Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal
and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the
_Inferno_ as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written.
Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and
certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged
forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling
it, if this had been his intention. Much however as I admire his
vigour and severity of style in the description of Ugolino, I
acknowledge with you that I do not discover so much imagination, so
much creative power, as in the Francesca. I find indeed a minute
detail of probable events: but this is not all I want in a poet: it is
not even all I want most in a scene of horror. Tribunals of justice,
dens of murderers, wards of hospitals, schools of anatomy, will afford
us nearly the same sensations, if we hear them from an accurate
observer, a clear reporter, a skilful surgeon, or an attentive nurse.
There is nothing of sublimity in the horrific of Dante, which there
always is in Aeschylus and Homer. If you, Giovanni, had described so
nakedly the reception of Guiscardo's heart by Gismonda, or Lorenzo's
head by Lisabetta, we could hardly have endured it.
_Boccaccio._ Prithee, dear Francesco, do not place me over Dante: I
stagger at the idea of approaching him.
_Petrarca._ Never think I am placing you blindly or indiscriminately.
I have faults to find with you, and even here. Lisabetta should by no
means have been represented cutting off the head of her lover, '_as
well as she could_,' with a clasp-knife. This is shocking and
improbable. She might have found it already cut off by her brothers,
in order to bury the corpse more commodiously and expeditiously. Nor
indeed is it likely that she should have entrusted it to her
waiting-maid, who carried home in her bosom a treasure so dear to her,
and found so unexpectedly and so lately.
_Boccaccio._ That is true: I will correct the oversight. Why do we
never hear of our faults until everybody knows them, and until they
stand in record against us?
_Petrarca._ Because our ears are closed to truth and friendship for
some time after the triumphal course of composition. We are too
sensitive for the gentlest touch; and when we really have the most
infirmity, we are angry to be told that we have any.
_Boccaccio._ Ah, Francesco! thou art poet from scalp to heel: but what
other would open his breast as thou hast done! They show
ostentatiously far worse weaknesses; but the most honest of the tribe
would forswear himself on this. Again, I acknowledge it, you have
reason to complain of Lisabetta and Gismonda.
* * * * *
_Petrarca._ In my delight to listen to you after so long an absence, I
have been too unwary; and you have been speaking too much for one
infirm. Greatly am I to blame, not to have moderated my pleasure and
your vivacity. You must rest now: to-morrow we will renew our
conversation.
_Boccaccio._ God bless thee, Francesco! I shall be talking with thee
all night in my slumbers. Never have I seen thee with such pleasure as
to-day, excepting when I was deemed worthy by our fellow-citizens of
bearing to thee, and of placing within this dear hand of thine, the
sentence of recall from banishment, and when my tears streamed over
the ordinance as I read it, whereby thy paternal lands were redeemed
from the public treasury.
Again God bless thee! Those tears were not quite exhausted: take the
last of them.
FOOTNOTE:
[14] It may puzzle an Englishman to read the lines beginning with
'Modicum', so as to give the metre. The secret is, to draw out _et_
into a disyllable, et-te, as the Italians do, who pronounce Latin
verse, if possible, worse than we, adding a syllable to such as end
with a consonant.
THIRD DAY'S INTERVIEW
It being now the Lord's day, Messer Francesco thought it meet that he
should rise early in the morning and bestir himself, to hear mass in
the parish church at Certaldo. Whereupon he went on tiptoe, if so
weighty a man could indeed go in such a fashion, and lifted softly the
latch of Ser Giovanni's chamber door, that he might salute him ere he
departed, and occasion no wonder at the step he was about to take. He
found Ser Giovanni fast asleep, with the missal wide open across his
nose, and a pleasant smile on his genial, joyous mouth. Ser Francesco
leaned over the couch, closed his hands together, and looking with
even more than his usual benignity, said in a low voice:
'God bless thee, gentle soul! the mother of purity and innocence
protect thee!'
He then went into the kitchen, where he found the girl Assunta, and
mentioned his resolution. She informed him that the horse had eaten
his two beans,[15] and was as strong as a lion and as ready as a
lover. Ser Francesco patted her on the cheek, and called her
_semplicetta_! She was overjoyed at this honour from so great a man,
the bosom friend of her good master, whom she had always thought the
greatest man in the world, not excepting Monsignore, until he told her
he was only a dog confronted with Ser Francesco. She tripped alertly
across the paved court into the stable, and took down the saddle and
bridle from the farther end of the rack. But Ser Francesco, with his
natural politeness, would not allow her to equip his palfrey.
'This is not the work for maidens,' said he; 'return to the house,
good girl!'
She lingered a moment, then went away; but, mistrusting the dexterity
of Ser Francesco, she stopped and turned back again, and peeped
through the half-closed door, and heard sundry sobs and wheezes round
about the girth. Ser Francesco's wind ill seconded his intention; and,
although he had thrown the saddle valiantly and stoutly in its
station, yet the girths brought him into extremity. She entered again,
and dissembling the reason, asked him whether he would not take a
small beaker of the sweet white wine before he set out, and offered to
girdle the horse while his Reverence bitted and bridled him. Before
any answer could be returned, she had begun. And having now
satisfactorily executed her undertaking, she felt irrepressible
delight and glee at being able to do what Ser Francesco had failed in.
