This is, however, not the place to describe Lorenzo’s poems, the fine _Altercazione_, a Platonic dialogue; the _Capitoli_, or _I Beoni_. His _Ballate_, _Canzone di Ballo_, and _Canzone Carnescialeschi_, which represent the popular, often very licentious poetry of the streets, are known to all Italian scholars. Il Lasca (A. Grazzini), after describing the masqueraders parading the streets with _Trionfi_, allegorical or mythological cars, and _Carri_ filled with men representing various trades, each one preceded and followed by its special attendants singing and dancing, and many masqued horsemen, says: “The Magnificent Lorenzo invented this manner of celebrating the festival. Formerly men dressed up as women went about the streets singing and dancing, imitating the maidens who thus greeted the month of May. The Magnificent, finding it was always the same thing, imagined to change not only the songs but the whole representation and the words, writing songs with varied metres, and causing new and different airs to be written. The first of these masquerades was performed by men who sold sugar-plums and _berriquocoli_ (small cakes), and the music, for three voices, was written by a certain Arrigo Tedesco,[154] head of the choir of S. Giovanni, a musician of great repute in those days.” The most beautiful of Lorenzo’s carnival songs is _Il Trionfo di Bacco e Arianne_, beginning: “Quant’ è bella giovanezza Che si fugge tuttavia.” Lorenzo’s sonnets are many, and some are worthy to rank with those of the most famous poets; indeed Muratori, in the specimens of perfect poetry appended to his treatise, cites four of them, together with the finest of Dante, Cavalcanti, Petrarch, and other great poets. In the _Laudi_, and the sacred play _S. Giovanni e Paolo_, can be traced Lorenzo’s early bringing up under his mother, herself no mean poetess, and the good Bishop Gentile. The play was written in later life for his children who acted it. It is said that Lorenzo himself took the part of Constantine. Already ill, and oppressed with cares, the Emperor’s address to his sons describing the duties of a ruler, and the lines “Spesso chi chiama Costantin felice Sta meglio assai di me e’l ver non dice,” have a sad autobiographical ring.