[Footnote 379: See Morsolin, _op. cit._, p. 197. This device was

imprinted as early as 1529, upon the books published for Trissino at

Verona by Janicolo of Brescia.]

[Footnote 380: The _Poetica_ was printed in 1529; but it had been

composed some years earlier.]

[Footnote 381: His grammatical and orthographical treatises were

published under the titles of _Epistola a Clemente VII._,

_Grammatichetta_, _Dialogo Castellano_, _Dubbi Grammaticali_.

Firenzuola made Trissino's new letters famous and ridiculous by the

burlesque sonnets he wrote upon them.]

[Footnote 382: Vicenza, Tolomeo Janicolo, 1529.]

In his attempt to add the heroic species of the epic to Italian

literature, Trissino was even less successful than in his dramatic

experiments. Disgusted with Ariosto's success in what he regarded as

a barbarous style of art, he set himself to make an epic on the model

of Homer, with scrupulous obedience to Aristotle's rules. For his

subject he chose an episode from Italian history, and used blank verse

instead of the attractive octave stanza. The _Italia Liberata_ cost

its author twenty years of labor.[383] It was a masterpiece of

erudition, displaying profound acquaintance with Roman tactics, and a

competent knowledge of Roman topography. But in spite of its

characters _plaques_ upon those of the _Iliad_, in spite of its

learnedly-constructed episodes, in spite of its fidelity to Aristotle,

the _Italia Liberata_ was not a poem. The good sense of the nation

refused it. Tasso returned to the romantic method and the meretricious

charms of the _ottava rima_. Only Gravina among critics spoke a good

word for it. The subject lacked real grandeur. Italy delivered from

the Goths, was only Italy delivered to the Lombards. The unity of the

poem was not the unity of an epic, but of a chapter from a medieval

Chronicle. The machinery of angels, travestied with classic titles,

was ridiculous. The Norcian Sibyl, introduced in rivalry with Virgil's

Sibyl of Avernus, was out of place. And though Trissino expunged what

made the old romantic poems charming, he retained their faults.

Intricate underplots and flatteries of noble families were consistent

with a species which had its origin in feudal minstrelsy. They were

wholly out of character with a professed transcription from the

Greek. Neither style nor meter rose to the heroic level. The blank

verse was pedestrian and prolix. The language was charged with

Lombardisms. Thus the _Italia Liberata_ proved at all points that

Trissino could make rules, but that he could not apply them to any

purpose. It is curious to compare his failure with Milton's success in

a not entirely dissimilar endeavor. The poet achieves a triumph where

the pedant only suffers a defeat; and yet the aim of both was almost

identical. So different is genius guided by principles from the

mechanical carpentry of imitative talent.

[Footnote 383: Nine books were first printed at Rome in 1547 by

Valerio and Luigi Dorici. The whole, consisting of twenty-seven books,

was published at Venice in 1548 by Tolomeo Janicolo of Brescia. This

Janicolo was Trissino's favorite publisher.]

CHAPTER XIV.

BURLESQUE POETRY AND SATIRE.

Relation of Satiric to Serious Literature--Italy has more

Parody and Caricature than Satire or Comedy--Life of

Folengo--His _Orlandino_--Critique of Previous

Romances--Lutheran Doctrines--Orlando's

Boyhood--Griffarosto--Invective against Friars--Maccaronic

Poetry--The Travesty of Humanism--Pedantesque

Poetry--Glottogrysio Ludimagistro--Tifi Odassi of Padua--The

Pedant Vigonca--Evangelista Fossa--Giorgio Alione--Folengo

employs the Maccaronic Style for an Epic--His Address to the

Muses--His Hero Baldus--Boyhood and Youth--Cingar--The

Travels of the Barons--Gulfora--Witchcraft in

Italy--Folengo's Conception of Witchcraft--Entrance into

Hell--The Zany and the Pumpkin--Nature of Folengo's

Satire--His Relation to Rabelais--The _Moscheis_--The

_Zanitonella_--Maccaronic Poetry was Lombard--Another and

Tuscan Type of Burlesque--_Capitoli_--Their Popular

Growth--Berni--His Life--His Mysterious Death--His Character

and Style--Three Classes of _Capitoli_--The pure Bernesque

Manner--Berni's Imitators--The Indecency of this

Burlesque--Such Humor was Indigenous--_Terza Rima_--Berni's

Satires on Adrian VI. and Clement VII.--His Caricatures--His

Sonnet on Aretino--The _Rifacimento_ of Boiardo's

_Orlando_--The Mystery of its Publication--Albicante and

Aretino--The Publishers Giunta and Calvi--Berni's Protestant

Opinions--Eighteen Stanzas of the _Rifacimento_ printed by

Vergerio--Hypothesis respecting the Mutilation of the

_Rifacimento_--Satire in Italy.

In all classical epochs of literature comedy and satire have presented

their antithesis to ideal poetry, by setting the actual against the

imagined world, or by travestying the forms of serious art. Thus the

Titanic farce of Aristophanes was counterposed to AEschylean tragedy;

and Moliere portrayed men as they are, before an audience which

welcomed Racine's pictures of men as the age conceived they ought to

be. It is the mark of really great literature when both thesis and

antithesis, the aspiration after the ideal and the critique of actual

existence, exhibit an equality of scale. The comic and satiric species

of poetry attain to grandeur only by contact with impassioned art of a

high quality, or else by contrast with a natural greatness in the

nation that produces them. Both mask and anti-mask reveal the mental

stature of the people. Both issue from the conscience of society, and

bear its impress.

If so much be admitted, we can easily understand why burlesque poetry

formed the inevitable pendent to polite literature in Italy. There was

no national tragedy; therefore there could be no great comedy. The

best work of the age, typified by Ariosto's epic, was so steeped in

irony that it offered no vantage-ground for humorous counterpoise.

There was nothing left but to exaggerate its salient qualities, and to

caricature its form. Such exaggeration was burlesque; such caricature

was parody. In like manner, satire found no adequate sphere. The

nation's life was not on so grand a scale as to evolve the elements of

satire from the contrast between faculties and foibles. Nor again

could a society, corrupt and satisfied with corruption, anxious to

live and let live, apply the lash with earnestness to its own

shoulders. _Facit indignatio versus_, was Juvenal's motto; and

indignation tore the heart of Swift. But in Italy there was no

indignation. All men were agreed to tolerate, condone, and compromise.

When vices come to be laughingly admitted, when discords between

practice and profession furnish themes for tales and epigrams, the

moral conscience is extinct. But without an appeal to conscience the

satirist has no _locus standi_. Therefore, in Italy there was no great

satire, as in Italy there was no great comedy.

The burlesque rhymsters portrayed their own and their neighbors'

immorality with self-complacent humor, calling upon the public to make

merry over the spectacle. This poetry, obscene, equivocal, frivolous,

horribly sincere, supplied a natural antithesis to the pseudo-platonic,

pedantic, artificial mannerism of the purists. In point of intrinsic

value, there is not much to choose between the Petrarchistic and the

burlesque styles. Many burlesque poets piqued themselves with justice

on their elegance, and clothed gross thoughts in diction of elaborate

polish. Meanwhile they laid the affectations, conventions and ideals

of the age impartially under contribution. The sonneteers suggested

parodies to Aretino, who celebrated vice and deformity in women with

hyperboles adapted from the sentimental school.[384] The age of gold

was ridiculed by Romolo Bertini.[385] The idyl found its travesty in

Berni's pictures of crude village loves and in Folengo's

_Zanitonella_. Chivalry became absurd by the simple process of

enforcing the prosaic elements in Ariosto, reducing his heroes to the

level of plebeian life, and exaggerating the extravagance of his

romance. The ironical smile which played upon his lips, expands into

broad grins and horse-laughter. Yet, though the burlesque poets turned

everything they touched into ridicule, these buffoons were not

unfrequently possessed of excellent good sense. Not a few of them, as

we shall see, were among the freest thinkers of their age. Like Court

jesters they dared to utter truths which would have sent a serious

writer to the stake. Lucidity of intellectual vision was granted at

this time in Italy to none but positive and materialistic thinkers--to

analysts like Machiavelli and Pomponazzi, critics like Pietro Aretino,

poets with feet firmly planted on the earth like Berni and Folengo.

The two last-named artists in the burlesque style may be selected as

the leaders of two different but cognate schools, the one flourishing

in Lombardy, the other in Florence.

[Footnote 384: See the Madrigals in _Opere Burlesche_, vol. iii. pp.

36-38.]

[Footnote 385: _Ibid._ p. 290.]

Girolamo Folengo was born in 1491 of noble parents at Cipada, a

village of the Mantuan district. He made his first studies under his

father's roof, and in due time proceeded to Bologna. Here he attended

the lectures of Pomponazzi, and threw himself with ardor into the

pleasures and perils of the academical career. Francesco Gonzaga, a

fantastical and high-spirited libertine from Mantua, was the

recognized leader of the students at that moment. Duels, challenges,

intrigues and street-quarrels formed the staple of their life. It was

an exciting and romantic round of gayety and danger, of which the

novelists have left us many an animated picture. Folengo by his

extravagant conduct soon exhausted the easy patience of the university

authorities. He was obliged to quit Bologna, and his father refused to

receive him. In this emergency he took refuge in a Benedictine convent

at Brescia. When he made himself a monk, Folengo changed his Christian

name to Teofilo, by which he is now best known in literature. But he

did not long endure the confinement of a cloister. After six years

spent among the Benedictines, he threw the cowl aside, and ran off

with a woman, Girolama Dieda, for whom he had conceived an insane

passion.[386] This was in the year 1515. During the next eleven years

he gave himself to the composition of burlesque poetry. His

_Maccaronea_ appeared at Venice in 1519, and his _Orlandino_ in 1526.

The former was published under he pseudonym of Merlinus Cocaius,

compounded of a slang word in the Mantuan dialect, and of the famous

wizard's title of romance.[387] The latter bore the _nom de plume_ of

_Limerno Pitocco_--an anagram of Merlino, with the addition of an

epithet pointing to the poet's indigence. These works brought Folengo

fame but little wealth, and he was fain to return at last to his old

refuge.[388] Resuming the cowl, he now retired to a monastery in the

kingdom of Naples, visited Sicily, and died at last near Padua, in the

convent of S. Croce di Campese. This was in 1544. The last years of

his life had been devoted to religious poetry, which is not read with

the same curiosity as his burlesque productions.

[Footnote 386: In _Mac._ xx. (p. 152 of Mantuan edition, 1771), he

darkly alludes to this episode of his early life, where he makes an

exposed witch exclaim:

Nocentina vocor magicis tam dedita chartis,

Decepique mea juvenem cum fraude Folengum.]

[Footnote 387: I cannot find sufficient authority for the story of

Folengo's having had a grammar-master named Cocaius, from whom he

borrowed part of his pseudonym. The explanation given by his Mantuan

editor, which I have adopted in the text, seems the more probable.

_Cocaj_ in Mantuan dialect means a cork for a bottle; and the phrase

_ch'al fa di cocaj_ is used to indicate some extravagant absurdity or

blunder.]

[Footnote 388: There seems good reason, from many passages in his

_Maccaronea_, to believe that his repentance was sincere. I may here

take occasion to remark that, though his poems are gross in the

extreme, their moral tone is not unhealthy. He never makes obscenity

or vice attractive.]

Teofilo Folengo, or Merlinus Cocaius, or Limerno Pitocco, was, when he

wrote his burlesque poems, what the French would call a _declasse_. He

had compromised his character in early youth and had been refused the

shelter of his father's home. He had taken monastic vows in a moment

of pique, or with the baser object of getting daily bread in idleness.

His elopement from the convent with a paramour had brought scandal on

religion. Each of these steps contributed to place him beyond the pale

of respectability. Driven to bay and forced to earn his living, he now

turned round upon society; and spoke his mind out with a freedom born

of bile and cynical indifference. If he had learned nothing else at

Bologna, he had imbibed the materialistic philosophy of Pomponazzi

together with Gonzaga's lessons in libertinage. Brutalized, degraded

in his own eyes, rejected by the world of honest or decorous citizens,

but with a keen sense of the follies, vices and hypocrisies of his

age, he resolved to retaliate by a work of art that should attract

attention and force the public to listen to his comments on their

shame. In his humorous poetry there is, therefore, a deliberate if not

a very dignified intention. He does not merely laugh, but mixes satire

with ribaldry, and points buffoonery with biting sarcasm. Since the

burlesque style had by its nature to be parasitical and needed an

external motive, Folengo chose for the subject of his parody the

romance of _Orlando_, which was fashionable to the point of

extravagance in Italy after the appearance of the _Furioso_. But he

was not satisfied with turning a tale of Paladins to ridicule. He used

it as the shield behind which he knew that he might safely shoot his

arrows at the clergy and the princes of his native land, attack the

fortresses of orthodoxy, and vent his spleen upon society by dragging

its depraved ideals in the mire of his own powerful but vulgar scorn.

Folengo has told us that the _Orlandino_ was conceived and written

before the _Maccaronea_, though it was published some years later. It

is probable that the rude form and plebeian language of this burlesque

romance found but little favor with a public educated in the niceties

of style. They were ready to accept the bastard Latin dialect invented

for his second venture, because it offended no puristic sensibilities.

But the coarse Italian of the _Orlandino_ could not be relished by

academicians, who had been pampered with the refinements of Berni's

wanton Muse.[389] Only eight cantos appeared; nor is there reason to

suppose that any more were written, for it may be assumed that the

fragment had fulfilled its author's purpose.[390] That purpose was to

satirize the vice, hypocrisy and superstition of the clergy, and more

particularly of the begging friars. In form the _Orlandino_ pretends

to be a romance of chivalry, and it bears the same relation to the

_Orlando_ of Boiardo and Ariosto as the _Secchia Rapita_ to the heroic

poems of Tasso's school. It begins with a burlesque invocation to

Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in which the poet bluntly

describes his poverty and begs for largess. Then Folengo passes to an

account of his authorities and to the criticism of his predecessors in

romantic poetry. He had recourse, he says, to a witch of Val Camonica,

who mounted him upon a ram, and bore him to the country of the Goths.

