LUIGI PULCI AND ANGELO POLIZIANO.
AN influence hardly less important than that of the philosophers and
grammarians was exercised on Lorenzo and his epoch by the literary
innovators who, with some infusion of classic learning, were not so
pedantic as the early humanists, while they bore the impress of the
teaching of the preceding century. The Medici were to these men of
letters, just as much as they were to the philosophers, the centre to
which their several rays converged, and Lorenzo’s name is inseparable
from the names of several among them. One in this brilliant circle
holds a different position from the rest. He took as a poet the part
which Landino took as a critic in the revival of the study of Dante.
Matteo Palmieri holds a place by himself. The first glance into his
great poem, the ‘City of Life,’ (‘Città di Vita’) shows it to be an
imitation of the ‘Divine Comedy;’ but only in the outward form. It is
a philosophical work, the object of which is to describe and correct
the problems and abuses of citizen life. It contains no real poetry,
but has the merit of popularising the doctrines of moral philosophy in
language somewhat lifeless, indeed, yet expressive, comparatively pure,
and free from the philological follies of the age. The book became
known only within a narrow circle. Theological criticism discovered in
it the heretical doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which indeed
Alamanno Rinuccini avowed without scruple in his funeral oration on
the poet, and the work was suppressed. In later years the author wrote
an unfinished history of the world, and a life of the grand seneschal
Nicola Acciaiuolo. He had been a pupil of Traversari and Marsuppini,
had held important offices of state, and after fulfilling several
embassies with honour, died at a ripe age in 1475.[22]
While this faint echo of Dante was addressing itself to the higher
classes, and proving how large was the retrogression from the beginning
of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, the popular
poetry, of which the religious side has been already noticed, began to
sound a natural strain in a lighter style. Burlesque, which belonged
to the character of the people, was allowed considerable play. The
sonnets that came forth from the barber’s shop of Domenico, called
‘Burchiello,’ in the very heart of old Florence, the Calimala, and
the market, enjoy a reputation that must be taken on trust. They were
chiefly experiments in the Florentine vulgar tongue—full of allusions
and trivialities; but occasionally they take a flight which may serve
to throw light on social and political matters, if all the writings
attributed to this man, who died at Rome in 1448, are really by him.
Another burlesque poet, Matteo Franco, whom we shall meet again,
belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s household, and used to hold with other
poets, particularly with Luigi Pulci, satirical and not always very
seemly sham-fights as a social pastime. But far more important for
this period was the rise of a new style which was destined to give to
the sixteenth century its special poetic character. Of the brothers
Pulci, scions of an old family somewhat reduced in circumstances, one,
Bernardo, tried his hand both as an original writer and a translator
of eclogues; the two others are among the cultivators of the poetry
of chivalry, which began its course as a branch of literature under
their auspices. Both Luca and Luigi belong to the immediate Medicean
circle. Luca Pulci, the eldest brother, born at Florence in 1431, is
commonly designated as the author of the poem on Lorenzo de’ Medici’s
tournament, which only retains a place in literature because it records
an event in the life of a celebrated man. But the assumption of this
authorship is by no means certain, for the first edition bears the name
of Luigi Pulci, whose literary fame it would not enhance. That Luca
was intimate with the young Medici is shown by the fact that at their
desire he began the poem ‘Ciriffo Calvaneo,’ which two generations
later was partially continued by Bernardo Giambullari for another
Lorenzo, grandson of the Magnificent. It is a poetical version of a
popular romance of chivalry, which in its Italian form bears the title
of the ‘Povero Avveduto,’ and relates the battles and adventures of the
time of King Louis d’Outre-mer of France, in 921-954.[23] Luca Pulci,
after some unlucky banking affairs at Rome and Florence, died in 1470,
in the debtors’ prison of the Stinche, and left to his brothers the
burden of a large family. He was, as we have said, the eldest of the
brothers; but it is probable that his ‘Ciriffo’ was preceded by Luigi’s
‘Morgante.’ We are led to assume this by the fact that Luigi chose a
far better subject.[24] His poem must have been written in and after
1460, and the cantos must have followed close upon each other. We learn
from the author himself that its original conception was due in part to
Lorenzo’s mother. In a letter addressed by him to Lorenzo from Fuligno,
December 4, 1470, he held out prospects of a new heroic poem.[25] That
a serious and pious woman like Madonna Lucrezia should be patroness
of a work more or less offensive in a religious point of view may be
matter of surprise. But after making allowance for the tendencies of
the time, which saw no harm in a mixture of religion and burlesque,
and, amid the strictest devotional practices, treated questions of
faith with incredible unceremoniousness, it must be remembered that
this lady was wont for the sake of genius to judge leniently many
things in literature and in life that were questionable. Thus she
remained a supporter of Angelo Poliziano after he had fallen into
disgrace with her daughter-in-law, and presented him with her religious
poems when the unfavourable rumours as to his faith and morals could be
no secret to her. But Luigi Pulci, the free-thinker and loose mocker,
who mixed up quotations from St. John’s Gospel with open expressions
of unbelief, found in her an active and zealous friend till her life’s
close.
