and the pedantries of
imitation.

[2] This name, it may be incidentally mentioned, proves
the wide-spread popularity of Pulci's poem, the _Morgante
Maggiore_.

[3] 'Era costui al presente di anni 18 o 19; ancora non se
radeva barba; e mostrava tanta forza e tanto ardire, e era
tanto adatto nel fatto d' arme, che era gran maraveglia; e
iostrava cum tanta gintilezza e gagliardia, che homo del
mondo non l' aria mai creso; et aria dato con la punta de
la lancia in nel fondo d' uno bicchiere da la mattina a la
sera,' &c. (p. 50).

Listen to Matarazzo's description of the scene; it is as good as any
piece of the 'Mort Arthur:'--'According to the report of one who
told me what he had seen with his own eyes, never did anvil take so
many blows as he upon his person and his steed; and they all kept
striking at his lordship in such crowds that the one prevented the
other. And so many lances, partisans, and crossbow quarries, and
other weapons, made upon his body a most mighty din, that above
every other noise and shout was heard the thud of those great
strokes. But he, like one who had the mastery of war, set his
charger where the press was thickest, jostling now one, and now
another; so that he ever kept at least ten men of his foes stretched
on the ground beneath his horse's hoofs; which horse was a most
fierce beast, and gave his enemies what trouble he best could. And
now that gentle lord was all fordone with sweat and toil, he and his
charger; and so weary were they that scarcely could they any longer
breathe.'

Soon after, the Baglioni mustered in force. One by one their heroes
rushed from the palaces. The enemy were driven back with slaughter;
and a war ensued, which made the fair land between Assisi and
Perugia a wilderness for many months. It must not be forgotten that,
at the time of these great feats of Simonetto and Astorre, young
Raphael was painting in the studio of Perugino. What the whole city
witnessed with astonishment and admiration, he, the keenly sensitive
artist-boy, treasured in his memory. Therefore in the S. George of
the Louvre, and in the mounted horseman trampling upon Heliodorus in
the Stanze of the Vatican, victorious Astorre lives for ever,
immortalised in all his splendour by the painter's art. The grinning
griffin on the helmet, the resistless frown upon the forehead of the
beardless knight, the terrible right arm, and the ferocious
steed,--all a