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Abelard, like Arnault Daniel, was a good craftsman in his mother tongue, a facile master of versi d'amore, which he would sing with a voice wondrously sweet and supple. Now Abelard was thirty-eight years of age: Héloïse seventeen. Amor al cor gentil ratto s'apprende, and Minerva was not the only goddess who presided over their meetings.
We have comedies of Ariosto and Macchiavelli those of the former are in rhymeless verse, versi sdruccioli, and those of the latter in prose. Such men could produce nothing which did not bear traces of their genius. But Ariosto in the structure of his pieces kept too close to the stories of the ancients, and, therefore, did not exhibit any true living picture of the manners of his own times.
Saul is in five acts and it contains 1567 lines of that Italian versi sciolti which inadequately corresponds to the blank verse of the English language. The scene is laid in the camp of Saul's army. Six persons are introduced, namely, Saul, Jonathan, David, Michel, Abner, and Achimelech.
No one can doubt that his poems exhibit, amidst some imbecility and more affectation, much elegance, ingenuity, and tenderness. They present us with a mixture which can only be compared to the whimsical concert described by the humorous poet of Modena: "S'udian gli usignuoli, al primo albore, Egli asini cantar versi d'amore."
To the same Brunetto Latini the teacher of Dante who, in his 'Canzoni, adopts the customary manner of the 'Trovatori, we owe the first-known 'versi sciolti, or blank hendecasyllabic verses, and in his apparent absence of form, a true and genuine passion suddenly showed itself.
The most significant matter connected with this scene in the early version of the poem is the stage direction, which reads thus: "Orfeo cantando sopra il monte in su la lira e seguente versi latini fu interotto da un pastore nunciatore della morte di Euridice." The name of the actor of Orfeo is mentioned as Baccio Ugolino.
Blank verse, although originally remodelled by Surrey upon the versi sciolti of the Italians, has departed widely from Italian precedent, first by its decasyllabic structure, whereas Italian verse consists of hendecasyllables; and, secondly, by its greater force, plasticity, and freedom.
I found this of his the other day, and must needs close up my notes with it. The very notion of it was, in his time, a convention; a series of sonnets bound together by an argument; a Vita nova without its overmastering occasion. Simonetta was dead; whereupon "tutti i fiorentini ingegni, come si conviene in si pubblica jattura, diversamente ed avversamente si dolsono, chi in versi, chi in prosa."
For the versification of ancient history could only lead to the false tracks which were trodden by Petrarch in his 'Africa, written in Latin hexameters, and a hundred and fifty years later by Trissino in his 'Italy delivered from the Goths, composed in 'versi sciolti' a never-ending poem of faultless language and versification, which only makes us doubt whether this unlucky alliance has been more disastrous to history or to poetry.
Here was the castle there is nothing of it now where the thirteenth-century troubadour was born whom Petrarch described as 'Il grande maestro d'amore, and whom Dante made Guido speak of as a poet in these words of unqualified praise: 'Questi ch' io ti scerno Fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno: Versi d'amore e prose di romanzi Soverchio tutti.
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