The ‘Morgante Maggiore’ was the beginning of the romantic epopee,
which successfully laid hold of the cycle of Carolingian legends that
had been rendered accessible to the Italian nation by the ‘Chronicle’
of Turpin and the book of the ‘Reali di Francia.’ This choice of a
subject was all the happier because Florence attributed her restoration
to Charlemagne, as may be read carved in stone in the church of the
Apostles. The style of the work is original. Amid all its prodigies
the old knightly romance is serious and full of faith. Christianity
is always the foil to the chivalry which sprang from it, and which
is animated by its spirit. ‘Morgante’ (the story takes its name from
the giant who accomplishes his strange exploits) is not a satire on
chivalry, but it is so saturated with burlesque that it assumes a very
peculiar character. Neither is it a denial of Christianity, from which,
on the contrary, it derives here and there a deeply religious tone;
but it is Christianity struggling with scepticism and denial, so that
the faith of the Church and the people is driven into the background.
In this respect ‘Morgante’ is a true mirror of the time. With its
perfect command of the subject, bound down to no poetical rules or
precedents, it is a mixture of seriousness and irony, Christianity and
unbelief, Biblical texts and profane witticisms. It is full of the
most glaring contrasts of sound common-sense and folly, of elegance
and coarseness, of lofty intellectual flights and mere buffoonery.
There is in this poem more richness of imagination and spontaneity
than perhaps in any other work before the appearance of the ‘Orlando
Furioso;’ passages occur full of the deepest pathos, and showing a
feeling that belongs only to a real poet—passages too often followed
by a grotesqueness that tends to destroy their effect. The qualities
here united in very unequal degrees were developed and discriminated by
later poets. The importance of Luigi Pulci lies less in his poem, which
falls short of perfection in every way, than in the fact that his work
contains the germs of the romantic epopee in all its various branches.
In considering that the two parent poems of chivalry in Italian, the
‘Morgante’ and ‘Ciriffo,’ originated in the Medicean house, let it
be remembered how much this branch of poetry, up to the ‘Jerusalem
Delivered,’ with which it terminates, was connected with that Court
life which is so constantly represented in its varied productions.
From the household of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, who at
the highest pinnacle of their fame did not abandon the simplicity and
comfort of free citizen life, to the ceremonious Court of Alfonso of
Este, is certainly a very long step. Though the Pulci did not go so
far as to weave into their ottava rima a genealogy of their patrons
reaching back to demigods, still theirs was a kind of poetry destined
to enliven stately banquets.
Luigi Pulci’s intimacy with Lorenzo is shown by his oft-quoted letters,
which throw some side-lights on the various relations between patron
and client, and on the commissions, rather political than literary,
entrusted to the latter. The author of ‘Morgante’ was sincerely
attached to his young patron. When the latter was going to Southern
Italy in 1466, before the Neroni and Pitti conspiracy, Pulci wrote to
him from the convent of Alverina:[26] ‘Dost thou really mean to leave
me buried in the snow among these woods, lonely and comfortless, while
thou goest to Rome? Is it really my fate that, whatever thou mayest
think of me, as the climax of my ill-luck, I must never mount a horse
by thy side? Am I to come to that only when I am an old man? How often
have we talked about Rome, and now shall I not accompany thee?—can it
be because I should increase the expenses of the journey? Let not that
trouble thee; amid all my troubles I will yet do thee credit. A horse
is all I ask of thee; for I shall find so many friends yonder, and
will manage so well, that I will not be a burthen to thee, as perhaps
thou fearest. Truly thou art wrong to pass me by, not to mention that
it would hurt me more than anything in this world. Do not treat me as
if I were old iron, for I shall soon be well if thou carest for me.’
