Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 - Leigh Hunt
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Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab,
is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the
Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being
asked, during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the orthodox
and heterodox were to be distinguished, he said, "Kill all: God will
know his own."
For Rahab, see _Joshua_, chap. ii. and vi.; and _Hebrews_. xi. 31]
[Footnote 9: The reader need not be required to attend to the
extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding
passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology
or the poet might have desired.]
[Footnote 10: These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and
schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no
longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after
them.
Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every
respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity
of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church,
Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many
dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with
voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much
light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the
old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our
imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must
be gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted
enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the
forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is
more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all these dances and
tinklings.]
[Footnote 11:
"Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo."
Cruel indeed;--the founder of the Inquisition! The "loving minion"
is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of "_amoroso drudo_." But what a
minion, and how loving! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of
course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down
other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia.
So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent
semi-barbarism in the character of Spain, which it has never got rid of
to this day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern patriots, it
would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even
Lope de Vega was an inquisitor; and Mendoza, the entertaining author of
Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cervantes, however, is enough to
sweeten a whole peninsula.]
[Footnote 12: What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility
enough to apply it to himself!]
[Footnote 13:
"O sanguis meus, o superinfusa
Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui
Bis unquam coeli janua reclusa?"
The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet
in "the obscurity of a learned language." And in truth it is a little
strong.]
[Footnote 14:
"Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso
Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo
De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso."
That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more
favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei
essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)--_Variorum edition of
Dante_, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373.]
[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times
in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the
original passage, with another version, in the Appendix.]
[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of
the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman,
of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the
co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who
appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old
commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate
that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so,
Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved
Caesar;--that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip
of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks.]
[Footnote 17:
"Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,
Piu e tacer che ragionare onesto."
Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the
lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a
boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general
character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts
(see the opening of canto xvi., Paradise, in the original), that while
he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto
xv. 73, &c.), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble
condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity
of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic,
may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious
specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours
is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that
Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a
harbinger.
All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on
the Cross!]
[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with
argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old
families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names,
of which nothing else is recorded.]
[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious
popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue
of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have
first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to
marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that
he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his
engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii.]
[Footnote 20:
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Piu caramente; e questo e quello strale
Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai si come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com'e duro calle
Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
E quel che piu ti gravera le spalle,
Sara la compagnia malvagia e scempia
Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
Si fara contra te: ma poco appresso
Ella, non tu, n'avra rossa la tempia.
Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
Fara la pruova, si ch' a te fia bello
Averti fatta parte per te stesso."
[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of
Verona.]
[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who
had received Dante at his court.]
[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paleo"]
[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne,
or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the
former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin?)
seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text
brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante)
might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second
William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples.]
[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
"Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia."
In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the
verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the
beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats
them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings
against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my
heart (like hers) contented.
"_Boccaccio._--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of
the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_
quite enough without _che la sazia?_The picture is before us, the
sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
"_Petrarch._--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your
remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as
blemishes, and even more."--p. 92.
Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety
itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety.]
[Footnote 30:
"E come a buon cantor buon citarista
Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda
In che piu di piacer lo canto acquista;
Si, mentre che parlo, mi si ricorda,
Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
Con le parole muover le fiammette." ]
[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a
private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to
Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age." Petrarch also makes honourable
mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while
in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem
there.--_Lombardi in loc._ vol. III. p. 547.]
[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat.]
[Footnote 33: "Si che duo bestie van sott' una pelle."]
[Footnote 34:
"Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
E fero un grido di si alto suono,
Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
Ne io lo 'ntesi, si mi vinse il tuono."
Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage
into his treatise on the Sublime.]
[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.
Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the
Camaldoli.]
[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage
in Cowley
"Lo, I mount; and lo,
How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!
Where shall I find the noble British land?
Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
Which in the sea does lie,
And seems a grain o' the sand.
For this will any sin, or bleed?
Of civil wars is this the meed?
And is it this, alas, which we,
Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie?"
And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very
finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the
Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--
"Where am I now? angels and God is here."
All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full
of grandeur and loveliness.]
[Footnote 37:
"Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,
Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,
E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
Cosi la donna mia si stava eretta
E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
Si the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
Fecimi quale e quei che disiando
Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga." ]
[Footnote 38:
"Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni."
[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person.]
[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary.]
[Footnote 41:
"Mi rendei
A la battaglia de' debili cigli."]
[Footnote 42:
"Ambo le luci mi dipinse."
[Footnote 43:
"Qualunque melodia piu dolce suona
Qua giu, e piu a se l'anima tira,
Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
Comparata al sonar di quella lira
Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
Del quale il ciel piu chiaro s' inzaffira." ]
[Footnote 44:
"Benedicendomi cantando
Tre volte cinse me, si com' io tacqui,
L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
Io avea detto; si nel dir gli piacqui."
