Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/137

Rh to assail culture in its representatives, and within little more than two years Politian escaped the gathering storm either by a broken heart or a voluntary death.

To appreciate Politian's services in imparting literary form to popular poetry, it will be necessary to bestow a glance on this poetry as it existed in Tuscany in his day, and in a measure exists still. We have previously remarked upon the absence of national ballad poetry at a very early period; and when at length we find traces of popular song, little resembling Chevy Chase is to be discovered, the staple being carols and love catches. Some of these may be as old as the thirteenth century, and the mass continued augmenting as one anonymous singer after another added something svifficiently attractive to be propagated from hamlet to hamlet, and treasured in the memory.

Similar lyrical production went on over most parts of Italy; the Sicilian songs, after the Tuscan, being the most numerous, or at least the best preserved. These ditties fall generally into two divisions, rispetti and stornelli: the former consisting of four or six verses, rhyming alternately, followed by a couplet; the latter of three lines only, the last rhyming with the first. These soon developed into the madrigal, a form affected by persons of culture and professional musicians, but the people continued to carol as of old. Thus, spontaneous births of the instinct for love and song, undergoing countless modifications in passing from mouth to mouth, until the right form has been found at last, and sifted by the taste of generation after generation, these little songs have formed a really beautiful collection of verse, reflecting in their ardour, graceful fancy and purity of sentiment, the best characteristics