Disse Turpino: Io voglio fare il boja. Here we have an emperor superintending the execution of a king who is hanged in the presence of a vast multitude, all of whom are greatly edified at beholding an archbishop officiating in the character of a finisher of the law. Before this adventure took place, Caradoro had dispatched an ambassador to the emperor, complaining of the shameful conduct of a wicked Paladin, who had seduced the princess his daughter. The orator does not present himself with modern diplomatic courtesy Macon t'abbatta come traditore, O disleale e ingiusto imperadore! A Caradoro è stato scritto, O Carlo, Such scenes may appear somewhat strange; but Caradoro's embassy and the execution of King Marsilius are told in strict conformity to the notions of the common people: and as they must still be described if we wished to imitate the popular story-tellers. If Pulci be occasionally refined and delicate, his snatches of amenity resulted from the national character of the Florentines, and the revival of letters. But at the same time, we must trace to national character and to the influence of his daily companions the buffoonery which, in the opinion of foreigners, frequently disgraces the poem. M. Ginguené has criticised Pulci in the usual style of his countrymen. He attributes modern manners to ancient times, and takes it for granted that the individuals of every other nation think and act like modern Frenchmen. On these principles, he concludes that Pulci, both with respect to his subject and to his mode of treating it, intended only to write burlesque poetry; because, as he says, such buffoonery could not have been introduced into a composition recited to Lorenzo de' Medici and his enlightened guests, if the author had intended to be in earnest. In the fine portrait of Lorenzo given by Machiavelli at the end of his Florentine history, the historian complains that he took more pleasure in the company of jesters and buffoons than beseemed such a man. It is a little singular that Benedetto Varchi, a contemporary historian, makes the O Charles, he cried, Charles, Charles! King Caradore has ascertained the thing, same same complaint of Machiavelli himself. Indeed many known anecdotes of Machiavelli, no less than his fugitive pieces, prove that it was only when he was acting the statesman that he wished to be grave and that he could laugh like other men when he laid aside his dignity. We do not think he was in the wrong. But whatever opinion may be formed on the subject, we shall yet be forced to conclude that great men may be compelled to blame the manners of their times, without being able to withstand their influence. In other respects the poem of Pulci is serious, both in subject and in tone. And here we shall repeat a general observation which we advise our readers to apply to all the romantic poems of the Italians-That their comic humour arises from the contrust between the constant endeavours of the writers to adhere to the forms and subjects of the popular story-tellers, and the efforts made at the same time by the genius of these writers to render such materials interesting and sublime. This simple elucidation of the causes of the poetical character of the Morgante has been overlooked by the critics; and they have therefore disputed with great earnestness during the last two centuries, whether the Morgante is written in jest or earnest; and whether Pulci is not an atheist, who wrote in verse for the express purpose of scoffing at all religion. Mr. Merivale inclines, in his Orlando in Roncesvalles, to the opinion of M. Ginguené, that the Morgante is decidedly to be considered as a burlesque poem, and a satire against the Christian religion. Yet Mr. Merivale himself acknowledges that it is wound up with a tragical effect, and dignified by religious sentiment, and is therefore forced to leave the question amongst the unexplained and perhaps inexplicable phænomena of the human mind.' If a similar question had not been already decided, both in regard to Shakspeare and to Ariosto, it might be still a subject of dispute whether the former intended to write tragedies, and whether the other did not mean to burlesque his heroes. It is a happy thing, that with regard to those two great writers, the war has ended by the fortunate intervention of the general body of readers, who on such occasions form their judgment with less erudition and with less prejudice than the critics. But Pulci is little read, and his age is little known. We are told by Mr. Merivale, that the points of abstruse theology are discussed in the Morgante with a degree of sceptical freedom which we should imagine to be altogether remote from the spirit of the fifteenth century.' Mr. Merivale follows M. Ginguené, who follows Voltaire. And the philosopher of Ferney, who was always beating up in all quarters for allies against Christianity, collected all the scriptural passages of Pulci, upon which he commented in his own way. But it is only since since the Council of Trent, that any doubt which might be raised on a religious dogma exposed an author to the charge of impiety; whilst, in the fifteenth century, a Catholic might be sincerely devout, and yet allow himself a certain degree of latitude in theological doubt. At one and the same time the Florentines might well believe in the gospel and laugh at a doctor of divinity: for it was exactly at this era that they had been spectators of the memorable controversies between the representatives of the eastern and western churches. Greek and Latin bishops from every corner of Christendom had assembled at Florence for the purpose of trying whether they could possibly understand each other; and when they separated, they hated each other worse than before. At the very time when Pulci was composing his Morgante, the clergy of Florence protested against the excommunications pronounced by Sixtus IV., and with expressions by which his holiness was anathematized in his turn. During these proceedings, an archbishop, convicted of being a papal emissary, was banged from one of the windows of the