k. Is it credible that
expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have
had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his
mother as to a jest?

I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived,
Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
spheres." He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
fellow-creature.

Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
appearance of Columbus.[3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.

Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
regard to its general cheerful