We know that the poem itself, as Pio Rajna has shown, "the _rifacimento_ of two earlier popular poems," was written to amuse Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the mother of Lorenzo de' Medici, and that it was recited, canto by canto, in the presence of such guests as Poliziano, Ficino, and Michelangelo Buonarotti; but how "it struck these contemporaries," and whether a subtler instinct permitted them to untwist the strands and to appraise the component parts at their precise ethical and spiritual value, are questions for the exercise of the critical imagination. That which attracted Byron to Pulci's writings was, no doubt, the co-presence of faith, a certain _simplicity_ of faith, with an audacious and even outrageous handling of the objects of faith, combined with a facile and wanton alternation of romantic passion with a cynical mockery of whatsoever things are sober and venerable. _Don Juan_ and the _Vision of Judgment_ owe their existence to the _Morgante Maggiore_. The MS. of the translation of Canto I. was despatched to England, February 28, 1820. It is evident (see Letters, March 29, April 23, May 18, 1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 425, 1901, v. 17, 21) that Murray looked coldly on Byron's "masterpiece" from the first. It was certain that any new work by the author of _Don Juan_ would be subjected to the severest and most hostile scrutiny, and it was doubtful if a translation of part of an obscure and difficult poem, vaguely supposed to be coarse and irreligious, would meet with even a tolerable measure of success. At any rate, in spite of many inquiries and much vaunting of its excellence (see Letters, June 29, September 12, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 314, 362), the MS. remained for more than two years in Murray's hands, and it was not until other arrangements came into force that the translation of the First Canto of the _Morgante Maggiore_ appeared in the fourth and last number of _The Liberal_, which was issued (by John Hunt) July 30, 1823. For critical estimates of Luigi Pulci and the _Morgante Maggiore_, see an article (_Quarterly Review_, April, 1819, vol. xxi. pp. 486-556), by Ugo Foscolo, entitled "Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians;" _Preface_ to the _Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo_, by A. Panizzi, 1830, i. 190-302; _Poems Original and Translated_, by J. H. Merivale, 1838, ii. 1-43; _Stories of the Italian Poets_, by J. H. Leigh Hunt, 1846, i. 283-314; _Renaissance in Italy_, by J. A. Symonds, 1881, iv. 431, 456, and for translations of the _Morgante Maggiore_, _vide ibid_., Appendix V. pp. 543-560; and _Italian Literature_, by R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D., 1898, pp. 128-131. ADVERTISEMENT.