Many other poets might be mentioned, but they are now mere names, except SENUCCIO DEL BENE, chiefly renowned as Petrarch’s friend, but himself a graceful writer, and two of considerably later date, of one of whom it may be truly if paradoxically said that he is chiefly remembered for being forgotten. This is DOMENICO BURCHIELLO, a standing example of the fickleness of popular taste. He was a Florentine, who lived from about 1400 to 1448, and composed numerous burlesque sonnets _alla coda_ (with a tag of three lines), which retained sufficient vitality to go through thirty editions soon after the invention of printing, but are now inevitably neglected, inasmuch as the Florentine slang in which they are mainly composed has ceased to be amusing, or even intelligible. The other poet of the period, GIUSTO DE’ CONTI, a jurist, who lived at the court of Sigismondo Malatesta, Prince of Rimini, and died there about 1452, is remarkable as the chief contemporary imitator of Petrarch, whom he followed with such servility as greatly to impair the credit otherwise due to him for the sweetness of his verse and the occasional dignity of his style. His collection of sonnets, entitled _La Bella Mano_, from its perpetual reference to the beauties of his lady’s hand, stands out at all events, as even an inferior work might have done, from the almost total poetical barrenness of the middle of the fifteenth century, otherwise only relieved by the elegant sonnets of another Petrarchist, Bonaccorso da Montemagno, and the popular carols which gained Leonardo Giustiniani deserved reputation. More genuine poetry is to be found in the occasional lyrics of two writers near the end of the fourteenth century, chiefly eminent in a different species of composition, the novelette. FRANCO SACCHETTI and GIOVANNI FIORENTINO are artists in words, and men of true poetic feeling. A canzonet of Sacchetti’s (the earliest Italian poet, says Rossetti, with whom playfulness was a characteristic), _O vaghe montanine pastorelle_, was so popular as to have been transmitted for some generations by oral recitation, while his novelettes, until printed in the eighteenth century, existed only in a single mutilated manuscript. This is the conclusion of Rossetti’s translation of this charming lyric: _I think your beauties might make great complaint Of being thus shown ever mount and dell; Because no city is so excellent But that your stay therein were honourable. In very truth now does it like you well To live so poorly on the hillside here?_ _Better it liketh one of us, pardie, Behind her flock to seek the pasture-stance, Far better than it liketh one of ye To ride unto your curtained rooms and dance. We seek no riches, neither golden chance, Save wealth of flowers to weave into our hair._