LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI was a universal genius. He distinguished himself as painter, sculptor and architect, but his Italian writings would hardly be of sufficient importance to mention, had not the dearth of names in this barren century made historians of literature thankful for any means of filling up the blank.
LEONARDO DA VINCI wrote a _Treatise on Painting,_ and he impressed upon all artists the necessity of being original, and of not copying their predecessors. It would have been well if the writers of the age had laid this injunction to heart as well as the painters, for as years advanced, the servile imitation of conventional forms became more and more the bane of Italian literature.
PULCI is celebrated for his mock-heroic poem, the _Morgante Maggiore._ The giant Morgante is the hero, but we also make the acquaintance of Orlando, Rinaldo, Charlemagne, and many other characters that appear in the more famous poems of Bojardo and Ariosto. It was unfortunate for Pulci that he had such great successors. He had abundance of wit and originality, but he had neither the poetical imagination of Bojardo nor the magic style of Ariosto, so that it is no cause for astonishment that he fell into neglect.
MATTEO BOJARDO, Count of Scandiano, was born in 1430 and died in 1494. He was favoured by nature and fortune; a soldier and a statesman, he had every opportunity of enriching his mind with varied experiences, nor can we say that those opportunities were neglected. His _Orlando Innamorato,_ which he did not live to finish, long as it is, displays great wealth of imagination and considerable creative power; but unfortunately, his style is heavy and rough, and was completely eclipsed by the extraordinary merits of Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso,_ which professes to be only a continuation of the earlier poem. Fifty years later, Berni entirely re-wrote Bojardo's work and certainly succeeded in giving it greater elegance, but he did not make it more interesting to modern readers. In truth, the knights of the epic cycle beginning with the _Morgante Maggiore_ and ending in the Eighteenth Century with the _Ricciardetto,_ appear terribly uninteresting in the present day, and it requires the picturesque and melodious style of a really great poet like Ariosto to entice the reader through the account of their numerous adventures.