And Lorenzo really did care for him. Two years later Pulci wrote to
him from Pisa: ‘If thou dost not wish people to believe or know that
I am thy friend, and have some influence with thee, placard it on the
walls—at thine own expense, of course; as for some time past having
had no money to pay away, I have been paying with thy name instead.
Wherever I show myself people whisper, “That is Lorenzo’s great
friend.”’ That Pulci’s money matters were not in brilliant order we
have already seen. His brother’s business misfortunes brought him into
great difficulties. ‘Never yet have I made a plan,’ he wrote to Lorenzo
after Luca’s failure, ‘that Fate did not destroy in an hour what I had
taken a year to build up. I must have come into the world like hares
and other poor animals, doomed to be the prey of the huntsman. It is
my fate to love thee, and to be very little in thy company.’ That the
Medicean bank helped him out, but that the loans were very unimportant
and notorious besides, we learn from a petition dated from his estate
at Mugello, May 14, 1479, to the effect that Lorenzo would grant him
a longer delay for the repayment of a hundred gold florins. He was
evidently included in the measures which were rendered necessary by
the bad state of the Medicean finances at that time. Pulci, who among
others was very intimate with the Sanseverini, seems to have been
employed by Lorenzo especially at Naples, Bologna, and Milan, both
before and after this period. The last of the poet’s letters known to
us, written from Verona, August 28, 1484, shows him to us in the suite
of Roberto da Sanseverino and his son Fracasso, who were on their way
to Venice. He died in Padua shortly after, but nothing is known about
his death.[27]
Luigi Pulci was about seventeen years older than his princely friend
Lorenzo de’ Medici, while the man who entered into the closest and
most productive intellectual relations with Lorenzo was a few years
his junior. In 1464 a boy of ten came to Florence to seek maintenance
and instruction in the house of some not very wealthy relatives. He
had been rendered fatherless by one of those tragedies which bring
to light and stigmatise the wild passions and party hatred that in
the Tuscan communes of the fifteenth century mocked at justice, and
which, though so fearful in punishment, was so powerless for the
protection of the citizens. Benedetto Ambrogini of Montepulciano, a
jurist of a not undistinguished family, who had held civil and judicial
offices at home and abroad, had in the previous year applied to Piero
de’ Medici[28] for protection against the bloodthirsty enmity of
fellow-citizens and neighbours, to which he soon after fell a victim,
leaving unprovided a widow with five children, of whom the above-named
boy was the eldest.[29] Angelo, who took from his birthplace the
name of Poliziano, early became acquainted with the serious side of
life; for although as a child he showed brilliant talents and made
rapid progress, he was in danger of being compelled to seek a living
as assistant in a shop, and of renouncing the studies to which he
was ardently devoted. At fifteen he expressed this tormenting dread
in a Latin poem addressed to the young but celebrated philologer,
Bartolommeo Fonte, who at that time assisted him with guidance and
encouragement.[30] In the year 1469-70 he studied at the Florentine
university, and at seventeen he wrote Greek epigrams. He had the
privilege of listening to the men who kept alive the traditions of
the university’s best days, Argyropulos and Andronikos Kallistos,
Landino and Ficino. That polite literature attracted him more than
philosophical lectures he declares himself, saying that he had done
with philosophy as dogs with the Nile: one drink, and then away!
‘Nature and youth drew me to Homer, and with all the zeal and industry
of which I was capable I set myself to translate him into Latin verse.’
In one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of his Latin poems,
the distichs addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici in commendation of his
master Kallistos, he sets forth how the latter was reading the Trojan
war in Argive verse. In this poem he alludes to the time when he hopes
to sing the deeds of Lorenzo, then limited to youthful exercises,
and his adroit conduct in the matter of the Pitti conspiracy, which
Poliziano commemorates in a later elegy.[31]
It must have been about 1470 that he began to translate the ‘Iliad.’
Carlo Marsuppini had translated the first book; Angelo began with the
second. It was a great undertaking for a young man. A Latin Homer had
been the _in votis_ up to that time; and now the work was begun by
one who had but just entered the world and was still unknown, but who
displayed an ease and grace of diction, melodiousness and richness
of versification, that caused general surprise. This work and the
admiration it excited opened the Medicean house to the young poet. It
was probably Ficino who recommended the ‘Homeric youth’ to Lorenzo.
