Mi fariano uscir de' gangheri.
Ma si restin col mal die
Si profane dicerie,

E il mio labbro profanato
Si purifichi, s'immerga,
Si sommerga

Dentro un pecchero indorato

Colmo in giro di quel vino

Del vitigno
Si benigno,

Che fiammeggia il Sansavino."

Have extraordinary taps :

Those Laps especially have strange
faneies:

To see them drink,
I verily think

Would make me lose my senses.
But a truce to such vile subjects,
With their impious, shocking ob-
jects.

Let me purify my mouth

In an holy cup o' the south;
In a golden pitcher let me

Head and ears for comfort get me,

And drink of the wine

Of the vine

Benign,

1

That sparkles warm in Sansovine." Bacchus, the season being hot, must have ice to his wine; and orders his satyrs in fine rock-splitting style, to go and hew some for him out of the grotto of Boboli. We join the original to these extracts, partly in the hope of shewing that we have done justice to it, and partly as a temptation to study for the lovers of Italian.

The Bacco in Toscana is much admired for its compound words after the Greek fashion; which an Italian, to the surprise of the English, can only well venture upon in the mock-heroic. Redi has indeed caricatured them, but with great spirit. Bacchus will have his wine arcifreddissimo (superultrafrostified); his boys

become savage for Greedy-great thirstiness".

(sete grandavida); and he calls the satyrs

"Capribarbicornipede famiglia

The goatibeardihornyfooted family."

In the translation of the following passage, we have endeavoured. to grow into a music and fervour, more obvious in some other parts of the poem, but highly characteristical of it altogether.

"La rugiada di rubino,

Che in Valdarno i colli onora,
Tanto odora,

Che per lei suo pregio perde
La brunetta
Mammoletta,

Quando spunta dal suo verde.
S' io ne bevo,
Mi sollevo

Sovra i gioghi di Permesso,
E nel canto sì m' accendo,
Che pretendo, e mi do vanto
Gareggiar con Febo istesso.
Dammi dunque dal boccal d' oro
Quel rubino ch'è 'l mio tesoro :
Tutto pien d'alto furore
Canterò versi d' amore,
Che saran viepiù soavi,
E più grati di quel che è
Il buon vin di Gersolè.

Quindi al suon d' una ghironda,
O d' un' aurea cennamella,
Arianna, idolo mio,

Loderò tua chioma bionda,
Loderò tua bocca bella.

“The ruby dew that stills

Upon Valdarno's hills,

Touches the sense with odour so

divine,

That not the violet,

With lips with morning wet,

Utters such sweetness from her

little shrine.

When I drink of it, I rise
Over the hill that makes poets wise,
And in my voice and in my song,
Grow so sweet and growso strong,
I challenge Phoebus with his
Delphic eyes.

Give me then, from a golden

measure,

The ruby that is my treasure, my treasure;

And like to the lark that goes maddening above,

I'll sing songs of love!

Songs will I sing more moving and fine,

Than the bubbling and quaffing

of Gersole wine.

Then the rote shall go round,
And the cymbals kiss,
And I'll praise Ariadne,
My beauty, my bliss;
I'll sing of her tresses,
I'll sing of her kisses;
Now, now it increases,
The fervour increases,

The fervour, the boiling, and ve-
nomous bliss.

The grim god of war and the arrowy boy

Double-gallant me with desperate joy;

Love, love, and a fight!

I must make me a knight;

I must make me thy knight of the bath, fair friend,

A knight of the bathing that knows no end.”

The famous Chianti wine, so much praised by travellers (health to the noble company we used to drink it in, on the other side of the Ponte Carraia!) is thus eulogized by the Tuscan wit::