g with such sweet breath about Florence in praise of his lady. For
it is cheaper to please a woman with a sonnet than with a jewel, and as
my Ippolita was not avaricious, I was blithe to oblige her in golden
numbers in lieu of golden pieces.

Wherefore I set my wits to work one morning after an evening of delight,
and found the muse complaisant. My fancy spouted like a fountain, the
rhymes swam in the water like gilded or silver fishes, so tame you had
but to dip in your fingers and take your pick, while allusion and simile
crowded so thickly about me that I should have needed an epic rather
than my legal fourteen lines to make use of the half of them. I tell you
I was in the very ecstasy of composition that lasted me for the better
part of a fortnight. But by the time that I had come to this point the
pretty Ippolita, whose name I had intended to place there, was no longer
the moment's idol of my soul, and between the two dainty girls that had
succeeded her I sat for a long while embarrassed, like the schoolman's
ass between the two bundles of hay, not knowing, as it were, at which to
bite.

At last I bethought me that the best way out of my trouble was to set
down the names of all the sweet women whom I loved or had loved, and to
let those others and more famous, of whom I knew nothing save by sight
or renown, stand to one side. So it came to pass that this poem of mine
proved, at the last, more like an amorous calendar of my own life than a
hymn in praise of the famous beauties of Florence. For with famous
beauties I have never at any time had much to do. It has always been my
desire to find my beauties for myself, and I have ever found that there
is a greater reward in the discovery of some pretty maid and assuring
her that she is lovelier than Helen of Troy or Semiramis or Cleopatra,
than in the paying of one's addresses to some publicly acclaimed
loveliness.

By the time my tale of verses was complete, it was as different as it
might be from that which it set itself, I will not say to rival, but to
parody, for it contained few names of great ladies that were upon the
lips of every Florentine, but sang the praises of unknown witches and
minxes that were at the time of writing, or had been, very dear to me.
If my song was not so fine a piece of work as that of Messer Dante,
though Messer Dante was at that time only in the earlier flights of his
efforts, and his pinions were, as yet, unfamiliar to the poet's ether,