The young head of the house, who had only become independent the year
before, took him up; and whatever changes outward and inward occurred
in Lorenzo’s life, the man who owed his brilliant endowments to
Heaven, and their early and happy recognition to him kept faithful;
he stood beside his patron’s death-bed and ere long followed him to
the tomb. The dedication of the second book contains praises of the
generous protector—praises lavish according to custom, but not untrue
if the custom and the glory with which the young ruler of Florence
had surrounded himself be taken into consideration.[32] A troop of
panegyrists followed, Marsilio Ficino at their head. There was no lack
of exaggeration. The head of the Platonists raised a flattering doubt
whether any one could discover if the Greek or the Latin text of this
Iliad was the original; another asked who had the greatest merit, he
who had given occasion for the undertaking, or he who had accomplished
it. Meanwhile the translator went on with his work; and when, two years
after the completion of the second book, he presented the third to his
patron, he expressed a hope that after finishing the whole he might
begin an epic poem on a subject taken from Lorenzo’s own life, the
war of Volterra. The ‘Iliad’ was never finished, the epic was never
written. Lorenzo, who knew the world much better than did Angelo,
probably objected to the glorification of an expedition of questionable
prowess and of unquestionable barbarity. In like manner, when his son
Leo was raised to the cardinalate, he disapproved of the eulogium which
Poliziano addressed to the Pope. When Poliziano described the most
important and dramatic event of his patron’s life, the conspiracy of
the Pazzi, it was in prose.
The man who had received the young poet into his house and enabled
him to give all his time to study was doubtless also the cause of
his sending a specimen of his work to Cardinal Ammanati, who kept up
such intimate relations with the Medici. Poliziano’s address to this
Prince of the Church[33] was modest. He wrote that he was doing like
the eagle, which carries its young as soon as they are out of the
shell into the light of the rising sun, that their eyes may become
accustomed to its splendour. The cardinal, in whom survived the
humanistic tradition of the days of Pius II., returns him phrase for
phrase without offending against truth. The verses were wonderfully
harmonious for so young a writer; the enterprise was useful as an
introduction to great things. But if Homer could be asked whether he
wished to be turned into Latin, he feared that the old poet, feeling
the impossibility of a perfect rendering, would prefer to remain a
citizen of Kolophon rather than become a Florentine, and would consider
the pallium a more suitable vesture than the toga. In 1473, our poet
had addressed some verses full of sonorous but very ordinary flattery
to the spendthrift Cardinal of San Sisto, Pietro Riario, on the
occasion of his appointment to the archbishopric of Florence. Instead
of the expected present, he was put off with fine speeches, and, after
the fashion of poor poets, complained bitterly.[34]
About this time, also, he was rewarded with nothing but words by
another cardinal, a very different man from Riario. He must have said
to himself that the days of Nicholas V. were over, although Sixtus IV.
hardly yielded to him in his zeal for collecting books. He never seems
to have become acquainted with the Pope, and the disagreement which
gradually arose between the latter and Poliziano’s protector deprived
him of all opportunity of doing so. Four books of the translation
of Homer are in existence;[35] whether the work proceeded further
is uncertain. It was twice interrupted, and the second interruption
decided its fate. Poliziano may, in the progress of his studies, have
come round to the views of the Cardinal of Pavia, and have doubted
whether a Latinity which strove after the elegance of the Augustan age
was suited to the old Greek epic.
The first short interruption was a journey to Mantua with Cardinal
Francesco da Gonzaga, in August 1472. The intimate relations between
the Gonzaga and the Medici, which corresponded to those between the
Marquis Lodovico and the city of Florence, have been already spoken
of. Francesco took the youthful poet with him from the Medici house.
