Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 41

[25] So Hortis (_Scritti inediti di F. Petrarca_, pp. 221, &c.), who combats A. W. von Schlegel's view that the Epy of Eclogue VII stands for Avignon.

[26] This spelling was current for some centuries, Spenser among others adopting it. Indeed, _egloghe_ is still the prevalent form among Italian scholars.

[27] One other was discovered and published from MS. by Hortis, in his _Studi sulle opere latini_, p. 351.

[28] It is not impossible that Boccaccio may have begun composing eclogues before his acquaintance with Petrarch, since the influence of the poems sent by Dante to Giovanni del Virgilio has been traced in the eclogue printed by Hortis, and in an early version of the _Faunus_, as well as in the work of Boccaccio's correspondent, Cecco di Mileto.

[29] So Aeneas Sylvius, in his _De Remedio Amoris_, after a particularly virulent tirade against women, explained: 'De his loquor mulieribus quae turpes admittunt amores.'

[30] 'Syncerius' is the form used, but there can be little doubt who was intended.

[31] In the days when it was fashionable for men of learning to discuss the laws of pastoral composition, a certain northern giant fell foul of the Neapolitan's piscatory eclogues on somewhat theoretical grounds.

Having never seen the blue smile of the bay of Naples, he suggested that the sea was an object of terror; forgetful of the monotonous setting of pastoral verse, he complained that the piscatory life offered little variety; finally, he contended that the technicalities of the craft were unfamiliar to readers--but are we to suppose that the learned author of the _Rambler_ was competent to tend a flock?

[32] They were at least the first to appear in print. The contributors were Girolamo Benivieni, of Florence, and Francesco Arsocchi and Fiorino Boninsegni, of Siena. The first possibly deserves mention as having introduced Pico della Mirandola as a character in his eclogues: some of the poems of the last are noteworthy as having been composed as early as 1468. There exists a poem by Luca Pulci on the story of Polyphemus and Galatea in the form of an eclogue. Luca died in 1470. Leo Battista Alberti, the famous architect, who died in 1472, also left a poem, which was published from MS. in 1850, with the heading 'Egloga.' This, however, proves not to be strictly pastoral. Among other early ventures were ten Italian eclogues in _terza rima_, by Boiardo. These, and also his ten Latin eclogues, will be found printed from MS. in his _Poesie volgari e latine_ (ed. A. Solerti, Bologna, 1894), while full accounts of both will be found in the essays contributed by G. Mazzoni and A. Campani to the _Studi su M. M. Boiardo_, edited by N. Campanini (Bologna, 1894). There can be no doubt that the court of Lorenzo was full of pastoral experiments in the vernacular for some time before the publication mentioned above.

[33] Having regard to the general character of the _Ameto_, I am not sure that it might not be possible to find some hidden meaning in the poem in question, if one were challenged to do so. The allegory is, however, mostly of the abstract kind, and the eclogue can hardly conceal allusions to any actual events.

[34] A very useful and representative, though of course by no means complete, collection is that by G. Ferrario, in the 'Cla.s.sici italiani.'

[35] Castiglione also figured among the Latin eclogists of his day, and the influence of his _Alcon_ is even traced by Saintsbury in _Lycidas_ (_Earlier Renaissance_, p. 34).

[36] It is said to have been by way of penance for having written the _Vendemmiatore_ that he later undertook the composition of the _Lagrime di San Pietro_, a lengthy religious poem, which remained unfinished at his death in 1568.

[37] _La Beca_ is ascribed by mistake to Luca Pulci in the first edition of Symonds' _Renaissance_.

[38] The best imitation is said to be the _Lamento di Cecco da Varlungo_ by Frances...o...b..ldovini (1643-1700), which is graceful, though rather more satiric in tone than its model.

[39] It differs, however, from most poems of the sort, in that the langnage of the fisher craft in Italy was capable of the same wantonly double meaning as was suggested to English writers by the name and terms of the n.o.ble art of venery. This serves to differentiate it from the style of pastoral, and suggests that we should rather cla.s.s it along with such works as Berni's _Caccia d'amore._

[40] It is occasionally traceable in the French _pastourelles_, but that form of courtly composition never became popular south of the Alps. Its vogue pa.s.sed completely with the decline of Provencal tradition. D'Ancona quotes one Italian example of the thirteenth century, the work of a Florentine, Ciacco dell' Anguillaja. It begins gracefully enough:

O gemma leziosa, Adorna villanella, Che se' piu virtudiosa Che non se ne favella, Per la virtude ch' hai Per grazia del Signore, Aiutami, che sai Che son tuo servo, amore.

[41] Further evidence of the popularity of this poem will be found in the existence of a religious parody beginning:

O vaghe di Gesu, o verginelle, Dove n' andate si leggiadre e belle?

(_Laude spirituali di Feo Belcari_, &c., Firenze, 1863, p. 105.) It is founded on the fourteenth ceutury, not on the popular, version.

[42] The foregoing remarks follow very closely Symonds' treatment in the third chapter of his _Italian Literature_. In point of fact, I lit on Donati's poem quite accidentally, before reading the chapter in question, but I have made no scruple of availing myself of his guidance wherever it was to be had.

[43] Symonds has some very severe strictures on these songs from the moral point of view. Judging from the actual songs themselves his remarks would appear somewhat exaggerated, but if we take into consideration the historical circ.u.mstances they are probably amply justified.

