Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
spheres." He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
fellow-creature.
Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
appearance of Columbus.[3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci."[5] And all minds, in
which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
weak.[6]
The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many
adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins,
his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more
or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they
assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne;
and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most
of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself
and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's
fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious;
and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice
better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a
halter.
There is, perhaps, no pure invention in the whole of this enlargement of
old ballads and chronicles, except the characters of another giant, and
of a rebel angel; for even Morgante's history, though told in a very
different manner, has its prototype in the fictions of the pretended
archbishop.[7] The Paladins are well distinguished from one another;
Orlando as foremost alike in prowess and magnanimity, Rinaldo by his
vehemence, Ricciardetto by his amours, Astolfo by an ostentatious
rashness and self-committal; but in all these respects they appear to
have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit
any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular
idiomatic phraseology; still less, though it has plenty of infernal
magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring
order, as in Ariosto; or with love-stories as good as Boiardo's, or even
with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be
found in both of those poets; albeit, in the fourteenth canto, there is
a long _catalogue raisonné_ of the whole animal creation, which a lady
has worked for Rinaldo on a pavilion of silk and gold.
To these negative faults must be added the positive ones of too many
trifling, unconnected, and uninteresting incidents (at least to readers
who cannot taste the flavour of the racy Tuscan idiom); great occasional
prolixity, even in the best as well as worst passages, not excepting
Orlando's dying speeches; harshness in spite of his fluency (according
to Foscolo), and even bad grammar; too many low or over-familiar forms
of speech (so the graver critics allege, though, perhaps, from want of
animal spirits or a more comprehensive discernment); and lastly (to say
nothing of the question as to the gravity or levity of the theology),
the strange exhibition of whole successive stanzas, containing as many
questions or affirmations as lines, and commencing each line with the
same words. They meet the eye like palisadoes, or a file of soldiers,
and turn truth and pathos itself into a jest. They were most likely
imitated from the popular ballads. The following is the order of words
in which a young lady thinks fit to complain of a desert, into which she
has been carried away by a giant. After seven initiatory O's addressed
to her friends and to life in general, she changes the key into E:
"E' questa, la mia patria dov' io nacqui? E' questo il mio palagio e 'l
mio castello? E' questo il nido ov' alcun tempo giacqui? E' questo il
padre e 'l mio dolce fratello? E' questo il popol dov' io tanto piacqui?
E' questo il regno giusto antico e bello? E' questo il porto de la mia
salute? E' questo il premio d' ogni mia virtute?
Ove son or le mie purpuree veste? Ove son or le gemme e le ricchezze?
Ove son or già le notturne feste? Ove son or le mie delicatezze? Ove son
or le mie compagne oneste? Ove son or le fuggite dolcezze? Ove son or le
damigelle mie? Ove son, dice? omè, non son già quie."[8]
Is this the country, then, where I was born? Is this my palace, and my
castle this? Is this the nest I woke in, every morn? Is this my father's
and my brother's kiss? Is this the land they bred me to adorn? Is this
the good old bower of all my bliss? Is this the haven of my youth and
beauty? Is this the sure reward of all my duty?
Where now are all my wardrobes and their treasures? Where now are all
my riches and my rights? Where now are all the midnight feasts and
measures? Where now are all the delicate delights? Where now are all the
partners of my pleasures? Where now are all the sweets of sounds and
sights? Where now are all my maidens ever near? Where, do I say? Alas,
alas, not here!
There are seven more "where nows," including lovers, and "proffered
husbands," and "romances," and ending with the startling question and
answer,--the counterpoint of the former close,--
"Ove son l' aspre selve e i lupi adesso, E gli orsi, e i draghi, e i
tigri? Son qui presso."
Where now are all the woods and forests drear, Wolves, tigers, bears,
and dragons? Alas, here!
These are all very natural thoughts, and such, no doubt, as would
actually pass through the mind of the young lady, in the candour of
desolation; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them
renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by
the poor queen in the play of _Richard the Second_, when she overhears
the discourse of the gardener:
"My wretchedness _unto a roar of pins_, They'll talk of state."
Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during
the recital of these passages? Or did he flatter himself, that the
comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be
amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new
one?[9]
The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external
nature, in the _Morgante_, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of
heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost
absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and
delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion. The
fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues
it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to
accept; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that "she
wishes she could give him the sun;" and that if she were to say, after
all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should
be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is
so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his
lips. The way also in which another of these loving admirers of Paladins
conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently
hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with
a ring and a graceful speech, is in a taste as high as any thing in
Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their
great successor.[10] Yet the tenderness of Pulci rather shews itself in
the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little
escapes of generous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great
charms of the _Morgante_. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's
encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he
discovers a kinsman; and this goodness and relationship combined move
the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who
is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such
a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without
peril out of the clutches of a devil, he longs to go and set free the
whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his
affection for him. Rinaldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest
till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part
with him without manifesting a tenderness proportionate to their
valour,--the old Homeric candour of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth
himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he
has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (_gentilezza_) even
in hell; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, answers that he has no
doubt of it, or of the capability of "friendship" in that quarter; and
he says he is as "sorry to part with him as with a brother." The passage
will be found in our abstract. There are no such devils as these in
Dante; though Milton has something like them:
"Devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds: men only disagree."
