Chapter XIV: Burlesque Poetry and Satire (1)

Relation of Satiric to Serious Literature--Italy has more
Parody and Caricature than Satire or Comedy--Life of
Folengo--His _Orlandino_--Critique of Previous
Romances--Lutheran Doctrines--Orlando's
Boyhood--Griffarosto--Invective against Friars--Maccaronic
Poetry--The Travesty of Humanism--Pedantesque
Poetry--Glottogrysio Ludimagistro--Tifi Odassi of Padua--The
Pedant Vigonca--Evangelista Fossa--Giorgio Alione--Folengo
employs the Maccaronic Style for an Epic--His Address to the
Muses--His Hero Baldus--Boyhood and Youth--Cingar--The
Travels of the Barons--Gulfora--Witchcraft in
Italy--Folengo's Conception of Witchcraft--Entrance into
Hell--The Zany and the Pumpkin--Nature of Folengo's
Satire--His Relation to Rabelais--The _Moscheis_--The
_Zanitonella_--Maccaronic Poetry was Lombard--Another and
Tuscan Type of Burlesque--_Capitoli_--Their Popular
Growth--Berni--His Life--His Mysterious Death--His Character
and Style--Three Classes of _Capitoli_--The pure Bernesque
Manner--Berni's Imitators--The Indecency of this
Burlesque--Such Humor was Indigenous--_Terza Rima_--Berni's
Satires on Adrian VI. and Clement VII.--His Caricatures--His
Sonnet on Aretino--The _Rifacimento_ of Boiardo's
_Orlando_--The Mystery of its Publication--Albicante and
Aretino--The Publishers Giunta and Calvi--Berni's Protestant
Opinions--Eighteen Stanzas of the _Rifacimento_ printed by
Vergerio--Hypothesis respecting the Mutilation of the
_Rifacimento_--Satire in Italy.

In all classical epochs of literature comedy and satire have presented their antithesis to ideal poetry, by setting the actual against the imagined world, or by travestying the forms of serious art. Thus the Titanic farce of Aristophanes was counterposed to AEschylean tragedy; and Moliere portrayed men as they are, before an audience which welcomed Racine's pictures of men as the age conceived they ought to be. It is the mark of really great literature when both thesis and antithesis, the aspiration after the ideal and the critique of actual existence, exhibit an equality of scale. The comic and satiric species of poetry attain to grandeur only by contact with impassioned art of a high quality, or else by contrast with a natural greatness in the nation that produces them. Both mask and anti-mask reveal the mental stature of the people. Both issue from the conscience of society, and bear its impress.

If so much be admitted, we can easily understand why burlesque poetry formed the inevitable pendent to polite literature in Italy. There was no national tragedy; therefore there could be no great comedy. The best work of the age, typified by Ariosto's epic, was so steeped in irony that it offered no vantage-ground for humorous counterpoise. There was nothing left but to exaggerate its salient qualities, and to caricature its form. Such exaggeration was burlesque; such caricature was parody. In like manner, satire found no adequate sphere. The nation's life was not on so grand a scale as to evolve the elements of satire from the contrast between faculties and foibles. Nor again could a society, corrupt and satisfied with corruption, anxious to live and let live, apply the lash with earnestness to its own shoulders. _Facit indignatio versus_, was Juvenal's motto; and indignation tore the heart of Swift. But in Italy there was no indignation. All men were agreed to tolerate, condone, and compromise. When vices come to be laughingly admitted, when discords between practice and profession furnish themes for tales and epigrams, the moral conscience is extinct. But without an appeal to conscience the satirist has no _locus standi_. Therefore, in Italy there was no great satire, as in Italy there was no great comedy.

The burlesque rhymsters portrayed their own and their neighbors' immorality with self-complacent humor, calling upon the public to make merry over the spectacle. This poetry, obscene, equivocal, frivolous, horribly sincere, supplied a natural antithesis to the pseudo-platonic, pedantic, artificial mannerism of the purists. In point of intrinsic value, there is not much to choose between the Petrarchistic and the burlesque styles. Many burlesque poets piqued themselves with justice on their elegance, and clothed gross thoughts in diction of elaborate polish. Meanwhile they laid the affectations, conventions and ideals of the age impartially under contribution. The sonneteers suggested parodies to Aretino, who celebrated vice and deformity in women with hyperboles adapted from the sentimental school.[384] The age of gold was ridiculed by Romolo Bertini.[385] The idyl found its travesty in Berni's pictures of crude village loves and in Folengo's _Zanitonella_. Chivalry became absurd by the simple process of enforcing the prosaic elements in Ariosto, reducing his heroes to the level of plebeian life, and exaggerating the extravagance of his romance. The ironical smile which played upon his lips, expands into broad grins and horse-laughter. Yet, though the burlesque poets turned everything they touched into ridicule, these buffoons were not unfrequently possessed of excellent good sense. Not a few of them, as we shall see, were among the freest thinkers of their age. Like Court jesters they dared to utter truths which would have sent a serious writer to the stake. Lucidity of intellectual vision was granted at this time in Italy to none but positive and materialistic thinkers--to analysts like Machiavelli and Pomponazzi, critics like Pietro Aretino, poets with feet firmly planted on the earth like Berni and Folengo. The two last-named artists in the burlesque style may be selected as the leaders of two different but cognate schools, the one flourishing in Lombardy, the other in Florence.

[Footnote 384: See the Madrigals in _Opere Burlesche_, vol. iii. pp. 36-38.]

[Footnote 385: _Ibid._ p. 290.]

Girolamo Folengo was born in 1491 of noble parents at Cipada, a village of the Mantuan district. He made his first studies under his father's roof, and in due time proceeded to Bologna. Here he attended the lectures of Pomponazzi, and threw himself with ardor into the pleasures and perils of the academical career. Francesco Gonzaga, a fantastical and high-spirited libertine from Mantua, was the recognized leader of the students at that moment. Duels, challenges, intrigues and street-quarrels formed the staple of their life. It was an exciting and romantic round of gayety and danger, of which the novelists have left us many an animated picture. Folengo by his extravagant conduct soon exhausted the easy patience of the university authorities. He was obliged to quit Bologna, and his father refused to receive him. In this emergency he took refuge in a Benedictine convent at Brescia. When he made himself a monk, Folengo changed his Christian name to Teofilo, by which he is now best known in literature. But he did not long endure the confinement of a cloister. After six years spent among the Benedictines, he threw the cowl aside, and ran off with a woman, Girolama Dieda, for whom he had conceived an insane passion.[386] This was in the year 1515. During the next eleven years he gave himself to the composition of burlesque poetry. His _Maccaronea_ appeared at Venice in 1519, and his _Orlandino_ in 1526. The former was published under he pseudonym of Merlinus Cocaius, compounded of a slang word in the Mantuan dialect, and of the famous wizard's title of romance.[387] The latter bore the _nom de plume_ of _Limerno Pitocco_--an anagram of Merlino, with the addition of an epithet pointing to the poet's indigence. These works brought Folengo fame but little wealth, and he was fain to return at last to his old refuge.[388] Resuming the cowl, he now retired to a monastery in the kingdom of Naples, visited Sicily, and died at last near Padua, in the convent of S. Croce di Campese. This was in 1544. The last years of his life had been devoted to religious poetry, which is not read with the same curiosity as his burlesque productions.

