Appena questo priego havea io decto quando egli apparve ad me fresco et giocondo, in un giardino ove io stava solecto. Di mirto coronato il capo biondo in forma pueril con si bel viso che mai piu bel fu visto in questo mondo. Creso haverai che su del paradiso fusse el suo aspecto, tanto era sovrano, se non che quando a lui mirai fiso Vidi che haveva uno archo orato in mano col quale Achille et Hercole percosse.
Here is the picture of the Golden Age, transcribed from Latin poetry, much as it was destined to control the future of Italian fancy[183]:
Vergine saggia e bella el ciel adorna di cui Virgilio poetando scripse, nuova progenie al mondo dal ciel torna, Rexe già el mondo et si la gente visse socto lei in pace che la età dell oro et seculo giusto et beato si disse. La terra allora senza alcun lavoro dava li fructi, et non faceva spine, ne ancho al giogo si domava el thoro; Non erano divisi per confine anchora i campi, et nesun per guadagno cercava le contrade pelegrine; Ognuno era fratello, ognun compagno, et era tanto amor, tanta pietade, che ad un fonte bevea el lupo et l'agno; Non eran lancia, non erano spade, non era anchor la pecunia peggiore che 'l guerigiante ferro piu si fiade; La invidia allor vedendo tanto amore di questo bene ad se genero pene e desto gaudio ad se diede dolore.
A little while beyond this foretaste of the _cinque cento_, we find Charon copied, without addition, but with a fatal loss of poetry, from the _Inferno_[184]:
Vidi Caron non molto da lontano con una nave in mezo la tempesta, che conducea con un gran remo in mano: Et ciaschuno occhio chelli havea in testa, pareva come di nocte una lumiera, o un falo quando si fa per festa. Quando egli fu appresso alla riviera un mezo miglio quasi o poco mancho, scacci sua faccia grande vizza e nera. Egli havea el capo di canuti biancho, el manto adosso rapezato et uncto, el volto si crudel non vidi un quancho.
Last upon the list of Dantesque imitators stands Matteo Palmieri, a learned Florentine, who composed his _Città di Vita_ in the middle of the fifteenth century. This poem won for its author from Marsilio Ficino the title of _Poeta Theologicus_.[185] Its chief interest at the present time is that the theology expressed in it brought suspicion of heresy on Palmieri. He held Origen's opinion that the souls of men were rebel angels. How a doctrine of this kind could be rendered in painting is not clear. Yet Giorgio Vasari tells us that a picture executed for Matteo Palmieri by Sandro Botticelli, which represented the Assumption of the Virgin into the celestial hierarchy--Powers, Princedoms, Thrones and Dominations ranged around her in concentric circles--fell under the charge of heterodoxy. The altar in S. Pietro Maggiore where it was placed had to be interdicted, and the picture veiled from sight.[186] The story forms a curious link between this last scion of medieval literature and the painting of the Renaissance. After Palmieri the meter of the Divine Comedy was chiefly used for satire and burlesque. Lorenzo de' Medici adapted its grave rhythms to parody in _I Beoni_. Berni used it for the Capitoli of the _Pesche_ and the _Peste_. At Florence it became the recognized meter for obscene and frivolous compositions, which delighted the Academicians of the sixteenth century. The people, meanwhile, continued to employ it in _Lamenti_, historical compositions, and personal Capitoli.[187] Thus Cellini wrote his poem called _I Carceri_ in _terza rima_, and Giovanni Santi used it for his precious but unpoetical Chronicle of Italian affairs. Both Benivieni and Michelangelo Buonarroti composed elegies in this meter; and numerous didactic eclogues of the pastoral poets might be cited in which it served for analogue to Latin elegiacs. In the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ it sometimes interrupted _ottava rima_, on the occasion of a set discourse or sermon.[188] Both Ariosto and Alamanni employed it in their satires. From these brief notices it will be seen that _terza rima_ during the Renaissance period was reserved for dissertational, didactic and satiric themes, the Capitoli of the burlesque poets being parodies of grave scholastic lucubrations. But no one now attempted an heroic poem in this verse.[189]