foundation in Caix' observation regarding the language of the "Rosa fresca," to the effect that it is studded with expressions of the chivalrous love poetry, which, however, form only a superficial appendage, and contrast strangely with the natural coarseness of the rest. But from this we must not draw the conclusion, that the author was a court poet, who had imitated the manner and even the speech of the people, but, on the contrary, rather that he was a popular poet, a roving minstrel, who was, to a certain degree, influenced by the artificial poetry, as happened at all times. We must, then, regard the contrasto not as a genuine popular poem, but as a product of the popular minstrelsy, to which class belong so many other old monuments of Northern Italy, written in dialect, with which we shall have to deal later on.

III

LYRICAL POETRY CONTINUED IN CENTRAL ITALY

N Italy chivalrous love poetry probably did not long survive the close of the rule of the Hohenstaufen. But the cultivation of lyrical poetry in the vulgar tongue had already been begun in other places, and Tuscany was the principal new centre in which it now continued to flourish. Here it was that Guittone of Arezzo, as early as the year 1260, composed his song on the battle of Monteaperti, and his love poetry is doubtless still older. But here, too, there is a lack of reliable data. Most of the Tuscan poets that wrote in the same manner appear to be more recent than Guittone; he is considered the head of a school, and looked up to as a master. All the important Tuscan communes take part in the literary activity. In Arezzo, besides Guittone, Master Bandino and Giovanni dell' Orto compose in the Provençal court manner. To Siena belong Messer Folcacchiero and men like Meo or Mino Macconi, while Florence is represented by Dante da Majano, so called after his native place, a little town near the hill of Fiesole. Specially numerous is the band of Pisan poets: Jacopo Mostacci, Gallo Pisano, Pucciandone Martelli, Betto Mettefuoco, Pannuccio dal Bagno, Bacciarone di Messer Baccone, Lotto di Ser Dato.

It was probably only from Tuscany that the poetical tradition reached the neighbouring city of Bologna, where especially Paolo da Castello, or, as he is also called, Paolo Zoppo, belongs to the old conventional school, and, at the beginning of his career, also the same Guido Guinicelli, from whom the first important reform of this poetry was to take its start. Finally, we find among the old lyrical poets two others from Romagna, according to Dante the only ones in this part of Italy that devoted themselves to artificial poetry, and in fact the only ones whose names we meet with in the

collections of lyrics. They are Tommaso of Faenza and Ugolino Buzzuola, likewise of Faenza. The latter, as we learn from the chronicler Salimbene, belonged to the Guelph family of the Alberghetti that ruled in Faenza, who also called themselves Manfredi, and was the father of that illfamed Frate Alberigo, who treacherously murdered his relations, and whose shameful memory was perpetuated by Dante in the "Commedia" ("Inf." xxxiii. 118).

Among the poets just named we have a direct continuation of the poetic manner begun in the South of Italy. The connection is unbroken and we are surely justified in assuming that some of the oldest Tuscans wrote poetry at the very court of Frederick II., where the most distinguished men from all parts of the country came together, and that it was probably just from there that they brought back the poetic manner to their home. Perhaps it was thus with Jacopo Mostacci of Pisa and Paganino of Sarzana, whose songs are contained in the Vatican collection quite near the beginning among those by Southern poets. The predominant and distinguishing characteristic of the school, the servile imitation of Provençal models, continues among the lyrical poets of Central Italy that have been mentioned, and consequently also the same ideas and modes of expression, the same conventional images repeat themselves. The language, too, though it is influenced by local peculiarities, shows in many forms the tradition that came from the South. Where the manuscripts, as is often the case, fluctuate in assigning the authorship of one and the same poem between a Southern and a Tuscan or Bolognese poet, we are not able to distinguish to which of them it belongs, so similar was their poetical manner. That people were conscious of this close connection with the Southern school was clear from the fact that, as Dante tells us, the whole of the oldest Italian poetry, that is to say, all belonging to the whole period that preceded his own times, was called Sicilian, and Dante himself believed that this name would have to be adhered to in the future. In point of fact, this name is thoroughly appropriate, and the designation of Sicilian school is used again at the present day, not only for the poets of the court of Frederick II., but for the whole movement in the Italian lyrical poetry of the thirteenth century which underwent Provençal influence.