There he found forty decades of Turpin's history among the rubbish of

old books stolen from Italy. Of these, three decades had already been

discovered and translated by Boiardo; but, after versifying a large

portion of the second, the poet left the rest of it to Ariosto. The

sixth was stolen from him by Francesco Bello. The last he gave with

his own hands to Poliziano, who put it into rhyme and allowed Pulci to

have the credit of his labors.[391] Folengo himself took a portion of

the first decade, and thus obtained material for treating of the birth

and boyhood of Orlando. This exordium is chiefly valuable as a piece

of contemporary criticism:

Queste tre Deche dunque sin qua trovo

Esser dal fonte di Turpin cavate;

Ma _Trebisonda_, _Ancroia_, _Spagna_, e _Bovo_

Coll'altro resto al foco sian donate:

Apocrife son tutte, e le riprovo

Come nemiche d'ogni veritate;

Boiardo, l'Ariosto, Pulci, e'l Cieco

Autenticati sono, ed io con seco.

[Footnote 389: Part of Folengo's satire is directed against the

purists. See Canto i. 7-9. He confesses himself a Lombard, and shrugs

his shoulders at their solemn criticisms:

Non pero, se non nacqui Tosco, i' piango;

Che ancora il ciacco gode nel suo fango.

To the reproach of "turnip-eating Lombard" he retorts, "Tuscan

chatterbox." Compare vi. 1, 2, on his own style:

Oscuri sensi ed affettate rime,

Qual'e chi dica mai compor Limerno?]

[Footnote 390: The first line of the elegy placed upon the edition of

1526 runs thus:

Mensibus istud opus tribus _indignatio fecit_.

Folengo claims for himself a satiric purpose. The edition used by me

is Molini's, Londra, 1775.]

[Footnote 391: See above Part i. p. 455, for the belief that Poliziano

was the real author of the _Morgante Maggiore_.]

If we may accept this stanza as expressing the opinion of Italians in

the sixteenth century relative to their romantic poets, we find that

it almost exactly agrees with that of posterity. Only the _Mambriano_

of Bello has failed to maintain its place beside the _Morgante_ and

_Orlando_.

Embarking upon the subject of his tale, Folengo describes the Court of

Charlemagne, and passes he Paladins in review, intermingling comic

touches with exaggerated imitations of the romantic style. The peers

of France preserve their well-known features through the distorting

medium of caricature; while humorous couplets, detonating here and

there like crackers, break the mock-heroical monotony. Gano, for

example, is still the arch-traitor of the tribe of Judas:

Figliuol non d'uomo, ne da Dio creato,

Ma il gran Diavol ebbelo cacato.

The effect of parody is thus obtained by emphasizing the style of

elder poets and suddenly breaking off into a different vein. Next

comes the description of Berta's passion for Milone, with a singularly

coarse and out-spoken invective against love.[392] Meanwhile

Charlemagne has proclaimed a tournament. The peers array themselves,

and the Court is in a state of feverish expectation. _Parturiunt

montes_: instead of mailed warriors careering upon fiery chargers, the

knights crawl into the lists on limping mules and lean asses, with a

ludicrous array of kitchen-gear for armor. The description of this

donkey-tournament, is one of Folengo's triumphs.[393] When Milone

comes upon the scene and jousts beneath his lady's balcony, the style

is heightened to the tone of true romance, and, but for the roughness

of the language, we might fancy that a page of the _Orlando_ were

beneath our eyes. A banquet follows, after which we are regaled with a

Court-ball, and then ensues the comic chain of incidents which bring

Milone and Berta to the fruition of their love. They elope, take ship,

and are separated by a series of mishaps upon the open sea. Berta is

cast ashore alone in Italy, and begs her way to Sutri, where she gives

birth to Orlando in a shepherd's cabin. During the course of these

adventures, Folengo diverts his readers with many brilliant passages

and bits of satire, at one time inveighing against the license of

balls, at another describing the mixed company on board a ship of

passage; now breaking off into burlesque pedigrees, and then again

putting into Berta's mouth a string of Lutheran opinions. Though the

personages are romantic, the incidents are copied with realistic

fidelity from actual life. We are moving among Italian _bourgeois_ in

the masquerade of heroes and princesses.

[Footnote 392: Canto i. 64, 65; ii. 1-4:

Ed io dico ch'Amor e un bardassola

Piu che sua madre non fu mai puttana, etc.

Folengo, of course, has a mistress, to whom he turns at the proper

moments of his narrative. This _mia diva Caritunga_ is a caricature of

the fashionable Laura. See v. 1, 2:

O donna mia, ch'hai gli occhi, ch'hai l'orecchie,

Quelli di pipistrel, queste di bracco, etc.]

[Footnote 393: Canto ii. 9-42.]

Berta's prayer when she found herself alone upon the waters in an open

boat, is so characteristic of Folengo's serious intention that it

deserves more than a passing comment.[394] She addresses herself to

God instead of to any Saints:

A te ricorro, non a Piero, o Andrea,

Che l'altrui mezzo non mi fa mestiero:

Ben tengo a mente che la Cananea

Non supplico ne a Giacomo ne a Piero.

[Footnote 394: Canto vi. 40-46. I have placed a translation of this

passage in an Appendix to this chapter.]

It is the hypocrisy of friars, Folengo says, who sacrifice to Moloch,

while they use the name of Mary to cloak their crimes--it is this

damnable hypocrisy which has blinded simple folk into trusting the

invocation of Saints. Avarice is the motive of these false priests:

and lust moves them to preach the duty of confession:

E qui trovo ben spesso un Confessore

Essere piu ruffiano che Dottore.

Therefore, cries Berta, I make my confession to God alone and from Him

seek salvation, and vow that, if I escape the fury of the sea, I will

no more lend belief to men who sell indulgences for gold. So far the

poet is apparently sincere. In the next stanza he resumes his comic

vein:

Cotal preghiere carche d'eresia

Berta facea, merce ch'era Tedesca;

Perche in quel tempo la Teologia

Era fatta Romana e fiandresca;

Ma dubito ch'alfin nella Turchia

Si trovera vivendo alla Moresca;

Perche di Cristo l'inconsutil vesta

Squarciata e si che piu non ve ne resta.

The blending of buffoonery and earnestness in Folengo's style might be

illustrated by the bizarre myth of the making of peasants, where he

introduces Christ and the Apostles:[395]

_Transibat Jesus_ per un gran villaggio

Con Pietro, Andrea, Giovanni, e con Taddeo;

Trovan ch'un asinello in sul rivaggio

Molte pallotte del suo sterco feo.

Disse allor Piero al suo Maestro saggio:

_En, Domine, fac homines ex eo._

_Surge, Villane_, disse Cristo allora;

E 'l villan di que' stronzi salto fora.

[Footnote 395: Canto v. 56-58. The contempt for country folk seems

unaffected.]

His fantastic humor, half-serious, half-flippant, spares nothing

sacred or profane. Even the Last Judgment receives an inconceivably

droll treatment on the slender occasion of an allusion to the

disasters of Milan.[396] Folengo has just been saying that Italy well

deserves her title of _barbarorum sepultura_.[397]

Che veramente in quell'orribil giorno

Che in Giosafatto suonera la tromba,

Facendosi sentire al mondo intorno,

E i morti salteran fuor d'ogni tomba,

Non sara pozzo, cacatojo, o forno,

Che mentre il tararan del ciel ribomba,

Non getti fuora Svizzeri, Francesi,

Tedeschi, Ispani, e d'altri assai paesi;

E vederassi una mirabil guerra,

Fra loro combattendo gli ossi suoi:

Chi un braccio, chi una man, chi un piede afferra;

Ma vien chi dice--questi non son tuoi--

Anzi son miei--non sono; e sulla terra

Molti di loro avran gambe di buoi,

Teste di muli, e d'asini le schiene,

Siccome all'opre di ciascun conviene.

[Footnote 396: Canto vi. 55-57. This passage is a caricature of

Pulci's burlesque description of the Last Day. See above Part i. p.

449. Folengo's loathing of the strangers who devoured Italy is clear

here, as also in i. 43, ii. 4, 59. But there is no force in his

invectives or laments.

L'Italia non piu Italia appello,

Ma d'ogni strana gente un bel bordello....

Che 'l cancaro mangiasse il Taliano,

Il quale, o ricco, o povero che sia,

Desidra in nostre stanze il Tramontano....

Che se non fosser le gran parti in quella,

Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella.]

[Footnote 397:

For verily on that most dreadful day,

When in the Valley of Jehosaphat

The trump shall sound, and thrill this globe of clay,

And dead folk shuddering leave their tombs thereat,

No well, sewer, privy shall be found, I say,

Which, while the angels roar their rat-tat-tat,

Shall not disgorge its Spaniards, Frenchmen, Swiss,

Germans, and rogues of every race that is.

Then shall we see a wonderful dispute,

As each with each they wrangle, bone for bone;

One grasps an arm, one grabs a hand, a foot;

Comes one who says, "These are not yours, you loon!"

"They're mine!" "They're not!" While many a limb of brute

Joined to their human bodies shall be shown,

Mule's heads, bull's legs, cruppers and ears of asses,

As each man's life on earth his spirit classes.]

The birth of Orlando gives occasion for a mock-heroic passage, in

which Pulci is parodied to the letter.[398] All the more amusing for

the assumption of pompous style, is the ensuing account of the hero's

boyhood among the street-urchins of Sutri. When he is tall enough to

bestride a broomstick, Orlandino proves his valor by careering through

the town and laughing at the falls he gets. At seven he shows the

strength of twelve:

Urta, fracassa, rompe, quassa, e smembra;

Orsi, leoni, tigri non paventa,

Ma contro loro intrepido s'avventa.

[Footnote 398: Canto vi. 8-11:

Qui nacque Orlando, l'inclito Barone;

Qui nacque Orlando, Senator Romano, etc.]

The octave stanzas become a cataract of verbs and nouns to paint his

tempestuous childhood. It is a spirited comic picture of the Italian

_enfant terrible_, stone-throwing, boxing, scuffling, and swearing

like a pickpocket. At the same time the boy grows in cunning, and

supports his mother by begging from one and bullying another of the

citizens of Sutri:--

Io v'addimando per l'amor di Dio

Un pane solo ed un boccal di vino;

Officio non fu mai piu santo e pio

Che se pascete il pover pellegrino:

Se non men date, vi prometto ch'io,

Quantunque sia di membra si piccino,

Ne prendero da me senza riguardo;

Che salsa non vogl'io di San Bernardo.

Cancar vi mangi, datemi a mangiare,

Se non, vi buttero le porte giuso;

Per debolezza sentomi mancare,

E le budella vannomi a riffuso.

Gente devota, e voi persone care

Che vi leccate di buon rosto il muso,

Mandatemi, per Dio, qualche minestra,

O me la trate giu dalla finestra.

In the course of these adventures Orlandino meets Oliver, the son of

Rainero, the governor, and breaks his crown in a quarrel. This brings

about the catastrophe; for the young hero pours forth such a torrent

of voluble slang, mixed with imprecations and menaces, that Rainero is

forced to acknowledge the presence of a superior genius.[399] But

before the curtain falls upon the discovery of Orlandino's parentage

and his reception into the company of peers, Folengo devotes a canto

to the episodical history of the Prelate Griffarosto.[400] The name of

this Rabelaisian ecclesiastic--Claw-the-roast--sufficiently indicates

the line of the poet's satire.

[Footnote 399: Canto vii. 61-65.]

[Footnote 400: He has been identified on sufficiently plausible

grounds with Ignazio Squarcialupo, the prior of Folengo's convent. In

the _Maccaronea_ this burlesque personage reappears as the keeper of a

tavern in hell, who feeds hungry souls on the most hideous messes of

carrion and vermin (Book xxiii. p. 217). There is sufficient rancor in

Griffarosto's portrait to justify the belief that Folengo meant in it

to gratify a private thirst for vengeance.]

Whatever appeared in the market of Sutri fit for the table, fell into

his clutches, or was transferred to the great bag he wore beneath his

scapulary. His library consisted of cookery books; and all the tongues

he knew, were tongues of swine and oxen.[401] Orlandino met this

Griffarosto fat as a stalled ox, one morning after he had purchased a

huge sturgeon:

La Reverenzia vostra non si parta;

Statemi alquanto, prego, ad ascoltare.

_Nimis sollicita es, O Marta, Marta,

Circa substantian Christi devorare._

Dammi poltron, quel pesce, ch'io 'l disquarta,

Per poterlo _in communi_ dispensare,

Nassa d'anguille che tu sei, lurcone;

E cio dicendo dagli col bastone.

[Footnote 401: In the play on the word _lingue_ there is a side-thrust

at the Purists.]

The priest was compelled to disgorge his prey, and the fame of the

boy's achievement went abroad through Sutri. Rainero thereupon sent

for Griffarosto, and treated the Abbot to such a compendious abuse of

monks in general as would have delighted a Lutheran.[402] Griffarosto

essayed to answer him with a ludicrous jumble of dog Latin; but the

Governor requested him to defer his apology for the morrow. The

description of Griffarosto's study in the monastery, where wine and

victuals fill the place of books, his oratory consecrated to Bacchus,

the conversation with his cook, and the _ruse_ by which the cook gets

chosen Prior in his master's place, carry on the satire through fifty

stanzas of slashing sarcasm. The whole episode is a pendent picture to

Pulci's Margutte. Then, by a brusque change from buffoonery to

seriousness, Folengo plunges into a confession of faith, attributed to

Rainero, but presumably his own.[403] It includes the essential

points of Catholic orthodoxy, abjuring the impostures of priests and

friars, and taking final station on the Lutheran doctrine of salvation

by faith and repentance. Idle as a dream, says Folengo, are the

endeavors made by friars to force scholastic conclusions on the

conscience in support of theses S. Paul would have rejected. What they

preach, they do not comprehend. Their ignorance is only equal to their

insolent pretension. They are worse than Judas in their treason to

Christ, worse than Herod, Anna, Caiaphas, or Pilate. They are only fit

to consort with usurers and slaves. They use the names of saints and

the altar of the Virgin as the means of glutting their avarice with

the gold of superstitious folk. They abuse confession to gratify their

lusts. Their priories are dens of dogs, hawks, and reprobate women.

