e platonic poets of Tuscany. The
songs of the archetype of Sicilian singers, the Emperor Frederick II.,
are completely Provencal in feeling as in form, though infinitely
inferior in execution. With him it is always the pleasure which he hopes
from his lady, or the pleasure which he has had--"Quando ambidue stavamo
in allegranza alla dolce fera;" "Pregovi donna mia--Per vostra
cortesia--E pregovi che sia--Quello che lo core disia." Again: "Sospiro
e sto in rancura--Ch' io son si disioso--E pauroso--Mi fate penare--Ma
tanto m' assicura--Lo suo viso amoroso--E lo gioioso--Riso e lo
sguardare--E lo parlare--Di questa criatura--Che per paura--Mi fate
penare--E di morare--Tant' e fina e pura--Tanto e saggia e cortese--Non
credo che pensasse--Ne distornasse--Di cio he m' impromise." It is, this
earliest Italian poetry, like the more refined poetry of troubadours and
minnesingers, eminently an importuning of highborn but loosely living
women. From Sicily and Apulia poetry goes first, as might be expected
(and as probably sculpture went) to the seaport Pisa, thence to the
neighbouring Lucca, considerably before reaching Florence. And as it
becomes more Italian and urban, it becomes also, under the strict
vigilance of burgher husbands, considerably more platonic. In Bologna,
the city of jurists, it acquires (the remark is not mine merely, but
belongs also to Carducci) the very strong flavour of legal quibbling
which distinguishes the otherwise charming Guido Guinicelli; and once in
Florence, among the most subtle of all subtle Tuscans, it becomes at
once what it remained even for Dante, saturated with metaphysics: the
woman is no longer paramount, she is subordinated to Love himself; to
that personified abstraction Amor, the serious and melancholy son of
pagan philosophy and Christian mysticism. The Tuscans had imported from
Provence and Sicily the new element of mediaeval love, of life devotion,
soul absorption in loving; if they would sing, they must sing of this;
any other kind of love, at a time when Italy still read and relished her
would-be Provencals, Lanfranc Cicala and Sordel of Mantua, would have
been unfashionable and unendurable. But in these Italian commonwealths,
as we have seen, poets are forced, nilly-willy, to be platonic; an
importuning poem found in her work-basket may send a Tuscan lady into a
convent, or, like Pia, into the Maremma; an _alba_ or a _serena_
interrupted by a wool-weaver of Calimara or a silk spin