No. II.--Ten Sonnets translated from Folgore da San Gemignano 526
No. III.--Translations from Alesso Donati 531
No. IV.--Jacopone's "Presepio," "Corrotto," and "Cantico dell'Amore Superardente," translated into English Verse 532
No. V.--Passages translated from the "Morgante Maggiore" of Pulci 543
No. VI.--Translations of Elegiac Verses by Girolamo Benivieni and Michelangelo Buonarroti 561
The period from 1300 to 1530--Its Division into Three Sub-Periods--Tardy Development of the Italian Language--Latin and Roman Memories--Political Struggles and Legal Studies--Conditions of Latin Culture in Italy during the Middle Ages--Want of National Legends--The Literatures of Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oïl cultivated by Italians--Franco-Italian Hybrid--Provençal Lyrics--French Chansons de Geste--Carolingian and Arthurian Romances--Formation of Italian Dialects--Sicilian School of Court Poets--Frederick II.--Problem of the _Lingua Aulica_--Forms of Poetry and Meters fixed--General Character of the Sicilian Style--Rustic Latin and Modern Italian--Superiority of Tuscan--The _De Eloquio_--Plebeian Literature--Moral Works in Rhyme--Emergence of Prose in the Thirteenth Century--Political Songs--Popular Lyrics--Religious Hymns--Process of Tuscanization--Transference of the Literary Center from Sicily to Tuscany--Guittone of Arezzo--Bolognese School--Guido Guinicelli--King Enzio's Envoy to Tuscany--Florentine Companies of Pleasure--Folgore da San Gemignano--The Guelf City.
Between 1300, the date of Dante's vision, and 1530, the date of the fall of Florence, the greatest work of the Italians in art and literature was accomplished. These two hundred and thirty years may be divided into three nearly equal periods. The first ends with Boccaccio's death in 1375. The second lasts until the birth of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1448. The third embraces the golden age of the Renaissance. In the first period Italian literature was formed. In the second intervened the studies of the humanists. In the third, these studies were carried over to the profit of the mother tongue. The first period extends over seventy-five years; the second over seventy-three; the third over eighty-two. With the first date, 1300, we may connect the jubilee of Boniface and the translation of the Papal See to Avignon (1304); with the second, 1375, the formation of the Albizzi oligarchy in Florence (1381); with the third, 1448, the capture of Constantinople (1453); and with the fourth, 1530, the death of Ariosto (1533) and the new direction given to the Papal policy by the Sack of Rome (1527).