reproduced the customs and the psychology of the people of the city and the surrounding districts, productive of the poetry of Politian, of Lorenzo and of Pulci himself, author of the _Beca di Dicomano,_ each with its various popular appeal. That inspiration contains something both of the sympathetic and of the ironical, as we observe in all poetry based upon popular themes and use of dialect, in the German romantic _Lieder_ and _Balladen_ and in the dialect literature of the Italy of to-day (one feels inclined to call the _Morgante_ "dialect" and not "Italian"): and in Pulci there vibrated a sympathetic-ironic chord, peculiar to himself and therefore naturally not exactly the same as in Lorenzo, or still less in Politian. But it did not vibrate pure and clear, being prevented from doing so, not so much owing to initial eccentricity and to the intention above-mentioned, as to the accumulation of other inspirations, arising in the fertile spirit of Pulci. For Pulci had in mind, in addition to the reconstruction of a sympathetic-ironic popular poem of the popular story-tellers, something that might be called a "Picaresque romance," understanding thereby not only tales of the sort to be found in Spanish literature, but also certain other tales of Boccaccio and a great part of Folengo's _Baldus._ Picaresque romance asked in its turn sympathy and irony, but of a different sort to the preceding, no longer sympathy for popular ingenuity, but for cleverness, trickiness, for an irony, which should no longer be simply that of superior culture, but also of superior morality; and this too was in some measure and in his own way in Pulci; but he often spoilt this disposition of mind by inadvertently passing, like a person lacking refinement of education, from Picaresque romance to Picaresque intonation, from the representation of a blackguard to the blackguard himself. And there is something else also in the _Morgante_: the imaginings and caprices of Pulci himself, his own personal moral opinions, religious or philosophical; things that are sometimes thought about even by those who do not think much about them, and which, owing to this casual hasty thinking, become nevertheless opinions or semi-opinions. Finally the _Morgante_ is a skein formed of strands of different colour and make, some of them thicker or thinner than others: it is a poem that is not in tune with a single dominant inspiration, and if we take one of those elements that we have described and transport it to the principal place, we immediately have the feeling that we are depriving the complex nature of the work of its vigour. Nevertheless the _Morgante_ must be looked upon as one of the most richly endowed works of our literature, where we meet at every step with delightful figures and traits of expression: Morgante, Margutte, Fiorinetta, Astarotte, Farfarello, Archbishop Turpin, certain touches of character in Orlando, and especially in Rinaldo, and also in