[44] It is perhaps worth putting in a word of warning against the possible confusion of this poem with Politian's Latin composition bearing the same t.i.tle. Ambra was a rustic resort in the neighbourhood of Florence, to which Lorenzo was much attached. By the lover Lauro the author seems to have meant himself. At least this is rendered probable by some lines near the end of Politian's poem, in which the villa is again personified as a nymph:

Et nos ergo illi grata pietate dicamus Hanc de Pierio contextam flore coronam, Quam mihi Caianas inter pulcherrima nymphas Ambra dedit patriae lectam de gramine ripae: Ambra mei Laurentis amor, quam corniger Vmbro, Vmbro senex genuit domino gratissimus Arno: Vmbro suo tandem non erupturus ab alneo.

(_Opera,_ Basel, 1553, p. 581.)

[45] He was born at Montepulciano in 1454, and died, at the age of forty, two years after Lorenzo.

[46] Symonds, _Renaissance_, iv. p. 232, note 3.

[47] It has been sometimes thought that the description of Mars in the lap of Venus, in stanzas 122-3, suggested Botticelli's picture in the National Gallery; but, though the lines are worthy of having inspired even a more successful example of the painter's art, the resemblance is in this case too general to warrant any such conclusion.

[48] A favourite phrase of his. 'What has been well called _la volutta idillica_--the sensuous sensibility to beauty, finding fit expression in the Idyll--formed a marked characteristic of Renaissance art and literature.' _Renaissance_, v. p. 170.

[49] The similar alternation of verse and prose found in the French and Provencal _cante-fables,_ notably in _Auca.s.sin et Nicolette,_ is of a different nature, for in them the prose served properly to explain and connect the verse-pa.s.sages which contained the actual story, and it probably formed no part of the original composition.

[50] I quote from the handy edition of Boccaccio's _Opere minori_ in the 'Biblioteca cla.s.sica economica.' The pa.s.sages cited above will be found on pp. 246 and 250, or in the _Opere volgari_, 1827-34. xv. pp. 186 and 194.

[51] It is probably no accident that, like Dante's poem, Boccaccio's romance is styled a 'comedy.' Both represent, in allegorical form, the ascent of the human soul from sin, through purgation, to the presence of G.o.d.

[52] It has been suggested that there is a gradual spiritualization in the motives of the tales; but this would appear to be a somewhat fanciful view.

[53] Proemio, _Opere minori_, p. 145; _Opere volgari_, xv. p. 4.

[54] _Opere minori_, p. 176, _Opere volgari_, xv. p. 60.

[55] While greatly shortening the pa.s.sage, and taking considerable liberties in the way of paraphrase, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to preserve the style and diction of the original. This will be found in the _Opere minori_, pp. 213, &c., _Opere volgari_, xv. pp. 126, &c.

[56] The description of the spring is from Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, III, 407, &c. No doubt a great deal more could be traced to Latin sources.

[57] For details concerning tree-lists see Moorman's _William Brown_, p.

154.

[58] Dunlop's notion of the verse being the important part, and the prose only written to connect the varions eclogues, is clearly wrong. Verse started by being subordinate in Boccaccio's romance, and remained so in all subsequent examples.

[59] _Prosa_ VIII. The whole pa.s.sage was versified in Spanish by Garcilaso, whence a portion found its way into Googe's eclogues. Among other ingenions devices Sannazzaro mentions that of pinning down a crow by the extremity of its wings and waiting for it to entangle its fellows in its claws. If any reader should be tempted to imagine that the author has been drawing on a fertile imagination, let him turn to the adventures of one Morrowbie Jukes, as related by Mr. Rudyard Kipling, for a description of this identical method of crow-catching as practised on the banks of an Indian stream.

[60] It may be well to point out that at times, as in Carino's invocation to the Dryads, Symonds has infused into his version a beauty of diction of which Sannazzaro appears to be innocent.

[61] The _Arcadia_ must have been extant in its original form as early as 1481, when it served as model for the eclogues of Pietro Jacopo de Jennaro. The earliest known MS. dates from 1489, and contains the first ten _Prose_ and _Ecloghe_. In this form it was surrept.i.tiously printed in 1502; the complete work first appeared in 1504. The earliest commentary, that of Tommaso Porcacchi, appeared in 1558, and went through several editions. An elaborate variorum edition was printed at Padua in 1723. I have followed the text in the 'Cla.s.sici italiani.'

[62] Arcadia had been called 'the mother of flocks' in the Homeric _Hymn to Pan_, and Polybius had described the softening effects of music upon its rude inhabitants. See some interesting remarks on the snbject by J. E.

Sandys, in his lectures on the _Revival of Learning_, Cambridge, 1905; also J. P. Mahaffy, _Rambles and Studies_, ch. xii.

[63] Having had occasion in the course of the following pages to call attention to certain inaccuracies of Ticknor's, I should like in this place to record my indebtedness to what still remains the standard history of Spanish literature. I have likewise made free use of Fitzmaurice-Kelly's admirable monograph.

[64] _Don Quixote_, pt. ii. ch. 62.

[65] Calderon wrote an early play on the tale of Cephalus and Procris, which met, it is said, with success. It was ent.i.tled _Celos aun del aire matan_, and was styled a 'fiesta cantada.' Later in life he parodied it in the 'comedia burlesca' ent.i.tled _Cefalo y Pocris_ (sic). Neither play appears to have any connexion with the _Cefalo_ of Niccol da Correggio (_v. post_, ch. iii). Both are printed in the third volume of Calderon's comedies in the 'Biblioteca de autores espanoles,' 1848-50. The _Pastor fido_ will be found in vol. iv.

[66] Mr. Gosse has protested against the use of such terms as 'exotic' in connexion with products of literary art, and no doubt the word has been not a little abused. I employ it in its strict sense of 'introduced from abroad, not indigenons,' and without implying any critical censure.

[67] Though a Portuguese, and one of the most notable poets in his own dialect, much of his poetical work is in Castillan.