They revel in soft beds, drink to intoxication, and stuff themselves

with unctuous food. And still the laity intrust their souls to these

rogues, and there are found many who defraud their kith and kin in

order to enrich a convent![404]

[Footnote 402: Canto viii. 23-32.]

[Footnote 403: Canto viii. 73-84. This passage I have also translated

and placed in an Appendix to this chapter, where the chief Lutheran

utterances of the burlesque poets will be found together.]

[Footnote 404: In addition to the eighth Canto, I have drawn on iii.

4, 20; iv. 13; vi. 44, for this list.]

It would not be easy to compose an invective more suited to degrade

the objects of a satirist's anger by the copiousness and the tenacity

of the dirt flung at them. Yet the _Orlandino_ was written by a monk,

who, though he had left his convent, was on the point of returning to

it; and the poem was openly printed during the pontificate of Clement

VII. That Folengo should have escaped inquisitorial censure is

remarkable. That he should have been readmitted to the Benedictine

order after this outburst of bile and bold diffusion of heretical

opinion, is only explicable by the hatred which subsisted in Italy

between the rules of S. Francis and S. Benedict. While attacking the

former, he gratified the spite and jealousy of the latter. But the

fact is that his auditors, whether lay or clerical, were too

accustomed to similar charges and too frankly conscious of their

truth, to care about them. Folengo stirred no indignation in the

people, who had laughed at ecclesiastical corruption since the golden

days of the Decameron. He roused no shame in the clergy, for, till

Luther frightened the Church into that pseudo-reformation which Sarpi

styled a deformation of manners, the authorities of Rome were

nonchalantly careless what was said about them.[405] An atrabilious

monk in his garret vented his spleen with more than usual acrimony,

and the world applauded. _Ha fatto un bel libro!_ That was all.

Conversely, it is not strange that the weighty truths about religion

uttered by Folengo should have had but little influence. He was a

scribbler, famous for scurrility, notoriously profligate in private

life. Free thought in Italy found itself too often thus in company

with immorality. The names of heretic and Lutheran carried with them

at that time a reproach more pungent and more reasonable than is usual

with the epithets of theological hatred.[406]

[Footnote 405: Leo X.'s complacent acceptance of the _Mandragola_

proves this.]

[Footnote 406: The curious history of Giulio Trissino, told by

Bernardo Morsolin in the last chapters of his _Giangiorgio Trissino_

(Vicenza, 1878), reveals the manner of men who adopted Lutheranism in

Italy in the sixteenth century. See above, p. 304. I shall support the

above remarks lower down in this chapter by reference to Berni's

Lutheran opinions.]

In the _Orlandino_, Ariosto's irony is degraded to buffoonery. The

prosaic details he mingled with his poetry are made the material of a

new and vulgar comedy of manners. The satire he veiled in allegory or

polite discussion, bursts into open virulence. His licentiousness

yields to gross obscenity. The chivalrous epic, as employed for

purposes of art in Italy, contained within itself the germs of this

burlesque. It was only necessary to develop certain motives at the

expense of general harmony, to suppress the noble and pathetic

elements, and to lower the literary key of utterance, in order to

produce a parody. Ariosto had strained the semi-seriousness of romance

to the utmost limits of endurance. For his successors nothing was left

but imitation, caricature, or divergence upon a different track. Of

these alternatives, Folengo and Berni, Aretino and Fortiguerra, chose

the second; Tasso took the third, and provided Tassoni with the

occasion of a new burlesque.

While the romantic epic lent itself thus easily to parody, another

form of humorous poetry took root and flourished on the mass of Latin

literature produced by the Revival. Latin never became a wholly dead

language in Italy; and at the height of the Renaissance a public had

been formed whose appreciation of classic style insured a welcome for

its travesty. To depreciate the humanistic currency by an alloy of

plebeian phrases, borrowed from various base dialects; to ape

Virgilian mannerism while treating of the lowest themes suggested by

boisterous mirth or satiric wit; was the method of the so-called

Maccaronic poets. It is matter for debate who first invented this

style, and who created the title _Maccaronea_. So far back as the

thirteenth century, we notice a blending of Latin with French and

German in certain portions of the _Carmina Burana_.[407] But the two

elements of language here lie side by side, without interpenetration.

This imperfect fusion is not sufficient to constitute the genuine

Maccaronic manner. The jargon known as Maccaronic must consist of the

vernacular, suited with Latin terminations, and freely mingled with

classical Latin words. Nothing should meet the ear or eye, which does

not sound or look like Latin; but, upon inspection, it must be

discovered that a half or third is simple slang and common speech

tricked out with the endings of Latin declensions and conjugations.[408]

In Italy, where the modern tongue retained close similarity to Latin,

this amalgamation was easy; and we find that in the fifteenth century

the hybrid had already assumed finished form. The name by which it was

then known, indicates its composition. As maccaroni is dressed with

cheese and butter, so the maccaronic poet mixed colloquial expressions

of the people with classical Latin, serving up a dish that satisfied

the appetite by rarity and richness of concoction. At the same time,

since maccaroni was the special delicacy of the proletariate, and

since a stupid fellow was called a _Maccherone_, the ineptitude and

the vulgarity of the species are indicated by its title. Among the

Maccaronic poets we invariably find ourselves in low Bohemian company.

No Phoebus sends them inspiration; nor do they slake their thirst at

the Castalian spring. The muses they invoke are tavern-wenches and

scullions, haunting the slums and stews of Lombard cities.[409] Their

mistresses are of the same type as Villon's Margot. Mountains of

cheese, rivers of fat broth, are their Helicon and Hippocrene. Their

pictures of manners demand a coarser brush than Hogarth's to do them

justice.

[Footnote 407: The political and ecclesiastical satires known in

England as the work of Walter Mapes, abound in pseudo-Maccaronic

passages. Compare Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines anterieures au

xiime Siecle_, p. 142, etc., for further specimens of undeveloped

Maccaronic poetry of the middle ages.]

[Footnote 408: Those who are curious to study this subject further,

should consult the two exhaustive works of Octave Delepierre,

_Macaroneana_ (Paris, 1852), and _Macaroneana Andra_ (Londres,

Truebner, 1862). These two publications contain a history of Maccaronic

verse, with reprints of the scarcer poems in this style. The second

gives the best text of Odassi, Fossa, and the _Virgiliana_. The

_Maccheronee di Cinque Poeti Italiani_ (Milano, Daelli, 1864), is a

useful little book, since it reproduces Delepierre's collections in a

cheap and convenient form. In the uncertainty which attends the

spelling of this word, I have adopted the form _Maccaronic_.]

[Footnote 409: Take one example, from the induction to Odassi's poems

(_Mac. Andr._ p. 63):

O putanarum putanissima, vacca vaccarum,

O potifarum potissima pota potaza ...

Tu Phrosina mihi foveas, mea sola voluptas;

Nulla mihi poterit melius succurrere Musa,

Nullus Apollo magis.]

Before engaging in the criticism of this Maccaronic literature, it is

necessary to interpolate some notice of a kindred style, called

_pedantesco_. This was the exact converse of the Maccaronic manner.

Instead of adapting Italian to the rules of Latin, the parodist now

treated Latin according to the grammatical usages and metrical laws of

Italian. A good deal of the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ is written in

_lingua pedantesca_. But the recognized masterpiece of the species is

a book called _I Cantici di Fidentio Glottogrysio Ludimagistro_. The

author's real name was Camillo Scrofa, a humanist and schoolmaster of

Vicenza. Though more than once reprinted, together with similar

compositions by equally obscure craftsmen, his verses are exceedingly

rare.[410] They owe their neglect partly to the absurdity of their

language, partly to the undisguised immorality of their

subject-matter. Of the _stilo pedantesco_ the following specimen may

suffice. It describes a hostelry of boors and peasants:[411]

Pur pedetentim giunsi ad un cubiculo,

Sordido, inelegante, ove molti hospiti

Facean corona a un semimortuo igniculo.

Salvete, dissi, et Giove lieti e sospiti

Vi riconduca a i vostri dolci hospitii!

Ma responso non hebbi; o rudi, o inhospiti!

Io che tra veri equestri e tra patritii

Soglio seder, mi vedi alhor negligere

Da quegli huomini novi et adventitii.

Non sapea quasi indignabundo eligere

Partito; pur al fin fu necessario

Tra lor per calefarmi un scanno erigere.

Che colloquio, O Dii boni, empio e nefario

Pervenne a l'aure nostre purgatissime,

Da muover nausea a un lenone a un sicario!

[Footnote 410: The book was first printed at Vicenza. The copy I have

studied is the Florentine edition of 1574. Scrofa's verses, detached

from the collection, may be found in the _Parnaso Italiano_, vol.

xxv.]

[Footnote 411: _Op. cit._ p. 23.]

One of the most famous and earliest, if not absolutely the first among

the authors of Maccaronic verse, was Tifi Odassi, a Paduan, whose

poems were given to the press after his death, in at least two

editions earlier than the close of the fifteenth century.[412] He

chose a commonplace _Novella_ for his theme; but the interest of his

tale consists less in its argument than in its vivid descriptions of

low town-life. Odassi's portraits of plebeian characters are executed

with masterly realism, and the novelty of the vehicle gives them a

singularly trenchant force. It is unfortunately impossible to bring

either the cook-shop-keeper or his female servant, the mountebank or

the glutton, before modern readers. These pictures are too

Rabelaisian.[413] I must content myself with a passage taken from the

description of a bad painter, which, though it is inferior in comic

power, contains nothing unpardonably gross.[414]

Quodsi forte aliquem voluit depingere gallum,

Quicunque aspiciat poterit jurare cigognam;

Depinxitque semel canes in caza currentes,

Omnes credebant natantes in aequore luzos;

Sive hominem pingit, poteris tu credere lignum

In quo sartores ponunt sine capite vestes;

Seu nudos facit multo sudore putinos,

Tu caput a culo poteris dignoscere nunquam;

Sive facit gremio Christum retinere Mariam,

Non licet a filio sanctam dignoscere matrem;

Pro gardelinis depingit sepe gallinas,

Et pro gallinis depingit sepe caballos:

Blasfemat, jurat, culpam dicit esse penelli,

Quos spazzaturas poteris jurare de bruscho;

Tam bene depingit pictorum pessimus iste,

Nec tamen inferior se cogitat esse Bellino.

[Footnote 412: Bernardino Scardeone in his work _De antiquitate urbis

Patavii_, etc. (Basileae, 1560), speaks of Odassi as the inventor of

Maccaronic poetry: "adinvenit enim primus ridiculum carminis genus,

nunquam prius a quopiam excogitatum, quod Macaronaeum nuncupavit,

multis farcitum salibus, et satyrica mordacitate respersum." He adds

that Odassi desired on his deathbed that the book should be burned. In

spite of this wish, it was frequently reprinted during Scardeone's

lifetime.]

[Footnote 413: It is with great regret that I omit Bertapalia, the

charlatan--a portrait executed with inimitable verve. Students of

Italian life in its lowest and liveliest details should seek him out.

_Mac. Andr._ pp. 68-71.]

[Footnote 414: _Ibid._ p. 71. I have altered spelling and

punctuation.]

It will be seen from this specimen that Italian and Latin are

confounded without regard to either prosody or propriety of diction.

The style, far from being even pedestrian, is reptile, and the

inspiration is worthy of the source imagined by the poet.[415] As

Odassi remarks in his induction:

Aspices, lector, Prisciani vulnera mille

Gramaticamque novam, quam nos docuere putane.

[Footnote 415:

Cognosces in me quantum tua numina possunt,

Quaeque tua veniunt stilantia carmina pota.]

The note struck by Odassi was sustained by his immediate imitators.

Another Paduan author used this parody of humanistic verse to

caricature a humanist, whom he called Vigonca.[416] Like Odassi, he

invoked Venus Volgivaga; and like Odassi's, very little of his verse

is quotable. The following extracts may be found acceptable for their

humorous account of a Professor's inaugural lecture in the university

of Padua.[417] Vigonca announces the opening of his course:

Ipse ante totis facit asavere piacis,

Et totis scolis mandat bolletina bidelis,

Quae bolletina portabant talia verba:

"Comes magnificus cavalerius ille Vigonca,

Patricius Patavus comesque ab origine longa,

Vos rogat ad primam veniatis quisque legendam;

Qui veniet, magnum fructum portabit a casa."

Omnes venturos sese dixere libenter;

Promissit comes, capitaneus atque potestas,

Et paduani vechi juvenesque politi.

Lux promissa aderat, qua se smatare Vigonca

Debebat, atque suam cunctis monstrare matieram.

Ille tamen totam facit concare la scolam,

De nigro totam facit conzare cathedram,

In qua debebat matus sprologare Vigonca;

Cetera fulgebant banchalis atque thapetis,

Et decem in brochis dicit spendidisse duchatos.

[Footnote 416: This anonymous poet has been variously identified with

Odassi and with Fossa of Cremona. The frequent occurrence of Paduan

idioms seems to point to a Paduan rather than a Cremonese author; and

though there is no authoritative reason for referring the poem to

Odassi, it resembles his style sufficiently to render the hypothesis

of his authorship very plausible. The name of the hero, Vigonca, is

probably the Italian _Bigoncia_, which meant in one sense a pulpit or

a reading-desk, in its ordinary sense a tub.]

