ADVERTISEMENT. THE Morgante Maggiore, of the first canto of which this translation is offered, divides with the Orlando Innamorato the honour of having formed and suggested the style and story of Ariosto. The great defects of Boiardo were his treating too seriously the narratives of chivalry, and his harsh style. Ariosto, in his continuation, by a judicious mixture of the gaiety of Pulci, has avoided the one; and Berni, in his reformation of Boiardo's poem, has corrected the other. Pulci may be considered as the precursor and model of Berni altogether, as he has partly been to Ariosto, however inferior to both his copyists. He is no less the founder of a new style of poetry very lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft. The serious poems on Roncesvalles in the same language, and more particularly the excellent one of Mr. Merivale, are to be traced to the same source. It has never yet been decided entirely whether Pulci's intention was or was not to deride the religion which is one of his favourite topics. It appears to me, that such an intention would have been no less hazardous to the poet than to the priest, particularly in that age and country; and the permission to publish the poem, and its reception among the classics of Italy, prove that it neither was nor is so interpreted. That he intended to ridicule the monastic life, and suffered his imagination to play with the simple dulness of his converted giant, seems evident enough; but surely it were as unjust to accuse him of irreligion on this account, as to denounce Fielding for his Parson Adams, Barnabas, Thwackum, Supple, and the Ordinary in Jonathan Wild,-or Scott, for the exquisite use of his Covenanters in the "Tales of my Landlord." In the following translation I have used the liberty of the original with the proper names, as Pulci uses Gan, Ganellon, or Ganellone; Carlo, Carlomagno, or Carlomano; Rondel, or Rondello, &c., as it suits his convenience; so has the translator. In other respects the version is faithful to the best of the translator's ability in combining his interpretation of the one language with the not very easy task of reducing it to the same versification in the other. The reader, on comparing it with the original, is requested to remember that the antiquated language of Pulci, however pure, is not easy to the generality of Italians themselves, from its great mixture of Tuscan proverbs; and he may therefore be more indulgent to the present attempt. How far the translator has succeeded, and whether or no he shall continue the work, are questions which the public will decide. He was induced to make the experiment partly by his love for, and partial intercourse with, the Italian language, of which it is so easy to acquire a slight knowledge, and with which it is so nearly impossible for a foreigner to become accurately conversant. The Italian language is like a capricious beauty, who accords her smiles to all, her favours to few, and sometimes least to those who have courted her longest. The translator wished also to present in an English dress a part at least of a poem never yet rendered into a northern language; at the same time that it has been the original of some of the most celebrated productions on this side of the Alps, as well of those recent experiments in poetry in England which have been already mentioned. INTRODUCTION TO THE MORGANTE MAGGIORE. - THE translation of the tedious Morgante of Pulci was chiefly executed at Ravenna in 1820, and was first published in "The Liberal." Such was the care bestowed by Lord Byron upon the task, that he only accomplished two stanzas a night, which was his principal time for composition, and such was his opinion of his success, that he always maintained that there was no such translation in the English language, and never would be such another. He appears to have thought that its merit consisted in the verbum pro verbo closeness of the version, rendered doubly difficult by the character of the poem, which, besides being humorous, is full of vulgar Florentine idioms, abrupt transitions, ungrammatical constructions, and sententious obscurity. Thus the translation was an exercise of skill in the art, and can only be estimated by continuous reference to the original Italian, where the exigencies, moreover, of rhyme, are far less felt than in English, and which Pulci often satisfied by yielding sense up to sound. The immense labour of mastering these accumulated obstacles explains Lord Byron's overestimate of the piece. "Why," he says to Mr. Murray, in 1821, "don't you publish my Pulci,-the best thing I ever wrote?" But, unless forced up from its natural level, it is impossible for a stream to rise higher than its source, and the translation, from its very fidelity, was as much below "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan" as Pulci was an inferior poet to Lord Byron. The first edition of the original Morgante was published at Venice in 1481. The characters are derived from some chivalrous romances of the thirteenth century. A question much mooted is whether Pulci designed a burlesque, or a serious poem-Ugo Foscolo maintaining that the air of ridicule arose from the contrast between the absurdity of the materials and the effort of the author to render them sublime; while Sismondi contends that the belief in the marvellous being much diminished, the adventures which formerly were heard with gravity could not be reproduced without a mixture of mockery. Hallam agrees with the latter, and thinks that Pulci meant to scoff at the heroes whom duller poets held up to admiration. If he really intended to ennoble his subject he was at least unsuccessful, and had strange ideas of dignity. There has been equal difference of opinion upon the parts of the poem which touch on religion. Ugo Foscolo considers Pulci a devout Catholic who laughed at particular dogmas and divines; Sismondi doubts whether to charge him with gross bigotry or profane derision; and Hallam thinks that, under pretence of ridiculing the intermixture of theology with romance, he had an intention of exposing religion to contempt. Whatever might have been his theoretical creed, he shows by his mode of treating sacred topics that he was entirely destitute of reverence. Lord Byron was asked to allow some suppressions, to which he responded, that Pulci must answer for his own impiety. |