poliziano, then aged eighteen, had already given proof of uncommon talent on the occasion of a visit to his native city, where his arrival was celebrated with brilliant festivities. Here originated the drama of ‘Orpheus,’ which made an epoch in literature, less by its actual merit than as the first example of a profane drama in the Italian tongue. Mysteries had long been popular; the modern drama, even when treating modern historical subjects, still more when, as in the works of Alberti and Gregorio Correr, it was directly modelled on the antique, had always adhered to the Latin language. In a letter to one of the cardinal’s suite, Messer Carlo Canale (who was, it may be mentioned, the second or third husband of the mother of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia), the author states that ‘Orpheus’ was composed in two days, amid constant noisy distractions, and that it was written in the vulgar tongue in order to be more intelligible to the hearers—‘animperfect work, fitted to bring its father shame rather than honour, and worthy of the fate prepared by the Lacedæmonians for children born weakly or crippled.’ This ‘favola’ is not a drama; it is a succession of lyrical pieces, with an ode inserted in Latin Sapphics, in praise of the cardinal, which Baccio Ugolini, another member of the Medicean circle and of Landino’s school, sang to the lyre in the character of ‘Orpheus.’[36]The Mantuan journey was a short episode. Some smaller Latin poems, including the beautiful and pathetic elegy on the death of Albiera degli Albizzi, the charming bride of Sigismondo della Stufa, in 1473, kept Poliziano in the same mood, and cannot fairly be considered as interruptions to his Homeric work. A longer interruption was caused by Giuliano de’ Medici’s tournament, which was a challenge to Angelo to write the fairest flower in his poetic garland.[37]He himself alludes to this interruption in the seventh stanza of the ‘Giostra:’E se qual fu la fama, il ver rimbomba,Che d’Hecuba la figlia, o sacro Achille,Poi che ‘l corpo lasciasti entro la tomba,T’accenda ancor d’amorose faville,Lascia un poco tacer tua maggior tromba,Ch’io fo squillar per l’italice ville.E tempra tu la cetra a’ nuovi carmi,Mentr’io canto l’amor di Giulio e l’armi.The subject in itself is poor. The author must have felt this, even had he not been warned by Luca Pulci’s verses on the tournament of Lorenzo. The ‘Stanzas’—the title by which Poliziano’s poem is best known—are counted among the gems of Italian literature. They were the first of the kind expressing real melody without artificiality, being remarkable for their artistic flow and carefulness of composition. But for a few harsh and ignoble expressions, they have never since been surpassed in point of form, though Ariosto may have more variety and freedom of movement, and Tasso more harmony. But how do these beautiful stanzas of ottava rima treat their subject? In the first book it is left altogether out of sight. The tournament gives place to mythology, the Piazza Sta. Croce to the gardens and palace of Venus. All the flowers and trees of the most highly-favoured climates, all animals of the chase and the peaceful park, the whole of Olympus, are introduced; reminiscences of all the classic poets from Lucretius to Claudian, even to the Christian singers, wanderings of an exuberant fancy through the realms of beauty and love,—all these combine and disport themselves in such perfect freedom, that it matters not whether they have anything to do with the subject or not. At the beginning of the second book the poet seems at last to bethink himself that he intended to sing the praises of a Medici. He therefore makes Cupid relate to Venus the glories of the Tuscan race, and begins with the preparations for great deeds which such vast mythological machinery demands. The youth is awakened and armed, but not without assistance from Olympus. The poem breaks off abruptly, and in its closing stanzas there gleams a sad presentiment of the cruel fate which was so soon to put an end to a life apparently destined to glory and happiness, and with it to a work already highly valued as a fragment, and which gave the tone to the poetry of the age just beginning. Who shall say whether it was not well for the poem that it remained a fragment? for the disproportion between the unimportance of the subject andthe pomp of the treatment might have come out too strikingly had it been continued. This poem, intended to celebrate the acts of Giuliano, is addressed to his brother. The dedicatory stanza speaks of Lorenzo without circumlocution as the ruler of Florence:High-born Lorenzo, laurel[38]in whose shadeThy Florence rests nor fears the lowering storm,Nor threatening signs in heaven’s high front displayed,Nor Jove’s dread anger in its fiercest form;O to the trembling Muse afford thine aid—The Muse that courts thee timorous and forlorn,Lives in the shadow of thy prosperous tree,And bounds her every fond desire to thee.[39]Angelo Poliziano continued to write Latin verses. His epigrams, odes, and elegies are valuable both as conveying a knowledge of the persons and tendencies of a memorable period, and as proofs of a versatility and classical spirit to be found in none of his contemporaries and in few subsequent writers. The philologers of the fifteenth century wrote Latin verses with ease; but the only poet among them is Poliziano. His works abound in imitations of all kinds, as do those of the later Roman poets. But Poliziano feels, thinks, and writes like a Roman; if not like a poet of the Augustan age, at least like one of the time of Statius, whom he resembles in more ways than one, having written ‘Sylvæ’ like him. He is more classical than some of those who are included in the ranks of the poets of antiquity.A peculiar grace, fulness of thought, and great variety, give to his poems a charm not often found in modern Latin verses, which seldom display a living individuality. To descriptions of modern life and modern localities, whose very names seem unsuitable to a classic sphere, he can give a native classical colouring, without any apparent effort, yet with the most consummate art. Most remarkable amonghis writings, by its grace and naturalness and an intermingling of joy and sadness, is the elegy on a bunch of violets given him by a beloved hand; a poem which, in the sixteenth century and in our own, has been an object of study to the choice spirits who wish to acquire pure classic inspiration in a modern form.[40]Poliziano here challenges a comparison with Lorenzo de’ Medici, who treated the same subject in two of his loveliest sonnets. The ‘Sylvæ,’ poems of Angelo’s later years, from 1482 to 1486, added to his reputation, though in happy turns of thought and warmth of feeling they are inferior to many of his smaller pieces. They are four poems in heroic metre, prolusions to his philological lectures at the Florence University, to a chair in which he was appointed on December 23, 1485, the degree of Doctor of Common Law being conferred on him by Archbishop Rinaldo Orsini at his palace, in the presence of Lorenzo’s son Piero.[41]The first of these poems,[42]‘Manto’ (the name of the Theban prophetess, which was assumed by the Italian city founded by her son), treats of Virgil, his works, his place in literature, his importance for all time.As the first of the ‘Sylvæ’ was intended as an introduction to Virgil’s ‘Bucolics,’ so the second, ‘Rusticus,’ was to serve the same purpose for the ‘Georgics,’ and for the works and times of Hesiod. The third, ‘Ambra,’ took its name from the Medicean Poggio a Cajano, but the name has little connection with the poem, which refers to localities only at its close, and is devoted to an analysis of Homeric plays regarded from a pseudo-Herodotean and pseudo-Plutarchian point of view. The last and longest of the ‘Sylvæ,’ bearing the strange title of ‘Nutricia: the Reward of the Nursing-mother,’ describes the origin, progress, and influence of the poetryand the poetics of classical times, passes on to the author of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ and ends by singing the praises of Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors. The abundance and versatility of Lorenzo’s talents were perhaps never more truly and happily expressed than in the closing verses of this poem; and when the praises of living and powerful men appear in such a setting as this, we may accept them without complaining. After describing his labours in the field of sentimental poetry, to which belong the greater part of Lorenzo’s earlier poems, his other poetical productions and his whole intellectual character are thus spoken of:—Non vacat argutosque sales, Satyraque bibacesDescriptos memorare senes, non carmina festisExcipienda choris, querulasve animantia chordas.Idem etiam tacitæ referens pastoria vitæOtia, et urbanos thyrso extimulante labores,Mox fugis in cœlum, non seu per lubrica nisusExtremamque boni gaudes contingere metam.Quodque alii studiumque vocant, durumque laborem,Hic tibi ludus erit, fessus civilibus actis,Huc is emeritas acuens ad carmina vires.Felix ingenio, felix cui pectore tantasInstaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaciAlternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas.Poliziano wrote the ‘Nutricia’ in October 1486, at the villa of Fiesole. In the following verses he prophesied of the times to come and the future greatness of his pupil, Piero, if the latter, fulfilling the bright promise of his youth, should walk in the footsteps of his father:—It jam pene prior, sic, ô sic pergat, et ipsumMe superet majore gradu, longeque relinquatProtinus, et dulci potius plaudatur alumno,Bisque mei victor illo celebrentur honores.A merciful fate spared the poet from witnessing the failure of hopes the fulfilment of which had already become very doubtful when he was prematurely called away. Anyone versed in the history of those days who may now climbthe pleasant heights of Fiesole, which new buildings and roads have altered but not transformed, will think with interest of Angelo’s abode here in the country-house of the Medici, which he describes in a letter to Marsilio Ficino. ‘If the summer heat oppress thee at Careggi, the cooler air of Fiesole will be pleasant to thee. We have plenty of water between the slopes of the hill, and while gentle winds constantly refresh us, the glare of the sun troubles us little. During the ascent to the villa it appears enclosed in trees, but the spot, when reached, commands an extensive view as far as the town. The neighbourhood is thickly inhabited, yet I find here the quiet which suits me. But I will tempt thee with yet another attraction. Pico sometimes wanders beyond the limits of his own grounds, breaks in unexpectedly upon my solitude, and carries me away from my shady gardens to his evening meal. You know how things are there; no superfluities, but everything as it should be, and with the spice of his conversation. But thou must be my guest; with me thou shalt find as good a table and perhaps better wine, for Pico and I are rivals in respect to wine.’[43]The ‘Sylvæ’ are dedicated to three young men belonging to the Medicean circle and one who stood outside it. Lorenzo—the son of Pier Francesco de’ Medici, grandson of Cosimo’s brother—whose name stands at the beginning of ‘Manto,’ was at that time on friendly terms with the members of the elder branch of his race. He afterwards became estranged from them; a change the effects of which did not cease when his posterity had entered upon the dominion of Florence, and the last remaining descendant of Cosimo’s line sat on the throne of France. Gifted with poetical talents, and no unworthy rival of his more famous relatives, the younger Lorenzo was a friend of Poliziano’s, who dedicated to him among other things a description of thevilleggiaturaat Poggio a Cajano. ‘Rusticus’ was intended for Jacopo Salviati, who, whenthese verses were written, in 1483, had been designated as Lorenzo’s son-in-law; so that Poliziano, who had first sung the praises of the unlucky Archbishop of Pisa and then openly insulted him with extravagant accusations, passed lightly over the troublesome past. ‘Ambra’ was sent to Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of Giovanni, and for a time a pupil, together with Piero de’ Medici, of our poet, who in one of his letters praised his intellectual gifts and knowledge of classical literature. He was a faithful adherent of his relatives, not only in prosperity but also in adversity, which fell on him even more heavily than on them. In the days of Savonarola he was accused of taking part in a conspiracy in favour of the exiles, and, with Niccolò Ridolfi, the father of Lorenzo’s son-in-law, suffered on the scaffold in 1497, at the age of thirty-two, a victim to mob-law. The last of these poems, ‘Nutricia,’ was dedicated, in 1491, several years after its composition, to the Cardinal of Sant’Anastasia, Antonio Pallavicino Gentile of Genoa, who had great influence in state affairs under Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., and took much interest in literature and literary men. At the close of the dedication Poliziano gratefully alludes to the cardinal’s efforts to further his cause with the Pope.As we have said, the ‘Sylvæ’ were prolegomena to lectures on literature. To a cycle of another kind, to lectures given at Florence in 1483 on the Aristotelian philosophy, Poliziano composed a prose introduction, probably the strangest ever heard at any university.[44]The very title—‘Lamia’ (the Witch)—sounds strange, and we almostsuspect a joke, but find that the author is in earnest. The beginning of this address to his students is highly characteristic. ‘Have you ever heard tell of witches? When I was a little boy my grandmother used to tell me about the witches in the neighbouring wood, who eat up naughty children. Fancy what an image of terror a witch was to me in those days! In the neighbourhood of my little villa at Fiesole there is a little brook, hidden by the shadow of the hill-side, and the women of the place who go there to draw water say that it is a place of meeting for the witches. But what is a witch? Plutarch of Chæronea, who was as grave as he was learned, relates that the witches have artificial eyes which they can put in and take out at their pleasure, just as weak-sighted old people do with their spectacles, which they stick on their noses when they want to look carefully at something and then put back into the case; or as others do with their false teeth, which they lay aside with their clothes when they go to bed;—not to mention your helpmeets, ye married men, with their bought braids and curls. If a witch desires to take a walk she puts in her eyes, and wanders through streets and alleys, squares and markets, churches and offices, taverns and baths, looks at everything, thrusts her nose into everything, meddles with everything, let a man do what he may. She has the eyes of an owl and a spy, like the old maid in Plautus. She can find out a grain of sand, and bury herself in the narrowest cranny. When she gets home, as soon as she reaches the threshold, she takes out her eyes and puts them in her pocket. Out of doors she has eyes like a lynx, at home she is blind. You ask what she does then? She sits spinning yarn, and humming a little song from time to time. Have you Florentines never known such witches, who know nothing of their own business, but are always busy about other people’s? No? Yet there are many of them in all cities, even here in yours. But they go about in disguise—you take them for men and women, but they are witches. Once it befell that some of them, happening to see me, stoodstill, and looked at me curiously, as those desirous to buy are wont to do. They whispered to each other, with uncouth gestures, “That is Poliziano—that is the rhymester who has suddenly dressed himself up as a philosopher,” and then they hurried away like wasps robbed of their sting. What they meant by their discourse is not clear to me; whether it displeases them that a man should be a philosopher, which, however, I am not, or that I venture to play the philosopher without having the material to do so. Let us now see what sort of a creature it is that men call a philosopher. You will soon perceive that I do not belong to the species. I say this not because I think that you believe it, but that no one may take it into his head to believe it. Not that I should be ashamed of the name, if it agreed with the facts, but because I prefer to keep free from titles which are not due to me:Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olimGrex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum.This therefore is the first point. The second is, whether the condition of a philosopher is bad. When I have proved the contrary I will speak to you briefly of myself and the subject of my lectures.’ After this introduction follows a sketch of the course of Grecian philosophy, and an exposition of the work of the later schools of thought.The man who raised to such a height the poetry of his native tongue, and the idiom from which it sprang, was deeply interested in popular poetry. He went hand in hand with his patron and friend in efforts to bring back language and literature ‘from the constraint of false rules to truth and nature.’ Both found the popular minstrelsy in the peculiar shape it retains to the present day, and differing completely in tone from the songs of other lands. In therispettithe ottava rima predominates, treated freely as it was in Boccaccio’s days for epic poetry. Even the sentimental pieces are epigrammatically pointed, and full ofantitheses, which give an impression of artificiality and imitation of the antique, more especially in southern Tuscany and the Roman district. They are not narratives, nor do they develope a state of mind, but they vividly describe momentary emotion. Without making up a whole history with such little songs, like Pulci and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano composed a series ofrispettidescribing joy and sorrow, accepted and especially despised love. They are partly in dialogue, frequently in a natural easy style, which reminds us of improvisations, more tender in expression, more flexible in diction than the two writers above mentioned, who not unfrequently betray that they are mocking at their own work. Other similar songs, but without internal connection, display a versatility resulting naturally from the way in which they originated. These fugitive poems grew within the Medicean circle, products of social intercourse in the villa and in evening walks in the garden; or, like the dance-songs (ballate), of which Poliziano wrote a great number, they were sung with music in the public squares. In short, they belonged to the life of the people who had furnished models for the rhymes composed for them by the poets of quality, with greater refinement, and not always without a secondary object in view.Poliziano’s versatility is wonderfully shown in the labours he undertook in the field of classical philology while thus wandering through the woods of poetry. He was one of the first to establish the true principles of textual criticism; at the request of Innocent VIII. he translated Herodian’s Roman history into Latin,[45]and made the writings of Hippocrates and Galen accessible to those of his countrymen who were not acquainted with Greek. On the latter occasion he claimed the assistance of the learned doctor Pietro Leoni, who was then lecturing in Padua, to securethe correct rendering of the medical terms.[46]The most talented poet of the fifteenth century was also the philologer who, while equal to others in knowledge of antiquity, represents its spirit with more truth and originality. In trying to rival the classical letter-writers, Poliziano followed a fashion that had influenced statesmen and men of learning from Petrarca downwards. He left a mass of epistolary testimony to the character of his age, the value of which must not be lightly estimated, though it may not always answer the expectations raised by the names. Like Ficino and others, Poliziano had arranged his Latin correspondence for publication, and wrote a dedication to Piero de’ Medici, when death cut short his career.[47]More interesting to us than the generality of these letters, which nevertheless contain valuable matter, are his confidential letters in the vulgar tongue, not meant for publication. Even this highly gifted man was not free from the bad habit of the learned men of the fifteenth century—the intermixture of Latin phrases with Italian when the subject gave no occasion for it.