[Footnote 417: Daelli, _Maccheronee di Cinque Poeti Italiani_ (Milano,

1864), p. 50; cp. _Mac. Andr._ p. 19.]

After narrating how the whole town responded to Vigonca's invitation,

and how the folk assembled to hear his first address, the poet thus

describes the great occasion:[418]

Sed neque bastabat ingens intrantibus ussus;

Rumpebant cupos parietes atque fenestras,

Inque ipso multos busos fecere parete.

Tunc ibi bidelus cunctos ratione pregavit,

Et sibi cavavit nigrum Vigonca biretum,

Et manicas alzans dedit hic sua verba de mato,

Et comencavit sanctam faciendo la crucem.

"Magnifice pretor, pariter generose prefecte,

Tu facunde comes auri portando colanam,

Magnus philosophus, lingua in utraque poeta,

Tu primicerius, Venete spes alma paludis,

Et vos doctores, celeberrima fama per orbem,

Vos cavalerii multum sperone dorati,

Vosque scolares, cives, charique sodales!

Non ego perdivi tempus futuendo putanas,

Non ego zugando, non per bordella vagando;

Non ego cum canibus lepores seguendo veloces,

Non cum sparveris, non cum falconibus ipse;

Non ego cum dadis tabulam lissando per ullam;

Non ego cum chartis volui dissipare dinaros,

Qualiter in Padue faciunt de nocte scolares.

Quum jocant alii, stabat in casa Vigonca

Et studiabat guardando volumina longa."

[Footnote 418: Daelli, _op. cit._ pp. 52, 54.]

This Paduan caricature may be reckoned among the most valuable

documents we possess for the illustration of the professorial system

in Italy during the ascendancy of humanism. Some material of the same

kind is supplied by the _Virgiliana_ of Evangelista Fossa, a Cremonese

gentleman, who versified a Venetian _Burla_ in mock-heroic Latin. He,

too, painted the portrait of a pedant, Priscianus:[419]

Est mirandus homo; nam sunt miracula in illo,

Omnes virtutes habet hic in testa fichatas ...

Nam quicquid dicit, semper per littera parlat,

Atque habet in boccham pulchra haec proverbia semper....

Est letrutus nam multum, studiavit in omni

Arte, fuit Padoe, fuit in la citta de Perosa,

Bononie multum mansit de senno robando.

[Footnote 419: _Ibid._ p. 112; _Mac. Andra_, p. 32.]

But Fossa's _Virgiliana_, while aiming at a more subtle sort of parody

than the purely maccaronic poems, misses their peculiar salt, and,

except for the Hudibrastic description of the author on

horseback,[420] offers nothing of great interest.

[Footnote 420: "De fossa compositore quando venit patavio" (_Mac.

Andra_, p. 39).]

Brief notice also may be taken of Giovan Giorgio Alione's satire on

the Lombards. Alione was a native of Asti, and seasoned his maccaroni

with the base French of his birthplace. For Asti, transferred to the

House of Orleans by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, was more than half a

French city and its inhabitants spoke the Gallic dialect common to

Piedmont.[421] Alione is proud of this subjection, and twits the

Lombards of Milan and Pavia with being unworthy of their ancient

origin no less than of their modern masters.[422] Unlike the ordinary

run of burlesque poems, his _Macharonea_ is virulently satirical.

Animated by a real rage against the North Italians, Alione paints them

as effeminate cowards, devoid of the sense of honor and debased by the

vices of ill-bred _parvenus_. The opening of a _Novella_ he relates,

may be cited as a fair specimen of his style:[423]

Quidam Franzosus, volens tornare Parisum,

Certum Milaneysum scontravit extra viglianam

Sine capello docheti testa bagnatum:

Et cum ignoraret Gallicus hic unde fuisset

Dixit vulgariter _estes vous moglie mon amicus_?

Ille qui intelligit a la rebusa, respondit

_Sy sy mi che ho mogle Milani et anca fiolos._

Gallus tunc cernens Lombardum fore loquela,

Et recordatus quod tempore guerre Salucis

Alixandrini fecerant pagare menestram

Scutumque sibi sgrafignarant de gibesera,

Sfodravit ensem dicens _o tretre ribalde_

_Rendez moy sa mon escu_, sy non a la morte spazat.

[Footnote 421: Alione says:

Cum nos Astenses reputemur undique Galli.]

[Footnote 422: See the passage beginning "O Longobardi frapatores,"

and ending with these lines:

Tunc baratasti Gallorum nobile nomen

Cum Longobardo, etc.

Daelli, _op. cit._ p. 94.]

[Footnote 423: Daelli, p. 93.]

The end of the story is far too crude to quote, and it is probable

that even the most curious readers will already have had enough of

Alione's peculiar gibberish.

The maccaronic style had reached this point when Folengo took

possession of it, stamped it with his own genius, and employed it for

one of the most important poems of the century. He is said to have

begun a serious Latin epic in his early manhood, and to have laid this

aside because he foresaw the impossibility of wresting the laurels

from Virgil. This story is probably a legend; but it contains at least

an element of truth. Folengo aimed at originality; he chose to be the

first of burlesque Latin poets rather than to claim the name and fame

of a Virgilian imitator.[424] In the proemium to his _Moscheis_ he

professes to have found the orthodox Apollo deaf to his prayers:

Illius heu frustra doctas captare sorores

Speravi ac multa laude tenere polos.

[Footnote 424: In the first book of the _Moscheis_, line 7, he says:

Gens ceratana sinat vecchias cantare batajas,

Squarzet Virgilios turba pedanta suos.

The end of the _Maccaronea_ sets forth the impossibility of modern

bards contending with the great poet of antiquity. Pontanus,

Sannazzarius, all the best Latin writers of the age, pale before

Virgil:

Non tamen aequatur vati quem protulit Andes,

Namque vetusta nocet laus nobis saepe modernis.

This refrain he repeats for each poet with whimsical reiteration.

Folengo's own ambition to take the first place among burlesque writers

appears in the final lines of _Mac._ book iii.:

Mantua Virgilio gaudet, Verona Catullo,

Dante suo florens urbs Tusca, Cipada Cocajo:

Dicor ego superans alios levitate poetas,

Ut Maro medesimos superans gravitate poetas.

The induction to the _Moscheis_ points to a serious heroic poem on

Mantua which he abandoned for want of inspiration. We have in these

references enough to account for the myth above mentioned.]

The reason of the god's anger was that his votary had sullied the

clear springs of Hippocrene:

Nescio quas reperi musas, turpesve sorores,

Nescio quas turpi carmina voce canunt.

Limpida Pegasidum vitiavi stagna profanus,

Totaque sunt limo dedecorata meo.

The exordium to the _Maccaronea_ introduces us to these vulgar Muses,

_grossae Camoenae_, who fill their neophytes with maccaronic

inspiration:

Jam nec Melpomene, Clio, nec magna Thalia,

Nec Phoebus grattando lyram mihi carmina dictet,

Qui tantos olim doctos fecere poetas;

Verum cara mihi foveat solummodo Berta,

Gosaque, Togna simul, Mafelina, Pedrala, Comina.

Veridicae Musae sunt hae, doctaeque sorellae;

Quarum non multis habitatio nota poetis.

The holy hill of Folengo's Muses is a mountain of cheese and

maccaroni, with lakes of broth and rivers of unctuous sauces:

Stant ipsae Musae super altum montis acumen,

Formajum gratulis durum retridando foratis.

Here he seeks them, and here they deign to crown him poet:[425]

Ergo macaronicas illic cattavimus artes,

Et me grossiloquum vatem statuere sorores.

[Footnote 425: Compare _Mac._ vii. p. 195.

Nil nisi crassiloquas dicor scrivisse camoenas,

Crassiloquis igitur dicamus magna camoenis.

This _great theme_ is nothing less than monasticism in its vilest

aspects.]

We have seen already that the maccaronic style involved a free use of

plebeian Italian, imbedded in a mixed mass of classical and medieval

Latinity. Folengo refined the usage of his predecessors, by improving

the versification, adopting a more uniformly heroic tone, and

introducing scraps of Mantuan dialect at unexpected intervals, so that

each lapse into Italian has the force of a surprise--what the Greeks

called [Greek: para prosdokian]. The comic effect is produced by a

sustained epical inflation, breaking irregularly into the coarsest and

least pardonable freaks of vulgarity. It is as though the poet were

improvising, emulous of Virgil; but the tide of inspiration fails him,

he falls short of classical phrases to express his thoughts, and is

forced in the hurry of the moment to avail himself of words and images

that lie more close at hand. His Pegasus is a showy hack, who ambles

on the bypaths of Parnassus, dropping now and then a spavined hock and

stumbling back into his paces with a snort. His war-trumpet utters a

sonorous fanfaronnade; but the blower loses breath, and breaks his

note, or suffers it to lapse into a lamentable quaver.

Tifi Odassi, who may be regarded as Folengo's master in this species

of verse, confined the Maccaronic Muse to quaintly-finished sketches

in the Dutch style.[426] His pupil raised her to the dignity of Clio

and composed an epic in twenty-five books. The length of this poem and

the strangeness of the manner render it unpalatable to all but serious

students at the present time. Its humor has evaporated, and the form

itself strikes us as rococo. We experience some difficulty in

sympathizing with those readers of the sixteenth century, who,

perfectly acquainted with Latin poetry and accustomed to derive

intellectual pleasure from its practice, found exquisite amusement in

so cleverly constructed a parody. Nor is it possible for Englishmen to

appreciate the more delicate irony of the vulgarisms, which Folengo

adopted from one of the coarsest Italian dialects, and cemented with

subtle skill upon the stately structure of his hexameters. Still we

may remember that the _Maccaronea_ was read with profit by Rabelais,

and that much of Butler's humor betrays a strong affinity to this

antiquated burlesque.

[Footnote 426: At the end of the _Maccaronea_ I think there may be an

allusion to Odassi conveyed in these words, _Tifi Caroloque futuris_.]

In substance the _Maccaronea_ begins with a rehandling of the

_Orlandino_. Guido, peerless among Paladins, wins the love of his

king's daughter, Baldovina of France. They fly together into Italy,

and she dies in giving birth to a son at Cipada, near Mantua. Guido

disappears, and the boy, Baldus, is brought up by a couple of

peasants. He believes himself to be their child, and recognizes the

rustic boor, Zambellus, for his brother. Still the hero's nature

reveals itself in the village urchin; and, like the young Orlando,

Baldus performs prodigies of valor in his boyhood:

Non it post vaccas, at saepe caminat ad urbem,

Ac ad Panadae dispectum praticat illam;

In villam semper tornabat vespere facto,

Portabatque caput fractum gambasque macatas.

When he goes to school, he begins by learning his letters with great

readiness. But he soon turns away from grammar to books of chivalry:

Sed mox Orlandi nasare volumina coepit:

Non vacat ultra deponentia discere verba,

Non species, numeros, non casus atque figuras,

Non Doctrinalis versamina tradere menti:

Fecit de norma scartazzos mille Donati

Inque Perotinum librum salcicia coxit.

Orlandi solum, nec non fera bella Rinaldi

Aggradant; animum faciebat talibus altum:

Legerat Ancrojam, Tribisondam, gesta Danesi,

Antonaeque Bovum, mox tota Realea Francae,

Innamoramentum Carlonis et Asperamontem,

Spagnam, Altobellum, Morgantis facta gigantis.

And so forth through the whole list of chivalrous romances, down to

the _Orlando Furioso_ and the _Orlandino_. The boy's heart is set on

deeds of daring. He makes himself the captain of a band of rogues who

turn the village of Cipada upside down. Three of these deserve

especial notice--Fracassus, Cingar, and Falchettus; since they became

the henchmen of our hero in all his subsequent exploits. Fracassus was

descended in the direct line from Morgante:

Primus erat quidam Fracassus prole gigantis,

Cujus stirps olim Morganto venit ab illo,

Qui bachiocconem campanae ferre solebat

Cum quo mille hominum colpo sfracasset in uno.

Cingar in like manner drew his blood from Pulci's Margutte:

Alter erat Baldi compagnus, nomine Cingar,

Accortus, ladro, semper truffare paratus;

Scarnus enim facie, reliquo sed corpore nervis

Plenus, compressus, picolinus, brunus, et atrox,

Semper habens nudam testam, rizzutus et asper.

Iste suam traxit Marguti a sanguine razzam,

Qui ad calcagnos sperones ut gallus habebat

Et nimio risu simia cagante morivit.

Falchettus boasted a still stranger origin:[427]

Sed quidnam de te, Falchette stupende, canemus?

Tu quoque pro Baldo bramasti prendere mortem.

Forsitan, o lecor, quae dico, dura videntur,

Namque Pulicano Falchettus venit ab illo

Quem scripsere virum medium, mediumque catellum;

Quapropter sic sic noster Falchettus habebat

Anteriora viri, sed posteriora canina.

[Footnote 427: I do not recognize Pulicanus, who is said to be the

ancestor of Falchettus. Is it a misprint for Fulicanus? Fulicano is a

giant in Bello's _Mambriano_, one of Folengo's favorite poems of

romance.]

It would be too long to relate how Baldus received knightly education

from a nobleman who admired his daring; how, ignorant of his

illustrious blood, he married the village beauty Berta; and how he

made himself the petty tyrant of Cipada. The exploits of his youth are

a satire on the violence of local magnates, whose manners differed

little from those of the peasants they oppressed. In course of time

Baldus fell under the displeasure of a despot stronger than himself,

and was shut up in prison.[428] In the absence of his hero from the

scene, the poet now devotes himself to the exploits of Cingar among

the peasants of Cipada. Without lowering his epic tone, Folengo fills

five books with whimsical adventures, painting the manners of the

country in their coarsest colors, and introducing passages of stinging

satire on the monks he hated.[429] Cingar, finding himself on one

occasion in a convent, gives vent to a long soliloquy which expresses

Folengo's own contempt for the monastic institutions that filled Italy

with rogues:

Quo diavol, ait, tanti venere capuzzi?

