There thus appeared at Verona a man strangely clad and using strange gestures, who, when brought before the mayor, recited with great energy passages of Latin verse and prose, taken from the works of Panormita, answered in reply to the questions put to him that he was himself Panormita, and was able to give so many small and commonly unknown details about the life of this scholar, that his statement obtained general credit. He was then treated with great honour by the authorities and the learned men of the city, and played his assumed part successfully for a considerable time, until Guarino and others who knew Panormita personally discovered the fraud. Comp. Rosmini, Vita di Guarino, ii. 44 sqq., 171 sqq. Few of the humanists were free from the habit of boasting. Codrus Urceus (Vita, at the end of the Opera, 1506, fol. lxx.), when asked for his opinion about this or that famous man, used to answer: ‘Sibi scire videntur.’ Barth. Facius, De Vir. Ill. p. 31, tells of the jurist Antonius Butriensis: ‘Id unum in eo viro notandum est, quod neminem unquam, adeo excellere homines in eo studio volebat, ut doctoratu dignum in examine comprobavit.’
347
A Latin poet of the twelfth century, one of the wandering scholars who barters his song for a coat, uses this as a threat. Carmina Burana, p. 76.
348
Sonnet cli: Lasso ch’i ardo.
349
Boccaccio, Opere Volgari, vol. xvi. in Sonnet 13: Pallido, vinto, etc.
350
Elsewhere, and in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, iv. 203.
351
Angeli Politiani Epp. lib. x.
352
Quatuor navigationes, etc. Deodatum (St. Dié), 1507. Comp. O. Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 1859, ed. 2, 1876.
353
Paul. Jov. De Romanis Piscibus, Præfatio (1825). The first decade of his histories would soon be published, ‘non sine aliqua spe immortalitatis.’
354
Comp. Discorsi, i. 27. ‘Tristizia’ (crime) can have ‘grandezza’ and be ‘in alcuna parte generosa’; ‘grandezza’ can take away ‘infamia’ from a deed; a man can be ‘onorevolmente tristo’ in contrast to one who is ‘perfettamente buono.’
355
Storie Fiorentine, l. vi.
356
Paul. Jov. Elog. Vir. Lit. Ill. p. 192, speaking of Marius Molsa.
357
Mere railing is found very early, in Benzo of Alba, in the eleventh century (Mon. Germ. ss. xi. 591-681).
358
The Middle Ages are further rich in so-called satirical poems; but the satire is not individual, but aimed at classes, categories, and whole populations, and easily passes into the didactic tone. The whole spirit of this literature is best represented by Reineke Fuchs, in all its forms among the different nations of the West. For this branch of French literature see a new and admirable work by Lenient, La Satire en France au Moyen-âge, Paris, 1860, and the equally excellent continuation, La Satire en France, ou la littérature militante, au XVIe Siècle, Paris, 1866.
359
See above, p. 7 note 2. Occasionally we find an insolent joke, nov. 37.
360
Inferno, xxi. xxii. The only possible parallel is with Aristophanes.
361
A modest beginning Opera, p. 421, sqq., in Rerum Memorandarum Libri IV. Again, in Epp. Seniles, x. 2. Comp. Epp. Fam. ed. Fracass. i. 68 sqq., 70, 240, 245. The puns have a flavour of their mediæval home, the monasteries. Petrarch’s invectives ‘contra Gallum,’ ‘contra medicum objurgantem,’ and his work, De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia; perhaps also his Epistolæ sine Titulo,’ may be quoted as early examples of satirical writing.
362
Nov. 40, 41; Ridolfo da Camerino is the man.
363
The well-known jest of Brunellesco and the fat wood-carver, Manetto Ammanatini, who is said to have fled into Hungary before the ridicule he encountered, is clever but cruel.
364
The ‘Araldo’ of the Florentine Signoria. One instance among many, Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi, iii. 651, 669. The fool as necessary to enliven the company after dinner; Alcyonius, De Exilio, ed. Mencken, p. 129.
