Yes, Sister of my Sovereign! for thy sake
I weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates-but I can not detest ;'
Thou pitiest not-but I can not forsake.

V.

Look on a love which knows not to despair,2
But all unquench'd is still my better part,
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart,
As dwells the gather'd lightning in its cloud,
Encompass'd with its dark and rolling shroud,
Till struck,-forth flies the all-ethereal dart!
And thus at the collision of thy name
The vivid thought still flashes through my frame,
And for a moment all things as they were
Flit by me-they are gone-I am the same.
And yet my love without ambition grew;
I knew thy state, my station, and I knew
A Princess was no love-mate for a bard;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it was
Sufficient to itself, its own reward;
And if my eyes reveal'd it, they, alas!
Were punish'd by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
Worshipp'd at holy distance, and around
Hallow'd and meekly kiss'd the saintly ground;
Not for thou wert a princess, but that Love
Had robed thee with a glory, and array'd
Thy lineaments in beauty that dismay'd—
Oh! not dismay'd-but awed, like One above!
And in that sweet severity there was
A something which all softness did surpass-
I know not how-thy genius master'd mine-
My star stood still before thee:-if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
But thou art dearest still, and I should be

Fit for this cell, which wrongs me--but for thee.
The very love which lock'd me to my chain
Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigor to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain."

VI.

It is no marvel-from my very birth

My soul was drunk with love,-which did pervade And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;

Of objects all inanimate I made

Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,

Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering; and the Wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in wo,
And that the only lesson was a blow ;-
And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again
The visions which arise without a sleep.
And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day

I found the thing I sought-and that was thee;
And then I lost my being all to be
Absorb'd in thine-the world was pass'd away-
Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!

VII.

I loved all Solitude-but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, save
The maniac and his tyrant ;-had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave,
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore;
The world is all before him-mine is here,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though he perish, he may lift his eye
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky-
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof.

VIII.

Yet do I feel at times my mind decline,"
But with a sense of its decay:-I see
Unwonted lights along my prison shine,
And a strange demon, who is vexing me
With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below
The feeling of the healthful and the free;
But much to One, who long hath suffer'd so,
Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place,
And all that may be borne, or can debase.
I thought mine enemies had been but Man,
But Spirits may be leagued with them-all Earth
Abandons-Heaven forgets me ;-in the dearth
Of such defence the Powers of Evil can,
It may be, tempt me further, and prevail
Against the outworn creature they assail.

3 [Tasso's profound and unconquerable love for Leonora, sustaining itself without hope throughout years of darkness and solitude, breathes a moral dignity over all his sentiments, and we feel the strength and power of his noble spirit in the un-upbraiding devotedness of his passion.-WILSON.]

4 ["My mind like theirs adapted to its grave."-MS.]

[" Nor do I lament," wrote Tasso, shortly after his confinement, "that my heart is deluged with almost constant misery, that my head is always heavy and often painful, that my sight and hearing are much impaired, and that all my frame is become spare and meager; but, passing all this with a short sigh, what I would bewail is the infirmity of my mind. My mind sleeps, not thinks; my fancy is chill, and forms no pictures; my negligent senses will no longer furnish the images of things; my hand is sluggish in writing, and my pen seems as if it shrunk from the office. I feel as if I were chained in all my operations, and as if I were overcome by an unwonted numbness and oppressive stupor." Opere, t. viii. p. 258.]

When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay ;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,

The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning

Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning,
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,

To him appears renewal of his breath,

And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;-
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirits soaring-albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him--and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round-and shadows busy,
At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness,-and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.

II.

There is no hope for nations!-Search the page
Of many thousand years-the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us naught or little still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For 'tis our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order-they must go
[slaughter.
Even where their driver goads them, though to
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes,

A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the real ;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme!-Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
Save the few spirits, who, despite of all,
And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,
And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd,
Gushing from Freedom's fountains-when the crowd,
Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud,
on each other to obtain

And trample

The cup which brings oblivion of a chain
Heavy and sore,-in which long yoked they plough'd
The sand, or if there sprung the yellow grain,
Twas not for them, their necks were too much bow'd,
And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain:-
Yes! the few spirits-who, despite of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With a few summers, and again put forth

Cities and generations-fair, when free-
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!
III.

