Page:The Oxford book of Italian verse.djvu/12

INTRODUCTION of which Cola di Rienzi dreamed—a confederation of all the Italian cities with Rome at its head—seemed within the bounds of possibility. But the instinct for unity was lacking in a race so long divided against itself, so long agitated by the incessant machinations of an esurient Papacy; Rienzi was murdered in Rome; Galeazzo and Bernabo Visconti, most bestial of tyrants, became lords of Lombardy; mercenaries began to infest the whole country, and an antipope elected by the French cardinals invoked the aid of foreign arms against Naples. The triumphs of the Trecento were intellectual and artistic, not political; it is well to forget the Popes and the Visconti, and to remember the great churches that were built, the great Universities that began to fourish, the schools of painting in Tuscany and Umbria, the Divina Commedia and the Canzoniere. II

At the end of the Trecento Italian poetry already possessed a variety of verse-forms. The canzone, the canzonetta, the ballata, the sonetto and the terza rima were completely evolved, the ottava rima of Boiardo, Pulci and Ariosto was in existence, and the rispetto of popular poetry was about to become a literary form in Tuscany and Umbria. The first half of the Quattrocento, however, produced no lyric poet of importance; the delightful songs of Franco Sacchetti, that indefatigable writer of short stories, closed the great epoch of Dante and Petrarch; Fazio degli Uberti, with his mediocre Dittamondo, was 12