By servitude and have the mind in prison. Yet through this centuried eclipse of woe Some voices shall be heard, and earth shall listen;

Poets shall follow in the path I show, And make it broader; the same brilliant sky

Which cheers the birds to song shall bid them glow,

And raise their notes as natural and high; Tuneful shall be their numbers; they shall sing

Many of love, and some of liberty, But few shall soar upon that eagle's wing, And look in the sun's face with eagle's

Till they are ashes and repose with me. The first will make an epoch with his lyre,

110

And fill the earth with feats of chivalry: His fancy like a rainbow, and his fire, Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his thought

Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire:

Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught, Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme, And Art itself seem into Nature wrought By the transparency of his bright dream.

The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood, Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem. 120 He, too, shall sing of arms and Christian blood

Shed where Christ bled for man; and his

high harp

Shall, by the willow over Jordan's flood, Revive a song of Sion: and the sharp

Conflict, and final triumph of the brave And pious, and the strife of hell to warp Their hearts from their great purpose, until

wave

Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,

Harder to bear and less deserved,

for I

But this meek man, who with a lover's eye

Will look on earth and heaven, and who will deign

To embalm with his celestial flattery As poor a thing as e'er was spawn'd to reign,

What will he do to merit such a doom? Perhaps he'll love, and is not love in

vain

Torture enough without a living tomb?
Yet it will be so; he and his compeer,
The Bard of Chivalry, will both con-

sume and pain too many a year, penury And, dying in despondency, bequeath To the kind world, which scarce will yield a tear,

A heritage enriching all who breathe

With the wealth of a genuine poet's soul, And to their country a redoubled wreath Unmatch'd by time (not Hellas can unroll

Through her olympiads two such names, though one

Of hers be mighty);-and is this the whole Of such men's destiny beneath the sun? 160 Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling

sense,

The electric blood with which their ar

teries run,

Their body's self turn'd soul with the in

tense

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 re

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