CHAPTER VIII.LUIGI PULCI AND ANGELO POLIZIANO.Aninfluence hardly less important than that of the philosophers and grammarians was exercised on Lorenzo and his epoch by the literary innovators who, with some infusion of classic learning, were not so pedantic as the early humanists, while they bore the impress of the teaching of the preceding century. The Medici were to these men of letters, just as much as they were to the philosophers, the centre to which their several rays converged, and Lorenzo’s name is inseparable from the names of several among them. One in this brilliant circle holds a different position from the rest. He took as a poet the part which Landino took as a critic in the revival of the study of Dante. Matteo Palmieri holds a place by himself. The first glance into his great poem, the ‘City of Life,’ (‘Città di Vita’) shows it to be an imitation of the ‘Divine Comedy;’ but only in the outward form. It is a philosophical work, the object of which is to describe and correct the problems and abuses of citizen life. It contains no real poetry, but has the merit of popularising the doctrines of moral philosophy in language somewhat lifeless, indeed, yet expressive, comparatively pure, and free from the philological follies of the age. The book became known only within a narrow circle. Theological criticism discovered in it the heretical doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which indeed Alamanno Rinuccini avowed without scruple in his funeral oration on the poet, and the work was suppressed. In later years the author wrote an unfinished historyof the world, and a life of the grand seneschal Nicola Acciaiuolo. He had been a pupil of Traversari and Marsuppini, had held important offices of state, and after fulfilling several embassies with honour, died at a ripe age in 1475.[22]While this faint echo of Dante was addressing itself to the higher classes, and proving how large was the retrogression from the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, the popular poetry, of which the religious side has been already noticed, began to sound a natural strain in a lighter style. Burlesque, which belonged to the character of the people, was allowed considerable play. The sonnets that came forth from the barber’s shop of Domenico, called ‘Burchiello,’ in the very heart of old Florence, the Calimala, and the market, enjoy a reputation that must be taken on trust. They were chiefly experiments in the Florentine vulgar tongue—full of allusions and trivialities; but occasionally they take a flight which may serve to throw light on social and political matters, if all the writings attributed to this man, who died at Rome in 1448, are really by him. Another burlesque poet, Matteo Franco, whom we shall meet again, belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s household, and used to hold with other poets, particularly with Luigi Pulci, satirical and not always very seemly sham-fights as a social pastime. But far more important for this period was the rise of a new style which was destined to give to the sixteenth century its special poetic character. Of the brothers Pulci, scions of an old family somewhat reduced in circumstances, one, Bernardo, tried his hand both as an original writer and a translator of eclogues; the two others are among the cultivators of the poetry of chivalry, which began its course as a branch of literature under their auspices. Both Luca and Luigi belong to the immediate Medicean circle.Luca Pulci, the eldest brother, born at Florence in 1431, is commonly designated as the author of the poem on Lorenzo de’ Medici’s tournament, which only retains a place in literature because it records an event in the life of a celebrated man. But the assumption of this authorship is by no means certain, for the first edition bears the name of Luigi Pulci, whose literary fame it would not enhance. That Luca was intimate with the young Medici is shown by the fact that at their desire he began the poem ‘Ciriffo Calvaneo,’ which two generations later was partially continued by Bernardo Giambullari for another Lorenzo, grandson of the Magnificent. It is a poetical version of a popular romance of chivalry, which in its Italian form bears the title of the ‘Povero Avveduto,’ and relates the battles and adventures of the time of King Louis d’Outre-mer of France, in 921-954.[23]Luca Pulci, after some unlucky banking affairs at Rome and Florence, died in 1470, in the debtors’ prison of the Stinche, and left to his brothers the burden of a large family. He was, as we have said, the eldest of the brothers; but it is probable that his ‘Ciriffo’ was preceded by Luigi’s ‘Morgante.’ We are led to assume this by the fact that Luigi chose a far better subject.[24]His poem must have been written in and after 1460, and the cantos must have followed close upon each other. We learn from the author himself that its original conception was due in part to Lorenzo’s mother. In a letter addressed by him to Lorenzo from Fuligno, December 4, 1470, he held out prospects of a new heroic poem.[25]Thata serious and pious woman like Madonna Lucrezia should be patroness of a work more or less offensive in a religious point of view may be matter of surprise. But after making allowance for the tendencies of the time, which saw no harm in a mixture of religion and burlesque, and, amid the strictest devotional practices, treated questions of faith with incredible unceremoniousness, it must be remembered that this lady was wont for the sake of genius to judge leniently many things in literature and in life that were questionable. Thus she remained a supporter of Angelo Poliziano after he had fallen into disgrace with her daughter-in-law, and presented him with her religious poems when the unfavourable rumours as to his faith and morals could be no secret to her. But Luigi Pulci, the free-thinker and loose mocker, who mixed up quotations from St. John’s Gospel with open expressions of unbelief, found in her an active and zealous friend till her life’s close.The ‘Morgante Maggiore’ was the beginning of the romantic epopee, which successfully laid hold of the cycle of Carolingian legends that had been rendered accessible to the Italian nation by the ‘Chronicle’ of Turpin and the book of the ‘Reali di Francia.’ This choice of a subject was all the happier because Florence attributed her restoration to Charlemagne, as may be read carved in stone in the church of the Apostles. The style of the work is original. Amid all its prodigies the old knightly romance is serious and full of faith. Christianity is always the foil to the chivalry which sprang from it, and which is animated by its spirit. ‘Morgante’ (the story takes its name from the giant who accomplishes his strange exploits) is not a satire on chivalry, but it is so saturated with burlesque that it assumes a very peculiar character. Neither is it a denial of Christianity, from which, on the contrary, it derives here and there a deeply religious tone; but it is Christianity struggling with scepticism and denial, so that the faith of the Church and the people is driven into the background. In this respect‘Morgante’ is a true mirror of the time. With its perfect command of the subject, bound down to no poetical rules or precedents, it is a mixture of seriousness and irony, Christianity and unbelief, Biblical texts and profane witticisms. It is full of the most glaring contrasts of sound common-sense and folly, of elegance and coarseness, of lofty intellectual flights and mere buffoonery. There is in this poem more richness of imagination and spontaneity than perhaps in any other work before the appearance of the ‘Orlando Furioso;’ passages occur full of the deepest pathos, and showing a feeling that belongs only to a real poet—passages too often followed by a grotesqueness that tends to destroy their effect. The qualities here united in very unequal degrees were developed and discriminated by later poets. The importance of Luigi Pulci lies less in his poem, which falls short of perfection in every way, than in the fact that his work contains the germs of the romantic epopee in all its various branches. In considering that the two parent poems of chivalry in Italian, the ‘Morgante’ and ‘Ciriffo,’ originated in the Medicean house, let it be remembered how much this branch of poetry, up to the ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ with which it terminates, was connected with that Court life which is so constantly represented in its varied productions. From the household of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, who at the highest pinnacle of their fame did not abandon the simplicity and comfort of free citizen life, to the ceremonious Court of Alfonso of Este, is certainly a very long step. Though the Pulci did not go so far as to weave into their ottava rima a genealogy of their patrons reaching back to demigods, still theirs was a kind of poetry destined to enliven stately banquets.Luigi Pulci’s intimacy with Lorenzo is shown by his oft-quoted letters, which throw some side-lights on the various relations between patron and client, and on the commissions, rather political than literary, entrusted to the latter. The author of ‘Morgante’ was sincerely attached to his youngpatron. When the latter was going to Southern Italy in 1466, before the Neroni and Pitti conspiracy, Pulci wrote to him from the convent of Alverina:[26]‘Dost thou really mean to leave me buried in the snow among these woods, lonely and comfortless, while thou goest to Rome? Is it really my fate that, whatever thou mayest think of me, as the climax of my ill-luck, I must never mount a horse by thy side? Am I to come to that only when I am an old man? How often have we talked about Rome, and now shall I not accompany thee?—can it be because I should increase the expenses of the journey? Let not that trouble thee; amid all my troubles I will yet do thee credit. A horse is all I ask of thee; for I shall find so many friends yonder, and will manage so well, that I will not be a burthen to thee, as perhaps thou fearest. Truly thou art wrong to pass me by, not to mention that it would hurt me more than anything in this world. Do not treat me as if I were old iron, for I shall soon be well if thou carest for me.’ And Lorenzo really did care for him. Two years later Pulci wrote to him from Pisa: ‘If thou dost not wish people to believe or know that I am thy friend, and have some influence with thee, placard it on the walls—at thine own expense, of course; as for some time past having had no money to pay away, I have been paying with thy name instead. Wherever I show myself people whisper, “That is Lorenzo’s great friend.”’ That Pulci’s money matters were not in brilliant order we have already seen. His brother’s business misfortunes brought him into great difficulties. ‘Never yet have I made a plan,’ he wrote to Lorenzo after Luca’s failure, ‘that Fate did not destroy in an hour what I had taken a year to build up. I must have come into the world like hares and other poor animals, doomed to be the prey of the huntsman. It is my fate to love thee, and to be very little in thy company.’ That the Medicean bank helped him out, but that the loanswere very unimportant and notorious besides, we learn from a petition dated from his estate at Mugello, May 14, 1479, to the effect that Lorenzo would grant him a longer delay for the repayment of a hundred gold florins. He was evidently included in the measures which were rendered necessary by the bad state of the Medicean finances at that time. Pulci, who among others was very intimate with the Sanseverini, seems to have been employed by Lorenzo especially at Naples, Bologna, and Milan, both before and after this period. The last of the poet’s letters known to us, written from Verona, August 28, 1484, shows him to us in the suite of Roberto da Sanseverino and his son Fracasso, who were on their way to Venice. He died in Padua shortly after, but nothing is known about his death.[27]Luigi Pulci was about seventeen years older than his princely friend Lorenzo de’ Medici, while the man who entered into the closest and most productive intellectual relations with Lorenzo was a few years his junior. In 1464 a boy of ten came to Florence to seek maintenance and instruction in the house of some not very wealthy relatives. He had been rendered fatherless by one of those tragedies which bring to light and stigmatise the wild passions and party hatred that in the Tuscan communes of the fifteenth century mocked at justice, and which, though so fearful in punishment, was so powerless for the protection of the citizens. Benedetto Ambrogini of Montepulciano, a jurist of a not undistinguished family, who had held civil and judicial offices at home and abroad, had in the previous year applied to Piero de’ Medici[28]for protection against the bloodthirsty enmity of fellow-citizens and neighbours, to which he soon after fell a victim, leaving unprovided a widow with five children, of whom the above-named boy was the eldest.[29]Angelo, who took from his birthplace the name of Poliziano, early became acquainted with the serious side of life; for although as a child he showed brilliant talents and made rapid progress, he was in danger of being compelled to seek a living as assistant in a shop, and of renouncing the studies to which he was ardently devoted. At fifteen he expressed this tormenting dread in a Latin poem addressed to the young but celebrated philologer, Bartolommeo Fonte, who at that time assisted him with guidance and encouragement.[30]In the year 1469-70 he studied at the Florentine university, and at seventeen he wrote Greek epigrams. He had the privilege of listening to the men who kept alive the traditions of the university’s best days, Argyropulos and Andronikos Kallistos, Landino and Ficino. That polite literature attracted him more than philosophical lectures he declares himself, saying that he had done with philosophy as dogs with the Nile: one drink, and then away! ‘Nature and youth drew me to Homer, and with all the zeal and industry of which I was capable I set myself to translate him into Latin verse.’ In one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of his Latin poems, the distichs addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici in commendation of his master Kallistos, he sets forth how the latter was reading the Trojan war in Argive verse. In this poem he alludes to the time when he hopes to sing the deeds of Lorenzo, then limited to youthful exercises, and his adroit conduct in the matter of the Pitti conspiracy, which Poliziano commemorates in a later elegy.[31]It must have been about 1470 that he began to translate the ‘Iliad.’ Carlo Marsuppini had translated the first book; Angelo began with the second. It was a great undertaking for a young man. A Latin Homer had been thein votisupto that time; and now the work was begun by one who had but just entered the world and was still unknown, but who displayed an ease and grace of diction, melodiousness and richness of versification, that caused general surprise. This work and the admiration it excited opened the Medicean house to the young poet. It was probably Ficino who recommended the ‘Homeric youth’ to Lorenzo. The young head of the house, who had only become independent the year before, took him up; and whatever changes outward and inward occurred in Lorenzo’s life, the man who owed his brilliant endowments to Heaven, and their early and happy recognition to him kept faithful; he stood beside his patron’s death-bed and ere long followed him to the tomb. The dedication of the second book contains praises of the generous protector—praises lavish according to custom, but not untrue if the custom and the glory with which the young ruler of Florence had surrounded himself be taken into consideration.[32]A troop of panegyrists followed, Marsilio Ficino at their head. There was no lack of exaggeration. The head of the Platonists raised a flattering doubt whether any one could discover if the Greek or the Latin text of this Iliad was the original; another asked who had the greatest merit, he who had given occasion for the undertaking, or he who had accomplished it. Meanwhile the translator went on with his work; and when, two years after the completion of the second book, he presented the third to his patron, he expressed a hope that after finishing the whole he might begin an epic poem on a subject taken from Lorenzo’s own life, the war of Volterra. The ‘Iliad’ was never finished, the epic was never written. Lorenzo, who knew the world much better than did Angelo, probably objected to the glorification of an expedition of questionable prowess and of unquestionable barbarity. In like manner, when his son Leo was raised to the cardinalate, he disapproved of the eulogium which Poliziano addressedto the Pope. When Poliziano described the most important and dramatic event of his patron’s life, the conspiracy of the Pazzi, it was in prose.The man who had received the young poet into his house and enabled him to give all his time to study was doubtless also the cause of his sending a specimen of his work to Cardinal Ammanati, who kept up such intimate relations with the Medici. Poliziano’s address to this Prince of the Church[33]was modest. He wrote that he was doing like the eagle, which carries its young as soon as they are out of the shell into the light of the rising sun, that their eyes may become accustomed to its splendour. The cardinal, in whom survived the humanistic tradition of the days of Pius II., returns him phrase for phrase without offending against truth. The verses were wonderfully harmonious for so young a writer; the enterprise was useful as an introduction to great things. But if Homer could be asked whether he wished to be turned into Latin, he feared that the old poet, feeling the impossibility of a perfect rendering, would prefer to remain a citizen of Kolophon rather than become a Florentine, and would consider the pallium a more suitable vesture than the toga. In 1473, our poet had addressed some verses full of sonorous but very ordinary flattery to the spendthrift Cardinal of San Sisto, Pietro Riario, on the occasion of his appointment to the archbishopric of Florence. Instead of the expected present, he was put off with fine speeches, and, after the fashion of poor poets, complained bitterly.[34]About this time, also, he was rewarded with nothing but words by another cardinal, a very different man from Riario. He must have said to himself that the days of Nicholas V. were over, although Sixtus IV. hardly yielded to him in his zeal for collecting books. He never seems to have become acquainted with the Pope, and the disagreementwhich gradually arose between the latter and Poliziano’s protector deprived him of all opportunity of doing so. Four books of the translation of Homer are in existence;[35]whether the work proceeded further is uncertain. It was twice interrupted, and the second interruption decided its fate. Poliziano may, in the progress of his studies, have come round to the views of the Cardinal of Pavia, and have doubted whether a Latinity which strove after the elegance of the Augustan age was suited to the old Greek epic.The first short interruption was a journey to Mantua with Cardinal Francesco da Gonzaga, in August 1472. The intimate relations between the Gonzaga and the Medici, which corresponded to those between the Marquis Lodovico and the city of Florence, have been already spoken of. Francesco took the youthful poet with him from the Medici house. Poliziano, then aged eighteen, had already given proof of uncommon talent on the occasion of a visit to his native city, where his arrival was celebrated with brilliant festivities. Here originated the drama of ‘Orpheus,’ which made an epoch in literature, less by its actual merit than as the first example of a profane drama in the Italian tongue. Mysteries had long been popular; the modern drama, even when treating modern historical subjects, still more when, as in the works of Alberti and Gregorio Correr, it was directly modelled on the antique, had always adhered to the Latin language. In a letter to one of the cardinal’s suite, Messer Carlo Canale (who was, it may be mentioned, the second or third husband of the mother of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia), the author states that ‘Orpheus’ was composed in two days, amid constant noisy distractions, and that it was written in the vulgar tongue in order to be more intelligible to the hearers—‘animperfect work, fitted to bring its father shame rather than honour, and worthy of the fate prepared by the Lacedæmonians for children born weakly or crippled.’ This ‘favola’ is not a drama; it is a succession of lyrical pieces, with an ode inserted in Latin Sapphics, in praise of the cardinal, which Baccio Ugolini, another member of the Medicean circle and of Landino’s school, sang to the lyre in the character of ‘Orpheus.’[36]The Mantuan journey was a short episode. Some smaller Latin poems, including the beautiful and pathetic elegy on the death of Albiera degli Albizzi, the charming bride of Sigismondo della Stufa, in 1473, kept Poliziano in the same mood, and cannot fairly be considered as interruptions to his Homeric work. A longer interruption was caused by Giuliano de’ Medici’s tournament, which was a challenge to Angelo to write the fairest flower in his poetic garland.[37]He himself alludes to this interruption in the seventh stanza of the ‘Giostra:’E se qual fu la fama, il ver rimbomba,Che d’Hecuba la figlia, o sacro Achille,Poi che ‘l corpo lasciasti entro la tomba,T’accenda ancor d’amorose faville,Lascia un poco tacer tua maggior tromba,Ch’io fo squillar per l’italice ville.E tempra tu la cetra a’ nuovi carmi,Mentr’io canto l’amor di Giulio e l’armi.The subject in itself is poor. The author must have felt this, even had he not been warned by Luca Pulci’s verses on the tournament of Lorenzo. The ‘Stanzas’—the title by which Poliziano’s poem is best known—are counted among the gems of Italian literature. They were the first of the kind expressing real melody without artificiality, being remarkable for their artistic flow and carefulness of composition. But for a few harsh and ignoble expressions, they have never since been surpassed in point of form, though Ariosto may have more variety and freedom of movement, and Tasso more harmony. But how do these beautiful stanzas of ottava rima treat their subject? In the first book it is left altogether out of sight. The tournament gives place to mythology, the Piazza Sta. Croce to the gardens and palace of Venus. All the flowers and trees of the most highly-favoured climates, all animals of the chase and the peaceful park, the whole of Olympus, are introduced; reminiscences of all the classic poets from Lucretius to Claudian, even to the Christian singers, wanderings of an exuberant fancy through the realms of beauty and love,—all these combine and disport themselves in such perfect freedom, that it matters not whether they have anything to do with the subject or not. At the beginning of the second book the poet seems at last to bethink himself that he intended to sing the praises of a Medici. He therefore makes Cupid relate to Venus the glories of the Tuscan race, and begins with the preparations for great deeds which such vast mythological machinery demands. The youth is awakened and armed, but not without assistance from Olympus. The poem breaks off abruptly, and in its closing stanzas there gleams a sad presentiment of the cruel fate which was so soon to put an end to a life apparently destined to glory and happiness, and with it to a work already highly valued as a fragment, and which gave the tone to the poetry of the age just beginning. Who shall say whether it was not well for the poem that it remained a fragment? for the disproportion between the unimportance of the subject andthe pomp of the treatment might have come out too strikingly had it been continued. This poem, intended to celebrate the acts of Giuliano, is addressed to his brother. The dedicatory stanza speaks of Lorenzo without circumlocution as the ruler of Florence:High-born Lorenzo, laurel[38]in whose shadeThy Florence rests nor fears the lowering storm,Nor threatening signs in heaven’s high front displayed,Nor Jove’s dread anger in its fiercest form;O to the trembling Muse afford thine aid—The Muse that courts thee timorous and forlorn,Lives in the shadow of thy prosperous tree,And bounds her every fond desire to thee.[39]Angelo Poliziano continued to write Latin verses. His epigrams, odes, and elegies are valuable both as conveying a knowledge of the persons and tendencies of a memorable period, and as proofs of a versatility and classical spirit to be found in none of his contemporaries and in few subsequent writers. The philologers of the fifteenth century wrote Latin verses with ease; but the only poet among them is Poliziano. His works abound in imitations of all kinds, as do those of the later Roman poets. But Poliziano feels, thinks, and writes like a Roman; if not like a poet of the Augustan age, at least like one of the time of Statius, whom he resembles in more ways than one, having written ‘Sylvæ’ like him. He is more classical than some of those who are included in the ranks of the poets of antiquity.A peculiar grace, fulness of thought, and great variety, give to his poems a charm not often found in modern Latin verses, which seldom display a living individuality. To descriptions of modern life and modern localities, whose very names seem unsuitable to a classic sphere, he can give a native classical colouring, without any apparent effort, yet with the most consummate art. Most remarkable amonghis writings, by its grace and naturalness and an intermingling of joy and sadness, is the elegy on a bunch of violets given him by a beloved hand; a poem which, in the sixteenth century and in our own, has been an object of study to the choice spirits who wish to acquire pure classic inspiration in a modern form.[40]Poliziano here challenges a comparison with Lorenzo de’ Medici, who treated the same subject in two of his loveliest sonnets. The ‘Sylvæ,’ poems of Angelo’s later years, from 1482 to 1486, added to his reputation, though in happy turns of thought and warmth of feeling they are inferior to many of his smaller pieces. They are four poems in heroic metre, prolusions to his philological lectures at the Florence University, to a chair in which he was appointed on December 23, 1485, the degree of Doctor of Common Law being conferred on him by Archbishop Rinaldo Orsini at his palace, in the presence of Lorenzo’s son Piero.[41]The first of these poems,[42]‘Manto’ (the name of the Theban prophetess, which was assumed by the Italian city founded by her son), treats of Virgil, his works, his place in literature, his importance for all time.As the first of the ‘Sylvæ’ was intended as an introduction to Virgil’s ‘Bucolics,’ so the second, ‘Rusticus,’ was to serve the same purpose for the ‘Georgics,’ and for the works and times of Hesiod. The third, ‘Ambra,’ took its name from the Medicean Poggio a Cajano, but the name has little connection with the poem, which refers to localities only at its close, and is devoted to an analysis of Homeric plays regarded from a pseudo-Herodotean and pseudo-Plutarchian point of view. The last and longest of the ‘Sylvæ,’ bearing the strange title of ‘Nutricia: the Reward of the Nursing-mother,’ describes the origin, progress, and influence of the poetryand the poetics of classical times, passes on to the author of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ and ends by singing the praises of Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors. The abundance and versatility of Lorenzo’s talents were perhaps never more truly and happily expressed than in the closing verses of this poem; and when the praises of living and powerful men appear in such a setting as this, we may accept them without complaining. After describing his labours in the field of sentimental poetry, to which belong the greater part of Lorenzo’s earlier poems, his other poetical productions and his whole intellectual character are thus spoken of:—Non vacat argutosque sales, Satyraque bibacesDescriptos memorare senes, non carmina festisExcipienda choris, querulasve animantia chordas.Idem etiam tacitæ referens pastoria vitæOtia, et urbanos thyrso extimulante labores,Mox fugis in cœlum, non seu per lubrica nisusExtremamque boni gaudes contingere metam.Quodque alii studiumque vocant, durumque laborem,Hic tibi ludus erit, fessus civilibus actis,Huc is emeritas acuens ad carmina vires.Felix ingenio, felix cui pectore tantasInstaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaciAlternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas.Poliziano wrote the ‘Nutricia’ in October 1486, at the villa of Fiesole. In the following verses he prophesied of the times to come and the future greatness of his pupil, Piero, if the latter, fulfilling the bright promise of his youth, should walk in the footsteps of his father:—It jam pene prior, sic, ô sic pergat, et ipsumMe superet majore gradu, longeque relinquatProtinus, et dulci potius plaudatur alumno,Bisque mei victor illo celebrentur honores.A merciful fate spared the poet from witnessing the failure of hopes the fulfilment of which had already become very doubtful when he was prematurely called away. Anyone versed in the history of those days who may now climbthe pleasant heights of Fiesole, which new buildings and roads have altered but not transformed, will think with interest of Angelo’s abode here in the country-house of the Medici, which he describes in a letter to Marsilio Ficino. ‘If the summer heat oppress thee at Careggi, the cooler air of Fiesole will be pleasant to thee. We have plenty of water between the slopes of the hill, and while gentle winds constantly refresh us, the glare of the sun troubles us little. During the ascent to the villa it appears enclosed in trees, but the spot, when reached, commands an extensive view as far as the town. The neighbourhood is thickly inhabited, yet I find here the quiet which suits me. But I will tempt thee with yet another attraction. Pico sometimes wanders beyond the limits of his own grounds, breaks in unexpectedly upon my solitude, and carries me away from my shady gardens to his evening meal. You know how things are there; no superfluities, but everything as it should be, and with the spice of his conversation. But thou must be my guest; with me thou shalt find as good a table and perhaps better wine, for Pico and I are rivals in respect to wine.’[43]The ‘Sylvæ’ are dedicated to three young men belonging to the Medicean circle and one who stood outside it. Lorenzo—the son of Pier Francesco de’ Medici, grandson of Cosimo’s brother—whose name stands at the beginning of ‘Manto,’ was at that time on friendly terms with the members of the elder branch of his race. He afterwards became estranged from them; a change the effects of which did not cease when his posterity had entered upon the dominion of Florence, and the last remaining descendant of Cosimo’s line sat on the throne of France. Gifted with poetical talents, and no unworthy rival of his more famous relatives, the younger Lorenzo was a friend of Poliziano’s, who dedicated to him among other things a description of thevilleggiaturaat Poggio a Cajano. ‘Rusticus’ was intended for Jacopo Salviati, who, whenthese verses were written, in 1483, had been designated as Lorenzo’s son-in-law; so that Poliziano, who had first sung the praises of the unlucky Archbishop of Pisa and then openly insulted him with extravagant accusations, passed lightly over the troublesome past. ‘Ambra’ was sent to Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of Giovanni, and for a time a pupil, together with Piero de’ Medici, of our poet, who in one of his letters praised his intellectual gifts and knowledge of classical literature. He was a faithful adherent of his relatives, not only in prosperity but also in adversity, which fell on him even more heavily than on them. In the days of Savonarola he was accused of taking part in a conspiracy in favour of the exiles, and, with Niccolò Ridolfi, the father of Lorenzo’s son-in-law, suffered on the scaffold in 1497, at the age of thirty-two, a victim to mob-law. The last of these poems, ‘Nutricia,’ was dedicated, in 1491, several years after its composition, to the Cardinal of Sant’Anastasia, Antonio Pallavicino Gentile of Genoa, who had great influence in state affairs under Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., and took much interest in literature and literary men. At the close of the dedication Poliziano gratefully alludes to the cardinal’s efforts to further his cause with the Pope.As we have said, the ‘Sylvæ’ were prolegomena to lectures on literature. To a cycle of another kind, to lectures given at Florence in 1483 on the Aristotelian philosophy, Poliziano composed a prose introduction, probably the strangest ever heard at any university.[44]The very title—‘Lamia’ (the Witch)—sounds strange, and we almostsuspect a joke, but find that the author is in earnest. The beginning of this address to his students is highly characteristic. ‘Have you ever heard tell of witches? When I was a little boy my grandmother used to tell me about the witches in the neighbouring wood, who eat up naughty children. Fancy what an image of terror a witch was to me in those days! In the neighbourhood of my little villa at Fiesole there is a little brook, hidden by the shadow of the hill-side, and the women of the place who go there to draw water say that it is a place of meeting for the witches. But what is a witch? Plutarch of Chæronea, who was as grave as he was learned, relates that the witches have artificial eyes which they can put in and take out at their pleasure, just as weak-sighted old people do with their spectacles, which they stick on their noses when they want to look carefully at something and then put back into the case; or as others do with their false teeth, which they lay aside with their clothes when they go to bed;—not to mention your helpmeets, ye married men, with their bought braids and curls. If a witch desires to take a walk she puts in her eyes, and wanders through streets and alleys, squares and markets, churches and offices, taverns and baths, looks at everything, thrusts her nose into everything, meddles with everything, let a man do what he may. She has the eyes of an owl and a spy, like the old maid in Plautus. She can find out a grain of sand, and bury herself in the narrowest cranny. When she gets home, as soon as she reaches the threshold, she takes out her eyes and puts them in her pocket. Out of doors she has eyes like a lynx, at home she is blind. You ask what she does then? She sits spinning yarn, and humming a little song from time to time. Have you Florentines never known such witches, who know nothing of their own business, but are always busy about other people’s? No? Yet there are many of them in all cities, even here in yours. But they go about in disguise—you take them for men and women, but they are witches. Once it befell that some of them, happening to see me, stoodstill, and looked at me curiously, as those desirous to buy are wont to do. They whispered to each other, with uncouth gestures, “That is Poliziano—that is the rhymester who has suddenly dressed himself up as a philosopher,” and then they hurried away like wasps robbed of their sting. What they meant by their discourse is not clear to me; whether it displeases them that a man should be a philosopher, which, however, I am not, or that I venture to play the philosopher without having the material to do so. Let us now see what sort of a creature it is that men call a philosopher. You will soon perceive that I do not belong to the species. I say this not because I think that you believe it, but that no one may take it into his head to believe it. Not that I should be ashamed of the name, if it agreed with the facts, but because I prefer to keep free from titles which are not due to me:Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olimGrex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum.This therefore is the first point. The second is, whether the condition of a philosopher is bad. When I have proved the contrary I will speak to you briefly of myself and the subject of my lectures.’ After this introduction follows a sketch of the course of Grecian philosophy, and an exposition of the work of the later schools of thought.The man who raised to such a height the poetry of his native tongue, and the idiom from which it sprang, was deeply interested in popular poetry. He went hand in hand with his patron and friend in efforts to bring back language and literature ‘from the constraint of false rules to truth and nature.’ Both found the popular minstrelsy in the peculiar shape it retains to the present day, and differing completely in tone from the songs of other lands. In therispettithe ottava rima predominates, treated freely as it was in Boccaccio’s days for epic poetry. Even the sentimental pieces are epigrammatically pointed, and full ofantitheses, which give an impression of artificiality and imitation of the antique, more especially in southern Tuscany and the Roman district. They are not narratives, nor do they develope a state of mind, but they vividly describe momentary emotion. Without making up a whole history with such little songs, like Pulci and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano composed a series ofrispettidescribing joy and sorrow, accepted and especially despised love. They are partly in dialogue, frequently in a natural easy style, which reminds us of improvisations, more tender in expression, more flexible in diction than the two writers above mentioned, who not unfrequently betray that they are mocking at their own work. Other similar songs, but without internal connection, display a versatility resulting naturally from the way in which they originated. These fugitive poems grew within the Medicean circle, products of social intercourse in the villa and in evening walks in the garden; or, like the dance-songs (ballate), of which Poliziano wrote a great number, they were sung with music in the public squares. In short, they belonged to the life of the people who had furnished models for the rhymes composed for them by the poets of quality, with greater refinement, and not always without a secondary object in view.Poliziano’s versatility is wonderfully shown in the labours he undertook in the field of classical philology while thus wandering through the woods of poetry. He was one of the first to establish the true principles of textual criticism; at the request of Innocent VIII. he translated Herodian’s Roman history into Latin,[45]and made the writings of Hippocrates and Galen accessible to those of his countrymen who were not acquainted with Greek. On the latter occasion he claimed the assistance of the learned doctor Pietro Leoni, who was then lecturing in Padua, to securethe correct rendering of the medical terms.[46]The most talented poet of the fifteenth century was also the philologer who, while equal to others in knowledge of antiquity, represents its spirit with more truth and originality. In trying to rival the classical letter-writers, Poliziano followed a fashion that had influenced statesmen and men of learning from Petrarca downwards. He left a mass of epistolary testimony to the character of his age, the value of which must not be lightly estimated, though it may not always answer the expectations raised by the names. Like Ficino and others, Poliziano had arranged his Latin correspondence for publication, and wrote a dedication to Piero de’ Medici, when death cut short his career.[47]More interesting to us than the generality of these letters, which nevertheless contain valuable matter, are his confidential letters in the vulgar tongue, not meant for publication. Even this highly gifted man was not free from the bad habit of the learned men of the fifteenth century—the intermixture of Latin phrases with Italian when the subject gave no occasion for it.

