o direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too
often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy; and one
fit of jaundice or hypochondria might have enabled the poet to see more
visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps
ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the
disciple of Plato.

[Footnote 1: _Literature of the South of Europe_, Thomas Roscoe's
Translation, vol. ii. p.54. For the opinions of other writers, here and
elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him),
_Storia della Poesia Italiana_, cap. v. sect. 25; Gravina, who is more
so, _Della Ragion Poetica_ (quoted in Ginguene, as below); Crescimbeni,
_Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Poesia_, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3
(Mathias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work,
4to, Rome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was
perhaps the "modestest sad most temperate writer" of his age ("il pin
modesto e moderato"); Ginguene, _Histoire Litteraire d'Italie_, tom. iv.
p. 214; Foscolo, in the _Quarterly Review_, as further on; Panizzi on
the _Romantic Poetry of the Italians_, ditto; Stebbing, _Lives of the
Italian Poets_, second edition, vol, i.; and the first volume of _Lives
of Literary and Scientific Men_, in _Lardner's Cyclopaedia_.]

[Footnote 2: Canto xxv. The passage will be found in the present
volume.]

[Footnote 3: Id. And this also.]

[Footnote 4: Canto xxvii. stanza 2.

"S' altro ajuto qui non si dimostra,
Sara pur tragedia la istoria nostra.

Ed io pur commedia pensato avea
Iscriver del mio Carlo finalmente,
Ed _Alcuin_ cosi mi promettea," &c. ]

[Footnote 5:

"In fine to adorerai l'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ma tu amerai il
Pulci."--_Parn. Ital_. vol. ix. p. 344.]

[Footnote 6: Ellis's _Specimens of Early English Poetical Romances_,
vol. ii. p. 287; and Panizzi's _Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry
of the Italians_; in his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p.
113.]

[Footnote 7: _De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia_, &c. cap. xviii.
p. 39 (Ciampi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferracutus, or
Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had the strength of forty men,
and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat
with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which
its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful
b