In Bologna itself there are very few traces of a continuation of Guido Guinicelli's artistic aspirations. On that account Casini altogether refused to admit that there had been a Bolognese school; but it must not be forgotten that among the three Bolognese poets, whom Dante eulogises in addition to Guinicelli, there is one of whom we know nothing at all, while of another scarcely anything has come down to us. The former is Guido Ghisilieri, probably identical with a Guido di Upizzino Ghisilieri, who is mentioned in documents, and was born about the year 1244. Fabrizio or Fabruzzo de' Lambertazzi, who was banished with his family in 1274, like Guinicelli, and is named among the heads of the banished party as late as the year 1294, is the author of an extant moralising sonnet, which contains a reflection to the effect that the judgment of the world is based only on results and not on the wisdom or foolishness of actions. Better known to us is Onesto of Bologna, of whom we have two canzoni, twenty-three sonnets and a ballad. He is a later poet; for whilst he has a polemic with Guittone in a sonnet, yet he directs others to Cino da Pistoja. Guido's influence is manifest in his poems, though it is somewhat superficial. In the one canzone, which is, as far as it has come down to us, quite unintelligible, we find again the thought of Guinicelli: Quand' egli appar, Amor prende suo loco In cor che sia di gentilezza fora.1 This idea afterwards became the dogma, as it were, of the school, by which its disciples may be recognised. A sonnet, "L'anima è criatura virtuata," gives a definition of the soul, developed according to the regular scholastic method. It was in Florence that Guido's learned poetry found its greatest adherents, those that did not merely adopt the new style (l'uso moderno), but also perfected it. Among these were Guido Cavalcanti and Dante Alighieri. It is a very interesting phenomenon, and one that we shall find again among the Florentine followers of Guido Guinicelli, that the originator of so severe and lofty a style 1 When it appears, Love takes its place with deliberation, it remains not in a heart that is without nobility. did not disdain, at times, in a jocose and scoffing vein, to descend to a completely realistic manner. We have two sonnets of this kind by him, the one, concerning the Lucia with the many-coloured cowl, at sight of whom his heart quivers more violently than a serpent's head that has been hacked off, so that he longs to kiss her mouth and both her eyes of flame-a delightful expression of natural feeling; the other, a very drastic invective against a malignant old woman, on whose head he heaps every possible curse: Diavol te levi, vecchia rabbiosa, E sturbigion te fera in su la testa.1 Here, then, the learned poet, too, approaches the style of popular poetry. A poetry of the people existed in Bologna as well as in other places, together with artificial poetry; just in this city, indeed, it had a better fate than in Tuscany, and several remnants of some importance have come down to us. The Bolognese notaries of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries often diverted and amused themselves by writing down, in the collections of public records, Italian songs, which introduce into the midst of Latin legal documents, with their heavy formal jargon, an echo of the loves and pleasures of the gay and joyous world. In Italy the law was always glad to ally itself with poetry, as may be seen from the many poets of those days who were lawyers, judges and notaries. The majority of the poems in question belong to the artificial category, and many of them are known to us from other sources; but others are popular in their general character, and also in the strongly idiomatic colouring of the language. From the record we learn at the same time the period in which they were current. A document of this kind, dated 1286, contains the fragment of a ballad beginning with the words "Partite, amore, a deo." It is the farewell of two lovers in the early morning, as we find it depicted in the Provençal Albas and in the German Tagelieder. The words of the girl, who warns her lover that it is time to depart, are tender in the intensity of their passion: "Kiss me once again, and then go": May the devil take you, wrathful old woman, and may confusion strike thee on the head. Or me bassa, oclo meo, E tosto sia l' andata. In a record of the year 1305, we have the little song of the nightingale, so simple in its contents. The boy's little bird has flown away out of its cage; he weeps and goes into the wood; he hears it sing and begs it to come back. The form of the piece is entirely in keeping-short verses of six syllables, tripping childishly along. This, too, is probably only a fragment. It is an innocent cry of nature, pleasing and touching by its very simplicity, and by the impression it But just on that very account it is impossible to conveys. analyse it. Quite different in character are three poems from a record of the year 1282, all of them ballads, like the pieces already mentioned. Here we have a coarse and vulgar humour, intended to excite the laughter of a less refined public. In them are described in the crudest way the adventures of two female