[Footnote 386: In _Mac._ xx. (p. 152 of Mantuan edition, 1771), he darkly alludes to this episode of his early life, where he makes an exposed witch exclaim:

Nocentina vocor magicis tam dedita chartis,
Decepique mea juvenem cum fraude Folengum.]

[Footnote 387: I cannot find sufficient authority for the story of Folengo's having had a grammar-master named Cocaius, from whom he borrowed part of his pseudonym. The explanation given by his Mantuan editor, which I have adopted in the text, seems the more probable. _Cocaj_ in Mantuan dialect means a cork for a bottle; and the phrase _ch'al fa di cocaj_ is used to indicate some extravagant absurdity or blunder.]

[Footnote 388: There seems good reason, from many passages in his _Maccaronea_, to believe that his repentance was sincere. I may here take occasion to remark that, though his poems are gross in the extreme, their moral tone is not unhealthy. He never makes obscenity or vice attractive.]

Teofilo Folengo, or Merlinus Cocaius, or Limerno Pitocco, was, when he wrote his burlesque poems, what the French would call a _declasse_. He had compromised his character in early youth and had been refused the shelter of his father's home. He had taken monastic vows in a moment of pique, or with the baser object of getting daily bread in idleness. His elopement from the convent with a paramour had brought scandal on religion. Each of these steps contributed to place him beyond the pale of respectability. Driven to bay and forced to earn his living, he now turned round upon society; and spoke his mind out with a freedom born of bile and cynical indifference. If he had learned nothing else at Bologna, he had imbibed the materialistic philosophy of Pomponazzi together with Gonzaga's lessons in libertinage. Brutalized, degraded in his own eyes, rejected by the world of honest or decorous citizens, but with a keen sense of the follies, vices and hypocrisies of his age, he resolved to retaliate by a work of art that should attract attention and force the public to listen to his comments on their shame. In his humorous poetry there is, therefore, a deliberate if not a very dignified intention. He does not merely laugh, but mixes satire with ribaldry, and points buffoonery with biting sarcasm. Since the burlesque style had by its nature to be parasitical and needed an external motive, Folengo chose for the subject of his parody the romance of _Orlando_, which was fashionable to the point of extravagance in Italy after the appearance of the _Furioso_. But he was not satisfied with turning a tale of Paladins to ridicule. He used it as the shield behind which he knew that he might safely shoot his arrows at the clergy and the princes of his native land, attack the fortresses of orthodoxy, and vent his spleen upon society by dragging its depraved ideals in the mire of his own powerful but vulgar scorn.

Folengo has told us that the _Orlandino_ was conceived and written before the _Maccaronea_, though it was published some years later. It is probable that the rude form and plebeian language of this burlesque romance found but little favor with a public educated in the niceties of style. They were ready to accept the bastard Latin dialect invented for his second venture, because it offended no puristic sensibilities. But the coarse Italian of the _Orlandino_ could not be relished by academicians, who had been pampered with the refinements of Berni's wanton Muse.[389] Only eight cantos appeared; nor is there reason to suppose that any more were written, for it may be assumed that the fragment had fulfilled its author's purpose.[390] That purpose was to satirize the vice, hypocrisy and superstition of the clergy, and more particularly of the begging friars. In form the _Orlandino_ pretends to be a romance of chivalry, and it bears the same relation to the _Orlando_ of Boiardo and Ariosto as the _Secchia Rapita_ to the heroic poems of Tasso's school. It begins with a burlesque invocation to Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in which the poet bluntly describes his poverty and begs for largess. Then Folengo passes to an account of his authorities and to the criticism of his predecessors in romantic poetry. He had recourse, he says, to a witch of Val Camonica, who mounted him upon a ram, and bore him to the country of the Goths. There he found forty decades of Turpin's history among the rubbish of old books stolen from Italy. Of these, three decades had already been discovered and translated by Boiardo; but, after versifying a large portion of the second, the poet left the rest of it to Ariosto. The sixth was stolen from him by Francesco Bello. The last he gave with his own hands to Poliziano, who put it into rhyme and allowed Pulci to have the credit of his labors.[391] Folengo himself took a portion of the first decade, and thus obtained material for treating of the birth and boyhood of Orlando. This exordium is chiefly valuable as a piece of contemporary criticism:

Queste tre Deche dunque sin qua trovo
Esser dal fonte di Turpin cavate;
Ma _Trebisonda_, _Ancroia_, _Spagna_, e _Bovo_
Coll'altro resto al foco sian donate:
Apocrife son tutte, e le riprovo
Come nemiche d'ogni veritate;
Boiardo, l'Ariosto, Pulci, e'l Cieco
Autenticati sono, ed io con seco.

[Footnote 389: Part of Folengo's satire is directed against the purists. See Canto i. 7-9. He confesses himself a Lombard, and shrugs his shoulders at their solemn criticisms:

Non pero, se non nacqui Tosco, i' piango;
Che ancora il ciacco gode nel suo fango.

To the reproach of "turnip-eating Lombard" he retorts, "Tuscan chatterbox." Compare vi. 1, 2, on his own style:

Oscuri sensi ed affettate rime,
Qual'e chi dica mai compor Limerno?]

[Footnote 390: The first line of the elegy placed upon the edition of 1526 runs thus:

Mensibus istud opus tribus _indignatio fecit_.

Folengo claims for himself a satiric purpose. The edition used by me is Molini's, Londra, 1775.]

[Footnote 391: See above Part i. p. 455, for the belief that Poliziano was the real author of the _Morgante Maggiore_.]

If we may accept this stanza as expressing the opinion of Italians in the sixteenth century relative to their romantic poets, we find that it almost exactly agrees with that of posterity. Only the _Mambriano_ of Bello has failed to maintain its place beside the _Morgante_ and _Orlando_.

Embarking upon the subject of his tale, Folengo describes the Court of Charlemagne, and passes he Paladins in review, intermingling comic touches with exaggerated imitations of the romantic style. The peers of France preserve their well-known features through the distorting medium of caricature; while humorous couplets, detonating here and there like crackers, break the mock-heroical monotony. Gano, for example, is still the arch-traitor of the tribe of Judas:

Figliuol non d'uomo, ne da Dio creato,
Ma il gran Diavol ebbelo cacato.