It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to
suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion
which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his
_Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_,
12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by
the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough
to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he
expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed
to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of
Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist!]
[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the
twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just
given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
"Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
Si che m' ha fatto per piu anni macro,
Vinca la crudelta che fuor mi serra
Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
Ritornero poeta, ed in sul fonte
Del mio battesmo prendero 'l capello:
Perocche ne la fede che fa conte
L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
Pietro per lei si mi giro la fronte." ]
[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te." _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says,
"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee."]
[Footnote 47:
"Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
Si che l' affetto convien che si paia
Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia."
A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for
the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in
which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of
doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian
sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles
to one's imagination.]
[Footnote 48:
"Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne."
Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical
image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the
tremendous passage that ensues!]
[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
invective awful.
A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope
would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the
hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic?--I am afraid, all things considered,
we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius
the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine
Church-hymns he would have written!]
[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence!) that
for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The
preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings
them into Heaven!]
[Footnote 51:
"Certo io credo
Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda." ]
[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the
close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of
restoration to his country were at an end.]
[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now
dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had
prepared for him.]
[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to
thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle
Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical!]
[Footnote 55: David.]
[Footnote 56: The Trinity.]
[Footnote 57: The Incarnation.]
[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p.
845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe
de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the
curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of
his poem with the word "stars." He thinks that it was done as a happy
augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention,
however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations
terminated.]
PULCI:
Critical Notice
of
PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.
Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after
Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after
tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he
seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety
of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the
absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be
the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet
of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a
susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in
earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most
laughable sallies.
Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble
family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into
Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of
December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of
a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo,
the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and
Lucca wrote a romance called the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, and is commended
for his _Heroic Epistles_. Little else is known of these brothers; and
not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the
name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was
one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary
circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always
meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens.
Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little
credit (Zilioli _On the Italian Poets_), and an earlier printed book,
which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone _De
Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinae_), say that he died miserably in Padua,
and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is
not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici
family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its
troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their
enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite
allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their
master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I
have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible
death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther,
calling them both the greatest villains (_sceleratissimi_); and adding,
that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his
bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a
ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical
paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a
Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good
humour--sport to amuse their friends--a perilous speculation. Besides
his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his
brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems,
and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, _La Beca_, in
emulation of the charming poem _La Nencia_, the first of its kind,
written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo,
who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power
of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs
for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind.
Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such
differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the
latter's youth, probably from his birth--is spoken of in a tone of
domestic intimacy by his wife--and is enumerated by him among his
companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on
Hawking _(La Caccia col Falcone_), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen
about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into
a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a
sonnet:
"'Luigi Pulci ov' e, che non si sente?' 'Egli se n' ando dianzi in quel
boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr a fantasticar
forse un sonetto.'"
"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw _him_." "Oh, in the wood there. Gone,
depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain--some whim, That will
not let him rest till it's a sonnet."
In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his
seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the
courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down
the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he
says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make
of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or
other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here--he
who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it." Such is the
first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the
sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial
listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with
the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by
Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in
somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della
Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in
turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in
the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of
Lorenzo.
"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia,
Che questa non e storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la
via,
Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la
pazzia;
Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi e infinita.
La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei
boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con
lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E cosi fuggo mille
urban dispetti: Si ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur
sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this
side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that
the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and
contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such
crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to
know 'em.
Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods
and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me
baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And
thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew
your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites."
He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted
by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the
laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little
troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his
"refuge." The _Morgante Maggiore_, the work which has rendered the name
of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely
narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production
that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points.
The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which
prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance
of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome.
The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then
settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied
with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think,
and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the
Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams
to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity
itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian
theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect.
Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to
an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's
friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise
with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its
liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in
combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a
mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the
same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors;
second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious
dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of
charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding;
third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics,
"sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly,
a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended
to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest
at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he
opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the
piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix
levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and
the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his
description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in
all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question,
as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind,
which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi,
who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if
not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses
himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his
cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are
constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner
capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this
monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo
di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of
profane derision." [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively
and impassioned people of the south take what may be called
household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than
northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does
not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as
it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others,
perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like
some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is
such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the
representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest
when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his
own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to
affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more
acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to,
ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more
levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If
Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well
as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in
something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation
of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might
explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse,
if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever
present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been
interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening
with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal
seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards
in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred
invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the
like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as
gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the
reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that
ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout
the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant
officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the
circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet
perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest
at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends,
and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a
captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling
than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only
warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.