Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/121

Rh  'Ballad, if I were now as once I was, I'd make myself a shepherd on some hill, And, without telling any one, would pass Where these girls went, and follow at their will, And "Mary," and "Martin," we would murmur still, And I would be for ever where they were. '"

This exquisite poem, however, rather belongs to the late fourteenth than to the early fifteenth century, as do other songs of equal beauty by Sacchetti and his contemporaries, which contrast favourably with earlier Italian lyrics by their brevity and simplicity. This is partly attributable to their having been in general written for music. Some of the most charming examples have been collected in Carducci's Studi Letterari.

Sacchetti and Giovanni mark the termination of the Trecentisti period. Many writings of their contemporaries have been printed as models of pure diction, but are otherwise too unimportant to deserve independent notice In a literary history. After the beginning of the fifteenth century Italian prose for a while declined, mainly from the false standard of excellence produced by exaggerated enthusiasm for the newly recovered classics. Neglecting the spirit, though only too attentive to the letter, of these models, writers corrupted their diction with Latinisms. The best books were histories, and the best of these were written in Latin. It might have been said that to find a really good vernacular historian we must go back to the fourteenth century, were it not for the doubts which beset the alleged chronicle of, which professedly details events at Florence from 1286 to 1318. The question of its genuineness has aroused the sharpest