From Death the Sin-born's incest with his mother,

In rank oppression in its rudest shape, The faction Chief is but the Sultan's brother,

And the worst despot's far less human ape:

Florence! when this lone spirit, which so long

Yearn'd, as the captive toiling at escape, To fly back to thee in despite of wrong, 130 An exile, saddest of all prisoners,

Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong,

Seas, mountains, and the horizon's verge for bars,

Which shut him from the sole small spot of earth

Where whatsoe'er his fate - he still were hers,

His country's, and might die where he had

birth

Florence! when this lone spirit shall return

To kindred spirits, thou wilt feel my

worth,

And seek to honour with an empty urn

140

The ashes thou shalt ne'er obtain
Alas!
'What have I done to thee, my people?'
Stern

Are all thy dealings, but in this they pass
The limits of man's common malice, for
All that a citizen could be I was;
Raised by thy will, all thine in peace or war,
And for this thou hast warr'd with me.
"T is done:

I may not overleap the eternal bar
Built up between us, and will die alone,

Beholding with the dark eye of a seer The evil days to gifted souls foreshown, Foretelling them to those who will not hear,

151

As in the old time, till the hour be come When Truth shall strike their eyes through many a tear,

And make them own the Prophet in his tomb.

THE MORGANTE MAGGIORE

OF PULCI

ADVERTISEMENT

The Morgante Maggiore, of the first canto of which this translation is offered, divides with the Orlando Innamorato the honour of having formed and suggested the style and story of Ariosto. The great defects of Boiardo were his treating too seriously the narratives of chivalry, and his harsh style. Ariosto, in his continuation, by a judicious mixture of the gaiety of Pulci, has avoided the one; and Berni, in his reformation of Boiardo's poem, has corrected the other. Pulci may be considered as the precursor and model of Berni altogether, as he has partly been to Ariosto, however inferior to both his copyists. He is no less the founder of a new style of poetry very lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft. The serious poems on Roncesvalles in the same language, and more particularly the excellent one of Mr. Merivale, are to be traced to the same source. It has never yet been decided entirely whether Pulci's intention was or was not to deride the religion which is one of his favourite topics. It appears to me, that such an intention would have been no less hazardous to the poet than to the priest, particularly in that age and country; and the permission to publish the poem, and its reception among the classics of Italy, prove that it neither was nor is so interpreted. That he intended to ridicule the monastic life, and suffered his imagination to play with the simple dulness of his converted giant, seems evident enough; but surely it were as unjust to accuse him of irreligion on this account, as to denounce Fielding for his Parson Adams, Barnabas, Thwackum, Supple, and the Ordinary in Jonathan Wild, or Scott, for the exquisite use of his Covenanters in the Tales of my Landlord.

In the following translation I have used the liberty of the original with the proper names; as Pulci uses Gan, Ganellon, or Ganellone; Carlo, Carlomagno, or Carlomano; Rondel, or Rondello, etc., as it suits his convenience; so has the translator. In other respects the version is faithful to the best of the translator's ability in combining his interpretation of the one language with the not very easy task of reducing it to the same versification in the other. The reader, on comparing it with the original, is requested to remember that the antiquated language of Pulci, however pure, is not easy to the generality of Italians themselves, from its great mixture of Tuscan proverbs; and he

may therefore be more indulgent to the present attempt. How far the translator has succeeded, and whether or no he shall continue the work, are questions which the public will decide. He was induced to make the experiment partly by his love for, and partial intercourse with, the Italian language, of which it is so easy to acquire a slight knowledge, and with which it is so nearly impossible for a foreigner to become accurately conversant. The Italian language is like a capricious beauty, who accords her smiles to all, her favours to few, and sometimes least to those who have courted her longest. The translator wished also to present in an English dress a part at least of a poem never yet rendered into a northern language; at the same time that it has been the original of some of the most celebrated productions on this side of the Alps, as well as of those recent experiments in poetry in England which have been already mentioned.

find