gossips, their obscene actions and discourse. In the second poem two sisters-in-law abuse each other before their neighbours. They manage to give each other the worst possible character, but when one of them comes to touch dangerous ground, the other becomes meek and makes promises on condition that the secret should be kept, whereupon they make it up again, in order to be able to deceive their husbands conjointly. The third ballad gives us a dialogue between a daughter who wishes to marry a young fellow, and her mother who refuses to give her consent. But the scene is here sketched far more coarsely than in the Tuscan song, "Per Arno mi cavalcava." The mother and daughter hurl curses at each other; the girl does not yield in spite of the old woman's words of warning, and shows no trace of modesty in the expression of her desires. A lengthy political poem, the "Serventese dei Geremei e Lambertazzi," narrates the same events as were of such moment in the lives of Guido Guinicelli and of Fabrizio Lambertazzi, the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Bologna, the exile of the latter in 1274 and 1280, and the betrayal of the town of Faenza, where they had taken refuge, to the Guelphs of Bologna, through the instrumentality of Tibaldello (1281). The number of details and of names shows that the poem must have been composed soon after the occurrence of the events. It may have been intended to be publicly recited before the people; for its tone is that of the roving minstrels, the exposition is irregular and lacking all art, there are many idioms in the language, and we frequently find assonance in the place of rhyme. The metrical form is the same as came to be regularly used later on for productions of this kind, the serventese. The characteristic trait of this form was the continuous concatenation of the rhymes, as opposed to division into stanzas; at the end or in the middle of each section (copula), the rhyme was started, which was then taken up and continued by the succeeding copula. In the earlier periods, the poem was always constructed in such a way, that a copula of three or four long verses (consisting of eleven or of seven syllables), which rhymed together, was followed by a shorter one (the coda, consisting of five or four syllables), which gave the rhyme to the next division; and this is also the form of the Bolognese poem (AAAьBBBCC...). The name of Serventese, therefore, did not mean the same thing in Italy, where it referred to metrical peculiarities, as in Provençal literature, though it was probably derived from the latter. The subject-matter could be of various kinds: thus, one of the Bolognese records contains a love serventese. However, the form was employed, by preference, for narrative, moralising and political pieces, for which purpose the uninterrupted succession of verses, without any strongly marked divisions into stanzas, was especially convenient. And so, because it so often resembled a moralising sermon, the other name, Sermintese, which was usual in the fourteenth century, may have been formed by popular etymology, as also the form Sermontese, employed by the old writer on metre, Antonio da Tempo. Antonio declared it to be a popular class of poetry, and Francesco da Barberino, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, treated it contemptuously as minstrels' poetry, which was unknown to the art poets. V THE FRENCH CHIVALROUS POETRY IN NORTHERN ITALY LITERATURE does not show a uniform development from the outset : it begins in different places and in different ways. Before the literature of a single province can attain the supremacy, subject the others to itself, and thus become the general literature of the whole country, it is local in character. The first attempts at poetical composi tion in the Italian language we found in the South and, soon after, poetry was written in the Centre of the peninsula, where it underwent a considerable transformation. In the North, the influence of the adjoining country was stronger as we saw quite at the beginning, and not merely the manner, but also the language of Provençal poetry was adopted. In this tongue poetry continued to be written throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, so that it is plain that lyrical court poetry composed in Italian could not spread in these parts. Dante names only Ildebrandino of Padua and Gotto of Mantua as poets who employed the vulgare illustre in Upper Italy, and he says that nobody composed poetry in Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio. This may be correct: for the Matulino of Ferrara, whom Salimbene mentions as the author of canzoni and serventesi, was probably a writer of popular poetry. The titles of the pieces in the old collections of songs are not accompanied by any names which would point with certainty to Upper Italy. a legal document, however, dated December 23, 1277, is preserved a poem in the Venetian dialect, the so-called "Lament of the Paduan lady, whose husband is away on a Crusade." This title, which was invented by the editor, does not correspond, at any rate, exactly to the subjectmatter, which has been variously interpreted; it is perhaps best to admit that the real context of this curious piece of In |