To this class belong those descriptive Latin poems of which we have already spoken (p. 262)--hunting-scenes, journeys, ceremonies, and so forth. In Italian we also find something of the same kind, as, for example, the descriptions of the famous Medicean tournament by Politian and Luca Pulci.[787] The true epic poets, Luigi Pulci, Bojardo, and Ariosto, are carried on more rapidly by the stream of their narrative; yet in all of them we must recognise the lightness and precision of their descriptive touch, as one of the chief elements of their greatness. Franco Sacchetti amuses himself with repeating the short speeches of a troop of pretty women caught in the woods by a shower of rain.[788] Other scenes of moving life are to be looked for in the military historians (p. 99). In a lengthy poem,[789] dating from an earlier period, we find a faithful picture of a combat of mercenary soldiers in the fourteenth century, chiefly in the shape of the orders, cries of battle, and dialogue with which it is accompanied. But the most remarkable productions of this kind are the realistic descriptions of country life, which are found most abundantly in Lorenzo Magnifico and the poets of his circle. Since the time of Petrarch,[790] an unreal and conventional style of bucolic poetry had been in vogue, which, whether written in Latin or Italian, was essentially a copy of Virgil. Parallel to this, we find the pastoral novel of Boccaccio (p. 259) and other works of the same kind down to the ‘Arcadia’ of Sannazaro, and later still, the pastoral comedy of Tasso and Guarini. They are works whose style, whether poetry or prose, is admirably finished and perfect, but in which pastoral life is only an ideal dress for sentiments which belong to a wholly different sphere of culture.[791]