The poem in terza rima which bears the name of ‘I Beoni’ (‘The Drinkers’), or ‘Simposio,’ resembles the ‘Nencia’ and the ‘Hawking Party’ in so far as it describes Florentine and Tuscan manners. In rhythm, tone, and manner, it is very different from the others; for although in ‘Nencia’ peasant life sometimes receives a burlesque covering, the poem never becomes satire, nor sinks to that degree of low comedy which degenerates into vulgarity. This, however, is the case in the ‘Beoni,’ a series of chapters in which the poet describes the manners and adventures of a company of jolly fellows, whom he meets near Porta Faenza as he is returning from Careggi, at the moment when they are setting out for Ponte a Rifredi, a little place about a mile away from the town, and which takes its name from a bridge over the little stream Terzolle. The business of the company is to taste a cask of wine which they have heard highly praised. The poem is not wanting in humour, and offers a lively picture of convivial rather than social manners, such as long existed in Tuscany, and of which we possess many literary monuments. Although unfinished, it is long, and monotonous in spite of the variety of its situations; its dry comedy often degenerates into downright coarseness, such as might lead to very unfavourable conclusions with regard to the morals even of the higher classes and the clergy, who in part are represented here. ‘I Beoni’ makes an unpleasant impression from another point of view. Not only is the metre that of the most sublime poems in the Italian language; the outward arrangement of the poem, as well as a number of particular turns, are burlesque imitations of the great poets. This is a proof of keen observation, of wonderful and many-sided power; but it has a darker side. If we are to recognise in this production the beginning of Italian satire, we can all the more justly measure the distance between these ‘chapters’ and those brilliant mirrors of the time which immediately followed that of Lorenzo de’ Medici—the satires of Lodovico Ariosto.