Glory and Empire! once upon these towers
With Freedom-godlike Triad! how ye sate!
The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench, her spirit-in her fate
All were enwrapp'd: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled-with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship;-even her crimes
Were of the softer order-born of Love,

She drank no blood, nor fatten'd on the dead,
But gladden'd where her harmless conquests spread;
For these restored the Cross, that from above
Hallow'd her sheltering banners, which incessant
Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,
Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles;
Yet she but shares with them a common wo,
And call'd the "kingdom" of a conquering foe,-
But knows what all-aud, most of all, we know—
With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!

IV.

The name of Commonwealth is pass'd and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time,
For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeath'd-a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand
Full of the magic of exploded science-
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic!-She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,
May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
Rights cheaply earn'd with blood.--Still, still, forever
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces, and then faltering :-better be
Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopyla,
Than stagnate in our marsh,-or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee!

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Morgante Maggiore, of the first canto of which this translation is offered, divides with the Orlando Innamorato the honor of having formed and suggested the style and story of Ariosto. The great defects of Boiardo were his treating too seriously the

[The following translation was executed at Ravenna in February, 1820, and first saw the light in the pages of the unfortunate journal called "The Liberal." The merit of it, as Lord Byron over and over states in his letters, consists in the wonderful verbum pro verbo closeness of the version. It was, in fact, an exercise of skill in this art, and cannot be fairly estimated, without continuous reference to the original Italian, which the reader will therefore now find placed opposite to the text. Those who want full information, and clear philosophical views, as to the origin of the Romantic Poetry of the Italians, will do well to read at length an article on that subject, from the pen of the late Ugo Foscolo, in the forty-second number of the Quarterly Review. We extract from it the passage in which that learned writer applies himself more particularly to the Morgante of Pulci. After showing that all the poets of this class adopted as the groundwork of their fictions, the old wild materials which had for ages formed the stock in trade of the professed story-tellers,-in those days a class of persons holding the same place in Christendom, and more especially in Italy, which their brothers still maintain all over the East,-Foscolo thus proceeds :

"The customary forms of the narrative all find a place in romantic poetry such are the sententious reflections suggested by the matters which he has just related, or arising in anticipation of those which he is about to relate, and which the story-teller always opens when he resumes his recitations: his defence of his own merits against the attacks of rivals in trade; and his formal leave-taking when he parts from his audience, and invites them to meet him again on the morrow. This method of winding up each portion of the poem is a favorite among the romantic poets; who constantly finish their cantos with a distich, of which the words may vary, but the sense is uniform.

All'altro canto ve farò sentire,

Se all' altro canto mi verrete a udire.'- Ariosto.

Or at the end of another canto, according to Harrington's translation,—
I now cut off abruptly here my rhyme,
And keep my tale unto another time.'

"The forms and materials of these popular stories were adopted by writers of a superior class, who considered the vulgar tales of their predecessors as blocks of marble finely tinted and variegated by the hand of nature, but which might afford a masterpiece, when tastefully worked and polished. The romantic poets treated the traditionary fictions Just as Dante did the legends invented by the monks to maintain their mastery over weak minds. He formed them into a poem, which became the admiration of every age and nation; but Dante and Petrarca were poets, who, though universally celebrated, were not universally understood. The learned found employment in writing comments upon their poems; but the nation, without even excepting the higher ranks, knew them only by name. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, a few obscure authors began to write romances in prose and in rhymne, taking for their subject the wars of Charlemagne and Orlando, or sometimes the adventures of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These works were so pleasing, that they were rapidly multiplied: but the bards of romance cared little about style or versification,-they sought for adventures, and enchantments, and miracles. We here obtain at least a partial explanation of the rapid decline of Italian poetry, and the amazing corruption of the Italian language, which took place immediately after the death of Petrarch, and which proceeded from bad to worse until the era of Lorenzo de' Medici.

"It was then that Pulei composed his Morgante for the amusement of Madonna Lucrezia, the mother of Lorenzo; and he used to recite it at table to Ficino, and Politian, and Lorenzo, and the other illustrious characters who then flourished at Florence: yet Pulci adhered strictly to the original plan of the popular story-tellers; and if his successors have embellished them so that they can scarcely be recognised, it is certain that in no other poem can they be found so genuine and native as in the Morgante. Pulci accommodated himself, though sportively, to the genius of his age; classical taste and sound criticism began to prevail, and great endeavors were making by the learned to separate historical truth from the chaos of fable and tradition so that, though Pulci introduced the most extravagant fables, he affected to complain of the errors of his predecessors. I grieve,' he said, for my emperor Charlemagne: for I see that his history has been badly written and worse understood.'