LUIGI PULCI AND ANGELO POLIZIANO.

Aninfluence hardly less important than that of the philosophers and grammarians was exercised on Lorenzo and his epoch by the literary innovators who, with some infusion of classic learning, were not so pedantic as the early humanists, while they bore the impress of the teaching of the preceding century. The Medici were to these men of letters, just as much as they were to the philosophers, the centre to which their several rays converged, and Lorenzo’s name is inseparable from the names of several among them. One in this brilliant circle holds a different position from the rest. He took as a poet the part which Landino took as a critic in the revival of the study of Dante. Matteo Palmieri holds a place by himself. The first glance into his great poem, the ‘City of Life,’ (‘Città di Vita’) shows it to be an imitation of the ‘Divine Comedy;’ but only in the outward form. It is a philosophical work, the object of which is to describe and correct the problems and abuses of citizen life. It contains no real poetry, but has the merit of popularising the doctrines of moral philosophy in language somewhat lifeless, indeed, yet expressive, comparatively pure, and free from the philological follies of the age. The book became known only within a narrow circle. Theological criticism discovered in it the heretical doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which indeed Alamanno Rinuccini avowed without scruple in his funeral oration on the poet, and the work was suppressed. In later years the author wrote an unfinished historyof the world, and a life of the grand seneschal Nicola Acciaiuolo. He had been a pupil of Traversari and Marsuppini, had held important offices of state, and after fulfilling several embassies with honour, died at a ripe age in 1475.[22]

