CIV.

Eaint Peter, who has hitherto been known
For an impetuous saint, upraised his keys,
And at the fith line knock'd the Poet down;
Who fell like Phaeton, but more at ease,
Into his lake, for there he did not drown,

A different web being by the Destinies
Woven for the Laureate's final wreath, whene'er
Reform shall happen either here or there.

CV.

He first sunk to the bottom-like his works,
But soon rose to the surface-like himself;
For all corrupted things are buoy'd, like corks,*
By their own rottenness, light as an elf,
Or wisp that flits o'er a morass: be lurks,
It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf,

In his own den, to scrawl some "Life" or Vision," As Wellborn says" the devil turn'd precisian."

CVI.

As for the rest, to come to the conclusion

Of this true dream, the telescope is gone Which kept my optics free from all delusion,

And show'd me what I in my turn have shown;

All I saw farther in the last confusion,

Was, that King George slipp'd into heaven for one; And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,

I left him practising the hundreth psalm.

* A drowned body lies at the bottom till rotten; it then floats, as most people know.

MORGANTE MAGGIORE

DI

MESSER LUIGI 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 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 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 Ganellon; Carlo, Carlomagno, or Carlomano; Rondel, or Rondello, &c. 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 not 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 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.

MORGANTE MAGGIORE.

CANTO I.

I.

In the beginning was the Word next God;
God was the Word, the Word no less was he:
This was in the beginning, to my mode

Of thinking, and without him nought could be: Therefore, just Lord! from out thy high abode, Benign and pious, bid an angel flee,

One only, to be my companion, who

Shall help my famous, worthy, old song through.

II.

And thou, oh Virgin! daughter, mother, bride
Of the same Lord, who gave to you each key
Of heaven, and hell, and every thing beside,
The day thy Gabriel said, "All hail!" to thee,
Since to thy servants pity's ne'er denied,

With flowing rhymes, a pleasant style and free, Be to my verses then benignly kind,

And to the end illuminate my mind.

III.

'Twas in the season when sad Philomel
Weeps with her sister, who remembers and
Deplores the ancient woes which both befell,