is the prettiest and most spirited song for May ever written. His processions and masquerades afforded also subjects for verse. Bands of people paraded the city in character, personating triumphs, or exhibitions of the arts; and Lorenzo wrote songs, which they chanted as they passed along. It is singular, that, free and energetic as the Florentines were, yet the songs composed for them never spoke of liberty, but turned upon love only: love was all their theme--love that was often licentiousness, and yet described with such truth and beauty, as must have tended greatly to enervate, and even to vitiate, the various persons that formed these gay companies. Lorenzo's canzoni are tainted with this defect. Lorenzo was a faithful and kind, though not a fond husband. His feelings were always held in discipline by him; and if he were too sensitive to the influence of beauty, yet his actions were all regulated by that excellent sense of justice and duty which is his admirable characteristic. There are some elegiac stanzas preserved of his, which prove that he suffered at one time the struggles and errors of passion, and was subdued by it to other thoughts than those which his reason approved. How different is this poem to those addressed to Lucretia Donati. There is no Platonic refinement, no subtlety, no conceit, no imitation of Petrarch; its diction is clear and sweet; truth and strength of feeling animate each expression; it bears the stamp of heartfelt sincerity, and is adorned by all the delicacy which real passion inspires. "Ah!" he exclaims, "had we been joined in marriage! Had you been earlier born, or had I come later into the world!" These stanzas are even left unfinished, and probably were concealed, as revealing a secret which it would have been fatal to have discovered to the world. Besides the animated and gay songs, and choruses, in which Lorenzo is unrivalled, he wrote several descriptive poems: one long one relates the history of how his favourite country house, named Ambra, was carried away by the overflowing of the Ombrone. He figures the villa to be a nymph, of whom the river god is enamoured, and, like one of Ovid's heroines, she falls a victim to his pursuit. The descriptions in this poem are lively, true, and graceful. The "Caccia di Falcone" gives a spirited detail of the disasters that befall falconers: he bring in several of his friends by name. "Where is Luigi Pulci," he cries, "that we do not hear him? He is gone before in that grove, for some whim has seized him, and he has retreated to meditate a sonnet." [Sidenote: April 8. 1492]