While this faint echo of Dante was addressing itself to the higher classes, and proving how large was the retrogression from the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, the popular poetry, of which the religious side has been already noticed, began to sound a natural strain in a lighter style. Burlesque, which belonged to the character of the people, was allowed considerable play. The sonnets that came forth from the barber’s shop of Domenico, called ‘Burchiello,’ in the very heart of old Florence, the Calimala, and the market, enjoy a reputation that must be taken on trust. They were chiefly experiments in the Florentine vulgar tongue—full of allusions and trivialities; but occasionally they take a flight which may serve to throw light on social and political matters, if all the writings attributed to this man, who died at Rome in 1448, are really by him. Another burlesque poet, Matteo Franco, whom we shall meet again, belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s household, and used to hold with other poets, particularly with Luigi Pulci, satirical and not always very seemly sham-fights as a social pastime. But far more important for this period was the rise of a new style which was destined to give to the sixteenth century its special poetic character. Of the brothers Pulci, scions of an old family somewhat reduced in circumstances, one, Bernardo, tried his hand both as an original writer and a translator of eclogues; the two others are among the cultivators of the poetry of chivalry, which began its course as a branch of literature under their auspices. Both Luca and Luigi belong to the immediate Medicean circle.Luca Pulci, the eldest brother, born at Florence in 1431, is commonly designated as the author of the poem on Lorenzo de’ Medici’s tournament, which only retains a place in literature because it records an event in the life of a celebrated man. But the assumption of this authorship is by no means certain, for the first edition bears the name of Luigi Pulci, whose literary fame it would not enhance. That Luca was intimate with the young Medici is shown by the fact that at their desire he began the poem ‘Ciriffo Calvaneo,’ which two generations later was partially continued by Bernardo Giambullari for another Lorenzo, grandson of the Magnificent. It is a poetical version of a popular romance of chivalry, which in its Italian form bears the title of the ‘Povero Avveduto,’ and relates the battles and adventures of the time of King Louis d’Outre-mer of France, in 921-954.[23]Luca Pulci, after some unlucky banking affairs at Rome and Florence, died in 1470, in the debtors’ prison of the Stinche, and left to his brothers the burden of a large family. He was, as we have said, the eldest of the brothers; but it is probable that his ‘Ciriffo’ was preceded by Luigi’s ‘Morgante.’ We are led to assume this by the fact that Luigi chose a far better subject.[24]His poem must have been written in and after 1460, and the cantos must have followed close upon each other. We learn from the author himself that its original conception was due in part to Lorenzo’s mother. In a letter addressed by him to Lorenzo from Fuligno, December 4, 1470, he held out prospects of a new heroic poem.[25]Thata serious and pious woman like Madonna Lucrezia should be patroness of a work more or less offensive in a religious point of view may be matter of surprise. But after making allowance for the tendencies of the time, which saw no harm in a mixture of religion and burlesque, and, amid the strictest devotional practices, treated questions of faith with incredible unceremoniousness, it must be remembered that this lady was wont for the sake of genius to judge leniently many things in literature and in life that were questionable. Thus she remained a supporter of Angelo Poliziano after he had fallen into disgrace with her daughter-in-law, and presented him with her religious poems when the unfavourable rumours as to his faith and morals could be no secret to her. But Luigi Pulci, the free-thinker and loose mocker, who mixed up quotations from St. John’s Gospel with open expressions of unbelief, found in her an active and zealous friend till her life’s close.

