PASSION FOR NATURE. 231 religious for artistic ecstasy, celestial for earthly paradise, scholasticism for humane studies, the ascetic for the hedonistic rule of conduct. Criticised according to its deeper meaning, the Hypnerotomachia is the poem of which Valla's De Voluptate was the argument, of which Lorenzo de' Medici's life was the realisation, and the life of Aretino the caricature. If it assumes the form of a vision, reminding us thereby that the author was born upon the confines of the middle ages and the modern era, it deals with the vision in no Dantesque spirit, but with the geniality of Apuleius. Allegory is but a transparent veil, to make the nudity of natural impulse fascinating. As in Boccaccio, so here the hymn of il talento, simple appetite, is sung; but the fusion of artistic and humanistic enthusiasms with this ground-motive adds peculiar quality, distinctive of the later age which gave it birth. The secret of its charm, which, indeed, it shares with earlier Renaissance art in general, is that this yearning after freedom has been felt with rapture, but not fully satisfied. The season of repletion and satiety is distant. Venus Physizoe appears to Francesco Colonna radiant above all powers of heaven or earth, because he is a monk and may not serve her. Had he his whole will, she might have been for him Venus Volvivaga, and he the author of another Puttana Errante. Nor has she yet assumed the earnest mask of science. This element of unassuaged desire, indulged in longings and outgoings of the fancy, this recognition of man's highest good and happiness in nature by one who has forsworn allegiance to the laws of nature, adds warmth to his emotion and pene trates his pictures with a kind of passion. The arts and scholarship, which divide the empire of his soul with beauty, have no less attraction of romance than love itself. Nor are they separated in his mind from nature. Nature and antiquity, knowledge and desire, the reverence for abstract beauty and the instincts of a lover are fused in one enthusiasm. Thus Francesco Colonna makes us understand how Italy used both art and erudition as instruments in the liberation of human energies. For the thinkers and actors of that period, antiquity and the plastic arts were aids to the recovery of a paradise from which man had been exiled. They could not dissociate the conception of nature from studies which revealed their human dignity and freedom, or from arts whereby they expressed their vivid sense of beauty. The work they thus inaugurated, had afterwards to be continued by the scientific faculties. One word may finally be said about the peculiar delicacy of this book. The Hypnerotomachia is no less an apotheosis of natural appetite than the Amorosa Visione. But it is more sentimental and imaginative, because its author had not Boccaccio's crude experi ence. It anticipates the art of the great age-the art of Cellini and Giulio Romano, goldsmith-sculptors and palace-builders; but it is more refined and passionate, because its author enjoyed those beauties of consummate craft in reverie instead of practice. It interprets the enthusiasm of Ciriac and Poggio, discoverers of manuscripts, decipherers of epigraphs; but it is more naïf and graceful than their work of erudition, because its author dealt freely with his learning VISION OF RENAISSANCE. 233 and subordinated scholarship to fancy. In short the Hypnerotomachia is a foreshadowing of the Renaissance in its prime-the spirit of the age foreseen in dreams, embodied in imagination, purged of material alloy, and freed from the encumbrances of actuality. CHAPTER IV. POPULAR SECULAR POETRY. Separation between Cultivated Persons and the People-Italian despised by the Learned-Contempt for Vernacular Literature-The Certamen Coronarium-Literature of Instruction for the Proletariate-Growth of Italian Prose-Abundance of Popular Poetry-The People in the Quattrocento take the Lead-Qualities of Italian Genius-Arthurian and Carolingian Romances—I Reali di Francia—Andrea of Barberino and his Works-Numerous Romances in Prose and Verse-Positive Spirit-Versified Tales from Boccaccio-Popular Legends-Ginevra degli Almieri-Novel of Il Grasso-Histories in Verse-LamentiThe Poets of the People-Cantatori in Banca-Antonio Pucci-His Sermintesi - Political Songs-Satires - Burchiello-His Life and Writings-Dance-Songs-Derived from Cultivated Literature, or produced by the People-Poliziano-Love-Songs—Rispetti and Stornelli —The Special Meaning of Strambotti-Diffusion of this Poetry over Italy-Its Permanence-Question of its Original Home-Intercommunication and Exchange of Dialects-Incatenature and Rappresaglie -Travelling in Medieval Italy-The Subject-Matter of this PoetryDeficiency in Ballad Elements-Canti Monferrini-The Ballad of L'Avvelenato and Lord Ronald. DURING the fifteenth century there was an almost complete separation between the cultivated classes and the people. Humanists, intent upon the exploration of the classics, deemed it below their dignity to use the vulgar tongue. They thought and wrote in Latin, and had no time to bestow upon the education of the common folk. A polite public was formed, who in the Courts of princes and the palaces of noblemen amused themselves with the ephemeral literature of pamphlets, essays, and epistles in the Latin tongue. For these THE PEOPLE AND THE SCHOLARS. 235 well-educated readers Poggio and Pontano wrote their Latin novels. The same learned audience applauded the gladiators of the moment, Valla and Filelfo, when they descended into the arena and plied each other with pseudo-Ciceronian invectives. To quit this refined circle, and address the vulgar crowd, was thought unworthy of a man of erudition. Even Alberti, as we have seen, felt bound to apologise for sending his Teogenio in Italian to Lionello d'Este. Only here and there a humanist of the first rank is found who, like Bruni, devoted a portion of his industry to the Italian lives of Dante and Petrarch, or like Filelfo, lectured on the Divine Comedy, or again like Landino, composed a Dantesque commentary in the mother tongue. Moreover, Dante and Petrarch passed for almost classical; and in nearly all such instances of condescension, pecuniary interest swayed the scholar from his wonted orbit. It was want of skill in Latin rather than love for his own idiom which induced Vespasiano to pen his lives of great men in Italian. Not spontaneous inspiration, but the whim of a ducal patron forced Filelfo to use terza rima for his worthless poem on S. John, and to write a commentary upon Petrarch in the vernacular.1 One of this man's letters reveals the humanist's contempt for the people's language, and his rooted belief in the immortality of 1 See Rosmini, Vita di Filelfo, vol. ii. p. 13, for Filelfo's dislike of Italian. In the dedication of his Commentary to Filippo Maria Visconti he says 'Tanto più volentieri ho intrapreso questo comento, quanto dalla tua eccellente Signoria non solo invitato sono stato, ma pregato, lusingato et provocato.' The first Canto opens thus: O Philippo Maria Anglo possente, Perchè mi strengi a quel che non poss' io? |