Nil nisi per mundum video portare capuzzos:

Quisquam vult fieri Frater, vult quisque capuzzum

Postquam giocarunt nummos, tascasque vodarunt,

Postquam pane caret cophinum, celaria vino,

In Fratres properant, datur his extemplo capuzzus.

Undique sunt isti Fratres, istique capuzzi.

Qui sint nescimus; discernare nemo valeret

Tantas vestitum foggias, tantosque colores:

Sunt pars turchini, pars nigri, parsque morelli,

Pars albi, russi, pars gialdi, parsque bretini.

Si per iter vado telluris, cerno capuzzos:

Si per iter pelagi, non mancum cerno capuzzos;

Quando per armatos eo campos, cerno capuzzos;

Sive forum subeo, sive barcam, sive tabernam,

Protinus ante oculos aliquem mihi cerno capuzzum.

[Footnote 428: _Mac._ iii. The edition I quote from is that of Mantua

(?) under name of Amsterdam, 1769 and 1771, 2 vols. 4to. See vol. i.

p. 117, for a satire on the frauds and injustice of a country

law-court, followed by a mock heroic panegyric of the Casa Gonzaga.

The description of their celebrated stud and breed of horses may be

read with interest.]

[Footnote 429: The episode of Berta's battle with her sister Laena

(_Mac._ iv. p. 144), the apostrophe to old age (_Mac._ v. p. 152), the

village ball (_ibid._ p. 163), the tricks played by Cingar on

Zambellus (_ibid._ p. 168, and _Mac._ vi.), the description of the

convent of Motella (_Mac._ vii. 196), the portrait of the ignorant

parish-priest (_Mac._ vii. p. 202), the Carnival Mass (_Mac._ viii. p.

212), followed by a drunken _Ker Mess_ (_ibid._ p. 214), are all

executed in the broad style of a Dutch painter, and abound in

realistic sketches of Lombard country-life.]

There will soon be no one left to bear arms, till the fields, or ply

the common handicrafts. All the villains make themselves monks,

aspiring to ecclesiastical honors and seeking the grade of superiority

denied them by their birth. It is ambition that fills the convents:

Illic nobilitas sub rusticitate laborat,

Ambitio quoniam villanos unica brancat.

This tirade is followed by the portrait of Prae Jacopinus, a village

parson whose stupidity is only equaled by his vices. Jacopino's

education in the alphabet is a masterpiece of Rabelaisian humor, and

the following passage on his celebration of the Mass brings all the

sordidness of rustic ceremonial before our eyes:[430]

Praeterea Missam foggia dicebat in una,

Nec crucis in fronte signum formare sciebat.

Inter Confiteor parvum discrimen et Amen

Semper erat, jam jam meditans adjungere finem;

Incipiebat enim nec adhuc in nomine Patris,

Quod tribus in saltis veniebat ad Ite misestum.

[Footnote 430: _Mac._ vii. p. 204.]

From generalities Folengo passes to particulars in the following

description of a village Mass:[431]

Inde Jacopinus, chiamatis undique Pretis,

Coeperat in gorga Missam cantare stupendam;

Subsequitant alii, magnisque cridoribus instant.

Protinus Introitum spazzant talqualiter omnem,

Ad Chyrios veniunt, quos miro dicere sentis

Cum contrappunto, veluti si cantor adesset

Master Adrianus, Constantius atque Jachettus.

Hic per dolcezzam scorlabant corda vilani

Quando de quintis terzisque calabat in unam

Musicus octavam noster Jacopinus et ipsas

Providus octavas longa cum voce tirabat.

Gloria in excelsis passat, jam Credo propinquat;

Oh si Josquinus Cantorum splendor adesset!

[Footnote 431: _Mac._ vii. p. 212. Folengo seems to have been fond of

music. See the whimsical description of four-part singing, _Mac._ xx.

p. 139, followed by the panegyric of Music and the malediction of her

detractors.]

Meanwhile Baldus has been left in prison, and it is time for Cingar to

undertake his rescue. He effects this feat, by stripping two

Franciscan monks, and dressing himself up in the frock he had just

filched from one of them, while he coaxes the unfortunate Zambellus

to assume the other. Then he persuades the people of Mantua that he

has seen himself assassinated on the high road; gains access to Baldus

in the dungeon, on the plea of hearing his confession; and contrives

to leave Zambellus there in the clothes of Baldus, after disguising

his friend in one of the friar's tunics. The story is too intricate

for repetition here.[432] Suffice it to say that Baldus escapes and

meets a knight errant, Leonardus, at the city gate, who has ridden all

the way from Rome to meet so valorous a Paladin. The swear eternal

friendship. The three henchmen of the hero muster round the new

comrades in arms; and the party thus formed set forth upon a series of

adventures in the style of Astolfo's journey to the moon.

[Footnote 432: This episode of Cingar's triumph over the enemies of

Baldus, his craft, his rhetoric, his ready wit, his infinite powers of

persuasion, his monkey tricks and fox-like cunning, is executed with

an energy of humor and breadth of conception, that places it upon a

level with the choicest passages in Rabelais.]

This part of the epic is a close copy of the chivalrous romances in

their more fantastic details. The journey of the Barons, as they are

now invariably styled, is performed in a great ship. They encounter

storms and pirates, land on marvelous islands, enter fairy palaces,

and from time to time recruit their forces with notable rogues and

drunkards whom they find upon their way. The parody consists in the

similarity of their achievements to those of knight-errantry, while

they are themselves in all points unlike the champions of chivalry.

One of their most cherished companions, for example, is Boccalus, a

Bergamasque buffoon, who distinguishes himself by presence of mind in

a great storm:[433]

Ille galantus homo, qui nuper in aequora bruttam

Jecerat uxorem, dicens non esse fagottum

Fardellumque homini plus laidum, plusque pesentum

Quam sibi mojeram lateri mirare tacatam

Quae sit oca ingenio, quae vultu spazzacaminus.

[Footnote 433: _Mac._ xii. p. 296.]

The tale of adventures is diversified, after the manner of the

romantic poets, by digressions, sometimes pathetic, sometimes

dissertational. Among these the most amusing is Cingar's lecture on

astronomy, in which the planetary theories of the middle ages are

burlesqued with considerable irony.[434] The most affecting is the

death of Leonardus, who chooses to be torn in pieces by bears rather

than yield his virginity to a vile woman. This episode suggests one of

the finest satiric passages in the whole poem. Having exhibited the

temptress Muselina, the poet breaks off with this exclamation:[435]

Heu quantis noster Muselinis orbis abundat!

[Footnote 434: In the course of this oration Folengo introduces an

extraordinarily venomous invective against _contadini_, which may be

paralleled with his allegory in the _Orlandino_. It begins (_Mac._

xiii. p. 11):

Progenies maledicta quidem villana vocatur,

and extends through forty lines of condensed abuse.]

[Footnote 435: _Mac._ xvi. p. 66.]

He then enumerates their arts of seduction, and winds up with a

powerful dramatic picture, painted from the life, of a _mezzana_

engaged in corrupting a young man's mind during Mass-time:

Dum Missae celebrantur, amant cantonibus esse,

Postque tenebrosos mussant chiachiarantque pilastros;

Ah miserelle puer, dicunt, male nate, quod ullam

Non habes, ut juvenes bisognat habere, morosam!...

Numquid vis fieri Frater Monachusve, remotis

Delitiis Veneris, Bacchi, Martisque, Jovisque,

Quos vel simplicitas, vel desperatio traxit?...

Nemo super terram sanctus; stant aethere sancti:

Nos carnem natura facit, quo carne fruamur.

As the epic approaches its conclusion, Baldus discovers his true

father, Guido, under the form of a holy hermit, and learns that it is

reserved for him by destiny, first to extirpate the sect of witches

under their queen Smirna Gulfora, and afterwards to penetrate the

realms of death and hell. The last five books of the _Maccaronea_ are

devoted to these crowning exploits. Merlin appears, and undertakes the

guidance of the Barons on their journey to Avernus.[436] But first he

requires full confession of their sins from each; and this humorous

act of penitence forms one of the absurdest episodes, as may be easily

imagined, in the poem. Absolved and furnished with heroic armor, the

Barons march to the conquest of Gulfora and the destruction of her

magic palace. Folengo has placed it appropriately on the road to hell;

for under Gulfora he allegorizes witchcraft. The space allotted to

Smirna Gulfora and the importance attached to her overthrow by Baldus

and his Barons, call attention to the prevalence of magic in Italy at

this epoch.[437] It may not, therefore, be out of place, before

engaging in this portion of the analysis, to give some account of

Italian witchcraft drawn from other sources, in order to estimate the

truth of the satire upon which Folengo expended his force.

[Footnote 436: _Mac._ xx. p. 152. From this point onward the poet and

Merlin are one person:

Nomine Merlinos dicor, de sanguine Mantus,

Est mihi cognomen Cocajus Maccaronensis.]

[Footnote 437: The _Novella_ of Luca Philippus, who kept a tavern at

the door of Paradise, and had no custom, since no one came that way so

long as Gulfora ruled on earth, forms a significant preface to her

episode. See _Mac._ xxi. p. 180. The altercation between this host and

Peter at the rusty gate of heaven is written in the purest Italian

style of pious parody.]

"Beautiful and humane Italy," as Bandello calls his country in the

preface to one of his most horrible _Novelle_, was, in spite of her

enlightenment, but little in advance of Europe on the common points of

medieval superstition. The teaching of the Church encouraged a belief

in demons; and the common people saw on every chapel wall the fresco

of some saint expelling devils from the bodies of possessed persons,

or exorcising domestic utensils which had been bewitched.[438] Thus

the laity grew up in the confirmed opinion that earth, air, and ocean

swarmed with supernatural beings, whom they distinguished as fiends

from hell or inferior sprites of the elements, called _spiriti

folletti_.[439] While the evil spirits of both degrees were supposed

to lie beneath the ban of ecclesiastical malediction, they lent their

aid to necromancers, witches and wizards, who, defying the

interdictions of the Church, had the audacity to use them as their

slaves by the employment of powerful spells and rites of conjurations.

There was a way, it was believed, of taming both the demons and the

elves, of making them the instruments of human avarice, ambition,

jealousy and passion. Since all forms of superstition in Italy lent

themselves to utilitarian purposes, the necromancer and the witch,

having acquired this power over supernatural agents, became the

servants of popular lusts. They sold their authority to the highest

bidders, undertaking to blast the vines or to poison the flocks of an

enemy; to force young men and maidens to become the victims of

inordinate appetites; to ruin inconvenient husbands by slowly-wasting

diseases; to procure abortion by spells and potions; to confer wealth

and power upon aspirants after luxury; to sow the seeds of discord in

families--in a word, to open a free path for the indulgence of the

vain desires that plague ill-regulated egotisms. A class of impostors,

half dupes of their own pretensions, half rogues relying on the folly

of their employers, sprang into existence, who combined the Locusta of

ancient Rome with the witch of medieval Germany. Such was the Italian

_strega_--a loathsome creature, who studied the chemistry of poisons,

philtres, and abortion-hastening drugs, and while she pretended to

work her miracles by the help of devils, played upon the common

passions and credulities of human kind.[440] By her side stood her

masculine counterpart, the _stregone_, _negromante_ or _alchimista_,

who plays so prominent a part in the Italian comedies and novels.

[Footnote 438: Aretino's _Cortigiana_ contains a very humorous

exorcism inflicted by way of a practical joke upon a fisherman.]

[Footnote 439: See above, Part i, p. 453, note 2, for the distinction

between the fiends and the sprites drawn by Pulci.]

[Footnote 440: See Lasca's _Novella_ of _Zoroastro_; Bandello's novels

of witchcraft (Part iii. 29 and 52); Cellini's celebrated conjuration

in the Coliseum; and Ariosto's comedy of the _Negromante_. These

sources may be illustrated from the evidence given by Virginia Maria

Lezia before her judges, and the trial of witches at Nogaredo, both of

which are printed in Dandolo's _Signora di Monza_ (Milano, 1855).

Compare the curious details about Lombard witchcraft in Cantu's

_Diocesi di Como_.]

Witchcraft was localized in two chief centers--the mountains of

Norcia, and the Lombard valleys of the Alps.[441] In the former we

find a remnant of antique superstition. The witches of this district,

whether male or female, had something of the classical Sibyl in their

composition and played upon the terrors of their clients. Like their

Roman predecessors, they plied the trades of poisoner, quack-doctor

and bawd. In Lombardy witchcraft assumed a more Teutonic complexion.

The witch was less the instrument of fashionable vices, trading in

them as a lucrative branch of industry, than the hysterical subject of

a spiritual disease. Lust itself inflamed the victims of this

superstition, who were burned by hundreds in the towns, and who were

supposed to hold their revels in the villages of Val Camonica. Like

the hags of northern Europe, these Lombard _streghe_ had recourse to

the black art in the delirious hope of satisfying their own inordinate

ambitions, their own indescribable desires. The disease spread so

wildly at the close of the fifteenth century that Innocent VIII., by

his Bull of 1484, issued special injunctions to the Dominican monks of

Brescia, Bergamo and Cremona, authorizing them to stamp it out with

fire and torture.[442] The result was a crusade against witchcraft,

which seems to have increased the evil by fascinating the imagination

of the people. They believed all the more blindly in the supernatural

powers to be obtained by magic arts, inasmuch as this traffic had

become the object of a bloody persecution. When the Church recognized

that men and women might command the fiends of hell, it followed as a

logical consequence that wretches, maddened by misery and intoxicated

with ungovernable lusts, were tempted to tamper with the forbidden

thing at the risk of life and honor in this world and with the

certainty of damnation in the other. After this fashion the confused

conscience of illiterate people bred a formidable extension of this

spiritual malady throughout the northern provinces of Italy. Some were

led by morbid curiosity; others by a vain desire to satisfy their

appetites, or to escape the consequences of their crimes. A more

dangerous class used the superstition to acquire power over their

neighbors and to make money out of popular credulity.