E del mio Carlo imperador m'increbbe;
E' stata questa istoria, a quel ch' io veggio,
Di Carlo, male intesa e scritta peggio.'

"And whilst he quotes the great historian Leonardo Aretino with respect, he professes to believe the authority of the holy Archbishop Turpin, who is also one of the heroes of the poem. In another passage, where he imitates the apologies of the story-tellers, he makes a neat allusion to the taste of his audience, I know,' he says, that I must proceed straightforward, and not tell a single lie in the course of my tale. This is not a story of mere in

narratives of chivalry, and his harsh style. Ariosto, in his continuation, by a judicious mixture of the gayety 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

vention and if I go one step out of the right road, one chastises, another criticises, a third scolds-they try to drive me mad-but in fact they are cot of their senses."

"Pulci's versification is remarkably fluent. Yet he is deficient in mek: fv his language is pure, and his expressions flow naturally; but his phrases are abrupt and unconnected, and he frequendy writes ungrammatically. vigor degenerates into harshness; and his love of brevity prevents the de velopment of his poetical imagery. He bears all the marks of rude genrus he was capable of delicate pleasantry, yet his smiles are usually batter severe. His humor never arises from points, but from unexpected situations strongly contrasted. The Emperor Charlemagne sentences King Mara, s of Spain to be hanged for high treason; and Archbishop Turpis kladly offers his services on the occasion.

E' disse: Io vo', Marsilio, che tu muoja
Dove tu ordinasti il tradimento.
Disse Turpino: lo voglio fare il boja.
Carlo rispose: Ed io son ben contento
Che sia trattato di questi due cani
L'opera santa con le sante mani.'

"Here we have an emperor superintending the execution of a king, who is hanged in the presence of a vast multitude, all of whom are greatly eder fied at beholding an archbishop officisting in the character of a fresher of the law. Before this adventure took place, Caradoro had despatched an abassador to the emperor, complaining of the shameful conduct of a worked Paladin, who had seduced the princess his daughter. The orator does tol present himself with modern diplomatic courtesy.

Macon t'abbatta come traditore,
O disleale e ingiusto imperadore!

A Caradoro è stato scritto, O Carlo,

O Carlo! O Carlo! (e crollava la testa)
De la tua corte, che non puoi negario,
De la sua figlia cosa disonesta.'

"O Charles,' he cried, Charles, Charles!-and as he cried
He shook his head-a sad complaint I bring
Of shameful acts which cannot be denied:
King Caradore has ascertained the thing,
Which comes moreover proved and verified
By letters from your own side of the water
Respecting the behavior of his daughter.'

"Such scenes may appear somewhat strange; but Caradoro's embassy, and the execution of King Marsilius, are told in strict conformity le cas notions of the common people, and as they must still be described if wy wished to imitate the popular story-tellers. If Pulei be occasionally refined and delicate, his snatches of ainenity resulted from the national character of the Florentines, and the revival of letters. But at the he he we must trace to national character, and to the influence of his day cra panions, the buffoonery which, in the opinion of foreigners, frequente das graces the poem. M. Ginguéné has criticised Pulci in the usual style of han countrymen. He attributes modern manners to ancient times, and takes it for granted that the individuals of every other nation think and acc 23 modern Frenchmen. On these principles, he concludes that Puli, bata with respect to his subject and to his mode of treating it, intended onleno write burlesque poetry; because, as he says, such buffoonery could eat have been introduced into a composition recited to Lorenzo de' Medica and his enlightened guests, if the author had intended to be in earnest. In the fine portrait of Lorenzo given by Machiavelli at the end of his Forensice history, the historian complains that he took more pleasure in the caper 7 of jesters and buffoons than beseemed such a man. It is a little g that Benedetto Varchi, a contemporary historian, makes the same ecar plaint of Machiavellt himself. Indeed, many known anecdotes of Mackiavelli, no less than his fugitive pieces, prove that it was only when he was acting the statesman that he wished to be grave, and that he could laugh like other men when he laid aside his dignity. We do not think he was in the wrong. But, whatever opinion may be formed on the subjeci, we shall yet be forced to conclude that great men may be compeled to Sara the manners of their times, without being able to withstand their indvence. In other respects, the poem of Pulci is serious, both in subject and in same. And here we shall repeat a general observation, which we advise our readesa to apply to all the romantic poems of the Italians-That ther comic Assor arises from the contrast between the constant endeavors of the writers to adhere to the forms and subjects of the popular story-tellers, and the effera made at the same time by the genius of these writers to render such materia interesting and sublime.

