ace, or at the canvas of one of the sensual Genoese painters. The
description of the garden of Venus has the charm of somewhat
artificial elegance, the exotic grace of style, which attracts us in
the earlier Renaissance work:--

The leafy tresses of that timeless garden
Nor fragile brine nor fresh snow dares to whiten;
Frore winter never comes the rills to harden,
Nor winds the tender shrubs and herbs to frighten;
Glad Spring is always here, a laughing warden;
Nor do the seasons wane, but ever brighten;
Here to the breeze young May, her curls unbinding,
With thousand flowers her wreath is ever winding.

Indeed it may be said with truth that Poliziano's most eminent faculty
as a descriptive poet corresponded exactly to the genius of the
painters of his day. To produce pictures radiant with Renaissance
colouring, and vigorous with Renaissance passion, was the function of
his art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This
remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and
Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were
not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the
inexhaustible variety and beauty of their pictures.

Of Poliziano's plagiarism--if this be the right word to apply to the
process of assimilation and selection, by means of which the
poet-scholar of Florence taught the Italians how to use the riches of
the ancient languages and their own literature--here are some
specimens. In stanza 42 of the 'Giostra' he says of Simonetta:--

E 'n lei discerne un non so che divino.

Dante has the line:--

Vostri risplende un non so che divino.

In the 44th he speaks about the birds:--

E canta ogni augelletto in suo latino.

This comes from Cavalcanti's:--

E cantinne gli augelli.
Ciascuno in suo latino.

Stanza 45 is taken bodily from Claudian, Dante, and Cavalcanti. It
would seem as though Poliziano wished to show that the classic and
medieval literature of Italy was all one, and that a poet of the
Renaissance could carry on the continuous tradition in his own style.
A, line in stanza 54 seems perfectly original:--

E gia dall'alte ville il fumo esala.

It comes straight from Virgil:--

Et jam summa pocul villarum culmina fumant.

In the next stanza the line--

Tal che 'l ciel tutto rassereno d'intorno,

is Petrarch's. So in the 56th, is the phrase 'il dolce andar
celeste.' In stanza 57--