Note 789 — Chapter VIII · DESCRIPTIONS OF LIFE IN MOVEMENT.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
See the Serventese of Giannozzo of Florence, in Trucchi, Poesie italiane inedite, ii. p. 99. The words are many of them quite unintelligible, borrowed really or apparently from the languages of the foreign mercenaries. Macchiavelli’s description of Florence during the plague of 1527 belongs, to certain extent, to this class of works. It is a series of living, speaking pictures of a frightful calamity.