He was scarcely more successful with his allotment of the labour;
found unlooked-for intricacies and complications in the machinery,
wondered that human wit could not simplify it, and declared that the
animal had never exhibited such restiveness before. In fact, he never
had experienced the same grooming. At this conjuncture, a green cap
made its appearance, bound with straw-coloured ribbon, and surmounted
with two bushy sprigs of hawthorn, of which the globular buds were
swelling, and some bursting, but fewer yet open. It was young
Simplizio Nardi, who sometimes came on the Sunday morning to sweep the
courtyard for Assunta.
'Oh! this time you are come just when you were wanted,' said the girl.
'Bridle, directly, Ser Francesco's horse, and then go away about your
business.'
The youth blushed, and kissed Ser Francesco's hand, begging his
permission. It was soon done. He then held the stirrup; and Ser
Francesco, with scarcely three efforts, was seated and erect on the
saddle. The horse, however, had somewhat more inclination for the
stable than for the expedition; and, as Assunta was handing to the
rider his long ebony staff, bearing an ivory caduceus, the quadruped
turned suddenly round. Simplizio called him _bestiaccia_! and then,
softening it, _poco garbato_! and proposed to Ser Francesco that he
should leave the bastone behind, and take the crab-switch he presented
to him, giving at the same time a sample of its efficacy, which
covered the long grizzle hair of the worthy quadruped with a profusion
of pink blossoms, like embroidery. The offer was declined; but Assunta
told Simplizio to carry it himself, and to walk by the side of Ser
Canonico quite up to the church porch, having seen what a sad,
dangerous beast his reverence had under him.
With perfect good will, partly in the pride of obedience to Assunta,
and partly to enjoy the renown of accompanying a canon of Holy Church,
Simplizio did as she enjoined.
And now the sound of village bells, in many hamlets and convents and
churches out of sight, was indistinctly heard, and lost again; and at
last the five of Certaldo seemed to crow over the faintness of them
all. The freshness of the morning was enough of itself to excite the
spirits of youth; a portion of which never fails to descend on years
that are far removed from it, if the mind has partaken in innocent
mirth while it was its season and its duty to enjoy it. Parties of
young and old passed the canonico and his attendant with mute respect,
bowing and bare-headed; for that ebony staff threw its spell over the
tongue, which the frank and hearty salutation of the bearer was
inadequate to break. Simplizio, once or twice, attempted to call back
an intimate of the same age with himself; but the utmost he could
obtain was a _riveritissimo_! and a genuflexion to the rider. It is
reported that a heart-burning rose up from it in the breast of a
cousin, some days after, too distinctly apparent in the long-drawn
appellation of _Gnor_[16] Simplizio.
Ser Francesco moved gradually forward, his steed picking his way along
the lane, and looking fixedly on the stones with all the sobriety of a
mineralogist. He himself was well satisfied with the pace, and told
Simplizio to be sparing of the switch, unless in case of a hornet or a
gadfly. Simplizio smiled, toward the hedge, and wondered at the
condescension of so great a theologian and astrologer, in joking with
him about the gadflies and hornets in the beginning of April. 'Ah!
there are men in the world who can make wit out of anything!' said he
to himself.
As they approached the walls of the town, the whole country was
pervaded by a stirring and diversified air of gladness. Laughter and
songs and flutes and viols, inviting voices and complying responses,
mingled with merry bells and with processional hymns, along the
woodland paths and along the yellow meadows. It was really the _Lord's
Day_, for He made His creatures happy in it, and their hearts were
thankful. Even the cruel had ceased from cruelty; and the rich man
alone exacted from the animal his daily labour. Ser Francesco made
this remark, and told his youthful guide that he had never been before
where he could not walk to church on a Sunday; and that nothing should
persuade him to urge the speed of his beast, on the seventh day,
beyond his natural and willing foot's-pace. He reached the gates of
Certaldo more than half an hour before the time of service, and he
found laurels suspended over them, and being suspended; and many
pleasant and beautiful faces were protruded between the ranks of
gentry and clergy who awaited him. Little did he expect such an
attendance; but Fra Biagio of San Vivaldo, who himself had offered no
obsequiousness or respect, had scattered the secret of his visit
throughout the whole country. A young poet, the most celebrated in the
town, approached the canonico with a long scroll of verses, which fell
below the knee, beginning:
How shall we welcome our illustrious guest?
To which Ser Francesco immediately replied: 'Take your favourite
maiden, lead the dance with her, and bid all your friends follow; you
have a good half-hour for it.'
Universal applauses succeeded, the music struck up, couples were
instantly formed. The gentry on this occasion led out the
cittadinanza, as they usually do in the villeggiatura, rarely in the
carnival, and never at other times. The elder of the priests stood
round in their sacred vestments, and looked with cordiality and