Poliziano, then aged eighteen, had already given proof of uncommon
talent on the occasion of a visit to his native city, where his
arrival was celebrated with brilliant festivities. Here originated
the drama of ‘Orpheus,’ which made an epoch in literature, less by
its actual merit than as the first example of a profane drama in the
Italian tongue. Mysteries had long been popular; the modern drama,
even when treating modern historical subjects, still more when, as in
the works of Alberti and Gregorio Correr, it was directly modelled on
the antique, had always adhered to the Latin language. In a letter to
one of the cardinal’s suite, Messer Carlo Canale (who was, it may be
mentioned, the second or third husband of the mother of Cesare and
Lucrezia Borgia), the author states that ‘Orpheus’ was composed in two
days, amid constant noisy distractions, and that it was written in the
vulgar tongue in order to be more intelligible to the hearers—‘an
imperfect work, fitted to bring its father shame rather than honour,
and worthy of the fate prepared by the Lacedæmonians for children born
weakly or crippled.’ This ‘favola’ is not a drama; it is a succession
of lyrical pieces, with an ode inserted in Latin Sapphics, in praise
of the cardinal, which Baccio Ugolini, another member of the Medicean
circle and of Landino’s school, sang to the lyre in the character of
‘Orpheus.’[36]
The Mantuan journey was a short episode. Some smaller Latin poems,
including the beautiful and pathetic elegy on the death of Albiera
degli Albizzi, the charming bride of Sigismondo della Stufa, in 1473,
kept Poliziano in the same mood, and cannot fairly be considered as
interruptions to his Homeric work. A longer interruption was caused by
Giuliano de’ Medici’s tournament, which was a challenge to Angelo to
write the fairest flower in his poetic garland.[37] He himself alludes
to this interruption in the seventh stanza of the ‘Giostra:’
E se qual fu la fama, il ver rimbomba,
Che d’Hecuba la figlia, o sacro Achille,
Poi che ‘l corpo lasciasti entro la tomba,
T’accenda ancor d’amorose faville,
Lascia un poco tacer tua maggior tromba,
Ch’io fo squillar per l’italice ville.
E tempra tu la cetra a’ nuovi carmi,
Mentr’io canto l’amor di Giulio e l’armi.
The subject in itself is poor. The author must have felt this, even
had he not been warned by Luca Pulci’s verses on the tournament of
Lorenzo. The ‘Stanzas’—the title by which Poliziano’s poem is best
known—are counted among the gems of Italian literature. They were the
first of the kind expressing real melody without artificiality, being
remarkable for their artistic flow and carefulness of composition. But
for a few harsh and ignoble expressions, they have never since been
surpassed in point of form, though Ariosto may have more variety and
freedom of movement, and Tasso more harmony. But how do these beautiful
stanzas of ottava rima treat their subject? In the first book it is
left altogether out of sight. The tournament gives place to mythology,
the Piazza Sta. Croce to the gardens and palace of Venus. All the
flowers and trees of the most highly-favoured climates, all animals of
the chase and the peaceful park, the whole of Olympus, are introduced;
reminiscences of all the classic poets from Lucretius to Claudian, even
to the Christian singers, wanderings of an exuberant fancy through the
realms of beauty and love,—all these combine and disport themselves in
such perfect freedom, that it matters not whether they have anything
to do with the subject or not. At the beginning of the second book
the poet seems at last to bethink himself that he intended to sing
the praises of a Medici. He therefore makes Cupid relate to Venus the
glories of the Tuscan race, and begins with the preparations for great
deeds which such vast mythological machinery demands. The youth is
awakened and armed, but not without assistance from Olympus. The poem
breaks off abruptly, and in its closing stanzas there gleams a sad
presentiment of the cruel fate which was so soon to put an end to a
life apparently destined to glory and happiness, and with it to a work
already highly valued as a fragment, and which gave the tone to the
poetry of the age just beginning. Who shall say whether it was not well
for the poem that it remained a fragment? for the disproportion between
the unimportance of the subject and the pomp of the treatment might
have come out too strikingly had it been continued. This poem, intended
to celebrate the acts of Giuliano, is addressed to his brother. The
dedicatory stanza speaks of Lorenzo without circumlocution as the ruler
of Florence:
High-born Lorenzo, laurel[38] in whose shade
Thy Florence rests nor fears the lowering storm,
Nor threatening signs in heaven’s high front displayed,
Nor Jove’s dread anger in its fiercest form;
O to the trembling Muse afford thine aid—
The Muse that courts thee timorous and forlorn,
Lives in the shadow of thy prosperous tree,
And bounds her every fond desire to thee.[39]
Angelo Poliziano continued to write Latin verses. His epigrams, odes,
and elegies are valuable both as conveying a knowledge of the persons
and tendencies of a memorable period, and as proofs of a versatility
and classical spirit to be found in none of his contemporaries and in
few subsequent writers. The philologers of the fifteenth century wrote
Latin verses with ease; but the only poet among them is Poliziano.