365
Sacchetti, nov. 48. And yet, according to nov. 67, there was an impression that a Romagnole was superior to the worst Florentine.
366
L. B. Alberti, Del Governo della Famiglia, Opere, ed. Bonucci, v. 171. Comp. above, p. 132, note 1.
367
Franco Sacchetti, nov. 156; comp. 24 for Dolcibene and the Jews. (For Charles IV. and the fools, Friedjung, o.c. p. 109.) The Facetiæ of Poggio resemble Sacchetti’s in substance—practical jokes, impertinences, refined indecency misunderstood by simple folk; the philologist is betrayed by the large number of verbal jokes. On L. A. Alberti, see pp. 136, sqq.
368
And consequently in those novels of the Italians whose subject is taken from them.
369
According to Bandello, iv. nov. 2, Gonnella could twist his features into the likeness of other people, and mimic all the dialects of Italy.
370
Paul. Jov. Vita Leonis X.
371
‘Erat enim Bibiena mirus artifex hominibus ætate vel professione gravibus ad insaniam impellendis.’ We are here reminded of the jests of Christine of Sweden with her philologists. Comp. the remarkable passage of Jovian. Pontanus, De Sermone, lib. ii. cap. 9: ‘Ferdinandus Alfonsi filius, Neapolitanorum rex magnus et ipse fuit artifex et vultus componendi et orationes in quem ipse usus vellet. Nam ætatis nostri Pontifices maximi fingendis vultibus ac verbis vel histriones ipsos anteveniunt.
372
The eye-glass I not only infer from Rafael’s portrait, where it can be explained as a magnifier for looking at the miniatures in the prayer-book, but from a statement of Pellicanus, according to which Leo views an advancing procession of monks through a ‘specillum’ (comp. Züricher Taschenbuch for 1858, p. 177), and from the ‘cristallus concava,’ which, according to Giovio, he used when hunting. (Comp. ‘Leonis X. vita auctore anon, conscripta’ in the Appendix to Roscoe.) In Attilius Alessius (Baluz. Miscell. iv. 518) we read, ‘Oculari ex gemina (gemma?) utebatur quam manu gestans, signando aliquid videndum esset, oculis admovebat.’ The shortsightedness in the family of the Medici was hereditary. Lorenzo was shortsighted, and replied to the Sienese Bartolommeo Soccini, who said that the air of Florence was bad for the eyes: ‘E quella di Siena al cervello.’ The bad sight of Leo X. was proverbial. After his election, the Roman wits explained the number MCCCCXL. engraved in the Vatican as follows: ‘Multi cæci Cardinales creaverunt cæcum decimum Leonem.’ Comp. Shepherd-Tonelli, Vita del Poggio, ii. 23, sqq., and the passages there quoted.
373
We find it also in plastic art, e.g., in the famous plate parodying the group of the Laöcoon as three monkeys. But here parody seldom went beyond sketches and the like, though much, it is true, may have been destroyed. Caricature, again, is something different. Lionardo, in the grotesque faces in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, represents what is hideous when and because it is comical, and exaggerates the ludicrous element at pleasure.
374
Jovian. Pontan. De Sermone, libri v. He attributes a special gift of wit to the Sienese and Peruginese, as well as to the Florentines, adding the Spanish court as a matter of politeness.
375
Il Cortigiano, lib. ii. cap. 4 sqq., ed. Baude di Vesme, Florence, 1854, pp. 124 sqq. For the
There thus appeared at Verona a man strangely clad and using strange gestures, who, when brought before the mayor, recited with great energy passages of Latin verse and prose, taken from the works of Panormita, answered in reply to the questions put to him that he was himself Panormita, and was able to give so many small and commonly unknown details about the life of this scholar, that his statement obtained general credit. He was then treated with great honour by the authorities and the learned men of the city, and played his assumed part successfully for a considerable time, until Guarino and others who knew Panormita personally discovered the fraud. Comp. Rosmini, 