About six miles from Florence on the high road to Pisa stands the fine villa of Castel-Pulci, now a lunatic asylum. In ancient times the Pulci owned large possessions in the Val d’Arno, but the first notice I have found of them is in 1278 when Jacopo di Rinaldo Pulci was denounced to the captain of the Guelph party in Florence for failing to keep a weir in the Arno near Ponte a Signa in proper repair. His son Mainetto sold this weir to the monks of the great Badia[70] a Settimo, who in 1313 also bought an island in the river from Giovanni and Ponzardo, sons of Mainetto. Like so many of the great Florentine houses the Pulci failed in 1321 and villa and lands were seized by the cardinal Napoleone Orsini, one of the creditors. His heirs sold the estate to the Marquis Rinnucini who enlarged and beautified Castel-Pulci, which was bought by the government some fifty years ago. Luigi Pulci, born on the 3rd of December 1431, was the author of the _Morgante Maggiore_, the first burlesque romance in European literature and the prototype of that form of poetry which Ariosto brought to perfection. His two elder brothers were also poets; Luca wrote the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_ and the _Driadeo d’Amore_, and was considered by Varchi superior to Luigi, while Giovio calls him _poeta nobile_. Bernardo, the eldest, was among the first to write pastoral poetry in the vulgar tongue; he also made a good translation of the Eclogues of Virgil, and wrote a poem on the passion of Christ and many plays. His wife Antonia was a poetess of no mean fame in the same style. Verino celebrates the three brothers thus: [Illustration: VILLA DI CASTEL-PULCI.] “Carminibus patriis notissima Pulcia proles. Qui non hanc urbem Musarem dicat amicam, Si tres prodicat frates domus una poetas?” Luigi Pulci was an intimate friend of the Medici and formed one of the brilliant company surrounding Lorenzo il Magnifico, who mentions him in his poem on hawking: “Luigi Pulci ov’è, che non si sente? Egli se n’andò dianzi in quel boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente, Vorrà fantasticar forse un sonetto;” Many were the jokes made by Lorenzo’s witty chaplain, Ser Matteo di Franco, a canon of the cathedral of Florence, and a favourite of Pope Innocent VIII, on the name of his friend Pulci (Pulex, a flea). He used to say of Luigi, who was very thin, “famine is as naturally depicted on his countenance as though it were a work by Giotto.” They wrote facetious sonnets to each other which were published in the fifteenth century and immediately placed on the Index, but a reprint of this rare volume was made by Marchese De Rossi in 1759. Both were admirers and intimate friends of Angelo Poliziano (to whom, by the way, some have erroneously attributed the _Morgante Maggiore_).