His works abound in imitations of all kinds, as do those of the later
Roman poets. But Poliziano feels, thinks, and writes like a Roman; if
not like a poet of the Augustan age, at least like one of the time
of Statius, whom he resembles in more ways than one, having written
‘Sylvæ’ like him. He is more classical than some of those who are
included in the ranks of the poets of antiquity.
A peculiar grace, fulness of thought, and great variety, give to his
poems a charm not often found in modern Latin verses, which seldom
display a living individuality. To descriptions of modern life and
modern localities, whose very names seem unsuitable to a classic
sphere, he can give a native classical colouring, without any apparent
effort, yet with the most consummate art. Most remarkable among his
writings, by its grace and naturalness and an intermingling of joy and
sadness, is the elegy on a bunch of violets given him by a beloved
hand; a poem which, in the sixteenth century and in our own, has been
an object of study to the choice spirits who wish to acquire pure
classic inspiration in a modern form.[40] Poliziano here challenges a
comparison with Lorenzo de’ Medici, who treated the same subject in
two of his loveliest sonnets. The ‘Sylvæ,’ poems of Angelo’s later
years, from 1482 to 1486, added to his reputation, though in happy
turns of thought and warmth of feeling they are inferior to many of
his smaller pieces. They are four poems in heroic metre, prolusions
to his philological lectures at the Florence University, to a chair
in which he was appointed on December 23, 1485, the degree of Doctor
of Common Law being conferred on him by Archbishop Rinaldo Orsini at
his palace, in the presence of Lorenzo’s son Piero.[41] The first of
these poems,[42] ‘Manto’ (the name of the Theban prophetess, which was
assumed by the Italian city founded by her son), treats of Virgil, his
works, his place in literature, his importance for all time.
As the first of the ‘Sylvæ’ was intended as an introduction to Virgil’s
‘Bucolics,’ so the second, ‘Rusticus,’ was to serve the same purpose
for the ‘Georgics,’ and for the works and times of Hesiod. The third,
‘Ambra,’ took its name from the Medicean Poggio a Cajano, but the name
has little connection with the poem, which refers to localities only
at its close, and is devoted to an analysis of Homeric plays regarded
from a pseudo-Herodotean and pseudo-Plutarchian point of view. The last
and longest of the ‘Sylvæ,’ bearing the strange title of ‘Nutricia:
the Reward of the Nursing-mother,’ describes the origin, progress, and
influence of the poetry and the poetics of classical times, passes
on to the author of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ and ends by singing the
praises of Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors. The abundance and
versatility of Lorenzo’s talents were perhaps never more truly and
happily expressed than in the closing verses of this poem; and when the
praises of living and powerful men appear in such a setting as this, we
may accept them without complaining. After describing his labours in
the field of sentimental poetry, to which belong the greater part of
Lorenzo’s earlier poems, his other poetical productions and his whole
intellectual character are thus spoken of:—
Non vacat argutosque sales, Satyraque bibaces
Descriptos memorare senes, non carmina festis
Excipienda choris, querulasve animantia chordas.
Idem etiam tacitæ referens pastoria vitæ
Otia, et urbanos thyrso extimulante labores,
Mox fugis in cœlum, non seu per lubrica nisus
Extremamque boni gaudes contingere metam.
Quodque alii studiumque vocant, durumque laborem,
Hic tibi ludus erit, fessus civilibus actis,
Huc is emeritas acuens ad carmina vires.
Felix ingenio, felix cui pectore tantas
Instaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaci
Alternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas.
Poliziano wrote the ‘Nutricia’ in October 1486, at the villa of
Fiesole. In the following verses he prophesied of the times to come and
the future greatness of his pupil, Piero, if the latter, fulfilling
the bright promise of his youth, should walk in the footsteps of his
father:—
It jam pene prior, sic, ô sic pergat, et ipsum
Me superet majore gradu, longeque relinquat
Protinus, et dulci potius plaudatur alumno,
Bisque mei victor illo celebrentur honores.
A merciful fate spared the poet from witnessing the failure of hopes
the fulfilment of which had already become very doubtful when he was
prematurely called away. Anyone versed in the history of those days who
may now climb the pleasant heights of Fiesole, which new buildings
and roads have altered but not transformed, will think with interest
of Angelo’s abode here in the country-house of the Medici, which he
describes in a letter to Marsilio Ficino. ‘If the summer heat oppress
thee at Careggi, the cooler air of Fiesole will be pleasant to thee.