The ‘Morgante Maggiore’ was the beginning of the romantic epopee, which successfully laid hold of the cycle of Carolingian legends that had been rendered accessible to the Italian nation by the ‘Chronicle’ of Turpin and the book of the ‘Reali di Francia.’ This choice of a subject was all the happier because Florence attributed her restoration to Charlemagne, as may be read carved in stone in the church of the Apostles. The style of the work is original. Amid all its prodigies the old knightly romance is serious and full of faith. Christianity is always the foil to the chivalry which sprang from it, and which is animated by its spirit. ‘Morgante’ (the story takes its name from the giant who accomplishes his strange exploits) is not a satire on chivalry, but it is so saturated with burlesque that it assumes a very peculiar character. Neither is it a denial of Christianity, from which, on the contrary, it derives here and there a deeply religious tone; but it is Christianity struggling with scepticism and denial, so that the faith of the Church and the people is driven into the background. In this respect‘Morgante’ is a true mirror of the time. With its perfect command of the subject, bound down to no poetical rules or precedents, it is a mixture of seriousness and irony, Christianity and unbelief, Biblical texts and profane witticisms. It is full of the most glaring contrasts of sound common-sense and folly, of elegance and coarseness, of lofty intellectual flights and mere buffoonery. There is in this poem more richness of imagination and spontaneity than perhaps in any other work before the appearance of the ‘Orlando Furioso;’ passages occur full of the deepest pathos, and showing a feeling that belongs only to a real poet—passages too often followed by a grotesqueness that tends to destroy their effect. The qualities here united in very unequal degrees were developed and discriminated by later poets. The importance of Luigi Pulci lies less in his poem, which falls short of perfection in every way, than in the fact that his work contains the germs of the romantic epopee in all its various branches. In considering that the two parent poems of chivalry in Italian, the ‘Morgante’ and ‘Ciriffo,’ originated in the Medicean house, let it be remembered how much this branch of poetry, up to the ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ with which it terminates, was connected with that Court life which is so constantly represented in its varied productions. From the household of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, who at the highest pinnacle of their fame did not abandon the simplicity and comfort of free citizen life, to the ceremonious Court of Alfonso of Este, is certainly a very long step. Though the Pulci did not go so far as to weave into their ottava rima a genealogy of their patrons reaching back to demigods, still theirs was a kind of poetry destined to enliven stately banquets.

Luigi Pulci’s intimacy with Lorenzo is shown by his oft-quoted letters, which throw some side-lights on the various relations between patron and client, and on the commissions, rather political than literary, entrusted to the latter. The author of ‘Morgante’ was sincerely attached to his youngpatron. When the latter was going to Southern Italy in 1466, before the Neroni and Pitti conspiracy, Pulci wrote to him from the convent of Alverina:[26]‘Dost thou really mean to leave me buried in the snow among these woods, lonely and comfortless, while thou goest to Rome? Is it really my fate that, whatever thou mayest think of me, as the climax of my ill-luck, I must never mount a horse by thy side? Am I to come to that only when I am an old man? How often have we talked about Rome, and now shall I not accompany thee?—can it be because I should increase the expenses of the journey? Let not that trouble thee; amid all my troubles I will yet do thee credit. A horse is all I ask of thee; for I shall find so many friends yonder, and will manage so well, that I will not be a burthen to thee, as perhaps thou fearest. Truly thou art wrong to pass me by, not to mention that it would hurt me more than anything in this world. Do not treat me as if I were old iron, for I shall soon be well if thou carest for me.’ And Lorenzo really did care for him. Two years later Pulci wrote to him from Pisa: ‘If thou dost not wish people to believe or know that I am thy friend, and have some influence with thee, placard it on the walls—at thine own expense, of course; as for some time past having had no money to pay away, I have been paying with thy name instead. Wherever I show myself people whisper, “That is Lorenzo’s great friend.”’ That Pulci’s money matters were not in brilliant order we have already seen. His brother’s business misfortunes brought him into great difficulties. ‘Never yet have I made a plan,’ he wrote to Lorenzo after Luca’s failure, ‘that Fate did not destroy in an hour what I had taken a year to build up. I must have come into the world like hares and other poor animals, doomed to be the prey of the huntsman. It is my fate to love thee, and to be very little in thy company.’ That the Medicean bank helped him out, but that the loanswere very unimportant and notorious besides, we learn from a petition dated from his estate at Mugello, May 14, 1479, to the effect that Lorenzo would grant him a longer delay for the repayment of a hundred gold florins. He was evidently included in the measures which were rendered necessary by the bad state of the Medicean finances at that time. Pulci, who among others was very intimate with the Sanseverini, seems to have been employed by Lorenzo especially at Naples, Bologna, and Milan, both before and after this period. The last of the poet’s letters known to us, written from Verona, August 28, 1484, shows him to us in the suite of Roberto da Sanseverino and his son Fracasso, who were on their way to Venice. He died in Padua shortly after, but nothing is known about his death.[27]

Luigi Pulci was about seventeen years older than his princely friend Lorenzo de’ Medici, while the man who entered into the closest and most productive intellectual relations with Lorenzo was a few years his junior. In 1464 a boy of ten came to Florence to seek maintenance and instruction in the house of some not very wealthy relatives. He had been rendered fatherless by one of those tragedies which bring to light and stigmatise the wild passions and party hatred that in the Tuscan communes of the fifteenth century mocked at justice, and which, though so fearful in punishment, was so powerless for the protection of the citizens. Benedetto Ambrogini of Montepulciano, a jurist of a not undistinguished family, who had held civil and judicial offices at home and abroad, had in the previous year applied to Piero de’ Medici[28]for protection against the bloodthirsty enmity of fellow-citizens and neighbours, to which he soon after fell a victim, leaving unprovided a widow with five children, of whom the above-named boy was the eldest.[29]Angelo, who took from his birthplace the name of Poliziano, early became acquainted with the serious side of life; for although as a child he showed brilliant talents and made rapid progress, he was in danger of being compelled to seek a living as assistant in a shop, and of renouncing the studies to which he was ardently devoted. At fifteen he expressed this tormenting dread in a Latin poem addressed to the young but celebrated philologer, Bartolommeo Fonte, who at that time assisted him with guidance and encouragement.[30]In the year 1469-70 he studied at the Florentine university, and at seventeen he wrote Greek epigrams. He had the privilege of listening to the men who kept alive the traditions of the university’s best days, Argyropulos and Andronikos Kallistos, Landino and Ficino. That polite literature attracted him more than philosophical lectures he declares himself, saying that he had done with philosophy as dogs with the Nile: one drink, and then away! ‘Nature and youth drew me to Homer, and with all the zeal and industry of which I was capable I set myself to translate him into Latin verse.’ In one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of his Latin poems, the distichs addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici in commendation of his master Kallistos, he sets forth how the latter was reading the Trojan war in Argive verse. In this poem he alludes to the time when he hopes to sing the deeds of Lorenzo, then limited to youthful exercises, and his adroit conduct in the matter of the Pitti conspiracy, which Poliziano commemorates in a later elegy.[31]

It must have been about 1470 that he began to translate the ‘Iliad.’ Carlo Marsuppini had translated the first book; Angelo began with the second. It was a great undertaking for a young man. A Latin Homer had been thein votisupto that time; and now the work was begun by one who had but just entered the world and was still unknown, but who displayed an ease and grace of diction, melodiousness and richness of versification, that caused general surprise. This work and the admiration it excited opened the Medicean house to the young poet. It was probably Ficino who recommended the ‘Homeric youth’ to Lorenzo. The young head of the house, who had only become independent the year before, took him up; and whatever changes outward and inward occurred in Lorenzo’s life, the man who owed his brilliant endowments to Heaven, and their early and happy recognition to him kept faithful; he stood beside his patron’s death-bed and ere long followed him to the tomb. The dedication of the second book contains praises of the generous protector—praises lavish according to custom, but not untrue if the custom and the glory with which the young ruler of Florence had surrounded himself be taken into consideration.[32]A troop of panegyrists followed, Marsilio Ficino at their head. There was no lack of exaggeration. The head of the Platonists raised a flattering doubt whether any one could discover if the Greek or the Latin text of this Iliad was the original; another asked who had the greatest merit, he who had given occasion for the undertaking, or he who had accomplished it. Meanwhile the translator went on with his work; and when, two years after the completion of the second book, he presented the third to his patron, he expressed a hope that after finishing the whole he might begin an epic poem on a subject taken from Lorenzo’s own life, the war of Volterra. The ‘Iliad’ was never finished, the epic was never written. Lorenzo, who knew the world much better than did Angelo, probably objected to the glorification of an expedition of questionable prowess and of unquestionable barbarity. In like manner, when his son Leo was raised to the cardinalate, he disapproved of the eulogium which Poliziano addressedto the Pope. When Poliziano described the most important and dramatic event of his patron’s life, the conspiracy of the Pazzi, it was in prose.

