FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 55 colours so refined and outlines so delicately drawn, that there is nothing repulsive in it. His selfishness and sensuality are related to Aretino's as the miniatures of a missal to Giulio Romano's Modes of Venus.1 In his sonnets on the Months, Folgore addresses the Brigata as 'valiant and courteous above Lancelot, ready, if need were, with lance in rest, to spur along the lists of Camelot.' In January he gives them good fires and warm chambers, silken coverlids for their beds, and fur cloaks, and sometimes in the day to sally forth and snow-ball girls upon the square: Uscir di fora alcuna volta il giorno, Gittando della neve bella e bianca A le donzelle, che staran dattorno. February brings the pleasures of the chase. March is good for fishing, with merry friends at night, and never a friar to be seen: Lasciate predicar i Frati pazzi, Ch' hanno troppe bugie e poco vero. 1 These remarks have to be qualified by reference to an unfinished set of five sonnets (Navone's edition, pp. 45-49), which are composed in a somewhat different key. They describe the arming of a young knight, and his reception by Valour, Humility, Discretion, and Gladness. Yet the knight, so armed and accepted, is no Galahad, far less the grim horseman of Dürer's allegory. Like the members of the brigata godereccia, he is rather a Gawain or Astolfo, all love, fine clothes, and courtship. Each of these five sonnets is a precious little miniature of Italian carpet-chivalry. The quaintest is the second, which begins: Ecco prodezza che tosto lo spoglia, E dice amico e' convien che tu mudi, This exordium makes one regret that the painter of the young knight in our National Gallery (Giorgione?) had not essayed a companion picture. Valour disrobing him and taking him into her arms and crying Queste carni m' ai offerte would have made a fine pictorial allegory. In April the 'gentle country all abloom with fair fresh grass' invites the young men forth. Ladies shall go with them, to ride, display French dresses, dance Provençal figures, or touch new instruments from Germany, or roam roam through spacious parks. May brings in tournaments and showers of blossoms -garlands and oranges flung from balcony and window-girls and youths saluting with kisses on cheeks and lips : E pulzellette, giovene, e garzoni Basciarsi nella bocca e nelle guance; D'amore e di goder vi si ragioni. In June the company of youths and maidens quit the city for the villa, passing their time in shady gardens, where the fountains flow and freshen the fine grass, and all the folk shall be love's servants. July finds them in town again, avoiding the sun's heat and wearing silken raiment in cool chambers where they feast. In August they are off to the hills, riding at morn and eve from castle to castle, through upland valleys where streams flow. September is the month of hawking; October of fowling and midnight balls. With November and December winter comes again, and brings the fireside pleasures of the town. On the whole, there is too much said of eating and drinking in these sonnets; and the series concludes with a piece of inhumane advice: E beffe far dei tristi cattivelli, E miseri cattivi sciagurati Avari non vogliate usar con elli. The sonnets on the Days breathe the same quaint medieval hedonism.1 Monday is the day of songs If I were writing the history of early Tuscan poetry, I should wish HIS JOYOUS COMPANIES. 57 and love; our young man must be up betimes, to make his mistress happy: Levati su, donzello, e non dormire ; Chè l'amoroso giorno ti conforta, Tuesday is the day of battles and pitched fields; but these are described in mock-heroics, which show what the poet really felt about the pleasure of them. Wednesday is the day of banquets, when ladies and girls are waited on by young men wearing amorous wreaths: E donzelletti gioveni garzoni Servir, portando amorose ghirlande. Thursday is the day of jousts and tourneys; Friday of hounds and horses; Saturday, of hawks and fowling-nets; Sunday, of dances and feats of arms. in Florence': Danzar donzelli, armeggiar cavalieri, Such then was the joyous living, painted with colours of the fancy by a Tuscan poet, and realised in here to compare the rarely beautiful poem of Lapo Gianni, Amor eo chero, with Folgore, and the masterly sonnets of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, especially the one beginning S' io fossi fuoco, with Cene dalla Chitarra, in order to prove the fulness of sensuous and satirical inspiration in the age preceding Dante. Lapo wishes he had the beauty of Absalom, the strength of Samson; that the Arno would run balm for him, her walls be turned to silver and her paving-stones to crystal; that he might abide in eternal summer gardens among thousands of the loveliest women, listening to the songs of birds and instruments of music. The voluptuousness of Folgore is here heightened to ecstasy. Cecco desires to be fire, wind, sea, God, that he might ruin the world; the emperor, that he might decapitate its population; death, that he might seek out his father and mother; life, that he might fly from both; being Cecco, he would fain take all fair women, and leave the foul to his neighbours. The spite of Cene is deepened to insanity. Florence at the close of that eventful century which placed the city under Guelf rule, in the plenitude of peace, equality, and wealth by sea and land. Distinctions of class had been obliterated. The whole population enjoyed equal rights and equal laws. No man was idle; and though the simplicity of the past, praised by Dante and Villani, was yielding to luxury, still the pleasure-seekers were controlled by that fine taste which made the Florentines a race of artists.1 This halcyon season was the boyhood of Dante and Giotto, the prime of Arnolfo and Cimabue. The buildings whereby the City of the Flower is still made beautiful above all cities of Italian soil, were rising. The people abode in industry and order beneath the sway of their elected leaders. Supreme in Tuscany, fearing no internal feuds, strong in their militia of thirty thousand burghers to repel a rival State, the Florentines had reached the climax of political prosperity. Not as yet had arisen that little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, above Pistoja, which was destined to plunge them into the strife of Blacks and Whites. During that interval of windless calm, in that fair city, where the viol and the lute were never silent through spring-tide and summer, the star of Italian poetry, that 'crowning glory of unblemished wealth,' went up and filled the heavens with light. 1 See Paradiso, xv.; Giov. Vill. vi. 69. CHAPTER II. THE TRIUMVIRATE. Chivalrous Poetry-Ideal of Chivalrous Love-Bolognese EruditionNew Meaning given to the Ideal-Metaphysics of the Florentine School of Lyrists-Guido Cavalcanti-Philosophical Poems-Popular Songs-Cino of Pistoja-Dante's Vita Nuova-Beatrice in the Convito and the Paradiso-The Preparation for the Divine Comedy in Literature-Allegory-The Divine Comedy-Petrarch's Position in Life-His Conception of Humanism-Conception of Italy-His Treatment of Chivalrous Love-Beatrice and Laura-The Canzoniere -Boccaccio, the Florentine Bourgeois-His Point of View-His Abandonment of the Chivalrous Standpoint-His Devotion to ArtAnticipates the Renaissance-The Decameron-Commedia UmanaPrecursors of Boccaccio-Novels-Carmina Vagorum-Plan of the Book-Its Moral Character-The Visione Amorosa-Boccaccio's Descriptions-The Teseide-The Rime-The Filocopo-The FilostratoThe Ameto, Fiammetta, Ninfale, Corbaccio-Prose before Boccaccio -Fioretti di San Francesco and Decameron compared-Influence of Boccaccio over the Prose Style of the Renaissance-His Death— Close of the Fourteenth Century-Sacchetti's Lament. THE Sicilians followed closely in the track of the Provençal poets. After, or contemporaneously with them, the same Italo-Provençal literature was cultivated in the cities of central Italy. The subjectmatter of this imitative poetry was love-but love that bore a peculiar relation to ordinary human feeling. Woman was regarded as an ideal being, to be approached with worship bordering on adoration. The lover derived personal force, virtue, elevation, energy, from his enthusiastic passion. Honour, justice, courage, self-sacrifice, contempt of worldly goods, |