This simple elucidation of the causes of the poetical character of the Morgante has been overlooked by the critics; and they have there frnci də puted with great earnestness during the last two centuries, wie het he Morgante is written in jest or earnest; and whether Pain is bad mo atheist, who wrote in verse for the express purpose of scoffing at all re ip Mr. Merivale inclines, in his Orlando in Roncesvalles, to the epersing of M. Ginguéné, that the Morgante is decidedly to be considered as a lesque poem, and a satire against the Christian religion. Yet Mr. Meri vale himself acknowledges that it is wound up with a tragical efect, ad dignified by religious sentiment; and is therefore forced to leave the question amongst the unexplained, and perhaps inexplicable, phenT THE of the human mind. If a similar question had not been already decurg both in regard to Shakspeare and to Ariosto, it might be still a subject of dispute whether the former intended to write tragedies, and whether the

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 parcularly the excellent one of Mr. Merivale, are to be traced to the same source. It has never yet been deeded entirely whether Pulci's intention was or was Bot to deride the religion which is one of his favorite tepics. 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 permission to publish the poem, and its reception 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 accase 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."

the

among

In the following translation I have used the liberty 6 the original with the proper names; as Pulci uses Gan, Ganellon, or Ganellone; Carlo, Carlomagno, or Carlomano; Rondel, or Rondello, &c., as it suits his convenience; so has the translator. In other respects

her dad not mean to burlesque his heroes. It is a happy thing that, with frgandita “hose two great writers, the war has ended by the fortunate interWhton of the general body of readers, who, on such occasions, form their ement with less erudition and with leas prejudice than the critics. Palc is trule read, and his age is little known. We are told by M. Merivale, that the pomts of abstruse theology are discussed in the Mirgaste with a degree of skeptical freedom which we should imagine to be 4ther remote from the spirit of the fifteenth century. Mr. Merivale * M. Ginguéné, who follows Voltaire. And the philosopher of Ferney, was always beating up in all quarters for allies against Christianity, colleted all the scriptural passages of Pulet, upon which he commented in his way. But it is only since the Council of Trent, that any doubt which get be raised on a religious dogma exposed an author to the charge of ety, whilst, in the fifteenth century, a Catholic might be sincerely t, and yet allow himself a certain degree of latitude in theological At At one and the same time the Florentines might well believe in The Gorpe and laugh at a doctor of divinity: for it was exactly at this that they had been spectators of the memorable controversies between we representatives of the eastern and western churches. Greek and Latin shops from every corner of Christendom had assembled at Fiorence for The purpose of trying whether they could possibly understand each other; And when they separated, they hated each other worse than before. At the (egy time when Pulz was composing his Morgante, the clergy of Florence ted against the excommunications pronounced by Sixtus IV., and With expressions by which his holiness was anathematized in his turn. During these proceedings, an archbishop, convicted of being a papal emis9, was hanged from one of the windows of the government palace at Pense: the event may have suggested to Pulci the idea of converting A ther archbishop into a hangman. The romantic poets substituted sary tod we eacfic observations for the trivial digressions of the storyThis was a great improvement; and although it was not well aged by Puci, yet he presenta us with much curious incidental matter. is pening has philosophical friend and contemporary Matteo Palmieri, he a the instinct of brutes by a bold hypothesis--he supposes that they animated by evil spirits. This idea gave no offence to the theologians of the fifteenth century; but it excited much orthodox indignation when Peber Bow geasy, a French monk, brought it forward as a new theory of 2. Mr. Merivale, after observing that Pulci died before the discovery America by Columbus, quotes a passage which will become a very inez document for the philosophical historian." We give it in his prose radiation : The water is level through its whole extent, although, like the Pat has the form of a globe. Mankind in those ages were much more rant than now. Herenies would blush at this day for having fixed his CHRIS Vessels will soon pass far beyond them. They may soon reach nother bemuphere, because every thing tends to its centre; in like manner By divine mystery, the earth is suspended in the midst of the stars, here dens are eithes and empires, which were ancient. The inhabitants of those

