The almost simultaneous appearance of two such poems as the _Morgante_ and the _Orlando_ by two writers of such social and intellectual distinction as Pulci and Boiardo, indicates that the love of chivalrous fiction must have been very rife in Italy. It is remarkable that the Italian writers should have so rarely essayed the easier path of prose-romance, but this they left to the Spaniards, who on their part, excepting in ballads, in that age rarely ventured upon poetical composition. One only of the Italian romantic epics between Boiardo and Ariosto deserves mention. It is the Mambriano of FRANCESCO BELLO, known as _Il Cieco d’Adria_. The blind bard amused the court of Mantua with recitations which he afterwards stitched together into a long poem devoid of all pretence to epic unity. But, as he himself observes, he thought he had done enough in bringing all the paladins back to Paris, and rendering all the Saracens tributary to the Emperor. His diction is often as unshapen as his story; nevertheless, he is a real poet, and his description of the Temple of Mars in particular will compare not unfavourably with those of Statius, Chaucer, and Boccaccio. Before parting with the predecessors of Ariosto, a word should be said of Boiardo’s minor poems. Besides a comedy, _Timone_, to be noticed hereafter, he wrote numerous canzoni and sonnets. Of these Panizzi justly says: “Boiardo’s poetry, although in the manner of Petrarch, has all the marks of originality, and resembles more the character of the predecessors of the Bard of Laura than of his successors. His poetry was not written to be read, but to be sung, and was submitted to those musical as well as metrical laws by which that of Petrarch had been governed. In his day, music was still subject to poetry, and the inanimate instruments were designed to support, not to drown, the human voice.” Panizzi, therefore, seems to consider Boiardo the last of the truly melodious lyrists of Italy; though it is just to point out that his remark respecting the predominance of the instrument over the voice did not become applicable until the seventeenth century, and that he elsewhere seems to confine the decay of Italian melody to the two centuries immediately preceding his own time (1830). His edition of Boiardo’s lyrics is almost inaccessible; but he has quoted enough in his memoir of the author to confirm his favourable judgment of their literary qualities. FOOTNOTES: [11] Morgante is the name of a giant converted to Christianity by Orlando. He dies in the middle of the poem. [12] The evident Greek derivation of this name from _margos_ (gluttonous) lends some countenance to the suspicion that Politian had a hand in Pulci’s poem.