The effect of parody is thus obtained by emphasizing the style of elder poets and suddenly breaking off into a different vein. Next comes the description of Berta's passion for Milone, with a singularly coarse and out-spoken invective against love.[392] Meanwhile Charlemagne has proclaimed a tournament. The peers array themselves, and the Court is in a state of feverish expectation. _Parturiunt montes_: instead of mailed warriors careering upon fiery chargers, the knights crawl into the lists on limping mules and lean asses, with a ludicrous array of kitchen-gear for armor. The description of this donkey-tournament, is one of Folengo's triumphs.[393] When Milone comes upon the scene and jousts beneath his lady's balcony, the style is heightened to the tone of true romance, and, but for the roughness of the language, we might fancy that a page of the _Orlando_ were beneath our eyes. A banquet follows, after which we are regaled with a Court-ball, and then ensues the comic chain of incidents which bring Milone and Berta to the fruition of their love. They elope, take ship, and are separated by a series of mishaps upon the open sea. Berta is cast ashore alone in Italy, and begs her way to Sutri, where she gives birth to Orlando in a shepherd's cabin. During the course of these adventures, Folengo diverts his readers with many brilliant passages and bits of satire, at one time inveighing against the license of balls, at another describing the mixed company on board a ship of passage; now breaking off into burlesque pedigrees, and then again putting into Berta's mouth a string of Lutheran opinions. Though the personages are romantic, the incidents are copied with realistic fidelity from actual life. We are moving among Italian _bourgeois_ in the masquerade of heroes and princesses.

[Footnote 392: Canto i. 64, 65; ii. 1-4:

Ed io dico ch'Amor e un bardassola
Piu che sua madre non fu mai puttana, etc.

Folengo, of course, has a mistress, to whom he turns at the proper moments of his narrative. This _mia diva Caritunga_ is a caricature of the fashionable Laura. See v. 1, 2:

O donna mia, ch'hai gli occhi, ch'hai l'orecchie,
Quelli di pipistrel, queste di bracco, etc.]

[Footnote 393: Canto ii. 9-42.]

Berta's prayer when she found herself alone upon the waters in an open boat, is so characteristic of Folengo's serious intention that it deserves more than a passing comment.[394] She addresses herself to God instead of to any Saints:

A te ricorro, non a Piero, o Andrea,
Che l'altrui mezzo non mi fa mestiero:
Ben tengo a mente che la Cananea
Non supplico ne a Giacomo ne a Piero.

[Footnote 394: Canto vi. 40-46. I have placed a translation of this passage in an Appendix to this chapter.]

It is the hypocrisy of friars, Folengo says, who sacrifice to Moloch, while they use the name of Mary to cloak their crimes--it is this damnable hypocrisy which has blinded simple folk into trusting the invocation of Saints. Avarice is the motive of these false priests: and lust moves them to preach the duty of confession:

E qui trovo ben spesso un Confessore
Essere piu ruffiano che Dottore.

Therefore, cries Berta, I make my confession to God alone and from Him seek salvation, and vow that, if I escape the fury of the sea, I will no more lend belief to men who sell indulgences for gold. So far the poet is apparently sincere. In the next stanza he resumes his comic vein:

Cotal preghiere carche d'eresia
Berta facea, merce ch'era Tedesca;
Perche in quel tempo la Teologia
Era fatta Romana e fiandresca;
Ma dubito ch'alfin nella Turchia
Si trovera vivendo alla Moresca;
Perche di Cristo l'inconsutil vesta
Squarciata e si che piu non ve ne resta.

The blending of buffoonery and earnestness in Folengo's style might be illustrated by the bizarre myth of the making of peasants, where he introduces Christ and the Apostles:[395]

_Transibat Jesus_ per un gran villaggio
Con Pietro, Andrea, Giovanni, e con Taddeo;
Trovan ch'un asinello in sul rivaggio
Molte pallotte del suo sterco feo.
Disse allor Piero al suo Maestro saggio:
_En, Domine, fac homines ex eo._
_Surge, Villane_, disse Cristo allora;
E 'l villan di que' stronzi salto fora.

[Footnote 395: Canto v. 56-58. The contempt for country folk seems unaffected.]

His fantastic humor, half-serious, half-flippant, spares nothing sacred or profane. Even the Last Judgment receives an inconceivably droll treatment on the slender occasion of an allusion to the disasters of Milan.[396] Folengo has just been saying that Italy well deserves her title of _barbarorum sepultura_.[397]

Che veramente in quell'orribil giorno
Che in Giosafatto suonera la tromba,
Facendosi sentire al mondo intorno,
E i morti salteran fuor d'ogni tomba,
Non sara pozzo, cacatojo, o forno,
Che mentre il tararan del ciel ribomba,
Non getti fuora Svizzeri, Francesi,
Tedeschi, Ispani, e d'altri assai paesi;
E vederassi una mirabil guerra,
Fra loro combattendo gli ossi suoi:
Chi un braccio, chi una man, chi un piede afferra;
Ma vien chi dice--questi non son tuoi--
Anzi son miei--non sono; e sulla terra
Molti di loro avran gambe di buoi,
Teste di muli, e d'asini le schiene,
Siccome all'opre di ciascun conviene.

[Footnote 396: Canto vi. 55-57. This passage is a caricature of Pulci's burlesque description of the Last Day. See above Part i. p. 449. Folengo's loathing of the strangers who devoured Italy is clear here, as also in i. 43, ii. 4, 59. But there is no force in his invectives or laments.

L'Italia non piu Italia appello,
Ma d'ogni strana gente un bel bordello....
Che 'l cancaro mangiasse il Taliano,
Il quale, o ricco, o povero che sia,
Desidra in nostre stanze il Tramontano....
Che se non fosser le gran parti in quella,
Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella.]

[Footnote 397:

For verily on that most dreadful day,
When in the Valley of Jehosaphat
The trump shall sound, and thrill this globe of clay,
And dead folk shuddering leave their tombs thereat,
No well, sewer, privy shall be found, I say,
Which, while the angels roar their rat-tat-tat,
Shall not disgorge its Spaniards, Frenchmen, Swiss,
Germans, and rogues of every race that is.
Then shall we see a wonderful dispute,
As each with each they wrangle, bone for bone;
One grasps an arm, one grabs a hand, a foot;
Comes one who says, "These are not yours, you loon!"
"They're mine!" "They're not!" While many a limb of brute
Joined to their human bodies shall be shown,
Mule's heads, bull's legs, cruppers and ears of asses,
As each man's life on earth his spirit classes.]

