in the candour of
desolation; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them
renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by
the poor queen in the play of _Richard the Second_, when she overhears
the discourse of the gardener:

"My wretchedness _unto a roar of pins_, They'll talk of state."

Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during
the recital of these passages? Or did he flatter himself, that the
comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be
amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new
one?[9]

The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external
nature, in the _Morgante_, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of
heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost
absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and
delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion. The
fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues
it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to
accept; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that "she
wishes she could give him the sun;" and that if she were to say, after
all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should
be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is
so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his
lips. The way also in which another of these loving admirers of Paladins
conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently
hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with
a ring and a graceful speech, is in a taste as high as any thing in
Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their
great successor.[10] Yet the tenderness of Pulci rather shews itself in
the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little
escapes of generous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great
charms of the _Morgante_. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's
encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he
discovers a kinsman; and this goodness and relationship combined move
the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who
is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such
a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without
peril out of the clutches of a