It is supposed that the character of Ashtaroth, which is a very new
and extraordinary one, and does great honour to the daring goodness
of Pulci's imagination, was not lost upon Milton, who was not only
acquainted with the poem, but expressly intimates the pleasure he took
in it.[11] Rinaldo advises this devil, as Burns did Lucifer, to "take a
thought and mend." Ashtaroth, who had been a seraph, takes no notice of
the advice, except with a waving of the recollection of happier times.
He bids the hero farewell, and says he has only to summon him in order
to receive his aid. This retention of a sense of his former angelical
dignity has been noticed by Foscolo and Panizzi, the two best writers on
these Italian poems.[12] A Calvinist would call the expression of the
sympathy "hardened." A humanist knows it to be the result of a spirit
exquisitely softened. An unbounded tenderness is the secret of all that
is beautiful in the serious portion of our author's genius. Orlando's
good-natured giant weeps even for the death of the scoundrel Margutte;
and the awful hero himself, at whose death nature is convulsed and the
heavens open, begs his dying horse to forgive him if ever he has wronged
it.
A charm of another sort in Pulci, and yet in most instances, perhaps,
owing the best part of its charmingness to its being connected with the
same feeling, is his wit. Foscolo, it is true, says it is, in general,
more severe than refined; and it is perilous to differ with such a
critic on such a point; for much of it, unfortunately, is lost to a
foreign reader, in consequence of its dependance on the piquant old
Tuscan idiom, and on popular sayings and allusions. Yet I should think
it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some
more agreeable quality; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most
obvious to a foreigner may claim, if not to have originated, at least
to have been very like the style of one who was among its declared
admirers,--and who was a very polished writer,--Voltaire. It consists in
treating an absurdity with an air as if it were none; or as if it had
been a pure matter of course, erroneously mistaken for an absurdity.
Thus the good abbot, whose monastery is blockaded by the giants (for the
virtue and simplicity of his character must be borne in mind), after
observing that the ancient fathers in the desert had not only locusts to
eat, but manna, which he has no doubt was rained down on purpose from
heaven, laments that the "relishes" provided for himself and his
brethren should have consisted of "showers of stones." The stones, while
the abbot is speaking, come thundering down, and he exclaims, "For God's
sake, knight, come in, for the manna is falling!" This is exactly in the
style of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. So when Margutte is asked
what he believes in, and says he believes in "neither black nor blue,"
but in a good capon, "whether roast or boiled," the reader is forcibly
reminded of Voltaire's Traveller, _Scarmentado_, who, when he is desired
by the Tartars to declare which of their two parties he is for, the
party of the black-mutton or the white-mutton, answers, that the dish is
"equally indifferent to him, provided it is tender." Voltaire, however,
does injustice to Pulci, when he pretends that in matters of belief he
is like himself,--a mere scoffer. The friend of Lucrezia Tornabuoni has
evidently the tenderest veneration for all that is good and lovely in
the Catholic faith; and whatever liberties he might have allowed himself
in professed _extravaganzas_, when an age without Church-authority
encouraged them, and a reverend canon could take part in those (it must
be acknowledged) unseemly "high jinks," he never, in the _Morgante_,
when speaking in his own person, and not in that of the worst
characters, intimates disrespect towards any opinion which he did not
hold to be irrelevant to a right faith. It is observable that his freest
expressions are put in the mouth of the giant Margutte, the lowest
of these characters, who is an invention of the author's, and a most
extraordinary personage. He is the first unmitigated blackguard in
fiction, and is the greatest as well as first. Pulci is conjectured,
with great probability, to have designed him as a caricature of some
real person; for Margutte is a Greek who, in point of morals, has been
horribly brought up, and some of the Greek refugees in Italy were
greatly disliked for the cynicism of their manners and the grossness of
their lives. Margutte is a glutton, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and
a blasphemer. He boasts of having every vice, and no virtue except
fidelity; which is meant to reconcile Morgante to his company; but
though the latter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives
him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by
the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The
respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on
what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs
himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as
though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt of
a merely and grossly anti-serious mode of existence, and his
consideration, nevertheless, towards the poor selfish wretch who had had
no better training.