The man who had received the young poet into his house and enabled him to give all his time to study was doubtless also the cause of his sending a specimen of his work to Cardinal Ammanati, who kept up such intimate relations with the Medici. Poliziano’s address to this Prince of the Church[33]was modest. He wrote that he was doing like the eagle, which carries its young as soon as they are out of the shell into the light of the rising sun, that their eyes may become accustomed to its splendour. The cardinal, in whom survived the humanistic tradition of the days of Pius II., returns him phrase for phrase without offending against truth. The verses were wonderfully harmonious for so young a writer; the enterprise was useful as an introduction to great things. But if Homer could be asked whether he wished to be turned into Latin, he feared that the old poet, feeling the impossibility of a perfect rendering, would prefer to remain a citizen of Kolophon rather than become a Florentine, and would consider the pallium a more suitable vesture than the toga. In 1473, our poet had addressed some verses full of sonorous but very ordinary flattery to the spendthrift Cardinal of San Sisto, Pietro Riario, on the occasion of his appointment to the archbishopric of Florence. Instead of the expected present, he was put off with fine speeches, and, after the fashion of poor poets, complained bitterly.[34]

About this time, also, he was rewarded with nothing but words by another cardinal, a very different man from Riario. He must have said to himself that the days of Nicholas V. were over, although Sixtus IV. hardly yielded to him in his zeal for collecting books. He never seems to have become acquainted with the Pope, and the disagreementwhich gradually arose between the latter and Poliziano’s protector deprived him of all opportunity of doing so. Four books of the translation of Homer are in existence;[35]whether the work proceeded further is uncertain. It was twice interrupted, and the second interruption decided its fate. Poliziano may, in the progress of his studies, have come round to the views of the Cardinal of Pavia, and have doubted whether a Latinity which strove after the elegance of the Augustan age was suited to the old Greek epic.

The first short interruption was a journey to Mantua with Cardinal Francesco da Gonzaga, in August 1472. The intimate relations between the Gonzaga and the Medici, which corresponded to those between the Marquis Lodovico and the city of Florence, have been already spoken of. Francesco took the youthful poet with him from the Medici house. Poliziano, then aged eighteen, had already given proof of uncommon talent on the occasion of a visit to his native city, where his arrival was celebrated with brilliant festivities. Here originated the drama of ‘Orpheus,’ which made an epoch in literature, less by its actual merit than as the first example of a profane drama in the Italian tongue. Mysteries had long been popular; the modern drama, even when treating modern historical subjects, still more when, as in the works of Alberti and Gregorio Correr, it was directly modelled on the antique, had always adhered to the Latin language. In a letter to one of the cardinal’s suite, Messer Carlo Canale (who was, it may be mentioned, the second or third husband of the mother of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia), the author states that ‘Orpheus’ was composed in two days, amid constant noisy distractions, and that it was written in the vulgar tongue in order to be more intelligible to the hearers—‘animperfect work, fitted to bring its father shame rather than honour, and worthy of the fate prepared by the Lacedæmonians for children born weakly or crippled.’ This ‘favola’ is not a drama; it is a succession of lyrical pieces, with an ode inserted in Latin Sapphics, in praise of the cardinal, which Baccio Ugolini, another member of the Medicean circle and of Landino’s school, sang to the lyre in the character of ‘Orpheus.’[36]

The Mantuan journey was a short episode. Some smaller Latin poems, including the beautiful and pathetic elegy on the death of Albiera degli Albizzi, the charming bride of Sigismondo della Stufa, in 1473, kept Poliziano in the same mood, and cannot fairly be considered as interruptions to his Homeric work. A longer interruption was caused by Giuliano de’ Medici’s tournament, which was a challenge to Angelo to write the fairest flower in his poetic garland.[37]He himself alludes to this interruption in the seventh stanza of the ‘Giostra:’

E se qual fu la fama, il ver rimbomba,

Che d’Hecuba la figlia, o sacro Achille,Poi che ‘l corpo lasciasti entro la tomba,T’accenda ancor d’amorose faville,Lascia un poco tacer tua maggior tromba,Ch’io fo squillar per l’italice ville.E tempra tu la cetra a’ nuovi carmi,Mentr’io canto l’amor di Giulio e l’armi.

The subject in itself is poor. The author must have felt this, even had he not been warned by Luca Pulci’s verses on the tournament of Lorenzo. The ‘Stanzas’—the title by which Poliziano’s poem is best known—are counted among the gems of Italian literature. They were the first of the kind expressing real melody without artificiality, being remarkable for their artistic flow and carefulness of composition. But for a few harsh and ignoble expressions, they have never since been surpassed in point of form, though Ariosto may have more variety and freedom of movement, and Tasso more harmony. But how do these beautiful stanzas of ottava rima treat their subject? In the first book it is left altogether out of sight. The tournament gives place to mythology, the Piazza Sta. Croce to the gardens and palace of Venus. All the flowers and trees of the most highly-favoured climates, all animals of the chase and the peaceful park, the whole of Olympus, are introduced; reminiscences of all the classic poets from Lucretius to Claudian, even to the Christian singers, wanderings of an exuberant fancy through the realms of beauty and love,—all these combine and disport themselves in such perfect freedom, that it matters not whether they have anything to do with the subject or not. At the beginning of the second book the poet seems at last to bethink himself that he intended to sing the praises of a Medici. He therefore makes Cupid relate to Venus the glories of the Tuscan race, and begins with the preparations for great deeds which such vast mythological machinery demands. The youth is awakened and armed, but not without assistance from Olympus. The poem breaks off abruptly, and in its closing stanzas there gleams a sad presentiment of the cruel fate which was so soon to put an end to a life apparently destined to glory and happiness, and with it to a work already highly valued as a fragment, and which gave the tone to the poetry of the age just beginning. Who shall say whether it was not well for the poem that it remained a fragment? for the disproportion between the unimportance of the subject andthe pomp of the treatment might have come out too strikingly had it been continued. This poem, intended to celebrate the acts of Giuliano, is addressed to his brother. The dedicatory stanza speaks of Lorenzo without circumlocution as the ruler of Florence:

High-born Lorenzo, laurel[38]in whose shadeThy Florence rests nor fears the lowering storm,Nor threatening signs in heaven’s high front displayed,Nor Jove’s dread anger in its fiercest form;O to the trembling Muse afford thine aid—The Muse that courts thee timorous and forlorn,Lives in the shadow of thy prosperous tree,And bounds her every fond desire to thee.[39]

Angelo Poliziano continued to write Latin verses. His epigrams, odes, and elegies are valuable both as conveying a knowledge of the persons and tendencies of a memorable period, and as proofs of a versatility and classical spirit to be found in none of his contemporaries and in few subsequent writers. The philologers of the fifteenth century wrote Latin verses with ease; but the only poet among them is Poliziano. His works abound in imitations of all kinds, as do those of the later Roman poets. But Poliziano feels, thinks, and writes like a Roman; if not like a poet of the Augustan age, at least like one of the time of Statius, whom he resembles in more ways than one, having written ‘Sylvæ’ like him. He is more classical than some of those who are included in the ranks of the poets of antiquity.

A peculiar grace, fulness of thought, and great variety, give to his poems a charm not often found in modern Latin verses, which seldom display a living individuality. To descriptions of modern life and modern localities, whose very names seem unsuitable to a classic sphere, he can give a native classical colouring, without any apparent effort, yet with the most consummate art. Most remarkable amonghis writings, by its grace and naturalness and an intermingling of joy and sadness, is the elegy on a bunch of violets given him by a beloved hand; a poem which, in the sixteenth century and in our own, has been an object of study to the choice spirits who wish to acquire pure classic inspiration in a modern form.[40]Poliziano here challenges a comparison with Lorenzo de’ Medici, who treated the same subject in two of his loveliest sonnets. The ‘Sylvæ,’ poems of Angelo’s later years, from 1482 to 1486, added to his reputation, though in happy turns of thought and warmth of feeling they are inferior to many of his smaller pieces. They are four poems in heroic metre, prolusions to his philological lectures at the Florence University, to a chair in which he was appointed on December 23, 1485, the degree of Doctor of Common Law being conferred on him by Archbishop Rinaldo Orsini at his palace, in the presence of Lorenzo’s son Piero.[41]The first of these poems,[42]‘Manto’ (the name of the Theban prophetess, which was assumed by the Italian city founded by her son), treats of Virgil, his works, his place in literature, his importance for all time.

