Members of this family were five times elected to the Priorate, one of the highest honours of the republic. Pulci had two brothers, and one of their wives, Antonia, who were all poets:-- Carminibus patriis notissima Pulcia proles; Quis non hanc urbem Musarum dicat arnicam, Si tres producat fratres domus una poetas? 'Ib.' II. v. 241. Luigi married Lucrezia di Uberto, of the Albizzi family, and was intimate with the great men of his time, but more especially with Angelo Politian, and Lorenzo the Magnificent. His Morgante has been attributed, in part at least,[1] to the assistance of Marsilius Ficinus, and by others the whole has been attributed to Politian. The first conjecture is utterly improbable; the last is possible, indeed, on account of the licentiousness of the poem; but there are no direct grounds for believing it. The 'Morgante Maggiore' [2] is the first proper romance; although, perhaps, Pulci had the 'Teseide' before him. The story is taken from the fabulous history of Turpin; and if the author had any distinct object, it seems to have been that of making himself merry with the absurdities of the old romancers. The 'Morgante' sometimes makes you think of Rabelais. It contains the most remarkable guess or allusion upon the subject of America that can be found in any book published before the discovery. [3] The well known passage in the tragic Seneca is not to be compared with it. The 'copia verborum' of the mother Florentine tongue, and the easiness of his style, afterwards brought to perfection by Berni, are the chief merits of Pulci; his chief demerit is his heartless spirit of jest and buffoonery, by which sovereigns and their courtiers were flattered by the degradation of nature, and the 'impossibilification' of a pretended virtue. [Footnote: 1 Meaning the 25th canto. Ed.] [Footnote 2: The 'Morgante' was printed in 1488. Ed.] [Footnote 3: The reference is, of course, to the following stanzas:--