were called Antipodes. They have plants and animals as well as Ju%, and wage wars as well as you.'-Morgante, c. xxv. st. 229, &c. *The more we consider the traces of ancient science, which break in trient flashes through the darkness of the middle ages, and which grady relusaated the horizon, the more shall we be disposed to adopt the hypothesis suggested by Bailly, and supported by him with seductive ence. He maintained that all the acquirements of the Greeks and Ecans had been transmitted to them as the wrecks and fragments of the cwledge ence possessed by primeval nations, by empires of sages and De hughers, who were afterwards ewept from the face of the globe by erwhelming catastrophe. His theory may be considered as exegant but if the literary productions of the Romans were not yet exCand is would seem incredible, that, after the lapse of a few centuries, the Cation of the Augustan age could have been succeeded in Italy by such Carberry. The Italians were so ignorant, that they forgot their family Casey, and before the eleventh century individuals were known only by Der Christian names. They had an indistinct idea, in the middle ages, of the extence of the antipodes; but it was a reminiscence of ancient knowge. Dante has indicated the number and position of the stars composing the polar constellation of the Austral hemisphere. At the same time he tells that when Lucifer was hurled from the celestial regions, the archdevil transdied the globe; half his body remained an our side of the centre of the

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 favors 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.

earth, and half on the other side. The shock given to the earth by his fal! drove a great portion of the waters of the ocean to the southern hemisphere, and only one high mountain remained uncovered, upon which Dante places his purgatory. As the fall of Lucifer happened before the creation of Adam, it is evident that Dante did not admit that the southern hemisphere had ever been inhabited; but, about thirty years afterwards, Petrarch, who was better versed in the ancient writers, ventured to hint that the sun shone upon mortals who were unknown to us.

Nella stagion che il ciel rapido inchina
Vers' occidente, e che il di nostro vola
A gente che di là forse l' aspetta.'

"In the course of half a century after Petrarch, another step was gained. The existence of the antipodes was fully demonstrated. Pulci raises a devil to announce the fact; but it had been taught to him by his fellow-citizen Paolo Toscanelli, an excellent astronomer and mathematician, who wrote in his old age to Christopher Columbus, exhorting him to undertake his expedition. A few stanzas have been translated by Mr. Merivale, with some slight variations, which do not wrong the original. They may be considered as a specimen of Pulci's poetry, when he writes with imagination and feel. ing. Orlando bids farewell to his dying horse.

His faithful steed, that long had served him well
In peace and war, now closed his languid eye,
Kneel'd at his feet, and seem'd to say, Farewell!
I've brought thee to the destined port, and die."
Orlando felt anew his sorrows swell

When he beheld his Brighadoro lie

Stretch'd on the field, that crystal fount beside,
Suflen'd his limbs, and cold his warlike pride:

And, O my much-loved steed, my generous friend,
Companion of my better years!" he said;

And have I lived to see so sad an end

Of all thy toils, and thy brave spirit fled.

O pardon me, if e'er I did offend

With hasty wrong that mild and faithful head !'

Just then, his eyes a momentary light

Flash'd quick-then closed again in endless night.' "When Orlando is expiring on the field of battle, an angel descensd to him, and promises that Alda his wife shall join him in paradise.

Bright with eternal youth and fadeless bloom,
Thine Aldabella thou shalt behold once more,

Partaker of a bliss beyond the tomb

With her whom Sinai's holy hills adore,

Crown'd with fresh flowers, whose color and perfume

Surpass what Spring's rich bosom ever bore-

Thy mourning widow here she will remain,
And be in Heaven thy joyful spouse again."

"Whilst the soul of Orlando was soaring to heaven, a soft and plaintive strain was heard, and angelic voices joined in celestial harmony. They sang the psalm, When Israel went out of Egypt; and the singers were known to be angels from the trembling of their wings.

Poi si senti con un suon dolce e filoco
Certa armonia con si soavi accenti
Che ben parea d' angelici stromenti.

In eritu Israel, cantar, de Egypto, Sentito fu dagli angeli solenne

Che si conobbe al tremolar le penne.'

"Dante has inserted passages from the Vulgate in his Divina Commedia; and Petrarch, the most religious of poets, quotes Scripture even when he is courting. Yet they were not accused of impiety. Neither did Pulci incur the danger of a posthumous excommunication until after the Reformation, when Pius V. (a Dominican, who was turned into a saint by a subsequent pope) promoted the welfare of holy mother church by burning a few wicked books, and hanging a few troublesome authors. The notion that Pulci was in the odor of heresy influenced the opinion of Milton, who only speaks of the Morgante as a sportful romance." Milton was anxious to prove that