To this wit and this pathos let the reader add a style of singular ease
and fluency,--rhymes often the most unexpected, but never at a loss,--a
purity of Tuscan acknowledged by every body, and ranking him among the
authorities of the language,--and a modesty in speaking of his own
pretensions equalled only by his enthusiastic extolments of genius in
others; and the reader has before him the lively and affecting, hopeful,
charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci, the precursor, and in some
respects exemplar, of Ariosto, and, in Milton's opinion, a poet worth
reading for the "good use" that may be made of him. It has been
strangely supposed that his friend Politian, and Ficino the Platonist,
not merely helped him with their books (as he takes a pride in telling
us), but wrote a good deal of the latter part of the Morgante,
particularly the speculations in matters of opinion. As if (to say
nothing of the difference of style) a man of genius, however lively, did
not go through the gravest reflections in the course of his life, or
could not enter into any theological or metaphysical question, to which
he chose to direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too
often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy; and one
fit of jaundice or hypochondria might have enabled the poet to see more
visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps
ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the
disciple of Plato.
[Footnote 1: _Literature of the South of Europe_, Thomas Roscoe's
Translation, vol. ii. p.54. For the opinions of other writers, here and
elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him),
_Storia della Poesia Italiana_, cap. v. sect. 25; Gravina, who is more
so, _Della Ragion Poetica_ (quoted in Ginguéné, as below); Crescimbeni,
_Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Poesia_, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3
(Mathias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work,
4to, Rome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was
perhaps the "modestest sad most temperate writer" of his age ("il pin
modesto e moderato"); Ginguéné, _Histoire Littéraire d'Italie_, tom. iv.
p. 214; Foscolo, in the _Quarterly Review_, as further on; Panizzi on
the _Romantic Poetry of the Italians_, ditto; Stebbing, _Lives of the
Italian Poets_, second edition, vol, i.; and the first volume of _Lives
of Literary and Scientific Men_, in _Lardner's Cyclopædia_.]
[Footnote 2: Canto xxv. The passage will be found in the present
volume.]
[Footnote 3: Id. And this also.]
[Footnote 4: Canto xxvii. stanza 2.
"S' altro ajuto qui non si dimostra,
Sarà pur tragedía la istoria nostra.
Ed io pur commedía pensato avea
Iscriver del mio Carlo finalmente,
Ed _Alcuin_ così mi promettea," &c. ]
[Footnote 5:
"In fine to adorerai l'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ma tu amerai il
Pulci."--_Parn. Ital_. vol. ix. p. 344.]
[Footnote 6: Ellis's _Specimens of Early English Poetical Romances_,
vol. ii. p. 287; and Panizzi's _Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry
of the Italians_; in his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p.
113.]
[Footnote 7: _De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia_, &c. cap. xviii.
p. 39 (Ciampi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferracutus, or
Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had the strength of forty men,
and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat
with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which
its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful
beggings of the question; after which the giant stakes the credit of
their respective beliefs on the event of their encounter.]
[Footnote 8: Canto xix. st. 21.]
[Footnote 9: When a proper name happens to be a part of the tautology,
the look is still more extraordinary. Orlando is remonstrating with
Rinaldo on his being unseasonably in love:
"Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gagliardia?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo sommo potere?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo senno di pria?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo antivedere?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua fantasia?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, l' arme e 'l tuo destriere?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gloria e fama?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo core? a la dama."
Canto xvi. st. 50.
Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy gagliardize?
Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy might indeed?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy repute for wise?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy sagacious heed?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy free-thoughted eyes?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy good arms and steed?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy renown and glory?
Oh where, Rinaldo, _thou?_--In a love-story.
The incessant repetition of the names in the burdens of modern songs
is hardly so bad as this. The single line questions and answers in the
Greek drama were nothing to it. Yet there is a still more extraordinary
play upon words in canto xxiii. st. 49, consisting of the description
of a hermitage. It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the
poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration
mad with envy:--
"La _casa cosa_ parea _bretta_ e _brutta_,
_Vinta_ dal _vento_; e la _notta_ e la _notte_
_Stilla_ le _stelle_, ch' a _tetto_ era _tutto_:
Del _pane appena_ ne _dette_ ta' _dotte_.
_Pere_ avea _pure_, e qualche _fratta frutta_;
E _svina_ e _svena_ di _botto_ una _botte_
_Poscia_ per _pesci lasche_ prese a _l'esca_;
Ma il _letto allotta_ a la _frasca_ fu _fresca_."
This _holy hole_ was a vile _thin_-built _thing_,
_Blown_ by the _blast_; the _night nought_ else o'erhead
But _staring stars_ the _rude roof_ entering;
Their _sup_ of _supper_ was no _splendid spread_;
_Poor pears_ their fare, and such-_like libelling_
Of quantum suff;--their _butt_ all _but_;--_bad bread_;--
A _flash_ of _fish_ instead of _flush_ of _flesh_;
Their bed a _frisk al-fresco_, _freezing fresh_.