As the first of the ‘Sylvæ’ was intended as an introduction to Virgil’s ‘Bucolics,’ so the second, ‘Rusticus,’ was to serve the same purpose for the ‘Georgics,’ and for the works and times of Hesiod. The third, ‘Ambra,’ took its name from the Medicean Poggio a Cajano, but the name has little connection with the poem, which refers to localities only at its close, and is devoted to an analysis of Homeric plays regarded from a pseudo-Herodotean and pseudo-Plutarchian point of view. The last and longest of the ‘Sylvæ,’ bearing the strange title of ‘Nutricia: the Reward of the Nursing-mother,’ describes the origin, progress, and influence of the poetryand the poetics of classical times, passes on to the author of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ and ends by singing the praises of Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors. The abundance and versatility of Lorenzo’s talents were perhaps never more truly and happily expressed than in the closing verses of this poem; and when the praises of living and powerful men appear in such a setting as this, we may accept them without complaining. After describing his labours in the field of sentimental poetry, to which belong the greater part of Lorenzo’s earlier poems, his other poetical productions and his whole intellectual character are thus spoken of:—

Non vacat argutosque sales, Satyraque bibacesDescriptos memorare senes, non carmina festisExcipienda choris, querulasve animantia chordas.Idem etiam tacitæ referens pastoria vitæOtia, et urbanos thyrso extimulante labores,Mox fugis in cœlum, non seu per lubrica nisusExtremamque boni gaudes contingere metam.Quodque alii studiumque vocant, durumque laborem,Hic tibi ludus erit, fessus civilibus actis,Huc is emeritas acuens ad carmina vires.Felix ingenio, felix cui pectore tantasInstaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaciAlternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas.

Poliziano wrote the ‘Nutricia’ in October 1486, at the villa of Fiesole. In the following verses he prophesied of the times to come and the future greatness of his pupil, Piero, if the latter, fulfilling the bright promise of his youth, should walk in the footsteps of his father:—

It jam pene prior, sic, ô sic pergat, et ipsumMe superet majore gradu, longeque relinquatProtinus, et dulci potius plaudatur alumno,Bisque mei victor illo celebrentur honores.

A merciful fate spared the poet from witnessing the failure of hopes the fulfilment of which had already become very doubtful when he was prematurely called away. Anyone versed in the history of those days who may now climbthe pleasant heights of Fiesole, which new buildings and roads have altered but not transformed, will think with interest of Angelo’s abode here in the country-house of the Medici, which he describes in a letter to Marsilio Ficino. ‘If the summer heat oppress thee at Careggi, the cooler air of Fiesole will be pleasant to thee. We have plenty of water between the slopes of the hill, and while gentle winds constantly refresh us, the glare of the sun troubles us little. During the ascent to the villa it appears enclosed in trees, but the spot, when reached, commands an extensive view as far as the town. The neighbourhood is thickly inhabited, yet I find here the quiet which suits me. But I will tempt thee with yet another attraction. Pico sometimes wanders beyond the limits of his own grounds, breaks in unexpectedly upon my solitude, and carries me away from my shady gardens to his evening meal. You know how things are there; no superfluities, but everything as it should be, and with the spice of his conversation. But thou must be my guest; with me thou shalt find as good a table and perhaps better wine, for Pico and I are rivals in respect to wine.’[43]

The ‘Sylvæ’ are dedicated to three young men belonging to the Medicean circle and one who stood outside it. Lorenzo—the son of Pier Francesco de’ Medici, grandson of Cosimo’s brother—whose name stands at the beginning of ‘Manto,’ was at that time on friendly terms with the members of the elder branch of his race. He afterwards became estranged from them; a change the effects of which did not cease when his posterity had entered upon the dominion of Florence, and the last remaining descendant of Cosimo’s line sat on the throne of France. Gifted with poetical talents, and no unworthy rival of his more famous relatives, the younger Lorenzo was a friend of Poliziano’s, who dedicated to him among other things a description of thevilleggiaturaat Poggio a Cajano. ‘Rusticus’ was intended for Jacopo Salviati, who, whenthese verses were written, in 1483, had been designated as Lorenzo’s son-in-law; so that Poliziano, who had first sung the praises of the unlucky Archbishop of Pisa and then openly insulted him with extravagant accusations, passed lightly over the troublesome past. ‘Ambra’ was sent to Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of Giovanni, and for a time a pupil, together with Piero de’ Medici, of our poet, who in one of his letters praised his intellectual gifts and knowledge of classical literature. He was a faithful adherent of his relatives, not only in prosperity but also in adversity, which fell on him even more heavily than on them. In the days of Savonarola he was accused of taking part in a conspiracy in favour of the exiles, and, with Niccolò Ridolfi, the father of Lorenzo’s son-in-law, suffered on the scaffold in 1497, at the age of thirty-two, a victim to mob-law. The last of these poems, ‘Nutricia,’ was dedicated, in 1491, several years after its composition, to the Cardinal of Sant’Anastasia, Antonio Pallavicino Gentile of Genoa, who had great influence in state affairs under Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., and took much interest in literature and literary men. At the close of the dedication Poliziano gratefully alludes to the cardinal’s efforts to further his cause with the Pope.

As we have said, the ‘Sylvæ’ were prolegomena to lectures on literature. To a cycle of another kind, to lectures given at Florence in 1483 on the Aristotelian philosophy, Poliziano composed a prose introduction, probably the strangest ever heard at any university.[44]The very title—‘Lamia’ (the Witch)—sounds strange, and we almostsuspect a joke, but find that the author is in earnest. The beginning of this address to his students is highly characteristic. ‘Have you ever heard tell of witches? When I was a little boy my grandmother used to tell me about the witches in the neighbouring wood, who eat up naughty children. Fancy what an image of terror a witch was to me in those days! In the neighbourhood of my little villa at Fiesole there is a little brook, hidden by the shadow of the hill-side, and the women of the place who go there to draw water say that it is a place of meeting for the witches. But what is a witch? Plutarch of Chæronea, who was as grave as he was learned, relates that the witches have artificial eyes which they can put in and take out at their pleasure, just as weak-sighted old people do with their spectacles, which they stick on their noses when they want to look carefully at something and then put back into the case; or as others do with their false teeth, which they lay aside with their clothes when they go to bed;—not to mention your helpmeets, ye married men, with their bought braids and curls. If a witch desires to take a walk she puts in her eyes, and wanders through streets and alleys, squares and markets, churches and offices, taverns and baths, looks at everything, thrusts her nose into everything, meddles with everything, let a man do what he may. She has the eyes of an owl and a spy, like the old maid in Plautus. She can find out a grain of sand, and bury herself in the narrowest cranny. When she gets home, as soon as she reaches the threshold, she takes out her eyes and puts them in her pocket. Out of doors she has eyes like a lynx, at home she is blind. You ask what she does then? She sits spinning yarn, and humming a little song from time to time. Have you Florentines never known such witches, who know nothing of their own business, but are always busy about other people’s? No? Yet there are many of them in all cities, even here in yours. But they go about in disguise—you take them for men and women, but they are witches. Once it befell that some of them, happening to see me, stoodstill, and looked at me curiously, as those desirous to buy are wont to do. They whispered to each other, with uncouth gestures, “That is Poliziano—that is the rhymester who has suddenly dressed himself up as a philosopher,” and then they hurried away like wasps robbed of their sting. What they meant by their discourse is not clear to me; whether it displeases them that a man should be a philosopher, which, however, I am not, or that I venture to play the philosopher without having the material to do so. Let us now see what sort of a creature it is that men call a philosopher. You will soon perceive that I do not belong to the species. I say this not because I think that you believe it, but that no one may take it into his head to believe it. Not that I should be ashamed of the name, if it agreed with the facts, but because I prefer to keep free from titles which are not due to me:

Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olimGrex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum.

This therefore is the first point. The second is, whether the condition of a philosopher is bad. When I have proved the contrary I will speak to you briefly of myself and the subject of my lectures.’ After this introduction follows a sketch of the course of Grecian philosophy, and an exposition of the work of the later schools of thought.

The man who raised to such a height the poetry of his native tongue, and the idiom from which it sprang, was deeply interested in popular poetry. He went hand in hand with his patron and friend in efforts to bring back language and literature ‘from the constraint of false rules to truth and nature.’ Both found the popular minstrelsy in the peculiar shape it retains to the present day, and differing completely in tone from the songs of other lands. In therispettithe ottava rima predominates, treated freely as it was in Boccaccio’s days for epic poetry. Even the sentimental pieces are epigrammatically pointed, and full ofantitheses, which give an impression of artificiality and imitation of the antique, more especially in southern Tuscany and the Roman district. They are not narratives, nor do they develope a state of mind, but they vividly describe momentary emotion. Without making up a whole history with such little songs, like Pulci and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano composed a series ofrispettidescribing joy and sorrow, accepted and especially despised love. They are partly in dialogue, frequently in a natural easy style, which reminds us of improvisations, more tender in expression, more flexible in diction than the two writers above mentioned, who not unfrequently betray that they are mocking at their own work. Other similar songs, but without internal connection, display a versatility resulting naturally from the way in which they originated. These fugitive poems grew within the Medicean circle, products of social intercourse in the villa and in evening walks in the garden; or, like the dance-songs (ballate), of which Poliziano wrote a great number, they were sung with music in the public squares. In short, they belonged to the life of the people who had furnished models for the rhymes composed for them by the poets of quality, with greater refinement, and not always without a secondary object in view.

Poliziano’s versatility is wonderfully shown in the labours he undertook in the field of classical philology while thus wandering through the woods of poetry. He was one of the first to establish the true principles of textual criticism; at the request of Innocent VIII. he translated Herodian’s Roman history into Latin,[45]and made the writings of Hippocrates and Galen accessible to those of his countrymen who were not acquainted with Greek. On the latter occasion he claimed the assistance of the learned doctor Pietro Leoni, who was then lecturing in Padua, to securethe correct rendering of the medical terms.[46]The most talented poet of the fifteenth century was also the philologer who, while equal to others in knowledge of antiquity, represents its spirit with more truth and originality. In trying to rival the classical letter-writers, Poliziano followed a fashion that had influenced statesmen and men of learning from Petrarca downwards. He left a mass of epistolary testimony to the character of his age, the value of which must not be lightly estimated, though it may not always answer the expectations raised by the names. Like Ficino and others, Poliziano had arranged his Latin correspondence for publication, and wrote a dedication to Piero de’ Medici, when death cut short his career.[47]More interesting to us than the generality of these letters, which nevertheless contain valuable matter, are his confidential letters in the vulgar tongue, not meant for publication. Even this highly gifted man was not free from the bad habit of the learned men of the fifteenth century—the intermixture of Latin phrases with Italian when the subject gave no occasion for it.

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