Part 15

Teachings or Lessonings of Love might probably express the sense more exactly to an English ear.

‘Chi vuol fare merli.’ The phrase means literally ‘he who wants to make battlements’—or possibly ‘to make thrushes,’ I can only guess at its bearing in the present passage, having searched for a distinct explanation in vain. It seems to be one of the myriad ‘vezzi di lingua’ of old Italian, and especially old Tuscan, idiom.

‘Di mandar a laveggio.’ I am far from certain as to the real meaning.

This precept, and especially a preceding one (p. 39) which enjoins the host to place the guests in their appropriate seats, keeping by himself those of less account, would seem to show that at this period the seats at the right and left of the host (or hostess) were by no means understood to be posts of honour. The absence of all mention, either in Bonvicino or in Barberino, of the hostess or her especial duties, strikes one as a singularity. That the hostess is nevertheless understood to be present may be fairly inferred from the clearly expressed presence of other ladies.

Prettily worded in the Italian:

‘Nè abbracciar stringendo, Se non sei ben una cosa con quello.’

Ancor c’ è molta gente Ch’ han certi vizj in dono ed in servire, Sì che poco gradire Vediamo in lor quando ne fanno altrui:

Chè non pensano a cui, Nè che nè come, nè tanto nè quanto. Altri fanno un procanto Di sue bisogne, e poi pur fanno il dono.

Ed altri certi sono Che danno indugio, e credon far maggiore. E molti che colore Pongon a scusa, e poi pur fanno e danno.

Ed altri che, com’ hanno Servigio ricevuto, affrettan troppo Disobbligar lo groppo Col qual eran legati alli serventi:

Onde sien tutti attenti Che non è picciol vizio non volere Obbligato manere; Anzi par poi che sforzato sia largo.

Dicemi alcuno: ‘Io spargo Li don, per mia libertate tenere; Non per altrui piacere.’ Questo è gran vizio: ed è virtù maggiore,

E più porta d’onore, Saver donar la sua persona altrui, Ricevendo da lui, E star apparecchiato a meritaro.

E non ti vo’ lassare Lo vizio di colui che colla faccia Non vuol dar sì che piaccia, Ma turba tutto, e sta gran pezza mutto.

The mention of a slave in a Florentine household of the late 13th or early 14th century may startle some readers. I translate the note which Signor Guglielmo Manzi, the editor of the Reggimento, supplies on this subject. ‘Slavery, which abases mankind, and revolts humanity and reason, diminished greatly when the Christian religion was introduced into the Roman Empire—that religion being in manifest opposition to so barbarous a system. The more the one progressed in the world, the more did the other wane; and, as Bodino observes in his book De Republicâ, slavery had ceased in Europe, to a great extent, by 1200. I shall follow this author, who is the only one to afford us some degree of light amid so great obscurity. In the year 1212 there were still, according to him, slaves in Italy; as may be seen from the ordinances of William, King of Sicily, and of the Emperor Frederick II. for the kingdom of Naples, and from the decretals of the Popes Alexander III., Urban III., and Innocent III., concerning the marriages of slaves. The first of these Popes was elected in 1158, the second in 1185, and the third in 1198; so that the principle of liberty cannot be dated earlier than in or about 1250—Bartolo, who lived in the year 1300, writing (Hostes de Captivis, I.) that in his time there were no slaves, and that, according to the laws of Christendom, men were no longer put up to sale. This assertion, however, conflicts with the words of our author, who affirms that in his time—that is, at the commencement of the 14th century—the custom existed. But, in elucidation of Bartolo, it should be said that he implied that men were no longer sold, on the ground that this was prohibited by the laws of Christendom, and the edicts of sovereigns. In France it can be shown that in 1430 Charles VII. gave their liberty to some persons of servile condition; and even in the year 1548 King Henri II. liberated, by letters patent, those of the Bourbonnais: and the like was done throughout all his states by the Duke of Savoy in 1561. In the Hundred Tales of Boccaccio we have also various instances showing that the sale of free men was practised in Italy. These are in the 6th Tale of the 2nd Day, the story of Madonna Beritola, whose sons remained in Genoa in serfdom; and in the 6th of the 5th Day, the story of Frederick, King of Sicily; and in the 7th of the same Day, the story of Theodore and Violante. It is therefore clear, from all this evidence, that, in the time of Messer Francesco, so execrable a practice was still prevalent; and, summing up all we have said, it must be concluded that serfdom, in non-barbarian Europe, was not entirely extinguished till the 16th century.’

‘Mottetti e parlari.’ Only a few specimens of these are given, and they are all sufficiently occult. Here is one. ‘Grande a morte, o la morte. Di molte se grava morte. [Responde Madonna] Dolci amorme, quel camorme, dunque amorme conveniarme.’

