The crudest forms of debauchery receive the most refined and highly finished treatment in poems which are as remarkable for their wit as for their cynicism.

A like vein of elaborate innuendo runs through the _Canti Carnascialeschi_ of Florence, proving that however profligate the people might have been, they were not contented with grossness unless seasoned with wit.

The same excitement of the fancy, playing freely in the lawlessness of sensual self-indulgence and heightening the consciousness of personal force in the agent, rendered the exercise of ingenuity or the avoidance of peril an enhancement of pleasure to the Italians.

This is perhaps one of the reasons why all the imaginative compositions of the Renaissance, especially the _Novelle,_ turn upon adultery.

Judging by the majority of these romances, by the comedies of the time, and by the poetry of Ariosto, we are compelled to believe that such illicit love was merely sensual, and owed its principal attractions to the scope it afforded for whimsical adventures.