Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/120

102 dignity of his style. His collection of sonnets, entitled La Bella Mano, from its perpetual refetence to the beauties of his lady's hand, stands out at all events, as even an inferior work might have done, from the almost total poetical barrenness of the middle of the fifteenth century, otherwise only relieved by the elegant sonnets of another Petrarchist, Bonaccorso da Montemagno, and the popular carols which gained Leonardo Giustiniani deserved reputation.

More genuine poetry is to be found in the occasional lyrics of two writers near the end of the fourteenth century, chiefly eminent in a different species of composition, the novelette. and are artists in words, and men of true poetic feeling. A canzonet of Sacchetti's (the earliest Italian poet, says Rossetti; with whom playfulness was a characteristic), O vaglie montanine pastorelle, was so popular as to have bdeti transmitted for some generatidns by oral recitation, while his novelettes, until printed in the eighteenth century, existed only in a single mutilated manuscript. This is the conclusion of Rossetti's translation of this charming lyric:

 'I think your beauties might make great complaint Of being thus shown ever mount and dell; Because no city is so excellent But that your stay therein were honourable. In very truth now does it like you well To live so poorly on the hill-side here?' 

 'Better it liketh one of us, pardie, Behind her flock to seek the pasture-stance, Far better than it liketh one of ye To ride unto your curtained rooms and dance. We seek no riches, neither golden chance, Save wealth of flowers to weave into our hair!