The birth of Orlando gives occasion for a mock-heroic passage, in which Pulci is parodied to the letter.[398] All the more amusing for the assumption of pompous style, is the ensuing account of the hero's boyhood among the street-urchins of Sutri. When he is tall enough to bestride a broomstick, Orlandino proves his valor by careering through the town and laughing at the falls he gets. At seven he shows the strength of twelve:

Urta, fracassa, rompe, quassa, e smembra;
Orsi, leoni, tigri non paventa,
Ma contro loro intrepido s'avventa.

[Footnote 398: Canto vi. 8-11:

Qui nacque Orlando, l'inclito Barone;
Qui nacque Orlando, Senator Romano, etc.]

The octave stanzas become a cataract of verbs and nouns to paint his tempestuous childhood. It is a spirited comic picture of the Italian _enfant terrible_, stone-throwing, boxing, scuffling, and swearing like a pickpocket. At the same time the boy grows in cunning, and supports his mother by begging from one and bullying another of the citizens of Sutri:--

Io v'addimando per l'amor di Dio
Un pane solo ed un boccal di vino;
Officio non fu mai piu santo e pio
Che se pascete il pover pellegrino:
Se non men date, vi prometto ch'io,
Quantunque sia di membra si piccino,
Ne prendero da me senza riguardo;
Che salsa non vogl'io di San Bernardo.
Cancar vi mangi, datemi a mangiare,
Se non, vi buttero le porte giuso;
Per debolezza sentomi mancare,
E le budella vannomi a riffuso.
Gente devota, e voi persone care
Che vi leccate di buon rosto il muso,
Mandatemi, per Dio, qualche minestra,
O me la trate giu dalla finestra.

In the course of these adventures Orlandino meets Oliver, the son of Rainero, the governor, and breaks his crown in a quarrel. This brings about the catastrophe; for the young hero pours forth such a torrent of voluble slang, mixed with imprecations and menaces, that Rainero is forced to acknowledge the presence of a superior genius.[399] But before the curtain falls upon the discovery of Orlandino's parentage and his reception into the company of peers, Folengo devotes a canto to the episodical history of the Prelate Griffarosto.[400] The name of this Rabelaisian ecclesiastic--Claw-the-roast--sufficiently indicates the line of the poet's satire.

[Footnote 399: Canto vii. 61-65.]

[Footnote 400: He has been identified on sufficiently plausible grounds with Ignazio Squarcialupo, the prior of Folengo's convent. In the _Maccaronea_ this burlesque personage reappears as the keeper of a tavern in hell, who feeds hungry souls on the most hideous messes of carrion and vermin (Book xxiii. p. 217). There is sufficient rancor in Griffarosto's portrait to justify the belief that Folengo meant in it to gratify a private thirst for vengeance.]

Whatever appeared in the market of Sutri fit for the table, fell into his clutches, or was transferred to the great bag he wore beneath his scapulary. His library consisted of cookery books; and all the tongues he knew, were tongues of swine and oxen.[401] Orlandino met this Griffarosto fat as a stalled ox, one morning after he had purchased a huge sturgeon:

La Reverenzia vostra non si parta;
Statemi alquanto, prego, ad ascoltare.
_Nimis sollicita es, O Marta, Marta,
Circa substantian Christi devorare._
Dammi poltron, quel pesce, ch'io 'l disquarta,
Per poterlo _in communi_ dispensare,
Nassa d'anguille che tu sei, lurcone;
E cio dicendo dagli col bastone.

[Footnote 401: In the play on the word _lingue_ there is a side-thrust at the Purists.]

The priest was compelled to disgorge his prey, and the fame of the boy's achievement went abroad through Sutri. Rainero thereupon sent for Griffarosto, and treated the Abbot to such a compendious abuse of monks in general as would have delighted a Lutheran.[402] Griffarosto essayed to answer him with a ludicrous jumble of dog Latin; but the Governor requested him to defer his apology for the morrow. The description of Griffarosto's study in the monastery, where wine and victuals fill the place of books, his oratory consecrated to Bacchus, the conversation with his cook, and the _ruse_ by which the cook gets chosen Prior in his master's place, carry on the satire through fifty stanzas of slashing sarcasm. The whole episode is a pendent picture to Pulci's Margutte. Then, by a brusque change from buffoonery to seriousness, Folengo plunges into a confession of faith, attributed to Rainero, but presumably his own.[403] It includes the essential points of Catholic orthodoxy, abjuring the impostures of priests and friars, and taking final station on the Lutheran doctrine of salvation by faith and repentance. Idle as a dream, says Folengo, are the endeavors made by friars to force scholastic conclusions on the conscience in support of theses S. Paul would have rejected. What they preach, they do not comprehend. Their ignorance is only equal to their insolent pretension. They are worse than Judas in their treason to Christ, worse than Herod, Anna, Caiaphas, or Pilate. They are only fit to consort with usurers and slaves. They use the names of saints and the altar of the Virgin as the means of glutting their avarice with the gold of superstitious folk. They abuse confession to gratify their lusts. Their priories are dens of dogs, hawks, and reprobate women. They revel in soft beds, drink to intoxication, and stuff themselves with unctuous food. And still the laity intrust their souls to these rogues, and there are found many who defraud their kith and kin in order to enrich a convent![404]

[Footnote 402: Canto viii. 23-32.]

[Footnote 403: Canto viii. 73-84. This passage I have also translated and placed in an Appendix to this chapter, where the chief Lutheran utterances of the burlesque poets will be found together.]

[Footnote 404: In addition to the eighth Canto, I have drawn on iii. 4, 20; iv. 13; vi. 44, for this list.]

It would not be easy to compose an invective more suited to degrade the objects of a satirist's anger by the copiousness and the tenacity of the dirt flung at them. Yet the _Orlandino_ was written by a monk, who, though he had left his convent, was on the point of returning to it; and the poem was openly printed during the pontificate of Clement VII. That Folengo should have escaped inquisitorial censure is remarkable. That he should have been readmitted to the Benedictine order after this outburst of bile and bold diffusion of heretical opinion, is only explicable by the hatred which subsisted in Italy between the rules of S. Francis and S. Benedict. While attacking the former, he gratified the spite and jealousy of the latter. But the fact is that his auditors, whether lay or clerical, were too accustomed to similar charges and too frankly conscious of their truth, to care about them. Folengo stirred no indignation in the people, who had laughed at ecclesiastical corruption since the golden days of the Decameron. He roused no shame in the clergy, for, till Luther frightened the Church into that pseudo-reformation which Sarpi styled a deformation of manners, the authorities of Rome were nonchalantly careless what was said about them.[405] An atrabilious monk in his garret vented his spleen with more than usual acrimony, and the world applauded. _Ha fatto un bel libro!_ That was all. Conversely, it is not strange that the weighty truths about religion uttered by Folengo should have had but little influence. He was a scribbler, famous for scurrility, notoriously profligate in private life. Free thought in Italy found itself too often thus in company with immorality. The names of heretic and Lutheran carried with them at that time a reproach more pungent and more reasonable than is usual with the epithets of theological hatred.[406]

[Footnote 405: Leo X.'s complacent acceptance of the _Mandragola_ proves this.]

