Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece Part 46

His Eclogues, with their allegories, repeat the manner of Petrarch's minor Latin poems.]

[Footnote 20: Marlowe makes Gaveston talk of 'Italian masques.' At the same time, in the prologue to _Tamburlaine_, he shows that he was conscious of the new and n.o.bler direction followed by the drama in England.]

[Footnote 21: This sentence requires some qualification. In his _Poesia Popolare Italiana_, 1878, Professor d'Ancona prints a Pisan, a Venetian, and two Lombard versions of our Border ballad 'Where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son,' so close in general type and minor details to the English, German, Swedish, and Finnish versions of this Volkslied as to suggest a very ancient community of origin. It remains as yet, however, an isolated fact in the history of Italian popular poetry.]

[Footnote 22: _Canti Popolari Toscani_, raccolti e annotati da Giuseppe Tigri. Volume unico. Firenze: G. Barbera, 1869.]

[Footnote 23: This is a description of the Tuscan rispetto.

In Sicily the stanza generally consists of eight lines rhyming alternately throughout, while in the North of Italy it is normally a simple quatrain. The same poetical material a.s.sumes in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy these diverge but a.s.sociated forms.]

[Footnote 24: This song, called Ciure (Sicilian for _fiore_) in Sicily, is said by Signor Pitre to be in disrepute there.

He once asked an old dame of Palermo to repeat him some of these ditties. Her answer was, 'You must get them from light women; I do not know any. They sing them in bad houses and prisons, where, G.o.d be praised, I have never been.' In Tuscany there does not appear to be so marked a distinction between the flower song and the rispetto.]

[Footnote 25: Much light has lately been thrown on the popular poetry of Italy; and it appears that contemporary improvisatori trust more to their richly stocked memories and to their power of recombination than to original or novel inspiration. It is in Sicily that the vein of truly creative lyric utterance is said to flow most freely and most copiously at the present time.]

[Footnote 26: 'Remember me, fair one, to the scrivener. I do not know him or who he is, but he seems to me a sovereign poet, so cunning is he in his use of verse.']

[Footnote 27: It must be remarked that Tigri draws a strong contrast in this respect between the songs of the mountain districts which he has printed and those of the towns, and that Pitre, in his edition of Sicilian _Volkslieder_, expressly alludes to the coa.r.s.eness of a whole cla.s.s which he had omitted. The MSS. of Sicilian and Tuscan songs, dating from the fifteenth century and earlier, yield a fair proportion of decidedly obscene compositions. Yet the fact stated above is integrally correct. When acclimatised in the large towns, the rustic Muse not unfrequently a.s.sumes a garb of grossness. At home, among the fields and on the mountains, she remains chaste and romantic.]

[Footnote 28: In a rispetto, of which I subjoin a translation, sung by a poor lad to a mistress of higher rank, love itself is pleaded as the sign of a gentle soul:--

My state is poor: I am not meet To court so n.o.bly born a love; For poverty hath tied my feet, Trying to climb too far above.

Yet am I gentle, loving thee; Nor need thou shun my poverty.

[Footnote 29: When the Cherubina, of whom mention has been made above, was asked by Signor Tigri to dictate some of her rispetti, she answered, 'O signore! ne dico tanti quando li canto! . . . ma ora . . . bisognerebbe averli tutti in visione; se no, proprio non vengono.']

[Footnote 30: I need hardly guard myself against being supposed to mean that the form of _Ballata_ in question was the only one of its kind in Italy.]

[Footnote 31: See my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, p.

114.]

[Footnote 32: The originals will be found in Carducci's _Studi Letterari_, p. 273 _et seq._ I have preserved their rhyming structure.]

[Footnote 33: Stanza XLIII. All references are made to Carducci's excellent edition, _Le Stanze, l'Orfeo e le Rime di Messer Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano._ Firenze: G. Barbera.

1863.]

SKETCHES AND STUDIES

IN ITALY AND GREECE

BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

AUTHOR OF "RENAISSANCE IN ITALY," "STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS," ETC.

THIRD SERIES

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1910

First Edition (Smith, Elder & Co.) _December 1898_ _Reprinted December 1907_ _Reprinted October 1910_ Taken Over by John Murray _January 1917_

_All rights reserved_

_Printed in Great Britain by_

Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd.

_London, Colchester & Eton_

CONTENTS

FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO

THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS

SIENA

MONTE OLIVETO

MONTEPULCIANO

PERUGIA

ORVIETO

LUCRETIUS

ANTINOUS

SPRING WANDERINGS

AMALFI, PaeSTUM, CAPRI