These village rispetti bear the same relation to the
canzoniere of Petrarch as the 'savage drupe' to the 'suave plum.' They
are, as it were, the wild stock of that highly artificial flower of
art. Herein lies, perhaps, their chief importance. As in our ballad
literature we may discern the stuff of the Elizabethan drama
undeveloped, so in the Tuscan people's songs we can trace the crude
form of that poetic instinct which produced the sonnets to Laura. It
is also very probable that some such rustic minstrelsy preceded the
Idylls of Theocritus and the Bucolics of Virgil; for coincidences of
thought and imagery, which can scarcely be referred to any conscious
study of the ancients, are not a few. Popular poetry has this great
value for the student of literature: it enables him to trace those
forms of fancy and of feeling which are native to the people, and
which must ultimately determine the character of national art, however
much that may be modified by culture.

* * * * *

_POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE_

The semi-popular poetry of the Italians in the fifteenth century
formed an important branch of their national literature, and
flourished independently of the courtly and scholastic studies which
gave a special character to the golden age of the revival. While the
latter tended to separate the people from the cultivated classes, the
former established a new link of connection between them, different
indeed from that which existed when smiths and carters repeated the
Canzoni of Dante by heart in the fourteenth century, but still
sufficiently real to exercise a weighty influence over the national
development. Scholars like Angelo Poliziano, princes like Lorenzo de'
Medici, men of letters like Feo Belcari and Benivieni, borrowed from
the people forms of poetry, which they handled with refined taste, and
appropriated to the uses of polite literature. The most important of
these forms, native to the people but assimilated by the learned
classes, were the Miracle Play or 'Sacra Rappresentazione;' the
'Ballata' or lyric to be sung while dancing; the 'Canto
Carnascialesco' or Carnival Chorus; the 'Rispetto' or short
love-ditty; the 'Lauda' or hymn; the 'Maggio' or May-song; and the
'Madrigale' or little part-song.

At Florence, where even under the despotism of the Medici a show of
republican life still lingered, all classes joined in the amusements
of carnival and spring ti