[Footnote 406: The curious history of Giulio Trissino, told by Bernardo Morsolin in the last chapters of his _Giangiorgio Trissino_ (Vicenza, 1878), reveals the manner of men who adopted Lutheranism in Italy in the sixteenth century. See above, p. 304. I shall support the above remarks lower down in this chapter by reference to Berni's Lutheran opinions.]

In the _Orlandino_, Ariosto's irony is degraded to buffoonery. The prosaic details he mingled with his poetry are made the material of a new and vulgar comedy of manners. The satire he veiled in allegory or polite discussion, bursts into open virulence. His licentiousness yields to gross obscenity. The chivalrous epic, as employed for purposes of art in Italy, contained within itself the germs of this burlesque. It was only necessary to develop certain motives at the expense of general harmony, to suppress the noble and pathetic elements, and to lower the literary key of utterance, in order to produce a parody. Ariosto had strained the semi-seriousness of romance to the utmost limits of endurance. For his successors nothing was left but imitation, caricature, or divergence upon a different track. Of these alternatives, Folengo and Berni, Aretino and Fortiguerra, chose the second; Tasso took the third, and provided Tassoni with the occasion of a new burlesque.

While the romantic epic lent itself thus easily to parody, another form of humorous poetry took root and flourished on the mass of Latin literature produced by the Revival. Latin never became a wholly dead language in Italy; and at the height of the Renaissance a public had been formed whose appreciation of classic style insured a welcome for its travesty. To depreciate the humanistic currency by an alloy of plebeian phrases, borrowed from various base dialects; to ape Virgilian mannerism while treating of the lowest themes suggested by boisterous mirth or satiric wit; was the method of the so-called Maccaronic poets. It is matter for debate who first invented this style, and who created the title _Maccaronea_. So far back as the thirteenth century, we notice a blending of Latin with French and German in certain portions of the _Carmina Burana_.[407] But the two elements of language here lie side by side, without interpenetration. This imperfect fusion is not sufficient to constitute the genuine Maccaronic manner. The jargon known as Maccaronic must consist of the vernacular, suited with Latin terminations, and freely mingled with classical Latin words. Nothing should meet the ear or eye, which does not sound or look like Latin; but, upon inspection, it must be discovered that a half or third is simple slang and common speech tricked out with the endings of Latin declensions and conjugations.[408] In Italy, where the modern tongue retained close similarity to Latin, this amalgamation was easy; and we find that in the fifteenth century the hybrid had already assumed finished form. The name by which it was then known, indicates its composition. As maccaroni is dressed with cheese and butter, so the maccaronic poet mixed colloquial expressions of the people with classical Latin, serving up a dish that satisfied the appetite by rarity and richness of concoction. At the same time, since maccaroni was the special delicacy of the proletariate, and since a stupid fellow was called a _Maccherone_, the ineptitude and the vulgarity of the species are indicated by its title. Among the Maccaronic poets we invariably find ourselves in low Bohemian company. No Phoebus sends them inspiration; nor do they slake their thirst at the Castalian spring. The muses they invoke are tavern-wenches and scullions, haunting the slums and stews of Lombard cities.[409] Their mistresses are of the same type as Villon's Margot. Mountains of cheese, rivers of fat broth, are their Helicon and Hippocrene. Their pictures of manners demand a coarser brush than Hogarth's to do them justice.

[Footnote 407: The political and ecclesiastical satires known in England as the work of Walter Mapes, abound in pseudo-Maccaronic passages. Compare Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines anterieures au xiime Siecle_, p. 142, etc., for further specimens of undeveloped Maccaronic poetry of the middle ages.]

[Footnote 408: Those who are curious to study this subject further, should consult the two exhaustive works of Octave Delepierre, _Macaroneana_ (Paris, 1852), and _Macaroneana Andra_ (Londres, Truebner, 1862). These two publications contain a history of Maccaronic verse, with reprints of the scarcer poems in this style. The second gives the best text of Odassi, Fossa, and the _Virgiliana_. The _Maccheronee di Cinque Poeti Italiani_ (Milano, Daelli, 1864), is a useful little book, since it reproduces Delepierre's collections in a cheap and convenient form. In the uncertainty which attends the spelling of this word, I have adopted the form _Maccaronic_.]

[Footnote 409: Take one example, from the induction to Odassi's poems (_Mac. Andr._ p. 63):

O putanarum putanissima, vacca vaccarum,
O potifarum potissima pota potaza ...
Tu Phrosina mihi foveas, mea sola voluptas;
Nulla mihi poterit melius succurrere Musa,
Nullus Apollo magis.]

Before engaging in the criticism of this Maccaronic literature, it is necessary to interpolate some notice of a kindred style, called _pedantesco_. This was the exact converse of the Maccaronic manner. Instead of adapting Italian to the rules of Latin, the parodist now treated Latin according to the grammatical usages and metrical laws of Italian. A good deal of the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ is written in _lingua pedantesca_. But the recognized masterpiece of the species is a book called _I Cantici di Fidentio Glottogrysio Ludimagistro_. The author's real name was Camillo Scrofa, a humanist and schoolmaster of Vicenza. Though more than once reprinted, together with similar compositions by equally obscure craftsmen, his verses are exceedingly rare.[410] They owe their neglect partly to the absurdity of their language, partly to the undisguised immorality of their subject-matter. Of the _stilo pedantesco_ the following specimen may suffice. It describes a hostelry of boors and peasants:[411]

Pur pedetentim giunsi ad un cubiculo,
Sordido, inelegante, ove molti hospiti
Facean corona a un semimortuo igniculo.
Salvete, dissi, et Giove lieti e sospiti
Vi riconduca a i vostri dolci hospitii!
Ma responso non hebbi; o rudi, o inhospiti!
Io che tra veri equestri e tra patritii
Soglio seder, mi vedi alhor negligere
Da quegli huomini novi et adventitii.
Non sapea quasi indignabundo eligere
Partito; pur al fin fu necessario
Tra lor per calefarmi un scanno erigere.
Che colloquio, O Dii boni, empio e nefario
Pervenne a l'aure nostre purgatissime,
Da muover nausea a un lenone a un sicario!