We have plenty of water between the slopes of the hill, and while
gentle winds constantly refresh us, the glare of the sun troubles us
little. During the ascent to the villa it appears enclosed in trees,
but the spot, when reached, commands an extensive view as far as the
town. The neighbourhood is thickly inhabited, yet I find here the quiet
which suits me. But I will tempt thee with yet another attraction.
Pico sometimes wanders beyond the limits of his own grounds, breaks
in unexpectedly upon my solitude, and carries me away from my shady
gardens to his evening meal. You know how things are there; no
superfluities, but everything as it should be, and with the spice of
his conversation. But thou must be my guest; with me thou shalt find
as good a table and perhaps better wine, for Pico and I are rivals in
respect to wine.’[43]
The ‘Sylvæ’ are dedicated to three young men belonging to the
Medicean circle and one who stood outside it. Lorenzo—the son of
Pier Francesco de’ Medici, grandson of Cosimo’s brother—whose name
stands at the beginning of ‘Manto,’ was at that time on friendly
terms with the members of the elder branch of his race. He afterwards
became estranged from them; a change the effects of which did not
cease when his posterity had entered upon the dominion of Florence,
and the last remaining descendant of Cosimo’s line sat on the throne
of France. Gifted with poetical talents, and no unworthy rival of
his more famous relatives, the younger Lorenzo was a friend of
Poliziano’s, who dedicated to him among other things a description
of the _villeggiatura_ at Poggio a Cajano. ‘Rusticus’ was intended
for Jacopo Salviati, who, when these verses were written, in 1483,
had been designated as Lorenzo’s son-in-law; so that Poliziano, who
had first sung the praises of the unlucky Archbishop of Pisa and then
openly insulted him with extravagant accusations, passed lightly over
the troublesome past. ‘Ambra’ was sent to Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of
Giovanni, and for a time a pupil, together with Piero de’ Medici, of
our poet, who in one of his letters praised his intellectual gifts and
knowledge of classical literature. He was a faithful adherent of his
relatives, not only in prosperity but also in adversity, which fell on
him even more heavily than on them. In the days of Savonarola he was
accused of taking part in a conspiracy in favour of the exiles, and,
with Niccolò Ridolfi, the father of Lorenzo’s son-in-law, suffered on
the scaffold in 1497, at the age of thirty-two, a victim to mob-law.
The last of these poems, ‘Nutricia,’ was dedicated, in 1491, several
years after its composition, to the Cardinal of Sant’Anastasia, Antonio
Pallavicino Gentile of Genoa, who had great influence in state affairs
under Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., and took much interest in
literature and literary men. At the close of the dedication Poliziano
gratefully alludes to the cardinal’s efforts to further his cause with
the Pope.
As we have said, the ‘Sylvæ’ were prolegomena to lectures on
literature. To a cycle of another kind, to lectures given at Florence
in 1483 on the Aristotelian philosophy, Poliziano composed a prose
introduction, probably the strangest ever heard at any university.[44]
The very title—‘Lamia’ (the Witch)—sounds strange, and we almost
suspect a joke, but find that the author is in earnest. The beginning
of this address to his students is highly characteristic. ‘Have you
ever heard tell of witches? When I was a little boy my grandmother
used to tell me about the witches in the neighbouring wood, who eat up
naughty children. Fancy what an image of terror a witch was to me in
those days! In the neighbourhood of my little villa at Fiesole there is
a little brook, hidden by the shadow of the hill-side, and the women of
the place who go there to draw water say that it is a place of meeting
for the witches. But what is a witch? Plutarch of Chæronea, who was
as grave as he was learned, relates that the witches have artificial
eyes which they can put in and take out at their pleasure, just as
weak-sighted old people do with their spectacles, which they stick on
their noses when they want to look carefully at something and then put
back into the case; or as others do with their false teeth, which they
lay aside with their clothes when they go to bed;—not to mention your
helpmeets, ye married men, with their bought braids and curls. If a
witch desires to take a walk she puts in her eyes, and wanders through
streets and alleys, squares and markets, churches and offices, taverns
and baths, looks at everything, thrusts her nose into everything,
meddles with everything, let a man do what he may. She has the eyes
of an owl and a spy, like the old maid in Plautus. She can find out a
grain of sand, and bury herself in the narrowest cranny. When she gets
home, as soon as she reaches the threshold, she takes out her eyes and
puts them in her pocket. Out of doors she has eyes like a lynx, at home
she is blind. You ask what she does then? She sits spinning yarn, and
humming a little song from time to time. Have you Florentines never
known such witches, who know nothing of their own business, but are
always busy about other people’s? No? Yet there are many of them in all
cities, even here in yours. But they go about in disguise—you take
them for men and women, but they are witches. Once it befell that some
of them, happening to see me, stood still, and looked at me curiously,
as those desirous to buy are wont to do. They whispered to each other,
with uncouth gestures, “That is Poliziano—that is the rhymester who
has suddenly dressed himself up as a philosopher,” and then they
hurried away like wasps robbed of their sting. What they meant by their
discourse is not clear to me; whether it displeases them that a man
should be a philosopher, which, however, I am not, or that I venture
to play the philosopher without having the material to do so. Let us
now see what sort of a creature it is that men call a philosopher. You
will soon perceive that I do not belong to the species. I say this not
because I think that you believe it, but that no one may take it into
his head to believe it. Not that I should be ashamed of the name, if it
agreed with the facts, but because I prefer to keep free from titles
which are not due to me:
Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olim
Grex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum.