government palace at Florence: this event may have suggested to Pulci the idea of converting another archbishop into a hangman. The romantic poets substituted literary and scientific observations for the trivial digressions of the storytellers. This was a great improvement: and although it was not well managed by Pulci, yet he presents us with much curious incidental matter. In quoting his philosophical friend and contemporary Matteo Palmieri, he explains the instinct of brutes by a bold hypothesis-he supposes that they are animated by evil spirits. This idea gave no offence to the theologians of the fifteenth century, but it excited much orthodox indignation when Father Bougeant, a French monk, brought it forward as a new theory of his own. Mr. Merivale, after observing that Pulci died before the discovery of America by Columbus, quotes a passage which will become a very interesting document for the philosophical historian.' We give it in his prose translation :- The water is level through its whole extent, although, like the earth, it has the form of a globe. Mankind in those ages were much more ignorant than now. Hercules would blush at this day for having fixed his columns. Vessels will soon pass far beyond them. They may soon reach another hemisphere, because every thing tends to its centre; in like manner, as by a divine mystery, the earth is suspended in the midst of the stars; here below are cities and empires, which were ancient. The inhabitants of those regions were called Antipodes. They have plants and animals as well as you, and wage wars as well as you.'-Morgante, c. xxv. st. 229, &c. The more we consider the traces of ancient science which break in transient flashes through the darkness of the middle ages, and and which gradually re-illuminated the horizon, the more shall we be disposed to adopt the hypothesis suggested by Bailly, and supported by him with seductive eloquence. He maintained that all the acquirements of the Greeks and Romans had been transmitted to them as the wrecks and fragments of the knowledge once possessed by primeval nations, by empires of sages and philosophers, who were afterwards swept from the face of the globe by some overwhelming catastrophe. His theory may be considered as extravagant; but if the literary productions of the Romans were not yet extant, it would seem incredible, that, after the lapse of a few centuries, the civilization of the Augustan age could have been succeeded in Italy by such barbarity. The Italians were so ignorant that they forgot their family names, and before the eleventh century individuals were known only by their Christian names. They had an indistinct idea, in the middle ages, of the existence of the antipodes; but it was a reminiscence of ancient knowledge. Dante has indicated the number and position of the stars composing the polar constellation of the Austral hemisphere. At the same time he tells us, that when Lucifer was hurled from the celestial regious, the arch-devil transfixed the globe; half his body remained on our side of the centre of the earth, and half on the other side. The shock given to the earth by his fall drove a great portion of the waters of the ocean to the southern hemisphere, and only one high mountain remained uncovered, upon which Dante places his purgatory. As the fall of Lucifer happened before the creation of Adam, it is evident that Dante did not admit that the southern hemisphere had ever been inhabited; but about thirty years afterwards, Petrarch, who was better versed in the ancient writers, ventured to hint that the sun shone upon mortals who were unknown to us. Nella stagion che il ciel rapido inchina Vers' occidente, e che il dì nostro vola A gente che di là forse l' aspetta.' In the course of half a century after Petrarch, another step was gained. The existence of the antipodes was fully demonstrated. Pulci raises a devil to announce the fact; but it had been taught to him by his fellow-citizen Paolo Toscanelli, an excellent astronomer and mathematician, who wrote in his old age to Christopher Columbus, exhorting him to undertake his expedition. A few stanzas have been translated by Mr. Merivale, with some slight variations, which do not wrong the original. They may be considered as a specimen of Pulci's poetry, when he writes with imagination and feeling. Orlando bids farewell to his dying horse. 'His faithful steed, that long had served him well In peace and war, now closed his languid eye, Kneel'd Kneel'd at his feet, and seem'd to say "Farewell! When he beheld his Brigliadoro lie Stretch'd on the field, that crystal fount beside, Of all thy toils, and thy brave spirit fled? With hasty wrong that mild and faithful head!"- Flash'd quick;-then closed again in endless night.' When Orlando is expiring on the field of battle, an angel de scends to him, and promises that Alda his wife shall join him in paradise. 'Bright with eternal youth and fadeless bloom Thine Aldabella thou shalt behold once more, Partaker of a bliss beyond the tomb With her whom Sinai's holy hills adore, Crown'd with fresh flowers, whose colour and perfume Thy mourning widow here she will remain, Whilst the soul of Orlando was soaring to heaven, a soft and plaintive strain was heard, and angelic voices joined in celestial harmony. They sang the psalm, 'When Israel went out of Egypt,' and the singers were known to be angels from the trembling of their wings. 'Poi sì sentì con un suon dolce e fioco In exitu Israel, cantar, de Ægypto, Che si conobbe al tremolar le penne.' Dante has inserted passages from the Vulgate in his Divma Commedia; and Petrarch, the most religious of poets, quotes Scripture even when he is courting. Yet they were not accused of impiety. Neither did Pulci incur the danger of a posthumous excommunication, until after the Reformation, when Pius V. (a Dominican, who was turned into a saint by a subsequent pope) promoted the welfare of holy mother church by burning a few wicked books and hanging a few troublesome authors. The notion that Pulci was in the odour of heresy influenced the opinion of Milton, who |