feeling that belongs only to a real poet—passages too often followed by a grotesqueness that tends to destroy their effect. The qualities here united in very unequal degrees were developed and discriminated by later poets. The importance of Luigi Pulci lies less in his poem, which falls short of perfection in every way, than in the fact that his work contains the germs of the romantic epopee in all its various branches. In considering that the two parent poems of chivalry in Italian, the ‘Morgante’ and ‘Ciriffo,’ originated in the Medicean house, let it be remembered how much this branch of poetry, up to the ‘Jerusalem Delivered,’ with which it terminates, was connected with that Court life which is so constantly represented in its varied productions. From the household of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, who at the highest pinnacle of their fame did not abandon the simplicity and comfort of free citizen life, to the ceremonious Court of Alfonso of Este, is certainly a very long step. Though the Pulci did not go so far as to weave into their ottava rima a genealogy of their patrons reaching back to demigods, still theirs was a kind of poetry destined to enliven stately banquets. Luigi Pulci’s intimacy with Lorenzo is shown by his oft-quoted letters, which throw some side-lights on the various relations between patron and client, and on the commissions, rather political than literary, entrusted to the latter. The author of ‘Morgante’ was sincerely attached to his young patron. When the latter was going to Southern Italy in 1466, before the Neroni and Pitti conspiracy, Pulci wrote to him from the convent of Alverina:[26] ‘Dost thou really mean to leave me buried in the snow among these woods, lonely and comfortless, while thou goest to Rome? Is it really my fate that, whatever thou mayest think of me, as the climax of my ill-luck, I must never mount a horse by thy side? Am I to come to that only when I am an old man? How often have we talked about Rome, and now shall I not accompany thee?—can it be because I should increase the expenses of the journey? Let not that trouble thee; amid all my troubles I will yet do thee credit. A horse is all I ask of thee; for I shall find so many friends yonder, and will manage so well, that I will not be a burthen to thee, as perhaps thou fearest. Truly thou art wrong to pass me by, not to mention that it would hurt me more than anything in this world. Do not treat me as if I were old iron, for I shall soon be well if thou carest for me.’ And Lorenzo really did care for him. Two years later Pulci wrote to him from Pisa: ‘If thou dost not wish people to believe or know that I am thy friend, and have some influence with thee, placard it on the walls—at thine own expense, of course; as for some time past having had no money to pay away, I have been paying with thy name instead. Wherever I show myself people whisper, “That is Lorenzo’s great friend.”’ That Pulci’s money matters were not in brilliant order we