[Footnote 410: The book was first printed at Vicenza. The copy I have studied is the Florentine edition of 1574. Scrofa's verses, detached from the collection, may be found in the _Parnaso Italiano_, vol. xxv.]

[Footnote 411: _Op. cit._ p. 23.]

One of the most famous and earliest, if not absolutely the first among the authors of Maccaronic verse, was Tifi Odassi, a Paduan, whose poems were given to the press after his death, in at least two editions earlier than the close of the fifteenth century.[412] He chose a commonplace _Novella_ for his theme; but the interest of his tale consists less in its argument than in its vivid descriptions of low town-life. Odassi's portraits of plebeian characters are executed with masterly realism, and the novelty of the vehicle gives them a singularly trenchant force. It is unfortunately impossible to bring either the cook-shop-keeper or his female servant, the mountebank or the glutton, before modern readers. These pictures are too Rabelaisian.[413] I must content myself with a passage taken from the description of a bad painter, which, though it is inferior in comic power, contains nothing unpardonably gross.[414]

Quodsi forte aliquem voluit depingere gallum,
Quicunque aspiciat poterit jurare cigognam;
Depinxitque semel canes in caza currentes,
Omnes credebant natantes in aequore luzos;
Sive hominem pingit, poteris tu credere lignum
In quo sartores ponunt sine capite vestes;
Seu nudos facit multo sudore putinos,
Tu caput a culo poteris dignoscere nunquam;
Sive facit gremio Christum retinere Mariam,
Non licet a filio sanctam dignoscere matrem;
Pro gardelinis depingit sepe gallinas,
Et pro gallinis depingit sepe caballos:
Blasfemat, jurat, culpam dicit esse penelli,
Quos spazzaturas poteris jurare de bruscho;
Tam bene depingit pictorum pessimus iste,
Nec tamen inferior se cogitat esse Bellino.

[Footnote 412: Bernardino Scardeone in his work _De antiquitate urbis Patavii_, etc. (Basileae, 1560), speaks of Odassi as the inventor of Maccaronic poetry: "adinvenit enim primus ridiculum carminis genus, nunquam prius a quopiam excogitatum, quod Macaronaeum nuncupavit, multis farcitum salibus, et satyrica mordacitate respersum." He adds that Odassi desired on his deathbed that the book should be burned. In spite of this wish, it was frequently reprinted during Scardeone's lifetime.]

[Footnote 413: It is with great regret that I omit Bertapalia, the charlatan--a portrait executed with inimitable verve. Students of Italian life in its lowest and liveliest details should seek him out. _Mac. Andr._ pp. 68-71.]

[Footnote 414: _Ibid._ p. 71. I have altered spelling and punctuation.]

It will be seen from this specimen that Italian and Latin are confounded without regard to either prosody or propriety of diction. The style, far from being even pedestrian, is reptile, and the inspiration is worthy of the source imagined by the poet.[415] As Odassi remarks in his induction:

Aspices, lector, Prisciani vulnera mille
Gramaticamque novam, quam nos docuere putane.

[Footnote 415:

Cognosces in me quantum tua numina possunt,
Quaeque tua veniunt stilantia carmina pota.]

The note struck by Odassi was sustained by his immediate imitators. Another Paduan author used this parody of humanistic verse to caricature a humanist, whom he called Vigonca.[416] Like Odassi, he invoked Venus Volgivaga; and like Odassi's, very little of his verse is quotable. The following extracts may be found acceptable for their humorous account of a Professor's inaugural lecture in the university of Padua.[417] Vigonca announces the opening of his course:

Ipse ante totis facit asavere piacis,
Et totis scolis mandat bolletina bidelis,
Quae bolletina portabant talia verba:
"Comes magnificus cavalerius ille Vigonca,
Patricius Patavus comesque ab origine longa,
Vos rogat ad primam veniatis quisque legendam;
Qui veniet, magnum fructum portabit a casa."
Omnes venturos sese dixere libenter;
Promissit comes, capitaneus atque potestas,
Et paduani vechi juvenesque politi.
Lux promissa aderat, qua se smatare Vigonca
Debebat, atque suam cunctis monstrare matieram.
Ille tamen totam facit concare la scolam,
De nigro totam facit conzare cathedram,
In qua debebat matus sprologare Vigonca;
Cetera fulgebant banchalis atque thapetis,
Et decem in brochis dicit spendidisse duchatos.

[Footnote 416: This anonymous poet has been variously identified with Odassi and with Fossa of Cremona. The frequent occurrence of Paduan idioms seems to point to a Paduan rather than a Cremonese author; and though there is no authoritative reason for referring the poem to Odassi, it resembles his style sufficiently to render the hypothesis of his authorship very plausible. The name of the hero, Vigonca, is probably the Italian _Bigoncia_, which meant in one sense a pulpit or a reading-desk, in its ordinary sense a tub.]

[Footnote 417: Daelli, _Maccheronee di Cinque Poeti Italiani_ (Milano, 1864), p. 50; cp. _Mac. Andr._ p. 19.]

After narrating how the whole town responded to Vigonca's invitation, and how the folk assembled to hear his first address, the poet thus describes the great occasion:[418]

Sed neque bastabat ingens intrantibus ussus;
Rumpebant cupos parietes atque fenestras,
Inque ipso multos busos fecere parete.
Tunc ibi bidelus cunctos ratione pregavit,
Et sibi cavavit nigrum Vigonca biretum,
Et manicas alzans dedit hic sua verba de mato,
Et comencavit sanctam faciendo la crucem.
"Magnifice pretor, pariter generose prefecte,
Tu facunde comes auri portando colanam,
Magnus philosophus, lingua in utraque poeta,
Tu primicerius, Venete spes alma paludis,
Et vos doctores, celeberrima fama per orbem,
Vos cavalerii multum sperone dorati,
Vosque scolares, cives, charique sodales!
Non ego perdivi tempus futuendo putanas,
Non ego zugando, non per bordella vagando;
Non ego cum canibus lepores seguendo veloces,
Non cum sparveris, non cum falconibus ipse;
Non ego cum dadis tabulam lissando per ullam;
Non ego cum chartis volui dissipare dinaros,
Qualiter in Padue faciunt de nocte scolares.
Quum jocant alii, stabat in casa Vigonca
Et studiabat guardando volumina longa."

[Footnote 418: Daelli, _op. cit._ pp. 52, 54.]