This Provençal influence was even renewed and strengthened in Tuscany. The style and language of Guittone of Arezzo show more clearly than in the case of any other poet the traces of a diligent study of the troubadours; he frequently quotes them in his letters, and once translates a passage of Peire Vidal very correctly. Of Messer Migliore degli Abati the "Cento Novelle " relate that he spoke Provençal excellently. Guittone, bewailing the death of the poet Giacomo da Leona, sings of him that he had spoken and written poetry in French and Provençal better than in Aretine. We have a sonnet in the Provençal tongue by Paolo Lanfranchi of Pistoja, and two such by Dante da Majano. More important still is the fact that one of the two old Provençal grammars, the "Donatz Provensals," was composed about this time in Italy and for the special use of the Italians. Moreover, the other old Provençal grammar, the "Razos del Trobar" of Raimon Vidal, did not remain unknown; the poet Girolamo Terramagnino of Pisa turned the prose into bad Provençal verse.

Among the Tuscan poets of this school instances of direct borrowing from the troubadours are more frequent. Thus Jacopo Mostacci, imitating a poem of Jordan de l'Isla— "Longa sazon ai estat vas amor," in the canzone "Umile core e fino e amoroso," followed his original more closely than had probably ever been done in the South. Furthermore, one of the Provençal classes of poems, one that is specially characteristic, was not cultivated in Italy till this time. It is true that the Sicilians knew the Contrasti, the dialogues between Madonna and the lover, but not yet that other kind of tenzone which reproduces conversations and discussions of different poets among themselves. In Provence the tenzone was likewise bound together in the form of a canzone; but later it was also customary for the one poet to send a single stanza, to which the other then replied with the same rhymes. But the sonnet was originally nothing but a single stanza, and so it is natural that those corresponding tenzone stanzas were in Italy reproduced in the shape of the sonnets with reply, which are in the Vatican collection actually called tenzoni. Frequently question and answer came and went several times in succession, so that a regular series arose, which again in its turn corresponded to

the ordinary extended Provençal tenzone; and, just as in the Provençal tenzone, more than two poets took part in the conversation, the first questioner sending his sonnet simultaneously to several people. Sometimes personal insults, but more frequently general questions of various kinds, formed the subject of these discussions. Often, as in most of the similar poems of the troubadours, it is a question of certain subtle distinctions in the matter of love affairs. Thus a certain Bartolommeo Notajo asks one Bonodico of Lucca, which of two knights a lady should prefer—the one who boldly declares his passion, or the one who is afraid and silent. Buonagiunta Urbiciani asks an unknown poet which is the first grief caused by love, and Dante da Majano desires to learn from from Tommaso of Faenza what he considers to be love's greatest sorrow. But other, and still less poetical problems, also appear in these dialogues. One asks another to resolve his doubts in scientific questions, and the Florentines, as we shall see, make tenzoni on political subjects, too. Dino Compagni, in a sonnet, lays before the lawyer, Lapo Saltarelli, a complicated legal case, and Guittone and his imitators occupy themselves with abstruse moral and theological themes. That variety of the tenzone, also, which was called joc partit, or partimen, and in which each of the two poets defended one of two possible replies, was imitated by the Tuscans, though more rarely. Federigo dell' Ambra had such a dispute in nine sonnets with the notary, Ser Pace, on the subject, whether it be more advisable to take the joys and sorrows of love as they come, or to abstain from them altogether; and a thoroughly Provençal partimen question is the one Ricco put to Ser Pace, as to whether it be better to love a young girl or a married woman. The transplanting of this class of poetry to Italy was by no means unimportant: the correspondences in series of sonnets which resulted from it remained a favourite form of composition among succeeding generations and in later ages. Inasmuch as they adopted fresh themes for treatment, they often served to express in a graphic manner the intellectual movement of the times.

The affected and artificial forms, too, were adopted in Tuscany from the Provençal poetry much more readily than had been the case in Sicily. Very popular was the juggling