of the Troubadours. In other respects, he shows himself in touch with the later developments-e.g., in his adoption of the ballata-form, almost certainly unknown to the Sicilians. Although the Sicilians so closely followed Troubadour precedent, it is remarkable that a class of writing possessing special attraction in the Party-spirit. wane of Provençal literature-the political sirventes-was wholly, or almost wholly, neglected by them. The pioneers were engrossed with the theme of knightly love. In the democratic cities of Tuscany, where the thing itself was unknown, this exclusive attachment could not continue to hold. It fell before the conditions of the age, and especially that spirit of faction which was as the breath of life in the nostrils of the Lapi and the Bindi. It was the success of his party, not any female abstraction, that fascinated the citizen; and the burning questions of the day, and the controversial fury that flashed and flamed in them, naturally found a mirror in contemporary verse. Bologna had its Serventese dei Geremei e Lambertazzi. But a caution is necessary. A production like this is something totally different from the Provençal type, and at the commencement of the fourteenth century the misshapen, and to some extent misnamed, verse is laughed out of court by Francesco da Barberino as mere mountebank mummery, which artistic poetry disowns. Politics, however, in the wider, international sense, laid hold of all, poets and lay-folk both. Guittone of Arezzo wrote nothing better than his political ode on the defeat of the Florentines at Monteaperti. This blow to the "country party" was due in a measure to the presence of German horse-a circumstance more than once ironically alluded to-and Guittone, ardent Guelf, wishes the Ghibellines joy of the alliance :— “Pray, serve them well, and make them show the blades, Wherewith your faces they have cleft in twain, And sons and fathers slain." The triumph of Charles of Anjou in 1266, which decided the supremacy of the Guelfs throughout Italy, and the ill-starred expedition of the young Conradin two years later, gave rise to a war of sonetti a tenzone, especially at Florence, where Monte Andrea, secure in the power of the French, gibes at the baffled Ghibellines, while Schiatta di Messer Albizzi Pallavillani espouses their cause and promises them good fortune. The day will come, says he, when it will be seen how the lamb can bite. Other versifiers who shared in the polemic were Orlanduccio Orafo, Palamidesse Belindore, Bernardo Notaio, and Ser Cione Notaio. This title "Ser," in Italian literary annals, is of evil omen, but it is bootless to make exceptions. The notary people, one and all, are ciphers to the tough friar. In Guittone's story there is much that reminds us of Dante. Converted "nel mezzo del cammin," he Guittone of left wife and children, and joined himse Arezzo. to the order of the Knights of Mary. This order was commonly known as that of the Joyous Brethren, because the knights, as a rule, gave them selves but little concern for the strict observance of their vows. Guittone, however, if the phrase may be forgiven, "meant business." He looked back with something like horror on his past career, wherein he had composed worldly Troubadour songs and prated about love as the only source of excellence. "Then was I from my birth to middle-age Pent in a foul, unhonour'd, noisome stye, He now regards Love as a sickness to be remedied by prayer and fasting, and if he still writes poetry, and poetry of an artistic kind, he has undoubtedly changed his tone. The Troubadours, in their repertory of forms, had a verse for enumerating the things that bring pleasure to the poet. To Bertran de Born the supreme bliss was the joy of battle, while the Monk of Montaudan found his delight in founts and flowers, in the song of birds, in maiden loveliness. Far otherwise is it with the Aretine penitent, who confesses himself pleased with the chaste and loving wife, with the widow that minds her house, with the conscientious prelate, with the monk-is there a sly touch here?-that gads not about in a world on which he is supposed to have turned his back. Thus morals and religion, as well as politics, furnish material for poetry, and not only for poetry but for prose, since Guittone practised both. Fra Guittone, then, is an important link in the evolutionary chain, but Heaven forbid the thought that he is an attractive writer! A dialectical manner, may serve. an incessant baptism of Cicero and Aristotle, Boethius and Seneca-if that be your liking, perhaps Guittone But his borrowings of pagan sentiment are not all. He of purpose confounds Latin and Italian. In other words, he uses Latin and Italian vocables ad libitum; and though Italian was a language barely able to lisp, insists on its adapting itself to the complicated Latin period. This is one reason of his obscurity, though other causes were contributory. The Troubadours had what they called rims cars, or "dear rhymes." These "dear rhymes" the Italians imitated in their canzoni equivoche, so named because words similar in sound, but dissimilar in sense, are made to rhyme therein. Such rhymes have always been permissible in Italian,-they may be found, for instance, in Tasso, but the employment of them was a fixed principle with Guittone, Chiaro Davanzati, Monte Andrea, and others affecting the "chiuso parlare or oscura rima." 1 An intermedi iate group. 66 6 The passage in which Dante alludes to Guittone may be termed classical: "O brother, now I see,' he said, 'the knot Which me, the Notary, and Guittone held Short of the sweet new style that now I hear.'" 2 The words are put into the mouth of Buonagiunta of Lucca; and the originator of the "sweet new style" 1 For further information respecting Guittone, the reader may be referred to L. Romanelli, Di Guittone d' Arezzo e delle sue opere, Campo-basso, 1875; and W. Koken, Guittone 's von Arezzo Dichtung und sein Verhältniss zu Guinicelli von Bologna, Leipzig. 2 Purgatorio, xxiv. 54-56. H was Guido Guinicelli (or Guinizelli) of Bologna, whom Dante calls "the father Of me and of my betters, who had ever "1 Practised the sweet and gracious rhymes of love." 1 For general purposes the schools may be distinguished as the Sicilian and the Tuscan, but between them. stands an intermediate, transitional group composed almost entirely of Florentines. Such were Chiaro Davanzati, Maestro Francesco, Maestro Rinuccino, Maestro Migliore, The Complete Damsel, and Pacino Angiolieri. Of these, by far the most important is Chiaro Davanzati, already mentioned as a follower of Guittone. Chiaro But Chiaro in his time played many parts. First he essays the Provençal style, developing a theme of Sordello: Bel cavalier me plai que per amor. Then, in emulation of Guittone, he discourses on the mysteries of theology, and renounces ordinary love as of the Devil. Towards the end of his career he was dead in 1280 he succumbed to the influence of Guinicelli. Yet, through all these phases and fashions, he manifests a freedom. and spontaneity which are full of augury. In his writings, as in those of his countrymen and contemporaries generally, may be remarked a tendency to greater ease and naturalness, especially in those dialogues betwixt lady and lover, of which examples have been left by Chiaro himself and a certain 1 Purgatorio, xxvi. 97-99. |