Prophet, has been duly fulfilled. We may therefore consider the Prometheus as a sort of Heathen scholiast upon the sacred writings; a view which gives a surpassing interest to even its splendid dramatic poetry. And in the Agamemnon, too, we have another proof of his introduction of Hebrew learning the sacrifice of Iphigenia is so evidently that of Isaac by Abraham paganised, that we can hardly doubt that the one was taken from the other. (To be continued.) NOTICES OF ITALIAN POETS, No. II. · BY H. F. CARY, TRANSLATOR OF DANTE. (WITH ADDITIONS BY HIS SON H. C.) LUIGI PULCI. [THE family of the Pulci was one of the most ancient and noble in the city of Florence, and many among its members, the ancestors of Luigi, had for several centuries, indeed almost from the period of its first independence, been chosen to fill the highest offices of the state. Luigi was the youngest son of Jacopo di Francesco Pulci, and was born at Florence on the third of December, 1431. His two elder brothers, Bernardo and Luca, were also poets, but neither of them attained to equal celebrity with their younger brother. Of the events of the life of Luigi but little is known, except that he married Lucretia, daughter of Uberto degli Albizi, by whom he had two sons, Ruberto and Jacopo; that he was the friend of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and read at his table portions of his Morgante as it was composed; that amongst other writings he published some odes, canzoni, and sonnets, several of which were suppressed for their profaneness; and that he died in the year 1487. It is added, but on questionable authority, that his remains were deprived of ecclesiastical sepulture on account of the impiety of his writings. The Morgante Maggiore is almost the earliest of the romances of chivalry that Italy produced, and is generally considered to be the prototype of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. It was produced in the midst of the festivals and banquets of the Tuscan court. Poliziano, Ficino, and even Lucrezia de' Medici had a hand in it, and concurred in amusing, by the reciting or singing it, the illustrious men and the ladies of that learned court. In imi tation of this perhaps the court of Esté, its worthy rival in the love for letters, heard the Orlando Inamorato of the Count Bojardo, which was first printed in 1496, at his beautiful domain of Scandiano.* "This singular offspring of the wayward genius of Pulci," says Mr. Roscoe,† "has been as immoderately commended by its admirers as it has been unreasonably degraded and condemned by its opponents; and whilst some have not scrupled to give it the precedence, in point of poetical merit, to the productions of Ariosto and of Tasso, others have decried it as vulgar, absurd, and profane; and the censures of the church have been promulged in confirmation of the latter part of the sentence. From the solemnity and devotion with which every canto is introduced, some have judged that the author meant to give a serious narrative; but the improbability of the relation, and the burlesque nature of the incidents, destroy all ideas of this kind. By others this author has been accused of a total want of elegance in his expressions, and of harmony in his verse; but this work yet ranks as classical in Italian literature, and if it be not poetry of the highest relish, has a flavour that is yet perceptible."] The following is a fragment from the second canto. The poem, consisting of about 30,000 verses, has certainly the recommendation of being in the purest Tuscan, and is full of an arch simplicity reminding one of Chau 3. * Bettinelli Risorg. d'Ital. Par. II. c. Epica. + Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, ch. v. |