The ‘Beca da Dicomano’ of Luigi Pulci[801] is an admitted counterpart to the ‘Nencia’ of Lorenzo. But the deeper purpose is wanting. The ‘Beca’ is written not so much from the inward need to give a picture of popular life, as from the desire to win the approbation of the educated Florentine world by a successful poem. Hence the greater and more deliberate coarseness of the scenes, and the indecent jokes. Nevertheless, the point of view of the rustic lover is admirably maintained. Third in this company of poets comes Angelo Poliziano, with his ‘Rusticus’[802] in Latin hexameters. Keeping clear of all imitation of Virgil’s Georgics, he describes the year of the Tuscan peasant, beginning with the late autumn, when the countryman gets ready his new plough and prepares the seed for the winter. The picture of the meadows in spring is full and beautiful, and the ‘Summer’ has fine passages; but the vintage-feast in autumn is one of the gems of modern Latin poetry. Politian wrote poems in Italian as well as Latin, from which we may infer that in Lorenzo’s circle it was possible to give a realistic picture of the passionate life of the lower classes. His gipsy’s love-song[803] is one of the earliest products of that wholly modern tendency to put oneself with poetic consciousness into the position of another class. This had probably been attempted for ages with a view to satire,[804] and the opportunity for it was offered in Florence at every carnival by the songs of the maskers. But the sympathetic understanding of the feelings of another class was new; and with it the ‘Nencia’ and this ‘Canzone zingaresca’ mark a new starting-point in the history of poetry. Here, too, we must briefly indicate how culture prepared the way for artistic development. From the time of the ‘Nencia,’ a period of eighty years elapses to the rustic genre-painting of Jacopo Bassano and his school. In the next part of this work we shall show how differences of birth had lost their significance in Italy. Much of this was doubtless owing to the fact that men and man were here first thoroughly and profoundly understood. This one single result of the Renaissance is enough to fill us with everlasting thankfulness. The logical notion of humanity was old enough--but here the notion became a fact.