[Footnote 441: It may be remembered that the necromancer in Cellini

sent his book to be enchanted in the Apennines of Norcia. Folengo

alludes to this superstition:

Qualiter ad stagnum Nursae sacrare quadernos.

With regard to Val Camonica, see the actual state of that district as

reported by Cantu. Folengo in the _Orlandino_ mentions its witches.

Bandello (iii. 52) speaks of it thus: "Val Camonica, ove si dice

essere di molte streghe."]

[Footnote 442: Witchcraft in Italy grew the more formidable the closer

it approached the German frontier. It seems to have assumed the

features of an epidemic at the close of the fifteenth century. Up to

that date little is heard of it, and little heed was paid to it. The

exacerbation of the malady portended and accompanied the dissolution

of medieval beliefs in a population vexed by war, famine and

pestilence, and vitiated by ecclesiastical corruption.]

Born and bred in Lombardy at the epoch when witchcraft had attained

the height of popular insanity, Folengo was keenly alive to the

hideousness of a superstition which, rightly or wrongly, he regarded

as a widespread plague embracing all classes of society. It may be

questioned whether he did not exaggerate its importance. But there is

no mistaking the verisimilitude of the picture he drew. All the

uncleanliness of a diseased imagination, all the extravagances of

wanton desire, all the consequences of domestic unchastity--incest,

infanticide, secret assassination, concealment of births--are traced

to this one cause and identified by him with witchcraft. The palace of

the queen Gulfora is a pandemonium of lawless vice:

Quales hic reperit strepitus, qualemque tumultum,

Quales mollities turpes, actusque salaces,

Utile nil scribi posset, si scribere vellem.

Her courts are crowded with devils who have taken human shape to

gratify the lusts of her votaries:

Leggiadros juvenes, bellos, facieque venustos,

Stringatos, agiles, quos judicat esse diablos,

Humanum piliasse caput moresque decentes,

Conspicit, innumeras circum scherzare puellas,

Quae gestant vestes auri brettasque veluti.

The multitude is made up of all nations, sexes, ages, classes:

Obstupet innumeros illic retrovare striones,

Innumerasque strias vecchias, modicasque puellas.

Non ea medesimo generatur schiatta paeso;

At sunt Italici, Graeci, Gallique, Spagnoles,

Magnates, poveri, laici, fratresque, pretesque,

Matronae, monighae per forzam claustra colentes.

Some of them are engaged in preparing love-potions and poisonous

draughts from the most disgusting and noxious ingredients. Others

compound unguents to be used in the metamorphosis of themselves on

their nocturnal jaunts. Among these are found poets, orators,

physicians, lawyers, governors, for whose sins a handful of poor old

women play the part of scapegoats before the public:

Sed quia respectu legis praevertitur ordo,

Namque solent grossi pisces mangiare minutos,

Desventuratae quaedam solummodo vecchiae

Sunt quae supra asinos plebi spectacula fiunt,

Sunt quae primatum multorum crimina celant,

Sunt quae sparagnant madonnis pluribus ignem.

Some again are discovered compiling books of spells:

Quomodo adulterium uxoris vir noscere possit,

Quomodo virgineae cogantur amare puellae,

Quomodo non tumeat mulier cornando maritum,

Quomodo si tumuit fantinum mingat abortum,

Quomodo vix natos vitient sua fascina puttos,

Quomodo desiccent odiati membra mariti.

The elder witches keep a school for the younger, and instruct them in

the secrets of their craft. Among these Baldus recognizes his own

wife, together with the principal ladies of his native land.

It is clear that under the allegory of witchcraft, in which at the

same time he seems to have believed firmly, Folengo meant to satirize

the secret corruption of society. When Gulfora herself appears, she

holds her court like an Italian duchess:

Longa sequit series hominum muschiata zibettis,

Qui cortesanos se vantant esse tilatos,

Quorum si videas mores rationis ochialo,

Non homines maschios sed dicas esse bagassas.

The terrible friar then breaks into a tirade against the courtiers of

his day, comparing them with Arthur's knights:

Tempore sed nostro, proh dii, saecloque dadessum,

Non nisi perfumis variis et odore zibetti,

Non nisi, seu sazarae petenentur sive tosentur,

Brettis velluti, nec non scufiotibus auri,

Auri cordiculis, impresis, atque medallis,

Millibus et frappis per calzas perque giupones,

Cercamus carum merdosi germen amoris.

Baldus exterminates the whole vile multitude, while Fracassus pulls

Gulfora's palace about her ears. After this, the Barons pursue their

way to Acheron, and call upon Charon to ferry them across. He refuses

to take so burdensome a party into his boat; but by the strength of

Fracassus and the craft of Cingar they effect a passage. Their entry

into hell furnishes Folengo with opportunities for new tirades against

the vices of Italy. Tisiphone boasts how Rome, through her

machinations, has kept Christendom in discord. Alecto exults in her

offspring, the Guelph and Ghibelline factions:

Unde fides Christi paulatim lapsa ruinet,

Dum gentes Italae bastantes vincere mundum

Se se in se stessos discordant, seque medesmos

Vassallos faciunt, servos, vilesque famejos

His qui vassalli, servi, vilesque fa meji

Tempore passato nobis per forza fu ere.

After passing the Furies, and entering the very jaws of Hades, Baldus

encounters the fantasies of grammarians and humanists, the idle

nonsense of the schoolmen, all the lumber of medieval philosophy mixed

with the trifles of the Renaissance.[443] He fights his way through

the thick-crowding swarm of follies, and reaches the hell of lovers,

where a mountebank starts forward and offers to be his guide. Led by

this zany, the hero and his comrades enter an enormous gourd, the bulk

of which is compared to the mountains of Val Camonica. Within its

spacious caverns dwell the sages of antiquity, with astrologers,

physicians, wizards, and false poets. But, having brought his Barons

to this place Merlinus Cocajus can advance no further. He is destined

to inhabit the great gourd himself. Beyond it he has no knowledge; and

here, therefore, he leaves the figments of his fancy without a word of

farewell:

Nec Merlinus ego, laus, gloria, fama Cipadae,

Quamvis fautrices habui Tognamque Gosamque,

Quamvis implevi totum macaronibus orbem,

Quamvis promerui Baldi cantare batajas,

Non tamen hanc zuccam potui schifare decentem,

In qua me tantos opus est nunc perdere dentes,

Tot, quot in immenso posui mendacia libro.

[Footnote 443:

Hic sunt Grammaticae populi, gentesque reductae,

Huc, illuc, istuc, reliqua seguitante fameja:

Argumenta volant dialectica, mille sophistae

Adsunt bajanae, pro, contra, non, ita, lyque:

Adsunt Errores, asunt mendacia, bollae,

Atque solecismi, fallacia, fictio vatum...

Omnes altandem tanto rumore volutant

Ethicen et Physicen, Animam, centumque novellas,

Ut sibi stornito Baldus stopparet orecchias.

Squarnazzam Scoti Fracassus repperit illic,

Quam vestit, gabbatque Deum, pugnatque Thomistas.

Alberti magni Lironus somnia zaffat.]

With this grotesque invention of the infernal pumpkin, where lying

bards are punished by the extraction of teeth which never cease to

grow again, Folengo breaks abruptly off. His epic ends with a

Rabelaisian peal of laughter, in which we can detect a growl of

discontent and anger.

Laying the book down, we ask ourselves whether the author had a

serious object, or whether he meant merely to indulge a vein of

wayward drollery. The virulent invectives which abound in the

_Maccaronea_, seem to warrant the former conclusion; nor might it be

wholly impossible to regard the poem as an allegory, in which Baldus

should play the part of the reason, unconscious at first of its noble

origin, consorting with the passions and the senses, but finally

arriving at the knowledge of its high destiny and defeating the powers

of evil.[444] Yet when we attempt to press this theory and to explain

the allegory in detail, the thread snaps in our hands. Like the

romances of chivalry which it parodies, the _Maccaronea_ is a bizarre

mixture of heterogeneous elements, loosely put together to amuse an

idle public and excite curiosity. If its author has used it also as

the vehicle for satire which embraces all the popular superstitions,

vices and hypocrisies of his century; if, as he approaches the

conclusion, he assumes a tone of sarcasm more sinister than befits the

broad burlesque of the commencement; we must rest contented with the

assumption that his choleric humor led him from the path of comedy,

while the fury of a soul divided against itself inspired his muses of

the cook-shop with loftier strains than they had promised at the

outset.[445] Should students in the future devote the same minute

attention to Folengo that has been paid to Rabelais, it is not

improbable that the question here raised may receive solution. The

poet is not unworthy of such pains. Regarded merely as the precursor

of Rabelais, Folengo deserves careful perusal. He was the creator of a

style, which, when we read his epic, forces us to think of the

seventeenth century; so strongly did it influence the form of humorous

burlesque in Europe for at least two hundred years. On this account,

the historian of modern literature cannot afford to neglect him. For

the student of Italian manners in Lombardy during the height of the

Renaissance, the huge amorphous undigested mass of the _Maccaronea_ is

one of the most valuable and instructive documents that we possess. I

do not hesitate, from this point of view, to rank it with the

masterpieces of the age, with the _Orlando_ of Ariosto, with

Machiavelli's comedies, and with the novels of Bandello.

[Footnote 444: This hypothesis receives support from the passage in

which Baldus compares his new love for Crispis, the paragon of all

virtues, with his old infatuation for Berta, who is the

personification of vulgar appetite, unrefined natural instinct. See

the end of Book xxiii.]

[Footnote 445: The rage of a man who knows that he has chosen the

lower while he might have trodden the higher paths of life and art,

flames out at intervals through this burlesque. Take this example, the

last five lines of Book xxiii.:

Sic ego Macronicum penitus volo linquere carmen

Cum mihi tempus erit, quod erit, si celsa voluntas

Flectitur et nostris lachrymis et supplice voto.

Heu heu! quod volui misero mihi? floribus Austrum

Perditus et liquidis immisi fontibus aprum.]

Folengo used the maccaronic style in two other considerable

compositions. The one entitled _Moscheis_ is an elegant parody of the

_Batrachomyomachia_, relating the wars of ants and flies in elegiac

verse. The other, called _Zanitonella_, celebrates the rustic loves of

Zanina and Tonello in a long series of elegies, odes and eclogues.

This collection furnishes a complete epitome of parodies modeled on

the pastorals in vogue. The hero appears upon the scene in the

following _Sonolegia_, under which title we detect a blending of the

Sonnet and the Elegy:[446]

Solus solettus stabam colegatus in umbra,

Pascebamque meas virda per arva capras.

Nulla travajabant animum pensiria nostrum,

Cercabam quoniam tempus habere bonum.

Quando bolzoniger puer, o mea corda forasti;

Nec dedit in fallum dardus alhora tuus.

Immo fracassasti rationis vincula, quae tunc

Circa coradam bastio fortis erat.

[Footnote 446: _Zanitonella_, p. 3.]

The lament is spun out to the orthodox length of fourteen verses, and

concludes with a pretty point. Who the _bolzoniger puer_ was, is more

openly revealed in another Sonolegia:[447]

Nemo super terram mangiat mihi credite panem

Seu contadinus, seu citadinus erit,

Quem non attrapolet Veneris bastardulus iste,

Qui volat instar avis, caecus, et absque braga.

[Footnote 447: _Ibid._ p. 2. Compare Sonolegia xiii. _ib._ p. 40.]

To follow the poet through all his burlesques of Petrarchistic

and elegiac literature, Italian or Latin, would be superfluous.

It is enough to say that he leaves none of their accustomed themes

untouched with parody. The masterpiece of his art in this style is

the sixth Eclogue, consisting of a dialogue between two drunken

bumpkins--_interloquutores Tonellus et Pedralus, qui ambo

inebriantur_.[448]

[Footnote 448: _Op. cit._ p. 42.]

The maccaronic style was a product of North Italy, cultivated by

writers of the Lombard towns, who versified comic or satiric subjects

in parodies of humanistic poetry. The branch of burlesque literature

we have next to examine, belonged to Tuscany, and took its origin from

the equivocal carnival and dance songs raised to the dignity of art by

Lorenzo de' Medici. Its conventional meter was _terza rima_, handled

with exquisite sense of rhythm, but degraded to low comedy by the

treatment of trivial or vulgar motives. The author of these

_Capitoli_, as they were called, chose some common object--a

paint-brush, salad, a sausage, peaches, figs, eels, radishes--to

celebrate; affected to be inspired by the grandeur of his subject;

developed the drollest tropes, metaphors and illustrations; and almost

invariably conveyed an obscene meaning under the form of innuendoes

appropriate to his professed theme. Though some exceptions can be

pointed out, the _Capitoli_ in general may be regarded as a species of

Priapic literature, fashioned to suit the taste of Florentines, who

had been accustomed for many generations to semi-disguised obscenity

in their vernacular town poetry.[449] Taken from the streets and

squares, adopted by the fashionable rhymsters of academies and courtly

coteries, the rude Fescennine verse lost none of its license, while it

assumed the polish of urbane art. Were it not for this antiquity and

popularity of origin, which suggests a plausible excuse for the

learned writers of _Capitoli_ and warns us to regard their indecency

as in some measure conventional, it would be difficult to approach the

three volumes which contain a selection of their poems, without

horror.[450] So deep, universal, unblushing is the vice revealed in

them.

[Footnote 449: We may ascend to the very sources of popular Tuscan

poetry, and we shall find this literature of _double entendre_ in the

_Canzoni_ of the _Nicchio_ and _Ugellino_, noticed above, Part i. p.

38. Besides the _Canti Carnascialeschi_ edited by Il Lasca, we have a

collection of _Canzoni a Ballo_, printed at Florence in 1569, which

proves that the raw material of the _Capitoli_ lay ready to the hand

of the burlesque poets in plebeian literature.]