This Paduan caricature may be reckoned among the most valuable documents we possess for the illustration of the professorial system in Italy during the ascendancy of humanism. Some material of the same kind is supplied by the _Virgiliana_ of Evangelista Fossa, a Cremonese gentleman, who versified a Venetian _Burla_ in mock-heroic Latin. He, too, painted the portrait of a pedant, Priscianus:[419]

Est mirandus homo; nam sunt miracula in illo,
Omnes virtutes habet hic in testa fichatas ...
Nam quicquid dicit, semper per littera parlat,
Atque habet in boccham pulchra haec proverbia semper....
Est letrutus nam multum, studiavit in omni
Arte, fuit Padoe, fuit in la citta de Perosa,
Bononie multum mansit de senno robando.

[Footnote 419: _Ibid._ p. 112; _Mac. Andra_, p. 32.]

But Fossa's _Virgiliana_, while aiming at a more subtle sort of parody than the purely maccaronic poems, misses their peculiar salt, and, except for the Hudibrastic description of the author on horseback,[420] offers nothing of great interest.

[Footnote 420: "De fossa compositore quando venit patavio" (_Mac. Andra_, p. 39).]

Brief notice also may be taken of Giovan Giorgio Alione's satire on the Lombards. Alione was a native of Asti, and seasoned his maccaroni with the base French of his birthplace. For Asti, transferred to the House of Orleans by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, was more than half a French city and its inhabitants spoke the Gallic dialect common to Piedmont.[421] Alione is proud of this subjection, and twits the Lombards of Milan and Pavia with being unworthy of their ancient origin no less than of their modern masters.[422] Unlike the ordinary run of burlesque poems, his _Macharonea_ is virulently satirical. Animated by a real rage against the North Italians, Alione paints them as effeminate cowards, devoid of the sense of honor and debased by the vices of ill-bred _parvenus_. The opening of a _Novella_ he relates, may be cited as a fair specimen of his style:[423]

Quidam Franzosus, volens tornare Parisum,
Certum Milaneysum scontravit extra viglianam
Sine capello docheti testa bagnatum:
Et cum ignoraret Gallicus hic unde fuisset
Dixit vulgariter _estes vous moglie mon amicus_?
Ille qui intelligit a la rebusa, respondit
_Sy sy mi che ho mogle Milani et anca fiolos._
Gallus tunc cernens Lombardum fore loquela,
Et recordatus quod tempore guerre Salucis
Alixandrini fecerant pagare menestram
Scutumque sibi sgrafignarant de gibesera,
Sfodravit ensem dicens _o tretre ribalde_
_Rendez moy sa mon escu_, sy non a la morte spazat.

[Footnote 421: Alione says:

Cum nos Astenses reputemur undique Galli.]

[Footnote 422: See the passage beginning "O Longobardi frapatores," and ending with these lines:

Tunc baratasti Gallorum nobile nomen
Cum Longobardo, etc.

Daelli, _op. cit._ p. 94.]

[Footnote 423: Daelli, p. 93.]

The end of the story is far too crude to quote, and it is probable that even the most curious readers will already have had enough of Alione's peculiar gibberish.

The maccaronic style had reached this point when Folengo took possession of it, stamped it with his own genius, and employed it for one of the most important poems of the century. He is said to have begun a serious Latin epic in his early manhood, and to have laid this aside because he foresaw the impossibility of wresting the laurels from Virgil. This story is probably a legend; but it contains at least an element of truth. Folengo aimed at originality; he chose to be the first of burlesque Latin poets rather than to claim the name and fame of a Virgilian imitator.[424] In the proemium to his _Moscheis_ he professes to have found the orthodox Apollo deaf to his prayers:

Illius heu frustra doctas captare sorores
Speravi ac multa laude tenere polos.

[Footnote 424: In the first book of the _Moscheis_, line 7, he says:

Gens ceratana sinat vecchias cantare batajas,
Squarzet Virgilios turba pedanta suos.

The end of the _Maccaronea_ sets forth the impossibility of modern bards contending with the great poet of antiquity. Pontanus, Sannazzarius, all the best Latin writers of the age, pale before Virgil:

Non tamen aequatur vati quem protulit Andes,
Namque vetusta nocet laus nobis saepe modernis.

This refrain he repeats for each poet with whimsical reiteration. Folengo's own ambition to take the first place among burlesque writers appears in the final lines of _Mac._ book iii.:

Mantua Virgilio gaudet, Verona Catullo,
Dante suo florens urbs Tusca, Cipada Cocajo:
Dicor ego superans alios levitate poetas,
Ut Maro medesimos superans gravitate poetas.

The induction to the _Moscheis_ points to a serious heroic poem on Mantua which he abandoned for want of inspiration. We have in these references enough to account for the myth above mentioned.]

The reason of the god's anger was that his votary had sullied the clear springs of Hippocrene:

Nescio quas reperi musas, turpesve sorores,
Nescio quas turpi carmina voce canunt.
Limpida Pegasidum vitiavi stagna profanus,
Totaque sunt limo dedecorata meo.

The exordium to the _Maccaronea_ introduces us to these vulgar Muses, _grossae Camoenae_, who fill their neophytes with maccaronic inspiration:

Jam nec Melpomene, Clio, nec magna Thalia,
Nec Phoebus grattando lyram mihi carmina dictet,
Qui tantos olim doctos fecere poetas;
Verum cara mihi foveat solummodo Berta,
Gosaque, Togna simul, Mafelina, Pedrala, Comina.
Veridicae Musae sunt hae, doctaeque sorellae;
Quarum non multis habitatio nota poetis.

The holy hill of Folengo's Muses is a mountain of cheese and maccaroni, with lakes of broth and rivers of unctuous sauces:

Stant ipsae Musae super altum montis acumen,
Formajum gratulis durum retridando foratis.

Here he seeks them, and here they deign to crown him poet:[425]

Ergo macaronicas illic cattavimus artes,
Et me grossiloquum vatem statuere sorores.

[Footnote 425: Compare _Mac._ vii. p. 195.

Nil nisi crassiloquas dicor scrivisse camoenas,
Crassiloquis igitur dicamus magna camoenis.

This _great theme_ is nothing less than monasticism in its vilest aspects.]

We have seen already that the maccaronic style involved a free use of plebeian Italian, imbedded in a mixed mass of classical and medieval Latinity. Folengo refined the usage of his predecessors, by improving the versification, adopting a more uniformly heroic tone, and introducing scraps of Mantuan dialect at unexpected intervals, so that each lapse into Italian has the force of a surprise--what the Greeks called [Greek: para prosdokian]. The comic effect is produced by a sustained epical inflation, breaking irregularly into the coarsest and least pardonable freaks of vulgarity. It is as though the poet were improvising, emulous of Virgil; but the tide of inspiration fails him, he falls short of classical phrases to express his thoughts, and is forced in the hurry of the moment to avail himself of words and images that lie more close at hand. His Pegasus is a showy hack, who ambles on the bypaths of Parnassus, dropping now and then a spavined hock and stumbling back into his paces with a snort. His war-trumpet utters a sonorous fanfaronnade; but the blower loses breath, and breaks his note, or suffers it to lapse into a lamentable quaver.

