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 devil, he longs to go and set free the whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his affection for him. Rinaldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part with him without manifesting a tenderness proportionate to their valour,--the old Homeric candour of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (_gentilezza_) even in hell; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, answers that he has no doubt of it, or of the capability of "friendship" in that quarter; and he says he is as "sorry to part with him as with a brother." The passage will be found in our abstract. There are no such devils as these in Dante; though Milton has something like them: