ood reason
to believe that the part of Orpheus was taken by Messer Baccio
Ugolini, singing to the viol. Here too it may be mentioned that a
_tondo_ in monochrome, painted by Signorelli among the arabesques at
Orvieto, shows Orpheus at the throne of Plato, habited as a poet with
the laurel crown and playing on a violin of antique form. It would be
interesting to know whether a rumour of the Mantuan pageant had
reached the ears of the Cortonese painter.

If the whole of the 'Orfeo' had been conceived and executed with the
same artistic feeling as the chief act, it would have been a really
fine poem independently of its historical interest. But we have only
to turn the page and read the lament uttered for the loss of Eurydice,
in order to perceive Poliziano's incapacity for dealing with his hero
in a situation of greater difficulty. The pathos which might have made
us sympathise with Orpheus in his misery, the passion, approaching to
madness, which might have justified his misogyny, are absent. It is
difficult not to feel that in this climax of his anguish he was a poor
creature, and that the Maenads served him right. Nothing illustrates
the defect of real dramatic imagination better than this failure to
dignify the catastrophe. Gifted with a fine lyrical inspiration,
Poliziano seems to have already felt the Bacchic chorus which forms so
brilliant a termination to his play, and to have forgotten his duty
to the unfortunate Orpheus, whose sorrow for Eurydice is stultified
and made unmeaning by the prosaic expression of a base resolve. It may
indeed be said in general that the 'Orfeo' is a good poem only where
the situation is not so much dramatic as lyrical, and that its finest
passage--the scene in Hades--was fortunately for its author one in
which the dramatic motive had to be lyrically expressed. In this
respect, as in many others, the 'Orfeo' combines the faults and merits
of the Italian attempts at melo-tragedy. To break a butterfly upon the
wheel is, however, no fit function of criticism: and probably no one
would have smiled more than the author of this improvisation, at the
thought of its being gravely dissected just four hundred years after
the occasion it was meant to serve had long been given over to
oblivion.

_NOTE_

Poliziano's 'Orfeo' was dedicated to Messer Carlo Canale, the husband
of that famous Vannozza who bore Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia to
Alexander VI. As first published in 1494, and as republished