[42] The foregoing remarks follow very closely Symonds’ treatment in the third chapter of his Italian Literature.  In point of fact, I lit on Donati’s poem quite accidentally, before reading the chapter in question, but I have made no scruple of availing myself of his guidance wherever it was to be had.

[43] Symonds has some very severe strictures on these songs from the moral point of view.  Judging from the actual songs themselves his remarks would appear somewhat exaggerated, but if we take into consideration the historical circumstances they are probably amply justified.

[44] It is perhaps worth putting in a word of warning against the possible confusion of this poem with Politian’s Latin composition bearing the same title.  Ambra was a rustic resort in the neighbourhood of Florence, to which Lorenzo was much attached.  By the lover Lauro the author seems to have meant himself.  At least this is rendered probable by some lines near the end of Politian’s poem, in which the villa is again personified as a nymph: 

  Et nos ergo illi grata pietate dicamus
  Hanc de Pierio contextam flore coronam,
  Quam mihi Caianas inter pulcherrima nymphas
  Ambra dedit patriae lectam de gramine ripae: 
  Ambra mei Laurentis amor, quam corniger Vmbro,
  Vmbro senex genuit domino gratissimus Arno: 
  Vmbro suo tandem non erupturus ab alneo.
    (Opera, Basel, 1553, p. 581.)

[45] He was born at Montepulciano in 1454, and died, at the age of forty, two years after Lorenzo.

[46] Symonds, Renaissance, iv. p. 232, note 3.

[47] It has been sometimes thought that the description of Mars in the lap of Venus, in stanzas 122-3, suggested Botticelli’s picture in the National Gallery; but, though the lines are worthy of having inspired even a more successful example of the painter’s art, the resemblance is in this case too general to warrant any such conclusion.

[48] A favourite phrase of his.  ’What has been well called la volutta idillica—­the sensuous sensibility to beauty, finding fit expression in the Idyll—­formed a marked characteristic of Renaissance art and literature.’ Renaissance, v. p. 170.

[49] The similar alternation of verse and prose found in the French and Provencal cante-fables, notably in Aucassin et Nicolette, is of a different nature, for in them the prose served properly to explain and connect the verse-passages which contained the actual story, and it probably formed no part of the original composition.

[50] I quote from the handy edition of Boccaccio’s Opere minori in the ‘Biblioteca classica economica.’  The passages cited above will be found on pp. 246 and 250, or in the Opere volgari, 1827-34. xv. pp. 186 and 194.

[51] It is probably no accident that, like Dante’s poem, Boccaccio’s romance is styled a ‘comedy.’  Both represent, in allegorical form, the ascent of the human soul from sin, through purgation, to the presence of God.