Tifi Odassi, who may be regarded as Folengo's master in this species of verse, confined the Maccaronic Muse to quaintly-finished sketches in the Dutch style.[426] His pupil raised her to the dignity of Clio and composed an epic in twenty-five books. The length of this poem and the strangeness of the manner render it unpalatable to all but serious students at the present time. Its humor has evaporated, and the form itself strikes us as rococo. We experience some difficulty in sympathizing with those readers of the sixteenth century, who, perfectly acquainted with Latin poetry and accustomed to derive intellectual pleasure from its practice, found exquisite amusement in so cleverly constructed a parody. Nor is it possible for Englishmen to appreciate the more delicate irony of the vulgarisms, which Folengo adopted from one of the coarsest Italian dialects, and cemented with subtle skill upon the stately structure of his hexameters. Still we may remember that the _Maccaronea_ was read with profit by Rabelais, and that much of Butler's humor betrays a strong affinity to this antiquated burlesque.

[Footnote 426: At the end of the _Maccaronea_ I think there may be an allusion to Odassi conveyed in these words, _Tifi Caroloque futuris_.]

In substance the _Maccaronea_ begins with a rehandling of the _Orlandino_. Guido, peerless among Paladins, wins the love of his king's daughter, Baldovina of France. They fly together into Italy, and she dies in giving birth to a son at Cipada, near Mantua. Guido disappears, and the boy, Baldus, is brought up by a couple of peasants. He believes himself to be their child, and recognizes the rustic boor, Zambellus, for his brother. Still the hero's nature reveals itself in the village urchin; and, like the young Orlando, Baldus performs prodigies of valor in his boyhood:

Non it post vaccas, at saepe caminat ad urbem,
Ac ad Panadae dispectum praticat illam;
In villam semper tornabat vespere facto,
Portabatque caput fractum gambasque macatas.

When he goes to school, he begins by learning his letters with great readiness. But he soon turns away from grammar to books of chivalry:

Sed mox Orlandi nasare volumina coepit:
Non vacat ultra deponentia discere verba,
Non species, numeros, non casus atque figuras,
Non Doctrinalis versamina tradere menti:
Fecit de norma scartazzos mille Donati
Inque Perotinum librum salcicia coxit.
Orlandi solum, nec non fera bella Rinaldi
Aggradant; animum faciebat talibus altum:
Legerat Ancrojam, Tribisondam, gesta Danesi,
Antonaeque Bovum, mox tota Realea Francae,
Innamoramentum Carlonis et Asperamontem,
Spagnam, Altobellum, Morgantis facta gigantis.

And so forth through the whole list of chivalrous romances, down to the _Orlando Furioso_ and the _Orlandino_. The boy's heart is set on deeds of daring. He makes himself the captain of a band of rogues who turn the village of Cipada upside down. Three of these deserve especial notice--Fracassus, Cingar, and Falchettus; since they became the henchmen of our hero in all his subsequent exploits. Fracassus was descended in the direct line from Morgante:

Primus erat quidam Fracassus prole gigantis,
Cujus stirps olim Morganto venit ab illo,
Qui bachiocconem campanae ferre solebat
Cum quo mille hominum colpo sfracasset in uno.

Cingar in like manner drew his blood from Pulci's Margutte:

Alter erat Baldi compagnus, nomine Cingar,
Accortus, ladro, semper truffare paratus;
Scarnus enim facie, reliquo sed corpore nervis
Plenus, compressus, picolinus, brunus, et atrox,
Semper habens nudam testam, rizzutus et asper.
Iste suam traxit Marguti a sanguine razzam,
Qui ad calcagnos sperones ut gallus habebat
Et nimio risu simia cagante morivit.

Falchettus boasted a still stranger origin:[427]

Sed quidnam de te, Falchette stupende, canemus?
Tu quoque pro Baldo bramasti prendere mortem.
Forsitan, o lecor, quae dico, dura videntur,
Namque Pulicano Falchettus venit ab illo
Quem scripsere virum medium, mediumque catellum;
Quapropter sic sic noster Falchettus habebat
Anteriora viri, sed posteriora canina.

[Footnote 427: I do not recognize Pulicanus, who is said to be the ancestor of Falchettus. Is it a misprint for Fulicanus? Fulicano is a giant in Bello's _Mambriano_, one of Folengo's favorite poems of romance.]

It would be too long to relate how Baldus received knightly education from a nobleman who admired his daring; how, ignorant of his illustrious blood, he married the village beauty Berta; and how he made himself the petty tyrant of Cipada. The exploits of his youth are a satire on the violence of local magnates, whose manners differed little from those of the peasants they oppressed. In course of time Baldus fell under the displeasure of a despot stronger than himself, and was shut up in prison.[428] In the absence of his hero from the scene, the poet now devotes himself to the exploits of Cingar among the peasants of Cipada. Without lowering his epic tone, Folengo fills five books with whimsical adventures, painting the manners of the country in their coarsest colors, and introducing passages of stinging satire on the monks he hated.[429] Cingar, finding himself on one occasion in a convent, gives vent to a long soliloquy which expresses Folengo's own contempt for the monastic institutions that filled Italy with rogues:

Quo diavol, ait, tanti venere capuzzi?
Nil nisi per mundum video portare capuzzos:
Quisquam vult fieri Frater, vult quisque capuzzum
Postquam giocarunt nummos, tascasque vodarunt,
Postquam pane caret cophinum, celaria vino,
In Fratres properant, datur his extemplo capuzzus.
Undique sunt isti Fratres, istique capuzzi.
Qui sint nescimus; discernare nemo valeret
Tantas vestitum foggias, tantosque colores:
Sunt pars turchini, pars nigri, parsque morelli,
Pars albi, russi, pars gialdi, parsque bretini.
Si per iter vado telluris, cerno capuzzos:
Si per iter pelagi, non mancum cerno capuzzos;
Quando per armatos eo campos, cerno capuzzos;
Sive forum subeo, sive barcam, sive tabernam,
Protinus ante oculos aliquem mihi cerno capuzzum.

[Footnote 428: _Mac._ iii. The edition I quote from is that of Mantua (?) under name of Amsterdam, 1769 and 1771, 2 vols. 4to. See vol. i. p. 117, for a satire on the frauds and injustice of a country law-court, followed by a mock heroic panegyric of the Casa Gonzaga. The description of their celebrated stud and breed of horses may be read with interest.]