[Footnote 450: My references are made to _Opere Burlesche_, 3 vols.,

1723, with the names of Londra and Firenze. Gregorovius says of them:

"Wenn man diese 'scherzenden' Gedichte liest, muss man entweder ueber

die Nichtigkeit ihrer Gegenstaende staunen, oder vor dem Abgrund der

Unsittlichkeit erschrecken, den sie frech entschleiern." _Stadt Rom._

vol. viii. p. 345.]

To Francesco Berni belongs the merit, such as it is, of having

invented the burlesque _Capitoli_. He gave his name to it, and the

term Bernesque has passed into the critical phraseology of Europe. The

unique place of this rare poet in the history of Italian literature,

will justify a somewhat lengthy account of his life and works.

Studying him, we study the ecclesiastical and literary society of Rome

in the age of Leo X. and Clement VII.

Francesco Berni was born at Lamporecchio, in the Val di Nievole,

about the end of the fifteenth century.[451] His parents were poor;

but they were connected with the family of the Cardinal Bibbiena, who,

after the boy's education at Florence, took him at the age of nineteen

to Rome. Upon the death of this patron in 1520, Berni remained in the

service of Bibbiena's nephew, Agnolo Dovizio. Receiving no advancement

from these kinsmen, he next transferred himself, in the quality of

secretary, to the household of Giammatteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona,

who was a distinguished Mecaenas of literary men. This change involved

his taking orders. Berni now resided partly at Rome and partly at

Verona, tempering the irksome duties of his office by the writing of

humorous poetry, which he recited in the then celebrated Academy of

the Vignajuoli. This society, which numbered Molza, Mauro, La Casa,

Lelio Capilupi, Firenzuola, and Francesco Bini among its members, gave

the tone to polite literature at the Courts of Leo and Clement.

[Footnote 451: The probable date is 1496.]

Berni survived the sack of 1527, which proved so disastrous to Italian

scholars; but he lost everything he possessed.[452] Monsignor Giberti

employed him on various missions of minor importance, involving

journeys to Venice, Padua, Nice, Florence, and the Abruzzi. After

sixteen years of Court-life, Berni grew weary of the petty duties,

which must have been peculiarly odious to a man of his lazy

temperament, if it is true, as he informs us, that the Archbishop kept

him dancing attendance till daylight, while he played primiera with

his friends. Accordingly, he retired to Florence, where he held a

canonry in the cathedral. There, after a quiet life of literary ease,

he died suddenly in 1535. It was rumored that he had been poisoned:

and the most recent investigations into the circumstances of his death

tend rather to confirm this report. All that is known, however, for

certain, is that he spent the evening of May 25 with his friends the

Marchionesse di Massa in the Palazzo Pazzi, and that next morning he

breathed his last. His mysterious and unexplained decease was ascribed

to one of the two Medicean princes then resident in Florence. A sonnet

in Berni's best style, containing a vehement invective against

Alessandro de' Medici, is extant. The hatred expressed in this poem

may have occasioned the rumor (which certainly acquired a certain

degree of currency) that Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici attempted to use

the poet for the secret poisoning of his cousin, and on his refusal

had him murdered. Other accounts of the supposed assassination ascribe

a like intention to the Duke, who is said to have suggested the

poisoning of the Cardinal to Berni. Both stories agree in representing

his tragic end as the price paid for refusal to play the part of an

assassin. The matter remains obscure; but enough suspicion rests upon

the manner of his death to render this characteristic double legend

plausible; especially when we remember what the customs of Florence

with respect to poisoning were, and how the Cardinal de' Medici ended

his own life.[453]

[Footnote 452: _Orl. Inn. Rifatto da Fr. Berni_, i. 14, 23-28, makes

it clear that Berni was an eye-witness of the Sack of Rome. Panizzi's

reference to this passage (_Boiardo ed Ariosto_, London, 1830, vol.

ii. p. cxi.) involves what seems to me a confusion.]

[Footnote 453: The matter is fully discussed by Mazzuchelli in his

biography of Berni. He, relying on the hypothesis of Berni having

lived till 1536, if not till 1543, points out the impossibility of his

having been murdered by the Cardinal, who died himself in July, 1535.

This difficulty has recently been removed by Signor Antonio Virgili's

demonstration of the real date of Berni's death in May, 1535. See

_Rassegna Settimanale_, February 23, 1879, a paper of great importance

for students of Berni's life and works, to which I shall frequently

refer.]

Such is the uneventful record of Berni's career. He was distinguished

among all the poets of the century for his genial vein of humor and

amiable personal qualities. That he was known to be stained with vices

which it is not easy to describe, but which he frankly acknowledged in

his poetical epistles, did not injure his reputation in that age of

mutual indulgence.[454] Willing to live and let live, with a

never-failing fund of drollery, and with a sincere dislike for work of

any sort, he lounged through existence, an agreeable, genial and witty

member of society. If this were all we should not need to write about

him now. But with this easy-going temperament he combined a genius for

poetry so peculiar and delicate, that his few works mark an epoch in

Italian literature.

[Footnote 454: It is enough to mention the _Capitoli_ "Delle Pesche,"

"A M. Antonio da Bibbiena," "Sopra un Garzone," "Lamentazion d'Amore."

References are made to the _Rime e Lettere di Fr. Berni_, Firenze,

Barbera, 1865. For the _Rifacimento_ of the _Orlando Innamorato_ I

shall use the Milan reprint in 5 vols., 1806, which also contains the

_Rime_.]

The best description of Berni is contained in the burlesque portrait

of himself, which forms part of his _Boiardo Innamorato_.[455] This

has been so well translated by an English scholar, the late W.S. Rose,

that I cannot do better than refer the student to his stanzas. They

convey as accurate a notion of the Bernesque manner as can be derived

from any version in a foreign language.[456] The character he there

has given to himself for laziness is corroborated by his extant

epistles in prose. Berni represents himself as an incurably bad

correspondent, pleased to get letters, but overcome with mortal terror

when he is obliged to answer them.[457] He confides to his friend

Francesco Bini that the great affair in life is to be gay and to write

as little as possible:[458] "A vivere avemo sino alla morte a dispetto

di chi non vuole, e il vantaggio e vivere allegramente, come conforto

a far vio, attendando a frequentar quelli banchetti che si fanno per

Roma, e scrivendo sopra tutto manco che potete. _Quia haec est

victoria, quae vincit mundum._" The curse has been laid upon him of

having to drive his quill without ceasing:[459] "_O ego laevus_, che

scrivo d'ogni tempo, e scrivo ora che ho una gamba al collo, che ieri

tornando dalla Certosa mi ruppe la mia cavalla, cascandomivi sopra.

Sono pure un gran coglione!" So his pen runs on. The man writes just

as he spoke, without affectation, mixing his phrases of Latin with the

idiom of common life. The whole presents an agreeable contrast to the

stilted style of Bembo, La Casa's studied periods, and the ambitious

epistolary efforts of Aretino. Sometimes he breaks into doggrel:[460]

"S'io avessi l'ingenio del Burchiello, Io vi farei volentier un

sonetto, Che non ebbi giammai tema e subietto, Piu dolce, piu

piacevol, ne piu bello." When his friends insist upon his writing to

them, rhyme comes to his aid, and he affects a comic fit of rage:[461]

Perche m'ammazzi con le tue querele,

Priuli mio, perche ti duole a torto,

Che sai che t'amo piu che l'orso il miele, etc.

[Footnote 455: Book III. canto vii. (canto 67 of the _Rifacimento_,

vol. iv. p. 266).]

[Footnote 456: This translation will be found in Panizzi's edition of

the _Orlando Innamorato_ (London, Pickering, 1830), vol. ii. p. cxiv.]

[Footnote 457: Letter vi. to Messer Giamb. Montebuona.]

[Footnote 458: Letter xvii.]

[Footnote 459: Letter xxiv.]

[Footnote 460: Letter to Ippolito de' Medici (ed. Milan, vol. v. p.

227).]

[Footnote 461: Letter ix.]

Importuned to publish the poems he recited with so much effect in

private circles, he at last consents because he cannot help it:[462]

"Compare, io non ho potuto tanto schermirmi che pure m'e bisognato dar

fuori questo benedetto Capitolo e Comento della Primiera; e siate

certo che l'ho fatto, non perche mi consumassi d'andare in stampa, ne

per immortalarmi come il cavalier Casio, ma per fuggire la fatica mia,

e la malevolenza di molti che domandandomelo e non lo avendo mi

volevano mal di morte." Nor were these the ordinary excuses of an

author eager to conceal his vanity. The _Capitolo_ upon the game of

primiera was the only poem which appeared with his consent.[463] He

intended his burlesque verses for recitation, and is even said to have

preserved no copies of them, so that many of his compositions,

piratically published in his lifetime, were with difficulty restored

to a right text by Il Lasca in 1548. This indifference to public fame

did not imply any carelessness of style. Mazzuchelli, who had seen

some of his rough copies, asserts that they bore signs of the minutest

pains bestowed upon them. The melody of versification, richness of

allusion, refinement of phrase, equality and flowing smoothness,

which distinguish Berni's work from that of his imitators confirm the

belief that his _Capitoli_ and sonnets, in spite of their apparent

ease, were produced with the conscientious industry of a real artist.

[Footnote 462: Letter vii. Compare the sonnet "In nome di M.

Prinzivalle da Pontremoli" (ed. Milan, vol. v. p. 3).]

[Footnote 463: It was published at Rome by Calvo in 1526, with the

comment of M. Pietro Paolo da S. Chirico.]

Berni's theory of poetry revealed a common-sense and insight which

were no less rare than commendable in that age of artificial

literature. He refused to write at command, pleading that spontaneity

of inspiration is essential to art, and quoting Vida's dictum:

Nec jussa canas, nisi forte coactus

Magnorum imperio regum.

Notwithstanding his avoidance of publication and parsimony of

production, Berni won an almost unique reputation during his lifetime,

and after his death was worshiped as a saint by the lovers of

burlesque.[464] In one of his drollest sonnets he complains that poets

were wont to steal their neighbors' verses, but that he is compelled

to take the credit of more than he ever wrote:[465]

A me quei d'altri son per forza dati,

E dicon tu gli arai, vuoi o non vuoi.

[Footnote 464: Il Lasca prefixed a sonnet to his edition of 1548, in

which he speaks of "Il Berni nostro dabbene e gentile," calls him

"primo e vero trovatore, Maestro e padre del burlesco stile," says

that it is possible to envy but impossible to imitate him, and

compares him thus with Burchiello:

Non sia chi mi ragioni di Burchiello,

Che saria proprio come comparare

Caron Dimonio all'Agnol Gabriello.

In another sonnet he climbs a further height of panegyric:

Quanti mai fur poeti al mondo e sono,

Volete in Greco, in Ebreo, o in Latino,

A petto a lui non vagliono un lupino,

Tant'e dotto, faceto, bello e buono:

and winds up with the strange assurance that:

da lui si sente

Anzi s'impara con gioja infinita

Come viver si debbe in questa vita.]

[Footnote 465: Sonnet xxvii.]

A piece of comic prose or verse cannot appear but that it is at once

ascribed to him:

E la gente faceta

Mi vuole pure impiastrar di prose e carmi,

Come s'io fussi di razza di marmi:

Non posso ripararmi;

Come si vede fuor qualche sonetto,

Il Berni l'ha composto a suo dispetto.

E fanvi su un guazzetto

Di chiose e di sensi, che rinnieghi il cielo,

Se Luter fa piu stracci del Vangelo.

One of the glosses referred to in this _coda_, lies before me as I

write. It was composed by Gianmaria Cecchi on Berni's sonnet which

begins "Cancheri e beccafichi." The sonnet is an amusing imprecation

upon matrimony, written in one paragraph, and containing the sting of

the epigram in its short _coda_ of three lines.[466] But it did not

need a commentary, and Cecchi's voluminous annotations justify the

poet's comic anger.

[Footnote 466: Sonnet ix.]

Berni's _Capitoli_ may be broadly divided into three classes. The

first includes his poetical epistles, addressed to Fracastoro,

Sebastian del Piombo, Ippolito de' Medici, Marco Veneziano, and other

friends. Except for the peculiar humor, which elevates the trivial

accidents of life to comedy, except for the consummate style, which

dignifies the details of familiar correspondence and renders fugitive

effusions classical, these letters in verse would scarcely detach

themselves from a mass of similar compositions. As it is, Berni's

personality renders them worthy companions of Ariosto's masterpieces

in a similar but nicely differentiated branch of literature. It

remains for the amateurs of autobiographical poetry to choose between

the self-revelation of the philosophizing Ferrarese poet and the

brilliant trifling of the Florentine. The second class embraces a

number of occasional poems--the Complaint against Love, the Deluge in

Mugello, the Satire upon Adrian VI., the Lamentation of

Nardino--descriptive or sarcastic pieces, where the poet chooses a

theme and develops it with rhetorical abundance. The third class may

be regarded as the special source and fountain of the Bernesque

manner, as afterwards adopted and elaborated by Berni's imitators.

