Quanto vaga, gentil, leggiadra, e pia Non si può dir, ne imaginar assai; and he beautifully adds, Quale sopra i nevosi, ed alti monti Apollo spande il suo bel lume adorno, Tal' i crin suoi sopra la bianca gonna! Il tempo e 'l luogo non convien ch' io conti, Che dov' è si bel sole è sempre giorno; E Paradiso, ov' è si bella Donna! "As over the snowy summits of the high mountains Apollo sheds his golden beams, so flowed her golden tresses over her white vest.--But for the _time_ and the _place_, is it necessary that I should note them? Where shines so fair a sun, can it be other than day? Where dwells so excellent a beauty, can it be other than Paradise?" It happened in the midst of Lorenzo's visions of love and poetry, that he was called upon to give his hand to a wife chosen by his father for political reasons. His inclinations were not consulted, as is plain from the blunt amusing manner in which he has noted it down in his memoranda. "I, Lorenzo, took to wife Donna Clarice Orsini,--or rather she was given to me, (ovvero mi fu data) on such a day." Yet a union thus inauspiciously contracted, was rendered, by the affectionate disposition of Lorenzo, and the amiable qualities of his wife, rather happy than otherwise; it is true, we have no poetical compliments addressed by Lorenzo to Donna Clarice, but there is extant a little billet written to her a few months after their marriage, from the tone of which it is fair to suppose, that Lorenzo had exchanged his poetic flame for a real attachment to an amiable woman.[62] There is a very beautiful and elegant passage in the beginning of Lorenzo's commentary on his own poems, in which he enlarges on the theory of love. "The conditions (he says) which appear necessarily to belong to a true, exalted, and worthy love, are two. First,--_to love but one_: secondly,--_to love that one always_. Not many lovers have hearts so generous as to be capable of fulfilling these two conditions; and exceedingly few women display sufficient attractions to withhold men from the violation of them; yet without these there is no true love." And afterwards, enumerating those charms of person and mind which inspire affection, he adds, "and yet these estimable qualities are not enough, unless the lover possess sensibility of heart to discern them, and elevation and generosity of soul to appreciate them." This in the original is very elegantly expressed, and the sentiment is as true as it is exalted and graceful; but that Lorenzo was not always thus philosophically refined, that he could descend from these Platonics to be impassioned and in earnest, and that when touched to the heart, he could pour forth the language of the heart, we have a single instance, which it is impossible to allude to without feeling some emotion of curiosity, which can never now be gratified.