Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/119

Rh present an affinity to Botticelli's illustrations of Dante, and have been attributed, although on insufficient authority, to Luca Signorelli. The poem was republished at Foligno in 1725, with a learned commentary, of which it was in great need. poem, Città di Vita, probably much in Frezzi's style, arouses interest from its having been suppressed as heretical, but its poetical merit has never yet sufficed to allure a publisher. "The object," says Symonds, who read it in MS., "is to show how free-will is innate in men." It is founded upon an actual vision, according to the assertion of the author.

Many other poets might be mentioned, but they are now mere names, except, chiefly renowned as Petrarch's friend, but himself a graceful writer, and two of considerably later date, of one of whom it may be truly if paradoxically said that he is chiefly remembered for being forgotten. This is, a standing example of the fickleness of popular taste. He was a Florentine, who lived from about 1400 to 1448, and composed numerous burlesque sonnets alla coda (with a tag of three lines), which retained sufficient vitality to go through thirty editions soon after the invention of printing, but are now inevitably neglected. Inasmuch as the Florentine slang in which they are mainly composed has ceased to be amusing, or even intelligible. The other poet of the period,, a jurist, who lived at the court of Sigismondo Malatesta, Prince of Rimini, and died there about 1452, is remarkable as the chief contemporary imitator of Petrarch, whom he followed with such servility as greatly to impair the credit otherwise due to him for the sweetness of his verse and the occasional