Omitting personal or occasional motives, he sings the praises of the

Plague, of Primiera, of Aristotle, of Peaches, of Debt, of Eels, of

the Urinal, of Thistles, and of other trifling subjects. Here his

burlesque genius takes the most fantastic flight, soaring to the ether

of absurdity and sinking to the nadir of obscenity, combining

heterogeneous elements of fun and farce, yet never transgressing the

limits of refined taste. These _Capitoli_ revealed a new vehicle of

artistic expression to his contemporaries. Penetrated with their

author's individuality, they caught the spirit of the age and met its

sense of humor. Consequently they became the touchstones of burlesque

inspiration, the models which tempted men of feebler force and more

uncertain tact to hopeless tasks of emulation. We still possess La

Casa's _Capitolo_ on the Oven; Molza's on Salad and the Fig;

Firenzuola's on the Sausage and the Legno Santo; Bronzino's on the

Paint-brush and the Radish; Aretino's on the Quartan Fever; Franzesi's

on Carrots and Chestnuts; Varchi's on Hard Eggs and Fennel; Mauro's

on Beans and Priapus; Dolce's on Spittle and Noses; Bini's on the _Mal

Franzese_; Lori's on Apples; Ruscelli's on the Spindle--not to speak

of many authors, the obscurity of whose names and the obscenity of the

themes they celebrated, condemn them to condign oblivion. Not without

reason did Gregorovius stigmatize these poems as a moral syphilis,

invading Italian literature and penetrating to the remotest fibers of

its organism. After their publication in academical circles and their

further diffusion through the press, simple terms which had been used

to cloak their improprieties, became the bywords of pornographic

pamphleteers and poets. Figs, beans, peaches, apples, chestnuts

acquired a new and scandalous significance. Sins secluded from the

light of day by a modest instinct of humanity, flaunted their

loathsomeness without shame beneath the ensigns of these literary

allegories. The corruption of society, hypocritically veiled or

cynically half-revealed in coteries, expressed itself too plainly

through the phraseology invented by a set of sensual poets. The most

distinguished members of society, Cardinals like Bembo, prelates like

La Casa, painters like Bronzino, critics like Varchi, scholars like

Molza, lent the prestige of their position and their talents to the

diffusion of this leprosy, which still remains the final most

convincing testimony to the demoralization of Italy in the

Renaissance.[467]

[Footnote 467: The scholars of the day were not content with writing

burlesque _Capitoli_. They must needs annotate them. See Caro's

Commentary on the _Ficheide_ of Molza (Romagnoli, _Scelta di Curiosita

Letterarie_, Dispensa vii. Bologna, 1862) for the most celebrated

example. There is not a sentence in this long and witty composition,

read before the Accademia delle Virtu, which does not contain a

grossly obscene allusion, scarcely a paragraph which does not refer to

an unmentionable vice.]

To what extent, it may be asked, was Berni responsible for these

consequences? He brought the indecencies of the piazza, where they

were the comparatively innocuous expression of coarse instincts, into

the close atmosphere of the study and the academical circle, refined

their vulgarisms, and made their viciousness attractive by the charm

of his incomparable style. This transition from the _Canto

Carnascialesco_ to the _Capitolo_ may be observed in Berni's _Caccia

di Amore_, a very licentious poem dedicated to "noble and gentle

ladies." It is a Carnival Song or _Canzone a Ballo_ rewritten in

octave stanzas of roseate fluency and seductive softness. A band of

youthful huntsmen pay their court in it to women, and the _double

entendre_ exactly reproduces the style of innuendo rendered

fashionable by Lorenzo de' Medici. Yet, though Berni is unquestionably

answerable for the obscene _Capitoli_ of the sixteenth century, it

must not be forgotten that he only gave form to material already

sufficiently appropriated by the literary classes. With him, the

grossness which formed the staple of Mauro's, Molza's, Bini's, La

Casa's and Bronzino's poems, the depravities of appetite which

poisoned the very substance of their compositions, were but

accidental. The poet stood above them and in some measure aloof from

them, employing these ingredients in the concoction of his burlesque,

but never losing the main object of his art in their development. A

bizarre literary effect, rather than the indulgence of a sensual

imagination, was the aim he had in view. Therefore, while we regret

that his example gave occasion to coarser debaucheries of talent, we

are bound to acknowledge that the jests to which he condescended, do

not represent his most essential self. This, however, is but a feeble

apology. That without the excuse of passion, without satirical motive

or overmastering personal proclivity, he should have penned the

_Capitolo a M. Antonio da Bibbiena_, and have joked about giving and

taking his metaphorical peaches, remains an ineradicable blot upon his

nature.[468]

[Footnote 468: The six opening lines of the _Lamentazion d'Amore_

prevent our regarding Berni's jests as wholly separate from his

experience and practice.]

The Bernesque _Capitoli_ were invariably written in _terza rima_,

which at this epoch became the recognized meter of epistolary,

satirical, and dissertational poetry throughout Italy.[469] Thus the

rhythm of the Divine Comedy received final development by lending

itself to the expression of whims, fancies, personal invectives and

scurrilities. To quote from Berni's masterpieces in this style would

be impossible. Each poem of about one hundred lines is a perfect and

connected unity, which admits of no mutilation by the detachment of

separate passages. Still readers may be referred to the _Capitolo a

Fracastoro_ and the two _Capitoli della Peste_ as representative of

the poet's humor in its purest form, without the moral deformities of

the still more celebrated _Pesche_ or the uncleanliness of the

_Orinale_.

[Footnote 469: A familiar illustration is Cellini's _Capitolo del

Carcere_. Curious examples of these occasional poems, written for the

popular taste, are furnished by Mutinelli in his _Annali Urbani di

Venezia_. See above, Part i. pp. 172, 519, for the vicissitudes of

_terza rima_ after the close of the fourteenth century.]

At the close of the _Capitolo_ written on the occasion of Adrian VI.'s

election to the Papacy, Berni declared that it had never been his

custom to speak ill of people:

L'usanza mia non fu mai di dir male;

E che sia il ver, leggi le cose mie,

Leggi l'Anguille, leggi l'Orinale,

Le Pesche, i Cardi e l'altre fantasie:

Tutte sono inni, salmi, laudi ed ode.

We have reason to believe this declaration. Genial good humor is a

characteristic note of his literary temperament. At the same time he

was no mean master of caricature and epigram. The _Capitolo_ in

question is a sustained tirade against the Fleming, who had come to

break the peace of polished Rome--a shriek of angry lamentation over

altered times, intolerable insults, odious innovations. The amazement

and discomfiture of the poet, contrasted with his burlesque utterance,

render this composition comic in a double sense. Its satire cuts both

ways, against the author and the object of his rage. Yet when Adrian

gave place to Giulio de' Medici, and Berni discovered what kind of a

man the new Pope was, he vented nobler scorn in verse of far more

pungent criticism. His sonnet on Clement is remarkable for exactly

expressing the verdict posterity has formed after cool and mature

inquiry into this Pope's actions. Clement's weakness and irresolution

must end, the poet says, by making even Adrian seem a saint:[470]

Un Papato composto di rispetti,

Di considerazioni e di discorsi,

Di piu, di poi, di ma, di si, di forsi,

Di pur, di assai parole senza effetti;

Di pensier, di consigli, di concetti,

Di congetture magre per apporsi

D'intrattenerti, purche non si sborsi,

Con audienze, risposte, e bei detti:

Di pie di piombo e di neutralita,

Di pazienza, di dimostrazione,

Di Fede, di Speranza e Carita,

D'innocenza, di buona intenzione;

Ch'e quasi come dir, semplicita.

Per non le dare altra interpretazione,

Sia con sopportazione,

Lo diro pur, vedrete che pian piano

Fara canonizzar Papa Adriano.

[Footnote 470:

A Papacy composed of compliment,

Debate, consideration, complaisance,

Of furthermore, then, but, yes, well, perchance,

Haply, and such-like terms inconsequent;

Of thought, conjecture, counsel, argument,

Starveling surmise to summon countenance,

Negotiations, audiences, romance,

Fine words and shifts, disbursement to prevent;

Of feet of lead, of tame neutrality,

Of patience and parade to outer view.

Of fawning Faith, of Hope and Charity,

Of Innocence and good intentions too,

Which it were well to dub simplicity,

Uglier interpretations to eschew;

With your permission, you,

To speak the plain truth out, shall live to see

Pope Adrian sainted through this Papacy.]

The insight into Clement's character displayed in this sonnet, the

invective against Adrian, and the acerbity of another sonnet against

Alessandro de' Medici:

Empio Signor, che de la roba altrui

Lieto ti vai godendo, e del sudore:

would gain in cogency, could we attach more value to the manliness of

Berni's utterances. But when we know that, while he was showering

curses on the Duke of Civita di Penna, he frequented the Medicean

Court and wrote a humorous _Capitolo_ upon Gradasso, a dwarf of

Cardinal Ippolito, we feel forced to place these epigrammatic

effusions among the ebullitions of personal rather than political

animosity. There was nothing of the patriot in Berni, not even so much

as in Machiavelli, who himself avowed his readiness to roll stones for

the Signori Medici.

As a satirist, Berni appears to better advantage in his caricatures of

private or domestic personages. The portrait of his housekeeper, who

combined in her single person all the antiquities of all the viragos

of romance:

Io ho per cameriera mia l'Ancroja

Madre di Ferrau, zia di Morgante,

Arcavola maggior dell'Amostante,

Balia del Turco e suocera del Boja:

Alcionio upon his mule:

Quella che per soperchio digiunare

Tra l'anime celesti benedette

Come un corpo diafano traspare:

Ser Cecco who could never be severed from the Court, nor the Court

from Ser Cecco:

Perch'ambedue son la Corte e ser Cecco:

the pompous doctor:

l'ambasciador del Boja,

Un medico, maestro Guazzaletto:

Domenico d'Ancona, the memory of whose beard, shorn by some Vandal of

a barber, draws tears from every sympathetic soul:

Or hai dato, barbier, l'ultimo crollo

Ad una barba la piu singolare

Che mai fosse descritta in verso o 'n prosa:

these form a gallery of comic likenesses, drawn from the life and

communicated with the force of reality to the reader. Each is perfect

in style, clearly cut like some antique chalcedony, bringing the

object of the poet's mirth before us with the exact measure of

ridicule he sought to inflict.[471]

[Footnote 471: Sonnets xi. xvi. xiv. iii. xx. The same vivid

picturesqueness is displayed in the desecrated Abbey (Sonnet xvii.),

which deserves to be called an etching in words.]

This satiric power culminates in the sonnet on Pietro Aretino.[472]

The tartness of Berni's more good-humored pasquinades is concentrated

to vitriol by unadulterated loathing. He flings this biting acid in

the face of one whom he has found a scoundrel. The sonnet starts at

the white heat of fury:

Tu ne dirai e farai tante e tante,

Lingua fracida, marcia, senza sale.

[Footnote 472: Sonnet xix. In the _Capitolo_ to Ippolito de' Medici,

Berni thus alludes to Aretino:

Com'ha fatto non so chi mio vicino,

Che veste d'oro, e piu non degna il panno,

E dassi del messere e del divino.]

It proceeds with execration; and when the required fourteen lines have

been terminated, it foams over into rage more voluble and still more

voluble, unwinding the folds of an interminable _Coda_ with

ever-increasing _crescendo_ of vituperation, as though the passion of

the writer could not be appeased. The whole has to be read at one

breath. No quotation can render a conception of its rhetorical art.

Every word strikes home because every word contains a truth expressed

in language of malignant undiluted heartfelt hate. That most difficult

of literary triumphs, to render abuse sublime, to sustain a single

note of fierce invective without relaxing or weakening the several

grades that lead to the catastrophe, has been accomplished. This

achievement is no doubt due in some measure to the exact

correspondence between what we know of Pietro Aretino and what Berni

has written of him. Yet its blunt fidelity to fact does not detract

from the skill displayed in the handling of those triple series of

rhymes, each one of which descends like a lash upon the writhing back

beneath:

Ch'ormai ogni paese

Hai ammorbato, ogn'uom, ogn'animale,

Il ciel e Dio e 'l diavol ti vuol male.

Quelle veste ducale,

O ducali accattate e furfantate,

Che ti piangono addosso sventurate,

A suon di bastonate

Ti saran tratte, prima che tu muoja,

Dal reverendo padre messer boja,

Che l'anima di noja,

Mediante un capestro, caveratti,

E per maggior favore squarteratti;

E quei tuoi leccapiatti,

Bardassonacci, paggi da taverna,

Ti canteranno il requiem eterna.

Or vivi e ti governa,

Bench'un pugnale, un cesso, overo un nodo

Ti faranno star cheto in ogni modo.

From this conclusion the rest may be divined. Berni paid dearly for

the satisfaction of thus venting his spleen. Aretino had found more

than his match. Though himself a master in the art of throwing dirt,

he could not, like Berni, sling his missiles with the certainty of

gaining for himself by the same act an immortality of glory. This

privilege is reserved for the genius of style, and style alone.

Therefore he had to shrink in silence under Berni's scourge. But

Aretino was not the man to forego revenge if only an opportunity for

inflicting injury upon his antagonist, full and effectual, and without

peril to himself, was offered. The occasion came after Berni's death;

and how he availed himself of it, will appear in the next paragraphs.

Though the _Capitoli_ and sonnets won for their author the high place

he occupies among Italian poets, Berni is also famous for his

_rifacimento_ or remodeling of the _Orlando Innamorato_. He undertook

this task after the publication of the _Furioso_; and though part was

written at Verona, we know from references to contemporary events

contained in the _rifacimento_, that Berni was at work upon it in the

last years of his life at Florence. It was not published until some

time after his death. Berni subjected the whole of Boiardo's poem to

minute revision, eliminating obsolete words and Lombard phrases,

polishing the verse, and softening the roughness of the elder poet's

style. He omitted a few passages, introduced digressions, connected

the episodes by links and references, and opened each canto with a

dissertation in the manner of Ariosto. Opinions may vary as to the

value of the changes wrought by Berni. But there can be no doubt that

his work was executed with artistic accuracy, and that his purpose was

a right one. He aimed at nothing less than rendering a noble poem

adequate to the measure of literary excellence attained by the

Italians since Boiardo's death. The _Innamorato_ was to be made worthy

of the _Furioso_. The nation was to possess a continuous epic of

Orlando, complete in all its parts and uniformly pure in style. Had

Berni lived to see his own work through the press, it is probable

that this result would have been attained. As it happened, the

malignity of fortune or the malice of a concealed enemy defeated his

intention. We only possess a deformed version of his _rifacimento_.

The history, or rather the tragedy, of its publication involves some

complicated questions of conjecture. Yet the side-lights thrown upon

the conditions of literature at that time in Italy, as well as on the

mystery of Berni's death, are sufficiently interesting to justify the

requisite expenditure of space and time.