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They held the pick of Florence, those scowling shrouds Giuliano and Lorenzo, Pazzi, Tornabuoni, Soderini or Pulci; and behind, old Cattaneo, battered with storms, walked heavily, swinging his long arms and looking into the day's face as if he would try another fall with Death yet.
Nothing is known of his latter days. It is not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite allegation with theological opponents.
In accordance with the medieval temper, the victory of the Christian and the final reconciliation among the combatants was attended by the baptism of the defeated Islamites, and the Improvisatori, who preceded Pulci in the treatment of these subjects, must have made free use of this stock incident.
But meanwhile, for all that Florentine burgesses, artizans, and humorists may think, there is in this Italy of the Renaissance something besides Florence; there is a school of poetry, disconnected with the realisms of Lorenzo and Pulci, with the Ovidian Petrarchisms of Politian. There is Ferrara.
"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw him." "Oh, in the wood there. Gone, depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain some whim, That will not let him rest till it's a sonnet."
The fragment, though bearing marks of want of correction, is in some respects a beautiful, and altogether a curious one, especially as it seems to have been written after the Furioso; for it touches in a remarkable manner on several points of morals and politics, and contains an extravagance wilder than any thing in Pulci, a whale inhabited by knights!
‘You have read Pulci, I suppose?’ said I. ‘Yes, yes,’ said the man in black, laughing; ‘I remember.’
Like the tournament that Giuliano held later in honour of Simonetta Vespucci, which Poliziano has immortalised, and for which Botticelli painted a banner, this pageant of Lorenzo's, for it was rather a pageant than a fight, was sung, too, by Luca Pulci, and was held in Piazza S. Croce.
There is the whole chronicle of Karl the Great, and all his Palsgrafen, by Pulci and Boiardo, a brave Count and gentleman himself, governor of Reggio, and worthy to sing of deeds of arms; so choice, too, as to the names of his heroes, that they say he caused his church bells to be rung when he had found one for Rodomonte, his infidel Hector.
All this is a purely artistic world, a world of decorative arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and the Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is none of the grotesque irreverence of Pulci.
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