This Lady is an ideal or symbolic personage—presumably Wisdom.

Matteo Palmieri (see p. 58) indicates that the state of things was the same in his time, about 1430: he is more decided than Barberino in condemning it.

‘Uomin di corte.’ This term was first applied to heralds, chamberlains, and the like court-officials: subsequently to the entertainers of a court, ‘giullari,’ jesters, and buffoons: and in process of time it came to include courtiers of whatever class. In the early writers—such as Barberino, Boccaccio, &c.—it is not always easy for a translator to pitch upon the precise equivalent: the reader should understand a personage who might be as romantic as a Troubadour, or as quaint as a Touchstone—but tending rather towards the latter extreme.

‘Uccelli grifoni.’ This seems a daring suggestion: possibly, as a griffin is a compound of eagle and lion, we are to understand that the eagle is the griffin-bird.

‘Drappi oltramarin’—which may mean foreign (from beyond sea), or else of ultramarine colour: I rather suppose the former.

‘Lana di pesce’—literally, fish’s wool. The term is new to me, nor do I find it explained in dictionaries: I can only therefore surmise that it designates the silky filaments of certain sea-mollusks, such as the pinna of the Mediterranean. This byssus is still made use of in Italy for gloves and similar articles.

‘Intaglj;’ and the next line gives the word ‘Scolture.’ Giovanni Villani notes that in 1330 a prohibition was issued against ‘dresses cut-out or painted:’ the fashion having run into the extravagance of ‘dresses cut-out with different sorts of cloth, and made of stuffs trimmed variously with silks.’

These seem to be very obedient birds: and their position, behind glass windows in a globe figuring the world, was rather an odd one to modern notions. The reader will keep me company in guessing whether or not we are to take the whole description au pied de la lettre.

Tiraboschi says 1468; but that, as far as I can trace, is a mistake.

It may be fair to state that the work, as first published, was put in the Roman index of prohibited books; and that the reissues (including no doubt the edition known to me) have omitted the inculpated passages. Whether these were objected to on moral or rather on ecclesiastical grounds I cannot affirm: the book as now printed is not only quite free from immoralities, but is decidedly moral, whereas there remains at least one passage of a tone such as churchmen resent ex officio.

A noticeable proverbial phrase. It is new to me; but I suppose it means either ‘learned in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin’ (the three languages in which the inscription over the cross was written), or else perhaps ‘learned in languages generally.’

That most capital and characteristic book, the Autobiography of the tragedian Alfieri, contains a reference to the Galateo, which, longish as it is, I am tempted to extract. ‘My worthy Paciaudi was wont to advise me not to neglect, amid my laborious readings, works in prose, which he learnedly termed the nurse of poetry. As regards this, I remember that one day he brought me the Galateo of Della Casa; recommending me to ponder it well with respect to the turn of speech, which assuredly is pure Tuscan, and the reverse of all Frenchifying. I, who in boyhood had (as we all have) read it loosely, understood it little, and relished it not at all, felt almost offended at this schoolboyish and pedantic advice. Full of venom against the said Galateo, I opened it. And, at the sight of that first Conciossiacosachè, to which is trailed-on that long sentence so pompous and so wanting in pith, such an impulse of rage seized me that, hurling the book out of window, I cried like a maniac: “Surely a hard and disgusting necessity, that, in order to write tragedies at the age of twenty-seven, I must swallow down again this childish chatter, and relax my brain with such pedantries!” He smiled at my uneducated poetic furor; and prophesied that I would yet read the Galateo, and that more than once. And so it turned out; but several years afterwards, when I had thoroughly hardened my neck and shoulders to bear the grammatical yoke. And I read not only the Galateo, but almost all our prose writers of the fourteenth century, and annotated them too: with what profit I cannot say. But true it is that, were any one to give them a good reading as regards their turn of phrase, and to manage availing himself with judgment and skill of their array, rejecting the cast clothes of their ideas, he might perhaps afterwards, in his writings as well philosophic as poetic or historic, or of any other class, give a richness, brevity, propriety, and force of colour, to his style, which I have not as yet seen fully gracing any Italian writer.’ A word or two may be spared to the formidable-looking vocable Conciossiacosachè which so excited Alfieri’s bile. It might be translated literally as ‘Herewith-be-something-that;’ and corresponds in practice to the English ‘Forasmuch as’—or more briefly ‘since,’ or ‘as.’ The Italian word poichè serves all the same uses, save that of longwindedness. But Conciossiacosachè itself is not lengthy enough for some Italian lips: and I believe that even the phrase into which it has sometimes been prolonged—‘Con ciò sia cosa fosse massimamente che’—has been used for other than burlesquing purposes.