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 cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author’s affectionate disposition, and his country’s advance in civilisation, combined to render it.  The editor of the Parnaso Italiano had reason to notice this engaging personal character in our author’s work.  He says, speaking of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will “admire Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci."[5] And all minds, in which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.