This therefore is the first point. The second is, whether the condition
of a philosopher is bad. When I have proved the contrary I will speak
to you briefly of myself and the subject of my lectures.’ After this
introduction follows a sketch of the course of Grecian philosophy, and
an exposition of the work of the later schools of thought.
The man who raised to such a height the poetry of his native tongue,
and the idiom from which it sprang, was deeply interested in popular
poetry. He went hand in hand with his patron and friend in efforts
to bring back language and literature ‘from the constraint of false
rules to truth and nature.’ Both found the popular minstrelsy in the
peculiar shape it retains to the present day, and differing completely
in tone from the songs of other lands. In the _rispetti_ the ottava
rima predominates, treated freely as it was in Boccaccio’s days for
epic poetry. Even the sentimental pieces are epigrammatically pointed,
and full of antitheses, which give an impression of artificiality and
imitation of the antique, more especially in southern Tuscany and the
Roman district. They are not narratives, nor do they develope a state
of mind, but they vividly describe momentary emotion. Without making
up a whole history with such little songs, like Pulci and Lorenzo
de’ Medici, Poliziano composed a series of _rispetti_ describing joy
and sorrow, accepted and especially despised love. They are partly
in dialogue, frequently in a natural easy style, which reminds us of
improvisations, more tender in expression, more flexible in diction
than the two writers above mentioned, who not unfrequently betray that
they are mocking at their own work. Other similar songs, but without
internal connection, display a versatility resulting naturally from
the way in which they originated. These fugitive poems grew within the
Medicean circle, products of social intercourse in the villa and in
evening walks in the garden; or, like the dance-songs (_ballate_), of
which Poliziano wrote a great number, they were sung with music in the
public squares. In short, they belonged to the life of the people who
had furnished models for the rhymes composed for them by the poets of
quality, with greater refinement, and not always without a secondary
object in view.
Poliziano’s versatility is wonderfully shown in the labours he
undertook in the field of classical philology while thus wandering
through the woods of poetry. He was one of the first to establish
the true principles of textual criticism; at the request of Innocent
VIII. he translated Herodian’s Roman history into Latin,[45] and made
the writings of Hippocrates and Galen accessible to those of his
countrymen who were not acquainted with Greek. On the latter occasion
he claimed the assistance of the learned doctor Pietro Leoni, who
was then lecturing in Padua, to secure the correct rendering of the
medical terms.[46] The most talented poet of the fifteenth century
was also the philologer who, while equal to others in knowledge of
antiquity, represents its spirit with more truth and originality. In
trying to rival the classical letter-writers, Poliziano followed a
fashion that had influenced statesmen and men of learning from Petrarca
downwards. He left a mass of epistolary testimony to the character
of his age, the value of which must not be lightly estimated, though
it may not always answer the expectations raised by the names. Like
Ficino and others, Poliziano had arranged his Latin correspondence for
publication, and wrote a dedication to Piero de’ Medici, when death
cut short his career.[47] More interesting to us than the generality
of these letters, which nevertheless contain valuable matter, are his
confidential letters in the vulgar tongue, not meant for publication.
Even this highly gifted man was not free from the bad habit of the
learned men of the fifteenth century—the intermixture of Latin phrases
with Italian when the subject gave no occasion for it.