d
processions which filled the sombre streets of Florence with
Bacchanalian revellers, and the ears of her grave citizens with
ill-disguised obscenity. Lorenzo took part in them himself, and
composed several choruses of high literary merit to be sung by the
masqueraders. One of these carries a refrain which might be chosen as
a motto for the spirit of that age upon the brink of ruin:--

_Youths and maids, enjoy to-day:
Naught ye know about to-morrow!_

He caused the triumphs to be carefully prepared by the best artists,
the dresses of the masquers to be accurately studied, and their
chariots to be adorned with illustrative paintings. Michelangelo's old
friend Granacci dedicated his talents to these shows, which also
employed the wayward fancy of Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo's power as
a colourist. "It was their wont," says Il Lasca, "to go forth after
dinner; and often the processions paraded through the streets till
three or four hours into the night, with a multitude of masked men on
horseback following, richly dressed, exceeding sometimes three hundred
in number, and as many on foot with lighted torches. Thus they
traversed the city, singing to the accompaniment of music arranged for
four, eight, twelve, or even fifteen voices, and supported by various
instruments." Lorenzo represented the worst as well as the best
qualities of his age. If he knew how to enslave Florence, it was
because his own temperament inclined him to share the amusements of
the crowd, while his genius enabled him to invest corruption with
charm. His friend Poliziano entered with the zest of a poet and a
pleasure-seeker into these diversions. He helped Lorenzo to revive the
Tuscan Mayday games, and wrote exquisite lyrics to be sung by girls in
summer evenings on the public squares. This giant of learning, who
filled the lecture-rooms of Florence with Students of all nations, and
whose critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history
of scholarship, was by nature a versifier, and a versifier of the
people. He found nothing' easier than to throw aside his professor's
mantle and to improvise _ballate_ for women to chant as they danced
their rounds upon the Piazza di S. Trinita. The frontispiece to an old
edition of such lyrics represents Lorenzo surrounded with masquers in
quaint dresses, leading the revel beneath the walls of the Palazzo.
Another woodcut shows an angle of the Casa Medici in Via Larga, girls
dancing the _carola_