The following pages, which treat of the manners of the time, will describe the bacchanals, which were not new in Florence, but which Lorenzo de’ Medici increased, and not merely for the humour of the thing, to a degree that has cast on his memory a reflection which an exact comparison of the poet’s circumstances with the past would hardly justify. The abundant imagination and many-sided wit of these gay compositions may be admired, but, even were the licence less, it would be impossible to take real pleasure in them when once the purpose underlying them is perceived. Such songs were traditional in Florence and other places, as were also the people’s carnival societies, of which Lorenzo made use for his popular festivals, and for which he wrote even in the days of his highest authority—perhaps even more especially then. To these songs the accomplished choir-master of San Giovanni, the German Heinrich Isaak, commonly called Arrigo Tedesco, composed melodies for three voices. Even before the event which exercised so great and injurious an influence on life and morals—the plague of 1348—songs were openly sung, the levity and revolting coarseness of which contrasted strangely with the pious canticles which resounded in the evening before the image of the Madonna and other shrines. The ‘Decameron’ refers to them, and the Chronicles of Modena give us the beginning of a drinking-song which bears witness to the confusion of tongues that had arisen, probably among the mercenary bands: ‘Trinche gote Malvasie—mi non biver oter vin.’ The poems destined for singing increase in number from the fourteenth century onwards.[5] Lorenzo only perfected in form, rendered more significant, and finally turned to account for other purposes, what he found ready in the life of the people. A greater contrast to these frivolous productions than even his wanderings on the heights of speculation, his effusions of philosophic poetry and tender aspiring sentiment, is offered by the poems on religious subjects, of which Lorenzo found examples in his own family. The mystery-play, ‘Rappresentazione dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo,’ composed, according to the prologue spoken by the angel of the Annunciation, for the brotherhood of San Giovanni, is said to have been acted at the festivities which celebrated the marriage of Maddalena de’ Medici. It is certain that Lorenzo’s son, Giuliano, then just ten, and perhaps also Piero, took part with other youths and boys of noble houses in the representation held by the said company in 1489. The legend of Constantia, daughter of Constantine the Great, who was said to have been cured of leprosy at the tomb of St. Agnes on the Nomentan Way, and that of the martyrs John and Paul, who suffered death in Rome on the Cœlian, are here blended with the story of the division of the empire among Constantine’s sons, of the reign of Julian the Apostate, and his death in the Parthian war, and formed