1460, and the cantos must have followed close upon each other. We learn from the author himself that its original conception was due in part to Lorenzo’s mother. In a letter addressed by him to Lorenzo from Fuligno, December 4, 1470, he held out prospects of a new heroic poem.[25] That a serious and pious woman like Madonna Lucrezia should be patroness of a work more or less offensive in a religious point of view may be matter of surprise. But after making allowance for the tendencies of the time, which saw no harm in a mixture of religion and burlesque, and, amid the strictest devotional practices, treated questions of faith with incredible unceremoniousness, it must be remembered that this lady was wont for the sake of genius to judge leniently many things in literature and in life that were questionable. Thus she remained a supporter of Angelo Poliziano after he had fallen into disgrace with her daughter-in-law, and presented him with her religious poems when the unfavourable rumours as to his faith and morals could be no secret to her. But Luigi Pulci, the free-thinker and loose mocker, who mixed up quotations from St. John’s Gospel with open expressions of unbelief, found in her an active and zealous friend till her life’s close. The ‘Morgante Maggiore’ was the beginning of the romantic epopee, which successfully laid hold of the cycle of Carolingian legends that had been rendered accessible to the Italian nation by the ‘Chronicle’ of Turpin and the book of the ‘Reali di Francia.’ This choice of a subject was all the happier because Florence attributed her restoration to Charlemagne, as may be read carved in stone in the church of the Apostles. The style of the work is original. Amid all its prodigies the old knightly romance is serious and full of faith. Christianity is always the foil to the chivalry which sprang from it, and which is animated by its spirit. ‘Morgante’ (the story takes its name from the giant who accomplishes his strange exploits) is not a satire on chivalry, but it is so saturated with burlesque that it assumes a very peculiar character. Neither is it a denial of Christianity, from which, on the contrary, it derives here and there a deeply religious tone; but it is Christianity struggling with scepticism and denial, so that the faith of the Church and the people is driven into the background. In this respect ‘Morgante’ is a true mirror of the time. With its perfect command of the subject, bound down to no poetical rules or precedents, it is a mixture of seriousness and irony, Christianity and unbelief, Biblical texts and profane witticisms. It is full of the most glaring contrasts of sound common-sense and folly, of elegance and coarseness, of lofty intellectual flights and mere buffoonery. There is in this poem more richness of imagination and spontaneity than perhaps in any other work before the appearance of the ‘Orlando Furioso;’ passages occur full of the deepest pathos, and showing a